The latest attempt is by Ann Gauger posting on the best Intelligent Design Creationist website.1 She outlines her case at: Is Evolution True? Laying Out the Logic.
- Evolution is a proven fact. It can be easily observed in the lab.
- The evidence that evolution has occurred in the past is overwhelming. This is especially true of molecular evolution. It would be perverse to ignore all this evidence and claim that genes have not evolved over billions of years.
- Primitive enzymes were probably promiscuous—they were able to catalyze reactions with a large range of related substrates [The Evolution of Enzymes from Promiscuous Precursors]. Many modern enzymes have broad specificity.
- Homologous enzymes with different, but related, specificities probably evolved from promiscuous ancestral enzymes following a gene duplication event and subsequent specialization of the two copies. Evolution in the two lineages occurs by a combination of natural selection and random genetic drift.
- It's possible to deduce the amino acid sequence of an ancient enzyme from a phylogenetic tree. Some ancient enzymes have been constructed and some of them react with multiple related substrates (promiscuous) as predicted.
- Therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that homologous enzymes with different specificities can evolve from promisuous enzymes in this manner.
This begs the question of whether evolution is true. It is a circular argument unsubstantiated by the evidence and unfalsifiable. No one can know what ancient enzymes actually looked like, and whether they really had such broad catalytic specificities.There you have it. This is one of the very best IDiot arguments for the existence of god(s).
In contrast, our argument is as follows:
- Is evolution true? Test case: Do enzymes evolve by a process of natural selection and random mutation?
- Modern enzymes are the only thing we can test.
- No one knows if ancient enzymes were different. They are lost in the deep past, so claims with regard to their promiscuity or ability to evolve are hypothetical and unfalsifiable.
- Modern enzymes can't evolve new functions, based on our own experiments.
- We haven't tested the universe of modern enzymes, so our result is qualified, but the nine most similar enzymes did not change function.
- Our estimate for the likely waiting time for an enzyme to evolve a new function is at least 1015 years.
- Therefore evolution of enzymes is likely to be impossible.
- Given the sophistication of enzymes and the way they work together, intelligent design is the best explanation for the origin and current diversity of modern enzymes.
Are you still wondering why I call them IDiots?
1. There's not a lot of competition.
121 comments :
Since when "sophisticated" means designed? I can conseder the Earth itself (with its internal and external dynamics) "sophisticated" and we have a good explanation for how it came to exist.
Probably.
I see that Gauger has managed to conflate evolution with natural selection.
How unusual...
paper in PNAS just this week shows how we can test changes in enzyme use over time very elegantly: Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation
Abstract
Paleogenetics is an emerging field that resurrects ancestral proteins from now-extinct organisms to test, in the laboratory, models of protein function based on natural history and Darwinian evolution. Here, we resurrect digestive alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH4) from our primate ancestors to explore the history of primate–ethanol interactions. The evolving catalytic properties of these resurrected enzymes show that our ape ancestors gained a digestive dehydrogenase enzyme capable of metabolizing ethanol near the time that they began using the forest floor, about 10 million y ago. The ADH4 enzyme in our more ancient and arboreal ancestors did not efficiently oxidize ethanol. This change suggests that exposure to dietary sources of ethanol increased in hominids during the early stages of our adaptation to a terrestrial lifestyle.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1404167111.abstract
Gauger quotes a biology paper as an example of the circular reasoning of evolutionists. What she doesn't quote is the abstract of the paper which says:
The past few years have seen significant advances in research related to the ‘latent skills’ of enzymes — namely, their capacity to promiscuously catalyze reactions other than the ones they evolved for. These advances regard (i) the mechanism of catalytic promiscuity — how enzymes, that generally exert exquisite specificity, promiscuously catalyze other, and sometimes barely related, reactions; (ii) the evolvability of promiscuous functions — namely, how latent activities evolve further, and in particular, how promiscuous activities can firstly evolve without severely compromising the original activity. These findings have interesting implications on our understanding of how new enzymes evolve. They support the key role of catalytic promiscuity in the natural history of enzymes, and suggest that today's enzymes diverged from ancestral proteins catalyzing a whole range of activities at low levels, to create families and superfamilies of potent and highly specialized enzymes. (boldface added)
So her own reference directly contradicts her own argument. Did she learn that from Behe?
"Hominids adapted to metabolize ethanol long before human-directed fermentation"
And I am forever grateful.
Hey Gauger, Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction. Heard of it?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Ancestral+Sequence+Reconstruction
Then there's this: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001446
Reconstruction of Ancestral Metabolic Enzymes Reveals Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Evolutionary Innovation through Gene Duplication
"Abstract
Gene duplications are believed to facilitate evolutionary innovation. However, the mechanisms shaping the fate of duplicated genes remain heavily debated because the molecular processes and evolutionary forces involved are difficult to reconstruct. Here, we study a large family of fungal glucosidase genes that underwent several duplication events. We reconstruct all key ancestral enzymes and show that the very first preduplication enzyme was primarily active on maltose-like substrates, with trace activity for isomaltose-like sugars. Structural analysis and activity measurements on resurrected and present-day enzymes suggest that both activities cannot be fully optimized in a single enzyme. However, gene duplications repeatedly spawned daughter genes in which mutations optimized either isomaltase or maltase activity. Interestingly, similar shifts in enzyme activity were reached multiple times via different evolutionary routes. Together, our results provide a detailed picture of the molecular mechanisms that drove divergence of these duplicated enzymes and show that whereas the classic models of dosage, sub-, and neofunctionalization are helpful to conceptualize the implications of gene duplication, the three mechanisms co-occur and intertwine."
Key question for idiots: If evolution did not take place, and mutations invariably always degrade and destroy god's supernaturally designed proteins, why did ancestral sequence reconstruction, a method based on assumptions about how evolution takes place, manage to reconstruct a functional and promiscous enzyme ancestor? How's this possible when the process is only based on trees and substitution models, not on structure or function? Shouldn't functional molecules supposedly be totally isolated and unreachable in sequence space?
More fundamental and key question for idiots: If your fundamentalist religious doctrine is really true, why do you have to lie to support it?
Ancestral sequence reconstruction assumes that evolution happened, so it's like totally circular, y'know? God, which is totally not an assumption, just created sequences, and you can do sequence reconstruction because, like, common designer, duh.
That portrayal was scarily accurate, please don't do that again ;P
Actually Gauger would probably say that reconstructions are just revealing what the Designer did, you haven't shown that natural selection could do the reconstructed changes. Then Behe would say "show me the numbers..."
"my Ann Gauger" ????
A freudian slip, no doubt.
Moran, you have been pretty good at hiding your IDiot tendencies until now. But truth was bound to slip out at some time or another.
But doing it in such amorous style?? Im Totally impressed.
Welcome, welcome to the World of Intelligent Design. I know it will pay huge pedagogical dividends for you, Toronto, Canada, USA, the world.
Your new biz card in already in the mail.
Steve,
I have written on uncommondescent.com "...our Ann Gauger..." and now Larry wrote "...my Ann Gauge..."
Whatta heck is going on...?
Freudian slip...? Huh... It has been proven wrong more than right...
When creationists invoke FACIL [False Accusation of Circular Logic] it shows they're desperate, in the last stages of denial. When a creationist says "Your theory made testable predictions; they were confirmed by observation; therefore you're begging the question" it's always funny, pathetic and infuriating at the same time.
This is the typical order of operations.
Creationist: If evolution were true, we would observe X! But X has never ever been observed! Not even once! Not once! No scientist knows the answer! No one can even IMAGINE how X could possibly happen! Cause X is IMPOSSIBLE and can't even be imagined happening in ANY conceivable universe! Impossible, that's all! Therefore God did it! So ban gay marriage, force schoolchildren to pray to my god, and abolish the capital gains tax!
Scientist: That's wrong. We have observed X many, many times over several decades. This is well known even to all grad students.
Creationist: You're begging the question! Your observation of X assumed evolution is true!
