Philosophy Discussion Forums

Anthony Edgar wrote:
If creation is true, we would expect to see the sudden appearance of fully formed creatures in the fossil record.  What does the fossil record reveal?  The sudden appearance of fully formed creatures. 
If the Bible is correct when is says life on earth is less than 6000 years old, we would expect the fossil record to reveal little or no evidence of speciation (assuming speciation occurs).  What does the fossil record reveal?  Little or no evidence of speciation.  

By your own standards, then, creationism has been falsified, because the fossil record is full of species which show gradual transitions from an original ancestral form to a different form. The best examples are probably the evolution of the whale from a land-dwelling mammal, the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, and the evolution of humans from their common ancestor with chimpanzees. In each case, we have a sequence of fossils (though in each case, some of the more recent remains are not yet fossilized) found in successive rock layers, with each form exhibiting features in-between the forms on either side of it in the sequence. If creationism were true, we would expect to find all these forms coexisting within the same rock layers, rather than being laid down in sequence. If God did in fact create each separate form, He did so by killing off each ancestral species, then immediately replacing it with an only very slightly different species. (Okay, I know it's a little more complicated than this, as sometimes multiple similar forms can be found in the same layers but I'm trying not to write a book here. It doesn't invalidate the sequence, though, as certain forms are always lower than others within the sequence.)

In addition, we can observe speciation occurring today. There are ring species, such as the Greenish Warbler, where a single species has spread out from a certain starting point around a geographical feature such as a mountain or a valley. As these populations spread around said geographical feature, each branch accumulates genetic changes, such that when the branches of the population finally get around the geographical barrier and meet on the other side, the two populations at the ends can no longer interbreed. However, these end populations can breed with their neighbors on their own side of the geographical barrier. If there weren't all those populations in the middle of the ring that could interbreed, we would call the end populations different species, because they're reproductively isolated. This is speciation in action. We would not expect this to occur if species could not change over time.

The next step would be the transition to being a species capable of hybridization, but not of producing viable offspring. The best example of this would be horses and donkeys. Though they can successfully breed with each other, their offspring are infertile. There are other examples of this, too, such as lions and tigers. However, lions and horses cannot interbreed successfully with each other. Why would this happen under the creationist model? Why would only some creatures be able to produce hybrid offspring? Evolution explains this perfectly, as species which can hybridize are closely related, that is, they share a recent common ancestor, and have not yet diversified so much from each other as to have achieved total reproductive isolation.

The fossil record is full of examples of speciation, too. Over and over again, we observe a pattern of a single form diversifying into multiple forms, and then each of those forms diversifying again. Dinosaurs would be a simple example of this, with dinosaurs starting out small, and then gradually growing more diverse, with some forms becoming truly gigantic. Moreover, even if there were no fossils whatsoever, the genetic evidence for speciation and common ancestry is overwhelming all on its own. If you look at the human genome, for example, you can see that we share a lot of DNA with other primates such as the great apes, less DNA with other mammals like cats and mice, even less DNA with other chordates like reptiles and amphibians, and so on, with us even sharing tiny amounts of our DNA sequences with plants and bacteria.

I'd provide sources to back up these claims, but I'm too new right now to post links. However, it should be no problem for you to look up my examples on google or wikipedia to check my facts.

Anthony Edgar wrote: My point was, (macro)evolution is touted as perhaps the greatest discovery in the history of science, but I find it telling that speciation has never been observed and no one has managed to find any use for it in applied science.  So the possibility remains that it may be a false theory (such thoughts are heresy to an atheist, I know, as macroevolution is an essential component of atheist theology).  

Talking about predictions in nature when evaluating a scientific theory ... one would expect that such an important "fact" as (macro)evolution would be eminently useful in applied science - not perfectly useless!  So, based on the evidence, I remain deeply skeptical.

...

Regardless of whatever  "evidence" you want to believe or whatever semantic games you want to play, the fact is your beloved macroevolution is an irrelevance in the real world, i.e., in applied science.  It's only raison d'être is to serve the psychological needs of atheists - theology masquerading as scientific fact, that's all it is.  Whether one believes in macroevolution or not, it makes not a jot of difference to applied science.  And let's face it - applied science is the only science that matters.   

(Post abridged for the sake of clarity)

Your claim that macroevolution has no relevance to applied science is patently false. As I said before, I'm too new to post links, but I'm sure that, should you actually care to look my examples up, it shouldn't take you long to find them.

