Differing Models on the Origin of Higher Taxa

[Halfcentaur]

Resorting to ad hominem insults rather than addressing arguments will do nothing to convince anyone of your superior intelligence. It will only suggest your immaturity and inability to defend your position using logic.

What's interesting is he called someone a troll, as if his intentions on this forum are in any way concerned with a discussion. What's this, day 6 now of his zealous denialist crusade?

He generalizes "evos" into a faceless entity that is easily addressed and claims we're all brainwashed and unable to even comprehend his arguments. At yet he's spending multiple hours a day here for almost a week straight pretending he's interested in an honest debate with people he deems unable to converse with him or honestly address his points. This seems a bit of a contradiction.

The pleasant aspect of that is how revealing it is, serving to provide something actually educational in the end.

 

[Wowbagger]

I am not a biologist but I would say ring species are strong evidence of micro summing into macro.

Ring species are, indeed, a very good example of what can emerge in the midst of natural macro-evolution.
They might also destroy certain expectations of created species, for some people.

Though, I hesitate to use that example in debates, because it is too easy for Creationists to say that all the members belong to the same "kind". No, they can't prove it. But, I find other examples are more difficult for them to evade.

That was the originally purpose of this thread. I think it's unlikely a new one would be any more constructive than this one.

Then, we should focus on getting this one back on track.

I think we are spending too much time nitpicking over what constitutes "neo-darwinism", and not enough time on establishing models for macro-evolution.

And, I am spending too much time telling everyone we are spending too much time. So, I for one will just have to drop the issue, after this post.

Those who disagree: I suppose I can't stop you from yammering on about words. But, I urge you to consider developing other ways in which we can get the point across about how the wide variety of taxa can come about through natural processes.

The vast majority of this poster's arguments are deliberate linguistic fallacies.

Then be the example of what we should be arguing about. Don't stoop to that level. Rise above the muck of words, and show 'em you can argue just on scientific results!

 

[randman]

Wowbagger, most creationists believe in speciation. That's not an issue as far as thinking it happens. Young Earth Creationists actually believe in very rapid speciation.

 

[Brainache]

Wowbagger, most creationists believe in speciation. That's not an issue as far as thinking it happens. Young Earth Creationists actually believe in very rapid speciation.

But you are saying that once a new species emerges it can't evolve more new species. That there is some mechanism that stops further evolution after speciation occurs?

 

[fishbob]

Great comment. Forensic science is often about determining whether an intelligent agent is involved. IDers propose to apply the same to biology.

And have done so for many many years.
With no success.

Could this be - a clue?

 

[ThunderChunky]

Nothing makes a higher taxon any different from a lower one other than it's temporal location in the history of life. Obviously no new higher taxa can evolve now, because that would require time travel. The origin of higher taxa were speciation events that occurred a long time ago.

 

[A'isha]

So you are agreeing NeoDarwinism is wrong?

Ok.

No, selectionism isn't wrong. It's just not the primary mechanism.

In other words, it's not just selectionism, it's selectionism AND neutralism AND mutationalism.

And NDs hampered understanding by emphasizing natural selection.

They didn't "hamper" anything, since the neutral and neomutationist theories developed based on evidence that didn't exist yet (or was so new that it was basically creating entirely new branches of science) at the time selectionism achieved its full prominence.

"Started to" but in 2010, they are still trying show evos that ND was wrong, hence the paper, despite data from the 60s showing it was wrong.

No, not wrong. Incomplete. (Or, rather, insufficient)

Nei doesn't deny that natural selection plays a role in evolution (he even admits "at present, we do not know the relative importance of chance and natural selection"). He doesn't see it has having as dominant a role as the selectionists do, but he still thinks selection exists. The argument is not whether neutralism is the whole truth, or selectionism is the whole truth. It's over how much of a role they each play in the overall truth.

The theory of evolution is additive, randman. New theories build on old ones as well as new evidence, and old theories are revised in light of both new theories and new evidence. This is the way the process works.

 

[Myriad]

Trying to find out how my computer works, I looked up explanations online and I find most of the field of cybernetics is stuck in dogmatic Neo-Turingism, which arbitrarily adopts and then later renounces contradictory ideas like CPUism, I/Oism, powersupplyism, and programism. None of them can really explain how my computer works and all you Turingists can't even agree among yourselves so I conclude that you are all in denial of the correct answer, Filmstripism. Filmstripism affirms that computers are "front loaded" with all the images that will ever appear on the screen on long miniature film strips, and simply project those images onto the display screen in sequence in response to all user input. The user input is accurately known in advance by the omniscient UPS drivers who insert the appropriate film strips into computers when they deliver them. This explanation has the advantage that I understand how film strip projectors work, while electronics, binary math, digital logic, and procedural algorithms are hard.

