A little proof of Evolution

Ha ha! Victory is mine! That was too easy. Better luck next time, Puck.

~Ulrika~

pfft, you believed me, don't lie.

shhh, don't give away my secrets of blackmail and manipulation.

Then I have to stand by my original point. There are two very different mechanisms at work here, and calling them both by the cover name "evolution" is an artifice of language and is really confusing the issue.

The change in the bird population can easily be explained by the (newly) competitive advantage of certain genes that already exist in the population. I suspect that even Kevn would not have any trouble with this, and it may even be what he talks about "microevolution".

Saying that this change then demonstrates "evolution" as if it provides any support for the introduction of beneficial random changes in base-pair sequence (much less the introduction of entire new genes) is at best sloppy thinking and at worst disingenuous.

The fact that the people you are trying to convince see through this slight-of-hand is one of the reasons you can't get any traction with them.

--Alvin

PS. Using newspaper articles as evidence for a position is a little bit like putting forward a story that your neighbor once told. It could even be that these people actually sequenced the DNA and identified the base-pair change. I'll look into it.

Wait a minute, Karl Rove has joined the SL forums? This is huge, I can't believe it, we have a celebrity in our midst!

Only through revealing blackmail material can one defang it.

So nyah.

You pagan.

I figured the profile, sig and name were pretty blatant, but I guess not, haha!

Ok, them's fightin' words.

Don't forget, I have pack after pack of purple elephants to back me up, bring it on....

I'm sorry to say that you were pwned by the forum master with my world-famous fool addendum nonetheless.

~Ulrika~

pfft. What you fail to realise is that I am a shape shifter and a trickster. I could pretend to be one of your purple elephants and turn them all to mutiny against you and stampede you.

Nothing can pwn the Puckster, m'lady.

You're right, out of fear, I humbly serve, I'll rent passion of the christ tomorrow and send all my wordly possessions to Bennie Hahn in hopes that he will heal my damaged soul. How could I have been such a FOOL?!.

That's not necessary. Just send your girlfriend may way and all will be well. Consider it a peace offering.

Really? You'll take her? Holy cow, I'm starting to like this new religion, lmao

Does she look good in a collar?

Yeah but she's not exactly house trained, and you'll have to get her fixed....

Now I am getting scared.

No backing out of the deal now, the contractors are already here to install the altar.

In the simplest sense, evolution is any change in allele frequencies of a population over time. In that sense, even if the changes to beak size and shape were within ther normal distribution of characters for the population, that the distribution has changed to center around this new norm is still evolution.

There is no definition of evolution that requires it be accompanied by new alleles, new genes, or new regulatory regions. Although over the longrun, these sorts of changes do happen.

That said, the idea of large scale changes, leading to the diversification of life, is supported by 150 years of testing, as related in my prior, rather long, post. There is simply no real reason to doubt this is the case.

You are absolutely spot on. I think folks unfamiliar with the topic are unaware of the enormous amount of testable, repeatable evidence for this mechanism of biological change.

~Ulrika~

Um. Does anyone want to talk about evolution?

From the Science article:

"In about a year, the resident finch population retooled: Their beaks shrank, becoming better equipped for this new diet."

There is no mention in the article of gene sequences or mutations, so I have to assume that no data of that sort was collected.

Change by mutation just doesn't happen this fast. The mechanism here is that existing alleles which coded for products which produce shorter beaks spread quickly throughout the population. This can properly be called "microevolution", or if you want to confuse the situation "evolution".

The point is that this mechanism (of shifting around existing alleles) will never result in the creation of new species, so that people who talk of "microevolution" inevitably leading in time to "macroevolution" are talking through their hats.

I am all for people being more logically rigorous, but if that is really your goal (and not simply to get people to toe the line), then you'd better be a little bit more logical yourself.

--Alvin

Didn't say there was. You missed my point.

Okay, at the risk of being pedantic, I'd better clarify.

This particular article is not in any way evidence for the kind of evolution which Kevn does not believe in. He said as much, clearly and logically in his first response.

Really. If you're not going to listen to what he says, how do you think you're going to change his position?

I must have.

If the point is to draw a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution, then, as previously pointed out, research shows evolution to be scale independent. The distinction is an arbitrary one.

Something to keep in mind, the original genetic variation being selected from would have itself come about via mutation or recombination or someother mechanism that increases genetic diversity. The current selection environment has acted to decrease that diversity, but over time, diversity will gradually increase, centering around the new norm.