Hello, Jurassic Park

[Harrison]

If I put it in with a well constructed retort can I re-post?

[Rust]

Wow, Rust. You read my entire post and yet didn't absorb a single thing. I absolutely used sources for my post, but it was hardly a reference for publication or copyright.

You took a quote as your own text, and then changed it to mean sonemthing other than the author intended. That is both plagarism and simple lying.

I made points you did not refute. I had items you ignored, and your entire post is complete rubbish pointing to referenced sites that solely empathise with your POV and a lack of understanding of the issues. What a pity. You cannot learn or debate, merely parrot. I blame the Canadian College system. It's not too late to head to a real college in America.

Your 'points' were mystical garbage. Nothing to do with science at the least, some garbage about anyone claiming man was an animal was somehow reduced to being unable to make a coherent claim. Pure garbage. I thought we were discussing evolution, not your particular religious beliefs, which have zero to do with science.

I've seen your type before. You are so intent on your point you lack the faculties tor rationally understanding different points and merely attempt to 'win'. It's comical in something as completely subjective and unproven as macroevolution. By all means continue to link people, and forgive me if I reference other write ups that provide my point, and plagarize to some degree, even if I reference before I'm doing so, like I did.

I called a spade a spade, you used uncited quotes that don't even support your claims and lied about what they meant. That's basically stealing *and* lying. You got caught. I've seen *your* type of debater before too. They're called liars.

I've already referenced my debate material was from a Catholic web site. Perhaps in your zeal to link to things you can't comprehend nor discuss without linking to things i've already refuted you missed that. Feel free to sticking to the sole thing you do understand, editorializing.

It's my fault for engaging in 'google' fighting with you. I guess I should just go through sites with valid refutations to your silly assertions. To be honest, I have no desire to do so, and I'd rather engange in discussions with people who aren't parrots.

Actually, I'm writing my own words. Where I quote I mark it. It's called being honest. And I don't try to distort quotes to support me by making edits that change the meaning. That's called misquoting and lying.

Tikker, they are not mutually exclusive. I absolutely agree micro evolution is proven and can coexist with religon. Macro could, even if its 100% completely unfounded, despite Rusts zeal to link to numerous sites that are again repeating exactly what I say.

I took some fascinating classes when I was Cal Poly and I wish I still had the materials.

I wish you'd learned something in them about science.

I have no issues with evolution, save with the religous zealourty people like Rust push it with, despite the wholesale ongoing changes that seem to be occuring with it, and the misinformation of those who cannot understand that something that is todays logic and without a shred of proof is not law.

Once again you show you really don't understand science or the scientific method. If this is the level of debate you engaged in I'm hardly shocked you think you've won anything here. All I'm doing here is pointing out what mainstream science says about evolution. Your misquotes of sites pretty clearly indicates you either don't understand what you read or are simply willing to lie to support your position.

If anyone wants to say 'I think God did it', I have no problem. It's the end of the matter, since such statements step outside the boundaries of science. But don't expect to make silly claims about science and not get called on it, and don't expect to get away with lying about your sources.

Like I've said. I've been watching Creationist lies and misquotes for the last decade on talk.origins. You're nothing new.


--R.

[Langston]

Rust

[Lyion]

I didn't invoke religon in regards to evolution.


You have not answered any questions,


Again, you've been thoroughly refuted here. Care to link other things? Care to point out sites I sourced more?


<edited out improper personal insults>

[Rust]

Macroevolution is about massive changes over eons of time resulting in the formation of new and complex organs, body plans, and life-forms.

Lyion's article is basically confused to hell and gone about what actually 'macroevolution' means, so I'll let a friend answer him: John Wilkin's article on Macroevolution from the t.o archive. John's a philosopher of science, a regular on talk.origins, and just recently got his Ph.D. on evolutionary theory and the phiolosphy of science. He's also bloody a funny Aussie. Article is at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html

Macroevolution
Copyright © 1997 by John Wilkins


What is macroevolution?

In science, macro at the beginning of a word just means "big", and micro at the beginning of a word just means "small" (both from the Greek words). For example, a macrophage means a bigger than normal cell, but it is only a few times bigger than other cells, and not an order of magnitude bigger.

In evolutionary biology today, macroevolution is used to refer to any evolutionary change at or above the level of species. It means the splitting of a species into two (speciation, or cladogenesis, from the Greek meaning "the origin of a branch") or the change of a species over time into another (anagenesis, not nowadays generally used). Any changes that occur at higher levels, such as the evolution of new families, phyla or genera, is also therefore macroevolution, but the term is not restricted to the origin of those higher taxa.

Microevolution refers to any evolutionary change below the level of species, and refers to changes in the frequency within a population or a species of its alleles (alternative genes) and their effects on the form, or phenotype, of organisms that make up that population or species.

Another way to state the difference is that macroevolution is between-species evolution of genes and microevolution is within-species evolution of genes.

There are various kinds of dynamics of macroevolution. Punctuated equilibrium theory proposes that once species have originated, and adapted to the new ecological niches in which they find themselves, they tend to stay pretty much as they are for the rest of their existence. Phyletic gradualism suggests that species continue to adapt to new challenges over the course of their history. Species selection and species sorting theories claim that there are macroevolutionary processes going on that make it more or less likely that certain species will exist for very long before becoming extinct, in a kind of parallel to what happens to genes in microevolution.


