Scientists predict and witness evolution in a 30-year marine snail experiment
phys.org
phys.org
I'll also add creating a throwaway account to mention you thought other comments were jokes doesn't feel in particularly good taste, regardless of how surprised you were about it. Just asking how many here hold different creationist views suffices to start the discussion.
Not all new accounts are throwaways. I did create an account for this purpose, but not to avoid association with any main identity (I habitually delete or permanently abandon social media accounts on a regular basis, when I feel that my behavior is becoming too addictive, to enforce a break on myself). I did actually think the comments were jokes at first. I took the first one I saw as sarcasm. I didn't think the microevolution/macroevolution argument was still seriously peddled around. The last time I saw that one was in a Chick Tract, but I don't tend to see evolution discussed in places where creationists hang out often.
And though I am curious about the numbers, I'm also alarmed and dismayed that such intellectually dishonest positions are being seriously posited here, and I don't think they deserve to be treated as neutral and valid positions. They are offensive and extremist, and in many cases, actively harmful and disruptive. Almost every comment here is directly or indirectly debating the existence of macroevolution as a result.
Fair point on throwaways. I always call them throwaways out of lack of taking the time to think on what else to call them. "New accounts" feels wrong, even though technically accurate, as it can cause conflation with "new users". "Anonymous account" might be better phrasing for this case? I don't know if there is a more established term you/others use for accounts that hide community identity though. If there is please drop it in a reply so I can use that in the future.
However much I disagree with their reasons I don't necessarily think their comments make for bad discussion here or steer things in off-topic direction. A debate on what exactly this experiment is providing evidence of is good and healthy discussion of this article regardless which interpretation is correct, with those disagreeing the most likely to provide the critiques to consider. While they certainly aren't neutral positions (or ones I'd consider logical) that's not necessarily a mark of what's bad discussion or an excuse to announce I thought their comments were jokes/peddling. To us, some ideas offend, viewpoints alarm, or strike us as extremist - we don't have to treat those positions as neutral or valid but we should treat them kindly instead of always assuming the worst and commenting about it separately. That, ironically, is actually a distraction from discussion on the article (if you make a sincere Ask HN post about it some may be interested though).
I'd wager that represents the majority of religious scientists. I'm not disparaging faith itself (not here at least), just creationism and denial of evidence because it is contrary to preconceptions. Why I consider creationism as contrary to the hacker ethos is precisely because being a hacker involves thinking outside boundaries and engaging in playful curiosity (often with a disregard for established authority). Creationism is mental gymnastics to support an established orthodoxy. It's excessive effort spent to explicitly avoid exploring the boundaries of one's own beliefs.
Honestly, I don't know on the throwaways and I don't blame you for the assumption. By all accounts, this would look like a throwaway. I don't think there's a great word for it, and my pattern of social Internet use is admittedly uncommon.
I disagree that they aren't off-topic. It's an article about a specific observation of evolution, and their response is to question the entire reality of evolution as a whole. It's like the people who go into a programming language update announcement to complain and trash talk the language (which happens a lot in Rust submissions in particular). I also think it's inordinate. It's likely a tiny minority of people who think this way, but because they are the loudest, they still managed to determine the topic for the entire comment section. Thus there is much argument and disagreement over something that the vast majority of scientists and commenters here already agree on.
Edit: I also find it funny, in retrospect, that this is an exact example of Poe's Law as originally stated.
As a creationist, if I believe that God as described in the Bible exists, and I have a statement from Him on how the world was created, that also matches every observation I have made of the world around me, isn't it ridiculous to believe in something else that contradicts the Bible?
Not sure I get the preprocessor analogy though. Unless you mean specifically changing some #define constants and not stuff like preprocessor macros?
I was thinking more like genetics is the code base, epigenetics are like decorators that can modify function without changing the behavior without changing code.
Every cell, after all, contains the entire DNA library of the organism, but not every cell needs all of those proteins, and they must not all simply be made into proteins constantly.
It's a little bit like preprocessor directives ("if we're on x86, compile this bit; if we're on ARM, compile that bit").
Transcription and translation turns DNA into protein, in my analogy this is the compilation step.
(Now, back to scientists seeing evolution which has none of these attributes of observation-driven science. An overloaded term meaning both adaptation and large-scale changes of which I'll focus on the unproven part.)
We'll start with the scientific method since it's usually absent in some way in these claims. We work from real-world observations to a hypothesis to testing that. There's usually predictions to confirm or falsify the theory. We must be willing to modify it or let it go entirely if we're scientists. There's also peer review by skeptical parties willing to consider alternatives. They're to be weighed on the bases of evidence, not feelings or politics. Dissent is always allowed regardless of credentials or numbers behind mainstream theories.
With this process, you'd have to look at the testable predictions of macro-evolution, observe them happening, observe no contradictions, and review by people who didn't have die-hard faith in evolution. Unfortunately, the theory fails in all of those areas.
First, we never see it happening in reality despite billions of observations over thousands of years. Second, life just appears out of nowhere fully formed in the fossil record, like the Cambrian explosion. Third, the man-made creatures don't change much or live long even under ideal, lab conditions but somehow random events worked better millions of times. Fourth, complexity science along with studies of life and the universe proved both are vastly more complex than initially assumed. We can't create them, esp self-sustaining. Yet, mainstream science keeps believing evolution just happened in a way that kept happening, doesn't now the same way, and just take their word for it. No dissent is allowed either with or without observations or experiments.
Eventually, there's going to be some actual science done. That requires evolution being marked as refuted by observed evidence. (Minor adaptation is proven, though.) They need to ask where we came from with a clean slate. They must factor in complexity theory, evidence of design, what optimization theory taught us about success rate of random vs intelligently-parameterized changes, and observations in programming like design and maintenance requirements. Whatever is predicted must match real-world observations. That will be science.
