I think I answered Jerry Coyne as i went through his video earlier but I just reviewed some of it and now I'm not sure if I did. So I just ant to sketch out some of my answers here, again if I already did.
Evolutionj occurs he evidenced by the fact that populations change over time. But that occurs because of the variability built into the genoe of the species, that's not evolution. All sorts of even quite ramatic changes can occur in a population ocver a number of generations as each generation varies slightly fromj the parent generation ayway. And if the ppulations split into a numbe ro poulations of smaller populations you get a new gset of gene frequencies in each new population which change their genetic picture to one degree or anothner from that of the oirginal pooulation. A very small population is likely to produce a very dramatic new trait poicture because of the great differences from the original. Butr this is all changes that occur within the species genome. This doesn't prove evolution at all because you can't get species to species tchange this way, you can only get variations on what is alreay in the geneome which is the set of traits characteristic of tht particular species and no other.
he tijks the fact that the change is often gradual but can someting be fast proves evoltuion. I don't get this at all so it's hard to comment. It's gradual if the opulation is large enough, an faster if the population is smaller.
then specieationj of branching . But this happens a lot in nature as different parts of a wild population split off and go indifferent directions, findi cdifferent niches and sometimes get somepletely idsolated from the original population. New gene frequences bring out difdferent characteristics in the new population and if there are more then a two that split off you can get a umber of very different looking populations all of the same species. All from that species genome. Nothiern gthat has anythihg to do with evolution fro that species to some othe speicies.
Then biogeography is a category he claims proves evolution and again I don't see how. I don't see why a creationist wouldn't recognize that whateer can get to a remove idisland would become the population on that isoland and if some animals don't have means of gettihjg there they wouldn't be there. What this has to do with evolution I have no idea. And then of courlse becaue there would be the same sitaution with new gene frequencies in the small nmber of migrants to the new island you could get very crastically different populations of the reatures in those remote places. All from the species genome. othihg to do with evoltuion.
Then naturl selecitn. Again it seems to me if this occurs it can be recognized as well by creationists as evolutionists because it would be operating on the pecies genome to bring out traits that are already there and over time exaggerate them quite a bit in some cases. That's what happened with Darwin's fins sorry, pigeons, and those of other pigeon breeders of his time. It's what happened witn the pod mrscaru lizards wthat developed the strong jaws for eating roughter food than they'd been used to in the original population. it doesn't have to be the food selecting the trait, though and I figure it usually isn't. the trait is alreayd there and it leads the creature to gravitate to the kind of footd it is suited for. then the habit of eating that food would act as a selective factor as well. But really, in any small population genetics seems to me to be the main actor as the variations just keep turning up in the offspring due to the gene frequencies which favor a certain trait picture. Nothihg to do with evoltuion.
then he gets into vestigial organs and limbs and so on. Some I can't explain but the hok sac for the human embryo seems to me to be the remnand fo a former provision for its hnourishment that gotr t destroyed by mutation which is a major weapon of the Fall hich has usbjected us to all kidns of diseases and deficiencies and death. Perhaps the vestigianl legs of the whale are also somehow related to the Fall but I don't know how off the top of my head. An organ of cuntion that would ahve developed into something more specific if mutation hadn't destroyed a bunch of genes connected with it or something like that. Certainly something like that hs to do with the prostrate problem. the problem is that the Fall explains a lot of things that people don't think of beause they wrongly think of this world ads the same as the cratred world but it's not. We are mere shadows of our created selves, we've lost ninety nine percent of our genetic strengths due to the Fall to judge by the amount of junk DNA in our genome. We mut have been quite sowonderful craetures at the Creation. Animals too since they avhe lost much of their own strengths and protectsion in the same way.
