Evolution (Introduction)

by David Turell , Friday, July 17, 2009, 20:27 (5403 days ago) @ xeno6696

I think Matt is closer to understanding my pattern of theorizing than George is. - 
> I still don't quite understand your distinction between micro- and macro- evolution. - Microevolution is variations in species adapting to changes in environment, etc. These are small and the species can still be identified as the same species. Macroevolution is the appearance of new species from the old ones, a definite step forward in the m ore complex direction that evolution has followed. Once again, just as it is obvious life came somehow from non-life, it is obvious that more and more complex life is the course of evolution. It is obvious that evolution happened. We don't need the first chapters of Genesis to demand instant creation of all species in one week. If God created evolution as His process, I suppose we could see there was an instant creation, but evolution started about 3.8 billion years ago.
 
> You wrote: "We still do not know how macroevolution is achieved: large jumps or tiny steps. - That is correct. We don't know if Darwin's tiny steps are the method, or Gould's punctuated equilibrium is. Or do both occur?
> > All these processes could clearly be accomplished by very small steps, not requiring any large jumps.
 
Your statement is obviously true, but that does not answer my question. - > Is your case simply that because there are gaps in the fossil record we are not justified in making this claim? - Gould's comment about tips and nodes of the tree is well known and recognizes gaps, but yet he and Eldridge proposed punctuated equilibrium which allows a mechanism of large jumps. So which is it? Tiny steps, large jumps, or both? - > 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. 
 
I don't know the rock-wallaby experiment. I've seen Wallabies in Australia. - 
> 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 - Yes chemical arguments are a major requirement of further studies. Anatomical comparisons do clearly yield evidence of homology. And this will not take 60 years, judging by how fast DNA research has proceeded. Look at all the Neanderthal info we are getting. - 
> He suggested way back when I joined that he finds information-theoretic arguments such as Dembski's as a potential flaw in evolution. - Note my recent post that referred to information passing in the cell. Where does the information come from or how does it develop? Darwin and currently Neo-Darwinism do not address that.