How would we know if a species was newly evolved?

[Subduction Zone]

What is that relationship but the common ancestry is a work of fiction, just because you draw a tree, doesn’t mean it’s so, especially because that tree is blank with missing information. That’s the big problem.

They do not just draw a tree. When categorized that is the shape that the evidence forms. Not just once, but again and again and in independent branches of biology. Creationists have no explanation for that. They only have claims that they refuse to put to the test. Unsupported claims are worthless in the sciences.

 

[ElishaElijah]

You found one example of a tree and not all tree diagrams. That it may have blanks on the branches is irrelevant and says nothing about the validity of the idea or use of them.

Common ancestry a theory supported by a rather hefty volume of evidence in a number of different disciplines. It is a scientific explanation rendered logically on that evidence and not a fiction that has no factual basis.

Common ancestry is not supported because it’s not shown, and what’s common? Living beings have DNA? Then this is just one aspect of life that is theory, the evolutions tree of life.
Then you have the environment that living beings live in that supposedly evolved as well, unfortunately for evolutionist this environment had to evolve perfectly for any life to exist. This is an impossibility and would love to see the science behind how oxygen, water, CO2, nitrogen and the chemicals for life just evolved.
The only option I see is Genesis 1 where God created all this to work in harmony.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Common ancestry is not supported because it’s not shown, and what’s common? Living beings have DNA? Then this is just one aspect of life that is theory, the evolutions tree of life.
Then you have the environment that living beings live in that supposedly evolved as well, unfortunately for evolutionist this environment had to evolve perfectly for any life to exist. This is an impossibility and would love to see the science behind how oxygen, water, CO2, nitrogen and the chemicals for life just evolved.
The only option I see is Genesis 1 where God created all this to work in harmony.

Sorry, but that is an empty claim on your part. Remember, you ran away from a discussion about evidence so any of your claims about evidence are of no value. Also you are using an argument from ignorance. That is a logical fallacy.

What I don't understand is why you are afraid to even learn what is and what is not evidence. It appears that you are very very afraid. Understanding evidence would only make you a better debater, or do you want to just make post that tell everyone how little that you know? I think that you could learn if you wanted to.

 

[ElishaElijah]

They do not just draw a tree. When categorized that is the shape that the evidence forms. Not just once, but again and again and in independent branches of biology. Creationists have no explanation for that. They only have claims that they refuse to put to the test. Unsupported claims are worthless in the sciences.

Then all science has is what’s described in Genesis 1. Anything before that is just a guess and theory. That’s all the information that’s shown

 

[ElishaElijah]

Sorry, but that is an empty claim on your part. Remember, you ran away from a discussion about evidence so any of your claims about evidence are of no value. Also you are using an argument from ignorance. That is a logical fallacy.

What I don't understand is why you are afraid to even learn what is and what is not evidence. It appears that you are very very afraid. Understanding evidence would only make you a better debater, or do you want to just make post that tell everyone how little that you know? I think that you could learn if you wanted to.

When do debaters call someone appearing to be afraid when I’m not, I’m very secure and confident.
This leads me to believe that you are the one who is afraid, unsure and nervous about the idea that you’ll have to stand before God some day, you’re conscience bears witness but for some reason you’re stuck.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Sorry, but that is an empty claim on your part. Remember, you ran away from a discussion about evidence so any of your claims about evidence are of no value. Also you are using an argument from ignorance. That is a logical fallacy.

What I don't understand is why you are afraid to even learn what is and what is not evidence. It appears that you are very very afraid. Understanding evidence would only make you a better debater, or do you want to just make post that tell everyone how little that you know? I think that you could learn if you wanted to.

Oh my, that may be a breaking of the rules here.

Why are you afraid?

 

[Subduction Zone]

When do debaters call someone appearing to be afraid when I’m not, I’m very secure and confident.
This leads me to believe that you are the one who is afraid, unsure and nervous about the idea that you’ll have to stand before God some day, you’re conscious bears witness but for some reason you’re stuck.

No, you aren't. If you were confident you would not be afraid to learn. You would not be willing to call your own God a liar. A confident person is not afraid to learn. A confident person embraces knowledge, he does not run away from it.

There is nothing to be afraid of when it comes to your God since it has been demonstrated that he does not exist. You have told us that yourself.

 

[sun rise]

and would love to see the science behind how oxygen, water, CO2, nitrogen and the chemicals for life just evolved.

That shows a total ignorance of physics, chemistry, biology paleontology and in fact most of science. To me it's rejecting the beauty of the world and puts God in a box of personal opinion. It is also creating a false dichotomy between God and the world which believers don't need to do. Theistic evolution - Wikipedia reconciles the two.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That shows a total ignorance of physics, chemistry, biology paleontology and in fact most of science. To me it's rejecting the beauty of the world and puts God in a box of personal opinion. It is also creating a false dichotomy between God and the world which believers don't need to do. Theistic evolution - Wikipedia reconciles the two.

It is actually blasphemous too. Who else but a creationist has the gall to tell his own God how he had to make the world.

