PoliticalChic
Diamond Member
Actually they are. Mutations occur all the time and evolution has been shown in many creatures in the here and now. Natural selection is not about creating the critter that will fill this niche.
Natural selection is about all these critters are being mutated all the time and every now and then one of those mutations gives one particular critter a massive advantage over his competitors. That critter prospers and the rest die out. That is an evolutionary step. The Galapagos Islands are a miniature lab of evolution. They are closely tied in geography but each island has species of finches that have evolved to take advantage of whatever that particular island has to offer.
You miss his point.There are no laboratory demonstrations of speciation, millions of fruit flies coming and going while never once suggesting that they were destined to appear as anything other than fruit flies.
More than six thousand years of breeding and artificial selection, barnyard and backyard, have never induced a chicken to lay a square egg or persuade a pig to develop wheels on ball bearing.
In a research survey published in 2001, the evolutionary biologist Joel Kingsolver reported that in sample sizes of more than one thousand individuals, there was virtually no correlation between specific biological traits and either reproductive success or survival. Important issues about selection, he remarked with some understatement, remain unresolved. selection exists at all. Computer simulations of Darwinian evolution fail when they are honest and succeed only when they are not. Thomas Ray has for years been conducting computer experiments in an artificial environment that he has designated Tierra. . . . Sandra Blakeslee, writing for the New York Times, reported the results under the headline Computer Life Form Mutates in an Evolution Experiment: Natural Selection Is Found at Work in a Digital World.
The above from Berlinski's "Devil's Delusion," p. 189-190
So, do you ever use your own words, or do you just rely on other people to argue for you? Let's begin.
Funny, there actually has been lots of laboratory evidence of speciation and evidence of speciation out in the wild. Google 'Richard Lenski.' He's been doing an experiment with e. coli bacteria for the past two decades. It's still ongoing, and he's had some utterly fascinating discoveries. Some of the non-harmful (to humans) e. coli colonies acquired the ability to process citrate, something with demarcates them from the harmful e. coli.
And oh, the fruit fly thing again, hm? Cute. The experiment was over... 600 generations I believe? Lenski's experiment it took 30,000 generations to produce the trait I spoke of above. Evolution takes time.
I don't think you have enough knowledge of biology to know how funny this is. Seriously. Go try looking at pictures of what domesticated animals and plants looked like before humans started controlling their breeding and suiting it to own purposes. They don't look like what they do now, so his assertion that there hasn't been evolution is just silly.
Also, his examples of what evolution should have happened? Now he's just being retarded.
In a research survey published in 2001, the evolutionary biologist Joel Kingsolver reported that in sample sizes of more than one thousand individuals, there was virtually no correlation between specific biological traits and either reproductive success or survival. Important issues about selection, he remarked with some understatement, remain unresolved. selection exists at all.
Ah, the old creationist tactic of quoting from biologists themselves, and trying to appeal to their authority. Someone's new at this game.
They've clipped his quotes right up. We don't know what the survey was about, how it was conducted, or even what the result was. To begin with, all we can get from this paragraph is that specific traits by themselves don't increase or decrease chances of reproduction or survival. But the author of the paragraph tries to make it mean natural selection is false. Which doesn't work when we don't what Kingsolver was even testing for. It's also interesting to note that he probably tested humans (i.e., individuals), and if he did, than the point is moot. Civilization tends to have a negating effect on natural selection.
So, anyone got a link to the research survey? Citation pleeeeease?
Computer simulations of Darwinian evolution fail when they are honest and succeed only when they are not. Thomas Ray has for years been conducting computer experiments in an artificial environment that he has designated Tierra. . . . Sandra Blakeslee, writing for the New York Times, reported the results under the headline Computer Life Form Mutates in an Evolution Experiment: Natural Selection Is Found at Work in a Digital World.
So how is Thomas Ray not honest? How do they fall apart if they are honest? What constitutes an honest computer simulation? This excerpt you've quoted makes a lot of unbacked and uncited statements.
1. "So, do you ever use your own words, or do you just rely on other people to argue for you?"
It's my argument, but Berlinski does such a nice job of tying you in knots, I think I'll keep using his words.
Painful, huh?
2. "the old creationist tactic of quoting from biologists themselves,..."
Pretty smart, huh?
Who better?
3. Now, as I end my refrain, thrust home (btw, that one from Edmond Rostand) :
May you walk behind the elephant in the procession of life!