Fallacies of Evolution

The 'barrier' is clearly there, & observable. Breeding is an example of using this barrier to produce certain traits in the child stock. When no new traits are added or introduced via breeding, the choices for selection are diminished. Fewer & fewer traits are available to future generations, as they are locked in to a narrow pattern. This should be obvious to anyone familiar with either breeding or natural selection, which are the same processes.
(i) we DO have a 'historical record', in the mtDNA of some families. Canidae, which has been used extensively in this thread, is an example of this record, & the sequence of events in the micro evolution of the variety we see today. Perhaps some specific canid traits have been lost to extinction, as in other genetic 'families', but there were still enough to produce the wide variety of canids we see today.
(ii)Speculation that mutation 'creates' genetic variability, such as within canidae, is flawed. There were too many traits in too short a time, for mutation & time to have 'created' them. The study i posted earlier stated this clearly. AND, there is NO RECORD of any traits being 'created' by mutation.. that is merely asserted. The slight variations from adaptation from e.coli & other bacteria are unique to bacteria, & their distinct genetic makeup.. a circular strand of dna, & even then, all you have are e.coli. They are not becoming anything else, even after millions of generations. They are clearly LOCKED into a genetic pattern. They can vary WITHIN the parameters of their DNA, but they do not add genes, add chromosome pairs, or become different organisms.
(iii)Mutations do not do as you believe. They are not the mechanism for 'creating' new genes. They merely alter old ones, & not for the better, for the most part. It is only in certain organisms, such as e.coli that have a broader adaptability in their environment. Others, such as saber toothed cats, or wooly mammoths, lacked this adaptability, & went extinct. In fact, the entire record of extinction is the story of DEvolution, not evolution. As traits became narrowed in the family tree, those that could not adapt to changing environmental pressures died off. If they lacked the adaptability to use existing traits necessary to survive, they died. They did not conjure up new traits, or mutate themselves at will.

Time & mutation is an imaginary process for 'creating' traits. This cannot be observed or repeated, yet it is hailed as the source of life & the origin of species.

And, you cannot see or repeat any of these alleged changes. You cannot see or repeat a single new trait occurring in an organism. Where did the variability within canids come from? HOW did those traits suddenly appear, in such a short time? WHY would all that variability happen, all at once, then sit there waiting to come out?

The 'accumulated small changes add up to big ones' is the central flaw of evolution. It is assumed, not observed, & the science of genetics is making that assumption seem crazier every day.

It is the very first point of the OP, & this flaw has not been addressed, but ignored & reasserted. That is not a scientific argument, but a political one, where bluff & propaganda is used to promote a mythical belief.

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You bring up many interesting points. I have noticed that for many hard core evolutionists, their devotion & loyalty to it is as an ideology, not a scientific concept. They are fully invested, philosophically, into the ToE as the basis for their naturalistic beliefs about origins & the universe, & to question that makes their whole worldview tremble. But i don't see it that way. I see the BELIEF in naturalistic origins as a belief, just as someone with supernaturalistic beliefs. And, just because they don't have the exact mechanism clearly defined, does not mean that there is NO NATURAL explanation, it just means we don't know, as yet. But this is unsatisfying to the dogmatist, who wants everything clearly & neatly defined, & framed in absolutes.

But i cannot see the ToE lasting for much longer. It has been the defacto naturalistic view for over 100 yrs, usurping spontaneous generation, which lasted for centuries, as the naturalistic 'theory' of origins. The hard science of genetics is a big nail in the coffin, for the ToE.. it is coasting on 19th century arguments & charts, that do not reflect the current knowledge about genetics, & it completely depends on logical fallacies for it support. There is NO SCIENCE to back the ToE, as the 'origin of species'.

It DOES matter to me, 'what the truth is'. As a theist, i do not care WHAT the mechanism 'was' or 'is' for HOW living things came about. Scientists for centuries have sought to understand 'what God hath wrought', & have peered deeply into the inner workings of God's creation, searching for a glimpse into the divine Cause. If it was evolution, fine.. i would accept that as the mechanism, just as i accept newton's theory of gravity, the attractions of mass, relativity, & quantum physics. But i see the holes & numerous serious flaws in the ToE, & cannot accept it as a valid explanation for origins. I don't know HOW it happened, either, & i am a seeker for this mystery. Maybe, some real mechanism will be discovered, that demonstrates the ability to change genetic structure, or create new genes, or add chromosomes.. but that seems unlikely, unless there is an event based change, or we go to the '2001 space odyssey' theory, with special beamed rays affecting the changes in short time periods. There are a lot of different imaginations about origins.. one or more might even have truth, or partial truth to them. But as science, we have methodology to adhere to. We cannot blend imagination with facts, & declare them the same.