I've seen this happen many times. Remember when Stephen Meyer debated Charles Marshall on Medved's radio show? Went like this:
Meyer: During the Cambrian explosion, dozens of proteins appeared simultaneously! Like lysyl oxidase, which appeared suddenly in arthropods during the Cambrian explosion! And evolution can't do it therefore God made them all at the same time by magic!
Marshall: Uh, many proteins did not appear during the Cambrian explosion. New body plans were produced by new gene regulation, not new proteins. Lysyl oxidase is found in fungi and must have existed hundreds of millions of years before the Cambrian.
Meyer: You're begging the question!
And you wonder why I call them liars!
Like "Hitler was a Darwinist", FACIL is whipped out not just when their ridiculous claims are scientifically falsified, but when we explain the actual facts so clearly that non-scientists can see we're right... even church audiences. Oh, that infuriates the creationists!
My counter-argument to FACIL is to say "You're lying" and then explain what "begging the question" means and why observations are not question-begging. But I'm a hothead and Harshman would say maybe they're not lying but just deceived themselves.
Are they lying or what? Meyer is a Ph.D. in philosophy so he freakin understands what petitio principii is and isn't. When he whipped out FACIL in his radio debate against Charles Marshall, it was the pathetic desperation of a man whose false ridiculous claims had been ass-munched by the evidence. Meyer was lying and deserves no pity.
With Green Screen Gauger, she's a few oars short of a rowboat, so who the hell knows if she knows what "begging the question" even means-- she demonstrated in her green screen video that she thinks the term "population genetics" means "phylogenetics", so it's possible she is incapable of understanding ANY scientific argument. Which is the most common attribute of creationists, and like all creationists she judges an argument not on whether it's truthful, but on whether it will sound self-confident and forceful in the ears of a church audience. Is that lying? Or is she too daffy to understand what "truth" even means?
Dr. Moran, why are you such a disrespectful person. Is it necessary to use kindergarten grade name calling to make your case?
You published a summary of Ann Gauger's work above, but you did not give her the respect of linking to her actual published article. Why? Why can you not respect her sufficiently to at least show your cronies her actual case?
Why should I respect Ann Gauger? Do you think she respects "Darwinists"?
We are all familiar with her arguments. She's been making the same point, with similar data, for many years. I do not respect people who continue to use the same tired old arguments long after they have been refuted.
sez bfast: "You published a summary of Ann Gauger's work above, but you did not give her the respect of linking to her actual published article."
Looking at Professor Moran's post, I see a link to Gauger's post at evolutionnews.org, said link being in the final sentence of Prof. Moran's 2nd paragraph. So when you say that Professor Moran "did not… [link] to her actual published article", you managed to overlook the link which Prof. Moran provided.
"Why? Why can you not respect her sufficiently to at least show your cronies her actual case?"
Are you arguing that Gauger did not present "her actual case" in that evolutionnews.org post? If so, where is "her actual case" presented—and given that you feel Prof Moran's alleged failure to link to Gauger's "actual case" constitutes some sort of disrespect, why did you disrespect Gauger by your own failure to link to Gauger's "actual case"?
If, on the other hand, you accept that Gauger's "actual case" is, in fact, presented in her evolutionnews.org post, you therefore also accept that Prof. Moran's link to said post is, indeed, the "[link] to her actual published case" which you berate Prof. Moran for failing to provide.
Tell me, bfast: Are you a blatant hypocrite, or are you just another goddamned Liar For Christ like so many other Creationists before you?
Then she'd be contradicting herself, because above she says we can't know anything about the past because the evidence has been lost to time. Odd how the designer starts making promiscous enzymes, then later derives more specified functions from them. It's almost as if the designer works exactly like evolution.
@bFast :"Why can you not respect her sufficiently to at least show your cronies her actual case."
I was aware of Ann Gauger's "case" long before any one blogged about it.
Perhaps you can tell me: Why didn't Gauger and Axe use Ancestral Sequence Reconstruction to try and reconstruct the evolutionary history of the enzymes in question, instead of just trying to convert one enzyme directly into the other by deliberately choosing which mutations to insert? Why would she deliberately choose to use a flawed method that has nothing to do with how evolution works?
Key question for idiots: If evolution did not take place, and mutations invariably always degrade and destroy god's supernaturally designed proteins, why did ancestral sequence reconstruction, a method based on assumptions about how evolution takes place, manage to reconstruct a functional and promiscous enzyme ancestor? How's this possible when the process is only based on trees and substitution models, not on structure or function? Shouldn't functional molecules supposedly be totally isolated and unreachable in sequence space?
More fundamental and key question for idiots: If your fundamentalist religious doctrine is really true, why do you have to lie to support it?
Can you answer those questions? Ann Gauger hasn't.
There is a large degree of intersection in the Venn diagram containing the "blatant hypocrite" and "goddamned Liar For Christ" sets.
"goddamned Liars For Christ" is a bit unwieldy as the name of a xtian rock band but it does have the quality of accuracy.
One must not forget that the same Ann Gauger reported results which clearly demonstrated that mutation and selection can overcome the growth limitations of BioF mutants.:
"The next presentation in this session was by Ann Gauger, a microbiologist and employee of the Biologic Institute, whose presentation was entitled, “Assessing the difficulty of pathway evolution: an experimental test.” Her presentation was remarkable in part because she performed experiments and reported original data.
She began with the repetitive attempt at a reductio ad absurdum, stating that the current complexity of metabolic pathways within cells could not have been created by gene duplication or gene recruitment (another name for co-option), and therefore they were designed. She suggested that contemporary evolutionists believe if there is not a payoff in terms of adaptive value within a few generations, any duplicated gene will be lost, and that for recruitment/co-option to work, function must change within a very few mutations. It is factually untrue that these assertions are an essential part of Darwinian theory. At most, they were initial starting points for investigations into protein evolution long ago, but today’s evolutionary biology does not adhere to any of them. Gene duplication is considered an integral part of evolutionary dynamics and one major source of the co-option that is so ubiquitous in evolution.
She suggested that when similar proteins are “arranged by hierarchy,” the evidence suggests they arose from a common ancestor that predates the eukaryote/prokaryote split and perhaps even the Archaea. Gauger thus, like Behe, accepted not only a phylogeny of life but an ancient singular origin of life. Then she embarked on a series of experiments designed to emulate 2 billion years of microbial evolution in Petri dishes over a few bacterial generations. Specifically, she wanted to see if either of two forms of a protein would mutate directly into the other under those experimental conditions. They did not.
Gunther Wagner congratulated Dr. Gauger on doing some great experimental work, but noted some logical inconsistencies in inference. The first is a phylogenetic comparative issue; it is necessary to know the ancestral state of the two proteins. If you are dealing with two proteins each derived separately from a common ancestor, then the experiment involves a minimum of two steps, backwards to the ancestral condition and then forwards to the alternative derived condition. It seems unlikely that you would be able to do that experimentally, especially if you have no idea of the environmental conditions under which the evolutionary diversification took place, and no idea if there were any intermediate forms that no longer survive. In response, Gauger admitted that the two proteins she studied are quite old and that studies of enzymes that are more recently diverged from each other report a lot of functional co-option, but only on a small scale.
She was then prompted by one of her colleagues to regale us with some new experimental finds. She gave what amounted to a second presentation, during which she discussed “leaky growth,” in microbial colonies at high densities, leading to horizontal transfer of genetic information, and announced that under such conditions she had actually found a novel variant that seemed to lead to enhanced colony growth. Gunther Wagner said, “So, a beneficial mutation happened right in your lab?” at which point the moderator halted questioning. We shuffled off for a coffee break with the admission hanging in the air that natural processes could not only produce new information, they could produce beneficial new information."
Four years later she explained that these findings wouldn't count - seemingly she just cannot accept that nature found a way to deal with the situation different from what she was demanding:
"No mistake -- the mutated cells grew on medium without added biotin, but this ability was the result of increasing their ability to scavenge biotin from the medium, not because they could make biotin. They had not found a way to replace BioF function, which was the whole point of the experiment."