The history of the concept of macroevolution

In the "modern synthesis" of neo-Darwinism, which developed in the period from 1930 to 1950 with the reconciliation of evolution by natural selection and modern genetics, macroevolution is thought to be the combined effects of microevolutionary processes. In theories proposing "orthogenetic evolution" (literally, straight line evolution), macroevolution is thought to be of a different calibre and process than microevolution. Nobody has been able to make a good case for orthogenesis since the 1950s, especially since the uncovering of molecular genetics between 1952 and the late 1960s.

Antievolutionists argue that there has been no proof of macroevolutionary processes. However, synthesists claim that the same processes that cause within-species changes of the frequencies of alleles can be extrapolated to between species changes, so this argument fails unless some mechanism for preventing microevolution causing macroevolution is discovered. Since every step of the process has been demonstrated in genetics and the rest of biology, the argument against macroevolution fails.

Non-Darwinian evolutionists think that the processes that cause speciation are of a different kind to those that occur within species. That is, they admit that macroevolution occurs, but think that normal genetic change is restricted by such proposed mechanisms as developmental constraints. This view is associated with the names of Schmalhausen and Waddington, who were often characterised as being non-Darwinians by the modern synthesis theorists.

The terms macroevolution and microevolution were first coined in 1927 by the Russian entomologist Iurii Filipchenko (or Philipchenko, depending on the transliteration), in his German-language work Variabilität und Variation, which was the first attempt to reconcile Mendelian genetics and evolution. Filipchenko was an evolutionist, but as he wrote during the period when Mendelism seemed to have made Darwinism redundant, the so-called "eclipse of Darwinism" (Bowler 1983), he was not a Darwinian, but an orthogeneticist. Moreover Russian biologists of the period had a history of rejecting Darwin's Malthusian mechanism of evolution by competition.

In Theodosius Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species, he began by saying that "we are compelled at the present level of knowledge reluctantly to put a sign of equality between the mechanisms of macro- and microevolution" (1937, page 12), thereby introducing the terms into the English-speaking biological community (Alexandrov 1994). Dobzhansky had been Filipchenko's student and regarded him as his mentor. In science, it is difficult to deny a major tenet of one's teachers due to filial loyalty, and Dobzhansky, who effectively started the modern Darwinian synthesis with this book, found it disagreeable to have to deny his teacher's views (Burian 1994).

The term fell into limited disfavour when it was taken over by such writers as the geneticist Richard Goldschmidt (1940) and the paleontologist Otto Schindewolf to describe their orthogenetic theories. As a result, apart from Dobzhansky, Bernhardt Rensch and Ernst Mayr, very few neo-Darwinian writers used the term, preferring instead to talk of evolution as changes in allele frequencies without mention of the level of the changes (above species level or below). Those who do are generally working within the continental European traditions (as Dobzhansky, Mayr, Rensch, Goldschmidt, and Schindewolf are) and those who don't are generally working within the Anglo-American tradition (such as John Maynard Smith and Richard Dawkins). Hence, the term is sometimes wrongly used as a litmus test of whether the writer is "properly" neo-Darwinian or not (Eldredge 1995: 126-127).

The term has been revived by a number of authors such as Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, the authors of punctuated equilibrium theory (see Eldredge's 1992 Macroevolutionary Dynamics ), but there is a tendency in these authors to revert to the orthogenetic view that something other than within-species processes are causing macroevolution, although they disavow the orthogenetic view that evolution is progressing anywhere.


Conclusion

There is no difference between micro- and macroevolution except that genes between species usually diverge, while genes within species usually combine. The same processes that cause within-species evolution are responsible for above-species evolution, except that the processes that cause speciation include things that cannot happen to lesser groups, such as the evolution of different sexual apparatus (because, by definition, once organisms cannot interbreed, they are different species).

The idea that the origin of higher taxa, such as genera (canines versus felines, for example), requires something special is based on the misunderstanding of the way in which new phyla (lineages) arise. The two species that are the origin of canines and felines probably differed very little from their common ancestral species and each other. But once they were reproductively isolated from each other, they evolved more and more differences that they shared but the other lineages didn't. This is true of all lineages back to the first eukaryotic (nuclear) cell. Even the changes in the Cambrian explosion are of this kind, although some (eg, Gould 1989) think that the genomes (gene structures) of these early animals were not as tightly regulated as modern animals, and therefore had more freedom to change.


References

Alexandrov, DA: 1994. Filipchenko and Dobzhansky: Issues in Evolutionary Genetics in the 1920s. In The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky, ed. MB Adams, Princeton University Press.

Bowler, PJ: 1983. The Eclipse of Darwinism, Johns Hopkins University Press

Burian, RM: 1994. Dobzhansky on Evolutionary Dynamics: Some Questions about His Russian Background. In The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky, ed. MB Adams, Princeton University Press.

Dobzhansky, Th: 1937. Genetics and the Origin of Species, Columbia University Press

Eldredge, N: 1992. Macroevolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches and Adaptive Peaks, McGraw-Hill

Eldredge, N: 1995. Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate, Weidenfeld and Nicholson

Goldschmidt, R: 1940. The Material Basis of Evolution, Yale University Press

Gould, SJ: 1989. Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History, Norton

It's hard to argue with someone who doesn't even understand his terms, because he doesn't even realize how idiotic his arguments are. Anyone with a decent knowledge of modern genetics can point out a number of mechanisms that lead to new genes (lateral transfer, gene duplication, polyploidy) as well as the absolute idiocy of the 'no new information can arise by mutation' claims. See Mark Isaak's article herefor references pointing out how ignorant such claims are.

