The common simple answer is “life is a tree, not a ladder”.
When a lineage splits, one of the branches can evolve something new while the common ancestral features will be conserved in the other branch. Even then, all branches will evolve in one way or another. Therefore, the bacteria we have today are different than the bacteria that would have existed in the distant past.
No one has found any structures that are known to have no function until all the parts of the IC system are present. They only speculate that they couldn’t have had function in the past with different or fewer parts. Also, IC systems were predicted to be an outcome of evolutionary mechanisms back in the 1920’s:
We could add the Mullerian Two-Step (make it beneficial then make it necessary) to the list of things we wish people would understand about evolution.
Another analogy for this is electricity. If you suddenly shut down the electricity in NY City it would be a mess (which has actually happened a few times). Does this mean NYC has always had electricity? Obviously not. When electricity was first introduced it was a luxury, something beneficial that some people had but was not necessary for the city to function. However, over time more and more functions within the city became dependent on electricity to the point that removing it would cause the city to stop functioning.
No one is stopping creationists from doing the research and publishing their results. That’s how debates are done in science, with peer reviewed primary research papers.
Can you show us any quality original research papers that were unjustly denied publication? And how are people being banned from discussing anything?
The ironic part is that BioLogos allows comments both on the article pages and in this discussion forum. Where can you find the same features at places like Evolution News & Views, Answers in Genesis, or Reasons to Believe? In order to attend a seminar at the Discovery Institute you have to get references from people they trust so they know you already accept Intelligent Design before attending.
The other part of the problem is that a good debate requires one thing: both sides should care about facts and honesty. Unfortunately, many creationists don’t believe in these things. Answers in Genesis flat out says that they will ignore any data that contradicts their beliefs:
“No apparent, perceived, or claimed evidence in any field of study, including science, history, and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the clear teaching of Scripture obtained by historical-grammatical interpretation.”–Answers in Genesis
How can you have a debate where one side will ignore any evidence that contradicts them?
If there is a piece of evidence you think the scientific community is ignoring then I implore you to post that evidence and we will see how it survives a debate.
The Intelligent Design folks believe that, not the scientific community.
I have to disagree here…science autocorrects to accommodate new data, as Dr Schweitzer, the evolutionary paleontologist who discovered the remnants you allude to, did. Unfortunately, people can be dogmatic. From religious doctrine to scientific models (even the germ theory was disputed), we have difficulty changing. It is true that some did disbelieve initially, but with further understanding and nuance, the skeptics joined her, too. She has not wavered in her stand on evolution.
This brings me back to the point that I raised at the start of this thread:
It is perfectly legitimate for scientists to reject challenges that fudge or cherry-pick measurements, that quote people out of context, that exaggerate or downplay the significance of discrepancies, anomalous results and error bars, that misrepresent evidence, or that attempt to challenge an incorrect straw man caricature of evolution that is not found in any school or university textbook. It is perfectly legitimate for scientists to shut down objectors who repeatedly do such things even after having been told that their arguments are fallacious for that very reason. Lying about facts is lying about facts, and those who engage in such behaviour have no right whatsoever to describe the rejection of their falsehoods as “dogmatic” or “anti-science” or “brainwashing.”
Soft tissue in dinosaur fossils is a case in point here.
Young earthists repeatedly present the soft tissue findings as if they consist of unstable biomolecules that should not last for millions of years. Yet whenever you go back to the original literature and examine what was actually reported, it turns out that the scientists concerned only found the ultimately stable breakdown products of those unstable biomolecules. Heme breakdown products and porphyrins are not haemoglobin. DNA breakdown products are not sequenceable DNA. Structures that had to be soaked in a demineralising solution for a week are not unpermineralised. And so on and so forth.
One of the most fundamental rules of science is that you must get your facts straight about what the evidence actually consists of before attempting to discuss what it does or does not prove. There is nothing “evolutionist” or “dogmatic” whatsoever about this; it is simply a matter of basic honesty.
First: in the words of Wikipedia, [citation needed]. Who exactly was the creationist to which you refer, and what exactly did they predict?