Rumraket's point needs repeating and repeating and repeating. And repeating.
If evolution did not take place, and mutations invariably always degrade and destroy god's supernaturally designed proteins, why did ancestral sequence reconstruction, a method based on assumptions about how evolution takes place, manage to reconstruct a functional and promiscous enzyme ancestor? How's this possible when the process is only based on trees and substitution models, not on structure or function? Shouldn't functional molecules supposedly be totally isolated and unreachable in sequence space?
I'm stealing that. Let us all copy and paste this for the IDiots to answer.
Like all IDcreationists, bFast criticizes us for name-calling while engaging in name-calling himself: thus he calls Prof. Moran a "disrespectful person."
I've seen this creationist technique a million times. Predictable as clockwork.
bFast, do you object to the scientifuc facts that Gauger got wrong about there being no evidence of the evolution of novel functions? Are you willing to defend the claim that proteins have never been observed to evolve new functions?
Do falsifications of fact bother you at all? Do you "respect" falsifications of scientific facts, and demand we do the same?
Larry wrote :
"1.Evolution is a proven fact. It can be easily observed in the lab.
2.The evidence that evolution has occurred in the past is overwhelming."
All we need Larry is scientific and experimental evidence for your claims Larry...Not what you wish it would be true and not what the genetic draft should do or have done...
We need you to stop buffing and show us the scientific experiments that prove your case Larry... It is over if you can't... You can't continue to sell your unfounded beliefs as science... it just doesn't work for me... I may very well for Dino-gene.. but I'm not him... I need science to be science and not religion... Do you get it..?
What new species, named, has been created in the labs of thye world?? how many?
i got a hunch its trivial diversity within mere species. Peoples kids look more different then any lab tweaked speciation claims.
Creationism easily welcomes variation within species. even creation of species in minor ways. All foxes/woves/( I say bears/seals) are from a kind off the ark.
People changed from Noah and family.
Genes changing over billions of years only works if there was billions of years.
There wasn't.
anyways time is not evidence for evolution. One must prove time created the gene change.
I think Ann Gauger does a great job of attacking evolution.
I think she is confident she is a revolutionary agent of change in conclusions in origin matters.
She is right and is the future.
Byers: "What new species, named, has been created in the labs of thye world?? how many?"
Creationist logic: because no species has ever been observed being made by an intelligent being, therefore all species were made by an intelligent being.
"What new species, named, has been created in the labs of thye world?"
Well, Triticale, scientific name xTriticosecale, from a hybrid of wheat (Triticum) and rye (Secale), for one that is now widespread. There are others, though not all of them got scientific names. And then there are the plant species that originated recently in the wild.
Crossbreeding, hybridization has nothing to do with new species. It depends on what's let in the genepool to a certain level. At the end it leads to infertility due loss of information within the kind.
Topgoosz,
That statement can only result from abysmal ignorance of speciation. New species often originate via hybridization, often accompanied by polyploidy and/or other genome rearrangements.
Hybridization may lead to infertility for reasons that certainly cannot be summarized as "loss of information within the kind", but hybrids may be fertile from the start or become fertile due to chromosome doubling (sometimes leading to speciation).
Two sentences, two false statements.
Lawrence Moran, you said, "Do you think she respects "Darwinists"?" Are you suggesting that the term IDiot and Darwinist are equivalently disrespectful?
promiscuity rather hinders than helps Larry's argument. Larry would read promiscuous as being the flip-side or intelligently caused.
Yet, promiscuity would simply describe the devolution of once plastic proteins that are now constrained.
Not much an argument for unguided evolution.
If you think about it, intelligently challenged evolution is an oxymoran.
Barbara
Hmmm. A hybrid. Well one could cross a tiger with a lion, they have, and say its a new species if it mated and the result was not within the previous two species.
I see this as a special case. not actually a species from mutation action.
Perhaps it was i don't know.
Hybrids are in the wild. I understand in the N american deer types.
if you do a evolved species with a scientific name then there it is.
are there three?
Hmmm. I question a hybrid is a new species . Its very trivial for making the case the labs are producing new evolved species.
hmmmm.
Is it actually evolution at work or human manipulation??
Would the thing survive in nature unaided?
I don't know these plant species in the wild but thats within creationist beliefs.
Evolution can't be lab proved unless its outside a a particular species.
Otherwise people would almost count as evidence for evolution.
Surely we did not evolve to our present looks etc!!
Oberski's love of Amino and The Acids laced intelligently challenged evolution say about all we need to know about the power of unguided evolution to explain much of anything.
Unwittingly the likes of the Oberski's in this world need intelligently packaged unintelligent evolution much more than they are willing to admit in order to gain any marketing traction for their position.
Cafeteria skeptics, those Oberskis.
Huh? Creationist logic here is pretty good. Do you how many , NAMED sciency, species have been created in the labs, or moms kitchen, in the world??
Name your top three!! Or one.
By this time there should be thousands backing up evolutions claims since humans could speed things up.
I got a hunch there is none but worse there is none outside a species type.
It can't be just a sexier butterfly relative to its parents. need some meat here.
Nonsense Barbara!!!
You've got 26 definitions of species for the precise reason that speciation is just not happening.
All you are seeing are varieties of existing organisms.
If as you say speciation is occuring, then surely you can document what direction current life is taking away from ancestral lineages.
So, what is the predicted direction of any lineage of existing forms based on historical data of biodiversity? Surely if speciation is taking place, we can track the past 10~100K years and track those deviations for some lifeforms???
But you know its bogus, Barbara. For the simple reason that life is constrained by the lack of new niches. There's no place for life to go.
Its stasis all the way down.
Most reconstructions show how little evolution has happened over hundreds of millions of years. I would encourage you to look them up in pdb and compare structure. Their ability to be reconstructed in the first place is due to their high sequence similarity. But evolution doesn't have to do with origins anyway right?
Surely if speciation is taking place, we can track the past 10~100K years and track those deviations for some lifeforms???
You mean, like polar bears diverging from brown bears?
Liu, Shiping et al. 2014. "Population Genomics Reveal Recent Speciation and Rapid Evolutionary Adaptation in Polar Bears". Cell 157/4 , 785-794.
Or the Lake Victoria cichlid radiation? Or 500+ endemic fruitfly species in Hawaii?
But you know its bogus, Barbara. For the simple reason that life is constrained by the lack of new niches. There's no place for life to go.
This is nbrearthtakingly stupid even for a creationist. There was no ocean for bears to colonise? (etc.)
@bFast,
Ann Gauger and her friends call me a Darwinist then they waste a lot of effort trying to prove that Darwinists are racists, Nazi lovers, eugenicists, and the root cause of many social evils. They also promte the idea that Darwinists are stupid because they believe in something that is obviously wrong in spite of the fact that Intelligent Design Creationist have been teaching them the "truth" about evolution for many years.
So the answer to your question is "no." I do not think that the terms "IDiot" and "Darwinist" are equally disrepectful. When I use the word "IDiot," I'm only implying that Intelligent Design Creationists are stupid, not stupid AND evil.
"Their ability to be reconstructed in the first place is due to their high sequence similarity."
Which makes it doubly suspicious why she chose to try and introduce mutations from one enzyme directly into another with two enzymes with so little sequence-based phylogenetic signal that we cannot reconstruct their probable history. It's almost as if she went out of her way to make her attempts unsuccessful.
"Most reconstructions show how little evolution has happened over hundreds of millions of years. I would encourage you to look them up in pdb and compare structure."
The structural conservation, while retaining functionality, despite high sequence divergence is a testament to evolution and goes against the common IDiot assertion that mutations invariably always destroy and degrade genetic information and the function of biopolymers.
When Axe and Gauger deceptively selects two enzymes which are though to be related for structure-functional reasons, but elects to convert one enzyme directly into the other with selected mutations, they are neglecting the evolutionary postulate. For all we know, the two enzymes have been diverging from a common ancestor for over a billion years, possibly passing through stages with different functions altogether. The history of the enzymes is not such that one of the modern versions existed a billion years ago, and then converted directly into the other modern version with a nice little change in function.