And then there is the fossil recorod. No matter how intuitively congenial it seems to be as a record of evolution from simple to complex, if in fact the whole thing couldn't even exist then that is revealed to be an illusion. And if the strata they are found in coudln't possibly represent time periods that would of course destroy the idea of a fossil record. Which I think it does. there is no way a gigantic slab of a homogeneous sedimetnary rock covering thousands of square miles could have existed in erth's history as a natural deposit from some natural source ofr other, lets alone characterize that time period. It's a flat straugthight horizontal object. Nothijg could live on or in it. If it's merely the base of a sea scape or landscape that somewhow or other remained after the next one started to eeposit on top of it, another wholly different sediment covering a huge territory as well and so on, which is ludicrous in itself, you have to account for how any of this makes sense and it simply does not. then I point out that the same stack of rocks start out as seascapes since they contain sea life fossils and then in the upper layes become landscapes, that too is ridiculous. These are not time periods and that is not a fossil record of evolution.
It's just a bunch of dead thihgs that for some reason got sorted into layers of sediments, all a physical mechanical phenomenon, nothing to do with evolution. The earth was folooded and bazillions of things died and ot buried and sincemoving water is known to form separate tacks of seiments that's outr evoplanation.
If you try to think thgough the morpholoigcal or genetic steps that would have to be taken for one species to evolve into another you just can't ge anywyere, or at least I can't. What exactly is being changed, a gene ithin the specie s genome? that gene is then incapacitated as a new function takes over that somehow is beneficial to that species nevertheless as long as it's ihntthe one where the changes are taken place? But you've gdestroyed a gene. the new trait replaces it? Alreayd i"m lost. this just can't happen. You ahhave to invent a whole new genome to rpelace the existing one. this just can't happen.
ButI don't see anything by scientists trying to do anything at all along these lines. It's all how we see change happenieng withnout recognziing that this is only within a species geneome, it's all the result of natural selection withiuout sepcfiyijg what exaftly it is that is being selected and how that something got there in the first place, and it has to be something that is not part of the current species trait picture if it's really going in the direct oion of true evolution to a new species. they never try to identify the pecifics. What changed and how to get from here to tehere.
It's really trule y as if they think their ability to imagine soethijg plausible that continues to seem plasible for a long time is enough to declare it a fact without doing one thing to find out if itit in fact is actualy true and could happen in the real world. that wouldn't happen ihn the lahard sciences where you can always test things but in a historical science you just end up relaying on your imaginaitoion and end up baptizing some likely story into evolution just ecause it seems so gocongenial or whtnot.
Where would a rhinoceros start to change to become a whale? Remember that the entire animal has to change and that mutation occur in genes and there are thousands upon thousands of genes that would have to change and that mutation tends to destroy rather than enhance the function of a gene. Send it to the junk yard cemetery instead of give it life in a new species.
It's weird but OCoyne seems to have no idea that he's talking bout plausibilities and generalities and then declaring them fact.
And that no REAL evidence has enered into his discussion at any oinjt that demonstrates his claim that evolutionj xexplains all these thingins.
I'm sorry, my typing seems to be getting worse. I feel it happening as I type and all Ica can say is I'm sorry. I don't knmow what to do about it. I don't want to have to give up this blog, it's really the only thihgning I have left that really engages my intersest.
I keep working on the evolution problem because although I belireve we are very close to the end of time and that Jesus will be returing soon, hopefully taking me in the rpture along with many others as part of that scienario, still Ikkeep hoping that if there is still time this world could be steered off its suicide courase, which is really what it is with all this marxist political devastateion that will happen if the wrong people get into the American government, which I'm afraid is going to happen. It will be God's will of course but He doesn't want us just to lie down and take it, we should be working against it no matter what. Anyhway if evolution could be blasted to smitherweens and people reocgnize that fact I think it would have to make a big difference in how people are thinking, it would cautch them up short and turn themr minds away from some of the destructive trajectory we're on and maybe toward something that could save things at least for now. So I would love to be one of God's instruments for the pulling down of the evolution stronghold as I would love to see people have to stop and say Qhoa maybe we need to rethink a few thiings here. Oh Lord let it be. but give me the dstrength to accept whatever You will instead. Not only would things settle down on earth but thousdans of people would be saved.
