Telling you that you are ignorant about the field of biology is not fallacious, or an attack on your character.
Given that you only made arguments of assertion in response to my arguments, and then followed up with ad hominem remarks, that makes it an ad hominem fallacy by definition because you are using the ad hominem remarks to substitute for having for an actual counter argument.
You still have not given any arguments to support your claim that any of the things you listed (polyploidy, horizontal gene transfer, plasmids, VNTRs, endogenous retroviruses,) could be used to explain how the new genetic code required for reptilian style scales could be introduced by random chance into a cat and result in replacing their fur.
Merely asserting it does, without giving logical reasons why, is the fallacy of argument by assertion.
It's not true just because you assert it is.
It is a statement that warrants belief, based or your comments that indicate no understanding.
You have Your character may be wonderful, but you happen to be miseducated about scientific facts, theories, concepts, and definitions.
You don't get to make any claims about anyone not understanding something until you can demonstrate logically why anything they have said shows a lack of understanding.
You failed to do that in your post because you did not offer any logical refutation of anything I argued. And I gave point by point logical reasons why your responses failed to constitute a valid refutation of my points.
You basically only offered fallacies of argument by assertion on the main point.
Comparing your statements to the consensus of qualified experts in the field of biology is not a fallacious appeal to authority, either.
Logical fallacy, argument by assertion
Merely claiming you are not committing a fallacy of appeal to authority doesn't make your claim true just because you assert it is.
You have provided no logical reasons for why what you said does not constitute the very definition of an appeal to authority fallacy.
The very definition of an appeal to authority is to cite an authority's belief in something as proof that it is true. Qualifications don't logically make it stop being a fallacy of appeal to authority because logically qualifications don't prove that what someone says is true. They could logically both have qualifications and be wrong about something. Only logical arguments can establish the objective logical truth of something.
1. Evolution doesn't suggest we can purposefully cause a population of cats to evolve into lizards.
We could get them to look very lizard-like, but would they be identical to other lizards species?
No, the randomness of mutations means evolution predicts that this would not be an expected outcome. So there is no problem for me here, only for your poor understanding of what evolution predicts.
Logical fallacy, strawman.
I never said you needed to be able to turn cats into something identical to lizards for my argument to be valid.
You are misrepresenting what I said to try to make it easier to attack, because you can't answer the specific argument I did make.
I gave you a much more limited goal: Selectively breeding cats to produce lizard-like scales on them instead of fur.
A very limited goal. And you've even got a big advantage over natural processes because you can artificially select for certain traits and don't have to let survival do it for you.
Would you be able to produce that outcome? You have no reason to think you would. Not without inputing new code into the cat's genes.
And you have no reason to think you're going to introduce new genetic code into the cat by selectively breeding it. You're just expressing epigenetically what the code already is capable of. You aren't adding new capability.
Why would you think natural selection is going to have any more chance of inputing new genetic code into the cat when you can't even do it by artificial sped up selection?
You have nothing you can point to observationally in reality that would suggest what you describe could happen or ever has. It's pure speculation that doesn't line up with what we know about the fact that code only comes from minds and the statistical impossibility that a functional code could be added to an organism's genes by random chance.
2. Maybe you should define adaptation. Based on the
dictionary.com website, adaptation is a way of describing evolution by natural selection. So I'm not sure what your distinction is.
My original point is that the way you defined adaptation is also consistent with the definition of evolution. Dictionaries seem to agree. Perhaps reflect on whatever reasons you have to relabel evolution with other words in order to deny the facts of evolution by calling it something else?
Adaptation - Wikipedia
"In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the population during that process. Thirdly, it is a phenotypic trait or adaptive trait, with a functional role in each individual organism, that is maintained and has evolved through natural selection."
Adaptation is observable and verified to exist.
"Evolution", in contrast, is a much broader umbrella word encompassing a collection of beliefs that ultimately assert that the concept of adaptation, when applied over time, can result in turning a single celled organism into various different organisms of increasing complexity until you finally arrive at mankind.
What you are doing, probably unintentionally because it's what was done to you when you learned about the concept of evolution, is the logical fallacy of a bait and switch.
You start from an easy to prove concept like adaptation, you call it "evolution", but then you also include a bunch of other stuff under the umbrella of the term "evolution" that is pure speculation with no observation to verify it does happen and no known mechanism by which it could occur.
So you point to adaptation of a moth changing colors to fit an environment, call it evolution, and say "see, evolution is true!". Then you speculate that man could have evolved from a single celled organism, call it evolution too, and then declare it is true because because "evolution is already proven true" by the observation of adaptation.
3. Your idea that we are "losing genetic information" is completely, demonstrably false. This is a canard that apologists pass around between each other, and is untethered to anything observable in actual science or reality.
You are committing the logical fallacy of irrelevant conclusion.
Whether or not genetic information actually is lost isn't actually going to defend your original claim that new functional genetic code can be introduced into an organism by natural selection.
So it's not even necessary for me to try to defend that point unless you can demonstrate why it would be necessary for the sake of the core argument about whether or not new functional genetic code can be introduced into an organism that will result in a something that is significant enough to be selected for by survival.
4. Irreducible complexity has been entirely debunked. It was effectively abandoned over a decade ago. You should stop raising this issue, and redirect your attention to the comprehensive, evidence-based, scientific explanations for every supposed example that apologists have raised, like the flagellum, the eye, etc. Biologists understand this process extremely well. Again, it is a function of your misunderstanding of biology, rather than a problem for biology.
Logical fallacy, strawman.
I never argued anything from the irreducible complexity of the mechanics of a biological cell
I said something "like irreducible complexity" in reference to the introduction of new genetic code.
An analogy would be computer code. There is a minimum standard of information that has to be typed in before any functional change in the program will result when it is run.
I am not talking about merely changing single digit numerical values attached to the functional lines of code that is already there - but adding new lines of code to do new functions.
Ie. Random letters here and there aren't going to generate new functions. It takes a string of letters arranged as information to be readable code to meet a minimum standard of producing a new function.
5. You seem to have the fundamental misconception that evolution happened intentionally,
Your claim is false. And I don't see how you could have gotten that claim from anything I actually said.
Therefore any arguments you try to make based on that premise are invalid.
We simply observe that evolution takes whatever beneficial mutations occur and then it runs with them.
Your statement doesn't refute anything I argued nor does it prove your original claims.
Because you haven't given us a mechanism by which random mutations of genetic code could produce new genetic functions of significance to effect the rate at which nature selects for them by survival and reproduction rates.
For example, evolution predicts (and observes) that two identical populations of rodents would evolve differently when placed in identical environments, such that one might end up going down the path of camouflage and the other might evolve a burrowing strategy, or a better mouth for eating new plants, or countless other possibilities.
You are describing adaptation.
Adaptation doesn't prove cells to mankind evolution happened.
Everything you are describing falls within what their genetic code is already capable of expressing. Not unlike how selective breeding of dogs produces different mouth shapes, different personality traits, and different affinities for different tasks.
You aren't observing new genetic code functions being introduced into them by random chance. You are seeing epigenetic expressions of the existing code.
That's why there are limits to what you can expect to see expressed by selective breeding.