Who Owns the Standard Definition of Evolution

That was Faith’s stance on macroevolution. To a tee.

Which gives rise to their utterly stupid question: "Where would it find a mate, since that 'extremely improbable saltational evolution event' have to happen at least twice in the same location close to the same time." The answer of course is that its mate would come from the same population which is what has been evolving itself.A particularly stupid "chicken or the egg" claim that creationists think is so great also requires every part of the chicken to "evolve" from scratch:

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To make an egg, you need a male chicken (rooster) and a female chicken (hen). These chickens need a fully functioning reproductive system. Think…if the theory of evolution is true, the male and female would have to evolve their reproductive systems at the same TIME. Imagine the female is fully evolved, but the male is not. Does she start hen pecking him by telling him “hurry up and evolve, we are going to be dead in a few years?”

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For sexual reproduction, animals do not have “millions of years” to evolve. They would need to evolve their reproductive organs within their life time.

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For the chicken and the egg, you need a 100% functioning male and 100% functioning female. But wait a second! They also need a functioning digestive system, nervous system, immune system, skeletal system, muscular system etc.

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So just where did this new chicken species get all its junk from? It inherited it from its parents, just like the creationists themselves did personally.And creationists wonder why we consider them to be so mind-bogglingly stupid. Plus he would demand that that new species be "of a different kind" (what he tried to euphemistically call "a new lifeform"). In evolution, new species are still of the same clade (closest thing to a "kind" we can think of) as their parent species (and of all their ancestral species as well, so we are still primates, mammals, amniotae, tetrapods, vertebrates, chordates, and animals).But creationists think that evolution requires the new species to jump to an entirely different clade, so when a new species of moth evolves they refuse to recognize that as evolution because "BUT THEY'RE STILL MOTHS!!!", to which we reply "Well, yeah. So what? What do you expect, feathers?" (nod to the punch line of a dirty joke from the mid-60's).And I strongly suspect that they think that all those "new kinds" have always existed, so instead of actual new clades/kinds being created as a branching out from a parent clade, they think in terms of the new species jumping from one branch to another (hence "dogs giving birth to kittens"). Circa 1984 quote about creationism: "Creationism is more fun than science!"

Reasonableness seems to have been thrown out the window with this statement:"I appreciate your admonition to get educated, but I’ll point out once again that I’m not here to prove/disprove anything. The burden of proof is on the claimant, and I am asking for the “show me” proof of common descent. I see plenty of paper studies, diagrams, and credentialed assertions, but no concluding proof.​"--K.RoseAny evidence given will just be thrown in the "paper studies, diagrams, and credentialed assertions" category and ignored.If K.Rose were on a jury in a murder trial the only evidence that K.Rose would accept would be a trip in a time machine to witness the actual murder. Things like fingerprints, DNA, shoe prints, fibers, and the like would just be thrown in the "paper studies, diagrams, and credentialed assertions" bucket and ignored. We would probably also here the claim that death happens all of the time, so pointing to a dead person is not evidence of a murder. Even worse, its a circular argument somehow.