Christian scientists already do that. Our current theory is that the universe and humans must have been designed by a being whose power exceeds all human knowledge and technology. The purpose isn't scientifically discoverable. The Bible, separately proven, explains it's to know and glorify God (Jesus Christ) and reflect His character as we live together and love each other. The awe of the purpose, beauty, and brilliance of God's overall creation motivates us to dig deeper into it to understand it. That God requires truth to come first is why we can't allow popular, unproven lies about either science (macro-evolution) or theology (false religion).
I wonder if we went out into the world which we would find more evidence in favor of?
The mind is a frustrating thing.
https://gethisword.com/evidence.html
Let’s look at your comparison. Observationally, Jesus existed, did miracles, fulfilled prophecies, manuscripts were higher impact, and millions report similar things today. Far as testable predictions, even His enemies who repent report life transformations and miracles in His name. Macro-evolution has failed to happen billions of times in observed creatures. Bible is evidentially stronger even though not a scientific claim.
Also, while experiential evidence grew for the Bible over thousands of years, many scientific theories and philosophies failed instead. Tons of fraud and politics, too. There’s a test of time principle that says you want to build on strong foundations. God’s Word is more trustworthy and reliable over time than scientific claims in general. It’s compatible with good ones, too, since Jesus was full of grace and truth.
This statement is doing a lot of work. I would be interested to see anything resembling proof that the bible is the inerrant word of a god.
Or look at recent examples of Covid strains evolving. There is not intelligence there either.
God (or what ever your source of faith is) will always exist, not because of anything Scientists uncover, but because all people are constantly faced with problems that require generation of Faith in themselves or others.
If you understand that you dont even need to use Science as part of you argument.
You heavily believe in what you have repeatedly not observed. After sample size hits hundreds of millions to billions, your confidence goes through the roof that this absolutely happened millions of times when you weren’t watching.
How is that science if hypotheses and validates theories are built on observed data? If anything, it sounds like a massive amount of faith in an imaginary model that’s the opposite of global observations.
This is why we say we (usually) don’t have as much faith as atheists or evolutionists. Many of us have seen multiple examples of answered prayers, miracles, or God speaking to us. What’s predicted keeps happening. Since Darwin, we’ve seen zero examples of bacteria, ants, chickens, or cats turning into other animals. So, you have faith and unrelenting faith at that.
It would be a great news story. Especially if it contrasted the proof of minor adaptations within types of creatures vs lack of actual evolution of the kind we always read about. Then, explain what falsification is, evolution’s predictions, and how observations contrary to predictions should decrease belief in the theory.
Meanwhile, snails are still snails, ants are still ants, and chickens are still chickens. Billions of things not turning into new animals. It’s like God had to intervene to create these categories since it’s observationally impossible by chance.
Strictly speaking, this is a theory, however reasonable.
We know from history that life can be surprising, hence, from a truth point of view, it's better to be careful, avoid rushing to conclusions, especially if this implies closing all other doors.
If we don't, then we're sowing the seeds for discord for when our theories will need to be updated. And it's reasonable to think that they will, as, so far, most (all?) scientific theories has evolved.
IIRC, Darwin's views on evolution require patching e.g. to take into consideration chaotic incidents affecting mortality/genes propagation (e.g. asteroids, epidemics).
Maybe if that theory keeps accumulating patches, it'll end up very different from where it started!
Again, as I've said, it's a reasonable theory. Using the word "theory" isn't about casting doubt, it's purely about intellectual honesty, at least as far as I'm concerned.
The way it's taught is often in an absolute way. The way science is taught in general is in an absolute way. That's because humans struggle immensely with nuance.
Typical traditional Eastern views transcend this creationism/evolution duality for example; one more door to explore.
Theories need to be considered for what they are, theories, and not dogmatically, for science to move forward. Evolution is a theory, and in its current form, already distant from Darwin's.
It's particularly amusing to have this discussion in the context of evolution, given that we have observed theories to systematically (AFAIK) evolve.
Why can't we extrapolate about the evolution of the theory of evolution then?
“Why can’t we extrapolate about the evolution of the theory of evolution then?”
The first quote answers the second. The dogma usually blocks even questioning of evolution in research venues, liberal communities, etc. If one opens with evidence, they’re usually countered with dogma using argument from authority or mockery as if dissent equals stupidity. Also, major opponents are hitting it right at the roots which might make the other points moot until the roots are defended or improved.
For these reasons, we usually can’t make it that far even if we’d be willing to do it. Also, I don’t know the modern versions in that much depth compared to an actual biologist. We’d probably need qualified skeptics in here for accuracy on our own side if we got that deep. :)
Like, how most people actually believe in science: they're incapable of understanding, nor reproducing most results (e.g. flat earthers, reproducibility issues in research).
A half-baked religion, which doesn't even encourage morality, what could go wrong…
https://youtu.be/FPeyJvXU68k?feature=shared
He correctly predicted the harms that would come from science without morals. Additionally, he observed Scientism is much like magic from older times. He makes comparisons. The end result is a tool of authoritarianism.
> Scientism is the belief that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
While it may be true locally in time, science may transcend itself over time. Furthermore, some aspects of the scientific development are poorly studied/understood/taken into account in how we do science, such as all those discoveries stemming from dreams & cie[0]. Einstein in particular was well-known to have had many valuable insights while being in a half-asleep state.
That's to say, objectively, the evolution of science is shaped by chaotic events, which AFAIK isn't embraced by contemporary institutionalized science. Perhaps because it's too close to the content of religions of old.
[0]: someone on HN copy-pasted this a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37731752
I think the reactions here are because a lot of creationist(others), will say things like "that is only a theory", thus "it was god, duh, I just owned you libtard".
Changing your chromosome numbers is an entirely different (and unproven to have ever occurred) beast compared to simply expressing some different but previously already present genes due to changing environments (something easily observable).
