Just Accidental?

[savagewind]

Incredulity: the state of being unwilling or unable to believe something.

That's exactly what you've been expressing here.
.

What don't I believe?

 

[savagewind]

Incredulity: the state of being unwilling or unable to believe something.

That's exactly what you've been expressing here.


I've not said anything of the sort. And it's fascinating to see you go from saying you're not a creationist to now arguing for supernatural intervention by God......and be completely oblivious to the contradiction.

A creationist believes in a god who designed each life form. Isn't it?

 

[savagewind]

I've not said anything of the sort.

You have not said it? Do you not think it?
How do you know that I am incapable of knowing what you think?

 

[Jose Fly]

Never mind @savagewind . This has gotten boring and I've completely lost interest.

 

[savagewind]

It's not the ignorant natural forces against intelligent design.

It is both.

 

[savagewind]

Never mind @savagewind . This has gotten boring and I've completely lost interest.

I am not sure where all the others went, but if you hurry you might be able to catch up.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Let Science discovers that a virus has mutated into a bacteria and that would be some real evidence.

Do you all really and truly not get it? One species into another species. OK? You all say it can't be witnessed.
Can it be witnessed in a one cell life form?

such major transitions have either all been debunked or remain deduced, (it MUST have happened sometime in the murky past, because the theory demands it.) But the objective evidence simply does not demand it

We can argue all day about whether one form turned into another, it's a subjective guess based on similar looking structures, scattered and distorted over millions of years.. not a whole lot to go on and lots of wiggle room, allowing for countless infamous blunders

But here's what actually is empirically verified; stasis, non evolution, 100's of millions of years with no change occurring in many species, and this is at least as problematic for Darwinism as is the explosively sudden appearances of entirely new forms.

 

[metis]

But here's what actually is empirically verified; stasis, non evolution, 100's of millions of years with no change occurring in many species,

Only with some species and only to the naked eye.

and this is at least as problematic for Darwinism as is the explosively sudden appearances of entirely new forms.

Darwin didn't understand that this was more the model because he didn't know anything about the fossil evidence. Today, we know so much more with that and many other things.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

In the sense that different kinds of life appeared at different times, in distinct logical steps, just like physical reality- with animal life beginning in the ocean and culminating with mankind,

Science has validated all this pretty emphatically has it not?

Texas sharpshooter fallacy - "an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are stressed. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred.

 

[siti]

You have to consider the period of time each species is able to reproduce. It isn't their whole life!

Yes - that's why in my earlier post I mentioned the number of genetic mutations per generation. For humans, on average, that's about 64 and for bacteria - with a much smaller genome, it's about 0.03. So - for arguments sake, let's take you hypothetical 5 year study of bacteria. During that time, an average bacterial lineage of even the fastest reproducing species would have built up about 6000 genetic mutations in a genome of several million base pairs - probably not enough to have developed a new species. For most bacteria - whose cells divide at a slower rate than the 12 minutes I used for that calculation - the number of changes would be even fewer. Of course there are also billions of lineages so the changes in some cases might be more significant and new species may indeed have emerged and then vanished without ever having reached a viable population that could compete with the others and therefore were not observed. However, these events are occasionally observed both in nature and in the laboratory - which answers your question here:

Do you all really and truly not get it? One species into another species. OK? You all say it can't be witnessed.
Can it be witnessed in a one cell life form?

Going back to the numbers game again because my previous post (although you kindly rated it informative) seems not to have made the point clearly enough...

Let's suppose that speciation events are so incredibly rare that they happen only in a particular genetic lineage on average every 100 million years (that's about 4 million generations of humans with a quarter of a billion random genetic mutations - about 5 times the difference in base pair sequences between humans and chimpanzees - and about 36 billion generations of bacteria and about a billion random genetic mutations - equivalent to about 25 complete changes of the entire bacterial genome). And let's suppose for a moment that current estimates are correct and that life has been around on earth for 3.8 billion years. That means 3.8 billion years ago (when we start the clock) there was just a single species and eventually after 100 million years of mutations there were 2, then each of those 2 gave rise to two new species after another 100 million years...etc. Even at that preposterously slow rate of speciation, life would by now have produced about 500 billion different species and even we assume that all but a very small fraction - say 0.01% - of just those that had emerged in the last 100 million years had become extinct, the surviving species would still number close to 30 million species - not too far off the number of species we currently imagine we could observe if we were able to count them all - and 20 times the number we can confidently describe at present.

Like I said before, the numbers game definitely favours evolution.

 

[savagewind]

I appreciate the math @siti. Thank you. You have debunked my theory. Bravo!

