A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

Tanypteryx writes:Breeding is not a surrogate for evolution.

Tangle writes:The ToE requires very large amounts of time - often millions of years. We can't therefore show you step by step how evolution has happened.

Dredge writes:and since you also "know" the biological mechanism responsible for this alleged evolution, you shouldn't have any trouble explaining how you would (theoretically) go about breeding a whale from its alleged evolutionary ancestor - a "rodent".

Dredge writes:If you have no idea how to even begin breeding these alleged ancestral "rodents" towards whale-ness, then I must conclude you have no idea how macroevolution occurs and that your claim to this knowledge is bogus and delusionary.

Faith writes:Not silly at all. If such an evolution is possible then it ought to be possible to hypothesize a plausible series of genetic changes that could bring it about over millions of years. A mutation here, a mutation there, etc. Since obviously nobody can do this and won't even try, we know the ToE is a complete krock.

Dredge writes:No need to go into every precise detail.

There's no reason to think you'd get anything whalelike at all, depending on mutations for this, even through hundreds of trials. This is an article of faith, this is not science. It can't happen. Mutations can't do anything that organized, in concert with one another. It can't happen. More likely your rodent is just going to get tired of being wet and long since would have emigrated to a more congenial climate.

Quite right - it's evolution by artificial selection.

I can't see why an naturally-occurring evolution couldn't theoretically be repeated by a human breeding program - assuming unlimited time is available and the evolutionary mechanisms and direction are known.

I can't see why an naturally-occurring evolution couldn't theoretically be repeated by a human breeding program ...

Percy writes:But you said "given unlimited time," so Stile suggested an experimental program (it would have to last for billions and billions of years) that could be repeated over and over and over again until a rodent evolved into a whale. But this program would never be successful because of several problems. First, whales didn't evolve from rodents but from a now extinct ungulate (a hoofed animal), i.e., it no longer exists. Second, even if this ungulate did exist, because mutations are random repeating the experiment is unlikely to produce whales, just as Stile suggested, except it's even more unlikely than that. I think the universe would end first. Third, even if this original ungulate did exist, we couldn't keep it unchanged from one run of the experiment to the next because it would evolve too. The only way to actually run the experiment is to begin with an infinite number of ungulates and run an infinite number of these experiments simultaneously. And Fourth, we don't know the details of the changing environments that occurred in sequence, including the now extinct plants and creatures that populated them. Even if we did, they don't exist anymore. That is, we don't know what the selection pressures were, and even if we did we couldn't reproduce them.

Dredge quotes:

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"In just 26 generations, we managed to create relationships between the shape and size of (fruit) fly wings that were more extreme than those resulting from more than 50 million years of evolution." - Geir H. Bolstad, researcher at the Norwegian for Nature Research. (sciencedaily.com, "58,000 fruit flies shed light on 100-year old evolutionary question", 2015)

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