Haw! ANOTHER "missing link" discovered!

[Seymour Flops]

If you don't mind my asking, what is it about Darwinism that you disagree with?

Toddsterpatriot

I don't mind, at all. Caveat: In a short post, I can only skim the surface.

As a political issue, my main disagreement is quasi-religious fervor with which Darwinists cling to this idea. It is a non-scientific hypothesis, that cannot be tested. It is fine as an idea, but not as something we are expected to swallow whole as factual and to join in with the politically driven bullying of non-believers. It shouldn't be a political issue at all.

As a supposed science, I understand that it is not subject to experimentation, so it is not science in that sense, but natural history. As with other kinds of history, we look at what the past left behind to try to figure out what happened in the past. We can't prove any of it.

My main disagreement is how fantastically unlikely the process is.

Here is how one step in changes brought about by Darwinian evolution is supposed to happen:

1) A random mutation occurs, that causes the offspring of two members of a species to be the same species, but with a new trait.

2) That trait causes that individual to survive longer and reproduce more* than the other members of the same species.

3) When reproducing, that trait is passed on to the individual's offspring - even though that individual had to mate with an individual who did not have that new trait.

4) The descendants of that one individual - with a new trait created by a random mutation - survive and reproduce with such greater efficiency than the rest of the population that they replace the other non-mutated members or they move to a new habitat.

5) The new mutated version of the species is still the same species - otherwise the original mutant could not have mated with anyone - so with all those sub-steps, Darwinian evolution has still not take place with that one step.

6) Many (dozens? hundreds? thousands? millions?) of such coincidentally beneficial mutations take place, each time replacing non-mutated members or moving away from them, until finally the multiple mutated individuals are unable to mate and reproduce with the original non-mutated versions and so have become a new species.

There are 2.9 billion bits of information in human DNA, each of which supposedly evolved through the process described above, in less than 5 billion years. That's just human evolution The same thing happened for catfish, bumblebees and all other species.

Another disagreement along the same lines is the uselessness of transitional mutations in increasing survival and reproduction. "Transitional mutation" is my term. Darwinists do not have a term for it, because it is not a topic with which they are comfortable. Transitional mutations are the intermediate steps between an original species and a new species with a beneficial feature, such as a wing, or an eye.

For example, a wing helps a flying animal survive and reproduce. No one would argue that. But how did a non-winged animal evolve wings? More correctly, how did a series of random mutations produce a species similar to an existing species, but with wings?

If flying bats evolved from a non-flying rodent, how did that process start?

The Darwinist answer is this: Two non-flying rodents conceived a randomly mutated individual who had a physical feature that was a step in the direction of a wing (presumably a pair of them). That feature, while not a functioning wing, allowed that individual to survive and reproduce in much greater numbers than its non-mutated fellow species members. It passed that feature on, by mating with a non-mutated member or members.

Then, later (years? decades? centuries?) another completely random mutation occurred that moved that feature further in the direction of a working wing or wings. Though the wings are not yet working and will not for many, many more mutations, this future wing is somehow already aiding survival and reproduction to the point of excluding other members.

Is that completely impossible? No, but it is so unlikely that we must acknowledge that there is likely something very significant missing from that model.

According to Darwinian logic, flying evolved in mammals, insects, and reptiles, independently of each other. So that lengthy multi-step random process that led to flight happened at least three times. By coincidence.

Darwinists do have an explanation for this wing evolution. I'll leave it to one of them to post it. I don't know how to describe it without seeming to parody it.

*In actual fact, it is only the reproduce part that is important in evolution. If a random mutation caused an individual to only live half as long, but to have twice as many offspring (which all had the beneficial trait), that would satisfy the Darwinist requirement. "Survival of the fittest" should actually be "reproduction of the most fertile" or some such.

 

[Seymour Flops]

HUN, the world has progressed quite a bit and you obviously do not understand how much information can be extracted from the tiniest of things at this point.

Exploratorium : Evidence : Extracting DNA from Neanderthal Bones

annex.exploratorium.edu

But you specified that particular fossil.

Tell me about it.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

He doesn't seem like he's a moron. Maybe you haven't asked the right question and he's not feeling very forthcoming because he senses you aren't genuine in your quest. But I could be wrong. I am still asking soup questions so my opinion is subject to change.

Posts #10 and #15 point toward moron.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Link? isn't an argument, it's a question.

