Evolution
Posted: Sun Jan 09, 2022 11:16 am
Last time on the Flat Earth thread...
Thank you for pointing out the hybrid not being the same thing. Now you've not only got a lack of evidence for recent new families, you've got no evidence for recent evolutionary speciation! Going back to the 20 phyla over 20M years, since there doesn't seem to be an accessible estimate of the number of species produced, I gave it a low estimate of 4,860 species assuming every level of the taxonomic tree below the phylum had 3 branches. (This seems a reasonable minimum as the difference between phyla is too big to happen suddenly; there must have been a lot of steps. I would not be surprised if there were far more species during this time.) That means either there was one new species every constant period of time, putting one every 4115 years, or there were clusters, shrinking that time considerably. Again, it's likely there were more species produced, and 20 is the lowest estimate of phyla that I've seen; there were likely more, again producing more species. This puts that 4115 figure as a maximum. Given this short timeframe which must have happened, why can't a noticeable event have happened once over human history, regardless how much time went into it before? Again, it looks like large-scale evolution just stopped.
A transitional species would be difficult to classify as one species or the other, especially useful as a definition when looking at less clear-cut groups above the species level. Where are the things we can't tell what family it's in? Could be a cat (felidae) or something else entirely, depending what angle you look at it? Evolution requires that at some point these should exist. Why can't something have evolved to be half-way in between two modern families? Or what about repeat evolution? Does one kind of organism evolve into another, and suddenly there's an evolutionary blacklist that prevents it from happening again?
I'm literally asking for proof that one kind of creature can become another kind entirely. I never said sudden. Macroevolution is the sum result of a lot of microevolutionary processes. I would not expect it to happen suddenly (though evolution itself seems to expect it - according to Stephen J. Gould, "The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design … has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution" (https://creation.com/cambrian-explosion, ref Gould, Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?, Paleobiology)). Macroevolution can only be a necessary result of microevolutionary processes if you believe that relationship is possible in the first place. Simply put, there is far less evidence than there should be that this scale of evolution is possible.
Here's a question: How does an organism evolve from one cell to thousands, with no in-between? Where are the hundred-celled organisms? I don't think it's reasonable to assume such a massive leap in cell count is possible. Yet it must have happened to reach modern complexity.
Speaking of cells, how did the complexity of the first one arise? You can get amino acids, you can even get proteins with a ton of time and luck, and some kind of mechanism for them to put themselves together. Congratulations, you have a clump of matter sitting there being useless. You still have to get RNA from somewhere. You still have to get the outer walls of a cell from somewhere. You still have to put it together in a non-destructive manner. And you have to jumpstart the impossibly complex system without obliterating it. Keep in mind what it would take to get here, and at this level you can't have a viable system without all the pieces. Don't forget that at no point can these be exposed to oxygen, which must have arose from some reactions within the atmosphere at some point, even if only in trace quantities.
Then you have to account for how the effectively digital data sequences in the nucleotides came to be, and how specific tRNA is produced to decode them. Where did tRNA come from? It only makes sense in the context of a cell, which provides significant shelter, in turn preventing a lot of the forces which could cause it to move around randomly. How would it just happen to form specific to one codon and one amino acid, and conveniently work in tandem with other objects, also nonsensical except in a cell, to detect that codon from an mRNA molecule and fetch the corresponding acid? Never mind how hopelessly complex proteins are, to require extraordinarily precise codon sequences. This is partially mitigated by the redundancy in how multiple codons can produce the same amino acid - preventing mutations from expressing themselves and killing the organism - but it doesn't counteract the sheer number of acids in a protein. It also creates a significant stabilizing effect on the reproduction process, because of the mutations it renders meaningless. The entire RNA/DNA translation sequence looks like something designed to promote stable self-propagation, and not remotely like something which arose randomly.
The impossibility of the beginning of evolution and the complexity within a cell are probably my biggest issues with the current evolutionary model.
Then skip to the first production of large quantities of oxygen. It must be produced in such quantities that it cleans up the atmosphere without the atmosphere fighting back - that is to say there are no reactions between the oxygen and atmosphere (or anything else really) that result in the oxygen producers being destroyed.
Given the sheer improbabilities and impossibilities involved, it makes far more sense, and takes a lot less faith, to believe something else is responsible for life.
20 million years, in which at least 20 different phyla were supposed to appear. More on that in a second.Krom wrote: No it is not reasonable to ask for an example of a species branching off in real time. You post an article saying "the Cambrian explosion may have happened much faster than originally thought" without apparently reading it: 20 million years. You also talk about two different species of finches mating and producing a hybrid offspring, not the same thing!
