Whoa! Whoa! dhw take notice!!! (The limitations of science)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, April 21, 2014, 01:51 (3868 days ago) @ David Turell

Matt: Let me focus here: 
> > 
> > David: Natural selection never creates variety.
> > 
> > Yes it does: It is responsible for forcing organisms to adapt. That means precisely that variety doesn't come into tangible fruition, without selection. And my analogy was absolutely perfect: you agreed to it exactly... but didn't!
> 
> That's because I think you look at it backwards. -I look at it from a different perspective for sure, but backwards? Nope. Evolution is a cyclical process, there is no "backwards" on a circle. -
>The genome is built to produce experimentation. Natural selection does not force genetic drift or random mutation. It does cause epigenetic attempts at new accommodations. But it is the genome that methylates DNA and the adaptations are juddged by competition in nature.
> -The key point behind my placing Natural selection as the premier component is that it is the change in the environment that prompts the organism to respond... epigenetically... DNA methylation... the whole 9 yards. Natural selection explains *why* we see progressions of species throughout the fossil record. One of your key arguments always comes back to speed... Romansh's paper demonstrates that the kind of research that will provide us with those kinds of answers isn't being done! This is more cause to suspend belief than it is to walk your line towards a creator! There's fields of stones that we've left unturned! -
> > 
> > Matt: But those changes rarely result in observable phenotypes. (I'm leaving room for "simple" changes such as fur color/eye colour/size variations etc.)
> 
> You are trying to bring in speciation with the phenotype proposal. You forget the famous experiment with Reznick's guppies. There whole populations changed size. I know you tried to exclude size, but we are not discussing speciation, just adaptation. We have no idea how speciation occurs, despite Darwin's theory.
> > -On the contrary, as Romansh has already shown you, there are dozens of ideas about how speciation occurs, the simplest definition I've seen is one I've already provided: A sub group can no longer form viable offspring with its parent group. The talkorigins link provides an encyclopedia of examples. -> > Matt:But if an event never happens that puts pressure against those alleles, evolution does not happen! This echoes a previous post, where I stated to prove that epigenetics is a stronger source of evolutionary change, you needed to be able to demonstrate that an organism exhibits enough of a change as to be called a different species, without the presence of selective pressure. 
> 
> Yes, natural selection applies selective pressure among all the varieties produced by an organism, and epigenetics appears to be the main adaptive mechanism that is applied, but it is the variety produced by the organism from which natural selection results in surviving choices, all adaptations, not new species. I agree that challenges in nature force the genome to create adaptations, but natural selection is only an arbiter or judging system. Perhaps we should define what you think the term natural selection means. I think it is the result of competition between organisms or competition with natural events and forces.
> > -That line. In red. Right there. Stop. We're in the same arena here. -What's the explanation for the fossil progression of horses? -"Some force of the environment, acts on species, and the organisms respond adapting to the new forms." NS is the judge by which each fossil horse came to take its form. -> > Matt:Maybe a football (soccer) analogy is in order: Natural selection is the goalie. It doesn't matter at all what happens on the other side of the field, except in the ultra-rare instances when the ball gets past the goalie.
> 
> That I can accept as an analogy. Note the goalie sits on his hands until the ball finally starts to come his way. All of the preliminary action is elsewhere. His stopping the ball or missing it is a final step.-If you accept that analogy, than you accept this extension:-The only thing that matters in any game of soccer: the balls that hit the back of the net. Everything else? Unimportant.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"