Who Owns the Standard Definition of Evolution

You dismiss what I presented because you wanted something different. Tough. What I presented is absolutely correct as described.

For #1 the response is that TOE has no answer for this, nor is TOE interested in answering this.For #2 the response is that TOE has no answer to this, and tells the questioner to go figure it out for himself.For #3 the response is that TOE has no answer for this, and replies with an irrelevant counter-question.For #4 the response is that TOE has no answer for this, and replies, irrelevantly, that other features of the chameleon are similar to other creatures.We see a pattern: TOE has no answers to the big macroevolution questions, but seems to have a ready set of go-to evasive responses.

Do you have anything constructive to discuss on the p values kicked out by the calculator I linked, and the p value for congruence between two independent trees for 30 taxa? Or are you going to hide behind a veil of insults as an excuse for failing to address the evidence?

Hello Dr. Jack – Thank you for your thoughtful response.The Theory of Evolution is presented to school kids and the general public as Macroevolution in the form of Zallinger’s “March of Progress”, sketches showing the evolutionary iterations of creatures between a land mammal and a whale, and so on. These depictions are intellectually stimulating to most, much more so than talk of bacterial mutation, taxonomy, and statistical likelihood of DNA similarities.Yet I’m finding that there is no real evidence for the most commonly asserted examples of Macroevolution. The evolutionary biologist is left to explain how extrapolation of microevolution DNA comparisons to some unknown degree is inarguable proof of the Macroevolution.This all seems intellectually dishonest at best, out-and-out balderdash at worst.In all of this back-and-forth I am trying to understand what the real TOE is all about, and what real proof we have for it.

I don’t have a problem with scientific inquiry, I realize that all science is tentative, I realize that we have to start somewhere, and that somewhere is ponderance/speculation/idea formulation.However, Science is characterized by perpetual inquiry and relentless skepticism. This is why I have a problem with TOE being presented as settled fact, such as it is. There is more about TOE that is as yet inadequately addressed – like my questions above which are met with generalized speculations that defer to microevolution as much as possible – than has been addressed.The bewildering part of this is that those who so vehemently advance TOE in the name of science are so willing to eschew the most fundamental aspects of science. They are only willing to apply known natural processes, and if those processes don’t fit then the perpetual foregone conclusion is “yes, they do fit and it’s only a matter of time before we figure out how”. There is no accounting for completely unknown processes blowing the whole thing out of the water.Supernatural would be the term for these processes, but that introduces the debate of where natural ends and super begins.

Hello Granny M. - Through all of this argle-bargle I have come to understand that my contention with TOE is in the Macroevolution that is fed to countless middle-schoolers and the general public in digestible chunks, as discussed in my entries immediately previous.

I’m not here to demonstrate anything one way or another, I’m simply asking the question of how the Macroevolution that is fed ubiquitously to the public can be substantiated.Nested hierarchies based on statistical analyses of microbiological classifications do not substantiate or demonstrate this.

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Do you have anything constructive to discuss on the p values kicked out by the calculator I linked ...

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You still have no clue, do you, about the fact that you don't even know how to interpret the p-values? It's not about the values themselves. It's the claims you make, with the p-values, that are wrong.

More importantly, we need theories that explain the data we do have. We have tons of data in biology, and ID/Creationism doesn't even start to explain it. For example, why is there an exact match between the phylogeny based on morphology and the phylogeny based on the sequence of cytochrome c for 30 taxa? ID/Creationism can't explain this.Why do we see more transitions than transversions when comparing the human and chimp genomes? Evolution perfectly explains it, but I have yet to see any proponent of ID/Creationism even begin to explain it.Why is there more sequence conservation in exons than in introns when comparing the same gene across diverse vertebrate species? Again, this is EXACTLY what we expect to see with evolution and common ancestry, but I have yet to see any proponent of ID/Creationism even begin to explain it.Even the most basic observation in biology, that of a nested hierarchy, can't be explained by ID/Creationism, but it is EXACTLY what we would expect to see from evolution and common ancestry. Not knowing the fine details of what happened in a specific lineage does not cast doubt on the entire theory. In addition, if someone just can't believe that something evolved it in no way poses a threat to the theory. Incredulity has never been a valid piece of scientific evidence. The only person I have seen eschewing the fundamental aspects of science is you. You apparently think that personal incredulity can be used to falsify a scientific theory. That just isn't the case.You also fail to address the many empirically verified tests that the theory of evolution has passed. You ask for these tests, but once given they are seemingly ignored.

Then why don't you interpret it for us. What does that p-value represent with reference to the matching phylogenies for 30 taxa?

And I am showing you how it has been substantiated. Microbiological classifications? Here are the taxa in the comparison:Can you please explain why the exact match between the phylogenies based on morphology and DNA sequence are not substantiation for the predictions made by the theory?

I'm a participant in this thread and would like to continue to participate, so I'm not going to moderate, but for anyone exhibiting a significant lack of constructive effort in messages not addressed to me I will change their account settings to allow only 5 messages/day. If it continues I'll set it lower.

I already explained it here in post 150:EvC Forum: Who Owns the Standard Definition of EvolutionThe differences between the genome of humans and other primates matches the changes caused by microevolution.

Do you see the problem here?Just what accounting do you propose for "completely unknown processes? Can you describe how "completely unknown processes" are accounted for in any other scientific fields? As far as anyone can tell the generalized speculations you listed were just something that you just made up, instead of actual citations.Macroevolution is just lots and lots of microevolution. If you have evidence that this is incorrect, please present it.

Taq:

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Then why don't you interpret it for us. What does that p-value represent with reference to the matching phylogenies for 30 taxa?

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I asked you for proof to back up your claim, that common ancestry of humans and non-human primates (or other animals in general) is beyond doubt.You brought this data as support for your claim. You think common ancestry explains the observed data, and calculate the p-values, based on the assumption of randomness, if there were seperate ancestors. With such low p-value, we could rule out the randomness. So they could be related by a common ancestor, or there are seperate ancestors with a different reason for the sequences not being random.You claiming that such is impossible beyond doubt, that is not the result of the p-values. That is from your argumentation and educated guess perhaps. You can do that, of course. And you should, as we should explore possible theories and explanations. But your claims about your hypothesis of common ancestry being true beyond doubt, are just your claims. And you try to impose these conclusions of yours on everybody else as facts, while they are not. Not from the data you provided.