Rather, there was an ancestral version with a different function from both of them, from which both of them can be mutationally derived while retaining various functions underway. For example, the ancestral enzyme could have been a highly promiscous hydrolase that was functional on a broad set of substrates. Subsequently it diverged through gene duplication and passed through several stages of enhanced selectivity for specific substrates, in both lineages, before making it to the two extant enzymes. Naturally we would now not expect, to be able to convert one enzyme directly into the other, because that is not the route through which they evolved.
This is why the IDiot work of Gauger and Axe is so deceptive, and deliberately so. They are not testing the evolutionary postulate, rather they are testing a strawman of their own construction. And in fact I contend that it is no accident, they should know better. They are liars for doctrine. Had they chosen instead to try this trick with two enzymes for which we can construct their history, we could have performed the correct experiment and proven them wrong. It is no accident they sat around on their apple computers, scouring the literature for two enzymes with very little phylogenetic signal, before setting out to do their silly little experiment.
So, what is the predicted direction of any lineage of existing forms based on historical data of biodiversity?
There is none. Read Stephen Jay Gould's "Full House."
Yes, Robert. There are cases of speciation occurring in the wild in recent times. Not a lot of them. When speciation happens that fast, it involves either autopolyploidy or hybridization (usually with polyploidy or serious chromosome rearrangement.
In lab: Triticale, some Drosophila, Brissicorhaphanus.
In garden (spontaneous changes): Oenothera gigas, Primula kewensis.
In the wild: 2 Tragopogon species, Senecio cambrensis, a Gilia, and more.
There are many species concepts because nature doesn't fit into the neat categories we scientists would like. (For example, you can't use a concept that involves interbreeding if the taxa involved only reproduce vegetatively.) Our preferred, most rigorous species concept is the Biological Species Concept (BSC): a group of individuals which can breed together but cannot breed with other groups. In most of these examples, the new species is reproductively isolated. Oenothera gigas, for example, is an autopolyploid, capable of reproducing (individuals can interbreed), but not capable of reproducing with its parent species (Oenothera lamarkiana). It certainly meets the BSC criteria for a species.
(The one I'm not sure about is Triticale is, but among wheatgrasses, the group it belongs to, most fertile species can interbreed to some extent, including ones even a non-grass person can recognize as clearly different.)
There are more examples, but I have to go work on the application of species concepts to a group of plants.
Mikkel Rumraket Rasmussen says,
It's almost as if she went out of her way to make her attempts unsuccessful.
That sounds very disrespectful. True, but disrespectful.
Dr. Moran, Interesting response. As I consider how to further this dialog, I see four paths in front of me. I have chosen one of these paths for this comment.
Please consider the position of the intelligent (possibly) ill-informed honest student.
You say, "They also promote the idea that Darwinists are stupid because they believe in something that is obviously wrong in spite of the fact that Intelligent Design Creationist have been teaching them the "truth" about evolution for many years."
They say: "They also promote the idea that "IDiots" are stupid because they believe in something that is obviously wrong in spite of the fact that Darwinists have been teaching them the "truth" about evolution for many years."
Do you see the problem here? There is a lyric I love, "or am I what I hate in others, only seeing things my way" (from Lobo's, "Am I True to Myself".) The "IDiots", as with you, obviously believe their position to be true. They, as with you, obviously believe that they have stuck sufficient data in front of your(their) face to change the mind of any honest person.
How say ye to that?
"Amino and The Acids" lacks marketing traction but "Cafeteria skeptics" is not bad.
Wow !
Byers, Topgoosz and Steve all in the same thread.
It's a trifecta of thick-headedness.
The Schwarzschild radius of stupidity has been exceeded and collapse to an IDiot singularity is inevitable.
"are you just another goddamned Liar For Christ." Neither. Just a truth seeker. I stated that Dr. Moran cited a summary -- that is what is found at evolutionnews.org. However, that summary points to experimental findings published here: http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2014.4 It would seem to me that scientific integrity would reference the experimental findings, rather than the summary that was developed to pique the interest of a particular audience.
Feeling a foot in your mouth yet?
Well. I can only ask how many new species have been created in labs and given new sci names.
If there are many or some or one I would have to retreat to creationist dictrine of allowing for speciation.
In wild or the lab.
The thread punched home EVOLUTION was proved in the lab.
I say it wasn't. Then i questioned if new species had been created in the lab. Witnessed to appear and take their place in nature.
HMMMM..
i'm not sure.
Anyways it still would be just more pigeon stuff however fixed this time.
piotr, you've got to be fuc@#$ kidding me. White bears from brown bears is evolution in action.
ROTFLMOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's not? They were magically poofed into existence then?
yeah, kinda like the magical plane that flies in the sky, and the magical moon lander, and the magical wireless iphone, and the magical nuclear warhead, and the magical artificial heart, and the magical circular knit machine.........
when man discovers magic that Nature has already put to use....then I'd say man is on to some cool ass second-hand Magic.
Magic DNA, magic ribosomes, magic ATP made by the Magic Man.
Throw out your gold teeth and see how they roll........the answers they reveal....life is unreal.
There may be one or two other differences....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear
"Compared with its closest relative, the brown bear, the polar bear has a more elongated body build and a longer skull and nose.[28] As predicted by Allen's rule for a northerly animal, the legs are stocky and the ears and tail are small.[28] However, the feet are very large to distribute load when walking on snow or thin ice and to provide propulsion when swimming; they may measure 30 cm (12 in) across in an adult.[49] The pads of the paws are covered with small, soft papillae (dermal bumps) which provide traction on the ice.[28] The polar bear's claws are short and stocky compared to those of the brown bear, perhaps to serve the former's need to grip heavy prey and ice.[28] The claws are deeply scooped on the underside to assist in digging in the ice of the natural habitat. Research of injury patterns in polar bear forelimbs found injuries to the right forelimb to be more frequent than those to the left, suggesting, perhaps, right-handedness.[50] Unlike the brown bear, polar bears in captivity are rarely overweight or particularly large, possibly as a reaction to the warm conditions of most zoos.
The 42 teeth of a polar bear reflect its highly carnivorous diet.[28] The cheek teeth are smaller and more jagged than in the brown bear, and the canines are larger and sharper.[28] The dental formula is 3.1.4.23.1.4.3[28]
Polar bears are superbly insulated by up to 10 cm (4 in) of blubber,[49] their hide and their fur; they overheat at temperatures above 10 °C (50 °F), and are nearly invisible under infrared photography.[51] Polar bear fur consists of a layer of dense underfur and an outer layer of guard hairs, which appear white to tan but are actually transparent.[49]"
etc, etc, etc.
@Steve
I don't see what human creations have to do with the polar bear. All types of design we know of were done by human beings. So humans designed and then created the polar bear? That's not what you're trying to say of course.
No, a magic man did it. Human beings can design things, therefore the polar bear was zapped into being in an instant by a supernatural omnipotent designer.
Flawless logic.
Steve:
The brown bear is a land animal and a poor swimmer; the polar bear spends most of its time at sea and can easily swim 100 miles in the open Arctic Ocean.
The brown bear is omnivorous; the polar bear is exclusively carnivorous.
The brown bear is nocturnal and territorial; the white bear is neither.
The brown bear hibernates; the white bear is active all year round.
The polar bear has some unique mutations in genes responsible for fatty acid metabolism and the functioning of the cardiovascular system. Those changes are adaptations to elevated LDL ("bad cholesterol") levels caused by the polar bear's diet (seals for breakfast, seals for lunch, seals for dinner).
The polar bear is in fact so different from the brown bear in its morphology, ecology and behaviour that until very recently it was placed in a genus of its own, Thalarctos, rather than being assigned to Ursus. But the molecular and paleontological evidence is clear: the two species diverged less than half a million years ago. That's barely more than 1% of the total separate history of the bear family (Ursidae). What made the polar bear evolve so fast? Guess, Steve.