Macroevolution (and oh how I hate that term, as it is a distinction without a difference) has been shown to be extremely useful in fields such as computer science, engineering, and medicine. Evolutionary algorithms have been used to find optimal solutions to questions in game theory and to improve the designs of airplanes. Anyone who studies HIV will point out that knowing its classification as a lentivirus, related to similar viruses in horses, cats, and monkeys, is useful for developing treatments to combat the disease.

Another excellent example of macroevolutionary theory at work in the applied sciences is the discovery of Tiktalik. Neil Shubin and his colleagues were able to work out in advance exactly what rock layer they could expect to find a transition between fish and amphibians, went there, and found exactly what they were looking for.

Andrian wrote:...

Dear Andrian,

I have successfully challenged the big three before you; in fact, I just gave up the continuation of debating them. The big three being Dark Matter, Anthony Edgar and Felix. Felix clearly demonstrated that he gladly and willingly defies logic, to Dark Matter it is self-admittedly more important to be loyal to ideals than to the truth, and Anthony Edgar resorts to snide remarks when cornered by logic. That has been exactly my experience with these three, anyway.

When I first started to argue with them, someone (forgot now who, bless his or her heart) warned me that I'll just exhaust myself trying to reply and defeat their arguments by logic.

In my opinion these three, and maybe others as well, are COMPLETELY impervious to logical reasoning when it comes to defending tenets of the Christian faith. All arguments are futile. I have given up on responding to their criticisms.

There is a fourth one, forgot his or her identifier, who occasionally inserts a cut-and-paste job, quite a long one, which lists the four reasons why Darwinian evolution is logically impossible.

This is a private opinion of mine: there seems to be a fundamentalist league that has descended on this philosophy forum to destroy all rational thought that may harm the belief of the faithful. I don't know what can be done about this. We just have to endure them.

You do as you please, of course, but my suggestion is to not respond to the claims of Dark Matter, Anthony Edgar, and Felix, because it leads to endlessly trying to prove them wrong, which is easily done if you ask my opinion, but to get them to admit to that is impossible.

If you have the patience, you may want to look up past discussions between me and any one of the three.

Truth be told, and pay respect where it's due, there are some philosophers here who are also deeply Christian, and they do NOT pretend to ignore reason. They (at least one) are respectful, and appreciate that their world view is one such, not the be-all-and-end-all. The big three, as I called them, however, are in my opinion obstinately opinionated, to the frustration of those who have tried to reason with them.

Renee, thank you for the warning. I'll keep that in mind. Obviously, if I come to the conclusion that someone is not arguing in good faith, I'll probably start ignoring them. As it stands now, of course, I'd like to at least participate in the discussion, which is why I decided to engage with someone who held an opposing viewpoint.

Renee wrote:Truth be told, and pay respect where it's due, there are some philosophers here who are also deeply Christian, and they do NOT pretend to ignore reason.

Let me guess, these are the Christians who believe in (macro)evolution; that Adam and Eve weren't real people; that humans decended from ape-like creatures, etc. If so, they are deceived and brainwashed Christians, whose aptitude for true science is as pitiful as their aptitude for theology.

Renee wrote:Truth be told, and pay respect where it's due, there are some philosophers here who are also deeply Christian, and they do NOT pretend to ignore reason.

Anthony Edgar wrote:Let me guess, these are the Christians who believe in (macro)evolution; that Adam and Eve weren't real people; that humans decended from ape-like creatures, etc. If so, they are deceived and brainwashed Christians, whose aptitude for true science is as pitiful as their aptitude for theology.

I am deeply indebted to you for placing this post, Anthony Edgar. You proved (or rather, demonstrated positively) the claim I made that you create snide remarks.

As an added bonus, you created a clear enough picture for others to see how you are likely to respond to statements that can be taken as critical to the fundamentalist beliefs of the Christian faith.

Renee wrote: ... They (at least one) are respectful, and appreciate that their world view is one such, not the be-all-and-end-all.

... unlike those who claim that science is the be-all-and-end-all, which leads them to conclude that a) dead matter can do magical things; and b) the spiritual realm is nonsense that only superstitious fools believe in.

-- Updated December 6th, 2016, 9:35 pm to add the following --

I forgot to mention that Gould and Eldredge's Punctuated Eqilibrium is really just a rehash of spontaneous generation. Perhaps this is why PE theory went nowhere - it's too silly even for evolutionary biologists.