Not sure why people aren't able to grasp that.
Can you name a single animal species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have witnessed?
Claiming that the science is bad because the time scales are large is to discount any hypotheses on large time scales. That blows away nearly all of astronomy and huge potions of geology. That's ridiculous. We can clearly learn about things that have happened in the past by piecing together the mountains of evidence that are available.
The even bigger problem is to, despite that, make them into de-facto doctrinal tenants such that any critic is automatically labelled a pseudo-scientific nutcase.
The additional problem with the hypothesis at hand (speciation-by-random-mutation) is that it has never been observed and thus confirmed.
Now what I just stated are simple objective facts that nobody who understands reasoning from first principles AND is academically honest should have any qualms with.
A good hypothesis has to be falsifiable and make new testable predictions but does not have to be directly observed in its entirety to be replaced or supported by new evidence. Taking plate tectonics again as an example it's relatively new but predicted all sorts of testable things in regards to earthquakes, deposits, volcanos, and current movement that have all matched better than any other proposed explanation predicts. If a set of new predictions by an alternate theory is found that predicts not only these findings but different ones plate tectonics does not then plate tectonics would be falsified and thrown to the side.
Fully agreed.
> A good hypothesis has to be falsifiable
Yes exactly which is what I'm saying. Speciation-by-random-mutation is in my understanding not a falsifiable hypothesis, or do I see that wrong in your view and why?
- Show the average mutation rate the theory claimed is not as high as was needed to drive the amount of speciation we see (this particular experiment could have added data against that instead of in support of it).
- Show that the rate of needed mutation rate to see the observed speciation amount would drive too much detriment for "workable" mutations to propagate. I.e. "if you need x mutations per generation to get y useful ones and we've seen at least z of y then the amount of bad x mutations would have overwhelmed the population".
- Run these types of long run experiments several times with animals with extremely low lifespans (i.e. days like fruit flies) and show the population's DNA is extremely stable over many years with no mutations occuring, casting doubt into the assumption mutations are occuring often enough to drive changes needed for speciation to occur so often. You'd also have to convincingly explain why the error has been in most all of the previous experiments rather than yours e.g. some listed here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laboratory_experiments_of_spec...
- Find significant quantities of speciation which don't appear to be well explained by speciation-by-random-mutation and propose a different testable and falsifiable theory which explains not only those better but the others just as well as speciation-by-random-mutation did.
- And of course, the Bingo "free space": reproducibly demonstrate alternative means of speciation directly.
Really you can bundle "experiments attempting to support the speciation-by-random-mutation concept" (of which we've attempted many) into the same bucket as "experiments attempting to falsify the speciation-by-random-mutation concept". The only difference between which bucket they end up in is whether the outcome of the experiment agreed with the current theory or not.
I hope you don't think that was some kind of genius gotcha question on your part ...
The same reasoning against Evolution, can be used for Plate Tectonics. So the question is valid, why do you believe one and not the other?
Many in this thread are creationist that believe the world was created 6000 years ago. The argument that at that time god kicked off Evolution and Plate Tectonics at same time. The arguments are valid for both.
But of course at the point you are using mysticism to just make up creation myths, of course you could reason about anything.
Ring species are an excellent way to show how speciation occurs. It’s not a cow giving birth to a chicken. It’s a series of biologically compatible sub-species where the start and end are no longer compatible.
You want the impossible so you never have to confront the fact that you’re wrong. It’s a wholly incurious attitude and really should be a hard line on a site that purports to be about intellectual curiosity.
> ... incurious attitude and really should be a hard line on [HN]
Weak. You can't answer the question. Just like nobody can tell me how speciation-by-random-mutation is supposedly a valid, falsifiable hypothesis.
But the intellectual that you are , you don't say "hmm interesting points you raise there", but rather demand censoring the critic.
Weak way to intellectually throw in the towel.
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Reg. ring species: Wikipedia tells you why they don't qualify:
> However, it is unclear whether any of the examples of ring species cited by scientists actually permit gene flow from end to end, with many being debated and contested. ...
> Many examples have been documented in nature. Debate exists concerning much of the research, with some authors citing evidence against their existence entirely.
I don't say "hmmm interesting points you raise there" because you don't raise any interesting points. Instead you retread the same tired arguments Creationists trot out despite being answered years ago.
Why does the lack of gene flow from end to end disqualify them. Just because genes from A can never make it to F, doesn't mean anything.
And your second quote is filled with weasel words. Not to mention, the following statements are pretty much "and here's a list of them".
How did you infer that? I specifically said in another comment that I'm not negating evolution, just the part about speciation-by-random-mutation.
> Why does the lack of gene flow from end to end disqualify them
This has to do with the technicalities of ring species. I recommend this article by an evolutionist himself, which explains it extremely well: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-...
In short, the hypothesized ring species don't solve the issue I raised because, let me quote that article:
> The authors [...] found, contrary to previous information, that there are indeed some hybrids (fertile ones, since they backcross) produced where the ring closes at the top, so they aren’t really acting like full biological species.
So we cannot be certain that where the ring closes, inter-breeding is impossible, because it has been shown to occur. Further:
> In the end, the authors conclude [...]: there are no good examples of ring species in nature
It was an interesting point about ring species that you raised however, and I learned something myself. So thanks.
So do you agree that species change by evolution, e.g. selection acting on random mutations?
Can you name a single species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have witnessed? Have I missed the Down-syndrome one (or any analogous known gene mutation) which has been continuously procreating all this time?
Besides the fact that Down-syndrome is a terrible example since Down-syndrome-parents would not necessarily produce offspring with the same genetic disorder, hence no speciation-by-random-mutation.
I thought people learn this stuff in HS...
