Evolution, religion, and ignorance.

[Mister Agenda]

You prove the OP's point. You do not understand the Theory of Evolution.

I disagree. I quoted TalkOrigins, which is a fairly well-respected site on evolution. IMO an article on TO carries more weight than the opinions of you or Exlax.

That means you understand how to copy and paste, not that you understand the subject. Demonstrating understanding means using your own words.

The piece said straight out that "The word evolution has a variety of meanings." If you just want to go with their first definition - Evolution is a change in the gene pool of a population over time - then I accept evolution. I fully accept that the gene pool of one generation is not an exact duplication of the generation before it.

Like so. It's clear you have a good general understanding of this part of evolution.

According to TO, that includes some biologists: "Some biologists feel the mechanisms of macroevolution are different from those of microevolutionary change."

Who are these biologists? Why do they think the mechanisms of macroevolutionary change are different from microevolutionary change? Different how? These are very important things to understand before choosing which biologists to agree with.

As noted above, I accept the first definition, as it is demonstrable.

Whereas as macroevolution only has overwhelming evidential support.

[John V]

Whereas as macroevolution only has overwhelming evidential support.

So show it. Exlax is taking a different approach, arguing that micro must necessarily lead to macro.

Oh, and what's your definition of macroevolution?

[Chas]

You prove the OP's point. You do not understand the Theory of Evolution.

I disagree. I quoted TalkOrigins, which is a fairly well-respected site on evolution. IMO an article on TO carries more weight than the opinions of you or Exlax.

It is a newsgroup. It is random people, so you are misguided in thinking there is more credibility there than I or others have.

You have no basis of comparison, you don't actually have any idea of how much people here know because you don't listen.

[Mister Agenda]

Well then you would need to propose a mechanism by which those smaller changes are prevented from accumulating. Until then, the logical view is that small, demonstrable changes will build up, just as it's logical to consider that if I walk solidly in one direction without interruption, I will eventually have walked a mile.

First, you haven't proven that the small changes represent anything new.

When did that become a requirement? Why is it a requirement?

By the first definition, which I accept, a simple example of evolution would be that one generation has 75% brown eye genes and 25% blue eye genes, but the next generation has 74% brown eye genes and 26% blue eye genes. There is nothing new in this form of evolution, and nothing to accumulate.

Do you have a problem with blue eyes first appearing as a mutation?

Second, you haven't proven that changes go solidly in one direction.

Why should changes have to go solidly in one direction for evolution to be true?

Going back to my example, the third generation could have 75% brown eye genes and 25% blue eye genes. This would be evolution from the second generation, but it would have gone nowhere from the first generation.

So? There is no requirement in evolution that allele change accumulate in certain ways in every single generation, especially when the allele presents no special help or hindrance to reproduction.

---

Whereas as macroevolution only has overwhelming evidential support.

So show it. Exlax is taking a different approach, arguing that micro must necessarily lead to macro.

Oh, and what's your definition of macroevolution?

Esquilax is correct that without a mechanism to prevent 'microevolutionary' changes from accumulating, the same mechanisms at work below the species level account for speciation.

Macroevolution is evolution above the species level leading to taxonomic divergence.

Please see one of the other current threads for an information dump on evidence for macroevolution. such as 'Can you give any evidence for Darwin's theory?'.

[Esquilax]

First, you haven't proven that the small changes represent anything new.

I love it when theists bluster in here as though to disprove my claims, only to end up inadvertently demonstrating them to be correct: it's clear your understanding of evolution is lacking, here.

Genetic changes, which comprise the entirety of evolution, are random, and observably do produce "new" things, regardless of whether those new changes are advantageous or not. For example, there's a type of three toed skink in New South Wales that is evolving the ability to birth live young, something the skinks have never been able to do before.

What is that, if not new?

By the first definition, which I accept, a simple example of evolution would be that one generation has 75% brown eye genes and 25% blue eye genes, but the next generation has 74% brown eye genes and 26% blue eye genes. There is nothing new in this form of evolution, and nothing to accumulate.

Demonstrably wrong with regards to newness, as demonstrated above. As to accumulation, should the blue eye genes prove to be an advantageous trait, such that they allow the next generation to breed more, then the propensity for blue eyes will become more entrenched in the next generation simply due to the propagation of blue eyed genes. That's accumulation of blue eyes amongst the population, but it's also worth mentioning that there's rarely only one change occurring at a time. Say the blue eyed generation had a subset that had larger eyes that were able to breed more, and within that subset there was a further subset that had a slightly different shape to their teeth, and so on and so forth. Assuming those traits remained stably advantageous so that they continue to propagate via sheer numbers, in the end you'd have a population that had much larger, exclusively blue eyes with differently shaped teeth and whatever else happened to be positive in their genetic mutations, and yet you're saying that that population wouldn't be a new species no matter how many changes occur?

Second, you haven't proven that changes go solidly in one direction. Going back to my example, the third generation could have 75% brown eye genes and 25% blue eye genes. This would be evolution from the second generation, but it would have gone nowhere from the first generation.

They don't go solidly in one direction. In fact, there are many factors that cause those traits to regress, but that's also evolution. Whales, for example, descend from land dwelling ungulate species that returned to the sea and regained aquatic traits, as demonstrated by fossil and genetic evidence. That's a marked regression, but no matter which way that pendulum swings, the result is still evolution.

Regarding your example, what most likely happened is that the blue eye gene didn't represent a significant breeding or survival advantage, and hence what you're seeing is the usual genetic drift. Again, while that one mutation may not be remarkable, they don't happen alone, and they don't happen in a one-per-person vacuum, either. This is more complex than your oversimplifications.

