Denial of Evolution VI.

OK. Which human, exactly, introduced stoats to Sci? We should find out and ban them...

 

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made by 50 people with phd's in education no doubt.

 

leopold is pounding hard on the argument by authority, even though authority didn't make the argument.

 

Leopold's theme song...

I fight authority, Authority always wins
Well, I fight authority, Authority always wins
Well, I've been doing it since I was a young kid
I come out grinnin'
Well, I fight authority, Authority always wins​

 

For the same reasons that artificial selection affects the gene pool, so does natural selection - and chemistry sustains both scenarios.

 

Evolution isn't environment "based" per se. Natural selection is environment based. As in, does this mutation help or hinder survival in this environment?

Right, mutations in the DNA might be helpful, harmful or neutral.

Except that the mutation has to survive in the environment it occurs in.

That's what evolution is, mutations at the DNA level that are not intrinsically harmful to the life form are then filtered through natural selection via the environment.

It did, and luckily the mutation was beneficial for the chameleon. In the Antarctic, the ability to change colors might not be as useful.

 

It is environmentally based (that's what drives selection.)
It is molecularly based (that's what DNA is.)
The two are not in opposition.

Exactly.

Also true.

That's what happened.

 

yes, i claimed that the article RAV posted was edited. on page 8 post 141.
the issue was raised a few times after that until page 11 post 205 where i mentioned it might not mean a lot.

if it was a copy/paste error then the page number would have been before or after the quote, not in the middle.

 

correct.
published in a respected peer reviewed source.

besides, who's doubting speciation?

 

the debate was whether the process of microevolution can be extrapolated to macroevolution.
definition of macroevolution:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evoscales_04
their conclusion was a clear no.
how did they conclude this james?

they aren't "so called".
the piece specifically addresses this.

no *, because i have demonstrated they are indeed different.
let me point out AGAIN it might be a minor thing.

* edit
retracted.
i found out that i could very well have included the page number inside the quote rather than the ends.

 

Every time you speak, you're wrong about something. If only you didn't feel the need to defend such an absurd position you'd probably manage to be right about a few things here and there, just like the rest of us. But I guess this is just the damage that creationists do to what might otherwise be intellectually healthy individuals. Such a shame. And I really mean that.

Anyway, just to help James put this one small thing to rest:

[video=vimeo;69369869]https://vimeo.com/69369869[/video]

 

There is a more fundamental misunderstanding in play here. The genetic isolation JamesR referred to is what defines speciation - the divergent group is no longer breeding within the ancestral group, as most remarkably evident in the case of Darwin's finches. Nothing better illustrates this than the stranding of the first finch on the Galapagos and the emergence of the many new forms that will not interbreed, each adapted to a particular food source for which there was evidently no competition. In parallel to this were the adaptations of the terrestrial iguana to the most unusual of survival traits - diving for seaweed. Additionally Galapagos turtles had adapted to conditions local to the particular island they inhabited (long vs short neck to subsist on short vs tall plants). Is this microevolution or macroevolution? Before you consider that, answer this: are Darwin's finches a case of gradualism or punctuated equilibrium? They are new species, and the key to understanding evolution by natural selection. Once we have this viable mechanism in place to explain what happened on Galapagos, does it really matter what Gould, Ayala or Lewin have added to the mix? Has anything they said really changed our understanding that evolution, as Darwin explained it, is fundamentally correct? The rest is details - details which naturalists will continue to pursue for the advancement of science. But that will never overturn what happened on Galapagos. What creationists will call a conspiracy is the mere act of students the world over encountering this shrine of natural history and walking away from it completely smitten by the overwhelming evidence. And this is just the gateway. Beyond lies a world of technical description that completely dovetails with this, and between all the life and physical sciences. The jigsaw puzzle is too nearly complete to point to a few outlying pieces not yet put in place. It's a work in progress, and none of the technical discussion between scientists will ever undo what's already been accomplished. After all, who can argue against the weight of evidence? The folks who agree are not engaging in conspiracy, just common sense and valid logic. After all, Galapagos is a bell that can't be unrung, not matter how stridently the creationists pretend that it can.

 

If you look at the evolution of life on earth, life evolved in water. Water is a critical part of life as we know it. Experiments have been performed, with a wide range of solvents, to see if there was a possible substituted for water, but none could sustain life. Logically this indicates that water is more than an inert solvent, or else any inert solvent would work. As such, life on earth is very much dependent on interactions with water, which no other solvent was able to provide.

Since life evolved in water, and since water was always the majority of the molecules within life (90% today), and since water is highly self assembling and can form hydrogen bonds and/or van der Waals interactions with any organic compound, natural selection at the nano-scale of the molecular level, would mean that which is best able to conform to the constraints of water. Water is the molecular environment in which the organics molecules of life all need to live and compete.

For example, beta DNA, which is the most common form of DNA used by life has the highest degree of hydration; natural selection of DNA in water, resulted in the DNA with the most chemically bound water.

Proteins have hydrophilic moieties out and hydrophobic moieties inside because this conforms to the constraints set by water. Natural selection in water, at the molecular scale, will also push proteins into unique folds. How does existing evolutionary theory take into consideration the molecular conformity to water, which is the basis for natural selection at the nano-scale?

I picture evolution having two parallel paths. The skeleton of evolution conforms to the push/pull of water, which set the law right from the very beginning, before there was life, as to how life would need to develop; nano-scale scaffolding. It is not coincidence that water, proteins and DNA all use hydrogen bonds; water set the path for nano-scale selection.

 

In another post, I talked about Yellow Stone National Park in the USA, and the huge million plus acre forest fire, years back, and how in a few short years after, different life appears to take over the burnt forest. Now Yellowstone is totally different being more meadows and small trees and the life that supports. It is no longer old world forest.

In Galapagos, life was stuck in place. What Darwin defined from his observation, was true, but would not have been the inference he would have concluded had he visited Yellowstone, which was all about extremely rapid change. He would have said life can totally change an ecosystem, in a few decades, by means of migrations, therefore life may not always evolve in place, like in Galapagos. His historical conclusion was based on a partial data set (one extreme circumstance) and would have been better, if he had visited both environments.

As an analogy, it would be like drawing a conclusion about New England, from only living there in the winter, instead of the winter and summer. There is no balance when you are one sided, in world of two sides.

Species become extinct all the time. This creates a void and new thing move in and/or move out. Sometimes natural selection is done by the consciousness of the animal; migrates to where the weather suits his clothes.