The Evolutionary Tree Continues to Fall: Falsified Predictions, Backpedaling, HGTs and Serendipity Squared

_{Cornelius Hunter

July 27, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution states that the species arose from earlier species. Slight changes accumulating over long time periods resulted in one species giving rise to a new species, over and over. Read more

Comments

Lizzie,
Indeed, which is why the finding of a few direct bridges is, initially, problematic, and presents the question: how are molecular sequences jumping from lineage to lineage? Either our notion of heredity is wrong, or something else is going on in addition. Now, there is plenty of reason to believe that our notion of heridity is right – we inherit phenotypic features from our parents, not from mosquitoes, and we know that genotypes map to phenotypes fairly well. So why might we have odd bits of DNA that seem to have come from somewhere else entirely? Well, there is a known mechanism: viruses. The tree of life based on parentage remains intact, and accounts for phenotypic features, and a great proportion of genotypic features too, not surprisingly as we know that the genome is the main carrier of inheritance. However, it appears that that tree is also host to another DNA propagation vector that uis orthogonal lineage, and pr0pagates from individual to individual across lineages (“horizontally). And we sneeze them out of our noses regularly.
Good point, and this gets back to the utility aspect of a scientific explanation and your comment regarding data points and probability accuracy. Initial models - such as taxonomy relationships - are not going to have the same level of accuracy and utility (predictability for further finds for instance) that latter models - ones based on more fossil finds, more understanding of geological and ecological shifts, more understanding of hybridization and genetic drift - have. Of course, recognizing other opportunities for genetic variation - such as viruses - can only come about if one already has a cognitive model that suggests such relationships and variation in the first place. That's utility.Doveton_{July 29, 2011
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No, Chris. Ouch. No, I'm not saying that either ID or evolutionary theory is "like believing in a flat earth! Strange how two people can read the same essay and draw such different lessons from it! What Asimov is saying is that scientific models become incrementally less wrong as we come to refine them in the light of new data! In other words, both ID or evolutionary theory could occupy the "flat earth" model at the beginning of Asimov's essay, because, as he points out - it's not a bad model. It's pretty nearly right. However, the curvature of the earth's surface turns out not to be zero, as was first thought, but very very very slightly positive. Now, let us take a slightly more specific theory than "ID" which isn't actually an explanatory theory at all - it's a default inference. Let's propose that the theory is that an Intelligent Designer placed the first unicellular life-form on earth, and frontloaded its genome with inactivated genetic information that would be activated by environmental triggers - genes for flagella, genes for flippers, genes for intelligence, whatever. And evolutionary theory was more or less as it is today. And that both of them, like flat-earth theory account for the data as we observe them. However, like flat-earth theory, they are very slightly wrong - perhaps ID, while accounting for a lot of the genetic data, seems to hit a snag - brand new sequences seem to appear suddenly in the genetic phylogeny, rather than triggered into action by the environment. Ditto, evolutionary theory finds that the genetic phylogenies are not entirely congruent with the phenotypic phylogenies - DNA sequences jump lineage boundaries! The theories are falsified! But - not so fast. The original theories still account for most of the data, but they can't be completely true. They need modification, just as flat-earth theory required a slightly positive addition to the postulated curvature parameter of zero. So ID adds a tweak - front-loading accounts for most of the data, but we need to hypothesises that new informational sequences are inserted by the Designer into the genome over time. ID-MkII is "slightly less wrong" than ID-MkI. It's not that there has been an "ad hoc patch" to the theory. Rather, it has been elaborated to account for more of the data. Ditto with evolutionary theory and viruses. Yes, evolutionary theory as it stood has been "falsified" just as ID-MkI was falsified, but we now have a more complex theory that accounts for the data better. Just as, with ID-MkII, we now know more about the way the Designer implement His Design. However, in both cases the original model remains a decent approximation for many purposes. Flat maps work pretty well for limited regions. ID frontloading is still a good-enough description for most purposes; ditto Darwin's theory. The point being that all models are wrong, but some are less wrong than others (hence "the relativity of wrong"); moreover, all models are provisional and subject to constant falsification. That does not mean (or very rarely means) that when a model is falsified, we have to go back to the proverbial drawing board. In fact like any "design process" (heh) we keep what works, jettison what doesn't, and modify what's left to try to work better (hey, what does that remind you of....?) cheers LizzieElizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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I just read the essay, Lizzie. Are you're telling me that believing that life made itself by accident and then evolved through random mutations and natural selection is JUST LIKE believing in a flat Earth, whereas belief in ID is just like believing in a perfectly spherical Earth? If so, then, yes, I see your point. You might have some issues with the details of ID but, at worst, those minor quibbles do not change the fact that ID is mostly right. It would be incredibly disappointing if you were trying to claim the opposite: that believing in evolution is just like believing in a spherical Earth. That would merely be advancing a typical low-level evolutionist article of faith: one that is without any empirical or rational basis whatsoever.Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Hi Lizzie, I've not read the essay, but I will. In the meantime, I don't think you have identified the fundamental problem at all. First of all, it is not a case of Lizzie (and scientists) versus Chris (and non-scientists). If anything, it is a case of evolutionists on the one hand moving the goalposts and "us guys" using science to cry foul play! Remember: although there maybe "scientific consensus" on your side, Lizzie, we have true science on our side. Which is more important? Quite simply the fossil record does not look the way it should look if evolution was true. The Cambrian Explosion - with its sudden appearance of virtually all major body plans - particularly undermines neo-darwinism. And then there's all the stasis: fossils of things that are still around today have not evolved at all. And then there's all the discontinunity: the same discontinuinty that we see in all extant species today. And if there really was a Tree of Life, we should never, ever find “a peculiar chunk of DNA in the genomes of eight animals – the mouse, rat, bushbaby, little brown bat, tenrec, opossum, anole lizard and African clawed frog – but not in 25 others, including humans, elephants, chickens and fish.” Dismissing that as HGT is simply not good enough. Okay, I'll go and read Asimov now. I hope he says that science should go wherever the evidence leads and theories should be abandoned if they are undermined by the evidence, not preserved because of an a priori commitment to naturalism.Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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Re the Cambrian explosion, I found an interesting graphic here: http://winteryknight.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/cambrianexplosion.gif drawn by someone who wanted to make your point, I think. But as I read it, it inadvertently makes the opposite point! The Cambrian explosion doesn't "turn the tree upside down", but merely marks a horizon. The circles do indeed show hypothesed lineages for which data is scant. The "Darwinian" answer is simply that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially, when we have reasons to account for the absence (the Cambrian marks the emergence of biota that fossilise readily), and when already some of those missing lineages are being filled in, partly by genetic evidence. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=32333 But of course this inference only works under the Asimov paradigm!Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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Chris, it's not "spin" at all, it's the way science works! This is a fundamental problem in these discussions, I think. On the one side, I'd argue, scientists are saying (including evolutionary scientists): here is a theory that may explain the observed patterns in our data; let's derive testable hypotheses that will allow us to parameterise the model and refine it so that it accounts for as much of the data as we can. On the other hand, you guys are saying: hey, look - the scientists got it wrong again! Yet another ad hoc tweak to save their theory! They are so blinded by their commitment to their theory that they cannot see that it is irredeemably holed, but just keep patching it in the hope of postponing the data of its inevitable demise! This is a huge cultural divide! How do we bridge it? I do recommend, if you have not read it, the essay, The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov. If you have read, it, I'd be interested to know your response. If you haven't, please do :) It isn't long. IMO it beautifully articulates the scientific paradigm, and I'd argue, if you disagree with that paradigm, fair enough, but in that case your disagreement is with the entire scientific edifice, not just evolutionary theory :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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"The data still show a tree, if far richer than we once thought, and more complicated than we once thought." Well spun ;-) But you forgot, the data - particularly from the Cambrian Explosion - turns the tree upside down too, Lizzie. Here's another nice quote: "We can tell tales of improvement for some groups, but in the honest moments we must admit that the history of complex life is more a story of multifarious variation about a set of basic designs than a saga of accumulating evidence".Chris Doyle_{July 29, 2011
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I have to say, the arguments against the tree of life seem pretty thin! It seems to me the ID hypothesis is orthogonal to it anyway. Darwin provided an explanation for what he considered the data showed - a tree. The data still show a tree, if far richer than we once thought, and more complicated than we once thought. Darwinian evolution remains a good explanation IMO, but not the only possible one. However, trying to claim that the tree itself isn't there seems a bit daft to me. Not ID's strongest (or necessary) suit, IMO :)Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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A general point: "species" is a pretty useful term, when used to categorise extant population, even though species divisions are fuzzier in places than others. "Ring species" are a good example, where populations at the extreme ends of a distribution cannot or do not interbreed, even if brought together artificially, but each population in the distribution interbreeds with neighbouring populations. Another example is of course populations that do not readily interbreed and produce fertile, viable offspring in the wild, but may to do so in captivity. What this means, of course, is that any extant biota (the one around now, for instance) is a horizontal slice through the branching process, and closely related populations may still be able to interbreed, while populations that branched far less recently will not, leaving clear discrete populations.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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Doveton:
In fact, if someone were to find an example of two disparate groups gaining a direct bridge biologically, evolutionary theory would be in serious trouble.
