Evolution (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, July 16, 2009, 12:57 (5405 days ago) @ George Jelliss

I still don't quite understand your distinction between micro- and macro- evolution.
> 
> You wrote: "We still do not know how macroevolution is achieved: large jumps or tiny steps. That issue is of major importance to arriving at a final and definitive theory of evolution."
> 
> In the video RD indicates that in the evolution of the whale the nostril of the creature gradually moved up and back to become the blow hole, and that the back legs atrophied, and the body streamlined. All these processes could clearly be accomplished by very small steps, not requiring any large jumps.
> 
> Is your case simply that because there are gaps in the fossil record we are not justified in making this claim? If so I don't see how the case could ever be proved to your satisfaction. Even a film of a flower growing has to be done by time-lapse photography. The fossil evidence for evolution is rather like time-lapse photography, but on a much slower or larger scale. - The only thing I can think of is that he means microevolution to mean the observed changes we can actually see in say, bacterial populations, the rock-wallaby experiment back in the 50's, or something of that nature. - What I take as his meaning of macroevolution is the generation of radically new traits in geologically short time spans, such as the cambrian explosion. He said here that he would take chemical arguments in lieu of fossil evidence, however we understand so little about gene regulation & expression and the nature of "junk" DNA that it will probably be another 60-70 years before we have that solution. This is part of the reason I'm thinking heavily about joining that mathematical biology group... if this method works we might have an answer sooner than that. - He suggested way back when I joined that he finds information-theoretic arguments such as Dembski's as a potential flaw in evolution. I did my best to shed light on the truth of where that theory fails. I never did ask for a follow-up, however.

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\"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.\"