--R.

[Rust]

I didn't invoke religon in regards to evolution. Keep trying to make up for your inadequate Canadian education, Rust.

As I've said, there is still hope! Maybe Bob Jones University will accept you!

You have not answered any questions, but keep sourcing links to things you do not understand. As Ugz indicate, your Hubris and ignorance is amusing.

You didn't answer any of my questions. Congrats on going back several pages and ignoring several people calling your bullshit what it is.

Again, you've been thoroughly refuted here. Care to link other things? Care to point out sites I sourced more?

Keep rolling, oh Google Hubris Master!

Or better, keep linking a usenet forum for all your facts. I'm sure it ranks up there with alt.sex and alt.canadian.everquest.losers in hits and verifiability.

Since you evidently don't know much about evolution or for that matter science in general, and since most of the articles in the t.o archive are written by qualified experts in the field, they're a lot more reliable than someone who plagiarizes and misquotes his sources.

--R.

[Lyion]

courtesy of my Catholic Science site

I didnt get what I posted from the site you linked.

Both quotes were taken from a message board. I did the cut n paste and probably should've sourced a quote exactly. Next time Ill not cut n paste in haste.

[Tikker]

You're a retard sometimes Lyion


You misquoted something, got called on it, and have been backpedalling with insults ever since

[Lyion]

Both are posts from forums I readily ADMITTED I was using.I realise you are sympathetic to Rust and his position but c'mon Tikker.

Neither are taken out of context at all. Reread.

Anyways, we'll go back to Link wars.

http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/ori ... ution.html

Were Darwin's extrapolations justified? Judging from the conclusions of many of the scientists attending one of the most important conferences in evolutionary biology in the past forty years, the answer is probably not.

"The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.

... Evolution, according to the Modern Synthesis, moves at a stately pace, with small changes accumulating over periods of many millions of years yielding a long heritage of steadily advancing lineages as revealed in the fossil record. However, the problem is that according to most paleontologists the principle feature of individual species within the fossil record is stasis, not change...

In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."

* Lewin, R. (1980)
"Evolutionary Theory Under Fire"
Science, vol. 210, 21 November, p. 883

"Feathers are features unique to birds, and there are no known intermediate structures between reptilian scales and feathers. Notwithstanding speculations on the nature of the elongated scales found on such forms as Longisquama ... as being featherlike structures, there is simply no demonstrable evidence that they in fact are. They are very interesting, highly modified and elongated reptilian scales, and are not incipient feathers."

* Feduccia, Alan (1985)
"On Why Dinosaurs Lacked Feathers"
The Beginning of Birds
Eichstatt, West Germany: Jura Museum, p. 76

"The Modern Synthesis is a remarkable achievement. However, starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. As Goodwin (1995) points out, "the origin of species -- Darwin's problem -- remains unsolved."

* Scott Gilbert, John Opitz, and Rudolf Raff (1996)
"Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology,"
Developmental Biology 173, Article No. 0032, 1996, p. 361

This theme is developed at much greater length, and with considerable insight, in Rudy Raff's new book, The Shape of Life: Genes, Development, and the Evolution of Animal Form, University of Chicago Press, 1996 (520 pages, $29.95 in paperback).

"The facts of microevolution do not suffice for an understanding of macroevolution."

* Goldschmidt, Richard B. (1940)
The Material Basis of Evolution
New Haven Connecticut: Yale University Press, p. 8

"We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is time that we cry: 'The emperor has not clothes.'"

* K. Hsu (1986)
"Darwin's Three Mistakes"
Geology, vol. 14, p. 534
(K. Hsu is a geologist at the Geological Institute at Zurich.)

"Micro-evolution involves mainly changes within potentially continuous populations, and there is little doubt that its materials are those revealed by genetic experimentation. Macro-evolution involves the rise and divergence of discontinuous groups, and it is still debatable whether it differs in kind or only in degree from microevolution. If the two proved to be basically different, the innumerable studies of micro-evolution would become relatively unimportant and would have minor value in the study of evolution as a whole."

* Simpson G.G. (1949)
Tempo and Mode in Evolution, p97

"[T]he origin of no innovation of large evolutionary significance is known."

* R. Wesson (1991)
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 45


"[L]arge evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any."

* R. Wesson (1991)
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 206

[Rust]

Both are posts from forums I readily ADMITTED I was using.I realise you are sympathetic to Rust and his position but c'mon Tikker.

Neither are taken out of context at all. Reread.

Yes, people should indeed reread and see how your quote distorts the original author's words.

Oh, more quotations. Now, before I look at these, I'll point out that Creationists *love* to misquote, and any time I see a Creationist quote an evolutionist to somehow attack evolution, I make a private bet he's taken the quote out of context (usually out of ignorance via a cut and paste). In fact over on talk.origins we started the Creationist Quote Mine Project link.

The National Center for Science Education put out an analysis of ID misquotation habits which is online at http://www.ncseweb.org/media/Analysis-o ... titute.pdf
which includes some of the cited works Lyion's site claims disagree with evolution.

Let's see how Lyion scores.