Are you a moron? < That's another question.

You win, Toddster!

 

[james bond]

You're LYING Again
You only believe in god-guided/"designed" 'evolution' which is NOT evolution, but serial creationism.
100% Fraudulent post.
If species can't evolve into one another they were CREATED roughly as is.
NO choice.
NOT evolution.

`

PS: the OCD troll 'ding' is now on ignore due to endless stalking and gratuitous harassment of my threads/posts in Environment with repeat and already answered baits. Recently even following me down here to the Sci section where he doesn't post, just to do the same. ie, Look at his 6, 7, 8. (and counting) vengeful out of control/No content snippets. Obsessed Mad Dog even taking third party swipes as well as nonsense one-line 'replies.' (nothing to shoot at in Env this AM, so he's here. He's GOT to have his Hate/endless losses sated.)

So much for your mensa claim.

An intelligent person would provide the correct response and not have to resort to ad hominem attacks. You don't have the correct answer so are easily frustrated. You even have to attack a second person. You are such a loser.

 

[ding]

As a political issue, my main disagreement is quasi-religious fervor with which Darwinists cling to this idea. It is a non-scientific hypothesis, that cannot be tested. It is fine as an idea, but not as something we are expected to swallow whole as factual and to join in with the politically driven bullying of non-believers. It shouldn't be a political issue at all.

Yeah, it does seem to have its fair share of "religious" fanatics, that's for sure. But most of them don't know the first thing about science.

As a supposed science, I understand that it is not subject to experimentation, so it is not science in that sense, but natural history. As with other kinds of history, we look at what the past left behind to try to figure out what happened in the past. We can't prove any of it.

That's true. It's not really testable. It's inferred. I think it's fair to say that the nature of life is to complexify though. And it has done so through a logical process.

My main disagreement is how fantastically unlikely the process is.

Here is how one step in changes brought about by Darwinian evolution is supposed to happen:

1) A random mutation occurs, that causes the offspring of two members of a species to be the same species, but with a new trait.

2) That trait causes that individual to survive longer and reproduce more* than the other members of the same species.

3) When reproducing, that trait is passed on to the individual's offspring - even though that individual had to mate with an individual who did not have that new trait.

4) The descendants of that one individual - with a new trait created by a random mutation - survive and reproduce with such greater efficiency than the rest of the population that they replace the other non-mutated members or they move to a new habitat.

5) The new mutated version of the species is still the same species - otherwise the original mutant could not have mated with anyone - so with all those sub-steps, Darwinian evolution has still not take place with that one step.

6) Many (dozens? hundreds? thousands? millions?) of such coincidentally beneficial mutations take place, each time replacing non-mutated members or moving away from them, until finally the multiple mutated individuals are unable to mate and reproduce with the original non-mutated versions and so have become a new species.

Which is why I believe in punctuated equilibrium. Genetic mutations. Nature filling a need. It's clear that life is a system; connected.

There are 2.9 billion bits of information in human DNA, each of which supposedly evolved through the process described above, in less than 5 billion years. That's just human evolution The same thing happened for catfish, bumblebees and all other species.

Another disagreement along the same lines is the uselessness of transitional mutations in increasing survival and reproduction. "Transitional mutation" is my term. Darwinists do not have a term for it, because it is not a topic with which they are comfortable. Transitional mutations are the intermediate steps between an original species and a new species with a beneficial feature, such as a wing, or an eye.

For example, a wing helps a flying animal survive and reproduce. No one would argue that. But how did a non-winged animal evolve wings? More correctly, how did a series of random mutations produce a species similar to an existing species, but with wings?

If flying bats evolved from a non-flying rodent, how did that process start?

The Darwinist answer is this: Two non-flying rodents conceived a randomly mutated individual who had a physical feature that was a step in the direction of a wing (presumably a pair of them). That feature, while not a functioning wing, allowed that individual to survive and reproduce in much greater numbers than its non-mutated fellow species members. It passed that feature on, by mating with a non-mutated member or members.

Then, later (years? decades? centuries?) another completely random mutation occurred that moved that feature further in the direction of a working wing or wings. Though the wings are not yet working and will not for many, many more mutations, this future wing is somehow already aiding survival and reproduction to the point of excluding other members.

Is that completely impossible? No, but it is so unlikely that we must acknowledge that there is likely something very significant missing from that model.

