MACROevolution vs MICROevolution - what is it?

A dog giving birth to a cat would be creating a new Linnean Family by saltation. In direct cotnradiction to evolutionary theory. If that is the creationist idea of macroevolution then it doesn't happen. Everything from the first life to the array of species currecntly inhabiting the planet is microevolution.Likewise the only definition of "kind" that creationists have presumes the absence of evolutionary links. Thus if macroevolution is between "kinds" all evolution is microevolution.In the first case "macroevolution" is a strawman. In the second it has been something that cannot happen because the definition oxymoronic. And in both cases the argument fails because the creationists idea of "microevolution" covers ALL of evolution.

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Mutations only help if they occur before selection. Afterward they defeat the purpose of the selection, which is the evolution of a new variety.

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There is no meaningful cutoff "before selection", nor does selection have the purpose of generating new varieties, nor would additional mutations defeat it if it did.In reality a successful species will generate large numbers of mutations, increasing diversity - so there will be plenty that occur before a speciation event. But the loss of interfertility - a rather important part of speciation is rather more likely to be due to mutations that occur during the speciation event.With reference to the peppered moth (which didn't reach the level of speciation anyway), would a mutation for a different shape of antenna in any way interfere with the process ? If so, how ?

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And what I'm saying is that genetic loss, being necessary to evolving this new species or breed, characterizes evolution itself, and this is not recognized

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It is recognised as a part of evolution, but it is only a part.

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We know it's not recognized because of all the silly wrong linear analogies that are given to describe it, ignoring the necessity of genetic loss.

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So people actually prefer standard evolutionary theory to your personal opinions. Just because reason and evidence are against you. That may seem silly to you but it isn'tLook, I understand you don't like the fact that your precious argument is foolish and wrong but that is the way it is. You can be as arrogant and rude as you like but you can't beat the truth that way.

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It is obviously not recognized even as a part or we wouldn't keep getting these silly wrong linear analogies that pretend there is a straight unimpeded line from microevolution to macroevolution

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In reality there is no clear problem with the analogies, and the role of selection certainly isn't a problem to them.

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Since there must be genetic loss because of microevolution in the formation of a new species, getting from there to further evolution is really not even possible at all.

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That's your opinion and it is obviously wrong. Mutation plays an important role in evolution and ignoring it is not a viable option. That is the reason people disagree with and your refusal to acknowledge that hardly helps your case.

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The evidence and truth happen to be on my side despite entrenched evo denials

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I guess that's why you've failed to produce any significant evidence, failed to answer the counter-arguments and failed to make a case for so many years.

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Some honest clear thinking would show an honest person that this is not opinion but fact, and all your insults only serve to distract from this simple fact

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If you were thinking clearly and honestly you would habve noticed that there weren't any insults. You would also notice that your argument is a failure.

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What's "foolish" is the wrongheaded denials of a simple logical proof that macroevolution is dead in the water

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There is no such proof, Your argument was wrong-head from the start and you still haven't been able to answer the objections produced the first time you raised it.

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I am of course making what must seem like an outlandish claim, but truth is truth.

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I wouldn't call it an outlandish claim. I'd call it a proven lie. And that IS the truth.The fact is that mutations supply a constant stream of new variations and that refutes your argument. As it did from the start. And if you had any sense at all - or any honesty - you would at least stop using your argument until you had an answer to that, even if you can't accept it.

At this point I am going to explain the basic differences in position.You claim that there is an inevitable and continuous decline in genetic diversityYour opponents claim that while individual species might suffer declines, on the whole genetic diversity tends to remain about the same - in the longer term.

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If it were true that you got a whole lot of new phenotypes in the daughter population you'd never get a recognizable variety or species, but we know that's not so

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But we know that your argument is wrong here. Existing species have considerable genetic diversity but are still recognisable as species. So we know that that level of diversity is not a problem. And this has been pointed out before.Maybe your arguments would work if your opponents were proposing an inevitable and sustained increase in genetic diversity, but they aren't.So ask yourself this. If you have such a great argument why are you making claims that are obviously false ?

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Again, add all the mutations you like, unless selection makes a new variety or species from them you aren't getting evolution, but the process of getting a new variety or species means losing genetic diversity. Always. And if you keep adding mutations you're just getting a dizzy exchange of increase followed by decrease followed by increase,l you aren't getting evolution

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That's funny because evolution IS typically a cycle of increase followed by decrease (in an isolated population) followed by increase !You are literally saying that evolution is not evolution.

