Different Opinions....Who is right?

[Dan From Smithville]

Yeah, right.

Has it become a new species? Arguable, even among Darwinists.

As I’ve stated, I have no problem w/ a new species appearing. It’s still Escherichia. Bacteria. For millions of years, it’s ancestors have been the same.

I have not seen any work detailing the evolution of Escherichia. What source are you using to substantiate your claim about the millions of years stasis of Escherichia?

The E. coli of Lenski evolved. They did not have to change species to demonstrate this, though there is some legitimacy to the argument that they just may have.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yeah, right.

Has it become a new species? Arguable, even among Darwinists.

As I’ve stated, I have no problem w/ a new species appearing. It’s still Escherichia. Bacteria. For millions of years, it’s ancestors have been the same.

What exactly is a Darwinist? I accept the theory of evolution and admire Darwin, but I do not worship him. Does that make me a Darwinist? Is that a branch of science?

 

[Hockeycowboy]

What exactly is a Darwinist? I accept the theory of evolution and admire Darwin, but I do not worship him. Does that make me a Darwinist? Is that a branch of science?

One espousing Darwinian evolution.....Common Descent.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Tell me, @Wild Fox , how were Trilobites predicted from ancestral lineages? Or what about Anomalocaris?

Would they have predicted mammals ‘returning’ to the ocean?

Or theropods evolving into birds? Not even all paleontologists agree w/ that....Google “BAND dinosaur to bird evolution”.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

One espousing Darwinian evolution.....Common Descent.

I am not clear that it is a valid moniker to apply, considering that the theory of evolution has long since moved beyond what Darwin proposed. It often seems to be applied as if it were a pejorative. It is not. It is just inaccurate.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

I am not clear that it is a valid moniker to apply, considering that the theory of evolution has long since moved beyond what Darwin proposed. It often seems to be applied as if it were a pejorative. It is not. It is just inaccurate.

Yeah, you’re probably right.... I just think of Darwin as one who started the so-called “Tree of Life,” which is all about a LUCA. But the tree has little support for its base. There is no trunk, in my estimation. No Common Descent.

Call me a ‘Common Descent dissenter.’

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Has it become a new species? Arguable, even among Darwinists.

Don't dishonestly move the goalpost.
You didn't ask for an example of speciation. You asked for an example of the evolution of a de novo ability / feature / function.

If you want examples of speciation, there are plenty of those as well though.

Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations
Observed Instances of Speciation


Which you will dismiss with another handwave. Likely with some strawman which ignores the law of monophy.

As I’ve stated, I have no problem w/ a new species appearing. It’s still Escherichia.

HAHA! I swear to your god, I'm replying as I read. Here we already have it. A strawman wich ignores the law of monophy.

The law of monophy is a law of biological evolution: species can't outgrow their ancestry. All descendants of "mammal" will forever remain "mammal". And this is so because every newborn is but a modified version of its parents. So you are stuck with a geneset that you've inherited from ALL your ancestors.

In other words, if it would have become something ELSE then an Escherichia, IT WOULD HAVE FALSIFIED EVOLUTION.

So to say "it's still Escherichia" as if that somehow makes it not an example of evolution, is exposing an extreme ignorance of the theory you insist on arguing against.

You are implying that if it would become NOT an Escherichia, then that would prove evolution.

In reality, such a thing would FALSIFY evolution.

This is how brutally you misrepresent / don't understand the science.

Bacteria. For millions of years, it’s ancestors have been the same.

No. Descendants are their ancestors.
But ancestors are not their descendants.

All humans are mammals.
Not all mammals are humans.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

One espousing Darwinian evolution.....Common Descent.

In that case, I guess I am also:
- an einsteinist
- a hawkingist
- a maxwellist
- a faradayist
- a curieist
- a feinmanist
- ...

Sounds pretty pointless.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Tell me, @Wild Fox , how were Trilobites predicted from ancestral lineages? Or what about Anomalocaris?

Would they have predicted mammals ‘returning’ to the ocean?

Or theropods evolving into birds? Not even all paleontologists agree w/ that....Google “BAND dinosaur to bird evolution”.

Scientific prediction is not the same as prophecy.

Evolution can not "prophesize" what species will exist in the future.
If you would understand how evolution actually works, you would know why that is the case.

At best, it can only make an educated guess - and even then there will be plenty of assumptions made about certain things.
​

Here's a good opportunity to demonstrate that you at least have an ounce of understanding of this theory:
Can you explain why evolution can not "prophesize" what species will exist in the future? And why it can only make an educated guess, and what type of assumptions must be made while doing that?


