Evolutionists use adaptive or variational changes to bolster their theory
Thursday’s editorial entitle “Devolution” is just another of the Post’s many instances of writing about something they know little about. Evolution as defined by the article, small changes over long periods of time, is totally uncontroversial. Everyone believes that, even creationists. Look at all the changes an infant goes through while attaining adulthood. What is controversial is that creationists say that there is a limit to change. The infant will never grow into something other than the mature form of its species.
These “significant biological changes” the article refers to, Tasmanian Devils reaching reproductive age earlier than usual, is nothing more than adaptation within a species. The anti-evolution crowd does not have any problem with this. From start to finish, it’s still a Tasmanian Devil, no macroevolutionary change of morphological body patterns. All recent “proofs” of evolution have been nothing but adaptation or variation changes within a species. From start to finish, eye migration of the flounder, color changes of the peppered moth, bacterial resistance, all are within a species, no new information is created.
Evolutionists are so hard up to find legitimate evidence for evolution that they have to fall back on these adaptive or variational changes to help bolster their theory. Again, macroevolution occurred in the past. We observe it after the fact. Its not empirical, but forensic. All the evidence we gather is circumstantial and can not be directly tested, and so must be interpreted. There are more ways than one to interpret the evidence.
John Chaikowsky
Godfrey
Right on Fark! Time to stop worrying about sailing over the edge of the Earth and join the 21 century. Horses have an excellent fossil record.
Is “Evolutionist” even a real word?
Is this letter writer saying that there is no more evolution and that all evolution happended in the past? If that’s the case, what date did evolution end?
Oh, wait - this is the new assualt on Evolution from the bible thumpers; just claim that it doesn’t exist. I get it!! If you say something doesn’t exist, does that make it so?
The fossil record for individual species shows over millions and millions of years transitions. Whose to saw that flounder isn’t in mid-evoloution as we speak?
Jom - YOUR PILLS!
Fark - Darwin believed that man came from apes. He stated in his Descent of Man, “The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems, the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded.” Because it allegedly occured “much further back in history” we’ll never know. No one observed the branching, all testing is indirect and circumstantial and its a unique, one time event. How scientific is that?
If there are “vast (and growing) fossil records showing gradual variations and transitions for many species and their ancestors,” why did Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge have to propose their ad hoc Punctuated Equilibria Theory to explain away their systematic absence?
Mr. Jones - Also the forensic evidence of the alleged transitions in the fossil record for the horse, is another unique occurance. Except maybe for Eohippus, the other horses in the series are just that - horses. They may vary in height and toe count, but horses none the same. Micro not macroevolution. Paleontologist and evolutionist, George Gaylord Simpson wrote, “The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature.”
Red State - If macro evolution were occuring today. We would not be having this discussion.
Thank you all for your comments.
John C - Darwin did indeed believe that man evolved from apes. Given the limited fossil record of hominids at the time, it was a reasonable theory. But one that has since been pretty well refuted since than. The hominid fossil record has seen numerous additions since Darwin’s time. Science and theories advance as evidence advances.
“No one observed the branching, all testing is indirect and circumstantial and its a unique, one time event. How scientific is that?”
Uhm, pretty darned scientific, if you ask anyone versed in the scientific method (as opposed to someone who gets their science lessons from a thousands-years-old book of fiction which states, among other ludicrous claims, that the value of pi is 3 and that the sky is a solid ceiling and rain happens when god opens a window in the firmament).
Science is charged with explaining observed and NON-OBSERVED events. We regularly explain and detail events which are observed by no human eyes. That’s what science does. Theorize answers and processes, compare evidence and results to the theory, and subject the theory to peer review. As new evidence appears which refutes a given theory, new theories are posited to encompass all relevant evidence, and peers review the new theories for accuracy.
This is where biblically-based “science” is doomed to fail again and again. The “theories” are etched in stone, monolithic and unable to change in response to conflicting evidence. Instead, creationists are forced to employ increasingly crazy rationalizations to explain the discrepancies between what is stated in Genesis and what is directly observable (for instance: “Dinosaur fossils were planted by Satan to tempt your faith”).
Sending a man to the moon pretty much poked an impossible hole in the whole “solid firmament” idea once and for all. But creationists and other bible-science apologists stubbornly cling to their increasingly archaic theories in the face of mounting contradictory evidence.
As for the Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, it does not in any way refute evolution and gradual change. Any geneticist working with resistant bacteria has witnessed this type of change directly in the lab. I have been working with genetics and genetic simulations on computers for decades, and have personally observed that very principle take place in virtual petri dishes. Laugh all you want about simulations, but they VERY closely mirror behaviors of natural systems, and the theory of “Punctuated Equilibrium” is a reasonable theory which accurately describes the behavior in these systems.
“Punctuated Equilibrium” does NOT imply that beings suddenly change from having no eyes to having 2 fully formed eyes. Phenotype changes in a local population can disseminate to dominate the locale in a very short number of generations. It also does not imply that gradual change does not happen, because it does. But in addition to the gradual changes, you can also observe larger leaps of change in localized populations.
It’s called the “scientific method”. When a creation “scientist” finally submits his theories for a bonafide peer review, we can continue this discussion.
Fark
When we talk about science, we are either talking about empirical or historical science. Empirical science deals with the utilization of the senses which is why the scientific method incorporates observation and direct testing. Historical science, again, involves investigation after the fact. No direct observation. A CSI unit will collect all the evidence they can, try to determine what is relevent and what is not and then try to put it all together to make sense out of it. Its open to a lot of interpretation as they try to make inferences to the best explanation. Macroevolution is an historical science.
Now, Michael Ruse, in thev 1982 Arkansas trial defined science a little different. He testified that science is 1. guided by natural law. 2. based on explaining by natural law. 3. testable 4. tentative and 5. falsifiable. Even by these criteria Darwinism still does not fall under the domain of empirical science. Verification for (testing) or against (falisifiability) is difficult for evolution because it is so plastic it can explain anything.
This definition makes archaeology, paleoanthropology and even the SETI project non-scientific. Should a scientist really try to explain cave drawings by natural means first before accepting an intelligent cause?
There has been additions to the fossil record since Darwin’s time, yet evolutionary paleontologist David Raup wrote in 1979 that “we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded … ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.”