What mechanism prevents evolution above species level / "kind"?

[mycorrhiza]

Creationist often state that while microevolution is possible, macroevolution is not. What mechanism prevents it? Why can't a species evolve past it's "kind"? There must be some kind of genetic barrier or similar to prevent this, so could you provide evidence of it?

So, here's what I want you to do:

1. Define what you mean with micro- and macroevolution and subsequently how you define species or "kind", whichever of those are brought up.
2. Show, preferably with peer-reviewed material (and preferably containing original research), why macroevolution, as you define it, is not possible while microevolution, as you define it, is.

Simply stating that it has never been observed is not evidence as I'm looking for the mechanism itself that prevents it from happening.


I'm doing this so you get a chance to present the evidence for your side, and I'm willing to change my opinion about evolution if you do provide convincing scientific evidence that evolution above species or "kind" is not possible.

 

[painted wolf]

Good luck... I've yet to have the question answered by anything other than: "because I said so!" :ignore:

wa:do

 

[camanintx]

opcorn:

 

[Man of Faith]

LOL, asking for scientific evidence from creationists when said evidence isn't accepted as science ahead of time, that's rich. And of course there isn't such a document in the atheistic naturalistic scientific evolutionary biology field because evolution is accepted as happened.

You might as well ask what mechanism can prevent Mozart’s music from creating itself or what mechanism can prevent the encyclopedia from writing itself. Information and/or codes don’t create themselves. DNA is the information and code of how an organism will form and that doesn’t create itself, it is passed on from the previous organism. So if the DNA of a fish doesn’t contain information in it for a dog, then we can never get to a dog.

 

[mycorrhiza]

LOL, asking for scientific evidence from creationists when said evidence isn't accepted as science ahead of time, that's rich. And of course there isn't such a document in the atheistic naturalistic scientific evolutionary biology field because evolution is accepted as happened.

You might as well ask what mechanism can prevent Mozart’s music from creating itself or what mechanism can prevent the encyclopedia from writing itself. Information and/or codes don’t create themselves. DNA is the information and code of how an organism will form and that doesn’t create itself, it is passed on from the previous organism. So if the DNA of a fish doesn’t contain information in it for a dog, then we can never get to a dog.

I'm not saying that it must be accepted by the scientific community, just that it has to be scientific, that it must adhere to the scientific method. And if it's valid, then it will probably pass peer-review.

New information can be added through mutations, so that's just based on a flawed understanding of the process. Unless you could provide me with scientific evidence that no new information could be added .

 

[painted wolf]

A fox doesn't have the information needed to get a dog... so I guess foxes are a different kind.

wa:do

 

[Man of Faith]

A fox doesn't have the information needed to get a dog... so I guess foxes are a different kind.

wa:do

You just validated that natural selection is a loss of information. Natural selection doesn't go backwards, only forwards and eventually you lose enough information to have an end result. You can't get the original dog kind from a poodle but you can get a poodle from the original dog kind through selection, either naturally or artifically.

 

[mycorrhiza]

You just validated that natural selection is a loss of information. Natural selection doesn't go backwards, only forwards and eventually you lose enough information to have an end result. You can't get the original dog kind from a poodle but you can get a poodle from the original dog kind through selection, either naturally or artifically.

How did you get that from what he said?

New information is added all the time. You and me both have about 100 mutations, some adding new information. But before we discuss this further: What is you definition of information and can you support, with evidence, that evolution leads to a loss of information? Increased genetic information has been observed (and that it hasn't is yet another misunderstanding), so your evidence will have be quite compelling.

Since you claim that it's simply a loss of information, the original canid "kind" must have had all the genes for all the current members of the canidae families. How do you propose that the genetic makeup of this animal looked? Is there are records of this creature in the fossil records? In what order do you propose that the canids evolved from this original canid "kind"? Was it linear or split up?

Or would you say that dogs are a separate "kind" from coyotes, foxes, jackals, etc?

 

[Willamena]

You just validated that natural selection is a loss of information. Natural selection doesn't go backwards, only forwards and eventually you lose enough information to have an end result. You can't get the original dog kind from a poodle but you can get a poodle from the original dog kind through selection, either naturally or artifically.

Natural selection doesn't have a backwards or forwards--what are you talking about?

 

[painted wolf]

You just validated that natural selection is a loss of information. Natural selection doesn't go backwards, only forwards and eventually you lose enough information to have an end result. You can't get the original dog kind from a poodle but you can get a poodle from the original dog kind through selection, either naturally or artifically.

No we got the poodle from the wolf... that includes all the "new information" that makes a poodle different from a wolf.

Unless you think wolves look like this naturally

So... tell me about this "original dog kind"... what did it look like?
If it had the genetics to produce all the "dogs" but couldn't add any "new information" then what kind of genome must this thing have had?
You're talking a lot of very conflicting genetics here.

wa:do

 

[Man of Faith]

Since you claim that it's simply a loss of information, the original canid "kind" must have had all the genes for all the current members of the canidae families.

That is correct. The only way that natural selection could create the diversity that we see in the world is if the original organism had all the genes in it for every type of creature in existence today. That is why natural selection validates creation and not evolution. Evolution doesn't claim or predict that the very first organism had human DNA or genes in it. So of course for evolution to be true there has to be more than natural selection, it has to include random mutations which have never been observed to produce a new form or type of organism.

