7 ms·

Changing into new species is just a longer time frame of more an more adaptations. Not sure why people aren't able to extrapolate that.

jdthedisciple 2y ago
Maybe that's how fairy tales work, but not science. Changing your chromosome numbers is an entirely different (and unproven to have ever occurred) beast compared to simply expressing some different but previously already present genes due to changing environments (something easily observable). Not sure why people aren't able to grasp that.
- sethammons 2y ago
  What are you talking about? Of course chromosome number changes have been seen: see every Down's syndrome person ever. Had that been an advantageous change, Down's people would be successfully increasing their percentage of the population
  - jdthedisciple 2y ago
    Let's make it extremely simple for you: Can you name a single species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have witnessed? Have I missed the Down-syndrome one (or any analogous known gene mutation) which has been continuously procreating all this time? Besides the fact that Down-syndrome is a terrible example since Down-syndrome-parents would not necessarily produce offspring with the same genetic disorder, hence no speciation-by-random-mutation. I thought people learn this stuff in HS...
    - Thiez 2y ago
      "Species" itself is a vague concept in biology. It makes sense at a HS level like "dog is a different species from elephant" but it breaks down in more complex cases, e.g. lion + tiger. Ring species are also a nice example where individuals from A breed with B so same species, B breeds with C so same species, …, but A does not breed with E so not the same species. If we exterminate the populations B, C, and D, A and E are now definitely different species, so I would argue we could observe speciation that way? But while the populations between them exist, it's more muddled. Since evolution moves slowly there are two ways to see it in action: either you experiment with a species that reproduces very rapidly, or you look at fossil records. For the first type bacteria are usually used, but since bacteria don't have sexual reproduction a naysayer could always cast doubt on whether a new species has truly been created (are any two individual bacteria really the same species? Who can tell, short of verifying base-by-base equality of their DNA), so it won't convince someone who is determined to doubt evolution. For the fossil records we have literal mountains of evidence where the development of existing and extinct species can be observed. But I imagine you won't count that as "witnessing" it happening. I feel like many people who doubt evolution use a standard of evidence that they don't use for any other scientific theory, and probably not for any other area in their life either. Other people have mentioned it already: plate tectonics, almost all of astronomy... we could extend it to history too. Did you witness the founding of the United States? If documented history count as proof of stuff like founding of the US, the civil war, and the first world war, then why don't fossils count as proof of evolution?
      - jdthedisciple 2y ago
        "Species" simply means can interbreed AND produce fertile offspring. This why your lion + tiger is not some special case, it trivially fails the definition: Their offspring are sterile. Now ring species as you describe have not been shown to exist. Let me refer you as well to this brilliant article by an evolutionist explaining that: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-species/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-... In short, the suspected ring species were found to produce fertile offspring when interbreeding at the ring-closing point (!). > The authors [...] found, contrary to previous information, that there are indeed some hybrids (fertile ones, since they backcross) produced where the ring closes at the top, so they aren’t really acting like full biological species. So we cannot be certain that where the ring closes, inter-breeding is impossible, because it has been shown to occur. Further: > In the end, the authors conclude [...]: there are no good examples of ring species in nature --- It's not about "doubting" in a religious sense. As an intellectual and academic I simply reserve the right to challenge and poke holes as rigorously as I can into any theory presented to me. What I found is that speciation-by-random-mutation appears to fail my (admittedly difficult but nonetheless valid) challenge. As for plate tectonics: Look, if I were to say the evidence in my eyes does not support the theory well enough, would that make me unscientific? Of course not! The best counter-example I just posted are ring species - scientists once had extreme confidence in their existence, only to be disappointed after new findings.
        Thiez 2y ago
        The brilliant article you post argues against ring species, but it does so by demonstrating geographic breaks that caused... speciation. So perhaps ring species as a concept sadly aren't as much a thing as was suggested in my HS days (I suppose science moved on, thanks for updating my knowledge) but if you accept the contents of that article then you must also agree that speciation is a thing that happens. But in the interest of considering the topic from an intellectual and academic point of view, what is your proposed alternative explanation for the huge number of species we see today, apart from evolution and speciation?
