Evolution: Do you see the resemblence

[ericmurphy]

Pachycephalosaurus existed in the Upper Cretaceous and does not exist today. Homo sapiens sapiens exist today and did not exist in the Upper Cretaceous, nor did they evolve from pachycephalosaurus. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy.

I'm not making any assertions about which organisms evolved from which, or how. I am making the simple, unassailable observation that organisms have changed over time. I.e., they have evolved over time. There's no logical fallacy here. If organisms are different now from what they were in the past (and they are) then evolution must necessarily as a logical consequence have happened. It doesn't matter whether that evolution occurred as a result of naturalistic processes or because God "poofed" them into existence. One way or another (or another, or another, or another), living organisms have evolved.

Evolutionary theory addresses how organisms evolve over time, and from what. It's an attempt to explain the causes underlying the observed evolution. That's a separate issue. Please try to make the distinction between evolution as an observation and evolutionary theory. Otherwise, we're talking past each other.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I'm not making any assertions about which organisms evolved from which, or how. I am making the simple, unassailable observation that organisms have changed over time.

Evolution happened because evolution happened. Brilliant ...

 

[Willamena]

No. It's like saying, here's a ball in my hand, and I'm letting go of it, and it's falling. That's evidence of gravity.

Let's get our analogies straight.

Let's. Go back and revise your trilobyte story so that it fits the analogy.

Also, let's get our nomenclature straight. I am not, not not NOT, discussing the theory of evolution here. The theory of evolution is not, of course, factual. No theory is. Evolution (as distinct from evolutionary theory) is simply an observation. It's the observation that living organisms have changed over time, and that's all it is. It's not an accounting for what caused that change, it's not a series of mechanisms purporting to explain that change; it is simply an observation that living organisms change. They change slightly over short amounts of time (microevolution), and they change dramatically over long periods of time (macroevolution). These observations are no more disputable than that the moon orbits the earth.

Sorry, I disagree.

 

[ericmurphy]

Evolution happened because evolution happened. Brilliant ...

The ball fell because I dropped it. Same thing.

What part of this is giving you trouble? Are you still unclear on the distinction between the observation of evolution and evolutionary theory? Have my explanations of that distinction been unclear?

Your comment illuminates exactly how inane it is to dispute the reality of evolution. Live has evolved because it has changed over time. It has evolved by the definition of the term.

 

[ericmurphy]

Let's. Go back and revise your trilobyte story so that it fits the analogy.

I don't need to. In fact, if things had turned out differently, I could just as justifiably say, "rabbits existed in the past, but do not exist now. Trilobites exist now, but did not exist in the past."

Those two observations are sufficient to establish the factual nature of evolution.

Sorry, I disagree.

Fine. But why? Where do you see the problem?

 

[Willamena]

I'm not making any assertions about which organisms evolved from which, or how.

Then there is no "falling".

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

What part of this is giving you trouble? Are you still unclear on the distinction between the observation of evolution and evolutionary theory? Have my explanations of that distinction been unclear?

Your pathetic pedantry is more than clear. I strongly recommend that you stop embarrassing yourself. There are more than a few people here, myself included, that actually understand what you pretend to teach.

 

[Willamena]

I could just as justifiably say, "rabbits existed in the past, but do not exist now.

There was a ball over there, but it's gone now.

Trilobites exist now, but did not exist in the past."

There is a ball here, but it wasn't there before.

Those two observations are sufficient to establish the factual nature of evolution.

There must be gravity!

Fine. But why? Where do you see the problem?

I could say, but better people than I have already said, on this thread alone. Besides, you seem pretty set in your beliefs.

 

[ericmurphy]

Then there is no "falling".

Of course there is. Humans came from somewhere. Rabbits came from somewhere. Dinosaurs came from somewhere. Trilobites came from somewhere. If they were not always here, then life on earth has changed over time. Hence, it has evolved.

Can you show me where this is not true?

 

[ericmurphy]

Your pathetic pedantry is more than clear. I strongly recommend that you stop embarrassing yourself. There are more than a few people here, myself included, that actually understand what you pretend to teach.

Okay. If you think evolution has not happened, then you necessarily believe that life has never changed, and is the same now as it always has been. Is this what you believe? Or are you using some different meaning for the term "evolution"?

So far, you have disagreed with me, but not said why. Where do you think I've gone wrong?

 

[ericmurphy]

Hopefully everyone is now clear on the distinction between the observation of evolution (which is indisputable), and the theory of evolution. If not, we can wrangle over it a bit more, but in the meantime, I'd like to start discussing the evidence for macroevolutionary theory.