Indeed, which is why the finding of a few direct bridges is, initially, problematic, and presents the question: how are molecular sequences jumping from lineage to lineage? Either our notion of heredity is wrong, or something else is going on in addition. Now, there is plenty of reason to believe that our notion of heridity is right - we inherit phenotypic features from our parents, not from mosquitoes, and we know that genotypes map to phenotypes fairly well. So why might we have odd bits of DNA that seem to have come from somewhere else entirely? Well, there is a known mechanism: viruses. The tree of life based on parentage remains intact, and accounts for phenotypic features, and a great proportion of genotypic features too, not surprisingly as we know that the genome is the main carrier of inheritance. However, it appears that that tree is also host to another DNA propagation vector that uis orthogonal lineage, and pr0pagates from individual to individual across lineages ("horizontally). And we sneeze them out of our noses regularly.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 29, 2011
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This is quite trivial and undisputed - things change, offspring are not identical. All 'types' or 'species' are headed downward toward genetic oblivion, not upward towards more complexity. Red Island Red Tigers will lose some of the information that BIRT's keep and vice versa. And both have less than the parent population. The tree is very apparent within 'branches' , but when you think "Tigers and elephants are even more distant cousins" (LOL) it falls.butifnot_{July 28, 2011
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... my point being that "evolutionary biologists" are well on their way to making the term 'species' vacuous and useless.Ilion_{July 28, 2011
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"The moment the disparate tiger groups no longer interbred, they would, for all practical purposes, be separate species." Oddly enough, disparate groups which were long thought to be separate species, but are now known to be interfertile, never get "lumped"; witness lions and tigers, or domestic cattle and any number of wild species ... including the American bison. At the same time, groups that were never thought to be disparate, and are known to be interfertile, get "split"; witness chimpanzees and bonobos, or African 'savannah' elephants and African 'forest' elephants.Ilion_{July 28, 2011
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The moment the disparate tiger groups no longer interbred, they would, for all practical purposes, be separate species.
Are they both assigned new nomenclature?Mung_{July 28, 2011
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Ciphertext, So the independently breeding tiger groups are still of the same species. How would the branch divergence lead to different species of tiger? Would those species not be successful in an interbreeding program? The moment the disparate tiger groups no longer interbred, they would, for all practical purposes, be separate species. And this is what occurs in nature. The Galapagos marine iguanas are only slightly phenotypically different from their land iguana cousins and their Equador mainland ancestors. Marine iguanas and land iguanas do sometimes interbreed, producing hybrid pink iguanas, but this now happens rarely and the two groups are phenotypically become more diverse.
So let me ask a question in the form of an illustration. Let’s say that there is a species of Tiger called Red Tiger. I take several breeding pairs of Red Tigers and put them on an isolated island (Red Island). I take several other breeding pairs of Red Tigers and put them on another isolated island (Blue Island). Such that I had the Red Island Red Tigers (RIRT) and Blue Island Red Tigers (BIRT). Is the theory that over time the RIRT and BIRT offspring will become different species, such that it is no longer suitable to call them both “Red Tigers”?
Yep...that sums it up quite nicely. Now one condition that does need to be added to your illustration is that the environments Red Island and Blue Island should be different; if they both have the same environments, the selective pressure for any differentiations becoming fixed would be low all other factors being equal.Doveton_{July 28, 2011
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@Doveton RE: Post #12
Tigers might eventually split into two (or more) separate groups of independent breeding tiger groups, both with slightly different phenotype characteristics from one another. This is why Lizzie suggested using the concept of “splitting” as opposed to “begetting”.