I bet you can't answer these questions.
I also bet that people like @Dan From Smithville will already know the answer even before finishing reading the questions.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yeah, you’re probably right.... I just think of Darwin as one who started the so-called “Tree of Life,” which is all about a LUCA. But the tree has little support for its base. There is no trunk, in my estimation. No Common Descent.

Call me a ‘Common Descent dissenter.’

The phylogenetic tree of life is not just a drawing made by people.
In fact, these days no human is actually involved in its creation.

It is instead generated by DNA-comparing algoritms.
Fully sequenced genomes are being compared and the genetic sequence matches are graphed out. The pattern that emerges is that of a family tree.

There is a trunk. It's the DNA shared by all living things.
And as you will definatly know if you were ever involved in a court case regarding paternity with a DNA test, you'll know what it means to share matching DNA.

 

[Deeje]

We don't have the same evidence, as your ilk ignores a whole bunch of evidence, like just about everything from phylogenies and associated material.

Who put these classifications together in the first place? Who insinuates that because organisms are mammals that they must all be related? In Australia we have monotremes.....egg laying mammals. Where do they belong on the evolutionary tree?

The classifications past "family" begin to have less and less evidence supporting them in any evolutionary sense.

Furthermore, your "interpretation" is completely merritless. It makes no predictions, it's unfalsifiable, untestable and it flies in the face of all the evidence you ignore.

I have as much real "evidence" for the existence of an Intelligent Creator as you have for his non existence.
How I interpret the evidence is just as valid as any suggestion by scientists that their interpretation must be correct.
I can say "might have" "could have" "leads us to the conclusion that..." and make a case.The "evidence" is the same...different interpretation. Its to be seen from your replies that science is your god.

This is why paleontologists succeed in finding fossils like tiktaalik by prediction, while you can't even properly define what you mean by "kind".

Ah Tiktaalik...lets talk about our first walking fish....

I'll quote this National Geographic article on Tiktaalik because I want to highlight the obvious problems with assumption when describing something that supposedly existed 375 million years ago.....

"Our Fishy Ancestors Had Fins Made for Walking
One of the first creatures to live on land sported surprisingly strong hips and fins.

BY DAN VERGANO, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
PUBLISHED JANUARY 14, 2014

ONE OF THE first "fish" to walk on land some 375 million years ago made its way with surprisingly strong hips and fins, report paleontologists.

Unearthed in the Canadian Arctic in 2006, Tiktaalik roseae, a genus of early land-walking fish, made headlines with news of its discovery, which was funded by the National Geographic Society. The new report fleshes out how our ancient four-limbed ancestors first made the move from water to land. (See pictures: "Nine Fish With 'Hands' Found to Be New Species.")

"They're big—the hips of Tiktaalik look very robust," says University of Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin, who led the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The find suggests that the pelvic girdle changes that accompanied the move to land by vertebrates—animals with backbones such as Tiktaalik—"started in the water or, more accurately, in the swamp," he says. (Also see "Pictures: 'Walking' Fish a Model of Evolution in Action.")

Tiktaalik lived in marshy river settings resembling today's Amazon. Up to 9 feet (2.7 meters) long, the lobed fish hunted like a freshwater crocodile in rivers and inlets, and had a surprisingly agile neck and primitive lungs.

"We are really just getting a glimpse into one of the most fascinating transitions for vertebrates," says paleontologist Catherine Boisvert of Australia's Monash University.

A series of discoveries, including Tiktaalik and similar creatures over the past decade, she says, are opening up to scholars the time when animals—other than insects—first made the leap to land.

The newly discovered pelvis of Tiktaalik, pictured here between a life-sized reconstruction (left) and a cast of the skeleton (right).

PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN JIANG, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (See link for photos)

The discovery of additional materials from the hind fin of Tiktaalik roseae a 375 million year old fossil suggest it was able to to use its hind fins as props as well as paddles.

Tiktaalik means "large, freshwater fish" in the language of the Nunavut people, who live in the region near its discovery site on Canada's frigid Ellesmere Island (map).

Shubin has nicknamed Tiktaalik the "fishapod," a play on the scientific "tetrapod" designation given to all four-legged animals and their descendants. (See also: "Tiktaalik Discovery Among National Geographic's Top Grants.")

"Our original discovery of Tiktaalik was so big that we had to split it into two parts, because we didn't have enough plaster," Shubin says. "This was the back end, and we were surprised to find a pelvis inside."