Since evolution moves slowly there are two ways to see it in action: either you experiment with a species that reproduces very rapidly, or you look at fossil records. For the first type bacteria are usually used, but since bacteria don't have sexual reproduction a naysayer could always cast doubt on whether a new species has truly been created (are any two individual bacteria really the same species? Who can tell, short of verifying base-by-base equality of their DNA), so it won't convince someone who is determined to doubt evolution. For the fossil records we have literal mountains of evidence where the development of existing and extinct species can be observed. But I imagine you won't count that as "witnessing" it happening.
I feel like many people who doubt evolution use a standard of evidence that they don't use for any other scientific theory, and probably not for any other area in their life either. Other people have mentioned it already: plate tectonics, almost all of astronomy... we could extend it to history too. Did you witness the founding of the United States? If documented history count as proof of stuff like founding of the US, the civil war, and the first world war, then why don't fossils count as proof of evolution?
This why your lion + tiger is not some special case, it trivially fails the definition: Their offspring are sterile.
Now ring species as you describe have not been shown to exist. Let me refer you as well to this brilliant article by an evolutionist explaining that: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2014/07/16/there-are-no-ring-...
In short, the suspected ring species were found to produce fertile offspring when interbreeding at the ring-closing point (!).
> The authors [...] found, contrary to previous information, that there are indeed some hybrids (fertile ones, since they backcross) produced where the ring closes at the top, so they aren’t really acting like full biological species.
So we cannot be certain that where the ring closes, inter-breeding is impossible, because it has been shown to occur. Further:
> In the end, the authors conclude [...]: there are no good examples of ring species in nature
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It's not about "doubting" in a religious sense. As an intellectual and academic I simply reserve the right to challenge and poke holes as rigorously as I can into any theory presented to me. What I found is that speciation-by-random-mutation appears to fail my (admittedly difficult but nonetheless valid) challenge.
As for plate tectonics: Look, if I were to say the evidence in my eyes does not support the theory well enough, would that make me unscientific? Of course not! The best counter-example I just posted are ring species - scientists once had extreme confidence in their existence, only to be disappointed after new findings.
But in the interest of considering the topic from an intellectual and academic point of view, what is your proposed alternative explanation for the huge number of species we see today, apart from evolution and speciation?
There are just a few aspects about it that don't fully compute in my mind.
Take this for example, and bear with me for a moment:
The earth is 4.5b yrs old. Say 4b yrs ago life began. Just in the past 500m yrs, there were 5 major extinction events, with perhaps 80-90% of species going extinct each time on avg.
Homo erectus are said to emerge something shy of 2 mio yrs ago. Denisovans are much younger. Us and Denisovans are genetically one species (we could produce viable offspring). The same holds with denisovans and homo erectus
This means we could probably viably procreate with homo erecti from ~2 mio yrs ago.
So across 2 mio yrs, pretty much no speciation occurred with us (if at all ever, remember that is still conjecture if we're being strict).
Now remember the last major extinction was just ~65 mio yrs ago.
Yet there are what, 1-2 billion different species alive today?
I know there is parallelization involved as the model goes, but to me it seems there was still very little time for all that to happen given that a single speciation event takes millions of years.
I'm not saying evolution by speciation is false. I'm just saying perhaps it's insufficient.
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All of that said, speciation - or even evolution and science in general (!) - is not at odds with my religious beliefs anyway, as long as we are being true to what's certain and what's conjecture.
We’d have to see them turn into organisms that were very different from their original form or even multi-cellular. That would be closer to what evolution as origin of life says. Instead, most (all?) stay what they are with minor adaptations.
We’ve also observed billions of other creatures over thousands of years that didn’t turn into new insects or animals. Evolution’s predictions on a macro-level have failed over a billion times for thousands of years.
On the fossil record, evolution predicted continuous streams of changes in all directions with piles of viable, intermediate forms. We don’t see that. We do see large jumps from one type to another happening after extinctions where there’s lower populations.
“use a standard of evidence that they don’t use for any other scientific theory”
That’s exactly what evolutionists do. These failures of the theory, both observational and historical, would have had it tossed long ago like most theories that fail that much. Instead, they keep making excuses for it or emphasizing again that it must be true.
That’s not science. That is like dogma driven by emotional or socio-political factors. Which also provably exist in institutions promoting it. So, it’s not science since it (a) is driven by non-scientific forces and (b) continues to fail the scientific method.
Let's take a look at the E. coli long term evolution experiment [1]! Here we see 12 initially identical populations of bacteria live through over 80k generations over a period of 36 years. During this time these isolated populations have undergone significant changes (such as becoming at least twice as large) that would surely qualify as "very different from their original form". One of the populations evolved the ability to aerobically grow on citrate. Not being able to do this is one of the defining qualities of E.coli, so it must surely qualify as becoming 'very different'.
> We’ve also observed billions of other creatures over thousands of years that didn’t turn into new insects or animals. Evolution’s predictions on a macro-level have failed over a billion times for thousands of years.
Speciation is usually a gradual process. There won't be a clear instant where yesterday there was one species and today it's suddenly two species. So in that regard there isn't a specific moment one could personally observe. And with the time between generations for animals being relatively long, we don't see much progress being made. What we do see around us is species in various stages of speciation. Here is a nice example of speciation starting for European birds [2] that is very recent.
Also I would argue that the E.coli experiment has shown speciation in a human lifetime.
> On the fossil record, evolution predicted continuous streams of changes in all directions with piles of viable, intermediate forms. We don’t see that. We do see large jumps from one type to another happening after extinctions where there’s lower populations.
Citation needed? We have lots of species living today that we can trace to shared ancestors, like how we can trace humans, chimps, and orangutans to a common ancestor. It's true that speciation happens much faster after an extinction, this makes sense because extinction events cause previously occupied ecological niches to get opened up. In a static environment the rate of change is low because most species will be in a local optimum. Everything we see appears to confirm evolution. If you think the fossil record disproves evolution you should consider if it merely disproves your understanding of evolution, which may be incorrect.