-- Updated December 6th, 2016, 9:40 pm to add the following --

Renee wrote:
As an added bonus, you created a clear enough picture for others to see how you are likely to respond to statements that can be taken as critical to the fundamentalist beliefs of the Christian faith.

"fundamentalist beliefs"? No, they're just Christian beliefs.

@Greta

Hi Greta, how are you?

Greta wrote:"Macro evolution" is a term recently embraced by theists because their initial claims that evolution was not real at all were so obviously disproved by fossil evidence and antibiotic resistance.

May I ask you what fossil "evidence" you are talking about? How old were they assumed to be and what method was used to date them? I am asking you respectfully to clarify this issue that you raised.

Anthony Edgar wrote: ... unlike those who claim that science is the be-all-and-end-all, which leads them to conclude that a) dead matter can do magical things; and b) the spiritual realm is nonsense that only superstitious fools believe in.

I think you may be confused about what science is. Science is a method of rational inquiry into the natural world based on empiricism. The natural world is any part of reality that can be observed. Some claim that science cannot say anything about the supernatural, but to say that is to admit that the supernatural is unobservable, and has no observable effects on reality. The spiritual realm, up to this point, has not been observed, which is why many people, myself included, do not believe in such a thing. What has been observed, however, is that humans have a proclivity for superstition, and that superstition leads to the belief in things that are not observable.

As for dead matter doing magical things, I am unaware of any scientist who believes that matter ever does anything magical. I'm guessing you're referring to abiogenesis, in which nonliving matter slowly became more complex until eventually it became living matter. This is not a magical process. There's good chemistry to back it up, and a strong precedent for it, as nonliving matter becomes living matter every day. Plants are constantly converting nonliving carbon dioxide from the air into living matter. Carnivores turn the dead matter of corpses into the living matter of their own bodies. Virtually all life on earth converts dead matter into living matter all the time. There's nothing magical about this process - it's just chemistry in action.

Anthony Edgar wrote:-- Updated December 6th, 2016, 9:35 pm to add the following --

I forgot to mention that Gould and Eldredge's Punctuated Eqilibrium is really just a rehash of spontaneous generation. Perhaps this is why PE theory went nowhere - it's too silly even for evolutionary biologists.

Um... Punctuated Equilibrium is nothing like spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation is the now defunct belief that rotting meat turned into flies, that grain turned into mice, and that mud turned into frogs. Punctuated Equilibrium, which is actually a part of the neo-Darwinian synthesis as far as I understand, is the idea that organisms undergo very little change for long periods of time, followed by short periods during which they experience a lot of change. (Of course these "short" and "long" periods are relative terms measured more in numbers of generations than in actual time spans. An organism might remain relatively static for 300 generations, and then within the space of 30 generations undergo a lot of change due to changing environmental pressures.)

Gould and Eldredge are often misunderstood by laymen as saying that one organism suddenly gives birth to an entirely different organism, or that the fossil record shows no evidence of transitional species, but this is incorrect. They were arguing against Gradualism, which is the belief that organisms undergo slow, constant change toward different forms. There are two reasons for their position. For one thing, generally in the fossil record, we find a lot of morphologically similar creatures, which are then replaced by a lot of creatures which are obviously related to the older form, but with significant differences. If Gradualism were true, we wouldn't expect to find distinct groups like this, but instead a smooth, unbroken gradient where it was hard to tell where one species stopped and another began. For another, Gould and Eldredge observed that environments tend to remain fairly stable for long periods of time, which means that once an organism reaches an optimal form, it is likely to stay there until the environment changes to favor a different form.

Renee: Felix clearly demonstrated that he gladly and willingly defies logic.

Where did I do that? I have said there are limits to what logic can demonstrate, that's all.

Andrian wrote:By your own standards, then, creationism has been falsified, because the fossil record is full of species which show gradual transitions from an original ancestral form to a different form.

Here are some quotes that suggest otherwise:-

Stephen Jay Gould: "All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms" ... "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.  The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."

George Gaylord Simpson (late Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology, Harvard University):  "In spite of these examples, it remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that new species, genera and families, and nearly all new families above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual and completely continuous transitional sequences."