The principal assertion evolutionary theory makes is that all life on earth is descended from one or a small number of universal common ancestors. The best summary I've ever read of the evidence supporting this assertion is contained in Douglas Theobald's "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution." While the Theobald article is a literature review and as such contains no original research, and has not undergone formal peer review, Theobald informed me in an e-mail dated Oct. 18, 2005:

However, it is not exactly true that the 29+ Evidences is not peer-reviewed. As I have commented before to others, it may not have been formally reviewed by a standard journal, but it has been through more extensive and thorough review than any of my formal peer-reviewed publications in standard journals. At the end of the 29+ Evidences I give a partial list of reviewers, 19 of which I know have PhDs in a relevant field:

Brett Vickers, John Wilkins, Wesley Elsberry, Edward Max, Jim Foley,
Laurence Moran, Ashby Camp, Cornelius George Hunter, Richard Harter, Matt Silberstein, Neil Rickert, Larry Handlin, John Harshman, Paul Gans, Sarah Clark, Paul Danaher, Howard Hershey, maff, Adam Noel Harris, Rich Daniel, Wade Hines, Chris Nedin, Peter Nyikos, Gavin Tabor, Andrew McRae, Ken Cox, Ken Cope, Mike Goodrich, Norm Pace, Scott Classen, Tom Schneider, Steve Schultz, Carl Woese, and Catherine Theobald.

I'm going to try to keep quoting from the article to a minimum, but I strongly suggest that anyone who is truly interested in the strength of the evidence supporting macroevolutionary theory read the article in its entirety. It's easily the project for a long weekend, if you read it thoroughly and carefully. If you want to follow up on the extensive references, you're probably look at more like a month's worth of reading.

Also, please do not point out that none of these lines of evidence are "proof" of evolutionary theory. There is no such thing as "proof" of evolutionary theory. Theories are not capable of being proven. Predictions a theory makes can be confirmed, or falsified. A successful prediction only means that the theory is correct so far. A falsified prediction means that the theory needs some working on, or if it is a significant failure, it may mean the theory needs to be abandoned.

But I will not respond to request that evolutionary theory be proven. It cannot be proven, any more than any scientific theory can be proven.

So let's take a look at the first piece of evidence Theobald cites as evidence for macroevolution:

The Fundamental Unity of All Life

All living organisms essentially do the same things. They take reproduce themselves, either sexually or asexually, they impart inheritable information to their descendants, they catalyze chemical reactions, and they use energy to accomplish these tasks.

All living organisms use essentially the same biochemistry to perform these tasks. All living organisms use the same (or closely related) genetic code, the same (or closely related) amino acids, and the same (or closely related) metabolic pathways.

Since evolutionary theory proposes that all organisms are related by common descent from a universal ancestor, it predicts that all the biochemical means by which organisms perform these processes should be similar, and slight differences should be modifications of some ancestral form. Such a prediction is trivially falsifiable by a finding that various organisms use completely unrelated genetic codes, unrelated chemical catalysts, unrelated metabolic pathways, etc. That we do not find such unrelated biochemical systems is a confirmation of this prediction.

As an example, all living organisms that have ever been studied have been found to use adenosine triphosphate as a basic unit of energy storage. There are hundreds of different molecules that would serve equally well, yet all living organisms use this same molecule.

It can, of course, be argued that a creator being could use the same basic building blocks over and over: the concept of common design. This is of course, true, but it is also an unfalsifiable assertion. There is no necessity that a creator use the same basic biochemistry in all living organisms.

Logically, if hypothesis X predicts observation A, but would be falsified by observation !A, then observation A is evidence for hypothesis X, while observation !A is a falsification of X. Contrarily, if hypothesis Y predicts A, but would not be falsified by !A, then neither A nor !A is evidence for Y. Since special creation may predict a common biochemistry among all living organisms (common design) but could still accommodate widely varying biochemistries (because a sufficiently advanced creator could do so), neither observation is evidence for a special creation. On this particular matter, therefore, special creation makes no falsifiable prediction. An observation of a universal biochemistry cannot tell us whether or not life was specially created by an intelligent designer.

 

[Willamena]

Of course there is. Humans came from somewhere. Rabbits came from somewhere. Dinosaurs came from somewhere. Trilobites came from somewhere. If they were not always here, then life on earth has changed over time. Hence, it has evolved.

Can you show me where this is not true?

So... the analogy becomes you let go a ball and another ball appeared at rest on the ground... so there must be gravity because balls don't get there by themselves. Hence, there was "falling" (even though no one saw it).