According to Darwinian logic, flying evolved in mammals, insects, and reptiles, independently of each other. So that lengthy multi-step random process that led to flight happened at least three times. By coincidence.

Darwinists do have an explanation for this wing evolution. I'll leave it to one of them to post it. I don't know how to describe it without seeming to parody it.

*In actual fact, it is only the reproduce part that is important in evolution. If a random mutation caused an individual to only live half as long, but to have twice as many offspring (which all had the beneficial trait), that would satisfy the Darwinist requirement. "Survival of the fittest" should actually be "reproduction of the most fertile" or some such.

Life is an interconnected system. Nature filling its needs.

 

[ding]

Posts #10 and #15 point toward moron.

I challenged him on that in my first post in the thread, post #20. He explained it in post #21. You might want to read that one.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Yeah, it does seem to have its fair share of "religious" fanatics, that's for sure. But most of them don't know the first thing about science.

That's true. It's not really testable. It's inferred. I think it's fair to say that the nature of life is to complexify though. And it has done so through a logical process.

Which is why I believe in punctuated equilibrium. Genetic mutations. Nature filling a need. It's clear that life is a system; connected.


Life is an interconnected system. Nature filling its needs.

I don't know much about punctuated equilibrium, other than a vague idea of what it means. I'll look into it.

Clearly, there is more going on than randomness. There is something that wants - or behaves as if it wants - life to multiply and spread to fill all the life-sustaining niches of Earth. Darwinists speak of this, but then immediately add that it is only an analogy, and that everything is really random.

 

[Hollie]

I don't mind, at all. Caveat: In a short post, I can only skim the surface.

As a political issue, my main disagreement is quasi-religious fervor with which Darwinists cling to this idea. It is a non-scientific hypothesis, that cannot be tested. It is fine as an idea, but not as something we are expected to swallow whole as factual and to join in with the politically driven bullying of non-believers. It shouldn't be a political issue at all.

As a supposed science, I understand that it is not subject to experimentation, so it is not science in that sense, but natural history. As with other kinds of history, we look at what the past left behind to try to figure out what happened in the past. We can't prove any of it.

My main disagreement is how fantastically unlikely the process is.

Here is how one step in changes brought about by Darwinian evolution is supposed to happen:

1) A random mutation occurs, that causes the offspring of two members of a species to be the same species, but with a new trait.

2) That trait causes that individual to survive longer and reproduce more* than the other members of the same species.

3) When reproducing, that trait is passed on to the individual's offspring - even though that individual had to mate with an individual who did not have that new trait.

4) The descendants of that one individual - with a new trait created by a random mutation - survive and reproduce with such greater efficiency than the rest of the population that they replace the other non-mutated members or they move to a new habitat.

5) The new mutated version of the species is still the same species - otherwise the original mutant could not have mated with anyone - so with all those sub-steps, Darwinian evolution has still not take place with that one step.

6) Many (dozens? hundreds? thousands? millions?) of such coincidentally beneficial mutations take place, each time replacing non-mutated members or moving away from them, until finally the multiple mutated individuals are unable to mate and reproduce with the original non-mutated versions and so have become a new species.

There are 2.9 billion bits of information in human DNA, each of which supposedly evolved through the process described above, in less than 5 billion years. That's just human evolution The same thing happened for catfish, bumblebees and all other species.

Another disagreement along the same lines is the uselessness of transitional mutations in increasing survival and reproduction. "Transitional mutation" is my term. Darwinists do not have a term for it, because it is not a topic with which they are comfortable. Transitional mutations are the intermediate steps between an original species and a new species with a beneficial feature, such as a wing, or an eye.

For example, a wing helps a flying animal survive and reproduce. No one would argue that. But how did a non-winged animal evolve wings? More correctly, how did a series of random mutations produce a species similar to an existing species, but with wings?

If flying bats evolved from a non-flying rodent, how did that process start?

The Darwinist answer is this: Two non-flying rodents conceived a randomly mutated individual who had a physical feature that was a step in the direction of a wing (presumably a pair of them). That feature, while not a functioning wing, allowed that individual to survive and reproduce in much greater numbers than its non-mutated fellow species members. It passed that feature on, by mating with a non-mutated member or members.

Then, later (years? decades? centuries?) another completely random mutation occurred that moved that feature further in the direction of a working wing or wings. Though the wings are not yet working and will not for many, many more mutations, this future wing is somehow already aiding survival and reproduction to the point of excluding other members.