In addition to being much larger, proportionally, than the rear fin-supporting pelvis bones of a fish, Tiktaalik's hips point outward, more like a land animal's. The suspicion is that the creature propelled itself over mud flats and shallows with large, surprisingly well-articulated rear fins.

Until now scholars have known very little about the anatomical bridges between ancient fish and the much larger land creatures that came later, notes paleontologist Per Ahlberg of Sweden's Uppsala University.

"With the Tiktaalik material the preservation is so good that it will be possible to reconstruct aspects of the pelvic-fin musculature and the range of movement of the fin," Ahlberg said by email.

"This will really help us to understand the locomotory transformation from fish to tetrapod."

Land Dwellers

Why fish made the move to land 395 million years ago remains a bit of a mystery, says Boisvert. At the time, the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana was drifting toward the proto-North American continent. (Also see "Oldest Animal Discovered—Earliest Ancestor of Us All?")

"This drift created many shallow-water habitats, hence perfect places for something crocodile-like to thrive," she says. "These environments are also at the equator at that time, so it is nice and warm and tropical."

But there wasn't a lot to eat on land at the time for Tiktaalik, aside from spiders, scorpions, insects, and a few plants. Fewer predators or a safer place to lay eggs may have instead driven land creatures to evolve, some suggest.

"What we are seeing is that the transition to land was a real transition, not from the sea to land in one fell swoop," says Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

"Creatures moved from open water to shallows, to marshes, to edges, before moving to land in a long, slow transition."

Our Fishy Ancestors Had Fins Made for Walking

Everything in this article about Tiktaalik is guesswork and assumptions made to fit pre-conceived ideas about evolution. How on earth does anyone know what a creature who lived 350 million years ago did or didn't do? Good grief!

You believe what you want to believe......like we all do.

 

[cladking]

While scientists examine the evidence. Analyze it. Compare and contrast it. Look for patterns. Come up with explanations for these patterns. Formulate hypotheses. Test them. Formulate theories to explain what is observed. If the theories are predictive and can lead to the expansion of knowledge and sound application, it is a pretty successful theory.

ONLY experiment must underlie theory.

No experiment has ever been devised nor performed to show a gradual change in species caused by "survival of the fittest" .

There is far more wonder in nature and far more ignorance of reality than science can even contemplate. Pronouncement about the lack of a Creator undermine your arguments far more than support them.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Why does Deeje have such long posts? It gets tiring to answer all of the incorrect statements. I can only think that if she post enough she thinks she can overwhelm anyone to answer.

I have noticed that when examples of the behavior are noted, there is an increase in the application. As if a petulant child were responding to being admonished.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Who put these classifications together in the first place? Who insinuates that because organisms are mammals that they must all be related? In Australia we have monotremes.....egg laying mammals. Where do they belong on the evolutionary tree?

The classifications past "family" begin to have less and less evidence supporting them in any evolutionary sense.



I have as much real "evidence" for the existence of an Intelligent Creator as you have for his non existence.
How I interpret the evidence is just as valid as any suggestion by scientists that their interpretation must be correct.
I can say "might have" "could have" "leads us to the conclusion that..." and make a case.The "evidence" is the same...different interpretation. Its to be seen from your replies that science is your god.



Ah Tiktaalik...lets talk about our first walking fish....

I'll quote this National Geographic article on Tiktaalik because I want to highlight the obvious problems with assumption when describing something that supposedly existed 375 million years ago.....

"Our Fishy Ancestors Had Fins Made for Walking
One of the first creatures to live on land sported surprisingly strong hips and fins.

BY DAN VERGANO, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
PUBLISHED JANUARY 14, 2014

ONE OF THE first "fish" to walk on land some 375 million years ago made its way with surprisingly strong hips and fins, report paleontologists.

Unearthed in the Canadian Arctic in 2006, Tiktaalik roseae, a genus of early land-walking fish, made headlines with news of its discovery, which was funded by the National Geographic Society. The new report fleshes out how our ancient four-limbed ancestors first made the move from water to land. (See pictures: "Nine Fish With 'Hands' Found to Be New Species.")

"They're big—the hips of Tiktaalik look very robust," says University of Chicago paleontologist Neil Shubin, who led the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The find suggests that the pelvic girdle changes that accompanied the move to land by vertebrates—animals with backbones such as Tiktaalik—"started in the water or, more accurately, in the swamp," he says. (Also see "Pictures: 'Walking' Fish a Model of Evolution in Action.")