Alfred S. Romer (late Prof. of Zoology, Harvard University): "A (fossil) record of pre-Cambrian life, it appears, simply does not exist ... All in all, there is no satisfactory answer to the pre-Cambrian riddle."

David M. Raup (Prof. of Geology, University of Chicago): "Also there is probably some wishful thinking involved.  In the years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable progressions.  In general, these have not been found - yet the optimism has died hard and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks."

Robert Barnes (in his book, Invertebrate Beginnings):  "The fossil record tells us almost nothing about the evolutionary beginnings of phyla and classes.  Intermediate forms are nonexistent, undiscovered and not recognized."

Prof. E. J. H. Corner (Botany Department of Cambridge University):  "... but I  still think that, to the unprejudiced,  the fossil record of plants is in fovour of special creation."

The best examples are probably the evolution of the whale from a land-dwelling mammal, the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, and the evolution of humans from their common ancestor with chimpanzees. In each case, we have a sequence of fossils (though in each case, some of the more recent remains are not yet fossilized) found in successive rock layers, with each form exhibiting features in-between the forms on either side of it in the sequence.

Whale evolution - a landlubbing, vegetarian, deer-like creature decided that the ocean was the place to be (for some mysterious reason) and develops a taste for seafood.  Somehow it's nose ends up top of its head, it front legs turn into flippers and its rear legs fuse into a tail.  Makes so much sense! ...  and we're to believe that this absurd tale is empirically recorded in the fossils.  Yeah, right. 
-----------------------
Richard Dawkins: "To put up a single famous fossil like Archaeopteryx panders to a fallacy."
-----------------------
"All these trees of life with their branches of our (ape-like) ancestors, that's a load of nonsense."  Mary Leakey, archeologist and paleo-anthropologist.

Richard C. Lewontin, Prof. of Zoology, Harvard: "Look, I'm a person who says in this book [Human Diversity, 1982], that we don't know anything about the ancestors of the human species.  All the fossils that have been dug up and are claimed to be ancestors, we haven't the faintest idea whether they are ancestors ... All you've got is Homo sapiens there, you've got that fossil there, you've got another fossil there ... and it's up to you to draw the lines.  Because there are no lines."  

In addition, we can observe speciation occurring today. There are ring species, such as the Greenish Warbler, where a single species has spread out from a certain starting point around a geographical feature such as a mountain or a valley. As these populations spread around said geographical feature, each branch accumulates genetic changes, such that when the branches of the population finally get around the geographical barrier and meet on the other side, the two populations at the ends can no longer interbreed. However, these end populations can breed with their neighbors on their own side of the geographical barrier. If there weren't all those populations in the middle of the ring that could interbreed, we would call the end populations different species, because they're reproductively isolated. This is speciation in action. We would not expect this to occur if species could not change over time.

The different strains of Greenish Warblers in the ring, regardless of whether they can interbreed or not, nevertheless all belong to the same species - yet you claim "speciation" has occurred?  I don't think so.  
Furthermore, how can say with any certainty that the process in this Greenish Warbler example has the potential to evolve a deer into a whale. or some ape-like creature into a human? 

The next step would be the transition to being a species capable of hybridization, but not of producing viable offspring. The best example of this would be horses and donkeys. Though they can successfully breed with each other, their offspring are infertile.

It seems to me that this "next step" - producing infertile offspring - represents an evolutionary dead-end.

Your claim that macroevolution has no relevance to applied science is patently false ... Macroevolution (and oh how I hate that term, as it is a distinction without a difference) has been shown to be extremely useful in fields such as computer science, engineering, and medicine. Evolutionary algorithms have been used to find optimal solutions to questions in game theory and to improve the designs of airplanes. Anyone who studies HIV will point out that knowing its classification as a lentivirus, related to similar viruses in horses, cats, and monkeys, is useful for developing treatments to combat the disease.

I'm not referring to ideas, models or theories - I talking about speciation itself.  As for medicine, can you give me an example therein of a use for speciation?  Your AIDS example sounds like no more than an idea, as in a theory embellishing another theory, not an actual use of speciation. Viruses mutate, but I'm not aware of any treatment for AIDS that involves one species of virus evolving into another species of virus.

Another excellent example of macroevolutionary theory at work in the applied sciences is the discovery of Tiktalik. Neil Shubin and his colleagues were able to work out in advance exactly what rock layer they could expect to find a transition between fish and amphibians, went there, and found exactly what they were looking for.