Is that completely impossible? No, but it is so unlikely that we must acknowledge that there is likely something very significant missing from that model.

According to Darwinian logic, flying evolved in mammals, insects, and reptiles, independently of each other. So that lengthy multi-step random process that led to flight happened at least three times. By coincidence.

Darwinists do have an explanation for this wing evolution. I'll leave it to one of them to post it. I don't know how to describe it without seeming to parody it.

*In actual fact, it is only the reproduce part that is important in evolution. If a random mutation caused an individual to only live half as long, but to have twice as many offspring (which all had the beneficial trait), that would satisfy the Darwinist requirement. "Survival of the fittest" should actually be "reproduction of the most fertile" or some such.

That long, tedious list, largely stolen from the Disco'tute has many errors typically perpetrated by ID'iot creationer ministries.

 

[ding]

I don't know much about punctuated equilibrium, other than a vague idea of what it means. I'll look into it.

Clearly, there is more going on than randomness. There is something that wants - or behaves as if it wants - life to multiply and spread to fill all the life-sustaining niches of Earth. Darwinists speak of this, but then immediately add that it is only an analogy, and that everything is really random.

The universe is an intelligence creating machine. It's literally written into the fabric of matter.

George Wald: Life and Mind in the Universe

Although some Darwinists may say everything is random, the ones who actually know the theory will admit that changes happen for logical reasons.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

You win, Toddster!

Obviously.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I challenged him on that in my first post in the thread, post #20. He explained it in post #21. You might want to read that one.

Post #21 didn't explain post #10.

 

[ding]

Post #21 didn't explain post #10.

View attachment 596974

Nevermind. It's not worth the work.

 

[alang1216]

Toddsterpatriot: Where are all the fossils that refute evolution?

They all do.

Sorry but none of them do and we have trillions of them. You may say they don't prove evolution but they certainly don't refute it.

 

[alang1216]

Long periods of stasis followed by rapid changes - which is the norm in the geologic record - and leaves gaps (aka lack of transitional fossils) in the fossil record go against Darwin's idea of slight successive changes.

Check out punctuated equilibrium. It fits the fossil record better than Darwin's model does.

Actually the two are no incompatible. I think what is happening is that slight successive changes don't take that long to appear and propagate, in terms of geologic time anyway. Once they're made and the selection pressure is relieved, stasis.

 

[abu afak]

I don't mind, at all. Caveat: In a short post, I can only skim the surface.

As a political issue, my main disagreement is quasi-religious fervor with which Darwinists cling to this idea. It is a non-scientific hypothesis, that cannot be tested. It is fine as an idea, but not as something we are expected to swallow whole as factual and to join in with the politically driven bullying of non-believers. It shouldn't be a political issue at all.

As a supposed science, I understand that it is not subject to experimentation, so it is not science in that sense, but natural history. As with other kinds of history, we look at what the past left behind to try to figure out what happened in the past. We can't prove any of it.

My main disagreement is how fantastically unlikely the process is.

Here is how one step in changes brought about by Darwinian evolution is supposed to happen:

1) A random mutation occurs, that causes the offspring of two members of a species to be the same species, but with a new trait.

2) That trait causes that individual to survive longer and reproduce more* than the other members of the same species.

3) When reproducing, that trait is passed on to the individual's offspring - even though that individual had to mate with an individual who did not have that new trait.

4) The descendants of that one individual - with a new trait created by a random mutation - survive and reproduce with such greater efficiency than the rest of the population that they replace the other non-mutated members or they move to a new habitat.

5) The new mutated version of the species is still the same species - otherwise the original mutant could not have mated with anyone - so with all those sub-steps, Darwinian evolution has still not take place with that one step.

6) Many (dozens? hundreds? thousands? millions?) of such coincidentally beneficial mutations take place, each time replacing non-mutated members or moving away from them, until finally the multiple mutated individuals are unable to mate and reproduce with the original non-mutated versions and so have become a new species.

There are 2.9 billion bits of information in human DNA, each of which supposedly evolved through the process described above, in less than 5 billion years. That's just human evolution The same thing happened for catfish, bumblebees and all other species.

