Re: Now Steven J claims poverty of the fossil record and that
- From: hersheyh <hersheyhv@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 5 Jul 2008 14:00:51 -0700 (PDT)
On Jul 5, 11:45 am, T Pagano <not.va...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:06:57 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
<steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 29, 3:37 pm, T Pagano <not.va...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:25:21 -0700 (PDT), "Steven J."
<steve...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-- [snip]
3. The fossil record does not show the ubiquitous transformism that
neoDarwinism predicted. It shows without exception "sudden
appearance" and "STASIS."
The last time we had this discussion, it was painfully clear that you
did not know what "stasis" meant (Gould and Eldredge used the term to
indicate that, at least at the morphological level, a species had
undergone no evolution at all; you use it to describe entire sequences
of similar but clearly distinct species each showing microevolutionary
changes as they transition from one to another). Someone who talks
about the Pearson, _et al._ foram sequence as showing "stasis" is just
using words as magic charms, not to convey meaning or express
understanding.
Note that many of what you seem to regard as "novelties" (e.g. bird
bills, bird wings, and feathers) do not appear full-blown and without
precursors in the fossil record: one can trace intermediate forms in
various maniraptoran theropods. Usually *species*, even entire
genera, appear without clear precursors, but speciation has been
observed in the lab (i.e. the sort of change that is worst-documented
in the fossil record is precisely the kind that has been observed in
the present day among living populations), and the fossil record is
known to be incomplete and incompletely uncovered and described.
1. There are similarities between all biological entities right down
to the cellular and molecular level.
And this disproves common descent how?
We may line organisms (and/or
some of their individual parts) into numerous sequences of putative
precursors/intermediates of all sorts depending on what "characters"
we consider of value and how each are weighted. Which lineal sequence
is correct and how do we know?
A branching bush or tree is not a lineal sequence. Evolution does not
produce a "ladder" of perfection. It produces a branching tree or
bush of organisms optimized to different niches.
Unless atheists produce the
empirically testable mechanism showing us which is the correct lineal
connection Steven J is merely story-telling.
Again, what evolution *necessarily* produces is a nested sequence
relatedness among living organisms and changes in the fossil
record that are consistent with that nested relatedness. To the
extent that data currently exists, that evidence is overwhelmingly
consistent (to the extent that, if Dumbski applied his statistical
threshold of improbability to this evidence, he would have to conclude
that this is highly probable) with that pattern. What pattern does
magical poofing by a hypothetical "intelligent designer" *necessarily*
produce? If it produces the same pattern, by analogy with the reasons
why known "intelligent designers" give the false appearance of
historical descent, we have to conclude that the designer is being
intentionally deceptive.
2. Random mutations and natural selection has only been shown to
produce oscillations back-and-forth around variations which already
exist in the collective genome of the population.
Until mutation produces a variant, it does not exist in the
population. Some types of mutations can occur and recur until there
is an environmental need for the variant. Selection, of course, can
*only* act on variants that actually exist in a population. Whether
there is oscillation or fixation is a function of the stability of the
environmental change. And speciation is a separate problem, which in
some cases happens only by chance in an isolated population. In other
cases, hybrid dysgenesis favors retention of reproductively isolating
events.
While some
individual point mutations have been shown to have beneficial effects
in some specific environments such mutations have never proceeded
further progressively, directionally, or coherently. Once that
specific environment disappears populations revert "back" to its
"wild" state.
Well, duh. If the specific environmental reversion did not cause
phenotypic reversion, that would mean that natural selection was not
working. However, in some cases of antibiotic resistance or other
mutations, phenotypic reversion is not a consequence of direct
reversion, but instead is due to further mutation elsewhere in the
same or different genes. This is important, since sometimes the
initial mutation to antibiotic resistance renders the organism less
fit in environments without the antibiotic. If one stops taking
antibiotic too soon, that can lead to competition between the w.t.
strain (sensitive) and the resistant strain. Second site reversions
can produce a resistant strain that can grow as rapidly as the normal
sensitive strain in environments without the antibiotic.
3. Steven J cannot claim poverty of the fossil record as Darwin
justifiably could 149 years ago. It is extensive and voluminous.
Only relative to the record available to Darwin. Relative to the
number and types of organisms that have ever existed, it remains poor.
Some
paleontologists believe that it is an adequate sampling of prehistoric
life.
Only if one ignores all those organisms that do not fossilize well.
We have a fossil sampling of at least 800 million years worth
of prehistoric life which shows that fossil populations show
absolutely NO PROGRESSIVE, DIRECTIONAL CHANGE WHATSOEVER over the
course of several million years each.
Progressive change would contradict evolution. "Progress" is in the
eye of the beholder. An intelligent dinosaur would only regard the
changes up to the KT boundary as "progress". After that, "progress"
went to hell in a handbasket. An intelligent trilobite would regard
progress to have stopped much earlier. And an intelligent archaean
bacteria would regard life since the introduction of substantial
oxygen in the atmosphere as the degradation of the environment into a
toxic cesspool and the end of progress. If you want to claim that
"intelligence" was some goal of evolution, you might be able to make a
weak case.