        2y ago
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Yeah man, totally. Creationists have been pushing this boulder up the hill as long as I can remember. Any day now there will be some aspect of evolution that will stump biologists indefinitely and will never be answered. Meanwhile the proposed alternative seems to be: some dude just created it all and he's supernatural so we can't even conceive of a way to falsify his existence. Talk about fairy tales!
  - jdthedisciple 2y ago
    Fyi, I'm not negating evolution per se. I'm operating strictly within the realm of the empiricism-based scientific method. It should not be so sensitive to scrutiny and skepticism. So creationism or not, let me pose the simple challenge to you as well: Can you name a single species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have actually observed? You see, the hard fact, which many of my beloved scientistic friends have yet to come to terms with, is that technically speaking, the speciation-by-random-mutation is a scientifically invalid hypothesis because it is not even falsifiable. In other words, it is a mere conjecture (and sadly nowadays even a doctrinal belief) like any other, from an honest, objective, naturalistic point of view. But I don't even need to get into that because most of my beloved atheists will already have more of an impulsive emotional reaction to that rather than facing it head-on.
    - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
      "actually observed" Maybe the problem here is you disagree with what an 'observation' is. If you are saying, I must physically see speciation or plate tectonics, myself, within my lifetime. And thus any events that occur over longer time spans, when I'll be dead, and not observing them, thus they cannot be proven? Anything with a long time scale is by your definition, invalid science?
  - nickpsecurity 2y ago
    You’re missing something that science-as-religion made people forget. Science is just one type of knowledge that isn’t even how most people learn most knowledge most of the time. We mostly learn by testimony from sources we trust mixed with experiential learning. Works fine. We also have science. So, we first need to get back to the pre-Hume period where godless, materialistic science wasn’t the answer to all questions or the only way forward. Second, we must be able to say what we’ve always known: it’s OK for science to say “I have no idea. We might never know that because we can’t scientifically observe or test it.” That’s what they should say about the origin of life. What can we know? We can indirectly observe the attributes to take guesses. If not knowing, we can work with God’s design rather than against it. Really, only revelatory knowledge… the Creator telling us… will tell us anything close to the truth. We’ve claimed both. I already posted evidence for the Bible being the Word of God in this thread. People who follow Jesus Christ treat key claims as axioms before layering reasoned statements on top of those and scientific observations. Unlike other faiths, we’ve found no contradictions. Unlike godless science with its axioms, ours lead us somewhere where every action in science should reflect godly character and love for others as commanded. Then, there’s the intelligent design evidence coming from complexity and systems theory. Universe, natural laws, and organic life make the best creations of humans look dumb and inept in comparison. Especially how the universe runs perfectly. Best I’ve seen humans claim is nine 9’s reliability on something way, way simpler. They couldn’t sustain it either.
- shellfishgene 2y ago
  There is lots of evidence in chromosome number changes, mostly duplications. Many grasses that we use as crops, such as wheat, have multiple genome copies and thus a much higher number of chromosomes.
  - jdthedisciple 2y ago
    Same challenge to you: Can you name a single animal species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have witnessed?
    - LegibleCrimson3 2y ago
      Depends on how pedantic you want to be about "speciation". Humans have tons of adaptation just across ethnicities that likely originate in random mutations, sickle-cell anemia being an obvious one. If you're asking for full species change in a laboratory environment (ignoring the fact that what constitutes a "species" is somewhat arbitrary), there have been many studies on that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_speciation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_sp... Claiming that the science is bad because the time scales are large is to discount any hypotheses on large time scales. That blows away nearly all of astronomy and huge potions of geology. That's ridiculous. We can clearly learn about things that have happened in the past by piecing together the mountains of evidence that are available.
      - jdthedisciple 2y ago
