A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

You should start thinking, Faith. Paternity tests, Faith. You really don't have to have been there to know who's the biological mother and father. Paternity tests tell you what happened in the past. Not repeated in the present, but they are very reliable on telling you what happened in the past. Much more reliable than people denying that sex happened.Paternity tests about the past are much more reliable than what people tell you now.

I'm talking qbout the distant past, not the recent past where you can hold the father responsible. You can't check anything in the prehistorical past, whatever you thlnk you know about it can never be verified in the past itself, you can only theorize about it in the present. Sometimes the clues are good enough so you can be fairly certain of your theory, but if in fact, for instance, conditions in the past were not like they are in the present and you don't take that into account how are you going to have an accurate idea about what really happened?The Bible gives a picture of lots of differences in the past from what we experience today, so a YEC has to take all that into account.It tells us there was a worldwide inundation so we have to take that into account. It tells us ppeople were living for nearly a thousand years before the Flood and still in the hundreds for a few centuries afterward, so we have to take that into account.It tells us the climate before the Flood was very different from what we experience today and we have to take that into account too.It tells us there was a great change in living things when the first human beings disobeyed God, that death entered the world at that point, which challenges evolutionjary theory, so we have to take that into account too.The Bible was dismissed by scientists as a true picture of reality, so although we thlnk that was a bad decision we can't persuade anyone, but we do have to accept it ourselves. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The past is not as impenetrable as you want it to be.When many independent lines of evidence and analysis agree, that's a solid result. For example, dating methods.

There's only one truly scientific dating method and that's radiometric, all the rest are human speculation. James Hutton made up a story about Siccar Point that he took as evidence of ancient age, and eventually the whole scientific community was persuaded of the truth of one man's wild speculation. If anyone WANTED an interpretation to be true, he wanted that one to be true and apparently many today also do, but it's certainly flimsy scientific evidence.Nevertheless that wild assumption was built on by others convinced of it and it carried science through to the objective radiometric method, which is the only one that has any real scientific standing. Nevertheless if the Bible is true that method is not even if we can't prove it yet.Believe me I don't enjoy being in this position.

Your ignorant opinion about what's scientific is noted. As usual we've discussed that at length and you ignored that.But I'll play your game this time. Multiple independent radiometric dating methods give the same results. They are independent because they use different isotopes that decay in different ways (there are three very different types of radioactive decay and lots of different subtypes) and use very different methods of analysis. We understand the physics very well. The phenomena of radioactive decay involve such fundamental properties of the universe that any change in the past would leave easily detectable repercussions today. Lots of people have looked. None of those repercussions exist.The Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and life is close to that old. Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

You mean the many independent radiometric methods.

Let's start again, but with the basics... First off let's take a standard scientific definition of Macroevolution:

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Macroevolution is evolution on a grand scale ” what we see when we look at the over-arching history of life: stability, change, lineages arising, and extinction.

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Here, you can examine the patterns of macroevolution in evolutionary history and find out how scientists investigate deep history.

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It is the study of the natural history of life over many generations, the long term results of individual populations evolving (by microevolution) generation after generation after generation, accumulating changes in traits over time.There are 4 basic Patterns in macroevolution that result from continued (micro)evolution and all have been observed:

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You can think of patterns as "what happened when." All of the changes, diversifications, and extinctions that happened over the course of life's history are the patterns of macroevolution.

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However, beyond the details of individual past events ” such as, when the beetle radiation began or what the first flowers looked like ” biologists are interested in general patterns that recur across the tree of life:

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1. Stasis: Many lineages on the tree of life exhibit stasis, which just means that they don't change much for a long time, as shown in the figure to the right.
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2. Character change: Lineages can change quickly or slowly. Character change can happen in a single direction, such as evolving additional segments, or it can reverse itself by gaining and then losing segments. Changes can occur within a single lineage or across several lineages. In the figure to the right, lineage A changes rapidly but in no particular direction. Lineage B shows slower, directional change.
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   Trilobites, animals in the same clade as modern insects and crustaceans, lived over 300 million years ago. As shown below, their fossil record clearly suggests that several lineages underwent similar increases in segment number over the course of millions of years.
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3. Lineage-splitting (or speciation): Patterns of lineage-splitting can be identified by constructing and examining a phylogeny. The phylogeny might reveal that a particular lineage has undergone unusually frequent lineage-splitting, generating a "bushy" tuft of branches on the tree (Clade A, below). It might reveal that a lineage has an unusually low rate of lineage-splitting, represented by a long branch with very few twigs coming off (Clade B, below). Or it might reveal that several lineages experienced a burst of lineage-splitting at the same time (Clade C, below).
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4. Extinction: Extinction is extremely important in the history of life. It can be a frequent or rare event within a lineage, or it can occur simultaneously across many lineages (mass extinction). Every lineage has some chance of becoming extinct, and overwhelmingly, species have ended up in the losing slots on this roulette wheel: over 99% of the species that have ever lived on Earth have gone extinct. In this diagram, a mass extinction cuts short the lifetimes of many species, and only three survive.