Another disagreement along the same lines is the uselessness of transitional mutations in increasing survival and reproduction. "Transitional mutation" is my term. Darwinists do not have a term for it, because it is not a topic with which they are comfortable. Transitional mutations are the intermediate steps between an original species and a new species with a beneficial feature, such as a wing, or an eye.

For example, a wing helps a flying animal survive and reproduce. No one would argue that. But how did a non-winged animal evolve wings? More correctly, how did a series of random mutations produce a species similar to an existing species, but with wings?

If flying bats evolved from a non-flying rodent, how did that process start?

The Darwinist answer is this: Two non-flying rodents conceived a randomly mutated individual who had a physical feature that was a step in the direction of a wing (presumably a pair of them). That feature, while not a functioning wing, allowed that individual to survive and reproduce in much greater numbers than its non-mutated fellow species members. It passed that feature on, by mating with a non-mutated member or members.

Then, later (years? decades? centuries?) another completely random mutation occurred that moved that feature further in the direction of a working wing or wings. Though the wings are not yet working and will not for many, many more mutations, this future wing is somehow already aiding survival and reproduction to the point of excluding other members.

Is that completely impossible? No, but it is so unlikely that we must acknowledge that there is likely something very significant missing from that model.

According to Darwinian logic, flying evolved in mammals, insects, and reptiles, independently of each other. So that lengthy multi-step random process that led to flight happened at least three times. By coincidence.

Darwinists do have an explanation for this wing evolution. I'll leave it to one of them to post it. I don't know how to describe it without seeming to parody it.

*In actual fact, it is only the reproduce part that is important in evolution. If a random mutation caused an individual to only live half as long, but to have twice as many offspring (which all had the beneficial trait), that would satisfy the Darwinist requirement. "Survival of the fittest" should actually be "reproduction of the most fertile" or some such.

So no answer to my last.
In fact you confirm the accusation.

You do NOT believe in evolution between species. Period. Impossible in your description above.

That's why you don't like 'Darwinism'.. it IS the Real Scientific evolution.
You only want to call 'evolution' a god-guided/DesignER process which is NOT the real scientific definition of evolution but Religion/theism with a designER.
You're a FRAUD twisting actual meaning to your own ID/Creationism from it's main theme: Darwin.

And again it's not only "designER," it's creationism, since 'species can't morph into one another' they must have been put/created here roughly as is.
Of course even then most of the "DesignER's" 'creations' have gone Extinct/Failed as design.

`

 

[Seymour Flops]

So no answer to my last.
In fact you confirm the accusation.

I don't know what "my last," is. I'm not tracking you that closely.

You do NOT believe in evolution between species. Period. Impossible in your description above.

Evolution "between species" as you put it, may have happened. My description is of evolution driven by the Darwinian theory.

Was any part of my description inaccurate? If not, then you are saying that Darwinian evolution is impossible.

That's why you don't like 'Darwinism'.. it IS the Real Scientific evolution.
You only want to call 'evolution' a god-guided/DesignER process which is NOT the real scientific definition of evolution but Religion/theism with a designER.
You're a FRAUD twisting actual meaning to your own ID/Creationism from it's main theme: Darwin.

And again it's not only "designER," it's creationism, since 'species can't morph into one another' they must have been put/created here roughly as is.
Of course even then most of the "DesignER's" 'creations' have gone Extinct/Failed as design.

`

It isn't creationism.

If you want to argue with a creationist, you'll have to be patient and wait until one comes on the forum.

Sorry.

 

[alang1216]

My main disagreement is how fantastically unlikely the process is.

Here is how one step in changes brought about by Darwinian evolution is supposed to happen:

1) A random mutation occurs, that causes the offspring of two members of a species to be the same species, but with a new trait.

2) That trait causes that individual to survive longer and reproduce more* than the other members of the same species.

3) When reproducing, that trait is passed on to the individual's offspring - even though that individual had to mate with an individual who did not have that new trait.

4) The descendants of that one individual - with a new trait created by a random mutation - survive and reproduce with such greater efficiency than the rest of the population that they replace the other non-mutated members or they move to a new habitat.

5) The new mutated version of the species is still the same species - otherwise the original mutant could not have mated with anyone - so with all those sub-steps, Darwinian evolution has still not take place with that one step.

6) Many (dozens? hundreds? thousands? millions?) of such coincidentally beneficial mutations take place, each time replacing non-mutated members or moving away from them, until finally the multiple mutated individuals are unable to mate and reproduce with the original non-mutated versions and so have become a new species.