Hey booby, the cross between lions and tigers (liger if the lion is male, tigon if the lion is female) results in fertile females and infertile males. Thus, male and female ligers cannot produce offspring. However, female ligers can mate with male tigers or male lions and produce viable descendants.
Steve,
Breeding dogs with long legs or long fur, that eventually leads to dogs with short legs or fur... is also considered evolution in action...
Same applies to men with long and short d..ks... LMAO...!!!
You have probably guessed at this, but Steve is apparently the nth. sock puppet for Quest, as indicated by Steve's use of ellipses, tone, and general incoherence.
Throw out your gold teeth and see how they roll........the answers they reveal....life is unreal.
Quest.
If you're keeping a running list, Quest's sock puppets include, at a bare minimum, Steve, Topgoosz, Busz (Busz said he was Topgoosz) and possibly or probably John Witton, (who according to Quest is or was in jail). Probably some others we haven't detected or have forgotten.
His need for creating sock puppets all day, I don't understand, especially since Larry gives no indication of banning any of them.
Byers: "Creationist logic here is pretty good. Do you how many , NAMED sciency, species have been created in the labs, or moms kitchen, in the world??"
Again, creationist logic: we have never observed any species being created by an intelligent being, therefore all species were created by an intelligent being.
I got a hunch there is none but worse there is none outside a species type.
We're scared of you hunches, Bob. The science world quakes before your hunches. At any rate, as pointed out by Barbara below, Triticale is a different genus.
Byers perfectly demonstrates the dishonesty of anti-evolution.
"Well. I can only ask how many new species have been created in labs and given new sci names.
If there are many or some or one I would have to retreat to creationist dictrine of allowing for speciation."
So creationism makes contradictory predictions: if there is no speciation, creationism is true; if there is speciation, creationism is true. Anti-evolutionist never have the guts to tell the regular people what they really believe right at the start. Just say right at the start that you don't know the evidence but your "doctrine" allows for all conceivable observations.
No, you'd never say that because you want to trick non-scientists into believing that you are "scientists" who know something about the evidence, and that this evidence you allegedly "know" is a problem for evolution. When every one of your fact claims is falsified, you say, "I would have to retreat to creationist dictrine of allowing for ..." Allowing for anything and everything, Bob. Why don't you just admit up front that anti-evolution doctrine cannot be based on evidence because its weasel-words and pseudo-predictions allow for any and all possible observational evidence?
Dino-gene,
I have told you that before... I have no need to use sock puppets... as I can say whatever I want... as I always do... as me - Quest...
Your paranoia is getting worst every day... Instead of trying to get me and others banned for asking difficult questions... why don't you try to answer them instead...If you had the answers... you would obviously provide them...Instead... you are trying to falsely accuse people of having sock puppets...
That's your life... living the so-called "science" without evidence... LMAO...!!!
Let's get the facts straight.... NS/speciation-Hybridisation is not a problem for creationists/ID because it fits perfectly the biblical account. This can only happen when they share a COMMON ANCESTOR.. Testable, observable, repeatable.. just name it.
This in contrast with macro-E. Never observed, never tested and impossible to repeat.
So, evolution within kinds is not a problem for you. Great. Now, what's a kind and how can we tell if two species belong to the same one or different ones?
So you agree speciation occurs. Sometimes it's fast (e.g. with polyploidy) and sometimes it's gradual. In other words, new kinds of organisms do evolve.
As John Harshman says, a basic problem with your position, topgoosz, is that your "kinds" or "types" are poorly, even circularly defined. "Kind" is a vague word. We could say that botanists are the same "kind" or that women are, or that humans are the same kind. Also, all primates are the same kind. All mammals are the same kind of animal. All vertebrates. In fact, it turns our we humans are really odd mutant fish.
So, define "kind", or use technical species definitions, or don't use this argument.
Barbara,
I know you have been avoiding me because you can't seem to accept the failure...
Anyway... I have a question for you:
There are about 13 species of Galapagos Finches... When some of the finches retain bigger beaks and begin to dominate the islands due to drought... is this process of change of the Finches beaks proof of speciation in your view...? Yes or No...? Please elaborate...
Quest,
Although you aren't really worth responding to (you just evade topics and move on), I haven't been so much avoiding you as trying to finish some reports due by the end of the year.
"When some of the finches retain bigger beaks and begin to dominate the islands due to drought", that's pretty good evidence of the effectiveness of natural selection. That kind of selection can lead to speciation, but it takes time and geographic isolation.
quest, I doubt that it will break Barbara's heart if you ignore her and I also doubt that you will ever get a clue. You're an ignorant, arrogant troll, and that's nothing to be proud of.
BTW: what you were trying to say here is: Men can jump high and if they continue to jump the effectiveness of natural selection CAN lead to speciation and that CAN make them jump to the Moon or alternatively they CAN develop wings.... all they need is time and geographic isolation...
Too bad you don't have proof for you imaginary speculation... such a nice fairytale ....
Men can jump high and if they continue to jump the effectiveness of natural selection CAN lead to speciation and that CAN make them jump to the Moon or alternatively they CAN develop wings
This is sort of "not even wrong" - Lamarckism of a sort that Lamarck would never have indulged in. And of course it has no relation at all to what Barbara was saying; only an IDiot would think so.
Quest - run that past Topgoosz and see if you can change his mind about evolution being perfectly OK within 'kinds'.
I recently wrote a long comedic comment wherein I listed some ridiculous ways that creationists misrepresent evolutionary theory. Some of you might have thought I was exaggerating the stupidity of their misrepresentations. But even I did not imagine stuff like:
what you were trying to say here is:
Gee, I wonder if the next part will be an accurate description of evolutionary theory.
Men can jump high and if they continue to jump the effectiveness of natural selection CAN lead to speciation and that CAN make them jump to the Moon or alternatively they CAN develop wings
Strangely, no, that is not what she said. Nor is it what any biologist said.
Anti-evolutionists can emit sentences in English, and that tricks us into believing they can understand sentences in English. Or some other human language. Like a mynah bird taught to curse.
"Which makes it doubly suspicious why she chose to try and introduce mutations from one enzyme directly into another with two enzymes with so little sequence-based phylogenetic signal that we cannot reconstruct their probable history. It's almost as if she went out of her way to make her attempts unsuccessful."
I'm sure she considers most candidates for this where there *is* high sequence similarity to be quite possible for evolution. Hence my comments and perhaps your departure from your original question about reconstruction. As Larry posted earlier, if only the terms matter to you, there are enzymes that change substrate with only one point mutation. Would you be content to win that debate on terms?
"Had they chosen instead to try this trick with two enzymes for which we can construct their history, we could have performed the correct experiment and proven them wrong."
That research would be a yawner to both sides for the reason I first mentioned. I feel your pain. You want to explain the similar structure that must somehow be preserved for billions of years in your scenarios, but the major differences in which to look for a barrier to her experiment are all sequence related and don't seem to have affected the structure much at all. But function follows form and the difference between the activity of the two should be a function of the spacial differences we observe at the active site - which are slight. You know very well that if evolutionists had converted one to perform like the other, you would have explained the results as being highly compatible with common ancestry and evidence of broad multidimensional highways between smooth fitness landscapes of what must be a multitude of unknown potential contexually significant functions. You would also have associated stories ready for why one might convert and the other not.
In other words, your only explanation for why she should be unable to convert their functions is some murky unspecified barrier that surely must exists in the subtleties of the structure due to the accumulated sequence differences from your story as if it had to completely backtrack some long pathway or like some otherwise unquantifiable net distance has built up between structures. But all the active site knows of the sequence is the shape the pertinent residues there are forced to take. And to whatever degree that the various functions you imagine have putatively selected for similar structures, that is the degree to which they ARE STRUCTURALLY SIMILAR. The enzyme doesn't care that you can't reconstruct it's phylogeny and neither would you if they were more promiscuous now! So please spare us the false objections. You may very well convert the activity of one to the other in the remaining 30% that were untested. Then you can pretend you knew it all along. Then you will have a story to tell about how that 1% evolved over a billion years and we can lump the other 99% onto the backs of origins researchers as per trend since that has nothing to do with evolution. I can't imagine all the proteinaceous lumps you guys must imagine are floating around waiting to become selectable.