You are asking what prevents macroevolution from happening naturally and that is the same thing that prevents the Morris code from producing itself. The Morris code has a sender and receiver that both agree on certain communication symbols ahead of time which has to have intelligent beings to create that. DNA does the same thing when it sends RNA messengers with information to the ribosome receivers using agreed upon symbols to produce proteins for life forms. Codes cannot come about without an intelligence so that is your hard stop.

 

[Man of Faith]

Natural selection doesn't have a backwards or forwards--what are you talking about?

A long haired dog and a short haired dog can produce either a long haired dog or a short haired dog, but two short haired dogs can only produce a short haired dog. That is what I mean by going forward. Let’s say that we have a long haired and a short haired dog that mate and produce two short haired dogs, and that means the long haired gene is lost, gone. We cannot get back to the long hair from two short haired dogs.

 

[Man of Faith]

No we got the poodle from the wolf... that includes all the "new information" that makes a poodle different from a wolf.

Unless you think wolves look like this naturally

So... tell me about this "original dog kind"... what did it look like?
If it had the genetics to produce all the "dogs" but couldn't add any "new information" then what kind of genome must this thing have had?
You're talking a lot of very conflicting genetics here.

wa:do

If going from a wolf to a poodle produces new information, then we could go from a poodle back to a wolf with new information, but we can't, which validates that we lost information getting to the Poodle, not gained it. No matter how we tried we cannot get back to a wolf from a poodle.

 

[painted wolf]

A long haired dog and a short haired dog can produce either a long haired dog or a short haired dog, but two short haired dogs can only produce a short haired dog. That is what I mean by going forward. Let’s say that we have a long haired and a short haired dog that mate and produce two short haired dogs, and that means the long haired gene is lost, gone. We cannot get back to the long hair from two short haired dogs.

Not true... you can indeed go from short haired parents to long haired offspring. It's the basic fact used to produce new dog breeds, mutation and then selective breeding.

In case you hadn't noticed, wolves all have long hair. They don't have long and short hair genes.

wa:do

 

[idav]

That is correct. The only way that natural selection could create the diversity that we see in the world is if the original organism had all the genes in it for every type of creature in existence today.

That isn't as miraculous as you make it sound. We are merely a combination of elements from the periodic table. Anything "new" is just a different combination of the matter that exists in all the universe. So the only thing necessary for diversity is the ability to change. There are even remnants of all those changes in our dna but most of it is just turned off or is junk dna.

 

[painted wolf]

If going from a wolf to a poodle produces new information, then we could go from a poodle back to a wolf with new information, but we can't, which validates that we lost information getting to the Poodle, not gained it. No matter how we tried we cannot get back to a wolf from a poodle.

No wolf needed to produce this breed.

But, the rebuttal to your point is... yes, some wolf genes are lost, but more poodle genes are gained. Genes for coat texture, behavior and so on are added and with them the "information" on how to make a poodle.
You can't just take a wolf and have it produce poodles. In fact you probably can't do it if you had a thousand years.
The poodle is the result of mutations producing the right traits and humans selectively breeding for those traits and breeding out others.

wa:do

 

[averageJOE]

Expect answers like "Have you ever witnessed a dog produce a non-dog?"

 

[mycorrhiza]

That is correct. The only way that natural selection could create the diversity that we see in the world is if the original organism had all the genes in it for every type of creature in existence today. That is why natural selection validates creation and not evolution. Evolution doesn't claim or predict that the very first organism had human DNA or genes in it. So of course for evolution to be true there has to be more than natural selection, it has to include random mutations which have never been observed to produce a new form or type of organism.

I would agree with you that if the first organism had all the genes for all species, then creationism would be true. However, nothing points towards this case. Not in the genetic records and not in the fossil record.

A single mutation wont produce a new "type of organism" (please be more specific, as I mentioned in the first post!), but several over a very long time might. We have observed speciation, after all.

Could I ask you to provide me with scientific evidence for your claims and define your terms like I asked for in the first post?

You are asking what prevents macroevolution from happening naturally and that is the same thing that prevents the Morris code from producing itself. The Morris code has a sender and receiver that both agree on certain communication symbols ahead of time which has to have intelligent beings to create that. DNA does the same thing when it sends RNA messengers with information to the ribosome receivers using agreed upon symbols to produce proteins for life forms. Codes cannot come about without an intelligence so that is your hard stop.

The difference is that one is a symbolic code, and the other is a genetic code. The first is design by man and the second shows no signs of design (not excluding the possibility that it was designed, of course). That you use "agreed upon symbols" implies intelligence, and the process of mutations isn't a conscious one, so it's a bit misleading. Even if DNA was designed, that doesn't really change anything about evolution, it just debunks abiogenesis .

A long haired dog and a short haired dog can produce either a long haired dog or a short haired dog, but two short haired dogs can only produce a short haired dog. That is what I mean by going forward. Let’s say that we have a long haired and a short haired dog that mate and produce two short haired dogs, and that means the long haired gene is lost, gone. We cannot get back to the long hair from two short haired dogs.

Painted Wolf already explained why this is wrong, so I'll point to her answer.

 

[camanintx]

A long haired dog and a short haired dog can produce either a long haired dog or a short haired dog, but two short haired dogs can only produce a short haired dog.

Next you're going to be telling us that two blond people can't produce a brunette or two people with brown eyes can produce a baby with blue eyes.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Can't help but notice that the question proposed in this OP has yet to be answered. Let's reiterate:

What supposed mechanism prevents evolution above the species (or "kind") level?