Anyways, we'll go back to Link wars.

http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/ori ... ution.html

Were Darwin's extrapolations justified? Judging from the conclusions of many of the scientists attending one of the most important conferences in evolutionary biology in the past forty years, the answer is probably not.

"The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. At the risk of doing violence to the positions of some of the people at the meeting, the answer can be given as a clear, No.

... Evolution, according to the Modern Synthesis, moves at a stately pace, with small changes accumulating over periods of many millions of years yielding a long heritage of steadily advancing lineages as revealed in the fossil record. However, the problem is that according to most paleontologists the principle feature of individual species within the fossil record is stasis, not change...

In a generous admission Francisco Ayala, a major figure in propounding the Modern Synthesis in the United States, said "We would not have predicted stasis from population genetics, but I am now convinced from what the paleontologists say that small changes do not accumulate."

* Lewin, R. (1980)
"Evolutionary Theory Under Fire"
Science, vol. 210, 21 November, p. 883

Ayala has apparently denied making this statement.

"I don't know how Roger Lewin could have gotten in his notes the quotation he attributes to me. I presented a paper/lecture and spoke at various times from the floor, but I could not possibly have said (at least as a complete sentence) what Lewin attributes to me. In fact, I don't know what it means. How could small changes NOT accumulate! In any case, virtually all my evolutionary research papers evidence that small (genetic) changes do accumulate."

A common Creationist quotation of Ayala, who I'm sure is embarrased by it. Misquote by Lewin, abuse of misquote by Creationists #1.

"Feathers are features unique to birds, and there are no known intermediate structures between reptilian scales and feathers. Notwithstanding speculations on the nature of the elongated scales found on such forms as Longisquama ... as being featherlike structures, there is simply no demonstrable evidence that they in fact are. They are very interesting, highly modified and elongated reptilian scales, and are not incipient feathers."

* Feduccia, Alan (1985)
"On Why Dinosaurs Lacked Feathers"
The Beginning of Birds
Eichstatt, West Germany: Jura Museum, p. 76

Oh, Feduccia. He's quite well known in palaeontology in disagreeing that birds are descended from dinosaurs. He's a bit of a vocal minority, but he is a trained scientist. He's also commonly misquoted to make it look like he somehow opposes evolution in general:

* Alan Feduccia who opposes the idea that birds are descended from dinosaurs and instead argues that birds are descended from non-dinosaur archosaurs (a taxon that includes dinosaurs) is often quoted by evolution deniers. Feduccia is a qualified scientist and should not be just dismissed, but his views are in an extreme minority within the scientific community. It is simply bad reasoning for the evolution deniers to use Feduccia's writing disagreeing with conventional ideas of bird evolution while ignoring the many experts that disagree with him.

"Is Archaeopteryx a 'missing link'?"1 quotes Feduccia on Archaeopteryx:

Was Archaeopteryx a feathered dinosaur? Dr. Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, said: "Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it's not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of 'paleobabble' is going to change that."

Notice the author is citing Feduccia's conclusion, and not his evidence. There is no mention that that his opinion is a minority opinion. Feduccia's peers in the field of bird evolution are "authorities" too. In short this creationist is saying that Feduccia is an authority and that he says that birds are not descended from dinosaurs, therefore birds are not descended from dinosaurs. It is a classic "argument from authority." It is also very inconsistent. Feduccia also says that evolution occurs, so if this argument is to be followed to its logical conclusion, this creationist must accept the evolution of birds from non-birds! One could also cite many more authorities that say birds are descended from theropod dinosaurs. This is why one should not pick and choose authorities. If Feduccia does turn out to be correct and his views become established within the scientific community, then the evolution deniers will probably become fond of quoting what Kevin Padian and other proponents of birds being descended from dinosaurs had to say about Feduccia's views.

So that's common Creationist misquote #2.

"The Modern Synthesis is a remarkable achievement. However, starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. As Goodwin (1995) points out, "the origin of species -- Darwin's problem -- remains unsolved."

* Scott Gilbert, John Opitz, and Rudolf Raff (1996)
"Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology,"
Developmental Biology 173, Article No. 0032, 1996, p. 361

Ah, the Meyer vs. Gilbert misquote. link.

The abstract of the article is:

Abstract
“A new and more robust evolutionary synthesis is emerging that attempts to explain macroevolution as well as microevolutionary events. This new synthesis emphasizes three morphological areas of biology that had been marginalized by the Modern Synthesis of genetics and evolution: embryology, macroevolution, and homology. The foundations for this new synthesis have been provide by new findings from developmental genetics and from the reinterpretation of the fossil record. In this nascent synthesis, macroevolutionary questions are not seen as being soluble by population genetics, and the developmental actions of genes involved with growth and cell specification are seen as being critical for the formation of higher taxa. In addition to discovering the remarkable homologies of homeobox genes and their domains of expression, developmental genetics has recently proposed homologies of process that supplement the older homologies of structure. Homologous developmental pathways, such as those involving the wnt genes, are seen in numberous embryonic processes, and they are seen occurring in discrete regions, the morphogenetic fields. These fields (which exemplify the modular nature of developing embryos) are proposed to mediate between genotype and phenotype. Just as the cell (and not its genome) functions as the unit of organic structure and function, so the the morphogenetic field (and not the genes or the cells) is seen as a major unit of ontogeny whose changes bring about changes in evolution.”

Well, the article evidently supports evolution. Oddly the quote doesn't. Creationist misquote #3. Thsi one is mentioned in the NCSE document.