 

[Tiberius]

I recall on another venue someone using the fact that in all the time we have been using bacteria and fungi for fermentation we have not observed speciation in those microorganisms. This was offered as evidence against theory of evolution.

Is it?

There is no evidence that ancient cultures making fermented milk products, bread, or beer had any idea what was causing the changes or that there were living things even involved. They were not only not looking, they were unaware of much of what was happening. Species could have evolved or not.

When microorganisms were discovered, no one had any idea of the species that existed, so anything new, even under the nose of the observer, wouldn't have been recognized for what it was. All those species were new to man and until we looked, undescribed. Many remain undescribed. An undescribed species is one new to us, but not necessarily or probably one new to the world. It could be. Maybe not. There is no information to know specifically under those historic circumstances.

Once we described some of them, recognized the role some of them had relating to us--food, pathogenesis, soil production, etc.--and started culturing them, I still do not see a feasible opportunity to know that speciation was occurring. Historically, scientists culturing bacteria, for instance, were doing so for some other purpose and such changes would go unnoticed for much the same reasons as before. No one was looking for these changes and any different species in what was intended as pure cultures could be just contamination.

Only recently--the last 70 years perhaps--have we started looking at this with the intent to discover actual speciation events in a human time frame.

Given that some of the same issues apply to macro-scale life on this planet that they do for microorganisms, much that may have happened probably did unnoticed.

So, it seems that claiming a lack of observed speciation on a human history scale is not good evidence against the theory.

I could go on, but the question remains. How do we know or not whether a species is new to us or new to the world?

You wouldn't.

It's like if you looked at a photo of a child and then looked at a photo of the same child taken one day apart, could you tell which was from Day 1 and which was from day 2? The change is very gradual. All you can do is wait for a long time, maybe a year, and compare the growth of the child to figure it out.

Likewise, evolution is very slow from the point of view of a single Human life. It would be very difficult to see it happening in real time. In order to do it, you'd need to look at old records and compare them to modern observations.

But by the time we can say, "This is a newly evolved species," it's already been around for a while.

 

[ElishaElijah]

It is actually blasphemous too. Who else but a creationist has the gall to tell his own God how he had to make the world.

Thank-you and that’s my point what you just mentioned and know that God made the world.

 

[YoursTrue]

Which is why I said "sun light damaging DNA"

I'm not sure, but I believe it is possible that sunlight can alter the inclination of the body. Maybe and maybe not. Not sure if that has been tested. Because, as I understand it, carbon-14 can be altered by sunlight or some form of radioactivity in the atmosphere, eons ago. Meaning that it can seriously alter a dating process.

 

[YoursTrue]

You wouldn't.

It's like if you looked at a photo of a child and then looked at a photo of the same child taken one day apart, could you tell which was from Day 1 and which was from day 2? The change is very gradual. All you can do is wait for a long time, maybe a year, and compare the growth of the child to figure it out.

Likewise, evolution is very slow from the point of view of a single Human life. It would be very difficult to see it happening in real time. In order to do it, you'd need to look at old records and compare them to modern observations.

But by the time we can say, "This is a newly evolved species," it's already been around for a while.

Well, at this point, I guess someone (you, perhaps?) can give a definition of species? Can you please write it out and not provide me with a link for the definition you accept? Thanks. Because --- if a person wants to insult me, as the archaeology expert here usually does -- that's one thing. But it would be helpful for someone to explain exactly what they think a species is without going into links to explain it. Also @Dan From Smithville or anyone else who wants to explain in their own words, what a species is, first of all. Then perhaps we can talk about it.

 

[YoursTrue]

Thank-you and that’s my point what you just mentioned and know that God made the world.

Obviously not everyone believes that. I do. But clearly many do not, and I can see why to an extent.

 

[YoursTrue]

In spite of, sigh, a serious digression, the question is interesting because we keep discovering new species at a reasonable rate but presume they've been around for quite some time.

Another point is inbreeding. A species is contrasted with another species because they can't produce fully viable offspring. And that takes geological time to happen. We do have cases such as mules where offspring can be produced but they can't in turn have offspring.



But noncoding DNA still serves purposes so mutations in those areas could have negative (or positive) consequences. What is noncoding DNA?: MedlinePlus Genetics

OK, thank you. You kind of answered my question about species that I asked. I'm going to stick to that point for a while about the apparent inability of certain lifeforms to produce viable (further reproducing at length) lifeforms, although you do bring up an interesting point about noncoding DNA which I don't know about yet. Thanks.

 

[Heyo]

Well, at this point, I guess someone (you, perhaps?) can give a definition of species? Can you please write it out and not provide me with a link for the definition you accept? Thanks. Because --- if a person wants to insult me, as the archaeology expert here usually does -- that's one thing. But it would be helpful for someone to explain exactly what they think a species is without going into links to explain it. Also @Dan From Smithville or anyone else who wants to explain in their own words, what a species is, first of all. Then perhaps we can talk about it.