        The problem with hypotheses on large time scales is that they are not falsifiable. The even bigger problem is to, despite that, make them into de-facto doctrinal tenants such that any critic is automatically labelled a pseudo-scientific nutcase. The additional problem with the hypothesis at hand (speciation-by-random-mutation) is that it has never been observed and thus confirmed. Now what I just stated are simple objective facts that nobody who understands reasoning from first principles AND is academically honest should have any qualms with.
        2y ago
mbivert 2y ago
> Changing into new species is just a longer time frame of more an more adaptations Strictly speaking, this is a theory, however reasonable. We know from history that life can be surprising, hence, from a truth point of view, it's better to be careful, avoid rushing to conclusions, especially if this implies closing all other doors.
- LegibleCrimson3 2y ago
  Strictly speaking, plate tectonics is a theory as well. I get quite tired of people claiming something as a theory as if it casts doubt on it. Evolution is known and accepted by biologists to be an undeniable fact by all but the most fringe. Even the vast majority of Christian biologists accept this.
  - mbivert 2y ago
    The problem is, conflating theories (beliefs really) with truth is one of the things reproached to past religious people. There's no shame in saying: "we don't know for sure, but this is reasonable so far". If we don't, then we're sowing the seeds for discord for when our theories will need to be updated. And it's reasonable to think that they will, as, so far, most (all?) scientific theories has evolved. IIRC, Darwin's views on evolution require patching e.g. to take into consideration chaotic incidents affecting mortality/genes propagation (e.g. asteroids, epidemics). Maybe if that theory keeps accumulating patches, it'll end up very different from where it started!
    - LegibleCrimson3 2y ago
      The details, yes, but denying the fact that all life as we know it has evolved into what it is now from something markedly different is not at all reasonable. I'm not claiming that the entire body of accepted mechanisms and details about evolution are 100% accurate. I'm claiming that something being a theory is not reasonable grounds to disbelieve it entirely. There is no reasonable disbelief in evolution.
      - 2y ago
Pikamander2 2y ago
The blame for that mostly lies on religion and human ego; the idea that humans gradually evolved like everything else and are no more biologically special than rats or monkeys is too much for some people to handle, so they cling to what they want to hear rather than what they can see with their own eyes.
nickpsecurity 2y ago
Science doesn’t work that way. Many phenomenon that happen in small ways don’t happen in large ways. A person hits a golf ball a long distance, a basketball is round, and therefore it should do that, too. A person observing golf, but not physics, might extrapolate that. It’s not until they experiment with the other claims that they learn the two behave differently. They’ll eventually learn principles of nature that say what’s possible for that small, dense ball is impossible for that larger, hollow ball. Likewise, many mechanisms found in science, esp biology, work only in local ways with limited or no use outside that. They might require their environment to exist to even work at all with no increments allowed. They might also work with other components in a precise way where neither separate nor incomplete combinations will work. For this reason, we can’t extrapolate much in biology without experiments to verify that. Then, I question why you’d be extrapolating that. Observations of the fossil record show no stream of intermediate forms in most species. Instead, we see extinctions followed by fully-grown animals appearing out of nowhere. Today, we observe zero… zero!… animals changing from one type into another. Everything tastes like chicken because the chickens are still chickens. :) So, your default positions should be these things: much evidence from adaptation within existing forms, billion plus examples against macro-evolution happening in a 2,000 year window, large-scale changes causing organism’ deaths, and changes being so hard to humans’ knowledge can’t create novel creature from existing ones. This combination of observed, replicated data should lead you to default on an intelligent designer, God or something else, being needed to create ultra-high-complexity changes to creatures along with it not happening often. Second, you should treat macro-evolution as falsified since it failed all its predictions. It doesn’t bother me as a scientist at all to say God created and sustains the universe by His will. And made man and the animals. And then drives the universe’s machinery to work in the ways we observe, which includes adaptation (micro-evolution). This fits all observations from complexity theory to universe fine-tuning to how all the laws are elegantly connected to the miracle of self-reproducing/maintaining life forms. Then, the Word of God (Bible) separately explains Jesus Christ did it to redeem us from evil to live with our Creator enjoying Him and His creations forever. That’s revelatory, not empirical, knowledge. Studying the creation is great but knowing the Creator is better. Especially seeing Him modify the laws of the universe to makes specific things happen in response to our needs or prayers. If anything, science deepened my knowlege of how powerful and good God must be.