As for varying functions selecting the same structure, I see no need to believe those imaginations from the perspective of either theory.
So, define "kind", or use technical species definitions, or don't use this argument.
So Barbara, you ask me to define kind? What's your definition of macro-E?
I can easily define kind such as the family/kind of felines, canines, mustelids, ursines, grasses etc. Within these kind there's variation, sometimes a lots of variation suchs as within the feline kind, canine kind. Easy to observe.
The problem with evolution is, which seeks an upward development, in fact, speciation within the genus is a downward proces. So, hybridisation, crosbreeding is only possible when they share a COMMON ANCESTOR. Got it?
And this always goes together wit a loss of information. Just look at the dachshund.
In the Netherlands now they are trying to forbid crossbreeding with dogs because the results are always sick and weak dogs. Is that evolution, from better to worse?
Btw... micro-E is incorrectly expressed . Actually it should be degeneration.
Now i ask you... define macro-evolution.
OK, let's concentrate on "the family/kind of mustelid". I assume you mean the traditional family Mustelidae. Let's take four examples: the weasel, the sea otter, the badger, and the wolverine. Are they all one kind?
Why are they classified to the same family/kind... Why do they called it family? And why especially Mustelidae?
Is it not so that they must share a common ancestor if they are classified as such?
Are you going to answer my question with questions?
They are not classified as the same "kind", because biologists don't use this creationist terminology. They are conventionally called a family in deference to the Linnaean traditions, but traditional ranks are decoupled from modern phylogenetic nomenclature. "A family", as opposed to "a clade" (of any size) is not a formally defined concept. I would say that Mustelidae is a valid clade, which means that (1) they all descend from a common ancestor, and (2) their most recent common ancestor and all its descendants belong to Mustelidae. If you call Mustelidae a kind/family, does it mean that you accept their shared descent from a common ancestor?
You're the one who mentioned mustelids as one example of a "kind,' Topgoosz. Did you forget?
BTW:
In the Netherlands now they are trying to forbid crossbreeding with dogs because the results are always sick and weak dogs. Is that evolution, from better to worse?
I bet the Dutch are really upset that they aren''t allowed to "crossbreed with dogs" anymore. I although I can certainly understand that the dogs would end up "sick and weak" after the encounter.
I also didn't realize creationists considered Dutchmen and dogs to be the same "kind."
If, OTOH, you mean that selective breeding can only lead to degeneration of function, then if a wild wolf was put in a race with a group of greyhounds, does that mean you would bet on the wolf?
Piotr Are you going to answer my question with questions?
Family or kind means exactly the same. Take the meaning manKIND. What to they wanna say with that? Black, white, yellow, brown, red, pygmee, downsyndrome, progeria, you name it, all belongs tot the family/kind manKIND.
And mustelidae are not classified as the same kind? They are a perfect example of speciation WITHIN the KIND.
And offcourse evolution-biologists refuse to use the word kind for clear reasons. To avoid how macro-evolution ever could occur while the only they observed is micro-E. Actually wrong expressed as earlierd noted. Micro-E is loss of information thus.... degeneration.
Topgoosz attempts to define "kind" in two ways: by giving a few examples of Linnean families (though oddly, not Hominidae, which includes chimpanzees) and by the use of hybridization as a criterion. That's probably the best he can do, because, really, the concept is unimportant to him and he hasn't thought about it at all. I bet that to him "kind" is just shorthand for "I don't care whether these species are related". What's important is that evolution is impossible, so there. And what's really important is that Homo sapiens is a separate kind.
The problems with using Linnean families are that, first, as Piotr says, they're arbitrarily defined units, differing in no discernible way from other clades, and, second, that the sort of evolution Topgoosz won't accept happens within families, as in the example of Hominidae.
The problem with using hybridization is that we know reproductive isolation can arise between species, so it can only be a positive criterion, never a negative one. And it's contradictory to the first criterion, since many members of the same families can't hybridize. (There are additional complications, like Haldane's rule to deal with too.)
Topgoosz doesn't care, because he isn't interested in what kinds are anyway.
Lutesuite.. what are you? Married with a daughter of twelve?
In the Netherlands you would go to jail for that.
Hey top,
"In the Netherlands now they are trying to forbid crossbreeding with dogs because the results are always sick and weak dogs."
Not crossbreeding, interbreeding. You know, the thing religious people in small communities also do. Keep it in the family stuff, nephew + niece thing...
I used to work in a lab where we did research into familial heritable vascular disease, for some reason these small communities where ideal for this type of research because of their tendency of interbreeding between relatives.
John One side-effect of crossbreeding/hybridisations/speciation is loss of information... Unless you can show me a turtle who can jump like a kangeroo, fly like an eagle,or run as fast like a cheetah caused by speciation within the family alone.
Hey Ed, crossbreeding, interbreeding whatever, both is worse for all dogs.
Bulging eyes, small skulls and flat noses , allowing normal breathing is hardly possible, to name a few... Evolution Huh?
And when you're ready with defining design... explain how the epiglottis could evolve without being suffocated.
Lutesuite- Greyhounds? Can you tell me something about the healthproblems Greyhounds suffered with? In case i want crossbreed a greyhound with a wolf.
Google dogs with defects...
More then 22.200.000 million hits.
Evolution, huh?
http://www.aspcapetinsurance.com/pet-insurance-plans/np/pet-insurance-congenital-conditions.aspx
Speciation within the kind canine, huh?
Funny you should mention dogs, because it's well documented, mainly by English ladies who bred dogs for a hobby in the 19th century, how they managed to select for specific traits and breed their off-spring towards these traits. Small noses, long dogs, big dogs, hairy dogs, naked dogs etc.
They also introduced heavy breathing, near suffocation, but hey, they got small dogs. You also got dachs hund, ideal for hunting rabbits, but with a very very long back, prone to injury. Now-a-days bag dogs are really hip.
It does however show you whats possible with genes/ DNA, in this specific case of selective breeding.
Top:
"And when you're ready with defining design..."
Perhaps... you could show actual evidence for intelligent design. Behe tried and failed in the 2005 Dover case, and in fact got slapped on the wrists for lying.
Are you willing to give it a try, where Behe failed?
Google on creationist lies and you get 2.25 mil hits. What's your point?
Topgoosz:
Clearly, you have the kindergarten view of "kinds": the doggie kind, the kitty kind, the bug kind, the turtle kind. But turtles encompass quite a few families. None of them can fly, but the differences between, say, alligator snappers and Kemp's ridley are profound. How about change of legs to flippers? Does that count as a big enough change? How about the evolution of warm-bloodedness?
Where did you get the idea that either hybridization or speciation involves loss of information? What is your evidence for such an odd claim?
And of course none of what you said was an actual response to my comment.
Someone as ignorant of biology as you are shouldn't be so secure in his opinions.
Topgoosz,
I'm only trying hard to understand why you should want to identify Linnean families with creationist "kinds". The status of "families" is no more special than that of "genera", "orders", "classes" or "phyla". It's an accident of history that families are called "families". Why are you willing to accept that all mustelids (no matter how different from one another) descend from a common ancestor, but refuse to accept the common ancestry of, say, Carnivora or Mammalia? You can't use hybridisation as a criterion because distant relatives within a family usually don't interbreed. Last time I checked, weasels definitely didn't interbreed with badgers or wolverines. If you attach a mystical significance to the fact that some taxa have systematic names ending in -idae, remember that orangs, chimps and gorillas are classified in the family Hominidae, together with Homo sapiens, as John poited out above. If you want to be consistent, you should accept the common ancestry of humans and the great apes.