Also how would you tell if some species is in a transitional state? Are you going to observe and document every generation for tens of thousands of generations? Do you think any human researcher or even research organization has sufficient lifespan to even document such a change? Do you have any idea how long it took for single celled organisms to become people and dogs? Is the species you decide to observe actually experiencing any selective evolutionary pressure that could even potentially make it transition into something else? Do you even understand that said selective evolutionary pressure generally means the origin species goes extinct and won't be around to observe and compare with anymore?
Macroevolution still doesn't exist as anything but a language term humans use to sort things, it doesn't just happen in the natural world. You are literally asking for a fish to one day grow legs and lungs and then crawl out of the sea or even an amoeba colony to just suddenly become an elephant.
Thank you for pointing out the hybrid not being the same thing. Now you've not only got a lack of evidence for recent new families, you've got no evidence for recent evolutionary speciation! Going back to the 20 phyla over 20M years, since there doesn't seem to be an accessible estimate of the number of species produced, I gave it a low estimate of 4,860 species assuming every level of the taxonomic tree below the phylum had 3 branches. (This seems a reasonable minimum as the difference between phyla is too big to happen suddenly; there must have been a lot of steps. I would not be surprised if there were far more species during this time.) That means either there was one new species every constant period of time, putting one every 4115 years, or there were clusters, shrinking that time considerably. Again, it's likely there were more species produced, and 20 is the lowest estimate of phyla that I've seen; there were likely more, again producing more species. This puts that 4115 figure as a maximum. Given this short timeframe which must have happened, why can't a noticeable event have happened once over human history, regardless how much time went into it before? Again, it looks like large-scale evolution just stopped.
A transitional species would be difficult to classify as one species or the other, especially useful as a definition when looking at less clear-cut groups above the species level. Where are the things we can't tell what family it's in? Could be a cat (felidae) or something else entirely, depending what angle you look at it? Evolution requires that at some point these should exist. Why can't something have evolved to be half-way in between two modern families? Or what about repeat evolution? Does one kind of organism evolve into another, and suddenly there's an evolutionary blacklist that prevents it from happening again?
I'm literally asking for proof that one kind of creature can become another kind entirely. I never said sudden. Macroevolution is the sum result of a lot of microevolutionary processes. I would not expect it to happen suddenly (though evolution itself seems to expect it - according to Stephen J. Gould, "The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design … has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution" (https://creation.com/cambrian-explosion, ref Gould, Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?, Paleobiology)). Macroevolution can only be a necessary result of microevolutionary processes if you believe that relationship is possible in the first place. Simply put, there is far less evidence than there should be that this scale of evolution is possible.
Here's a question: How does an organism evolve from one cell to thousands, with no in-between? Where are the hundred-celled organisms? I don't think it's reasonable to assume such a massive leap in cell count is possible. Yet it must have happened to reach modern complexity.
Speaking of cells, how did the complexity of the first one arise? You can get amino acids, you can even get proteins with a ton of time and luck, and some kind of mechanism for them to put themselves together. Congratulations, you have a clump of matter sitting there being useless. You still have to get RNA from somewhere. You still have to get the outer walls of a cell from somewhere. You still have to put it together in a non-destructive manner. And you have to jumpstart the impossibly complex system without obliterating it. Keep in mind what it would take to get here, and at this level you can't have a viable system without all the pieces. Don't forget that at no point can these be exposed to oxygen, which must have arose from some reactions within the atmosphere at some point, even if only in trace quantities.
Then you have to account for how the effectively digital data sequences in the nucleotides came to be, and how specific tRNA is produced to decode them. Where did tRNA come from? It only makes sense in the context of a cell, which provides significant shelter, in turn preventing a lot of the forces which could cause it to move around randomly. How would it just happen to form specific to one codon and one amino acid, and conveniently work in tandem with other objects, also nonsensical except in a cell, to detect that codon from an mRNA molecule and fetch the corresponding acid? Never mind how hopelessly complex proteins are, to require extraordinarily precise codon sequences. This is partially mitigated by the redundancy in how multiple codons can produce the same amino acid - preventing mutations from expressing themselves and killing the organism - but it doesn't counteract the sheer number of acids in a protein. It also creates a significant stabilizing effect on the reproduction process, because of the mutations it renders meaningless. The entire RNA/DNA translation sequence looks like something designed to promote stable self-propagation, and not remotely like something which arose randomly.
The impossibility of the beginning of evolution and the complexity within a cell are probably my biggest issues with the current evolutionary model.
Then skip to the first production of large quantities of oxygen. It must be produced in such quantities that it cleans up the atmosphere without the atmosphere fighting back - that is to say there are no reactions between the oxygen and atmosphere (or anything else really) that result in the oxygen producers being destroyed.
Given the sheer improbabilities and impossibilities involved, it makes far more sense, and takes a lot less faith, to believe something else is responsible for life.