> That’s exactly what evolutionists do. These failures of the theory, both observational and historical, would have had it tossed long ago like most theories that fail that much. Instead, they keep making excuses for it or emphasizing again that it must be true.
You mean biologists? To call evolution a failed theory is absurd, it's one of the most successful theories science has produced. It's supported by the fossil record, by DNA research, by bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics and gaining the ability to digest plastics. By vestigial organs. By the way that early fetal development for mammals all looks the same. And there are no counter examples. No species appearing out of nowhere without a historical ancestor. No species with completely incompatible biology to our own.
> That’s not science. That is like dogma driven by emotional or socio-political factors. Which also provably exist in institutions promoting it. So, it’s not science since it (a) is driven by non-scientific forces and (b) continues to fail the scientific method.
You are seeing a conspiracy where none exists. If you have a better theory than evolution I encourage you to publish, and in a decade or two we will all know you as a Nobel prize winner. Maybe share it with us here on HN, I for one would be delighted to have been one of the first to have read this new theory. I sure hope it doesn't rely on an invisible undetectable magic man steering everything.
Even if a theory is invented to supplant evolution, I guarantee it will include evolution. Just like General Relativity supplanted Newtonian Physics, turns out that they have pretty much the same results at the scales and speeds we usually find ourselves at. And just like the Earth being an oblate sphere instead of a perfect sphere. The basic idea of evolution is correct and any hypothetical future changes will be a refinement on what we already know, not a radically different thing.
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_... 2. https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evo-news/speciation-in-real-t...
Answers in Genesis has a nice takedown of that which links to a scientific publication about the citrate:
https://answersingenesis.org/genetics/mutations/richard-lens...
https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/jb.180.16.4160-4165...
Once again, evolutionists report that an organism gained abilities it basically already had. There was no, new capabilities invented in the process. So, you might want to drop that one.
Re common ancestors
Most of what I saw in the past was them claiming that without proof. What they’d usually argue are similarities. Reuse of design, or iterations, happen in intelligent design done by human engineers. We reuse and tweak all kinds of stuff, esp mechanical and software. You don’t see people arguing an unguided, chance-based process must have produced the software because of the similarities in the code. Evolutionists take quite a leap.
Re failed theory w/ counter evidence
You said vestigial. That’s another thing I’m skeptical of. Scientists that don’t understand our bodies have said many things were useless in the past. Then, evolutionists said they were vestigial. Later, the appendix, the spleen, “junk DNA,” etc were proven to have important uses for people even though you can live without some of them.
Vestigial organs seem to be one of those things where evolutionists don’t know why something exists, make a statement of faith that it’s vestigial, and then use the faith-based statements (existence of vestigials) to back evolution theory itself. I don’t like that methodology since they’ve been wrong so many times.
Re fetal development
Same as before. There’s similarities. So, instead of designed with similarities (most likely), it must have been produced by unguided processes in hostile environments that endlessly added more capabilities starting with simple things they spontaneously formed from non-living material in a universe that accidentally formed life-preserving constants.
Yet, even those that believe this won’t rely on such processes to design anything because they don’t work. Even evolutionary algorithms and large, language models take lots of fine-tuning in environments hand-crafted for their execution. Why would I expect anything less of the more complex designs in the universe and of life? :)
Maybe you can stop with the disingenuous "evolutionists" and just call these people by their professions: biologists and geneticists.
Feeding on citrate under aerobic conditions is a new capability for the e. coli strain that the experiment started with. You can deny it all you want but that just shows the world that you're closing your eyes for what is right in front of you. If it was really such an easy ability to acquire you'd think that more than 1 of the 12 lines would have achieved it after 75k+ generations. But researching the strain that did develop the ability showed that it's a complex ability that required multiple mutations to acquire. It's not like the bacteria just activated a dormant gene that they already had.
But we can leave the e. coli behind and take another example: antibiotic resistance in bacteria and the ability to digest plastic of some bacteria. Many antibiotics (and also plastics in general) simply didn't exist before we invented them. And yet we see bacteria develop a resistance to antibiotics. And now that plastic is everywhere, some bacteria have evolved the ability to break it down. Clearly these are new and original abilities.
> Most of what I saw in the past was them claiming that without proof. What they’d usually argue are similarities. Reuse of design, or iterations, happen in intelligent design done by human engineers. We reuse and tweak all kinds of stuff, esp mechanical and software. You don’t see people arguing an unguided, chance-based process must have produced the software because of the similarities in the code. Evolutionists take quite a leap.
So you're suggesting evolution isn't true, it's actually an intelligent designer that is iterating on a design, resulting in... the development of species over time with a fossil record and existing species that looks exactly like an evolutionary tree, including physical traits, similarity in genetics... but it's definitely not evolution.
Speaking of reuse of design, in nature we actually see that something like (for example) the eye has evolved separately a bunch of times, with several variations. And miraculously these variations match the evolutionary trees for the species involved.
> You said vestigial. That’s another thing I’m skeptical of. Scientists that don’t understand our bodies have said many things were useless in the past. Then, evolutionists said they were vestigial. Later, the appendix, the spleen, “junk DNA,” etc were proven to have important uses for people even though you can live without some of them.
When I was talking about vestigial stuff I had the leg bones in some snakes in mind, that seem to VERY STRONGLY suggest that their ancestors may have had legs, and these legs have evolved away. Whales also have some bones left that again strongly suggest their ancestors once walked on land, but one could argue about whether these count as 'vestigial' since apparently some muscles are still connected to them. But regardless of vestigiality, they're clearly remains of legs.
> Vestigial organs seem to be one of those things where evolutionists don’t know why something exists, make a statement of faith that it’s vestigial, and then use the faith-based statements (existence of vestigials) to back evolution theory itself. I don’t like that methodology since they’ve been wrong so many times.