Respectfully,
Myriad

 

[Dinwar]

And have done so for many many years.
With no success.

Could this be - a clue?

Not to mention the fact that many (most?) forensic techniques have never been peer-reviewed. There are some rather infamous cases where "evidence" of arson was found in homes known to have been burned down by wildfires, for example. ID is very much like many aspects of forensics: It really really really WANTS to be science when it grows up, but doesn't want to grow up.

Nothing makes a higher taxon any different from a lower one other than it's temporal location in the history of life. Obviously no new higher taxa can evolve now, because that would require time travel. The origin of higher taxa were speciation events that occurred a long time ago.

Not only time travel, but a tabula rassa. I explained to randman in another of these threads that a major reason we don't see novel phyla arising is competition--there's already so many things here now that there's simply no ROOM for a new phylum to arise. If you look at mass extinctoins you see the radiation of new suits of animals (check out "Future Evolution" by Peter Ward for a full discussion--my normal caveat here applies, in that anything less than 500 pages or so is hopelessly incomplete as a summary of this topic). We also benefit from a few million, hundred million, or billion years of adaptation, depending on what scale you want to talk about, so any new species has all the odds of winning that a new boxer has against a heavyweight champion. It is NOT impossible for new phyla to arise--the whole plant kingdom arose well after the Cambrian Explosion (randman is limiting his analysis to only animals, and thus ignores this) and the entire CE happened well after the rise of metazoans (the Ediacara Period). It's just so increadibly unlikely that we haven't seen it in the last few hundred million years.

The theory of evolution is additive, randman. New theories build on old ones as well as new evidence, and old theories are revised in light of both new theories and new evidence. This is the way the process works.

Creationists always take the normal process of science as evidence that science is wrong. They think that because their book needs to be infalliable for their religion to be correct, our book (always, for some reason, The Origin of the Species) needs to be infalliable or our entire scientific structure falls apart. They don't understand that even if a theory collapses like a house of cards in a tornado scientists will pick through the rubble and, quite often, salvage a few ideas that are useful.

 

[Halfcentaur]

Creationists always take the normal process of science as evidence that science is wrong. They think that because their book needs to be infalliable for their religion to be correct, our book (always, for some reason, The Origin of the Species) needs to be infalliable or our entire scientific structure falls apart. They don't understand that even if a theory collapses like a house of cards in a tornado scientists will pick through the rubble and, quite often, salvage a few ideas that are useful.

A perfect summation really.

 

[Paulhoff]

They don't understand that even if a theory collapses like a house of cards in a tornado scientists will pick through the rubble and, quite often, salvage a few ideas that are useful.

Whereas Creationists will beat the same drum no matter how big the hole is in the drum head and will act as if no change is what is good about their idea.

Paul

 

[randman]

But you are saying that once a new species emerges it can't evolve more new species. That there is some mechanism that stops further evolution after speciation occurs?

No, I am saying evos claim sequential speciation, meaning speciation and then another and then another adds up to macroevolution.

In terms of arguing whether that process is viable, I think there are very sound reasons why it is not, but this thread was aimed to just have some clear understanding of terms, and most of the evos here even failed on that.

 

[randman]

No, selectionism isn't wrong. It's just not the primary mechanism.

That's a HUGE CLAIM on your part, but a very interesting one. If not the primary one, the Modern Synthesis has really fallen apart, and that may well be happening. Neo Darwinism has been a theory in crisis for some time.

 

[RecoveringYuppy]

No, I am saying evos claim sequential speciation, meaning speciation and then another and then another adds up to macroevolution.

In terms of arguing whether that process is viable, I think there are very sound reasons why it is not, but this thread was aimed to just have some clear understanding of terms, and most of the evos here even failed on that.

If you'll just type macroevolution in to the little search box over at wikipedia you'll see it's you who is failing on the terminology. Speciation by itself is macroevolution.

And no one here has denied that the larger clades are higher taxa. That's virtually a definition. No one agrees to your unusual terminology because you appear to be trying to box us in to a strawman.

 

[Dinwar]

In terms of arguing whether that process is viable, I think there are very sound reasons why it is not, but this thread was aimed to just have some clear understanding of terms, and most of the evos here even failed on that.

HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?

For reference, randman has many of his better critics on "Ignore", meaning he's probably reading about 50% of what's said in this thread (and falling).

 

[randman]

No.



In other words, this paper says that the molecular and genomic data uncovered points to a dominant mechanism of evolution that is far closer to the neutralist explanation than to the neo-Darwinist explanation, and that if evolutionary theory is not following neo-Darwinist ideas, it's dead wrong to call it neo-Darwinist.

Again, this is the paper you cited, randman.

So you admit that science shows Neo darwinism to be wrong and consider that a valid point in your favor?

Unbelievable.

 

[randman]

Speciation by itself is macroevolution.

Nope, regardless of what wiki says. Have already posted it and so won't do again of peer-reviewed papers talking of macroevolution being above the species level, not speciation. Whomever wrote the wiki article is just talking out their backside.

 

[Reality Check]

Nope, regardless of what wiki says. Have already posted it and so won't do again of peer-reviewed papers talking of macroevolution being above the species level, not speciation. Whomever wrote the wiki article is just talking out their backside.

Not right, randman.
The Wiki defintion of macroevolution

Macroevolution is evolution on a scale of separated gene pools.[1] Macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs at or above the level of species, in contrast with microevolution,[2] which refers to smaller evolutionary changes (typically described as changes in allele frequencies) within a species or population.[3]
The process of speciation may fall within the purview of either, depending on the forces thought to drive it. Paleontology, evolutionary developmental biology, comparative genomics and genomic phylostratigraphy contribute most of the evidence for the patterns and processes that can be classified as macroevolution. An example of macroevolution is the appearance of feathers during the evolution of birds from theropod dinosaurs.

(emphasis added)
This agrees with other defintions such as TalkOrigins:

In evolutionary biology today, macroevolution is used to refer to any evolutionary change at or above the level of species. It means at least the splitting of a species into two (speciation, or cladogenesis, from the Greek meaning "the origin of a branch", see Fig. 1) or the change of a species over time into another (anagenetic speciation, not nowadays generally accepted [note 1]). Any changes that occur at higher levels, such as the evolution of new families, phyla or genera, are also therefore macroevolution, but the term is not restricted to those higher levels. It often also means long-term trends or biases in evolution of higher taxonomic levels.

So citing (where?) peer-reviewed papers talking of macroevolution being above the species level does not mean anything.
You will have to show that there are no peer-reviewed papers that include speciation in macroevolution.

On the other hand, there are web sites where macroevolution is defined as evolution above the species level, e.g. Evolution 101, but you won't like them because they usually also say macroevolution = microevolution + a long time !

If you look really, really hard you may find a web site supporting your claim that macroevolution never includes speciation and that macroevolution is not microevolution + a long time. Good luck.

 

[Halfcentaur]

So you admit that science shows Neo darwinism to be wrong and consider that a valid point in your favor?

Unbelievable.

Cripes.

This comment shows you are delusional, as so many evos are. Maybe an analogy would help. A guy takes the stand and says he is innocent but admits to a fact that makes him look guilty. By your logic, it is quote-mining or something amiss to bring up the fact he admitted to. After all, he says he's innocent?

This, along with other evo practices, shows evos suffer under delusion and are not doing real science, except in part.

 

[A'isha]

That's a HUGE CLAIM on your part, but a very interesting one.

No, not on my part. Only on the part of someone like you, who seems to have a strawman opinion of the theory of evolution that has nothing whatsoever in common with the actual theory of evolution.

That might be why you keep interpreting things (that don't bother actual scientists one whit) as Giant Crises of Evo Theory. Anomalies aren't problems in evolution. They're opportunities.

If not the primary one, the Modern Synthesis has really fallen apart, and that may well be happening. Neo Darwinism has been a theory in crisis for some time.

No, it hasn't. It has been a theory created without knowledge of modern genomics. But it has certainly been embraced and incorporated into the ideas of neutralists and mutationalists. Not that you'd understand any of that.

So you admit that science shows Neo darwinism to be wrong and consider that a valid point in your favor?

There's your problem. Selectionism isn't wrong, per se. You can't seem to accept that selectionism is being looked at in a new light in terms of things like neutralism, but despite all that it's still accepted even by neutralists like Nei. As shown, once again, by the paper that you yourself originally cited!

You simply cannot grok that selectionism isn't a totally rejected weltanschauung, as your religionism demands, but a one-among-many view of things, as science not just accepts, but expects.