jdthedisciple 2y ago

Maybe that's how fairy tales work, but not science. Changing your chromosome numbers is an entirely different (and unproven to have ever occurred) beast compared to simply expressing some different but previously already present genes due to changing environments (something easily observable). Not sure why people aren't able to grasp that.

sethammons 2y ago
What are you talking about? Of course chromosome number changes have been seen: see every Down's syndrome person ever. Had that been an advantageous change, Down's people would be successfully increasing their percentage of the population
- jdthedisciple 2y ago
  Let's make it extremely simple for you: Can you name a single species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have witnessed? Have I missed the Down-syndrome one (or any analogous known gene mutation) which has been continuously procreating all this time? Besides the fact that Down-syndrome is a terrible example since Down-syndrome-parents would not necessarily produce offspring with the same genetic disorder, hence no speciation-by-random-mutation. I thought people learn this stuff in HS...
  - Thiez 2y ago
    "Species" itself is a vague concept in biology. It makes sense at a HS level like "dog is a different species from elephant" but it breaks down in more complex cases, e.g. lion + tiger. Ring species are also a nice example where individuals from A breed with B so same species, B breeds with C so same species, …, but A does not breed with E so not the same species. If we exterminate the populations B, C, and D, A and E are now definitely different species, so I would argue we could observe speciation that way? But while the populations between them exist, it's more muddled. Since evolution moves slowly there are two ways to see it in action: either you experiment with a species that reproduces very rapidly, or you look at fossil records. For the first type bacteria are usually used, but since bacteria don't have sexual reproduction a naysayer could always cast doubt on whether a new species has truly been created (are any two individual bacteria really the same species? Who can tell, short of verifying base-by-base equality of their DNA), so it won't convince someone who is determined to doubt evolution. For the fossil records we have literal mountains of evidence where the development of existing and extinct species can be observed. But I imagine you won't count that as "witnessing" it happening. I feel like many people who doubt evolution use a standard of evidence that they don't use for any other scientific theory, and probably not for any other area in their life either. Other people have mentioned it already: plate tectonics, almost all of astronomy... we could extend it to history too. Did you witness the founding of the United States? If documented history count as proof of stuff like founding of the US, the civil war, and the first world war, then why don't fossils count as proof of evolution?
    - jdthedisciple 2y ago
      "Species" simply means can interbreed AND produce fertile offspring. This why your lion + tiger is not some special case, it trivially fails the definition: Their offspring are sterile. Now ring species as you describe have not been shown to exist. Let me refer you as well to this brilliant article by an evolutionist explaining that: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-species/ https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-... In short, the suspected ring species were found to produce fertile offspring when interbreeding at the ring-closing point (!). > The authors [...] found, contrary to previous information, that there are indeed some hybrids (fertile ones, since they backcross) produced where the ring closes at the top, so they aren’t really acting like full biological species. So we cannot be certain that where the ring closes, inter-breeding is impossible, because it has been shown to occur. Further: > In the end, the authors conclude [...]: there are no good examples of ring species in nature --- It's not about "doubting" in a religious sense. As an intellectual and academic I simply reserve the right to challenge and poke holes as rigorously as I can into any theory presented to me. What I found is that speciation-by-random-mutation appears to fail my (admittedly difficult but nonetheless valid) challenge. As for plate tectonics: Look, if I were to say the evidence in my eyes does not support the theory well enough, would that make me unscientific? Of course not! The best counter-example I just posted are ring species - scientists once had extreme confidence in their existence, only to be disappointed after new findings.
      - Thiez 2y ago
        The brilliant article you post argues against ring species, but it does so by demonstrating geographic breaks that caused... speciation. So perhaps ring species as a concept sadly aren't as much a thing as was suggested in my HS days (I suppose science moved on, thanks for updating my knowledge) but if you accept the contents of that article then you must also agree that speciation is a thing that happens. But in the interest of considering the topic from an intellectual and academic point of view, what is your proposed alternative explanation for the huge number of species we see today, apart from evolution and speciation?
        2y ago