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If you aren't getting the formation of a new variety or species then you can have all the genetic diversity you want

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Which is fatal to your argument. Allow genetic diversity to increase in between speciation events and there is no longer an argument for inevitable decline. You'd have to look at evidence to see if there were signs of this assumed decline (and the evidence says - very strongly - NO)

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But it doesn't increase in reality. If it did you'd get only the see-saw effect I described, which is not evolution because evolution produces identifiable varieties, and macroevolution supposedly takes off from an established variety or species

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Saying that it doesn't happen because if it did evolution would actually work isn't really much of an argument. And the additional variation would be accumulating in the established species.

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You get your species that can no longer interbreed with its precursors and supposedly that is the platform for macroevolution.

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That is an instance of macroevolution but so what?

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You could even get a species as genetically depleted as the cheetah or the elephant seal, as the result of microevolution, and it would be absurdly celebrated as macroevolution.

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If it was genuinely a new species it would be an example of macroevolution. So what.

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Every selective breeding program in history says a resounding YES

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Selective breeding over a few hundred or even a few thousand years is not the same as natural evolution over hundreds of thousands of years. Not nearly. So selective breeding programs can't answer the question.

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Since all that has happened in breeding is a speeded-up version of what happens under natural selection in the wild (do you want to argue with Darwin about that?

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I doubt that Darwin said it was the same rather than similar, but even if it was you'd only be copying a part of the process and missing out the parts most important to add new variation. So of course you'd get the result you want because your model is rigged to produce that result.

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As long as there are identifiable species and identifiable breeds, some of which are known to have lasted hundreds of years at least, and many probably more than that, even some for which there is no doubt written evidence, as long as there are identifiable varieties, species and breeds, my argument stands because adding mutations at any appreciable rate would destroy their identifiable characteristics.

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That's just silly. Want to tell me why mutations would specifically target so many of the identifying characteristics as to produce the result you claim ? Can you really give any reason to think that's even remotely sensible ? Don't forget that we can happily lose a few unimportant ones and the important Ines are the bones that evolution almost never changes - or only changes within limits (I.e. There are all sorts of minor variations on the backbone, but having a backbone has been stable for a long, long time)In the meantime reality still shows no sign of your genetic depletion except in cases of severe bottlenecks where it would be expected anyway, breeders don't create new species, species aren't a hodgepodge of mixed phenotypes despite their variety - unless the breeders bring it out artificially. You're just wrong and it is obvious.

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...it doesn't take into account the FACT that to get a new variety or species requires the loss of genetic material for other phenotypes.

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Really ? The weasel program uses very heavy selection. The original sentence is lost. Each selective step cause the loss of considerable amounts of variation. How can you possibly have missed that ?Of course the weasel only considers asexual reproduction and when you start with only a single organism you don't have any variation to start with. But then that is actually done with experiments with bacteria (including demonstrations of the evolution of antibiotic resistance)Of course it destroys your assertion that the loss of variation must end evolution, but it's hardly the first time that has been disproved. So why get upset about it ? Especially when it is in a book published decades ago.

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The point is that when the new phenotypes are selected for and form a new population, over time they replace the unselected phenotypes throughout the population and that makes for a loss of genetic diversity in this new population.

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And that point has been accepted all through this long, long discussion. You need to actually deal with the disagreements if you want to get any further.

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Evo thinking has assumed that evolution takes a long time, but in reality it doesn't. This is demonstrated by such examples as the Pod Mrcaru lizards which were discussed here a few years ago, and the Jutland cattle somebody also brought up on that same thread.

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Funny then, that you condemn Punctuated Equilibria when rapid speciation is one of the major points of it.I will, however, point out the following facts that undermine your claim:1) The Pod Mrcau lizards are a very unusual case. Taking such cases as typical is an obvious mistake2) We do not know the basis of the phenotypic changes in the lizards - it may be partly (or even wholly) an environmental response which would be much quicker.3) We do not know if the lizards would interbreed with the ancestral species - and we do know that Jutland cattle CAN interbreed with other cattle. So we cannot say that either represents full speciation.And, of course, neither deals with the time or conditions for variation to recover (which it is unlikely to do since the populations remain relatively small)

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That can't happen

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As I pointed out it DOES happen. You can get antibiotic resistance evolving from a clonal population of bacteria.

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Anybody who honestly thinks it through should recognize that the loss of genetic diversity brought about by the processes of microevolution that produce new varieties, races and species, has to bring evolution to an end.