There are multiple definitions of species in biology. Evolutionary biology uses (mostly) the ability to interbreed as the (a) criterion. But even that has problems. First, it is only relative, not absolute. In ring species you can have population A being interfertile with B, B with C, C with D but D no longer with A. The next problem is time. We can't test if a modern human can interbreed with one of the first homo sapiens. Even though we are anatomically nearly identical, genetic drift may have resulted in incompatibility. The last problem is that inter-fertility isn't binary but probabilistic. While in 99+% of cases mules are sterile, every now and then we get a fertile one. Also males from species A and females from species B may have a high chance of fertile offspring it may be different with females of A with males of B.
And that is only for sexually reproducing animals and plants. It gets even more complicated with single celled organisms.
tl;dr: it's complicated.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Thank-you and that’s my point what you just mentioned and know that God made the world.

Actually I don't. Listen carefully I do not think that God made the world. You not only think that God made the world, but have the audacity to tell him how he made it.


That takes some nerve.

If, please note the if, if God made the world the world itself will tell us how he made it. Assuming that he is an honest God. We can use observation and evidence to tell us the history of the Earth and life itself. It left a record behind. It does take a bit of training to learn how to interpret it, but it is not that hard to follow where others have gone. The hard part is figuring out what happened. Par of science is peer review where a person writes down what he did very precisely. How he observed, what he observed, etc.. He notes everything that he can so that others that are checking on his work can verify that what he said is correct. Scientists rarely take each other at their word. In the sciences it is not an insult to have some say "I don't believe you, let me check your work". That is actually a compliment because he is saying in effect "Your work is new and interesting and I want to know if it is true too".

The other option to someone checking your work is ignoring it and that no scientist wants. The way that new ideas get accepted is that others check it and find out that it is correct and then tell others about it. The absolute worst thing for a scientist to do is to write a paper and everyone ignores it.

But once one has found the way it is much easier for others to follow. I had more than one geology class where were went to the key sites of a discovery and were able to figure it out for ourselves. But again, we were brought to the evidence. We did not have to search and search and then pull out the story from a ton of research. The key to doing this work is also having a test that would show that you are wrong. In the sciences all ideas must be testable. There must be at least one way to show that they are wrong if they are wrong. That forces people to keep an open mind when working.

 

[YoursTrue]

There are multiple definitions of species in biology. Evolutionary biology uses (mostly) the ability to interbreed as the (a) criterion. But even that has problems. First, it is only relative, not absolute. In ring species you can have population A being interfertile with B, B with C, C with D but D no longer with A. The next problem is time. We can't test if a modern human can interbreed with one of the first homo sapiens. Even though we are anatomically nearly identical, genetic drift may have resulted in incompatibility. The last problem is that inter-fertility isn't binary but probabilistic. While in 99+% of cases mules are sterile, every now and then we get a fertile one. Also males from species A and females from species B may have a high chance of fertile offspring it may be different with females of A with males of B.
And that is only for sexually reproducing animals and plants. It gets even more complicated with single celled organisms.
tl;dr: it's complicated.

OK. So I know this may be a foreign thought to you, and what you say makes sense in terms of defining things and I appreciate it, and I'm pretty sure I'll have questions about the whole thing -- but I was thinking that since evolution is so outstanding -- in terms of moving (meaning life progressing in terms of biologic content), I just want to say that after continual contemplation of this, it is within the realm of possibility that if there is a God who is the creator that this God can recreate an individual. Scientifically. No, only kidding about using the word scientifically except if the resurrection occurs as spoken of in the Bible, that would be the proof! <smile> because I mean I believe it can be all in His memory. But thank you so much for your very nice answer.

 

[YoursTrue]

You wouldn't.

It's like if you looked at a photo of a child and then looked at a photo of the same child taken one day apart, could you tell which was from Day 1 and which was from day 2? The change is very gradual. All you can do is wait for a long time, maybe a year, and compare the growth of the child to figure it out.

Likewise, evolution is very slow from the point of view of a single Human life. It would be very difficult to see it happening in real time. In order to do it, you'd need to look at old records and compare them to modern observations.

But by the time we can say, "This is a newly evolved species," it's already been around for a while.

Unless, of course, it suddenly emerged? Maybe impossible according to the theory? I mean like homo sapiens emerging (evolving) more or less quickly from the "Unknown Common Ancestor"? Which begs the question in my mind -- why don't gorillas and chimpanzees and bonobos have any signs of evolving to -- something a little bit different that lasts??

 

[ElishaElijah]

Actually I don't. Listen carefully I do not think that God made the world. You not only think that God made the world, but have the audacity to tell him how he made it.


That takes some nerve.

What it takes is faith and trust in God and what He says. Listen carefully what God said and then you can change your mind. You did say I blasphemed and here is the record of what God says about Creation and how He created everything. Will just post the most important part:

“Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. Then God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.” Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so. Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭1:3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26-27, 29‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Notice how God said let us make man in our image and He formed man out of the dust from the ground.
“Then the Lord God formed the man out of the dust from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭2:7‬ ‭CSB‬‬

As far as the rest of your explanation, it’s appreciated and well put on your perspective.