Re: Darwin the 'dunce' 'founder?' of modern evolution

In message <6bf99198-cc4c-4973-b10a-729d0b7e6ecd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Art Biele <Abiele7000@xxxxxxx> writes
On Feb 14, 1:46 pm, Ernest Major <{$t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In message
<7a7e2f92-724b-48e0-ad16-5df1d92cd...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Art
Biele <Abiele7...@xxxxxxx> writes

>On Feb 14, 4:52 am, "richardalanforr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
><richardalanforr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On Feb 14, 7:55 am, Art Biele <Abiele7...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>> > On Feb 12, 3:30 pm, "richardalanforr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

>> > <richardalanforr...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > > On Feb 12, 7:08 pm, Art Biele <Abiele7...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>> > > > > No, it isn't.
>> > > > > It's a pack of falsehoods derived from creationist sources
>> > > > >embellished
>> > > > > with inventions of your own.

>> > > > > Get a freakin' education.

>> > > > > RF
>> > > Get a freakin' education. You are at best utterly ignorant, at worst
>> > > utterly dishonest.

>> > > RF

>> > With respect to the finches:

>> > Darwin’s Finches:

>> > It was once claimed by evolutionists that the Finches found on the
>> > Galapagos Islands are an excellent example of Darwinian evolution in
>> > action. They once claimed up to 31 species of finch lived on those
>> > Islands, but that figure had dropped in modern times to 13 species, 3
>> > genuses’, and one family. However. Recent research has shown that all
>> > 13 species are capable of interbreeding

>> FALSEHOOD #1
>> No, it hasn't. It has shown that *some* of the species are capable of
>> interbreeding.

>> >and they do interbreed.

>> That does not mean that they are not distinct species.

>> > They
>> > are descendants of a single pair of finches and the radiation that
>> > occurred in the Galapagos occurred in the range of hundreds of years,
>> > not millions or even thousands of years.

>> FALSEHOOD #2
>> I've posted a link to a paper which demonstrates that they radiated
>> over a period of over two million years.

>> > A recent drought demonstrated
>> > a rapid increase in long beak finches over just a two to three year
>> > period.

>> Quite so.
>> Your point?

>It means that you evolutionists are full of Bull *** and will keep
>changing your definitions to keep your pet evidences and theories of
>'evolution' alive. Darwin and his pro-evolution anti-Bible mentors
>(Lyell, Huxley, etc) were wrong about how physical characterictics)
>changes impercepttively in ones lifetime, but over very long periods
>of time species slowly evolve into new species, and the finches were
>his prime example, they force fitted their data into their
>manufactured fabricated method and mode of evolution evolutionary
>scenario.

If you want to serve the Lord you should refrain from promulgating
falsehoods. By tarnishing Christianity by associating it with falsehoods
you promote atheism.

1) Huxley was not one of Darwin's mentors. The reverse is nearer the
truth.

You are correct, Huxley was not Darwins Mentor, Lyell definitely was
and i believe it was Lyell who actually came up with has been called
Charles Darwin's sole contribution to Evolution theory, his mechanism
of the very gradual ongoing accumulative novel changes a species
continually undergo, with Natural selection selecting the best ones.

I believe that you are wrong. Several people did propose natural selection before Darwin, but to the best of my knowledge Lyell was not one of them. Hutton, as far as I know, was the earliest. Others were Blyth and Matthews.

Darwin credited the writings of the Rev. Malthus as the source of his inspiration. (It seems to me that the consensus of historians of biology is that Darwin was retrospectively projecting an 'eureka moment' on a more prolonged process.)

By the way, you ought to be skeptical of people who write of "Charles Darwin's sole contribution to Evolution theory".

To date, science has falsified this alleged mechanism, it has never
been observed, and the changes that Darwin and friends did observe was
caused by a mechanism Darwin knew nothing about, Mendellian genetics.
Darwin never really understod what causes variation in the species.

Darwin was aware that he didn't have a worked out theory of variation. However he didn't need one - the observed fact that variation exists is sufficient.

Your assertion of falsification is a falsehood. Both natural selection and the de novo origination of variation have been observed.

And Mendelian (sic) genetics is not a mechanism that causes changes in species. Apart from the you might like to bear in mind that Mendel's Laws are not the last word in genetics.

2) Huxley famously argued that Darwin should not exclude saltationism.

Yes he did, it was based on Huxley's honest observation of the fossil
record of his day where none observed any gradual evolution evolution.
Just like today, the fossil record is one of the abrupt appearance of
species in the fossil record followed by stasis. As Gould pointed out,
Darwin and Lyeel were both wrong in their claims of gradualism, in
geology and as a legitimate mode of the predicted single phylogenic
Tree.

Darwin may have overstated the gradual nature of morphological change in evolution, but you should be aware that punctuationistic passages can be found in Darwin's writings. You should also be aware that punctuationism and saltationism are not the same, and that Gould, among others, has documented gradual interspecific changes in the fossil record.

3) Darwin did not convince Lyell of the factuality of evolution until
long after the time-period during which Lyell could be considered one of
Darwin's mentors. (And why did you neglect to mention Darwin's mentors
during his time at Cambridge - the Rev. Sedgwick and the Rev. Henslow?)

Because it was Charles Lyell whom Darwin said that he never gave Lyell
enough credit for his theory of evolution, that half ot it came from
Lyell's mind. Darwin claimed that he came to see evolution through
Lyell's eyes. By 1837, a mere year or so after meeting Charles Lyell,
Darwin already had formulated his mechanism on how evolution can occur
without any need for God's help. That was the ultimate Goal of Lyell
and friends.

You're still engaging in character assassination and ad-hominem.

Do you have a citation for Darwin having said that?