Except that is not Darwinism, that is your strawman. Darwin's famous finches came to the Galapagos and managed to survive long enough to reproduce. Like all populations there was variations in their traits. We're not all the same size are we? On some islands the finches with larger more powerful beaks found more food and passed that trait on to their offspring. Finches with smaller beaks didn't do as well and had fewer, less robust offspring. The population slowly had more of the genes for big beaks over time, in fact, big beaks may have been an advantage in finding mates since they would have been healthier and better fed. If some of that island's population ended up on other islands, the populations would have been kept apart by their mating preferences.

Simplistic maybe but not impossible or even improbable.

Another disagreement along the same lines is the uselessness of transitional mutations in increasing survival and reproduction. "Transitional mutation" is my term. Darwinists do not have a term for it, because it is not a topic with which they are comfortable. Transitional mutations are the intermediate steps between an original species and a new species with a beneficial feature, such as a wing, or an eye.

There is no such term because there is no such thing. Every trait that evolves gives an advantage to the animal or plant. Every step in the evolution of the eye conveyed advantage to the animal.

 

[Seymour Flops]

Except that is not Darwinism, that is your strawman. Darwin's famous finches came to the Galapagos and managed to survive long enough to reproduce. Like all populations there was variations in their traits. We're not all the same size are we? On some islands the finches with larger more powerful beaks found more food and passed that trait on to their offspring. Finches with smaller beaks didn't do as well and had fewer, less robust offspring. The population slowly had more of the genes for big beaks over time, in fact, big beaks may have been an advantage in finding mates since they would have been healthier and better fed. If some of that island's population ended up on other islands, the populations would have been kept apart by their mating preferences.

That's really not an example that you want to hold up in an informed discussion. I know "Darwin's Finches" are talked about in junior high textbooks, but more advanced textbooks avoid them. You misstate even the junior high version.

The point of the finches as a supposed exemplar of Darwinian evolution is not that the "larger more powerful beaks" were always better and therefore all the finches had developed large powerful beaks. If that were true, Darwin would have found nothing but large beaked finches, which would show no change. The idea is that each island had different food sources for the birds, with different kinds of beaks being most useful for each one. Therefore the different species evolved.

Unfortunately for that theory, they are not different species.

In a bold and thought-provoking paper published in 2014 in Biological Reviews, “Sisyphean evolution in Darwin's finches,” Bailey D. McKay and Robert M. Zink challenge the fundamental premise of this textbook example of speciation in Darwin's Finches. They present a detailed morphological analysis to complement previous genetic analyses of the six putative species of ground finch in the genus Geospiza that form the Darwin's Finch complex, and report that there is insufficient genetic and morphological divergence among populations to support species-level taxonomic ranks for these finch populations. Instead, in opposition to deep-rooted conventional thinking by evolutionary biologists, McKay and Zink propose that populations of Darwin's finches are “transient morph” that have diverged in bill size and body size under strong selection for ability to use local seed resources, but that shifting adaptive landscapes and gene flow among islands constantly erode morphological and genetic differences among populations and thwart speciation.

. . .

McKay and Zink make a strong case that there is only one species of ground finch, and that rather than unveiling the process of speciation, the Darwin's Finch case study shows that local adaptation and morphological divergence under the influence of natural selection are not sufficient to initiate speciation. In their challenge to entrenched orthodoxy regarding speciation in Darwin's Finches, McKay and Zink are deserving of the Katma Award.

Katma Award 2015, to Bailey McKay and Robert Zink

The Katma Award of the Cooper Ornithological Society is intended to encourage the formulation of new ideas that could change the course of thinking about the bi

academic.oup.com

I know that that's a lot to digest for a person with only a junior high understanding of evolution. To put it more simply: the finches have different beaks because finches with certain beaks reproduced better on particular islands. But they are still the same species. Move the population of one island to another and in several generations, the descendants of those newcomers will have the beaks appropriate for that island.

Here is another explanation:

No New Species​

The textbooks are wrong, says ornithologist Robert Zink of the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History. The ground finches may seem to be different species, at least with superficial comparison, but they’re stuck in what he calls Sisyphean evolution. “Species kind of get started, but . . . they never make it to the top of the hill,” Zink says.