Yes, this was point #4 in the OP:

It is merely wishful thinking, masked in statistical probability. But to calculate probability, you have to have some parameters to go by. Something that is observably impossible cannot be calculated, as a probability. It would not matter how many times you jumped up & down, to reach the moon. Unless you can show this as a physical, objective possibility, declaring, 'if you do it over enough time, anything is possible!' still cannot make the impossible, possible. It is an appeal to magic, as you noted.

I think we have a terminology problem. The ONLY organisms that can procreate are those closely related, or descended from the same family line. IOW, tigers & lions are both felids, descended from the same ancestor, but locked in reproductive isolation from *some* other felids. Equids have the same anomaly, such as with zebras, donkeys, & horses, which also can reproduce, but produce sterile offspring. But you cannot mix a felid & equid, & get anything. There has to be some relation for any reproduction to take place.

Canidae, which was examined earlier in this thread, is different. I have not heard of any canids not able to reproduce with each other. Foxes, coyotes, wolves, dingos, etc.. all are canids, carry the mtDNA to show a common ancestor, & they have not locked themselves out in reproductive isolation. Why? I don't think we know, yet. It could be that we will discover 'why?', someday, as continued advances in genetics helps us explain the nature of living things. But for now, we don't know why some felids or equids can become reproductively isolated. Some fruit flies have been followed & branched out in trees until some strains have become reproductively isolated from other strains. It is possible that this could happen with humans, too, but for now, we remain the same species, able to reproduce with all other human 'strains'.

But to label a reproductively isolated child branch a 'new species!' is a bit of poetic license. It is only by definition. Most of the time, the new 'species' is just a variation of the old one, but narrowed down to such restrictive trait choices that it has lost the ability to procreate with distant cousins. They have the same genetic makeup, the same chromosome pairs, & share MOST of the same morphology. IOW, you have 'micro' evolution within the family tree branches, such as with canids, felids, equids, etc. But there is nothing to indicate 'macro' evolution between such trees. We can follow the mtDNA in each tree, but there is nothing to indicate any descendancy or ancestry between the various trees.. there is nothing to indicate a common ancestor with canids & felids, for example, other than an imaginative drawing.

So you don't really have 'mixed species'. You have some family trees branching out to reproductive isolation from other branches, & some sterile offspring if those branches are bred. it indicates descendancy, & the genetic architecture is nearly identical. But you cannot put a canid & a felid together.. they will fight like cats & dogs.

 

If they were subspecies, then they would be able to cross breed. Since they cannot, they are different species by the definition you provided.

 

While two related species are genetically dissimilar enough to prevent reproduction, it takes many generations to reach this point. During the process of speciation, no individual is genetically different enough from other members of the same generation to prevent breeding. The 'barrier' of sexual reproduction only applies over a generation or two, so it is not a problem for the theory of evolution.

When selective breeding has produced hundreds of different dog breeds in just a few centuries, how can you deny the accumulation of small changes that underpins evolution? The only reason specific traits cannot be repeated is because the multiple genetic changes that cause them occur randomly and cannot be forced in a laboratory.

People have been predicting the eminent end of the Theory of Evolution since it was first proposed 150 years ago. Not only has it withstood the hard science of genetics, but our growing understanding of DNA only reinforces it.

 

It is a problem with terminology, specifically, the term 'species'. It is not a clear descriptive term. Even among evolutionists. From wiki:

So whenever the 'debate' centers on the definition of 'species' there is seldom any enlightenment, as the definitions are vague, & not even agreed upon by those framing the debate. It becomes an argument of words, with competing definitions & changing goal posts.

 

This is all hand waiving and you making baseless assertions. Please provide a peer reviewed paper for ANY of the claims you made in this post.

 

You dodged the content of my post. You claim a 'barrier' exists to macroevolution.