So the independently breeding tiger groups are still of the same species. How would the branch divergence lead to different species of tiger? Would those species not be successful in an interbreeding program? So let me ask a question in the form of an illustration. Let's say that there is a species of Tiger called Red Tiger. I take several breeding pairs of Red Tigers and put them on an isolated island (Red Island). I take several other breeding pairs of Red Tigers and put them on another isolated island (Blue Island). Such that I had the Red Island Red Tigers (RIRT) and Blue Island Red Tigers (BIRT). Is the theory that over time the RIRT and BIRT offspring will become different species, such that it is no longer suitable to call them both "Red Tigers"?ciphertext_{July 28, 2011
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Eric Anderson,
Lizzie:“You talk about “one species giving rise to a new species, over and over” – better to talk about “one species splitting into two, over and over”.” Yet, of course, evolutionary theory has no valid way to distinguish between the two, right?
Not sure what you mean here - it seems that evolutionary theory does a fine job of distinguishing related species.
Under evolutionary theory it is just as likely that a tiger could turn into an elephant (over time) as it is that an amoeba could turn into an elephant. There is no reason to prefer one over the other.
This would not be accurate under evolutionary theory. Never mind that fairly simple analysis dismisses the notion that either tigers or amoebas can give rise to elephants, for evolutionary theory to be accurate, neither tigers nor amoebas can "turn into" anything other than tigers or amoebas respectively. Tigers might eventually split into two (or more) separate groups of independent breeding tiger groups, both with slightly different phenotype characteristics from one another. This is why Lizzie suggested using the concept of "splitting" as opposed to "begetting". That aside, there are a number of reasons given evolutionary theory to predict some speciation characteristics. For example, we can quickly eliminate elephants splitting off from tigers because of the lack of immediate phenotype relationships. In other words, the differences between elephants and tigers require intermediate phenotypical fixations. Think of it this way - a cousin, an offspring of one of your parents' siblings, is very closely related to you. What are chances that you and your spouse could have a child that is identical to one of your cousins? The answer, of course, is zero, even if, I might add, you were to have a child with your sibling's spouse. The fact is, neither you nor your wife carry the genetic material to create an offspring that is identical to your sibling and his or her spouse's genetic makeup, even with genetic drift and mutation. Tigers and elephants are even more distant cousins, so there is no direct route (genetically speaking) between the two. This is what Lizzie tried to get across by noting splits occurring over and over. Once you have several branches between to species, there's no way to biologically create a direct branch between the two and evolutionary theory predicts this. In fact, if someone were to find an example of two disparate groups gaining a direct bridge biologically, evolutionary theory would be in serious trouble.Doveton_{July 28, 2011
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Elizabeth @7: "You talk about “one species giving rise to a new species, over and over” – better to talk about “one species splitting into two, over and over”." Yet, of course, evolutionary theory has no valid way to distinguish between the two, right? Under evolutionary theory it is just as likely that a tiger could turn into an elephant (over time) as it is that an amoeba could turn into an elephant. There is no reason to prefer one over the other.Eric Anderson_{July 28, 2011
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But it is important to note that while the incongruences are extremely interesting, and HGT is a fascinating addition to our knowledge, broadly, genetic phylogenies do confirm phenotypic ones, and occasionally, when they do not, make predictions about new phenotypic data that are later confirmed.
And now, if the trees don't agree, we can blame it on HGT! ad hoc squared!Mung_{July 28, 2011
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In a trivial sense, Darwin’s model has been falsified countless times...
Trivial because falsification isn't important to the theory.
So when you talk about “falsified predictions” it’s extremely important to be precise about exactly what hypothesis generated the falsified prediction.
Yeah Dr. Hunter. Next time make it clear you're talking about the tree of life please.Mung_{July 28, 2011
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Ilion @4:
Yet, according to at least some of the DarwinDefenders here at UD — and with no dissent from the others — to say that “one species changed into another” is to commit the mortal sin of Not Understanding Science.
Elizabeth Liddle @7:
You talk about “one species giving rise to a new species, over and over” – better to talk about “one species splitting into two, over and over”.