Tiktaalik lived in marshy river settings resembling today's Amazon. Up to 9 feet (2.7 meters) long, the lobed fish hunted like a freshwater crocodile in rivers and inlets, and had a surprisingly agile neck and primitive lungs.

"We are really just getting a glimpse into one of the most fascinating transitions for vertebrates," says paleontologist Catherine Boisvert of Australia's Monash University.

A series of discoveries, including Tiktaalik and similar creatures over the past decade, she says, are opening up to scholars the time when animals—other than insects—first made the leap to land.

The newly discovered pelvis of Tiktaalik, pictured here between a life-sized reconstruction (left) and a cast of the skeleton (right).

PHOTOGRAPH BY KEVIN JIANG, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO (See link for photos)

The discovery of additional materials from the hind fin of Tiktaalik roseae a 375 million year old fossil suggest it was able to to use its hind fins as props as well as paddles.

Tiktaalik means "large, freshwater fish" in the language of the Nunavut people, who live in the region near its discovery site on Canada's frigid Ellesmere Island (map).

Shubin has nicknamed Tiktaalik the "fishapod," a play on the scientific "tetrapod" designation given to all four-legged animals and their descendants. (See also: "Tiktaalik Discovery Among National Geographic's Top Grants.")

"Our original discovery of Tiktaalik was so big that we had to split it into two parts, because we didn't have enough plaster," Shubin says. "This was the back end, and we were surprised to find a pelvis inside."

In addition to being much larger, proportionally, than the rear fin-supporting pelvis bones of a fish, Tiktaalik's hips point outward, more like a land animal's. The suspicion is that the creature propelled itself over mud flats and shallows with large, surprisingly well-articulated rear fins.

Until now scholars have known very little about the anatomical bridges between ancient fish and the much larger land creatures that came later, notes paleontologist Per Ahlberg of Sweden's Uppsala University.

"With the Tiktaalik material the preservation is so good that it will be possible to reconstruct aspects of the pelvic-fin musculature and the range of movement of the fin," Ahlberg said by email.

"This will really help us to understand the locomotory transformation from fish to tetrapod."

Land Dwellers

Why fish made the move to land 395 million years ago remains a bit of a mystery, says Boisvert. At the time, the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana was drifting toward the proto-North American continent. (Also see "Oldest Animal Discovered—Earliest Ancestor of Us All?")

"This drift created many shallow-water habitats, hence perfect places for something crocodile-like to thrive," she says. "These environments are also at the equator at that time, so it is nice and warm and tropical."

But there wasn't a lot to eat on land at the time for Tiktaalik, aside from spiders, scorpions, insects, and a few plants. Fewer predators or a safer place to lay eggs may have instead driven land creatures to evolve, some suggest.

"What we are seeing is that the transition to land was a real transition, not from the sea to land in one fell swoop," says Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.

"Creatures moved from open water to shallows, to marshes, to edges, before moving to land in a long, slow transition."

Our Fishy Ancestors Had Fins Made for Walking

Everything in this article about Tiktaalik is guesswork and assumptions made to fit pre-conceived ideas about evolution. How on earth does anyone know what a creature who lived 350 million years ago did or didn't do? Good grief!

You believe what you want to believe......like we all do.

You keep changing your claim. Your previous claim was as much evidence for a creator as for evolution. Now that that has been chewed up, you move to a straw man claim of as much evidence for a creator as scientists have against the existence of a creator. Determining the existence of a creator or non-existence isn't even something science does. How can you have a position opposite of a position that doesn't exist?

Clearly you deny evidence, create fallacious narratives and believe what you want. Don't drag the rest of us down with you out of spite for the validity of our views.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yes, microevolution...changes within species. Even within family taxa.

But you overlook the Cambrian Explosion, the abrupt appearance of novel lifeforms. Darwinism evolution does not predict sudden change, only gradual.

You're going to try this one again? Really?

If Darwin had known the complexity of the cell and it's DNA, he would have thrown out his theory.

The discovery of DNA served to reinforce the veracity of the theory of evolution, actually.
Hence the reason it's still the only scientific theory in use that explains the diversity of life on earth.

 

[SkepticThinker]

No, my friend.....there have been 1000's of new species discovered, that apparently spanned those years. But each one appears abruptly in the record. That's why no obvious precursors are found. Even if you feel earlier trilobites were ancestral to the later ones - which they could've been, being in the same family - it still doesn't explain the appearance of the first. Not to mention the other anatomically-different species that are found.