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+ Note that #2 - Character change - shows two variations on anagenesis (blue and red lineages) and that #3 - Lineage-splitting (or speciation) - shows cladogenesis with daugher-clades nested inside parent clades. /+(Micro)evolution in isolated populations diverges over time due to mutations and genetic drift, resulting in both anagenesis and cladogenesis. The speciation events occur within clades forming a branching pattern with nested hierarchies, as seen in 3 above.So the next questions are what is speciation, how do speciation events it occur and how frequent are they?See Population Dynamics - the math behind the evolution of species, which I'll cover in the next reply.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : + clrty

Having covered the scientific definition of macroevolution in Message 772, involving anagenesis, cladogenesis, genetic drift, basic microevolution effects over multiple generations. Now let's look at speciation, what it is and how it happens.Speciation occurs when two reproductively isolated daughter populations diverge over time until they are sexually incompatible.From Population Dynamics - the math behind the evolution of species, Message 6

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THE BASIC MODEL

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The central assumption of the DOBZHANSKY-MULLER model of speciation is that alleles cause no sterility or inviability on their normal “pure species” genetic background. Instead, an allele can lower fitness only when brought together with genes from another species. Any particular hybrid incompatibility might cause partial or complete hybrid sterility or inviability. For most of this paper, I assume that hybrid incompatibilties involve interactions between pairs of genes, as in DOBZHANSKY and MULLER’S verbal models. Later, I consider three-locus and higher interactions. I also assume that multiple substitutions do not occur at the same locus, an assumption that is reasonable during the early divergence of taxa. I assume nothing about the evolutionary causes of substitutions. The DOBZHANSKY-MULLER model of speciation requires only that substitutions occur and assumes nothing about whether they are brought about by natural selection or genetic drift.

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Because I consider the cumulative effects of interactions between many loci -- which quickly gets complicated -- it is useful to picture this process diagramatically. Figure 1 offers a simple way to picture the accumulation of complementary genes between two haploid populations. Each of the two heavy lines represents a lineage descended from a common ancestor. The two allopatric populations begin with identical “ancestral” lowercase genotypes at all loci (a b c . . .). Time runs upward, with the first substitution occurring at the a locus, the second at the b locus and so on.

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The first substitution involves the replacement of the a allele by the A allele in population 1 (uppercase letters indicate only that an allele is “derived”; no dominance is implied). The A allele cannot cause any hybrid sterility or inviability: because A is obviously compatible with the genetic background of population 1, it must be compatible with the identical background of population 2. The second substitution, at the B locus (in population 2), could be incompatible with only one locus: A, as the B allele has not been “tested” for compatibility with A. The third substitution, at C, could be incompatible with the B or a alleles. As we continue this process, it is clear that we can identify all possible (i.e., evolutionarily allowed) incompatibilities by drawing an arrow from each derived allele to each “earlier” (lower) allele carried by the other species. Thus D can be incompatible with c, B, and a. This arrow-drawing device will repeatedly prove useful.

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Several other less trivial facts also emerge from Figure 1:

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• All incompatibilities are asymmetric. For example, although B might be incompatible with A, b cannot be incompatible with a.
• Evolutionarily derived (uppercase) alleles are involved in more potential incompatibilities than ancestral (lowercase) alleles.
• Later substitutions cause more possible incompatibilities than earlier ones (e.g., although the substitution of B produces one possible incompatibility, the later substitution of D produces three). This suggests that the strength of reproductive isolation might increase faster than linearly with time.

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Note that this means that ancestral (lowercase) alleles cannot on their own cause speciation, and that at least two derived/mutated (uppercase) alleles are needed to cause reproductive incompatibilities.From Population Dynamics - the math behind the evolution of species, Message 7

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THE RATE OF SPECIATION

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Later substitutions cause more potential incompatibilities than earlier ones (Figure 1). As already noted, the first substitution at the A locus cannot cause any hybrid incompatibility, while the second substitution could be incompatible with only one locus: the B allele has not been tested with the A allele. In general, the Kth substitution can be incompatible with K-1 loci from the other population. It is obvious, then, that the total number of incompatibilities separating two taxa increases faster than linearly with the number of substitutions that have occurred between them. This, in turn, implies that the strength of reproductive isolation -- or the probability of speciation -- between two taxa increases faster than linearly with time. This important effect is easily quantified. I consider two cases. First, I assume that complete reproductive isolation results from a single incompatibility between two complementary genes. Second, I assume that reproductive isolation results from the cumulative effects of many small incompatibilities. As we will see, both cases yield similar results.