Darwin's debt to Lyell was an appreciation of deep time, and the cumulative effect of small events, so it's possible that he could have written something on those lines. But as I've mentioned above Darwin also credited Rev. Malthus as the source of his inspiration. On the other hand Darwin is recorded as referring to seeing the rock formations encountered during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle through Lyell's eyes.

But if you want to blame someone for deep time you should go back beyond Lyell to Hutton, and perhaps earlier. Rev. Sedgwick was one of the geologists who put the final stake in the heart of the interpretation of the geological column (by that point reduced to the diluvium - now known as the glacial drift) as the record of the Noachian flood.


4) You should not conflate non-acceptance of your preferred biblical
exegesis with being anti-Bible.

5) The Galapagos finches are not explictly mentioned in "On the Origin
of Species".

I believe they are. 1859 edition pages 397 and 398. Darwin clearly was
referring to the finches he brought back from the Galopagos. Charles
Darwin did not know what kind of birds they were, but back in England,
ornithologist John Gould identified them to Darwin and Gould told
Darwin that they consisted of 25 different species. Diferentiation of
species in Darwin's day merely meant that for each finch there were at
least some variation between the 25 of the 26 birds Gould examined.

Can you provide evidence for your claim that Gould identified 25 species? Wikipedia quote, accurately, Desmond & Moore's biography for a figure of 12. An endnote in the latter gives a figure of 14 for a later opinion by Gould.

However, you haven't read my words carefully enough. I used the qualification of "explicitly" for a reason. Your claim was that "the finches were his prime example"; that he mentioned the finches implicitly in a reference to the Galapagos avifauna, among 75 pages on biogeography, as a whole does not support your assertion.

In his effort to undermine the Biblical account of creation in the
Bible, Darwin makes a real dumb statement: "why should the species
which are supposed to have been created in the Galapagos Archipelago,
and nowhere else, bear so plain a stamp of affinity to those created
in America?" Darwin makes a strawmen argument by suggesting the
finches, according to Biblical accounts of Creation must have been
created there in the Galapagos. Biblical Creation makes no claim that
species are found only where they are created. There could be many
paths by which the finches and other birds arrived there.

You are engaging in a red-herring. Firstly, this does nothing to defend your claim that "the finches were his prime example". Secondly, your quibbling about his wording to avoid addressing an observation that supports common descent with modification.

>The definition defining Species in the 20th century is the ability to
>interbreed. Therefore it has been determined that all of Dawin's
>Finches are known to be capable of interbreeding, thus they are one
>species under the standard and most common definition of species
>established by evolutionists. So how does Peter Grant respond to what
>mus be a very discomforting discovery for evolutionists everywhere,
>with a paper on "What is a species?" And in Peter Grants worthless
>meanderings he concludes that:

You've already been asked at least twice for evidence of your claim that
all of Darwin's Finches are capable of interbreeding. Rather than
reiterate the claim would you be so kind as to provide that evidence.

Ask Peter Grant. Grant has made efforts to redefine 'species' so that
by eliminating "The ability to interbreed" from being part of the
definition of the what is a species, so that Darwins' Finches and
other birds can still be labelled as different sepecies despite the
fact that they all can interbreed.

I'm asking you. It's your claim. And it doesn't appear to be Peter Grant's.

It's not an important point - wider hybridisation is known among several groups of birds, such as anatids (duck, geese and swans), galliforms (chickens, turkeys, pheasants, grouse, quail, etc), parrots, and even finches (house sparrows are recorded as interbreeding with yellowhammers, greenfinches and chaffinches) - but if you are going to make claims you really ought to support them when asked, rather than arguing from false authority.

The reason that it is not an important point is that it was never required that two populations must be absolutely intersterile for them to belong to different species. The claim that it was is a falsehood and a strawman.

Do you really wish to espouse the position that camel and llamas belong to the same species? or turkeys and chickens? or wheat, oats and barley?

Apart from that you misrepresent the Biological Species Concept. The
idea of that if two populations are capable of interbreeding then they
are the same species oversimplies the Biological Species Concept to the
point that it is not an accurate representation thereof. Even if you
haven't read the literature on concepts of what is a species the
existence of widely known hybrids (e.g. mules) between what are
universally recognised as separate species should have been a hint that
you didn't understand the definition.

I am well aware, and have argued for years and forcefully, that
evolutionists have no good definition for the word 'species' period. I
argued it here on talk origins. I now see there is a T.O. article
admitting the problems I raised of defining a species.

The word has always lacked meaning because evolutionists could never
bring the definition of 'species' into conformance with their
doctrines on evolution. It has been left ill defined and is
predominantly for evolutionary propaganda. Evolutionists demand that
the word 'species' be used to enforce the concept of a single
evolutionary tree of life and the word keeps failing them.

You've abandoned argument for rhetoric again.


>"In light of what we learned about Darwins' finches [they can all
>interbreed] we define species similarly [as Mayr defined it: a
>population is a species if they can interbreed], but without the
>exclusive emphasis on genetic isolation. Species comprise one or more
>populations capable of breeding with little or no fitness loss. ...
>this [definition of species] is important for Darwins finches and many
>other species of terrestrial birds because a major component of the
>barrier to interbreed is not a genetic one but is learned."

It would have been nice if you had deigned to give a citation for this
quote. I can't find any evidence that this material exists - both Google
Scholar and Google Web searches are coming up blank when presenting with
phrases from the above paragraph.

Yes I should have. Am having trouble finding it now. I must stop now,
can't go on.. I'll take your adice to be more cordial should I post
further in this forum.

Mayr had another definition for species, perhaps it was a jest when
addressing his peers:. "Species are whatever we want them to be."

That is likely to be a reference to the "cynical species concept" - that a species is what a competent taxonomist identifies as a species.
--
alias Ernest Major

.

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