I think I had forgotten some zeros in my math.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Texas sharpshooter fallacy - "an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are stressed. From this reasoning, a false conclusion is inferred.

 

[Deeje]

Again, why don't we observe glaciers carve entire U-valleys?

You have repeated this question several time now JF. Is there a point? Let me guess......

Could it be because glaciers are so slow moving that we never see them doing their carving? Wow! What an incredible observation.....now I suppose you are going to suggest this this explains evolution too! LOL

How do you know that a V-shaped valley was caused by a river?....and a U-shaped valley was caused by a glacier?

The river is often still there in a V-shaped valley....and some of them are no longer valleys but canyons, like the Grand Canyon and the river is still visible, doing its carving. I have never seen it but I have seen pics of it.

You can see what caused the V-shaped valley because the cause is still the same as it was thousands or even millions of years ago. Evolution isn't like a V-shaped valley however, it is like a U-shaped one.....right?

If it were a V-shaped valley, the cause would have been evident from the beginning....like creation.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Yes - that's why in my earlier post I mentioned the number of genetic mutations per generation. For humans, on average, that's about 64 and for bacteria - with a much smaller genome, it's about 0.03. So - for arguments sake, let's take you hypothetical 5 year study of bacteria. During that time, an average bacterial lineage of even the fastest reproducing species would have built up about 6000 genetic mutations in a genome of several million base pairs - probably not enough to have developed a new species. For most bacteria - whose cells divide at a slower rate than the 12 minutes I used for that calculation - the number of changes would be even fewer. Of course there are also billions of lineages so the changes in some cases might be more significant and new species may indeed have emerged and then vanished without ever having reached a viable population that could compete with the others and therefore were not observed. However, these events are occasionally observed both in nature and in the laboratory - which answers your question here:



Going back to the numbers game again because my previous post (although you kindly rated it informative) seems not to have made the point clearly enough...

Let's suppose that speciation events are so incredibly rare that they happen only in a particular genetic lineage on average every 100 million years (that's about 4 million generations of humans with a quarter of a billion random genetic mutations - about 5 times the difference in base pair sequences between humans and chimpanzees - and about 36 billion generations of bacteria and about a billion random genetic mutations - equivalent to about 25 complete changes of the entire bacterial genome). And let's suppose for a moment that current estimates are correct and that life has been around on earth for 3.8 billion years. That means 3.8 billion years ago (when we start the clock) there was just a single species and eventually after 100 million years of mutations there were 2, then each of those 2 gave rise to two new species after another 100 million years...etc. Even at that preposterously slow rate of speciation, life would by now have produced about 500 billion different species and even we assume that all but a very small fraction - say 0.01% - of just those that had emerged in the last 100 million years had become extinct, the surviving species would still number close to 30 million species - not too far off the number of species we currently imagine we could observe if we were able to count them all - and 20 times the number we can confidently describe at present.

Like I said before, the numbers game definitely favours evolution.

This hypothetical logarithmic extrapolation worked fine 150 years ago

Because it assumed almost every speciation survived to speciate further without frequent mass extinctions resetting the clock. We know better now. It also assumed that the Cambrian explosion was a mere artifact of an incomplete record, in contrast it has become ever more explosive and sharply defined,

Even if that window does not keep ever shrinking as science progresses, most entire animal groups still appeared within a <75 milllion year geological blink of an eye during the Cambrian, even using the most absurdly loose definitions of this time period, it is less time than it takes for even ONE speciation by your model...

You could argue your claims with punctuated equilibrium advocates if you prefer!

 

[siti]

This logarithmic extrapolation worked fine 150 years ago

Because it assumed almost every speciation survived to speciate further without frequent mass extinctions resetting the clock. We know better now. It also assumed that the Cambrian explosion was a mere artifact of an incomplete record, in contrast it has become ever more explosive and sharply defined,

Even if that window does not keep ever shrinking as science progresses, most entire animal groups still appeared within a <75 milllion year geological blink of an eye during the Cambrian- less time than it takes for even ONE speciation by your model...

You could argue your claims with punctuated equilibrium advocates if you prefer!

Except that none of that was the point. The point was to refute the argument that several billion years was not enough time for sufficient genetic change to occur to allow the number of species to proliferate as they obviously have. I know perfectly well that speciation does not require 100 million years (I never said that anyway) - indeed it happens in a single generation quite routinely in the plant world which tolerates polyploidy and hybridisation much more readily than animals do. And my very over simplistic and extremely conservative estimation of how much genetic change could occur over 3.8 billion years also took no account of any external influences such as environment, population dynamics, cataclysmic climate change...etc. etc. all of which also contribute to the potential for allopatric speciation even if we discount any actual influence they might have in the genetic mutation process.