AlexandrB 2y ago
Yeah man, totally. Creationists have been pushing this boulder up the hill as long as I can remember. Any day now there will be some aspect of evolution that will stump biologists indefinitely and will never be answered. Meanwhile the proposed alternative seems to be: some dude just created it all and he's supernatural so we can't even conceive of a way to falsify his existence. Talk about fairy tales!
- jdthedisciple 2y ago
  Fyi, I'm not negating evolution per se. I'm operating strictly within the realm of the empiricism-based scientific method. It should not be so sensitive to scrutiny and skepticism. So creationism or not, let me pose the simple challenge to you as well: Can you name a single species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have actually observed? You see, the hard fact, which many of my beloved scientistic friends have yet to come to terms with, is that technically speaking, the speciation-by-random-mutation is a scientifically invalid hypothesis because it is not even falsifiable. In other words, it is a mere conjecture (and sadly nowadays even a doctrinal belief) like any other, from an honest, objective, naturalistic point of view. But I don't even need to get into that because most of my beloved atheists will already have more of an impulsive emotional reaction to that rather than facing it head-on.
  - FrustratedMonky 2y ago
    "actually observed" Maybe the problem here is you disagree with what an 'observation' is. If you are saying, I must physically see speciation or plate tectonics, myself, within my lifetime. And thus any events that occur over longer time spans, when I'll be dead, and not observing them, thus they cannot be proven? Anything with a long time scale is by your definition, invalid science?
- nickpsecurity 2y ago
  You’re missing something that science-as-religion made people forget. Science is just one type of knowledge that isn’t even how most people learn most knowledge most of the time. We mostly learn by testimony from sources we trust mixed with experiential learning. Works fine. We also have science. So, we first need to get back to the pre-Hume period where godless, materialistic science wasn’t the answer to all questions or the only way forward. Second, we must be able to say what we’ve always known: it’s OK for science to say “I have no idea. We might never know that because we can’t scientifically observe or test it.” That’s what they should say about the origin of life. What can we know? We can indirectly observe the attributes to take guesses. If not knowing, we can work with God’s design rather than against it. Really, only revelatory knowledge… the Creator telling us… will tell us anything close to the truth. We’ve claimed both. I already posted evidence for the Bible being the Word of God in this thread. People who follow Jesus Christ treat key claims as axioms before layering reasoned statements on top of those and scientific observations. Unlike other faiths, we’ve found no contradictions. Unlike godless science with its axioms, ours lead us somewhere where every action in science should reflect godly character and love for others as commanded. Then, there’s the intelligent design evidence coming from complexity and systems theory. Universe, natural laws, and organic life make the best creations of humans look dumb and inept in comparison. Especially how the universe runs perfectly. Best I’ve seen humans claim is nine 9’s reliability on something way, way simpler. They couldn’t sustain it either.
shellfishgene 2y ago
There is lots of evidence in chromosome number changes, mostly duplications. Many grasses that we use as crops, such as wheat, have multiple genome copies and thus a much higher number of chromosomes.
- jdthedisciple 2y ago
  Same challenge to you: Can you name a single animal species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have witnessed?
  - LegibleCrimson3 2y ago
    Depends on how pedantic you want to be about "speciation". Humans have tons of adaptation just across ethnicities that likely originate in random mutations, sickle-cell anemia being an obvious one. If you're asking for full species change in a laboratory environment (ignoring the fact that what constitutes a "species" is somewhat arbitrary), there have been many studies on that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_speciation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_sp... Claiming that the science is bad because the time scales are large is to discount any hypotheses on large time scales. That blows away nearly all of astronomy and huge potions of geology. That's ridiculous. We can clearly learn about things that have happened in the past by piecing together the mountains of evidence that are available.
    - jdthedisciple 2y ago
      The problem with hypotheses on large time scales is that they are not falsifiable. The even bigger problem is to, despite that, make them into de-facto doctrinal tenants such that any critic is automatically labelled a pseudo-scientific nutcase. The additional problem with the hypothesis at hand (speciation-by-random-mutation) is that it has never been observed and thus confirmed. Now what I just stated are simple objective facts that nobody who understands reasoning from first principles AND is academically honest should have any qualms with.
      - 2y ago