(Just want to say, I realize my comment up above from 9:16 AM could be easily be misread as an insult against Dutch people. If anyone read it that way, please understand that was not my meaning at all.)
Those bastards cut our doors in half, killed our elm trees, and made women pay for dinners. They deserve what they get.
Liar.
creationist lies:379.000 hits
evolution lies: 175.000.000 hits
There you go Ed.
And don't confuse lies with defects caused by crossbreeding, interbreeding, hybridisation, speciation, variation within the kind aka loss of information and therefore in contrast with evolution.
Harmfull mutations against beneficial/neutral mutations. Now do the math, go count them and see whats in favor. Harmfull means a wipe out of information during millions of years and therefor destructive.
Show me how the evolutionproces has solved that problem every time after a mass extinction, with the latest, 60 milion years ago.
So, 60 millions years ago evolution was able, just like that, to create/repeat all loss information again, just like that.
Now do the math. Harmfull versus beneficial.
And how IC is the epiglottis?
Piotr.. It's in the genes. God programmed all life in a way offspring/speciation-variation always come forth within the family/kind and no evolutionist can change or do something about that because it's a law of nature given by God.
It's a God given law. The further you get form your common ancestor the thinner the genepool caused by variation that has his limits.
Let's play a game oke? You started with a beneficial mutation and i give you syndromes, caused by harmfull mutations..
My first: Down Syndrome..
Your turn
No, thank you, Topgoosz, I don't feel like playing children's games. I asked a straightforward question and expect a straigtforward answer. Let me rephrase the question a little in case you suffer from comprehension problems. It seems you believe the weasel, the sea otter, the wolverine, and the badger had a common ancestor. Why do you think so? Those animals differ in size, behaviour, morphology, diet, chromosome count, etc. No two among them can mate successfully to produce offspring. What's your evidence that they belong to the same "kind"?
Jibbers Crabst, Topgoosz is so stupid he doesn't even remember the creationist bullshit he just made up!
First Top/Quest writes: I can easily define kind such as the family/kind of felines, canines, mustelids, ursines, grasses etc.
THAT IS NOT A DEFINITION YOU ASS. That is a list of examples. But you give as an example, "mustelids" are a "kind."
Piotr: OK, let's concentrate on "the family/kind of mustelid". I assume you mean the traditional family Mustelidae.
Topgoosz: Why are they classified to the same family/kind... Why do they called it family?
YOU JUST CALLED THEM THE SAME KIND. WE WERE TRYING TO USE YOUR %$#! TERMINOLOGY. And THAT's what you get when you accept any premises or cult jargon of the creationists!
But FINE! As Piotr pointed out, otters and wolverines are now the same "kind" by your not-definition. Meaning that wolverines, otters etc. descend from a recent common ancestor, according to creationism.
But oops, otters are highly adapted to an aquatic environment. They use tools (stones for cracking open shellfish) so they evolved tool-use, and all that had to evolve since their descent from the common ancestor with wolverines, which creationists ADMIT must exist.
But wait, it's worse. The Amazon river otter (Pteronura) has a horizontally flattened tail, adapted for betting swimming. That's a gain of function AND an incipient structure-- but oops, creationists say incipient structures and gain of function mutations are impossible.
Topgoosz, do you agree that in an aquatic environment, otters have higher fitness than wolverines?
So some mutation increased their fitness, right? A beneficial mutation increasing anatomical complexity, right? After their descent from the common ancestor that you admit existed.
Gain of function, increase in anatomical complexity, incipient structure-- if creationism is true, the incipient structure, gain of function and increase in anatomical complexity evolved AFTER their descent from the common ancestor with wolverines, which has no such structure, and which creationists admit must exist!
Game, Set, MATCH!
Actually, it is inbreeding that causes loss of information. Inbreeding = breeding among close relatives. It is definitely breeding within a "kind," however badly you define "kind." Inbreeding caused some of the defects found in purebred dogs. (Other problems are the inevitable side effects of what was bred for, e.g. vulnerability to back problems in low-slung dachshunds.)
Crossbreeding, interbreeding, and outbreeding ( all the same thing) retain the same amount of genetic information and may increase the amount of genetic variation within one of the species involved. I mean, if species A and B hybridize and the hybrids breed back (backcross) to B, then some genes from A will pass into the B populations and increase the genetic variation in B as a whole. Sometimes, the mitochondria from A pass into B.
Now consider the example speciation by hybridization and polyploidy. Let's say species A is diploid and we can designate its genome as AA. Diploid species B has genome BB. They hybridize. The hybrids have genome AB. If they undergo polyploidy (which in some groups they are prone to), they produce hybrids with genomes AABB and are often reproductively isolated from their diploid parents. Those polyploids may not have all the "A" type variation or all the "B" variation in their parents, but each AABB individual has a lot more information than any AA or BB individual. And since hybridization and polyploidy may happen again in this system, new AABB individuals may form with slightly different variation (seen in some fern complexes) and contribute to the variation in the new species of hybrid origin.
So: crossbreeding, interbreeding, hybridization, and speciation don't (necessarily) involve or cause loss of variation.
Do you even read what you wrote, Topgoose? You wrote, "Show me how the evolution proces has solved that problem every time after a mass extinction, with the latest, 60 milion years ago. So, 60 millions years ago evolution was able, just like that, to create/repeat all loss information again, just like that."
It would seem obvious to me that evolution did not "repeat all loss information". The dinosaurs are gone (except for birds) and mammals (and birds) are the dominant big animals now. The information that was lost is lost. However, the genetic variations that survived went on to reproduce, mutate, speciate, mutate some more, and in 65 million years had time to produce the impressive amount of variation we see today.
ROTFLMAO!
Bravo Diogenes! Bis bis…
I introduce the subject in high school by gently explaining that horses and donkeys are not different in kind [sic] therefore sibling species (for lack of a better term) since hybrids (mules and hinnies) are infertile.
I then mention that humans and chimpanzees by any objective criterion are more similar to each other than donkeys are to horses…
… wait for it, wait for it…
Of course some perplexed and somewhat embarrassed student always raises his hand asking about the possibility of human-chimpanzee hybrids and my response (every year) is
OF COURSE! WHERE DO YOU THINK GERMANS COME FROM?!
In any case – and we have rehashed this frequently on this blog – human/chimp divergence would by any objective criterion represent micro-evolution and not macroevolution
Here are some of my high school exercise sheets that I hope are not too far advanced for IDers. Bottom line: differences between domestic horses, Przewalski' horses and donkeys are no "different in kind" than differences between various hominid lineages and that humans/chimpanzee lineages (as compared to equine phylogeny) would represent the paragon of micro-evolution (whatever that is supposed to mean).
http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/ws.extensions.html
Parenthetically, participation on this blog has obliged me to revisit my naïve definition of a gene on those worksheets. As always, my gratitude knows no bounds.
ITMT - P Z Myers posted a great blog: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/10/23/a-scientific-visualization-of-the-importance-of-race/
Genetically, humans appear nothing more than an inbred subset of chimpanzees.
I cited PZ M's blog on the AP teachers’ site (accessible to anybody involved in Biology education at the secondary, post-secondary level)
https://apcommunity.collegeboard.org/group/apbiology/discussion-boards/-/message_boards/message/48616441
Larry and Joe were cited extensively! (thank you thank you thank you thank you…)
I have to say though, that even on that polite forum, I finally had to throw in the towel. At some point deliberate obtuseness and intellectual dishonesty makes civil discourse impossible.
I apologize for being shamelessly autobiographical in this post - but I do have an ulterior motive - I am hoping to entice some of you to participate on the AP teachers forum first hand so I need no longer play the role of cross-pollinator.
Top asked:
"And how IC is the epiglottis?"
Is the epiglottis the next IC thing? The next cool ID fad? After failing miserably with for example eye, flagellum and blood clotting, the epiglottis is the current IC attempt?
Anyway, back to your question:
Top asked:
"And how IC is the epiglottis?"
Do tell, I expect we'll all be swept away with your evidence.