LOL. Elizabeth Liddle was introduced to the concept of anagenesis right here at UD (apparently she'd never heard of it before.) Then promptly ignored it. Apart from the logical absurdity inherent in the very idea of one species splitting into two.Mung_{July 28, 2011
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Cornelius Hunter: A small but important point: You talk about "one species giving rise to a new species, over and over" - better to talk about "one species splitting into two, over and over". "Species" is an essentially horizontal concept, that describes non-interbreeding extant populations, like dogs and cats. Dogs will never "give rise to" cats. But dogs may subdivide into two independently adapting populations, so that after many generations, we can talk about two "species" of dog. Neither of those species are the species we now have, although one may be much more like it than the other, and when our descendents find fossils of our dogs, they may well be tempted to say they are the same species as one of their two extant species. But it would be misleading - not least because clearly a long-dead population cannot interbreed with its remote descendents! As for your article (which I enjoyed btw!), I have a couple of comments: The tree of life, as derived from phenotypic traits, still stands as a tree. What is more, genetic trees are indeed substantially congruent. However, as you rightly note, there are incongruences that cannot merely be put down to "noise". Something else is going on. And that something else appears to be HGT - in other words that something, other than heredity, is determining where various genes end up. That doesn't, as your linked article, points out, mean that the phenotypic trees don't imply heredity, it just means that there is a second system spreading genetic material through the tree by a different mechanism. In eukaryotes one of those mechanisms is viruses. To give a model example: Imagine a simple heredity model where you start off with a single string, keep reproducing from it, from its descendents, and so on, while also occasionally mutating the string. You will of course end up with a tree structure where your final population has quite a lot of variance, and you can trace each variant back up the tree, and find out where the mutation first appeared in that lineage. Now add an additional system: take a second smaller, string, and have it do the same, so that it also has a tree structure. However, instead of running the second tree independently of the first, instantiate each of these strings as an new insert into an individual in one of the original strings, and allow it to propagate by jumping between lineages on the original (just as a virus does). That will really mess up the phylogenies of the first tree, because unless you know who was the parent of each individual, you will be tempted to assume inheritance relationships where none exist; A may not have inherited xyz from is parent, but acquired it from a virus that it caught from B, making it look as though A is more closely related to B than it actually is. If the virus has no phenotypic effects, we will find ourselves with molecular trees that are incongruent with the phenotype-derived trees. And I suggest that even if the virus does have phenotypic effects it almost as likely, I suggest, that the same will be true, as any phenotypic effects of a viral insertion in one individual are unlikely to resemble the phenotypic effects in another, and the trait resulting from the insertion in the original individual will simply behave like any other heritable trait thereafter. But it is important to note that while the incongruences are extremely interesting, and HGT is a fascinating addition to our knowledge, broadly, genetic phylogenies do confirm phenotypic ones, and occasionally, when they do not, make predictions about new phenotypic data that are later confirmed. I think it is really important to distinguish between the falsification of a specific prediction, and the falsification of a whole theory. In a trivial sense, Darwin's model has been falsified countless times; we know that heredity and population change is much more complicated than he envisioned. Indeed, Darwin had very little idea about how heredity even worked, and even less how variance was generated. So when you talk about "falsified predictions" it's extremely important to be precise about exactly what hypothesis generated the falsified prediction. In this case, the falsified hypothesis is that all genetic material is inherited. We now not it is not. Here are a few other falsfied evolutionary hypotheses: That all heritable phenotypic variance is genetic (Lamarck wasn't so wrong, not that Darwin thought so either). That all characteristic traits of populations are adaptive (we know they are not - drift is a very important factor). That all adaptation must arise from incremental beneficial mutations (we now not that even deleterious mutations can propagate through the population and serve as precursors for later beneficial mutations). That all adaptation arises from novel genetic changes (much adaptation is simply changes in the frequency of existing alleles). So there are a few more for your next article :) But none of this rattles the foundations of biology - it merely adds to the richness and complexity. What really would rattle the foundation of biology would be something like the discovery that the earth is only 6,000 years old, and that the geologic column has no correlation with age. Or, perhaps more plausibly, that large parts of the genome are "latent" genetic material that can be activated by environmental triggers in order to generate a better adapted phenotype. That would stab at the heart of Darwin's theory. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it would falsify it :) A lot better than that pre-Cambrian rabbit, anyway, which almost certainly just fell down some old mine working.Elizabeth Liddle_{July 28, 2011