mbivert 2y ago

> Changing into new species is just a longer time frame of more an more adaptations Strictly speaking, this is a theory, however reasonable. We know from history that life can be surprising, hence, from a truth point of view, it's better to be careful, avoid rushing to conclusions, especially if this implies closing all other doors.

LegibleCrimson3 2y ago
Strictly speaking, plate tectonics is a theory as well. I get quite tired of people claiming something as a theory as if it casts doubt on it. Evolution is known and accepted by biologists to be an undeniable fact by all but the most fringe. Even the vast majority of Christian biologists accept this.
- mbivert 2y ago
  The problem is, conflating theories (beliefs really) with truth is one of the things reproached to past religious people. There's no shame in saying: "we don't know for sure, but this is reasonable so far". If we don't, then we're sowing the seeds for discord for when our theories will need to be updated. And it's reasonable to think that they will, as, so far, most (all?) scientific theories has evolved. IIRC, Darwin's views on evolution require patching e.g. to take into consideration chaotic incidents affecting mortality/genes propagation (e.g. asteroids, epidemics). Maybe if that theory keeps accumulating patches, it'll end up very different from where it started!
  - LegibleCrimson3 2y ago
    The details, yes, but denying the fact that all life as we know it has evolved into what it is now from something markedly different is not at all reasonable. I'm not claiming that the entire body of accepted mechanisms and details about evolution are 100% accurate. I'm claiming that something being a theory is not reasonable grounds to disbelieve it entirely. There is no reasonable disbelief in evolution.
    - 2y ago

Pikamander2 2y ago

The blame for that mostly lies on religion and human ego; the idea that humans gradually evolved like everything else and are no more biologically special than rats or monkeys is too much for some people to handle, so they cling to what they want to hear rather than what they can see with their own eyes.

nickpsecurity 2y ago

Science doesn’t work that way. Many phenomenon that happen in small ways don’t happen in large ways. A person hits a golf ball a long distance, a basketball is round, and therefore it should do that, too. A person observing golf, but not physics, might extrapolate that. It’s not until they experiment with the other claims that they learn the two behave differently. They’ll eventually learn principles of nature that say what’s possible for that small, dense ball is impossible for that larger, hollow ball. Likewise, many mechanisms found in science, esp biology, work only in local ways with limited or no use outside that. They might require their environment to exist to even work at all with no increments allowed. They might also work with other components in a precise way where neither separate nor incomplete combinations will work. For this reason, we can’t extrapolate much in biology without experiments to verify that. Then, I question why you’d be extrapolating that. Observations of the fossil record show no stream of intermediate forms in most species. Instead, we see extinctions followed by fully-grown animals appearing out of nowhere. Today, we observe zero… zero!… animals changing from one type into another. Everything tastes like chicken because the chickens are still chickens. :) So, your default positions should be these things: much evidence from adaptation within existing forms, billion plus examples against macro-evolution happening in a 2,000 year window, large-scale changes causing organism’ deaths, and changes being so hard to humans’ knowledge can’t create novel creature from existing ones. This combination of observed, replicated data should lead you to default on an intelligent designer, God or something else, being needed to create ultra-high-complexity changes to creatures along with it not happening often. Second, you should treat macro-evolution as falsified since it failed all its predictions. It doesn’t bother me as a scientist at all to say God created and sustains the universe by His will. And made man and the animals. And then drives the universe’s machinery to work in the ways we observe, which includes adaptation (micro-evolution). This fits all observations from complexity theory to universe fine-tuning to how all the laws are elegantly connected to the miracle of self-reproducing/maintaining life forms. Then, the Word of God (Bible) separately explains Jesus Christ did it to redeem us from evil to live with our Creator enjoying Him and His creations forever. That’s revelatory, not empirical, knowledge. Studying the creation is great but knowing the Creator is better. Especially seeing Him modify the laws of the universe to makes specific things happen in response to our needs or prayers. If anything, science deepened my knowlege of how powerful and good God must be.