And the only "directional" change that I can think of in evolution are
examples where the entire environment has changed (as in the
directional change to oxygen-using organisms, allowing complex
metazoans) or there is an arms race (as in predator/prey intelligence
in warm-blooded organisms). But it is theistic evolutionists who
often think in terms of a "goal" or "direction" for evolution. Most of
the time, that is simply a metaphorical statement of belief. Most
evolutionary biologists simply see no evidence of teleology in the
fossil record nor would it be expected.
4. NeoDarwinism is, like ALL purely naturalistic processes,
gradualistic and linear.
Not true on all counts. Phenotypic change in organisms is not always
gradualistic. Sometimes a change in a single nucleotide can have a
significant phenotypic effect. Sometimes a small phenotypic effect.
Sometimes none. And evolution is not always linear, it is often
branching and divergent.
As such neither Darwin nor the Dawkinsian
gradualists see "species" as an entitiy of any real importance in
evolutionary biology.
What a ridiculous statement. Speciation (in the biological species
concept, BSC) is the *key* element in evolution. *When* two
populations have become different species and can no longer exchange
genetic information, their future changes are necessarily independent
of each other. That is the *primary* branching point of all
evolution. Most 'species' at any geologically short time span in
history are or likely were clearly and undeniably species by the BSC
(one cannot, of course, test this in fossils but have to infer it from
the degree of morphological difference within modern species where it
can be tested). But because evolution is a *process* rather than an
event like a proto-chicken giving birth to a fully modern chicken
(which is about the largest 'gap' that is hypothesized; only brain-
dead creationists talk about a dinosaur laying a chicken egg or dog
giving birth to a cat) one expects *some* modern species to
demonstrate intermediate degrees of speciation and reproductive
isolation. Which, of course, is exactly what one sees in species with
real racial variants, species with limited genetic exchange, ring
species, and all the fossils of the same "species" that vary over
geologic time spans. For example, modern H. sapiens and archaic H.
sapiens blending into something like a more modern H. erectus.
[Again, only brain-dead creationists think that the common ancestor of
chimps and humans somehow directly produced modern humans (and chimps
for that matter). There was a series of speciation events in the
human lineage with each produce part of the difference between us and
chimps (bipedalism came early).
"Species" is merely part of the gradual linear
continuum of one creature to another.
Not linear. Not necessarily gradual at the phenotypic level.
So, what on earth does the
separation of breeding populations (that is, speciation) have to do
with how novelty emerges and how one structure transforms into
another? Steven J doesn't say (and probably doesn't since neither
does anyone else).
Speciation is *sometimes* the indirect consequence of hybrid
dysgenesis. Sometimes speciation happens for non-selective reasons
involving isolation in an ecological niche. Rarely speciation is the
result of sufficient change over time so that a moden population is
simply labelled a different species because of the amount of
accumulated morphologic difference. The last is the only 'linear'
change in species without divergence of two lines. If the reason for
speciation is hybrid dysgenesis, then the two populations (now
species) already had an adaptation to different environments that
drove the speciation. If the reason for speciation is mere chance
because of isolation, the two species are already in either different
local places or different local environments and will specialize to
optimize fitness to those (at least somewhat) different local
conditions or places. The linear change can either be due to fixation
of chance selectively neutral variation or can be due to selective
change in response to a changing environment (and likely both).
5. To be sure the Gouldians conjectured that speciation in small
founder populations (when they don't become extinct) might create the
initial conditions for emergence or transformation. Perhaps it is
sometimes the case that placing a system at some set of "boundary"
conditions might cause a novel change.
The reason why organisms at the ecological limits of the population
change is precisely *because* boundary conditions are not the same as
those at the core of the organism's environment. It is necessarily
more difficult for some reason (e.g., hotter summers, longer winters,
less optimal food sources, a black background instead of a tan one).
Evolution optimizes organisms to *local* conditions. That means that
populations at the boundary are likely to optimizing to *different*
conditions than those faced in the core of the organism's area.
Gould thought that pushing a
small founder population to these boundaries might cause a rapid
change if it didn't become extinct.
And there are clear experimental evidence that that rapid change does
indeed happen. Mediterranean lizards. Guppies in predator-free
ponds.
But Lenski has done just these
kinds of experiments with E. coli over 30,000 generations and he has
NEVER seen any progressive, directional change---NEVER.
What he did find is, when the chance mutational events did happen, is
rapid change to optimize growth in an environment with the previously
unavailable citrate that was present. Again, selection does NOT
create the needed variant. It only selects variations that mutation
has and can produce and that *actually* exist in some variant
organism.
snip
Regards,
T Pagano
.
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