[Angrboda]

It's said that with the variety available to the average media consumer today, you could spend all your time reading on the internet without ever reading an opinion that differs from your own. Perhaps that's why creationists misunderstand evolution. It's not that they don't try, but their first inclination is to go to a source which agrees with their pre-existing opinions. So an industry of disinformation about evolution feeds on itself and perpetuates the misunderstanding. In that sense, it wouldn't be that they haven't tried to understand evolution, it's that they've tried in a way that is guaranteed to lead to an understanding filled with error.

[pocaracas]

Why don't we quote something with a little more substance (and accuracy)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

Natural selection is the gradual process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment. It is a key mechanism of evolution. The term "natural selection" was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared with artificial selection, now more commonly referred to as selective breeding.

Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evol..._synthesis

The modern evolutionary synthesis is a 20th-century union of ideas from several biological specialties which provides a widely accepted account of evolution. It is also referred to as the new synthesis, the modern synthesis, the evolutionary synthesis, millennium synthesis or the neo-Darwinian synthesis.

The synthesis, produced between 1936 and 1947, reflects the consensus about how evolution proceeds.[1] The previous development of population genetics, between 1918 and 1932, was a stimulus, as it showed that Mendelian genetics was consistent with natural selection and gradual evolution. The synthesis is still, to a large extent, the current paradigm in evolutionary biology.[2]

The modern synthesis solved difficulties and confusions caused by the specialisation and poor communication between biologists in the early years of the 20th century. At its heart was the question of whether Mendelian genetics could be reconciled with gradual evolution by means of natural selection. A second issue was whether the broad-scale changes (macroevolution) seen by palaeontologists could be explained by changes seen in local populations (microevolution).

The synthesis included evidence from biologists, trained in genetics, who studied populations in the field and in the laboratory. These studies were crucial to evolutionary theory. The synthesis drew together ideas from several branches of biology which had become separated, particularly genetics, cytology, systematics, botany, morphology, ecology and paleontology.
[...]
The modern evolutionary synthesis continued to be developed and refined after the initial establishment in the 1930s and 1940s. The work of W. D. Hamilton, George C. Williams, John Maynard Smith and others led to the development of a gene-centered view of evolution in the 1960s. The synthesis as it exists now has extended the scope of the Darwinian idea of natural selection to include subsequent scientific discoveries and concepts unknown to Darwin, such as DNA and genetics, which allow rigorous, in many cases mathematical, analyses of phenomena such as kin selection, altruism, and speciation.

This "Modern Evolutionary Synthesis" is the current model that people usually refer to simply as "Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection".
So, if you want to get the current scientific understanding of how evolution works, this is what you should refer to.

It is a bit of a broad subject so it is understandable that quite a few people find it to be overwhelming.

[Anomalocaris]

It's said that with the variety available to the average media consumer today, you could spend all your time reading on the internet without ever reading an opinion that differs from your own. Perhaps that's why creationists misunderstand evolution. It's not that they don't try, but their first inclination is to go to a source which agrees with their pre-existing opinions. So an industry of disinformation about evolution feeds on itself and perpetuates the misunderstanding. In that sense, it wouldn't be that they haven't tried to understand evolution, it's that they've tried in a way that is guaranteed to lead to an understanding filled with error.

They need, but their indoctrination forecloses any serious possibility of, a completely different definition of "try".

[John V]

I love it when theists bluster in here as though to disprove my claims, only to end up inadvertently demonstrating them to be correct: it's clear your understanding of evolution is lacking, here.

Genetic changes, which comprise the entirety of evolution, are random, and observably do produce "new" things, regardless of whether those new changes are advantageous or not. For example, there's a type of three toed skink in New South Wales that is evolving the ability to birth live young, something the skinks have never been able to do before.

What is that, if not new?

Feel free to support that.

As to accumulation, should the blue eye genes prove to be an advantageous trait, such that they allow the next generation to breed more, then the propensity for blue eyes will become more entrenched in the next generation simply due to the propagation of blue eyed genes.

Maybe, maybe not.

That's accumulation of blue eyes amongst the population, but it's also worth mentioning that there's rarely only one change occurring at a time. Say the blue eyed generation had a subset that had larger eyes that were able to breed more, and within that subset there was a further subset that had a slightly different shape to their teeth, and so on and so forth. Assuming those traits remained stably advantageous so that they continue to propagate via sheer numbers, in the end you'd have a population that had much larger, exclusively blue eyes with differently shaped teeth and whatever else happened to be positive in their genetic mutations, and yet you're saying that that population wouldn't be a new species no matter how many changes occur?

First, I said I don't accept macroevolution because I haven't seen compelling scientific evidence. This isn't compelling scientific evidence.

Second, you give a straight-line scenario, yet below acknowledge that changes don't go solidly in one direction.

[Anomalocaris]

Whereas as macroevolution only has overwhelming evidential support.

So show it. Exlax is taking a different approach, arguing that micro must necessarily lead to macro.

Oh, and what's your definition of macroevolution?

"Macro"evolution is cumulative effect of "Micro"evolution operating over a timescale longer than your can imagine with your pitiful bible addled, jesus besotted brain, but still only an infinitesimal fraction of the time that is in reality available for it to operate.

"Micro" evolution is the steps, "Macro" evolution is the journey. Jesus is the swamp that prevents you from ever taking any sort of journey beyond sad bronze age superstition. No "Macro" evolution beyond sheep fucking bedouin state of mental development for you.