Are you saying that seals and walruses used to be otters and beavers? Are you saying that otters and beavers will one day be seals and walruses?
No one who knows anything about evolutionary theory would honestly say such things. Only creationists, who know nothing about evolution, would say such things.
Do you remember the discussion of the problem faced by creationists when they "triumphantly" confront "evolutionists" with their PRATTs? They get laughed out of there rightfully for uttering such nonsense. Of course, the problem is that they, being ignorant and misled, had no idea that what they had been taught was such nonsense. And yet what they say
is nonsense and they must be informed of that fact.
One example of such nonsense is creationists stating that for evolution to be true we would need to see a dog give birth to a cat. Which is what you are claiming here to be what evolution says. That is completely and utterly untrue and complete and utter nonsense. And as long as you utter complete and utter nonsense, then you should not be surprised at the reaction you receive.
Examine how life works! That is the key to reasoning all this out. Parents produce offspring. In doing so, the parents' genetic information, recombined with some mutations mixed in, is passed on to the offspring. As a result, parents' offspring are very similar to their parents, yet slightly different. In order to pass their genes on to further generations, those offspring need to live and survive within their environment, at least up to the point of being able to reproduce and even at times to do other things that will further ensure the survival of their genes. Those offspring who are better able to do that will be better represented in the progenitors of the next generation; those unable to survive or be selected for reproduction will be less well represented. The genes of those who are better represented among the progenitors of the next generation will contribute more to that next generation's collective genome. And so one, for generation after generation.
My personal opinion, which I have not seen expressed elsewhere, is that evolution is not an actual force or process, but rather it is the natural cumulative effects of life doing what life does. Think in terms of what life does and evolution will make much more sense. Of course, that does not keep us from describing what life naturally does in terms of "evolutionary processes".
Stop thinking in terms of one modern species "evolving" into another unrelated modern species ... or even into another
related species. That is nonsense. As long as you continue to utter such nonsense, you will be treated appropriately regardless of what kind of shit-fit tantrum you decide to throw.
A dog will give birth to a dog, a dog different from the parents, albeit very similar. Over successive generations, those differences can accumulate, eventually (should the environment's selective pressures so determine) over many generations result in an animal that bears little resemblance to that original dog. Similarly, a cat will give birth to a cat, different from the parent, and over generations, depending on the environment's selective pressures, could result in an animal that bears little resemblance to the original cat.
But at no point could a dog ever become a cat, nor could a cat ever become a dog. Even if the new dog were to appear for all purposes to be a cat, its genes would reveal it to be a dog -- genetics does not lie.
IOW, try to think in terms of Darwin's branching tree. Lamarck (remember the pre-Darwinian use/disuse acquired traits misconception of evolution? The immediate and obvious disproof of which is to cut off multiple generations of lab mice's tails and observe that their offspring continue to have tails with complete and utter disregard of our Lamarckian efforts.) thought in terms of a "Ladder of Life", in which all life worked its way up a Scale of Being with Man at its Penacle. That Lamarckian model has been shown to be wrong.
Rather, what we see and would expect to see is an infinitely branching tree. Please review my message
Message 186 in
How do "novel" features evolve? where I discussed diachronic views vs synchronic views. As we view the evolution of a particular species over time, we would be viewing that species
diachronically, meaning "over time". But in viewing the "Tree of Life" at any instant in time, we would be viewing it
synchronically, meaning what the "snapshot of life" is at that time.
At a given point in time, we would see the vast array of species that exist. From that point, each species would propagate, each "reproducing after its own kind." Let's follow one particular amphibian species, which I admittedly cannot readily identify (I am, after all, a professional software engineer). Around 318 million years ago, some amphibians responded to the increasingly dry environment to become
stem reptiles (Captorhinidae), the earliest and most basal reptile types. From that base species (or group of species), we see the serpents, crocodiles, turtles, lizards, therapsids (progenitors of the mammals), dinosauria (progenitors of the dinosaurs and of birds).
Now for a bit of fun. Walter Brown is one of the icons of "creation science". Retired from the US Air Force circa 1979, he appears to have been the primary source of that classic bogus creationist claim about the radical rate at which the earth's rotation rate is slowing down. But, please, let's leave that particular fiasco until later.
Walter Brown's story is that it was his son who did this. Here's the story as I posted in my essay since 1990 (
THE BULLFROG AFFAIR: or The Enchanted Prince Croaks):
quote:
Frank Arduini encountered a similar protein claim by Walter T. Brown Jr of the Chicago area; his Center for Scientific Creation used to be ICR Midwest Center. Arduini had had many dealings with Brown, whose response to Arduini's many requests for documentation was that he didn't need to supply evidence supporting his claims, rather it was responsibility of the evolutionists to disprove them.
One of Brown's claims that Arduini was especially interested in was that the rattlesnake's closest biochemical relative is humans. However, Brown demanded $70 from Arduini to provide that documentation.
Robert Kenney of Chicago fared somewhat better. In February 1984, he and his wife visited the ICR in El Cajon, Calif. When he asked Gish directly for documentation supporting his claims concerning fetal horse hemoglobin, Gish became noticeably disturbed (that Kenney had Awbrey & Thwaites' article in front of him throughout the conversation probably did not help Gish's
disposition much). Finally, Gish said that he had no documentation, but rather that Kenney should see Gary Parker. Kenney's attempts to catch Parker during his scheduled offices hours on two separate days failed. Before Kenney left, Dr. Cummings promised to get the documentation for him. After nine months, it still had not arrived.
Then in the Summer of 1984, Kenney wrote to Walter Brown about the fetal horse hemoglobin. Brown responded with a telephone call. Kenney tried to get Brown to confirm or deny the ICR's claims, or at least to pressure the ICR to produce some kind of documentation. Brown refused, but instead offered another
claim: rattlesnake proteins.
Brown claimed that on the basis of data from a 1978 study by Margaret Dayhoff, comparisons of cytochrome c show that the rattlesnake is more closely related to humans that to any other organism. When Kenney asked Brown to provide the name of the scientific journal and the page number in which Dayhoff had reached this conclusion, Brown stated that he couldn't. Dayhoff had never reached such a conclusion, but rather Brown's son had used Dayhoff's data to reach that conclusion for a science fair project. It was Brown's son who had concluded that rattlesnakes are more closely related to humans by cytochrome c than to any other organism. For fifteen dollars, Brown sent Kenney photocopies of his son's project (apparently, Brown's price depends on who you are). Kenney wrote:
"In the project I quickly found that the rattlesnake and humans differed by only fourteen amino acids. Humans and rhesus monkeys differed by one amino acid. Later, Brown called me again and then explained that of the forty-seven organisms in the study, the one closest to the RATTLESNAKE was the human, not that the one closest to the human was the rattlesnake. You see, among the forty-seven there were no other snakes." (CEN Vol.4 No.5 Sep/Oct 84, pg 16)
Most of the other organisms in the study were as distantly related to the rattlesnake as were humans; it is coincidence that human cytochrome c was just barely less different than the others. Obviously, this is just semantic sleight-of-hand which can serve no other purpose than to mislead and it is so blatant that Brown had to know what he was doing.
Later after a debate, Kenney found Brown telling a small group about rattlesnakes being more closely related to humans than to any other organism. When Kenney started explaining to the group how misleading that was, Brown quickly changed the subject.
Did you understand that? From the "stem reptile", several separate branches radiated out, each one evolving separately and independently. Please review
Message 201. In his book, Michael Denton, an Australian MD, posited a hierarchy that "disproved evolution", whereas in reality his entire argument actually supported the evolutionary view.
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