Secondly: the James Webb Space Telescope is another case in point here.
Another fundamental rule of science is that you must not exaggerate nor downplay the extent or significance of discrepancies, discordances and sources of error in scientific findings. Surprising findings and anomalous results occur all the time in science, but they do not justify throwing out any and every established scientific fact that you don’t like. Once again, there is nothing “evolutionist” about this whatsoever: it’s simply a matter of basic honesty. Exaggerating the significance of surprising findings is lying, and those who do so have no right whatsoever to accuse scientists who call them on it of “dogmatism” or “brainwashing” or any kind of discrimination.
There’s been a lot of hype in the popular press about the JWST findings posing some sort of threat to the Big Bang. They do nothing of the sort. The claim that they do is based on an out-of-context quote from a single scientist that was blown up out of all proportion. Quote mining is lying.
The JWST findings have shown that large galaxies formed earlier in the history of the universe than was previously thought possible—about 200 million years after the Big Bang. This is surprising, and it does mean that scientists need to rethink some details of galaxy formation, but it does nothing whatsoever to reduce the age of the universe from 13.8 billion years to just six thousand. That would require a complete rewrite of everything that we know about physics, chemistry and cosmology.
I would most like people to understand that natural selection is really no different than the basic learning process. Thus rather than this being a mechanical explanation, it is an explanation at the very roots of what it means to be alive. Thus in theology, it is not about excluding God but changing His role from the Deist Watchmaker designing machines to the Christian Shepherd guiding his flock to better pastures.
Because they are successful. Why should they evolve? They are a dominant life form and can still defeat us, often developing resistance to antibiotics.
But some of them have. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Unless of course it was the unsuccessful, inferior bacteria that eventually turned into us. Not sure what it says about us…
Constructive neutral evolution is an interesting topic that I recently came across again. This idea suggests that complexity is a result of larger cell size, smaller effective population sizes, and slower reproduction which reduces the overall cost of genome size and genome complexity as well as reducing selection against complexity. In bacteria there is selection against complexity because the cost of the genome is a much larger proportion of the bacterial lifetime energy budget and larger population sizes allows for selection to see much smaller changes in fitness.
So it could be that multicellularity and overall eukaryotic complexity is due to the removal of selection against complexity, not necessarily selection for complexity.
It’s a tough one. I think that the one thing that I have taken away is that evolution isn’t an easy concept to grasp–and God is also a hard one. With that, I need to give others (and myself) more patience. I think that begs the question–with the Bible being so unclear and irrelevant to nature, does God really care that we get things that accurate–or does it matter more that we love others as ourselves?
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly[a] with your God. (Micah 6:8)
I guess this is what I wish everyone would understand about evolution.
It’s a creation that keeps on creating because there is grandeur in this view of life,
with its several powers,
having been originally breathed
into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity,
from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful
have been, and are being, evolved
Had to look that one up – being relatively illiterate and/or at least having senior memory, I didn’t recognize it as a Darwin quote. That, and ‘whilst’ didn’t sound like you.
A big reason I accept the science of evolution is my becoming aware of the concept of neutral drift and the neutral theory of evolution. In conjunction with those, I also became aware of what population genetics implies. Formerly I thought that a single mutation in a single base pair in DNA was supposed to have been able accomplish and account for each morphologic and phenotypic change, “macroevolution” and “irreducibly complex” structures and molecular machines.
@T_aquaticus’ post above just this evening and its accompanying citation didn’t hurt either, about constructive neutral evolution (CNE):
All I did was add “ creation that keeps on creating “ to his quote. It’s my favorite quote by Darwin actually. Always felt it was the perfect blend of the way evolution works with a head nod to genesis about “ having been breathed into a few forms or one “.
But it’s also a fairly iconic quote of his referred thousands of times lol. I’ve read it in so many books, xd covers and heard it in films.
Sort of on the side, I wish people would stop with the strange idea that the theory of evolution endures because scientists don’t want to rock the boat! In my experience in university science courses and getting to know a fair number of my professors, rocking the boat is precisely what they all aspire to regardless of the branch of science.