In a previous post I mentioned that there have been 3 pieces of evidence presented. Actually, there have been 4 when we include transitional fossils:1. A nested hierarchy
2. A specific pattern of transition and transversion mutations.
3. A specific pattern of sequence conservation in introns and exons.
4. Transitional fossils.Number 5 is shared endogenous retroviruses, or ERV's for short.Retroviruses have two distinguishing features. First, the retro- part comes from the fact that they have a genome made of RNA that is reverse transcribed into DNA as part of its life cycle. This is the backwards direction from what happens in most cells where DNA is transcribed into RNA.The next feature is that the reverse transcribed viral DNA genome is inserted into the host genome. It does this by cutting the DNA at different places on each DNA strande. The picture below shows how tranposons do it, but retroviruses use the same process:This creates two identical repeats on either side of the insertion which are called target site repeats. These features are seen in endogenous retroviruses which is evidence for them being the product of retroviral insertions.We can observe retroviruses inserting into the host genome in experiments, and what we observe is that they insert all over the place.The diagram represents the places where three different retroviruses (HIV, ASLV, and MLV) inserted into the genome of human cells in an experiment (here). The boxes represent the 22 autosomal chromomes and the X chromosome. The dots with lines below them are where the viruses inserted. As anyone can see, they insert all over the place. It is extremely rare for two independent viral insertions to occur at the same base in two separate genomes.Again, this is what we observe. This isn't an assumption or an assertion. This is observation.If one of these viral insertions occur in an egg or sperm cell then it can be inherited vertically, and we call these endogenous retroviruses, or ERV's. So do these exist? Yep, sure do. There are over 200,000 such insertions in the human genome.This is from the 2001 human genome paper. It lists a total of 203,000 ERV's in the human genome across 3 classes.So let's recap.1. Retroviruses randomly insert into the human genome.
2. The human genome has 200,000 of these insertions that are inherited.So what about other species, do they have ERV's, these relics of past retroviral insertion? Yep, they have them too.Here's the curious thing. These insertions are found at the same spot in many different species. In fact, out of the 203,000 ERV's found in the human genome only 82 are NOT found at the same spot in the chimp genome.This means more than 99% of the ERV's found in the human genome are found at the exact same spot in the chimp genome.As we have already seen, retroviruses insert all over the place. They don't insert into the same spot in the genome over and over and over. However, ERV's are inherited, and those inherited ERV's do show up at the same spot in different genomes.Therefore, when we see many, many ERV's shared at the same position in two genomes this is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that those individuals share a common ancestor.

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Given the size of vertebrate genomes (>1 × 10^9 bp) and the random nature of retroviral integration (22, 23), multiple integrations (and subsequent fixation) of ERV loci at precisely the same location are highly unlikely (24). Therefore, an ERV locus shared by two or more species is descended from a single integration event and is proof that the species share a common ancestor into whose germ line the original integration took place (14).
Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences

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So we now have 5 pieces of evidence.1. A nested hierarchy
2. A specific pattern of transition and transversion mutations.
3. A specific pattern of sequence conservation in introns and exons.
4. Transitional fossils.
5. 200,000 shared Endogenous Retroviruses.

I'm not sure what this means. Does it mean you accept that each generation's genotype reflects natural selection operating on the previous generation? (The other contributor to a generation's genotype is mutation.) But you accept common descent all the way back to Adam. Why not before? Clearly the first part of this, that natural selection and common descent are the same thing, is wrong, but what about that second part. Must evidence of one also be evidence of the other?I think the answer is that of course it is possible for some particular evidence to support both. For example, that exons are preserved much more than introns is evidence of both natural selection (artificial selection for bred animals) and common descent. The real question is why you think this is a problem? Before I comment on the content I have to comment on the assumption that natural selection and common descent are part of genetics. They are related, but expressing it that way is hierarchically wrong. Genetics, natural selection and common descent are all part of evolution, and mutations are also worth including. Natural selection controls which genes are passed on to the next generation. Common descent is just an inevitable consequence of how life reproduces. Genetics is the maleable blueprint for life. Mutations ensure that genetic maleability and guarantee that each generation is different from the one before. You observe common descent in the here and now, so of course you accept common descent. What you reject is that Adam and Eve had ancestors who were also subject to common descent, and that rejection has a religious foundation not based upon evidence. This is an absurd position. Everyone everywhere uses the evidence left behind by past events to infer events that were never observed. When you arrive home to discover a broken window and a baseball on the floor, that is evidence for an event you didn't see, that someone swung a bat and hit a baseball through your window. Forensic science provides scads of examples. The deceased have even been exhumed to gather DNA samples to prove their parentage of someone born long before. Proving a deceased father raped his daughters is one example.So your argument that only directly observed events can be known to have happened is without merit, yet you keep repeating it. You never attempt to justify it. It blocks productive discussion to merely repeat it instead of addressing the specifics of what has been explained. You're deflecting, not discussing. What you're actually doing is rejecting evidence without reason or reasons. Without going back to verify I'm still pretty certain you said the opposite just recently. No one else sees it as circular, and you've been unable to explain any circularity you think you see. You just declare it circular and leave it at that.You also must see common descent as factual, because its evidence is all around you. You are making very broad non-specific criticisms that are obviously untrue. No effort to understand the world around us works this way, even in religious circles.We can be very specific about what your problems with evolution are. Despite protests to the contrary you do accept common descent. Everybody does. But you reject it across species boundaries and can give no specific reasons other than the bogus one that we haven't seen it actually happen.Except that we have seen it happen, in short-lived species like bacteria. Why do you think a process natural to short-lived life based on DNA doesn't occur in long-lived life that is also based upon DNA.No one, whether religious or not, accepts your view of what constitutes legitimate study, not even you. You just keep trotting it out because you have nothing else.--Percy