"Do you even read what you wrote, Topgoose?"
No he doesn't. He doesn't define 'kind' specific enough, thus he can slither out of questions he knows he can't answer by 'moving the goalposts'. Or plainly ignoring what ever you write.
Diogenes has a nice summary some way up this thread.
Top does a Gish gallop, clearly lacks Gish's intelligence though and gets himself caught in his own web of lies.
and in fact got slapped on the wrists for lying
Careful, Ed. I don't think so, unless you can show me something in the trial transcript I missed my first couple of times through.
He certainly got his butt handed to him on cross examination, though - I think from his point of view, that had to be worse than any admonition for lying would have been.
Sorry, you're right. His (deliberate?) lie(s) outside the courtroom was/ were exposed. I'm implying with my writing that he got caught commiting perjury, that was certainly not the case.
His butt was indeed handed to him. Big time.
Re Tom Mueller
Of course some perplexed and somewhat embarrassed student always raises his hand asking about the possibility of human-chimpanzee hybrids and my response (every year) is
OF COURSE! WHERE DO YOU THINK GERMANS COME FROM?!
Excuse me, that's a racist comment that is entirely inappropriate in a classroom. Imagine if an instructor in an American classroom said that Afro-Americans were a hybrid of chimps and humans. That would almost certainly have negative consequences for that instructor's continued employment in an American university.
By the way, I am not of German ancestry and have no great affection for Germany or Germans but such "jokes" are entirely inappropriate.
colnago80 says,
Excuse me, that's a racist comment ...
Get a life.
I'm pretty sure Tom's students can recognize a joke when they hear it. Did you think about where a last name like "Mueller" (Müller) comes from?
Danke, Larry.
(Yes, that's another joke.)
Perhaps I should have mentioned I also teach German at my school.
re: Imagine if an instructor in an American classroom said that Afro-Americans were a hybrid of chimps and humans.
uhmmm... as a matter of fact, that is exactly the teaching of the Seventh Day Adventist Church according to the teachings of its founder/prophet Ellen White.
Mind you - not too long ago, scientists with the highest credentials held similar views and considered negroid races, actually any non-white/nonNordic Eurpopean as not only inferior but even different in species.
Speaking of classrooms - I am sure Larry can help me out - but some insane professor (his name escapes me) with tenure in some Ontario university (I forget which) is still attempting to pull out the bell-curve argument that blacks are genetically inferior in intelligence. I remind you that James Watson is desperately attempting to redeem his public reputation for blurting out similar remarks.
re: "Blacks"
Actually that term is used a lot in the Canadian Maritimes... but I don't remember ever hearing that term in the Canadian West.
What the hell - am I supposed to be a "White"?!
I remember I almost had a car accident in downtown Halifax as I passed by a building with a sign identifying itself as the "The Black Educators Association" of Nova Scotia.
I was tempted to park and inquire where the "White Educators Association" was located.
I am glad I didn't - the endemic racism in Halifax is so pernicious that I was obliged to become a member of the "The Black Educators Association"
... "associate" member actually. Apparently my blonde/blue-eyed phenotype prohibited full membership. How ironic is that!?
To the director's credit - he invited me to a executive meeting to make my case for full membership, but I was in the throes of re-locating. I could never raise a family in that part of the world, so I never bothered.
but...
... we digress.
re: "digression"
IMHO - these are issues that need to be brought up in class!
My classes are also directed to the seminal paper published in 1977 (how is that for forgotten ancient history) separating once and for all confounding black/white nature/nurture variables with respect to IQ.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/u2177002257m7371/
Individuals identified as “black” can have increasing or decreasing admixture of cryptic “white” alleles in their genome without any concomitant effect on IQ.
OK OK - alright already... I have no right to hijack this thread.
I apologise - In my defense, colnago80 got me going....
I see your nature-nurture argument, and raise you a compelling argument that no such thing as "intelligence," as measured by IQ tests, actually exists: http://vserver1.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/523.html
Think about it for a minute ('cause that's all it should take): Is there a measurable quality of humans called "athleticism"? Who has more of this singular quality, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Tiger Woods, Usain Bolt or Aleksandr Karelin? Oh, you say it is nonsensical to try to fit all their diverse talents on the Procrustean bed of a single measure? And do you think human mental capabilities are so much less diverse than our physical ones? So a singular measure makes no sense there either, does it?
Dino-moron,
Stop referring to me-Quest- and Top-goof as the same person...!!! You are insulting your own intelligence... or whatever is left of it...LMAO...!!!
I see your nature-nurture argument, and raise you a compelling argument that no such thing as "intelligence," as measured by IQ tests, actually exists
Hmmm… I cannot agree.
Let’s face it – stupid people exist. We encounter them every day! And… it would appear that our qualitative impression of utter and complete stupidity can indeed correspond to Binet’s statistical model.
There is an apocryphal story when some naïf asked Binet for an exact definition of intelligence and Binet apparently answered “Whatever my test measures!
I also react strongly against pop psychology that pretends to pass for academic endeavor such as Gardner’s version of Multiple Intelligences inflicted on all education students.
That said – of course, there is some prima facie merit to the concept of multiple intelligences, I am not sure any psychologist has managed to identify and quantitate them in any meaningful manner.
To quote an eminent statistician, George E. P. Box, who wrote in his book Empirical Model Building and Response Surfaces : “Essentially, all [statistical] models are wrong, but some are useful.”
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2015/1/what-everyone-should-know-about-statistical-correlation
Argumendum,
Say Binet’s IQ test does correlate to a meaningful measurement; genetic predisposition to lower scores in blacks is NEVER measured even though it is measurable.
@ judmarc
Your post caused me pause to ponder:
Is there a measurable quality of humans called "athleticism"?
How about physical fitness? For example, with nary a glance, no one would ever mistake me for an athlete.
OK, how about physical fitness? :-)
What would Aleksandr Karelin's heart rate look like after the sprint intervals that Usain Bolt tosses off before breakfast? How would Bolt feel if he tried to do Karelin's weight training? Do either of them stand to live as long as Tiger Woods?
In other words, physical fitness for *what*?
Let's relate this back to "intelligence." My car mechanic has never failed in 26 years to fix everything correctly the first time. I have seen him look at a 3-page-foldout wiring diagram that was complete spaghetti to me and identify the exact location of an electrical problem in a couple of seconds.
Of course if you sit him down in front of a reading comprehension test (a timed one, as all "intelligence" tests I've ever taken were timed - why is that?), I've got a very good chance of besting him, as long as the reading comprehension piece doesn't have to do with auto repair.
But I think of the section of an actual reading comprehension test from the SAT that appeared in a book called "None of the Above." I aced all four questions. Oh, and - the reading piece that had appeared on the SAT was not reproduced in the book. Just the way the questions were phrased easily told me which answer was correct. So what are these tests measuring? Reading comprehension? Some general intelligence factor? Or how attuned to nuances of the questioners' meaning and predilections we are?
OK, enough OT. If you haven't read all the way through the Shalizi piece, I heartily recommend it to you (and everyone else here).
Rum wrote,
"It's not? They were magically poofed into existence then?"
Quantum mechanics i.e. quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation theory shed some light how creation could have happened...
Here is some clues in the video at 40 min mark...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtYfz72MmtM
Topgoose, I thought of you this morning while reading about a new species of tetraploid, parthenogenic Whiptail Lizard produced in the lab and now named Aspidoscelis neavesi. See http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.3099/MCZ17.1.
Interestingly, it was produced as a test of a hypothesis about the origin of a wild, unnamed tetraploid specimen of Whiptail collected years before, which would presumably be treated as a member of this same species.
You're going to copy me now...?
Barbara,
Are you the RNA World believer...?
Barbara,
Know anything about Quantum Mechanics...?
@Qest
Stop bluffing about your ID creation evidence in QM. Give us some links to papers that prove ID rather than your own wand-magical creation. Last time I check there were 0 -zero articles on the theme. I guess you got some inside scoop. Indulge me!
Post a Comment