So you agree the scientific consensus updates as more information becomes available, as we see with vestigial organs losing their vestigial status when their use becomes known. And yet evolution has not been rejected by scientists. To me that sounds like the new information did not contradict evolution. Does it sound like a grand conspiracy to you?
> Same as before. There’s similarities. So, instead of designed with similarities (most likely), it must have been produced by unguided processes in hostile environments that endlessly added more capabilities starting with simple things they spontaneously formed from non-living material in a universe that accidentally formed life-preserving constants.
The origin of life is out of scope of evolution, so I don't see why you're bringing it up. Evolution would still be the leading theory about the historical and continued development of terrestrial life regardless of whether the first life arose from nonliving materials, was brought to earth by aliens, or was created by a deity from your pantheon of choice.
> Yet, even those that believe this won’t rely on such processes to design anything because they don’t work. Even evolutionary algorithms and large, language models take lots of fine-tuning in environments hand-crafted for their execution. Why would I expect anything less of the more complex designs in the universe and of life? :)
Because it's faster? Somewhere out there in the world is a tree with a branch that is perfectly shaped to be part of a hammer. But when I need a hammer I won't grow a billion trees and find the one with the best shaped branch, I'll take a slightly bigger branch and cut it in the shape I like. Here we come back to the fact that evolution takes many generation and it's essentially random, so IF you have the option of taking the role of an intelligent designer, that is often the quickest way to get stuff done.
There are many biologists and geneticists that don't believe in unguided, large-scale adaptation (evolution) as origin of all life. Many are in the intelligent design camp. So, you can't speak for all biologists and geneticists. Instead, I'm countering evolutionists since it's them biologists, geneticists, complexity theorists, and systems people (me) disagree with.
"If it was really such an easy ability to acquire you'd think that more than 1 of the 12 lines would have achieved it after 75k+ generations."
We believe in small-scale adaptations ("micro-evolution"). Things that turn something on or off in existing genetic code, like this example per my link, would fit in there. So would antibiotic resistance in bacteria. We still don't see them forming new organs or anything substantial like evolutionists say happened for most (all?) species on Earth.
Far as difficulty, we believe it's difficult. Actually, those of us opposing macro-evolution say that micro-evolution can be so hard for things like citrate that it furthers our doubt in their larger claims. Especially when the features have irreducible complexity at mind-boggling levels.
" the development of species over time with a fossil record and existing species that looks exactly like an evolutionary tree, including physical traits, similarity in genetics"
You all just describe it that way, like marketing. I've already noted that evolutionists usually believe in evolution a priori, come up with evolutionary explanations for anything they observe, ignore what is contrary to the theory, and publish what supports the general theory. They certainly present things in a way that looks like they evolved. Many specific examples they put forth in the past turned out to not be what they said, too.
Until the systemic bias is eliminated, I don't trust such presentations of cherry-picked data over observations of actual evolution. Further, the prior predictions of evolution didn't match the observations. They promoted it harder and made excuses instead of dropping it. Since then, we've learned the universe and body are even more complex than originally anticipated. Macro-evolution is provably harder than believed when evolution was failing its predictions.
Even as macro-evolution became harder, we saw people posit evolutionary algorithms with the Humies Awards as proof of its design. I was one of those people before becoming Christian because pro-evolution statements with those cherry-picked presentations were all I was ever exposed to. Now, I get to see several sides. In any case, re-reviewing the work on evolutionary algorithms and large, language models (eg GPT) show they take an enormous amount of intelligent design to accomplish anything useful. Everything from the substrate to the math to the implementation to the environmental interface.
" suggest that their ancestors may have had legs" "since apparently some muscles are still connected to them. But regardless of vestigiality, they're clearly remains of legs."
This is an example of what I'm talking about. They're actually just bones that look kind of like leg bones. So, that means they're either leg bones or that legs and those use a similar structure for a purpose. Instead of proof of structural similarity, you say it's proof of evolution because your worldview (evolution) dictates starting everything with its conclusions as premises. Even with muscle tissue, you have to think it's vestigial or a leg because evolution makes you want to.
Note: Interestingly, the Bible does have a serpent with legs that becomes a snake. That's presented as a supernatural event, though, so I can't use it here. Plus, it's testimony, not science.
"Does it sound like a grand conspiracy to you?"
It is if you call organizational bias a conspiracy. It's a fact that they wouldn't allow competing theories in most places. The person would be mocked, rejected by the journal, or not even get funded. With that happening, all research output is pro-evolution because those controlling the human processes are pro-evolution. Any science that becomes dogma with strong, political motivation is self-reinforcing.
"so IF you have the option of taking the role of an intelligent designer, that is often the quickest way to get stuff done."
Straight-forward creation is the fastest route for an intelligent designer capable of sustaining the whole universe. Ours can and did. Whether or not God worked through evolution from there is an open question.
Empirical observations of the only intelligent designers we know, humans, show they create their fictional universes rapidly before forcing things to happen with in-universe laws. Think filming a movie vs what happens in the movie's universe. Even in the fictional universes, they often say they were evolved because things look that way. They weren't. The whole thing was shot in months to a year. Truth is we can't know by internal observation.
If stating something obviously false, need some citation. As others in this thread have done, the religious are kind of used to making things up, so it seems ok to them. They can't detect false information as readily.
Let me show you an example where I can say anything.
"Most Creationist/Intelligent Designers, secretly believe in Science and Evolution, and know their beliefs are total bunk, and do not say out loud, because they are fearful of the other cult members ejecting them from their community. Or in some way bearing a stigma and being punished. So continue to spout the party line".
https://creation.com/creation-scientists
Answers in Genesis has a whole page on both profiles and biases against non-evolutionary scientists:
https://answersingenesis.org/creation-scientists/?gad_source...