What is the biological mechanism that imposes that barrier? I proposed what it must be, at a minimum, in my post, which you totally ignored. You also claim this barrier is observable. Please identify this observable biological mechanism.

 

As has been on display throughout this thread and pointed out multiple times....There is an extremely obvious aspect to this whole concept that you for some reason cannot grasp and place into understanding. Breeding IS the mechanism that allows for evolution and genetic changes but, it takes many generations and vast amounts of the one thing you refuse to comprehend.

TIME.

 

I not only did not dodge it, i addressed it directly in my reply. DNA is the barrier. It is unique to each organism, & does NOT vary willy nilly within its parameters, but consistently outputs whatever is input. And, when there are traits that are 'bred' out, via natural or man made selection, the result is a NARROWER choice of selection & a standardization of traits. Instead of more, you get less variability, as undesired or unneeded traits are left behind in the dustbin of selection.

There is NO MECHANISM that 'creates' traits on the fly. The child organism can only produce what was in the parent stock, with some degradation. It is a slow dwindling of the number of traits or variable available, but it eventually becomes narrowed down in a specific trait pattern.. that which we label a breed (or sometimes, species, or sub-species).

Any geneticist recognizes this barrier, as do animal breeders. There are not 'new traits' being randomly created in each organism, messing up the desired trait output. Instead, you get a steady narrowing of variability, as the selection process depletes the available varieties.

Again? You just keep repeating the same old, tired, refuted claims. Time has NO MECHANISM to provoke change. If the process cannot be observed, repeated, & analyzed over the last several millennia, adding millions more does not give it a better chance. This is a scientific process, not a shot at the lottery.
[MENTION=66829]One Mind[/MENTION] & i both addressed this a few posts up. Did you think this somehow did not apply?

I just found that darwin facepalm.. & wanted to use it in this discussion. I don't think you are dumb, but i could not edit it to say anything else. But, that you continue to ignore rational arguments, & keep repeating irrational ones, seems to make the graphic apply more than i might think...

 

Since i have used canidae a lot in this thread, i'll show a useful graphic, to get the concepts across. Many phylogeneticists are preferring the circular 'hub' to the sideways tree, as it more clearly communicates the sequence of events.



There have been many studies, including the one i referenced earlier, that show the clear descendancy in canidae. You can trace the mtDNA in each 'branch' to the parent stock, which contained all the original genetic variability.

As you go out from the central hub, variability begins to decrease, as certain 'breeds' become locked in morphological & genetic patterns. A schnauzer is at the end of its variability, without the pool of genes to pick from. Many of the 'old' genes are still there, but in smaller amounts, that lessen the odds of them coming up in the procreation slot machine.

Canidae is a perfect example of 'micro' evolution, and the devolution within a family tree. We can trace the descendancy, observe the ability to reproduce between the various 'breeds', & the most important SCIENTIFIC process, see the mtDNA as a proof of descendancy. We are not stuck with a 'looks like!' morphology to guess at descendancy, but can trace it through the dna.

How can you conclude anything other than 'devolution' from canidae? Where did all this variability come from, in the short time humans have been breeding canids? What process 'created' all this variety? One of the mantras of evolutionary biology is 'selection acts upon existing variability', so all of these traits were there, waiting for opportunity to come out via the slot machine of procreation. They did, & we have the current breeds. Some traits have been lost, never to be seen again, through extinction. New ones are not being made, by any process we can observe or repeat. So the 'theory' of macro evolution has no basis, & the opposite is actually observed.

Now, i know that i am pretty much the only one who presents science, arguments, facts, & studies in this thread, regarding this topic. I would LOVE it if anyone would rebut this post with anything that resembles science. But i don't expect it. I expect logical fallacies, as that is what has been given, for the most part, throughout this thread.

1. If variability is created on the fly, why do we NOT see added variability all the time, within each species? Instead, we observe narrowing of variability, as breeds become locked in morphological patterns.
2. WHERE did all the original variability come from, if they are supposed to be 'slow incremental changes' over millions of years?
3. Canids have a lot of morphological differences, all observed within the last few hundred years, not over 'millions of years'. Why? How?

 

This is more hand waiving and simply stating "nuh uh". You've been challenged numerous times to provide a peer reviewed paper, or ANY evidence at all for the claims you keep making. Why do you continue to ignore this?