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Your "honest thinking" seems to be nothing of the sort. But please demonstrate it to us.

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However selection is expressed in Dawkins' model is false. Watch the program work, it just produces one variation after another as if it had infinite resources.

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The production of variation has nothing to do with selection. And the production of new variation IS realistic (and need I point out that since the length stays the same - unlike real evolution - the number of possible variations is clearly finite?)

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And what example would you put forward as typical?

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I would be looking at examples considered incipient species, or maybe introduced animals on other islands. Remember that the lizards got a lot of attention because the change was so dramatic. Do you have any other examples of such dramatic change over so short a time ?

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Just normal sexual recombination over generations is the simplest explanation, bringing out the large heads and jaws simply due to their genes being high frequency in the original population, purely randomly.

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Or maybe if the young lizards have to work harder to chew their food the head and jaws develop more. I don't think we can say.

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If a dozen human beings get isolated on an island for a few hundred years some striking traits are likely to come to characterize the whole population after that time just because of the recombination of the genes possessed by the original dozen.

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Any examples to support that claim ?I very much doubt that it would be as dramatic as the lizards.

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I'm not interested in "full speciation," merely the fact that recognizable phenotypic changes fairly rapidly result from simple random selection of a small number of individuals out of a larger population, showing that simple sexual recombination of a new set of gene frequencies is all it takes to get a new variety. If "full speciation" has not yet arrived, it will eventually if reproductive isolation continues.

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We don't know whether the lizards are an example of that or not. You'd be better with your examples of domestic breeding. Although full speciation IS important because otherwise your new variety could just be absorbed back into the main population if the geographic barriers ceased to be a factor.

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Well until you can come up with one you don't have much of an argument.

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I'll settle for a weak argument if it's stronger than yours - and it is.

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It was only so dramatic because it contradicted evo expectations, not because there is any evidence in reality that supports those expectations

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If such changes commonly happened in such a time it would hardly be considered dramatic. Breeders should be able to manage it on a routine basis. This is evidence in reality to contradict your claim.

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The Jutland cattle seem to fit. Even the record of breeds that only take a hundred years or so to develop from wild stock to pure bred, as in many cattle breeds. Any founder effect will fit of course and I do regard those as species

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What on earth are you talking about ? Which cattle breeds were developed from wild stock on only a hundred years ? And why regard breeds as species ? What are the dramatic differences ?

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The circumstances are unusual which is why the ToE fantasy can go on unchallenged. But these few examples ought to be a challenge, even the lizards alone, especially in the absolute absence of any contrary evidenc

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The problem is the lack of any evidence. We can't tell if you are right or not - and the absence of other examples is a big problems for you.

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Not important at all since just getting a clearly identifiable new variety demonstrates that the changes do not require anywhere near the time the ToE assumes.

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If we are considering the time required for speciation then speciation is obviously important. And that is the time you are talking about.

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And surely it is obvious that because the population started from such few numbers there should be a great deal of homozygosity in the genome, meaning severely reduced genetic diversity. If this is doubted then DNA should be tested.

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Nobody is doubting that. Although the relationship to the phenotypic changes is in doubt. It should be obvious, for instance, that none of the lizards brought to the island displayed the new phenotype.

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Yes that is obvious, but so is it obvious that none of Darwin's pigeons started out with their exaggerated characteristics.

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Which means that selection is required in addition, and quite strong selection IF the differences are due to genetics. That is one of the reasons for suspecting environmental response as at least a partial cause of the differences - that would skip the need for selection and work much quicker.

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We already have pretty strong selection in the fact that only ten individuals made up the founding population so that there was a very small gene pool undergoing recombination over the generations.

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That would only be true if the ten were chosen because they already had the "new" features - and they didn't. So, no, there was NO selection there.Instead of boasting about your "simple logical argument" or claiming that "honest thought" would show that you were right you might like to spend some time actually thinking about the issues. Maybe you would make fewer ridiculous errors.

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I'm not following your reasoning. First, the small number of founding individuals is already strong selection of a very small gene pool, and second, what can you mean by "environmental response" if not selective pressure from the environment? Either way you've got selection in operation

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As I have already pointed out your first claim is nonsense. On the second point I mean that the lizards may grow differently becUse of the different environment - no genetic change required. That does fit the very rapid change without selection for the new features which you seem to think can be accomplished by selecting individuals without any of them.