OK, I'll bite. Though I know a scathing response awaits. I cannot accomplish this simple task because each one of the processes listed takes a relatively long time, certainly longer than 24-48 hours.I do have to disagree with your first assertion. I would say there has been plenty of adequate observation whether by apple tree farmers or time-lapse photography of seed germination, seasonal foliage cycles, etc. Besides, it's an apple tree, not the explanation of our existence.

In response to the thoughtful remarks from Dr Jack, Taq, dwise1, PaulK, Tanypteryx, AZPaul3, Omnivorous, and Percy.OK, folks, you have all noted your experience with and disdain for Creationists, so the genetics-evolution-natural selection-common descent-descent with modification back-and-forth semantics are getting tedious. You should understand very clearly which part of “evolution” I reject, and if you don’t you’re better off asking one of the others to explain it.Circular reasoning is where you start with what you want to end with, or the premise and the conclusion are the same thing. In this instance we say evolution theory shows that B descended from A, even though A & B are completely different creatures that could not possibly reproduce together (say, an extinct land mammal-A and an extinct aquatic creature-B). We then examine the A & B fossils and sure enough, they line up with the evolution theory, apparently proving the theory. The only problem is that you cannot validate/certify the fossil’s ancestry, so the A & B fossils have the same basic problem as the theory, they can’t be proven/certified, they are essentially saying the same thing. The fossils’ ancestry can’t validate the theory’s assertion, and the theory’s assertion can’t validate the fossils’ ancestry.Of course people use evidence from the past to make decisions, and the evidence they have doesn’t always drive the right decision. Crime investigations can gather evidence from unmeasured, unrecorded, unobserved past events, then come to a decision based on the most likely answer – in a relatively short time - because they must, even though there is still a level of doubt. This is the reasonable doubt standard, and it sometime results in the execution of the innocent. Evolution has no such time constraints, so a much more rigid standard of doubt can be applied. Evolution contradicts my beliefs, so I will hold it to a much more rigid standard of doubt.The evidence vs. proof/validation discourse is also getting tedious. Paper studies, by definition, cannot account for the unknown. I generally stay away from analogies, because they are, well, analogies, but one seems useful here: You wouldn’t buy a rocket ship or an electric can opener based on a pile of paper studies that show they work, or that show other products with similar parts. You would say “show me that it works” before you bought it. That’s the validation you’d want before you bought your electric can opener or rocket ship.I did say “Rather, we should offer elective courses on these subjects [evolution] later in their educational career, by all means and along with Bible study offerings” and “You could make a much better argument for mandatory study of Biblical principles”. My apologies if this implied that I support mandatory Bible classes for schoolkids.I accept common descent back to Adam and no farther based on Biblical Faith.

We start with a hypothesis.If humans share a common ancestor with other apes, then there would have been species in the past that had a mixture of human and ape features.We then look at the fossil record to see if there are fossil species that support the hypothesis. In fact, there are. There are now many known fossil species that have a mixture of human and ape features, such as Australopithecus afarensis.That's not circular reasoning. It's hypothesis testing. The theory predicts what types of characteristics fossils in the past should have, and those predictions are supported by the fossil record.You will notice that nowhere do I state that any fossil as being an ancestor or descendant of any other species. What we are looking at are the physical characteristics of the fossils, and how those line up with the predictions made by the theory. That's it. The fact that the theory of evolution is able to predict what characteristics fossils have, even before they are discovered, is why the theory is so strongly and widely accepted in biology. It also results in the conviction of guilty people based on evidence. You seem so closed off to any evidence that if you were on a jury in a murder trial that the only evidence you would accept is to time travel and observe the murder yourself. If the prosecution presented evidence of the defendant's bloody fingerprint on the murder weapon, your response would be that its just diagrams and opinions, and just ignore it. You have decided that common ancestry between certain species just can't be true, so you reject any and all evidence that challenges that position. And I have shown you that the theory of evolution works. It explains all of the following:1. A nested hierarchy
2. A specific pattern of transition and transversion mutations.
3. A specific pattern of sequence conservation in introns and exons.
4. Transitional fossils.
5. 200,000 shared Endogenous Retroviruses.You just ignore the evidence. You won't even address it.What do you expect to see as evidence for the theory of evolution? How do you think it should be validated?What features should fossils have if humans evolved from a common ancestor shared with other apes?What features should we see in the human genome if humans share a common ancestor with other apes?Why aren't the specific pieces of evidence I have supplied evidence for the theory? So much for being a "show me" person.