This theme is developed at much greater length, and with considerable insight, in Rudy Raff's new book, The Shape of Life: Genes, Development, and the Evolution of Animal Form, University of Chicago Press, 1996 (520 pages, $29.95 in paperback).

I suspect Raff indeed extends his work. Too bad the work in question actually supports evolution.

"The facts of microevolution do not suffice for an understanding of macroevolution."

* Goldschmidt, Richard B. (1940)
The Material Basis of Evolution
New Haven Connecticut: Yale University Press, p. 8

Goldschmidt is indeed famous for his views on macroevolution via 'hopeful monsters' or saltational changes. The date on his quote should be a bit of a red light, it's 65 years ago. He proposed that small mutations could lead to large phenotypic effects. link

Wes Elsberry's article about Goldschmidt points out he was a firm supporter of evolution, he just had 'unique' ideas about how macroevolutionary changes arose. Wes is another talk.origins regular.

An expanded quote is:

"Microevolution. This term has been used by Dobzhansky (1937) for evolutionary processes observable within the span of a human lifetime as opposed to macroevolution, on a geological scale. It will be one of the major contentions of this book to show that the facts of microevolution do not suffice for an understanding of macroevolution. The latter term will be used here for the evolution of the good species and all the higher taxonomic categories."

As Wes points out, Goldschmidt had his own definition of macroevolution. It also makes clear that Goldschmidt knew macroevolution exists, but disagreed with the idea that it was simply microevolution writ large. Another clear misquote to try to make it look like Goldschmidt somehow rejected macroevolution.

"We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is time that we cry: 'The emperor has not clothes.'"

* K. Hsu (1986)
"Darwin's Three Mistakes"
Geology, vol. 14, p. 534
(K. Hsu is a geologist at the Geological Institute at Zurich.)

Hsu is actually decrying Social Darwinism. The above is an out of context quote from the last line of his article which is discussed as part of the Quote Mine project here at #4.6. The remainder of the article points out that the author is an evolutionist - the first paragraph of the commentary article is:

The Darwinian theory of evolution has two themes: common descent and natural selection. Creationists are barking up the wrong tree when they question common descent, which is amply documented by scientific evidence. Darwin's mistakes were in his emphasis on biotic competition in natural selection.

So that's another consecutive misquote. Still batting 1.000!


Next:

"Micro-evolution involves mainly changes within potentially continuous populations, and there is little doubt that its materials are those revealed by genetic experimentation. Macro-evolution involves the rise and divergence of discontinuous groups, and it is still debatable whether it differs in kind or only in degree from microevolution. If the two proved to be basically different, the innumerable studies of micro-evolution would become relatively unimportant and would have minor value in the study of evolution as a whole."

* Simpson G.G. (1949)
Tempo and Mode in Evolution, p97

Not sure how this quote poses much of an issue. It may not even be a misquote, since it's simply Simpson (one of the founders of the Modern Synthesis) pointing out there are questions about the causes of macroevolution (in 1949 to boot), and his whole book was, after all 'Tempo and Mode in Evolution'. So I'll just put this one down to your site misunderstanding what Simpson was saying. Certainly Simpson didn't think macroevolution was somehow false, he was one of the central players in modern evolutionary theory.

"[T]he origin of no innovation of large evolutionary significance is known."

* R. Wesson (1991)
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 45


"[L]arge evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any."

* R. Wesson (1991)
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 206

I'm impressed, your site almost got a quote right here. Wesson is also mentioned in the Quote Mine project at #21 link

So giving you Wesson as a reasonably accurate quote, you get something like one out of ... a bunch. I should point out Wesson was a political science professor, not a paleontologist or biologist or geologist.

Congrats! You did about average for Creationist misquoting.

--R.

[mofish]

Bravo. Mushroom cloud layin motherfucker.

Evolution is the theory that best fits the facts and evidence we have. It's as solid a theory as there is, with very, very few weaknesses, creationists' bullshit arguments notwithstanding. The largest and oldest christian religion in the world even accepts it. Leave it to the right-wing American 'men of faith' to dispute it.

You don't like it? Come up with something better. Let's hear it. Im all ears.

[Langston]

Rust - all you're doing is saying "NUH UH!!!!11!"

Can you do me a favor, please? Can you post a link (I know how you love your links!) to a website that details one incident of proof that macroevolution has, genuinely, occured - as evidenced in the fossil record or otherwise ("otherwise" doesn't include "proof" which is a group of scientists believe it to be so).

I'm looking for proof of MACROevolution, not more links to theories - or, worse yet, links to sites that you feel counter other people's beliefs/theories.

Can you manage that much, Big Guy?

[Tikker]

While you're waiting for Rust to find proof Ugz, Please show us undisputable proof of your belief system


k, thx

[Donnel]

While you're waiting for Rust to find proof Ugz, Please show us undisputable proof of your belief system


k, thx

Tikker

I would like to be shown examples where it's proven that new genetic material is formed from mutations. Mutations thus far have only caused a corroption or loss of genetic information.

I cannot show proof of my side because you can't prove that something doesn't happen, only that it does. If no proof is found that it doesn't happen then you can assume that it doesn't happen.

The burden of proof falls to those who think that it does happen.

[mofish]

Haha. A creationist talking about burden of proof. OK.

Evolution is a thoroughly falsified and completely acceptable theory that explains the diversity of life we see on Earth. The only people that don't think so, have political and religious agendas coloring their view. No facts to back up their opposition. No scientific evidence to refute anyone.