In a recent paper in Biological Reviews, Zink helps make the case. “None of these ‘species’ are distinct,” he says. The various ground finches don’t differ significantly in ways that usually differentiate bird species, such as plumage patterns or song. Unlike with discrete species, these features aren’t stable and can vary over just a few generations, depending on weather and food availability. Sequences of their nuclear and mitochondrial DNA show little variation and none of the telltale signs that suggest distinct species.

Are Darwin's Finches One Species or Many?

Darwin’s finches are icons of evolution, but scientists disagree about what exactly they represent.

www.discovermagazine.com

Simplistic maybe but not impossible or even improbable.


There is no such term because there is no such thing. Every trait that evolves gives an advantage to the animal or plant. Every step in the evolution of the eye conveyed advantage to the animal.

Really? What was the very first step and what advantage did it convey?

Feel free to either guess, or give evidence, so long as you are honest about it if you are guessing.

 

[Hollie]

That's really not an example that you want to hold up in an informed discussion. I know "Darwin's Finches" are talked about in junior high textbooks, but more advanced textbooks avoid them. You misstate even the junior high version

The point of the finches as a supposed exemplar of Darwinian evolution is not that the "larger more powerful beaks" were always better and therefore all the finches had developed large powerful beaks. If that were true, Darwin would have found nothing but large beaked finches, which would show no change. The idea is that each island had different food sources for the birds, with different kinds of beaks being most useful for each one. Therefore the different species evolved.

Unfortunately for that theory, they are not different species.

In a bold and thought-provoking paper published in 2014 in Biological Reviews, “Sisyphean evolution in Darwin's finches,” Bailey D. McKay and Robert M. Zink challenge the fundamental premise of this textbook example of speciation in Darwin's Finches. They present a detailed morphological analysis to complement previous genetic analyses of the six putative species of ground finch in the genus Geospiza that form the Darwin's Finch complex, and report that there is insufficient genetic and morphological divergence among populations to support species-level taxonomic ranks for these finch populations. Instead, in opposition to deep-rooted conventional thinking by evolutionary biologists, McKay and Zink propose that populations of Darwin's finches are “transient morph” that have diverged in bill size and body size under strong selection for ability to use local seed resources, but that shifting adaptive landscapes and gene flow among islands constantly erode morphological and genetic differences among populations and thwart speciation.

. . .

McKay and Zink make a strong case that there is only one species of ground finch, and that rather than unveiling the process of speciation, the Darwin's Finch case study shows that local adaptation and morphological divergence under the influence of natural selection are not sufficient to initiate speciation. In their challenge to entrenched orthodoxy regarding speciation in Darwin's Finches, McKay and Zink are deserving of the Katma Award.

Katma Award 2015, to Bailey McKay and Robert Zink

The Katma Award of the Cooper Ornithological Society is intended to encourage the formulation of new ideas that could change the course of thinking about the bi

academic.oup.com

I know that that's a lot to digest for a person with only a junior high understanding of evolution. To put it more simply: the finches have different beaks because finches with certain beaks reproduced better on particular islands. But they are still the same species. Move the population of one island to another and in several generations, the descendants of those newcomers will have the beaks appropriate for that island.

Here is another explanation:

No New Species​

The textbooks are wrong, says ornithologist Robert Zink of the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of Natural History. The ground finches may seem to be different species, at least with superficial comparison, but they’re stuck in what he calls Sisyphean evolution. “Species kind of get started, but . . . they never make it to the top of the hill,” Zink says.

In a recent paper in Biological Reviews, Zink helps make the case. “None of these ‘species’ are distinct,” he says. The various ground finches don’t differ significantly in ways that usually differentiate bird species, such as plumage patterns or song. Unlike with discrete species, these features aren’t stable and can vary over just a few generations, depending on weather and food availability. Sequences of their nuclear and mitochondrial DNA show little variation and none of the telltale signs that suggest distinct species.

Are Darwin's Finches One Species or Many?

Darwin’s finches are icons of evolution, but scientists disagree about what exactly they represent.

www.discovermagazine.com

Really? What was the very first step and what advantage did it convey?

Feel free to either guess, or give evidence, so long as you are honest about it if you are guessing.

''To put it more simply: the finches have different beaks because finches with certain beaks reproduced better on particular islands.''

You inadvertently confirmed some basic precepts of biological evolution: Changes in population over time due to environment and adaptation.

I hope this won't reduce your standing with the folks at the Flat Earth Society.