First of all, Tiktalik isn't an example of applied science. Finding a fossil is not a practical use; it amounts to no more than finding (perceived) evidence to support a theory. Furthermore, have fans of Tiktalik ever considered that one "success" is statisically insignificant and can therefore be attributed to luck?

-- Updated December 8th, 2016, 8:56 pm to add the following --

Renee wrote:Anthony Edgar resorts to snide remarks when cornered by logic.

It's a very sad day when the sublime thoughts of an intellectual giant not only go unappreciated, but are regarded as no more than "snide remarks". Renee, you have no idea of whom you're dealing with - my IQ has been measured at 9.8 and it took me a mere ten years to graduate from primary school (ie, Grade 1-7). I didn't make it to high school on account of "mental problems"' related to my genius.

-- Updated December 8th, 2016, 9:00 pm to add the following --

Daviddunn wrote:@Greta

Hi Greta, how are you?

Greta wrote:"Macro evolution" is a term recently embraced by theists because their initial claims that evolution was not real at all were so obviously disproved by fossil evidence and antibiotic resistance.

May I ask you what fossil "evidence" you are talking about? How old were they assumed to be and what method was used to date them? I am asking you respectfully to clarify this issue that you raised.

While you're at it, Greta, please explain what relevance antibiotic resistance has to speciation.

Just another theist wrote:

Greta wrote:"Macro evolution" is a term recently embraced by theists because their initial claims that evolution was not real at all were so obviously disproved by fossil evidence and antibiotic resistance.

While you're at it, Greta, please explain what relevance antibiotic resistance has to speciation.

Basically your theist pals were performing exorcisms on people afflicted with bacterial disease until science revealed the truth.

Some speciation material for you to study. I do trust that, if you are going to debunk the claims, that you yourself also conduct rigorous molecular testing on which to base your opinion. After all, it wouldn't do to just make stuff up and make physical claims without testing or having a robust mathematical model, would it?

http://www.pnas.org/content/102/suppl_1/6550.full.pdf

If one begins with the assumption that they know the truth as revealed by God then anything that appears to contradict that truth must be false. When science seems to confirm their beliefs they appeal to science, but when science contradicts their beliefs they either claim that it is not science or that science is not a reliable source of knowledge. They appeal to evidence when it seems to favor their beliefs but when it contradicts their beliefs they insist that evidence is irrelevant.They quote evolutionary biologists out of context to make it appear that they are saying something other than they actually are of simply misquote them. But it may be a bit unfair to blame them for this since more often than not they are simply repeating what others have said and do not bother to check the sources and read what was actually said in context. Typically it does not matter because they are not interested in discovering the truth, they are only interested in defending what they believe to know is the truth.

Anthony Edgar wrote: Here are some quotes that suggest otherwise:-

This is a philosophy of science forum. I don't really need to explain why quote mining isn't an acceptable form of argumentation, do I?

Anthony Edgar wrote: Whale evolution - a landlubbing, vegetarian, deer-like creature decided that the ocean was the place to be (for some mysterious reason) and develops a taste for seafood.  Somehow it's nose ends up top of its head, it front legs turn into flippers and its rear legs fuse into a tail.  Makes so much sense! ...  and we're to believe that this absurd tale is empirically recorded in the fossils.  Yeah, right. 

I don't know why you think it's so strange that a land-dwelling creature might become semi-aquatic, or that a semi-aquatic creature might become aquatic. Let's use the hippo, a close relative of the whale, as an example. Hippos are at home on land and in the water. They're herbivores, and from what I understand eat both terrestrial grasses and aquatic plant life. For a creature living along the coastline, being able to diversify your diet to include marine plants could be an advantage. In addition, going into the water could be a good way to avoid land predators. If, over time, one lineage of these creatures started to spend more and more time in water, we could expect to see adaptations for the water being favored by natural selection. Webbed feet, for example, would help with swimming, improving mobility in the water, and would be the first step toward turning feet with discrete digits into flippers. And, as the creature becomes more adapted to life in the water, its diet is likely to diversify to include marine animals as well as plants. At this point, the ancestor of the whale would probably have been something akin to a seal or sea otter. As time went on and the whale ancestors spent more and more time in the water and less and less time on land, they would pick up even more adaptations for living in the sea, such as losing their back legs in favor of a powerful, hydrodynamic tail and streamlined body. Having the nostrils on top of the head would mean that the creature wouldn't have to expend as much energy to get its head above the surface of the water to breathe. So in principle, just sitting in our armchairs musing about how something like a deer might turn into a whale, none of these changes are ridiculous. We know the process by which each could happen and why they would be favored by natural selection.