Taking a bite of the apple ... Oh, you mean "Time alone all by itself works magic."? Isn't that the typical creationist objection to science pointing out that speciation takes a long time, too long in most cases (especially in long-generation species) to observe within a single human lifetime, let alone multiple times within a single human lifetime.I hope you heard yourself there. That was the idea behind the analogy: the typical creationist demand for directly observed speciation events is completely unrealistic.I have a similar analogy for the "evolutionists claim that anything can happen given enough time": Bake a cake:

1. Gather the ingredients on the counter top and wait for time to do its thing. Results: no cake no matter how long you wait.
2. But there's a process, so you mix everything together and still no cake.
3. It needs to go into the oven. So you put the batter into the oven and still no cake.
4. Oh, you mean I need to light the oven? OK, light the oven, stick the batter in and pull it out immediately. Still no cake.
5. You need to keep the batter in a pre-heated oven for a specified amount of time. This time we have cake!
   

The point of that analogy is that the typical creationist assertion (Hovind, et al.) that "evolutionists" believe that all you need is time is false and misleading. Rather, evolution involves natural processes which necessarily take time, just as the growth of an apple tree from a seed or the baking of a cake necessarily take time.As you yourself have stated. Now we can only hope that you do not attempt to make that standard creationist false assertion. But that is not what you demand. Indeed, that is exactly what you reject.You need to see it for yourself and test it for yourself. Not take the word of any actual experts in the field. Or trust any technology that those experts might use. What's the difference? Methodology is methodology regardless of what you are applying it (assuming you are applying it properly and appropriately).You cannot accept the same properly and appropriately applied methodology in one case and reject it in another case solely on the basis of whether or not you wish to accept or reject the results based solely on your personal beliefs.Methodology, like reality, doesn't care about what you believe. They either work or they don't.

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OK, folks, you have all noted your experience with and disdain for Creationists, so the genetics-evolution-natural selection-common descent-descent with modification back-and-forth semantics are getting tedious. You should understand very clearly which part of “evolution” I reject, and if you don’t you’re better off asking one of the others to explain it.

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I am not sure what you are talking about here. If you claim we believe in unevidenced and unobserved processes - without specifying that these are processes you imagine - then obviously the correct reply is to point out that the processes we believe in are well-evidenced and observed. That you then misinterpret that is really your problem.

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Circular reasoning is where you start with what you want to end with, or the premise and the conclusion are the same thing. In this instance we say evolution theory shows that B descended from A, even though A & B are completely different creatures that could not possibly reproduce together (say, an extinct land mammal-A and an extinct aquatic creature-B)

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The problem here is that you assume that we start with the conclusion (as well as not being strictly correct - truly circular reasoning uses the conclusion as a premise).
So this claim of circular reasoning is just something else you made up. And you made it up because you want to conclude that there is a fault in evolutionary reasoning. Which is exactly what you call circular reasoning.

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We then examine the A & B fossils and sure enough, they line up with the evolution theory, apparently proving the theory. The only problem is that you cannot validate/certify the fossil’s ancestry, so the A & B fossils have the same basic problem as the theory, they can’t be proven/certified, they are essentially saying the same thing. The fossils’ ancestry can’t validate the theory’s assertion, and the theory’s assertion can’t validate the fossils’ ancestry.