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Considering the cumulative effects of all K substitutions,

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where L is the strength of reproductive isolation (or the fitness “load” among hybrids due to complementary gene interactions). Thus, early in the divergence of two taxa (L << l), the strength of reproductive isolation increases as the square of the number of substitutions:

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Thus the chance of speciation increases much faster than linearly with K (or time) whether speciation typically results from a very small number of genes of large effect (as in the first model) or a large number of genes of smaller effect (as in the second). The number of substitutions having a substantial effect on reproductive isolation also increases faster than linearly with time. Thus, if one were to double the time since divergence, one would more than double the number of genes having a large effect on hybrid fitness. ...

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The role of early vs. late substitutions: The above discussion might seem to imply that a gene of known large effect on hybrid fitness was more likely a later than earlier substitution. This is incorrect. Although the probability that a substitution causes hybrid sterility or inviability increases with time, any gene afflicting hybrids is just as likely to have been the first gene to diverge as the last. This is because a late diverging gene must be incompatible with something, in particular with some locus that diverged earlier.

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The bottom line is that speciation is caused by multiple (at least 2) mutations, and the longer populations are isolated the higher is the probability that incompatible mutations or mutation combinations arise in either of the daughter populations.

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These incompatibilities need not be enough to cause speciation on their own, and it may take several mildly incompatible mutations to build up to the point of speciation, but the probability increases with the square of the number of mutations. The longer population are isolated the more probable incompatibilities will arise.This tells us how speciation occurs. This causes the nested hierarchies of species, as predicted by the ToE.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : No reason given.

This one is funny again. You don't know much, Faith. Lots and lots and lots of different radiometric methods. And they all converge to give similar dates. Together with all the other different dating methods.

The past is the past, Faith. We can and do test the past. Whether recent or distant. We use those methods.You may not like it because of your ridiculous faith; but rational people do. Whether recent history or distant history. Those methods work.

First, a degree just indicates that you should have studied the subject enough to understand it, but not necessarily that you use that understanding or that you do not misapply it in order to deceive.Second, there is a long history concerning YECs and academics degrees.Almost without fail, YECs will claim to have degrees, especially PhDs, in order to present themselves as authorities -- a lot of creationist claims are appeals to authortity, which is doubtless due to the fundamentalist mindset. This has led to many creationists touting false credentials, such as honorary degrees and degrees purchased from "diploma millsHarold Slusher, the source of a number of the ICR's young-earth claims including the moon dust argument. He has a MS in a physical science which I believe to be legitimate (his monograph on radioactive half-lives has been praised for clearly explaining half-lives even though his conclusions are wrong), but he would also claim the title of Dr. Slusher because of an honorary doctorate and a second doctorate from a diploma mill. When I first heard that he was part of the faculty at University of Texas at El Paso, I looked him up on the UTEP website, where he was listed as "Dr. Harold Slusher." For a while afterwards, that faculty list was no longer available and then when it came back up he was just "Harold Slusher". Over the years, I've received emails from his students complaining about him.A much more infamous case is "Dr." Kent Hovind, who also illustrates another problem with "degreed creationists." He always insists on being addressed as "Dr. Hovind", even to the point of having had himself listed in the telephone book as such. He's yet another "diploma mill baby". After high school, he attended about one year of community college and then transferred to an unaccredited Baptist college for his bachelor's in Religion. Then he purchased his master's and doctorate from a diploma mill, both "degrees" in Religious Education. His devotees consider him a scientist because he makes "sciencey-sounding" claims and also mainly because of his title of "Dr. Hovind". But even his fake degrees have nothing to do with any field of science, but rather with religious education.That's the other problem I mentioned: in many cases the creationist's degree, even when legitimate, has nothing to do with the subject. This becomes especially clear whenever creationists repost any of their "lists of creationists who are scientists". Well, very few of them have degrees in any field of science.
First, a great many of them have degrees in engineering and engineers are notoriously dismissive of science. Several of them have degrees in theology and religious studies. In one list there two with doctorates in "food science" (a legitimate field, but how could that be pertinent?). And others had doctorates in fields that were even less pertinent.Then there are properly degreed creationists who misuse their knowledge. In order to join most creationist organizations, you must effectively swear an oath to firmly adhere to a fixed set of YEC beliefs, so when a degreed creationist speaks one must determine whether they are speaking or acting as a scientist or as a creationist.In a local debate a decade ago, a local creationist quoted from Dr Georgia Purdom, PhD Molecular Genetics, in order to "refute" retroviruses. What he neglected to mention was that she is a professional creationist working with Answers in Genesis as one of their professional speakers. He later quoted from Dr. John C. Sanford, PhD plant breeding/plant genetics, again failing to mention that he is not only an anti-evolutionist but also a YEC. Both acts were deliberately intended to deceive his audience who, unlike me, did not have the benefit of a pause button so I could go look up those two references.Dr. Steve Austin, PhD Sedimentary Geology, had his legitimate doctorate financed by the ICR who, in the wake of all the scandals about fake creationist degrees, was feeling a lot of pressure to have a geologist on their staff with a legitimate doctorate. While working on his degree, Austin wrote several articles for the ICR and the Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ) under that pseudonym "Stuart Nevins". I read some of his CRSQ articles and noted that he presented several misrepresentations about geology that he knew his creationist audience would eat up but which any geology student would know after the first semester or two were utterly false and misleading. At the ICR with his PhD, he has used his knowledge in the old YEC game of ordering radiometric dating on samples that they know will yield bad results.BTW, when you were getting all bent out of shape over my suggestion that you talk to a geologist about your "lithification model" (squeezing the water out), I'm pretty sure that I mentioned Dr. Austin as a possible candidate so that at least you'd be getting corrected by a YEC. Sometimes a professional YEC will correct followers' really egregious mistakes, such as Dr. Gish on a radio show correcting a caller's use of the "why are there still monkeys?" claim (yes, that blatantly false claim does actually occur in the wild, albeit rarely).Even more blatant is Dr. Jonathan Wells, a Moonie who decided that his mission was "destroying Darwinism", so he earned a PhD in molecular and cellular biology solely for that purpose.So having a degree that is not in a pertinent field is meaningless. Having a fake degree is worse than meaningless. And having a pertinent, legitimate degree does nothing if you either fail to use it or use it for dishonest purposes.