I’ll also add there are billions of people who are Christian, Catholic, Muslim, or Hindu. Most are likely to reject atheistic materialism that’s a presupposition of evolution theory. It’s hard to tell who godless scientists speak for but it’s a minority. They’re a majority where they have power, though.
There is still a scale problem.
If the list has 700, out of 480,000. Then that is .15%
In any group, from any field, any skills. There are .15% crazy people. There could be .15% people that believe the world sits on a giant turtle. Or still believe in Zeus.
Ok. You are in deep with this belief. It can be scary to try and get out of a cult.
Do you have any logic, or reasoning, that Does Not Include the Bible, to explain why a god that created the entire universe, and the world, would cherry pick some tribes in the Middle East to provide his one true message. ?
Just because there are some unknowns, where is the leap to creationism and a Christian god. That is really just mysticism. People have always made up mystical reasons for he unknown. All of the same reasoning used for Creationism can also be used to say the universe was created by an Alien AI and set on top of a Turtle.
https://ncse.ngo/how-many-creationists-science
""“Newsweek found that less than 0.15% of 480,000 biologists and earth scientists polled doubted evolution.” The citation is to a June 29, 1987, story by Larry Martz with Ann McDaniel.
What Martz and McDaniel actually wrote, though, was, “By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientist[s]) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared ‘abruptly.’”""
Meanwhile the proposed alternative seems to be: some dude just created it all and he's supernatural so we can't even conceive of a way to falsify his existence. Talk about fairy tales!
So, we first need to get back to the pre-Hume period where godless, materialistic science wasn’t the answer to all questions or the only way forward. Second, we must be able to say what we’ve always known: it’s OK for science to say “I have no idea. We might never know that because we can’t scientifically observe or test it.” That’s what they should say about the origin of life.
What can we know? We can indirectly observe the attributes to take guesses. If not knowing, we can work with God’s design rather than against it. Really, only revelatory knowledge… the Creator telling us… will tell us anything close to the truth. We’ve claimed both.
I already posted evidence for the Bible being the Word of God in this thread. People who follow Jesus Christ treat key claims as axioms before layering reasoned statements on top of those and scientific observations. Unlike other faiths, we’ve found no contradictions. Unlike godless science with its axioms, ours lead us somewhere where every action in science should reflect godly character and love for others as commanded.
Then, there’s the intelligent design evidence coming from complexity and systems theory. Universe, natural laws, and organic life make the best creations of humans look dumb and inept in comparison. Especially how the universe runs perfectly. Best I’ve seen humans claim is nine 9’s reliability on something way, way simpler. They couldn’t sustain it either.
So creationism or not, let me pose the simple challenge to you as well:
Can you name a single species whose speciation-by-random-mutation we have actually observed?
You see, the hard fact, which many of my beloved scientistic friends have yet to come to terms with, is that technically speaking, the speciation-by-random-mutation is a scientifically invalid hypothesis because it is not even falsifiable. In other words, it is a mere conjecture (and sadly nowadays even a doctrinal belief) like any other, from an honest, objective, naturalistic point of view. But I don't even need to get into that because most of my beloved atheists will already have more of an impulsive emotional reaction to that rather than facing it head-on.
Maybe the problem here is you disagree with what an 'observation' is.
If you are saying, I must physically see speciation or plate tectonics, myself, within my lifetime.
And thus any events that occur over longer time spans, when I'll be dead, and not observing them, thus they cannot be proven?
Anything with a long time scale is by your definition, invalid science?
A person hits a golf ball a long distance, a basketball is round, and therefore it should do that, too. A person observing golf, but not physics, might extrapolate that. It’s not until they experiment with the other claims that they learn the two behave differently. They’ll eventually learn principles of nature that say what’s possible for that small, dense ball is impossible for that larger, hollow ball.
Likewise, many mechanisms found in science, esp biology, work only in local ways with limited or no use outside that. They might require their environment to exist to even work at all with no increments allowed. They might also work with other components in a precise way where neither separate nor incomplete combinations will work. For this reason, we can’t extrapolate much in biology without experiments to verify that.
Then, I question why you’d be extrapolating that. Observations of the fossil record show no stream of intermediate forms in most species. Instead, we see extinctions followed by fully-grown animals appearing out of nowhere. Today, we observe zero… zero!… animals changing from one type into another. Everything tastes like chicken because the chickens are still chickens. :)
So, your default positions should be these things: much evidence from adaptation within existing forms, billion plus examples against macro-evolution happening in a 2,000 year window, large-scale changes causing organism’ deaths, and changes being so hard to humans’ knowledge can’t create novel creature from existing ones.
This combination of observed, replicated data should lead you to default on an intelligent designer, God or something else, being needed to create ultra-high-complexity changes to creatures along with it not happening often. Second, you should treat macro-evolution as falsified since it failed all its predictions.
It doesn’t bother me as a scientist at all to say God created and sustains the universe by His will. And made man and the animals. And then drives the universe’s machinery to work in the ways we observe, which includes adaptation (micro-evolution). This fits all observations from complexity theory to universe fine-tuning to how all the laws are elegantly connected to the miracle of self-reproducing/maintaining life forms.
Then, the Word of God (Bible) separately explains Jesus Christ did it to redeem us from evil to live with our Creator enjoying Him and His creations forever. That’s revelatory, not empirical, knowledge. Studying the creation is great but knowing the Creator is better. Especially seeing Him modify the laws of the universe to makes specific things happen in response to our needs or prayers. If anything, science deepened my knowlege of how powerful and good God must be.
So.
A god, created the universe, in all its hugeness and complexity, and kicked it off to run by a set of rules. (which technically could have life anywhere).
Then
On this one planet Earth. He lets 100's of religions take root and flourish.
Then this god cherry picks a few tribes wondering in the desert and says 'You guys are my dudes'. And here are some commandments about only worshiping me.
BUT, he doesn't let anybody else know, just these tribes wondering around in the middle east.