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Of course we wouldn’t rely on just those fossils - we’d look for intermediates between the two. And we wouldn’t conclude that B was descended from A - we’d conclude that B was likely descended from A or a close relative (if the evidence added up - and always with the possibility of revision if more fossils turn up - exactly as happened in the case of whales).What validates the theory and the conclusion is the evidence. The features of the fossils that point to a relationship. The anatomically intermediate fossils. All the wider evidence of evolutionary relationships in living species. None of these are expected if creationism were true - oh there would be some similarities but the evidence of relationship would go further than that. Indeed the problem for creationism is that we do find so much evidence of relationship at every level of the tree of life. The clean breaks we would expect if creationism were true are simply not there.

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Evolution has no such time constraints, so a much more rigid standard of doubt can be applied. Evolution contradicts my beliefs, so I will hold it to a much more rigid standard of doubt.

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I think you overstate the time constraints - investigations can take months. The biggest time constraint is gathering the evidence. For fossil evidence we don’t have the luxury of gathering the evidence quickly - we must take what has survived in the state it has survived. Nevertheless the evidence is pervasive and very strong. Creationism has nothing to compare.

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The evidence vs. proof/validation discourse is also getting tedious. Paper studies, by definition, cannot account for the unknown. I generally stay away from analogies, because they are, well, analogies, but one seems useful here: You wouldn’t buy a rocket ship or an electric can opener based on a pile of paper studies that show they work, or that show other products with similar parts. You would say “show me that it works” before you bought it. That’s the validation you’d want before you bought your electric can opener or rocket ship.

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But despite your objections the “paper studies” do show very strong evidence. And you don’t say what evidence you would reasonably expect to be able to get. It very much looks like I was entirely correct and you want to personally witness tens of missions of years of evolution. Well if you have that time why not withhold judgement until you’ve got tens of millions of years of direct observations under your belt? If you don’t it’s silly to demand it.

Ugh, a painful 3:29. Is this punishment for holding forth?

Because the accused must be punished or freed, and grievances must be addressed, legal/judicial proceedings must come to a decision in a relatively immediate period of time; thus the lower standard of "reasonable doubt". This is a demonstrably imperfect standard, but it is by far the best we have for settling these matters.The key principle of evolution being debated here merits no such immediacy for resolution. There is no perpetrator, no aggrieved, the yes/no validity of it has no bearing on what we do today or will do tomorrow, thus there is no urgency to settle the matter and we have the luxury of demanding the "show me " standard of doubt.I have looked at your evidence and much like it. True, I have not taken the time to attend college courses to understand all of the details, but the overall gist is pretty clear. The thing is the evidence could also point to any number of other manufactured theories tailored to fall in line with the limited evidence.And, of course, if the evidence is genuine, it all falls right in line with Creation.

I suppose it's a matter of not being able to take on every battle.You are correct in your implication that I have not personally observed the seed-to-harvest cycle of an apple, nor do I fully understand the mechanisms involved, but I do accept the explanation I am given. You might say it's taken on faith.There are many other things for which I would like to see more concluding proof, but life is short and battles must best selected carefully. Gotta have time to step back and smell the roses once in a while.

The standard is *beyond* reasonable doubt. It's a very high standard; in English law it's interpreted as "such that you are sure".It's been explained to you that science is tentative. I don't agree with the emphasis that is often put on that statement here; it sounds almost agnostic, as if the standard is the civil law one of 'balance of probability' or 50:50 or that knowledge remain hypothetical.For things that have reached the high tower of theories we've got to the point of sureness. We know the ToE is fact, undoubtedly some minor modifications will be made over time but it, like other modern theories it's here to stay - it's 200 years old.You're just special pleading on behalf of your religious beliefs, not on the basis of the evidence we put in front of you. As opposed to fraudulent? What do you mean 'if the evidence is genuine'? Of course it is, you can prove it yourself.It doesn't in anyway shape and form fall in line with your beliefs in creation does it? 7,000 year old earth, immutability of species?
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The conclusion-premise consideration is precisely the point. Between the Evolution Theory and the Fossil Ancestry, which is the premise and which is the conclusion? It could be either-or for both; they both have the same demonstrable proof deficit.You are correct in saying that I want to see the process demonstrated. The fact that we don't know how to do that does not mean we default to accepting the certainty of the process - quite the opposite, in reality.