Ament
Latr I left out a couple of things from the Coyne discussion. One of the ways I've argued from the strata got left out, which is thta the strata were all originally laid down straight and flat and horizontal and show no sign whateever of any kind of disturbance during their laying down. the cross section of the Grand Staircase area show a stack of layers one n top of the other without a ... without an irregularity of any sort within that whole stack. it's only after the entire column was in place that we see all kinds of disturbances, a folcano erupting beneath the stack sand send up magma from the bottom to the very top of it, and the lifting of the stack over the Grand Canyoj area also . All that happened after the entire stack was laid down, and that is evidence that those are not time periods since we know this erth to be a very acive planet what with weathering and earthquakes and volcanoes and tectonic jolts and all that should certainly show up in any period of tend of millions of years while those sedimentary layers were forming. But there inot ta single ripple in their placid recumbance ... is tht the workd I want? Well it popped into my head and I hope it is. Ayway no disturbances whatever to the supposed evidence of former time periods of milions of years. NO TIME PERIODS, folks, taht's what that means.
the other thinkg I left out was Coyne's fourth constituent of evolutin which is tht two relted poulations all have a common ancestor. so tey look for something that seems to be a transitional, a creatur that shares the characteristics of the two populations and they say they've found some, such as the transitiaonl between birds and reptiles. It occurs at the right place in the fossil record to be the transitional , the common anestor they are looking for.
The problem is that ll this stuff is totally subjective. ther is no way to prove a common ancestor that far back. We can prove ti within a species as poulations split off from the main population and vary quite a bit from it through the new gene frequencies, bt betwen species? Couldn't be possible to tra ck it down even if it were true whic it isn't. It's all wildly imaginative and this is over and over again what gets called fact in the commuity of evolutionist scientists. you'd think they'd know better. This isn't evidence. When ordinary people make such mitstakes in reasoning we get laughed at but if you're a scientist it's just find toe to trust your imagination like this, you don't need to verify it despite the time honored idea that this is what science does.
Anyay. No time periods, no fofssil record, no way for genetic variation to do anything but fary the scpecies itself, no way to get from species to species at all. I'd say this has been proved and evolution has not.
It ain't a rabbit in the Cambrian, but.
Even Lter. I've been watching anothre video on evolution, this one a film about the hitory of the earth tht touches on which cretures lived in which time periods. I mentioned trying to find out extly what and how many of the different creatures are found fossilized int n ehiwhich strata nd haven't been able to get a definitive lit of these,, but this sort of film at least gives me a rough notion. And what I just noticed is that somewhere in teh Ordovician period while it's all mostly about sea cretures and how they supposedly evolved, mention is made of plants becoming terrestrial.
Notw what is interesting becuase all this is of course taken from the fossil record, that is which aimals were alieve when and their characteristics. I nnoted the change from land creatures from sea creatures in the upper layers of the sedimetnary rocks as a rathr inexplicalbe occurrence. That is, how did the environent just change from sea to land like that? In the same place, in the same part of the stack? but this is even more difficult to explain. All teh fossils are apparently of sea life with the exception of some terrestrial plant life. So how did that get into this particular laye of rock? Isn't it the idea tht the creatures lived in this time period and when they died they got buried and fossilized where they had lived? So how could we hve sea life and plant life buried in the same rock?
JustIt ain't a rabbit in the Cambrian but something in the same class of falsifiers, woudln't you say?
another bit of anomalous factuality to confound the evolutionist if any evolutionists ever bothered to notice.
Andet later: Watching the History of Life series eisode on the Devonian period and finally I'm getting more of a sense of what creatures were fossilized in a time period, and it includes bogth sea cretures and land creatures. Plants are the main terrestrial living things but now some aimal life is gettig up on the land too.
And what continues to bemuse me about this is how they are represented in the so called fossil record, the sedimentary rocks in which they are found. How can you find both sea life fossils and terrestrial life fossils in the same layer of rock? Apparetly not in different areas of the rock but just scattered through the whole layer. At least this belies the usual idea tht these re living things that got buried prettymuch where they lived, if some lived on land and some lived in these esea. this whole lime period thing is a weird delusion no matter how you go at it.