But in this topic we are discussing if features in the genome indicates realtionshipos between species, so possible effects of a pre-flood environment don't apply.Consider that genes code for proteins, and every three bases of a genes sequence represents one amino acid of a protein. This is the codon (I realise you probably know this already). However, most amino acids are represented in the genome by more than one codon, in fact there can be anywhere up to six different codons. Therefore there can be a great deal of variation in a genes sequence that will produce the same protein ”design’. This allows for mutations to accrue without changing the protein.
Now we can look at this sequence variation in genes that maintain basic cell function in all organisms, such as cytochromes B or C, and map the variation in gene sequences between species. Now within a kind as it diversifies into different species you’d expect this variation to show relationships as mutations are inherited, just as in a familial relationship. But you wouldn’t expect to fit species of different kinds into a familial relationship of variation, since the kinds were created separately and mutations are random. However that is not what we see, and the variation that is present in all species is consistent with them all being related. So for example the variation of cytochrome B between humans and Chimpanzees is less than the variation between Chimpanzees and Gorillas so it’s possible to build up a pattern of relationship between these apes.This is only addressing the question of relationships between species. The question of how changes in the genomes can result in the variety of phenotypes we see I will leave to another post.
Also I note that I’ve used the terms kind and species and I know in the past this has created arguments over definitions, but it’s not really relevant to what I’m trying to discuss.

We may already have a problem with different uses of some terms. I don't thlnk in terms of mutations at all as a normal element in processes of microevolution/variation, and I am not sure if you are talking about microevolution/variation when you use the term "species" either. Sorry, it does get confusing.j "Species" in the sense of microevolution/variations? And I don't know what to make of "Familial relationship of variation?" Sorry, again I'm not sure what you are talking about. Sprry, I'm completely lost.And even though you seem to mean to clarify in what follows, I get even more lost.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This confusion is all your doing by NOT using the scientific definitions for the scientific terms. ++ If I were you I would stick to "kind" and define that for how you want to use it.+ I think we can assume that meddle was using the scientific definition, so you only confuse yourself with your non-standard use of the term species.+ We also know, btw, that it takes at least 2 mutations to develop reproductive incompatibilities. Your insistence on ignoring the roll of mutations in the diversification of life on earth is also your loss.+ See Population Dynamics - the math behind the evolution of species, Message 6 and Message 7 which show that it is not possible to develop reproductive incompatibilities without mutations.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : +Edited by RAZD, : ++

Yip, you do creationism and pretend that the way you use it are the way they are used in science. They certainly are not.Edited by Pressie, : No reason given.