And the fossils discovered in the Cambrian strata, are mostly very well preserved, with soft-body parts clearly defined.




No, they don't "all corroborate" it....I just mentioned one. Darwin was aware of the Cambrian radiation, and noted it presented an obstacle to his theory back then, but he was thinking viable precursors were yet to be discovered. They hadn't then, and they still haven't. Despite much effort.

And the similarity of genes, doesn't stress relationship. Rather, this similarity reveals a common Maker, who used a somewhat uniform "blueprint" to create these organisms.

As if the undirected mechanisms of evolution, working with nature, could have created the marvelous balance observed in Earth's ecosystems & cycles!

'Selfish genes' wouldn't have accomplished that.

Oh it doesn't?? Well, that's news to most people.
I wonder how we can trace family lineages and relationships so readily then. How weird. I guess you just think that's fake, or ... ?

 

[Deeje]

If you want examples of speciation, there are plenty of those as well though.

Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur | Observations
Observed Instances of Speciation


Which you will dismiss with another handwave. Likely with some strawman which ignores the law of monophy.

I sometimes wonder if you even read the articles you provide links for. Both just made me laugh. Suggestion masquerading as fact....nothing new. No handwave required....just read it and see how many suggestions there are that you would otherwise never see or acknowledge.

What is speciation? Seriously.....all speciation does is produce varieties within a well defined family of creatures. Adaptation is the mechanism, an inbuilt, programmed response to a change in environment or food source.....all well documented and observed.

What speciation will never do is change the taxonomy of any organism, as your constant reference to monophy demonstrates. Macro-evolution depends on changes in definitions of a “family”, by assuming that in the early process of evolution that a single cell found a way to keep changing (morphing) so that these moved out of their microscopic cellular existence to create all manner of living things. But, ‘amoebas to dinosaurs’ has NO real evidence to support it....none...zip....zilch.

Arguing on one end of this question does not explain how that first process, imagined by scientists, actually fits in with what they know, rather than what they imagine. It is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst....but obviously convincing to a lot of people. Please don’t pretend that it convinces everyone.

If you have no proof for the beginning, what is the point of arguing about things at the end? What something became is moot if you have no idea how all these species found their way into their classifications in the first place? When did monophy kick in? How would you even know?

 

[cladking]

I sometimes wonder if you even read the articles you provide links for. Both just made me laugh. Suggestion masquerading as fact....nothing new. No handwave required....just read it and see how many suggestions there are that you would otherwise never see or acknowledge.

Indeed!

People usually link to something that doesn't support their contentions. They link to things written by those who share their beliefs instead.

 

[gnostic]

Indeed!

People usually link to something that doesn't support their contentions. They link to things written by those who share their beliefs instead.

Like you?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I sometimes wonder if you even read the articles you provide links for. Both just made me laugh. Suggestion masquerading as fact....nothing new. No handwave required....just read it and see how many suggestions there are that you would otherwise never see or acknowledge.

What is speciation? Seriously.....all speciation does is produce varieties within a well defined family of creatures. Adaptation is the mechanism, an inbuilt, programmed response to a change in environment or food source.....all well documented and observed.

What speciation will never do is change the taxonomy of any organism, as your constant reference to monophy demonstrates. Macro-evolution depends on changes in definitions of a “family”, by assuming that in the early process of evolution that a single cell found a way to keep changing (morphing) so that these moved out of their microscopic cellular existence to create all manner of living things. But, ‘amoebas to dinosaurs’ has NO real evidence to support it....none...zip....zilch.

Arguing on one end of this question does not explain how that first process, imagined by scientists, actually fits in with what they know, rather than what they imagine. It is wishful thinking at best, delusional at worst....but obviously convincing to a lot of people. Please don’t pretend that it convinces everyone.

If you have no proof for the beginning, what is the point of arguing about things at the end? What something became is moot if you have no idea how all these species found their way into their classifications in the first place? When did monophy kick in? How would you even know?

Speciation is a step in evolution. What is varieties within kinds? Families within classes? Species within genera? Families within superfamilies? Subspecies within a species? What? There is nothing in the Bible that indicates what is meant by kind. Redefining it after the fact is a non-starter.

There is a lot of evidence for the evolution from prokaryotes to eukaryotes to multicelluraity to invertebrates to vertebrates. You just choose to ignore it and prattle on.

All I have seen from you is wishful thinking, goalpost moving, false dichotomies, misinformation and a lot of useless tongue wagging in written form.