 

Just because some guy in the internet makes some dumb argument in his mom's basement eating Cheetos doesn't mean this is an scientific argument made by real scientists. Above are the arguments I have never heard before in my entire life from informed evolutionists.

I found it astounding that you barely addressed the real arguments for evolution.
29+ evidences for evolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

 

The mixed species are still a species. They are dead ends.

If there were transitional species we'd see them. There would be evidence of a species
changing into another. Part of a former and part of a new. Instead all that exists are separate
and distinct species.

 

Finally you agree with me and I accept your apology.

Yes, Darwin gave himself an out. Unfortunately the geological record still hasn't produced
any evidence of evolution.

 

Subspecies within the species can procreate. Heinz 57 dogs are a good example. Races are
subspecies. They can procreate. They remain the same species.

Hybrids cannot.

 

What would count as evidence for evolution from the geological record?

 

Whatever delusional thought makes you feel warm and fuzzy.
Your inability to comprehend Darwin's writing style is your problem, not mine.

 

Why don't you present ONE of these alleged 'arguments', & we can examine them, scientifically? That is what i've asked for, all along. But for all these pages, have mostly gotten fallacies... kind of like this one, claiming there to be 'so much evidence' that it is too much work to list them all. One valid, scientific argument with evidence. Is that too much to ask?

For anyone who has spent any time 'debating' evolutionists over the science of evolution, which for me goes back to talk.origins on usenet, these fallacies are repeated often, & without shame or introspection.

oh, & btw, nice inclusion of some ad hominem in there, too! might as well get a whole load of fallacies, to prove my point!

 

Macro-evolution is based upon the spontaneous increase in the complexity of an organism via random mutation.
Unfortunately, for macro-evolution, spontaneity always decreases complexity and increases stability.
Spontaneity always increases entropy.

The spontaneous increase in complexity, information or available energy remain a theory for some, but it is a disprovable hypothesis to me.

 

You are trying to change the topic on me. Again, show me that the above arguments are used by actual scientists to support evolution. And again, just because people on the internet use an argument doesn't mean its an official argument used by actual scientists.

Here are the arguments in question:
'Everybody believes this!' This is an attempt to prove something by asserting it is common knowledge. It is obviously not true, anyway, as many people do not believe in the ToE, in spite of decades of indoctrination from the educational system, public television, & other institutions intent on promoting this ideology.
Argument by Assertion. Instead of presenting evidence, assertions are repeated over & over, as if that will make up for the impotence of the arguments.
Argument from Ignorance. This is claiming that evolution is true, because it has not been proven false. But the burden of proof is on the claimant, not the skeptic, to prove their claims.

To state that these are fallacies of evolution is to state these are inherent fallacies made by evolution, and are official arguments, rather than just dumb things said by people on reddit. In fact I have never heard any of these arguments from anybody in my life and I have been debating evolution for years.

 

Entropy only works in closed systems. When energy goes into a system like the sun's entropy the energy won't necessarily decrease. Also if natural selection is removing the bad mutations, then we won't get this decline in complexity. Everyone has 100 new mutations and if mutations were destroying complexity life would be extinct very quickly.

 

still waiting for you to provide a single peer reviewed piece of scientific evidence supporting your baseless claims. You've ignored by request several times now. Wonder why that is?

 

A species becoming another species. According to evolutionists it's a gradual process. Gradual or not there
would be evidence of a species becoming another species. A species, in this wishful gradual process, would
eventually have to contain two species until it becomes one. So far there is nothing.

 

Correction, you're the one with the problem. I fully comprehend. Remember, you're the one
who said Darwin didn't say the geological record would show a gradual process. I agreed
with him. You didn't until you finally realized I was right and changed your opinion to agree
with me.

Good try.

 

"Part of a former and part of a new." Do you understand how vague that is? If that's really what you want to go with, there are hundreds, probably thousands, of fossils that fit that description. Archaeoteryx has both bird and dinosaur traits, for example. There are living organisms that fit that definition, like monotremes. If you can't get more specific, then you're simply wrong to say that transitional species don't exist.

 

You truly are delusional if you think I agree with you.
.His statement acknowledged an incomplete fossil record which is what we expect to see; not a problem with his theory...