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Sure, biological taxonomy is not absolute and it's criteria like "morphological differences" can be interpreted in different ways. That said though - we DO cle

Sure, biological taxonomy is not absolute and it's criteria like "morphological differences" can be interpreted in different ways. That said though - we DO clearly observe speciation in the paleo records (assuming you won't be claiming that Eohippus == Modern Horse) so yes at some point these genome changes accumulate into a critical mass leading to speciation. Except that the "accepted" (there is obv some very solid criticism out there) narrative of natural selection being the only(or primary) vector of that change is yet to be proven after ~200 years of attempts to do so. Speaking of flipping of the "reproduction gene" - if it gets flipped in a single specimen via a random mutation then he's obv stuck in terms of his reproductive ability, but that's a whole another can of worms no pun intended.

Amezarak 10y ago
> That said though - we DO clearly observe speciation in the paleo records (assuming you won't be claiming that Eohippus == Modern Horse) Sure, because we're looking at a big gap in time. An Eohippus never gave birth to a horse, though. There were intermediate organisms in between E and H. But as I said, there's no bright line you can point to and say one Eohippus is one species and its immediate progeny are another. Put another way, if you have H(n), H(n+1), H(n+2), H(n+3)...and so on, there's no point at which you can say H(n+m) and H(n+m+1) are different species. But sure, you can compare H(n) and H(n+2000) and say they're different species. The line is inherently fuzzy. It disappears whenever you look too closely. Only when you zoom out is it present. If you concede that natural selection leads to small changes, you have therefore conceded that it leads to speciation.
- ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
  >> But as I said, there's no bright line you can point to and say one Eohippus is one species and its immediate progeny are another. by this logic you can claim that "there's no bright line between the colors" because there are shades between them. there are discreet species in the Eohippus -> Modern Horse lineage however just like there's color white and color black. there are also "subspecies" out there like polar bears being essentially grizzly bears who adapted to living in the arctic but again this doesn't negate the existence of distinct species in their lineage. >> If you concede that natural selection leads to small changes, you have therefore conceded that it leads to speciation. and by this logic taking a CS101 class equals to graduating with a masters degree. sympatric speciation (or rather lack of proof in this area) has been a thorn in darwinists' collective sides since the day "the origin of species" came out and is a huge hole in the whole "emergence of new species via natural selection" narrative. so huge as a matter of fact that after couple of hundreds of years of trying to figure out how it works they decided it wasn't all that important :)
  - Amezarak 10y ago
    > again this doesn't negate the existence of distinct species in their lineage. There's only distinct species from the million-years-view. They only look distinct because the fossil record does not include every horse-ancestor who ever lived - the vast majority of them are gone from history. From the on-the-ground, year-by-year perspective, you have Eohippus very, very slowly looking more and more like a horse, so slowly that at no point do you really notice them changing from Eohippus to horse. We just arbitarily decided that the total gene pool back then was "Eohippus" and today it is "horse"; and even, say, the modern horse genetic pool is probably more diverse than any arbitrary Eohippus and many of its descendants. The idea of a "species" in general only makes sense to us because almost everything that ever lived is dead. > by this logic you can claim that "there's no bright line between the colors" Well...there isn't. If you're dialing up light-frequencies a thousandth of a nanometer at a time from 400nm to 700nm, there's no point where you say "this is purple" and the next thousandth-meter adjustment you say "this is blue." I'm not sure we're talking about the same things.
    - ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
      >> They only look distinct because the fossil record does not include every horse-ancestor who ever lived.. no, they look distinct because they belong to different species. >> there's no point where you say "this is purple" and the next thousandth-meter adjustment you say "this is blue." umm, there are discrete "blue" and "purple" points. to state the opposite is plain ridiculous :)

Amezarak 10y ago

> That said though - we DO clearly observe speciation in the paleo records (assuming you won't be claiming that Eohippus == Modern Horse) Sure, because we're looking at a big gap in time. An Eohippus never gave birth to a horse, though. There were intermediate organisms in between E and H. But as I said, there's no bright line you can point to and say one Eohippus is one species and its immediate progeny are another. Put another way, if you have H(n), H(n+1), H(n+2), H(n+3)...and so on, there's no point at which you can say H(n+m) and H(n+m+1) are different species. But sure, you can compare H(n) and H(n+2000) and say they're different species. The line is inherently fuzzy. It disappears whenever you look too closely. Only when you zoom out is it present. If you concede that natural selection leads to small changes, you have therefore conceded that it leads to speciation.

ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
>> But as I said, there's no bright line you can point to and say one Eohippus is one species and its immediate progeny are another. by this logic you can claim that "there's no bright line between the colors" because there are shades between them. there are discreet species in the Eohippus -> Modern Horse lineage however just like there's color white and color black. there are also "subspecies" out there like polar bears being essentially grizzly bears who adapted to living in the arctic but again this doesn't negate the existence of distinct species in their lineage. >> If you concede that natural selection leads to small changes, you have therefore conceded that it leads to speciation. and by this logic taking a CS101 class equals to graduating with a masters degree. sympatric speciation (or rather lack of proof in this area) has been a thorn in darwinists' collective sides since the day "the origin of species" came out and is a huge hole in the whole "emergence of new species via natural selection" narrative. so huge as a matter of fact that after couple of hundreds of years of trying to figure out how it works they decided it wasn't all that important :)
- Amezarak 10y ago
  > again this doesn't negate the existence of distinct species in their lineage. There's only distinct species from the million-years-view. They only look distinct because the fossil record does not include every horse-ancestor who ever lived - the vast majority of them are gone from history. From the on-the-ground, year-by-year perspective, you have Eohippus very, very slowly looking more and more like a horse, so slowly that at no point do you really notice them changing from Eohippus to horse. We just arbitarily decided that the total gene pool back then was "Eohippus" and today it is "horse"; and even, say, the modern horse genetic pool is probably more diverse than any arbitrary Eohippus and many of its descendants. The idea of a "species" in general only makes sense to us because almost everything that ever lived is dead. > by this logic you can claim that "there's no bright line between the colors" Well...there isn't. If you're dialing up light-frequencies a thousandth of a nanometer at a time from 400nm to 700nm, there's no point where you say "this is purple" and the next thousandth-meter adjustment you say "this is blue." I'm not sure we're talking about the same things.
  - ChemicalWarfare 10y ago
    >> They only look distinct because the fossil record does not include every horse-ancestor who ever lived.. no, they look distinct because they belong to different species. >> there's no point where you say "this is purple" and the next thousandth-meter adjustment you say "this is blue." umm, there are discrete "blue" and "purple" points. to state the opposite is plain ridiculous :)