As soon as I'm allowed to post links, I'll link you to pictures of the fossils which show these kinds of transitions, though seriously, a simple google search is all it takes to find this information. Don't be lazy. Look it up. You certainly have the time and energy to pull quotes from famous scientists out of context to make it seem like they support your point, so you have no excuse.

Anthony Edgar wrote: -----------------------
Richard Dawkins: "To put up a single famous fossil like Archaeopteryx panders to a fallacy."
-----------------------
"All these trees of life with their branches of our (ape-like) ancestors, that's a load of nonsense."  Mary Leakey, archeologist and paleo-anthropologist.

Richard C. Lewontin, Prof. of Zoology, Harvard: "Look, I'm a person who says in this book [Human Diversity, 1982], that we don't know anything about the ancestors of the human species.  All the fossils that have been dug up and are claimed to be ancestors, we haven't the faintest idea whether they are ancestors ... All you've got is Homo sapiens there, you've got that fossil there, you've got another fossil there ... and it's up to you to draw the lines.  Because there are no lines."  

Once again, these are quote mines. I don't know what Mary Leakey is on about off the top of my head, but the other two are pretty easy to figure out.

Richard Dawkins is probably saying not to just use Archaeopteryx or any other single transitional fossil as an example of the evolutionary transition. We have LOTS of fossils indicating the transition from dinosaurs to birds. In fact, recently a dinosaur tail was even found encased in amber, covered in feathers. But seriously, there are SO many examples that using just Archaeopteryx is silly. There's Anchiornis, Confuciusornis, Sinornis, and Ichthyornis, just to name a few. Again, a simple google search can turn up TONS of these transitions, as well as pictures of their fossils and their associated dates.

As for the quote from Richard C. Lewontin, while it's not as clear what his actual intent is, he's probably referring to the fact that there are so many fossils on the human evolutionary tree that it's hard to tell which are our direct ancestors and which are more like our cousins. However, back in 1982, the Human Genome Project was far from completed, and we now have the ability to sequence the genomes of some of the more recent, non-fossilized finds. This is how we know, for example, that Neanderthals were not our ancestors, but a closely-related species which we actually were able to (limitedly) interbeed with. Still, the evidence for human evolution is overwhelming, and no scientist worth their PhD would tell you otherwise. Again, all it takes to find the evidence is a simple google search.

Anthony Edgar wrote: The different strains of Greenish Warblers in the ring, regardless of whether they can interbreed or not, nevertheless all belong to the same species - yet you claim "speciation" has occurred?  I don't think so.  
Furthermore, how can say with any certainty that the process in this Greenish Warbler example has the potential to evolve a deer into a whale. or some ape-like creature into a human? 

First, the Greenish Warbler is not fully speciated yet. It is in the process of speciating. As I pointed out, all that would need to happen for the varieties at opposite ends of the ring to be considered a different species would be for the populations in the middle of the ring to be wiped out somehow.

As for the process being the same, it's very simple. Reproduction with heritable variation and natural selection. However, your claim was that speciation doesn't happen, and I gave you an example of speciation in progress. There are other examples where we've observed total speciation within a human lifetime, too. Scientists were able to successfully create a new species of fruit fly in a lab, for example... back in 1971. (Dobzhansky, Th., and O. Pavlovsky, 1971. "An experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila", Nature 23:289-292.) Again, google is your friend. It's not hard to find this information. Speciation occurs. Deal with it.

Anthony Edgar wrote: It seems to me that this "next step" - producing infertile offspring - represents an evolutionary dead-end.

Uh... no. Horses and donkeys can still produce fertile offspring within their own populations. Sure, it's a dead end to try and bring the populations back together once they've speciated, but that's exactly what evolution predicts. Now that the populations are separated, they can adapt for different environmental and ecological niches, and there's the possibility that both horses and donkeys could speciate again at some point in the future, such that there would be two species of horses and two species of donkeys.

Anthony Edgar wrote: I'm not referring to ideas, models or theories - I talking about speciation itself.  As for medicine, can you give me an example therein of a use for speciation?  Your AIDS example sounds like no more than an idea, as in a theory embellishing another theory, not an actual use of speciation. Viruses mutate, but I'm not aware of any treatment for AIDS that involves one species of virus evolving into another species of virus.