[Donnel]

Mofish,

I was asking for proof that mutations result in a gain of genetic information. This is the CRUX of evolutionary theory. In order for everything to have evolved from nothing (or small bits of almost nothing) mutations would have had to have resulted in a net gain of genetic material. The not so surprising reality is that mutations only corrupt or destroy what is already there. I do not have to prove that they do not cause new material. It is the job of the evolutionists to prove that they do.

[Rust]

While you're waiting for Rust to find proof Ugz, Please show us undisputable proof of your belief system


k, thx

Tikker

I would like to be shown examples where it's proven that new genetic material is formed from mutations. Mutations thus far have only caused a corroption or loss of genetic information.

I cannot show proof of my side because you can't prove that something doesn't happen, only that it does. If no proof is found that it doesn't happen then you can assume that it doesn't happen.

The burden of proof falls to those who think that it does happen.

Gene duplication events. Polyploidy. Lateral transfer via plasmids or other methods.

There's three mechanisms off the top of my head that give rise to additional 'information'. Then add descent with modification. Shake well.


From EvoWiki: http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Evoluti ... nformation

Creationists/IDists all claim that "evolution can't produce new information." For example, this is the core argument of Stephen C. Meyer in his allegedly peer-reviewed paper, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories (link)" in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (see also the extensive critiques (link) of this paper at The Panda's Thumb). Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this ID claim is that it can be refuted from first principles, without needing any specialized knowledge or evidence! Suppose there are two nucleotide sequences A and B. If some particular mutation X can transform sequence A into sequence B, there is another particular mutation Y which can transform sequence B into sequence A. If mutation X is one which subtracts information from a sequence, it follows that sequence A must contain more information than sequence B -- and mutation Y must, therefore, be one which adds information to a sequence. In addition, quite apart from the fact that this claim is invalid in and of itself, this claim is refuted by almost innumerable studies documenting the evolutionary origin of novel genes.

As the EvoWiki article points out, mutations are obviously reversible. There are 'knockout' mutations in genes where a single point mutation disable them (the p21 ras mutation in many cancers for example) - if this would qualify as a 'loss' of information, then any back mutation or second mutation that restored function would then be a 'gain' of information.

References are available to primary scientific literature on the EvoWiki page, as well as to a number of short survey articles (some by talk.origins regulars like Dr. Ian Musgrave or Wes Elsberry).

This 'no new information' argument is as specious as 'evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics' argument, or 'evolution equals atheism' claims of Creationists and ID'ers.

--R.

[Zanchief]

Mofish,

I was asking for proof that mutations result in a gain of genetic information. This is the CRUX of evolutionary theory. In order for everything to have evolved from nothing (or small bits of almost nothing) mutations would have had to have resulted in a net gain of genetic material. The not so surprising reality is that mutations only corrupt or destroy what is already there. I do not have to prove that they do not cause new material. It is the job of the evolutionists to prove that they do.

Avoiding the whole micro/macro debate, do you believe that it's possible for two stupid and feeble people to have a strong intelligent child? Is that mutation resulting in the gain of genetic material?

It’s a random parallel evolution.

[Donnel]

Rust, the problem with your quote from EvoWiki is that it's a theory. Find me a documented case of a mutation causing a gain in functional DNA!

And "innumerable studies documenting the evolutionary origin of novel genes" do not count because they are studies on what evolutionists EXPECT to have happened. That's like saying. I have $100 today. I had $400 yesterday, let's see what different ways I can think of to have spent it and then write receipts to match that path.

I want the receipts themselves! Show me where someone has documented proof of new traits/structures emerging via a mutation where it wasn't actually a LOSS or CORRUPTION of genetic material.

[Donnel]

Mofish,

I was asking for proof that mutations result in a gain of genetic information. This is the CRUX of evolutionary theory. In order for everything to have evolved from nothing (or small bits of almost nothing) mutations would have had to have resulted in a net gain of genetic material. The not so surprising reality is that mutations only corrupt or destroy what is already there. I do not have to prove that they do not cause new material. It is the job of the evolutionists to prove that they do.

Avoiding the whole micro/macro debate, do you believe that it's possible for two stupid and feeble people to have a strong intelligent child? Is that mutation resulting in the gain of genetic material?

It’s a random parallel evolution.

Stupid and Feeble are not things that can't be overcome by education and excercise.

[Zanchief]

Mofish,

I was asking for proof that mutations result in a gain of genetic information. This is the CRUX of evolutionary theory. In order for everything to have evolved from nothing (or small bits of almost nothing) mutations would have had to have resulted in a net gain of genetic material. The not so surprising reality is that mutations only corrupt or destroy what is already there. I do not have to prove that they do not cause new material. It is the job of the evolutionists to prove that they do.

Avoiding the whole micro/macro debate, do you believe that it's possible for two stupid and feeble people to have a strong intelligent child? Is that mutation resulting in the gain of genetic material?

It’s a random parallel evolution.

Stupid and Feeble are not things that can't be overcome by education and excercise.

So you don't believe that someone can be born with athletic ability? All intelligence is learned?

[Rust]

Rust, the problem with your quote from EvoWiki is that it's a theory. Find me a documented case of a mutation causing a gain in functional DNA!