With a bit of random genetic luck and a following naturally selective wind who knows - in the next 100 million years there might even emerge a species of RF poster who actually does get the point of an argument now and again.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Except that none of that was the point. The point was to refute the argument that several billion years was not enough time for sufficient genetic change to occur to allow the number of species to proliferate as they obviously have. I know perfectly well that speciation does not require 100 million years - indeed it happens in a single generation quite routinely in the plant world which tolerates polyploidy and hybridisation much more readily than animals do. And my very over simplistic and extremely conservative estimation of how much genetic change could occur over 3.8 billion years also took no account of any external influences such as environment, population dynamics, cataclysmic climate change...etc. etc. all of which also contribute to the potential for allopatric speciation even if we discount any actual influence they might have in the genetic mutation process. With a bit random genetic luck and a following naturally selective wind who knows - in the next 100 million years there might even emerge a species of RF poster who actually does get the point of an argument now and again.

So you concede that your claim 'Even at that preposterously slow rate of speciation [1 in 100M years], life would by now have produced about 500 billion different species'.....

is plainly false

I am glad we could clear this up, and I do appreciate the rare retreat, and commend you for your humility. Many evolutionists just start name calling at this point.

But I am genuinely curious as to why you claimed it, if (as you went on to say) you already knew this? were you hoping nobody else would notice?

So let me be clear on where the goal posts have been moved, it now does not take 100 million generations but one single generation? yes I'm sure that would help solve the math problem! But many species like those of horseshoe crabs, would view 1 speciation in 100 million years as pretty hyperactive!

'With a bit random genetic luck and a following naturally selective wind who knows'

Well yeah, sure, nothing is impossible, technically. Including being dealt 4 royal flushes in a row by random chance..

The far more interesting question to me is; what constitutes the least improbable explanation? God forbid, even a mechanism that does not require billions of lucky coincidences at all? But a proven scientific, empirically testable and repeatable explanation? We do have such a mechanism, fairly obvious to any who do not feel disdain for it.

i.e. Finding truth requires being more interested in the question, than any particular answer.

 

[siti]

So let me be clear on where the goal posts have been moved, it now does not take 100 million generations but one single generation? yes I'm sure that would help solve the math problem! But many species like those of horseshoe crabs, would view 1 speciation in 100 million years as pretty hyperactive!

What a load of horseshoe crab horse crap! In fact the earliest horseshoe crab fossils date to about 450 million years ago - so even by my model there should have been somewhere between 4 and 5 speciation events in the horseshoe crab lineage - obviously there have been very many more than that - most species are of course now extinct but 4 distinct species survive to this day. Their status as "living fossil" pin-ups in Creationist museums is increasingly being called into question. Whilst the general morphology of fossils and extant species displays remarkable apparent stasis, the earliest fossils were much smaller (about 1.5 inches long - but we don't know if that's because they are fossils of immature individuals or because the species really was that small) and earlier fossils had fewer and rather different legs. The modern species seem to be very different animals from their fossil cousins after all. Once again, your example makes my case much stronger than I did myself.

BTW - there are different mechanisms of speciation - speciation by polyploidy can indeed happen suddenly in a single reproductive event in which the offspring are biologically incapable of reproducing with the parent generation due to the mismatch in the number of chromosomes. The offspring are of a different species and are thereafter on a different evolutionary branch than the parents and any siblings that were not subject to polyploidy. It happens all the time in the plant kingdom and we have made extensive use of it for many of our modern food crops. Anyway, I don't want to get too deep into technical details but there is no question that evolution by random mutation and natural selection could easily have produced the proliferation of different species we observe. If you really want to explore the question, you can look it all up.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

what constitutes the least improbable explanation?

I'd say that it would be the one that requires the existence of the least improbable entity that one can imagine existing undesigned and uncreated. If that's a living cell, then its the naturalistic explanation: abiogenesis/evolution. If the least improbable entity that one can imagine existing undesigned and uncreated is a god, then creationism is less likely.

 

[Looncall]

Has anyone found out what makes the natural forces of nature cooperate for life's good?

You have the wrong end of the stick. Living things are as they are because those forces are as they are.

Speaking of natural forces cooperating is just silly anthropomorphizing.

 

[savagewind]

You have the wrong end of the stick. Living things are as they are because those forces are as they are.

Speaking of natural forces cooperating is just silly anthropomorphizing.

You are right, but they DO act as though they cooperate.