So, now you're moving the goalposts on me, eh? You start off talking about macroevolution having no value in applied science, and then when I give you examples of macroevolution being used in applied science, you switch to talking about speciation. Also, treatments for HIV are generally designed to try to prevent the virus from evolving to resist the treatment, not to try and get the virus to evolve. Knowing how adaptive HIV is and how the virus predictably mutates under given situations as a result of evolutionary pressures is vital to finding a treatment. I admit that here we're at the point where my lay knowledge of the subject is at its limit. Microbiology is well outside my field of expertise. I'd link you to a video made by an actual microbiologist who studies lentiviruses, but once again I'm not allowed yet.

Another excellent example of macroevolutionary theory at work in the applied sciences is the discovery of Tiktalik. Neil Shubin and his colleagues were able to work out in advance exactly what rock layer they could expect to find a transition between fish and amphibians, went there, and found exactly what they were looking for.

First of all, Tiktalik isn't an example of applied science. Finding a fossil is not a practical use; it amounts to no more than finding (perceived) evidence to support a theory. Furthermore, have fans of Tiktalik ever considered that one "success" is statisically insignificant and can therefore be attributed to luck?

Anthony Edgar wrote: It's a very sad day when the sublime thoughts of an intellectual giant not only go unappreciated, but are regarded as no more than "snide remarks". Renee, you have no idea of whom you're dealing with - my IQ has been measured at 9.8 and it took me a mere ten years to graduate from primary school (ie, Grade 1-7). I didn't make it to high school on account of "mental problems"' related to my genius.

This... explains a lot.

Anthony Edgar wrote: While you're at it, Greta, please explain what relevance antibiotic resistance has to speciation.

Again with shifting the goalposts, Anthony! This is a philosophy forum, and you'll have to do better if you want to be taken seriously by philosophers. No logical fallacies allowed!

Antibiotic resistance is an amazing example of evolution at work because it shows how a population can change over time. Originally, only a tiny proportion of disease-causing bacteria were resistant to antibiotics, which is why the drugs worked so well. However, today, most of the disease-causing bacteria (descended from those original populations) are resistant to antibiotics. Why do you think that might be? Could it be that the bacteria that were resistant to antibiotics had a survival advantage over the ones that weren't resistant, and that these reproduced more successfully in an environment filled with antibiotics? That's evolution - heritable variation and natural selection. Macroevolution is just that process happening over a longer time period and producing larger changes.

Anthony Edgar wrote: First of all, Tiktalik isn't an example of applied science. Finding a fossil is not a practical use; it amounts to no more than finding (perceived) evidence to support a theory. Furthermore, have fans of Tiktalik ever considered that one "success" is statisically insignificant and can therefore be attributed to luck?

Somehow I missed this section of your reply.

Ummm... are you kidding me? Do you even know what applied science is? And how is predicting the location of an as-yet undiscovered fossil of no practical use? Seems quite practical to me. If you want to find a specific kind of fossil, you need to know where to look for it, so as not to waste your time and money digging in the wrong spot. This feat is actually quite similar to Mendeleev predicting the properties of gallium before the element was ever discovered.

I'm also pretty sure you're using statistical significance incorrectly here. I don't even know what kind of data set we'd be looking at, so calculating statistical significance would be very difficult indeed.

While we're at it, let's consider the ability of creationists to predict the location of fossils based on the Flood story in Genesis. Where are all the horse fossils found in the same layers as dinosaurs? Where are the human fossils in Cambrian rock layers? Where are the bird fossils that predate Arcosaurs? Any of these finds would turn the Theory of Evolution on its head and win the person who discovered them a Nobel Prize.

Andrian wrote:As soon as I'm allowed to post links, I'll link you to pictures of the fossils which show these kinds of transitions, though seriously, a simple google search is all it takes to find this information.

I am interested in this too, but I will wait for you to post these links as soon as you are able to. I am not in a hurry, I can wait. You seem to be knowledgeable about the theory of evolution by natural selection, and I am student of this theory. I have been looking for information on this subject and there is this question that I have been asking those who know about the theory of evolution but no one has yet answered me this. I am interested in knowing how old were these fossil "evidence", and how was its age determined from a scientific point of view?