And "innumerable studies documenting the evolutionary origin of novel genes" do not count because they are studies on what evolutionists EXPECT to have happened. That's like saying. I have $100 today. I had $400 yesterday, let's see what different ways I can think of to have spent it and then write receipts to match that path.

I want the receipts themselves! Show me where someone has documented proof of new traits/structures emerging via a mutation where it wasn't actually a LOSS or CORRUPTION of genetic material.

Tetraploidy in orchids is the most obvious one. Ian Musgrave's short comments here list three more where new coding segments have arisen from duplication or other events:

Yes, my favorite example is the nylon hydrolysing enzyme. It recently came in to existance via duplication of an existing gene, followed by a frame shift mutation.

Ohno S. (1984 Apr). Birth of a unique enzyme from an alternative reading frame of the preexisted, internally repetitious coding sequence. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 81, 2421-5.

Another nylon degrading enzyme has been isolated as new mutants in the laboratory, it is disctict from the above enzyme, but I do not know if it is a duplication event.

Negoro S, Kakudo S, Urabe I, and Okada H. (1992 Dec). A new nylon oligomer degradation gene (nylC) on plasmid pOAD2 from a Flavobacterium sp. J Bacteriol, 174, 7948-53

My second favorite example is the Sdic gene, where the annexin and dynenin intermediate chain genes were duplicated in tandem, then the intervening sequences deleted to form a single new gene, (the Sperm specific dynenin intermediate chain gene Sdic). The good thing about this example is that a previously non-coding part of the sequence became the protein coding sequence, and the protein coding sequence has a non-coding role.

Capy P. (1998 Dec 10). Evolutionary biology. A plastic genome [news; comment] Nature, 396, 522-3.

Nurminsky DI, Nurminskaya MV, De Aguiar D, and Hartl DL. (1998 Dec 10). Selective sweep of a newly evolved sperm-specific gene in Drosophila [see comments] Nature, 396, 572-5.

My third favorite is the vancomycin resistance gene, where a D-alanine D-alanyl-ligase was duplicated and mutated into a D-alanine D-lactate ligase.

Park IS, et al. Gain of D-alanyl-D-lactate or D-lactyl-D-alanine synthetase activities in three active-site mutants of the Escherichia coli D-alanyl-D-alanine ligase B. Biochemistry. 1996 Aug 13;35(32):10464-71.

Gene duplication plus mutation, that leaves the old gene intact and gives rise to a new expressed gene clearly meets your requirement for mutation creating 'new information'.

Wes Elsberry has a page that discusses how C'ists and IDiots have problems explaining what they mean by 'information'. If it's simply 'new functional coding DNA' then the above would all qualify.

--R.

[Donnel]

Mofish,

I was asking for proof that mutations result in a gain of genetic information. This is the CRUX of evolutionary theory. In order for everything to have evolved from nothing (or small bits of almost nothing) mutations would have had to have resulted in a net gain of genetic material. The not so surprising reality is that mutations only corrupt or destroy what is already there. I do not have to prove that they do not cause new material. It is the job of the evolutionists to prove that they do.

Avoiding the whole micro/macro debate, do you believe that it's possible for two stupid and feeble people to have a strong intelligent child? Is that mutation resulting in the gain of genetic material?

It’s a random parallel evolution.

Stupid and Feeble are not things that can't be overcome by education and excercise.

So you don't believe that someone can be born with athletic ability? All intelligence is learned?

I didn't say that.

There's no reason what you said has to be anything more then simple genetics. Why couldn't a stupid and feeble set of parents be carrying the genes for intelligence and brawn? It doesn't have to be mutation.

[Donnel]

Two quotes from Refuting Evolution 2 by Johnathan Sarfati with Michael Matthews

Chapter 5

Gene switches: means of evolution?

William Bateson (1861–1926), who added the word ‘genetics’ to our vocabulary in 1909, found that embryos sometimes grew body parts in the wrong place. From this he theorized that there are underlying controls of certain body parts, and other controls governing where they go.

Ed Lewis investigated and won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for discovering a small set of genes that affect different body parts (Hox or Homeobox). They act like ‘architects of the body.’ Mutations in these can cause ‘dramatic’ changes. Many experiments have been performed on fruit flies (Drosophila), where poisons and radiation induced mutations.

The problem is that they are always harmful. PBS 2 showed an extra pair of wings on a fly, but failed to mention that they were a hindrance to flying because there are no accompanying muscles. Both these flies would be eliminated by natural selection.

Walter Gehring of the University of Basel (Switzerland) replaced a gene needed for eye development in a fruit fly with the corresponding gene from a mouse. The fly still developed normal fly eyes, i.e., compound eyes rather than lens/camera. This gene in both insects and mammals is called eyeless because absence of this gene means no eyes will form.

However, there is obviously more to the differences between different animals. Eyeless is a switch—it turns on the genetic information needed for eyes. But evolution requires some way of generating the new information that’s to be switched on. The information needed to build a compound eye is vastly different from that needed to build a lens/camera type of eye. By analogy, the same switch on an electric outlet/power socket can turn on a light or a laptop, but this hardly proves that a light evolved into a laptop!

All the same, the program says that eyeless is one of a small number of common genes used in the embryonic development of many animals. The program illustrated this with diagrams. Supposedly, all evolution needed to do was reshuffle packets of information into different combinations.