 

[Autodidact]

Absolutely, unequivocally false. Just because a particular structure could arise naturally does not in any way, shape, or form falsify the notion that it was created. There would be nothing stopping a creator from creating a flagellum even if it could be shown in step-by-step detail how a flagellum could arise from entirely naturalistic and unguided processes.

Try again. Try to come up with a single falsifiable prediction either Intelligent Design or special creation makes. If you cannot do so (and you cannot), then you have no justification for claiming that either one is in any way scientific.

It also misunderstand what "falsification" is. Falsification means something that we would observe in nature, and does not depend on any other theory or theoretical finding. It would be a sentence of the form, if creationism were true, we would not expect to see X in nature. Fill in the X.

 

[Autodidact]

How is it evidence of evolution?

That's like saying there was a ball over there, now there's a ball here - so that's evidence of gravity.

Well, yeah, I think it would be. If the ball were up in the air, and then it was on the ground, I think that would be evidence of gravity. As for the Theory of Gravity, that's something else.

 

[ericmurphy]

There was a ball over there, but it's gone now.


There is a ball here, but it wasn't there before.


There must be gravity!


I could say, but better people than I have already said, on this thread alone. Besides, you seem pretty set in your beliefs.

I still don't think I'm getting my point across. By saying evolution is factual, all I'm saying is that living organisms have changed over time. To deny evolution is to deny that living organisms have changed over time. In other words, you have to believe that the same organisms that exist today have existed for the entire time that life has existed on earth.

That is clearly not the case. It is inarguable (isn't it?) that that is not the case.

So I'm still not clear on where your problem is with what I'm saying.

 

[Autodidact]

Pachycephalosaurus existed in the Upper Cretaceous and does not exist today. Homo sapiens sapiens exist today and did not exist in the Upper Cretaceous, nor did they evolve from pachycephalosaurus. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy.

He's not alleging that bunnies evolved from trilobites, and I don't know that they did. He's alleging that species change over time--that some go extinct, and new ones come into being, that's all. ToE explains how.

 

[Autodidact]

Evolution happened because evolution happened. Brilliant ...

It's like the difference between the observation that things fall down, and the theory that mass causes a dent in the fabric of space time, see? The observed fact, and the explanation. Why do species emerge and go extinct? Because of descent with modification plus natural selection.

 

[ericmurphy]

So... the analogy becomes you let go a ball and another ball appeared at rest on the ground... so there must be gravity because balls don't get there by themselves. Hence, there was "falling" (even though no one saw it).

You're missing a critical point in the analogy. It isn't a matter of just seeing a ball in one place and then seeing it in another place.

You can fix your analogy in at least two ways: you can add the fact that you observe the ball falling (because we can observe, through the fossil record, that different organisms existed in the past). Or, you can revise your analogy to say: "This ball was in one place earlier, and it's in a different place now. Therefore the ball has moved."

The second analogy may be better, because it avoids discussion of a mechanism (gravity) by which the ball got from one place to the other. I'm not discussing mechanisms by which life has evolved (i.e., changed) over time. I'm merely making the straightforward (and still, I think, inarguable) observation that it has, in fact, changed over time.

 

[Willamena]

I still don't think I'm getting my point across. By saying evolution is factual, all I'm saying is that living organisms have changed over time.

Ta-da! The Theory of Evolution in its essence as it relates to biology.

To deny evolution is to deny that living organisms have changed over time. In other words, you have to believe that the same organisms that exist today have existed for the entire time that life has existed on earth.

That is clearly not the case. It is inarguable (isn't it?) that that is not the case.

So I'm still not clear on where your problem is with what I'm saying.

I have to agree, and I have no problem with that, just that the evidence you'd pointed at wasn't evidence of change.

 

[ericmurphy]

I want to make clear, once again (since plainly I'm not getting my point across), that when I say evolution is factual, all I am saying is that life, i.e., populations of living organisms, have changed over time. I don't see how this is even arguable. There are species in existence now that did not exist in the past. There were species in the past that do not exist now.

That is all I am saying. I'm not making any claims about how organisms alive today came to be, or whether they are descended from organisms that lived in the past. One can argue that everything alive today is descended from organisms alive in the past (which although pretty obviously true probably should not be considered factual), and one can go even further and argue that all organisms share a common ancestor. I think the evidence for common descent is conclusive, and not really open to rational dispute anymore, but common descent is not a fact.

The change of life over time is factual. I don't see how it can be denied. But that is all I am saying, when I say evolution is a fact. And if you disagree with me, I don't see how you can do so without claiming that life is the same today as it has been for the entire time it has existed on earth. If there's a third possibility, I'm happy to hear what it is, but no one has proposed such a third possibility yet.