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Eocene, nice find, to further back up your quote: “Whatever we may try to do within a given species, we soon reach limits which we cannot break through. A wall exists on every side of each species. That wall is the DNA coding, which permits wide variety within it (within the gene pool, or the genotype of a species)-but no exit through that wall. Darwin's gradualism is bounded by internal constraints, beyond which selection is useless." R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990) New Research on Epistatic Interactions Shows "Overwhelmingly Negative" Fitness Costs and Limits to Evolution - Casey Luskin June 8, 2011 Excerpt: In essence, these studies found that there is a fitness cost to becoming more fit. As mutations increase, bacteria faced barriers to the amount they could continue to evolve. If this kind of evidence doesn't run counter to claims that neo-Darwinian evolution can evolve fundamentally new types of organisms and produce the astonishing diversity we observe in life, what does? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/new_research_on_epistatic_inte047151.html At one of her many public talks, she [Lynn Margulis] asks the molecular biologists in the audience to name a single unambiguous example of the formation of a new species by the accumulation of mutations. Her challenge goes unmet. Michael Behe - Darwin's Black Box - Page 26 Natural Selection and Evolution's Smoking Gun, - American Scientist - 1997 “A matter of unfinished business for biologists is the identification of evolution's smoking gun,”... “the smoking gun of evolution is speciation, not local adaptation and differentiation of populations.” Keith Stewart Thomson - evolutionary biologist “The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the position of some people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.” Roger Lewin - Historic Chicago 'Macroevolution' conference of 1980 "The closest science has come to observing and recording actual speciation in animals is the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky in Drosophilia paulistorium fruit flies. But even here, only reproductive isolation, not a new species, appeared." from page 32 "Acquiring Genomes" Lynn Margulis. Selection and Speciation: Why Darwinism Is False - Jonathan Wells: Excerpt: there are observed instances of secondary speciation — which is not what Darwinism needs — but no observed instances of primary speciation, not even in bacteria. British bacteriologist Alan H. Linton looked for confirmed reports of primary speciation and concluded in 2001: “None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/05/selection_and_speciation_why_d.html Wired Science: One Long Bluff - Refuting a recent finch speciation claim - Jonathan Wells - Nov. 2009 Excerpt: "Does the report in Wired Science mean that “biologists have witnessed that elusive moment when a single species (of Galapagos finch) splits in two?” Absolutely not." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/11/wired_science_one_long_bluff.html As well, materialists never mention the fact that the variations found in nature (such as peppered moth color and finch beak size) which are often touted as solid proof of evolution are always found to be cyclical in nature. i.e. The variations are found to vary around a median position with never a continual deviation from the norm. This blatant distortion/omission of evidence led Phillip Johnson to comment in the Wall Street Journal: "When our leading scientists have to resort to the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you know they are in trouble."bornagain77_{July 28, 2011
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Here's a good piece by author Kevin Kelly from his book, "Out of Control" ======= "Around the world, a few naturalists are conducting long-term observations of evolving populations of organisms in the wild: snails in Tahiti, fruitflies in Hawaii, finches in the Galapagos, and lake fish in Africa. Every year that these studies go on, there is a better chance that scientists can unequivocally demonstrate long-term evolution in action in the field. Shorter-term studies using bacteria, and recently flour beetles, show short-term evolution of organisms in the lab. So far, these experiments with populations of living creatures have matched the results expected from neodarwinian theory. The beaks of finches in the Galapagos really do thicken over time in response to drought-induced changes in their food supply, just as Darwin predicted. These careful measurements prove that self-governing adaptation does spontaneously occur in nature. They also unequivocally demonstrate that noticeable change can emerge on its own by summing up the steady unnoticeable work of incremental deletions of the unfit. But the results do not show new levels of diversity, new kinds of creatures, or even new complexity emerging. Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the wild in recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new animal species emerge in domestic breeding. That includes no new species of fruitflies in hundreds of millions of generations in fruitfly studies, where both soft and harsh pressures have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to induce speciation. And in computer life, where the term "species" does not yet have meaning, we see no cascading emergence of entirely new kinds of variety beyond an initial burst. In the wild, in breeding, and in artificial life, we see the emergence of variation. But by the absence of greater change, we also clearly see that the limits of variation appear to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species."Eocene_{July 28, 2011
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"Slight changes accumulating over long time periods resulted in one species giving rise to a new species, over and over." Yet, according to at least some of the DarwinDefenders here at UD -- and with no dissent from the others -- to say that "one species changed into another" is to commit the mortal sin of Not Understanding Science.Ilion_{July 28, 2011
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As time pants on to the end, discovery reveals that rather than another human fabricated iconic image from Idolatry of a singular tree, it appears there are many orchards with thousands of trees(and quite possibly twice or three times as many shrubs and ruderals). Interestingly, the ancient Germanic tribes once worshiped a tree as an image of their god(or at least one of them). That's why the definite article has the masculine 'Der' Baum.Eocene_{July 28, 2011
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The problem is that most people can't see the forest for the trees. And if the tree falls in the forest and no-one is there, can we be sure it made a sound?Eric Anderson_{July 27, 2011
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Does the evolutionary tree falling make the same sound as one hand clapping?Joseph_{July 27, 2011
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