But as shown, known mutations in these genes cause monstrosities, and different switches are very distinct from what is switched on or off. Also, the embryo develops into its basic body plan before these genes start switching—obviously they can’t be the cause of the plan before they are activated! But the common genes make perfect sense given the existence of a single Creator.
Increased amounts of DNA don’t mean increased function

Biologists have discovered a whole range of mechanisms that can cause radical changes in the amount of DNA possessed by an organism. Gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, etc., do not help explain evolution, however. They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information—these mechanisms create nothing new. Macroevolution needs new genes (for making feathers on reptiles, for example), yet Scientific American completely misses this simple distinction:

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism’s DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. [SA 82]

In plants, but not in animals (possibly with rare exceptions), the doubling of all the chromosomes may result in an individual which can no longer interbreed with the parent type—this is called polyploidy. Although this may technically be called a new species, because of the reproductive isolation, no new information has been produced, just repetitious doubling of existing information. If a malfunction in a printing press caused a book to be printed with every page doubled, it would not be more informative than the proper book. (Brave students of evolutionary professors might like to ask whether they would get extra marks for handing in two copies of the same assignment.)

Duplication of a single chromosome is normally harmful, as in Down’s syndrome. Insertions are a very efficient way of completely destroying the functionality of existing genes. Biophysicist Dr Lee Spetner in his book Not By Chance analyzes examples of mutational changes that evolutionists have claimed to have been increases in information, and shows that they are actually examples of loss of specificity, which means they involved loss of information (which is to be expected from information theory).

The evolutionist’s ‘gene duplication idea’ is that an existing gene may be doubled, and one copy does its normal work while the other copy is redundant and non-expressed. Therefore, it is free to mutate free of selection pressure (to get rid of it). However, such ‘neutral’ mutations are powerless to produce new genuine information. Dawkins and others point out that natural selection is the only possible naturalistic explanation for the immense design in nature (not a good one, as Spetner and others have shown). Dawkins and others propose that random changes produce a new function, then this redundant gene becomes expressed somehow and is fine-tuned under the natural selective process.

This ‘idea’ is just a lot of hand-waving. It relies on a chance copying event, genes somehow being switched off, randomly mutating to something approximating a new function, then being switched on again so natural selection can tune it.

Furthermore, mutations do not occur in just the duplicated gene; they occur throughout the genome. Consequently, all the deleterious mutations in the rest of the genome have to be eliminated by the death of the unfit. Selective mutations in the target duplicate gene are extremely rare—it might represent only 1 part in 30,000 of the genome of an animal. The larger the genome, the bigger the problem, because the larger the genome, the lower the mutation rate that the creature can sustain without error catastrophe; as a result, it takes even longer for any mutation to occur, let alone a desirable one, in the duplicated gene. There just has not been enough time for such a naturalistic process to account for the amount of genetic information that we see in living things.

Dawkins and others have recognized that the ‘information space’ possible within just one gene is so huge that random changes without some guiding force could never come up with a new function. There could never be enough ‘experiments’ (mutating generations of organisms) to find anything useful by such a process. Note that an average gene of 1,000 base pairs represents 41000 possibilities—that is 10602 (compare this with the number of atoms in the universe estimated at ‘only’ 1080). If every atom in the universe represented an ‘experiment’ every millisecond for the supposed 15 billion years of the universe, this could only try a maximum 10100 of the possibilities for the gene. So such a ‘neutral’ process cannot possibly find any sequence with specificity (usefulness), even allowing for the fact that more than just one sequence may be functional to some extent.

So Dawkins and company have the same problem as the advocates of neutral selection theory. Increasing knowledge of the molecular basis of biological functions has exploded the known ‘information space’ so that mutations and natural selection—with or without gene duplication, or any other known natural process—cannot account for the irreducibly complex nature of living systems.

Yet Scientific American has the impertinence to claim:

Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this [duplication of genes] is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years. [SA 82]

This is about the vital red blood pigment hemoglobin that carries the oxygen. It has four polypeptide chains and iron. Evolutionists believe that this evolved from an oxygen-carrying iron-containing protein called myoglobin found in muscles, which has only one polypeptide chain. However, there is no demonstration that gene duplication plus natural selection turned the one-chained myoglobin into the four-chained hemoglobin. Nor is there any adequate explanation of how the hypothetical intermediates would have had selective advantages.

In fact, the proposed evolution of hemoglobin is far more complicated than Scientific American implies, though it requires a little advanced biology to understand. The α- and β-globin chains are encoded on genes on different chromosomes, so they are expressed independently. This expression must be controlled precisely, otherwise various types of anemia called thalassemia result. Also, there is an essential protein called AHSP (alpha hemoglobin stabilizing protein) which, as the name implies, stabilizes the α-chain, and also brings it to the β-chain. Otherwise the α-chain would precipitate and damage the red blood cells.

AHSP is one of many examples of a class of protein called chaperones which govern the folding of other proteins.3 This is yet another problem for chemical evolutionary theories—how did the first proteins fold correctly without chaperones? And since chaperones themselves are complex proteins, how did they fold?

Recap:

Duplication does not cause new information, only a repeating of what is already there. A mutation of a duplication may cause a new function, but it is not proof of evolution. To follow the evolutionist theory, the mutated duplication if expressed would have to provide a survivable advantage in order to be passed on (Natural selection). If it was not expressed, then it bore no import either way.

[Tossica]

Rust is knocking motherfuckers out left and right.

KA-POW!

SMACK!

THUD!