And then. You are believing all of this, because it was written in a book, hundreds of years after the fact, and was edited by a committee. (which isn't disputed by most Christians).
And based on all this, you believe you are scientific, and believing this can enrich your scientific understanding of the Universe?
WTF?
On creation, most human creators make fake worlds that have vast universes in them at a certain age. Within their universes, the creator often focuses on a few people or places to tell a story. They rapidly create their world, not slowly evolve it. They do it to receive praise from those they show it to who they also give joy to. We get those habits from God who unsurprisingly designed this universe the same way.
The Word of God tells the story of who God is (for worship), who we are (explains suffering), and who Jesus is (our redemption). It also tells us how to live for stable, peaceful, loving, and just societies. Then, promises an eternity like that.
It came often through people with supernatural abilities claiming to speak for God. (Most writings don’t.) Witnesses included every type of person, the history was stronger, miracles followed the Gospel everywhere, and lives changed for the better. This happened in thousands of people groups using the same message from Jewish authors from 2000 years ago. Only that message.
To address more in your comment. God actually started with two people near Africa (later confirmed by science) who were in a paradise. Given autonomy (a gift), people chose to betray God, lie, cover, murder, sexual immorality, and even sacrifice their own kids. Even if shown mercy, people kept opposing God or making evil choices. Your comment presupposed He owes evil people something good. A just God owes them nothing but punishment.
Instead, God shows His love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God gives up the riches of heaven to pursue His creation who ran from and even were willing to kill Him. Each that merely repents and chooses Him, He not only forgives: He puts His Spirit in them with promised, amazing effects (testable predictions). He’ll also never let us go which is proven, He says, by the fixed laws of this universe (constants) and Christ’s perfect character.
Far as by committee, the Old Testament was meticulously copied with careful checking. The New Testament writings were mostly agreed on by the churches. They came from holy men who sometimes worked miracles which non-Christian religions couldn’t do. A devout Christian translated them originally with others doing the same from manuscripts close to the original.
Scholars say around 2 million variations have been detected in copying with nearly 100% not changing the meaning of a single line. And others don’t cancel a single doctrine. And Christ’s miracles, death, and resurrection are attested by all. Anyone who studies transmission of human ideas knows that’s so improbable, esp in groups arguing with each other, that the consistency of the Bible is itself almost a miracle.
You will not find in secular ideologies perfect love, forgiveness, justice, miracles, life-changing power, global impact on every type of person, and thousands of years of consistency. This is unique to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It proves He is true to His Word.
You want to repent of your sins and put your trust in Jesus Christ today? There’s nothing better! :)
So the book tells you what to believe, including to believe in the book.
Any questions, the book is the answer.
Is there any reason to believe in this book? Yes, the book tells me to believe in the book.
Where do you get your beliefs? The book.
But humans wrote the book. The Book tells me to believe in the book.
Really?
You don't see anything circular in this?
You can literally make up anything and use this exact same logic to justify it. This is the basis of every religion. Just make it up, and it is self justifying. The religion tells you what to believe including why the source of the religion makes it the one religion.
Have a blessed day.
There is no argument, if you believe in the book, then your points make sense to you. If someone doesn't believe in the book, then all of the other points are based on nothing.
You can't argue with someone's beliefs. If you believe the sun revolves around the earth, and all you can see is the sunrise and sunset, how do I argue with you. You'll believe what you want.
People reply this way
"many people reply that way to Christians. Christ predicted it, too."
Yes of course. Because people thinking with logic can come to these same conclusions, and respond this same way. I am sure you have heard this before.
And, Christ predicted it? I'm sure he did. A lot of religious leaders say others will respond this way. It is a common trope to keep cult members in line, "ignore the infidels, they will question your true faith, they will cloud your mind with logic, but ours is beyond logic".
Sorry. I've been down all of these arguments. I've stopped trying to argue with the true believers. Logic isn't going to win any battles with someone living in a dream world.
Edit: what? It is part of the sophisticated successor of falsification, it reflects the history of Science, and it just makes sense. I cannot give a course in a post. Find material Lakatos: it is more than absolutely worth it.
Moderators, we need to tackle all of this absurd incivility.
Nonetheless, disappointing experiments must be treated reasonably (still Lakatos). We do not throw away theories - complex beasts that are best considered as "programmes" also to underline that they involve components - because an outcome was problematic: we investigate till we frame the problem in a sub-theory of "what could have gone wrong".
Going towards the case of OP's statements which I countered, to corroborate some theory you conceive experiments to see if it is fact-resistant (Popper - but also fact compliant, which remains the main basic thing), but then you would also refine it according to the complications given by facts. Maybe you need more sophisticated ways to assess your results.
> I put that word in quotes cuz I'm not sure what [science] means anymore
Well, since we are on Lakatos, let us rephrase him: Science would be something that allows predictions.
Could it have been lack of food as well? Humans got taller after having wide access to milk etc.
How did they control the experiment, given that it was on a rock in the ocean? Could the smaller variation have come from somewhere else?
Experiments like this one will not turn skeptics into even micro evolution believers.
Thus, there is no distinction at all between "microevolution" and "macroevolution".
"set of animals or plants in which the members have similar characteristics to each other and can breed with each other"
Breeding is a criteria for differentiating species and also there is a lot of difference between theory and practice.
“Can interbreed” is a fuzzy line too, the probability decreases as genetic distance increases but it doesn’t just suddenly stop. Sometimes very different species can interbreed, and sometimes a small change is enough to make it stop working. Of course, often breeding can be accomplished with human intervention, but never in nature, for simple mechanical or behavioral reasons.
For Macro, isn't it just longer. 300 years, 3000 years.
How would that be done in a lab to the satisfaction of anybody that would deny evolution to begin with.
There is no experiment that will satisfy people of this because they don't want to know.