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Jan Ardena said:
I haven’t been given any answer.
If you think I have, but have not responded to it in a way you like, then you need to explain it again.
Consider a previous example you were given in this thread - that of chromosome 2 of human DNA and the two chromosome 2s in chimpanzees. Each chromosome has literally billions of separate genetic "letters" in its sequence. Yet we find that the chimp chromosomes and the human chromosomes are the same to a very high degree. That is, exactly the same repetitions of the same millions of letters of code appear in both chimpanzees and human beings.
My question to you is: how do you account for this startling level of similarity? I see three possible answers. One is that human beings and chimps share a common ancestor, not too long ago in terms of generations. Another possibility is that it is an astoundingly improbable coincidence - so improbable that we would never expect to observe such a thing even comparing the DNA of billions of separate species. The third possibility is that God deliberately put the same genes in human beings as he did in chimps, and arranged things just so that they would look
exactly as we would expect them to look if Darwin's theory of evolution was correct. That is, God set out to deceive us into drawing the obvious conclusion that chimps and humans are related.
What do you think, Jan? Which explanation do you prefer? I think your God has some explaining to do, don't you?
I don’t.
I simply understand that they are the same kind of creature, but they vary in shape, size, colour, and so on.
How much would they have to vary in shape, size, colour and so on before you would be willing to call them different "kinds"? You must be able to draw a line somewhere, otherwise how can you possibly tell one "kind" from another, in any systematic way?
Go back to my example with the genetic sequences, above. Are we dealing with one "kind" there, or three, or more? What's your criteria for classifying those sequences by "kind"? Would you have it that each individual sequence is it's own "kind" perhaps? If so, then why is your father (who has a different genetic sequence to you) the same "kind" as you? If, in my example, you think at some point one "kind" changed into another, where did that happen?
I get the step. I get how you could come to believe this is true.
But you don’t know whether or not it is true, so you accept and believe it
Nothing in biology makes sense unless it is true. If you throw out evolution, you're left floundering around with a bunch of groundless
ad hoc explanations for the diversity of life, or else you have to resort to God of the Gaps. Unless you have a viable scientific alternative to the the theory of evolution, that is, and none of you Creationists have ever attempted to put any such thing forward.*
I have done.
It appears to be vague and speculative.
I'm betting you didn't look at any of the primary literature (i.e. the peer-reviewed papers published by real scientists). If you did, please provide links to what you looked at, and we can discuss with direct reference to what you read.
I’m thinking maybe I don’t have the intellectual capacity to completely track with these explanations, maybe you could simplify it for me, and other little theists.
Which parts were you struggling with? You'll probably need to refer me to the sources you consulted so I can help.
All I want is actual evidence that this does occur. Not vague stuff.
Well, for example, Write4U just gave you a link about genetic studies of Siberian huskies and Siberian wolves. Why not look at that?
This is where ‘The Emporers New Clothes’ comes in. There does not appear to be any evidence.
I think it most likely appears that way to you because you only read the grade-school summaries of the scientific findings. If you want to trace through the detailed evidence from fossils or genetic studies, there's really no alternative but to read the primary scientific literature.
It's like going to library and getting a kids' book to learn how to build the space shuttle. The kids' book won't be
useless. It will probably tell you some interesting facts about the shuttle. It might have some nice diagrams giving you an idea of what's inside the rocket boosters. But you won't come away with any idea about how to go about building a working rocket engine by reading that. If you want to know the details, you'll need to read enough of the relevant adult literature at a minimum. Probably, you'll also need some specialist education by qualified teachers, too.
Now I’ve no reason to deny macro evolution, if it naturally occurs. If it does occur, I may as well accept it, because it would be true. Just like I have to accept microevolution.
Like I said, the Creationists have been feeding you a lie. There's no meaningful difference between macro-evolution and micro-evolution. Macro-evolution equals micro-evolution plus time. It's no more complicated than that. If you really understand micro-evolution and accept it, then a belief in macro-evolution ought to follow automatically.
Connecting lines from one drawing to the next, to show that there are common ancestral links, highlights only the idea of ...
Your sentences keep cutting off half way through.
In my over-simplified example above, I could effective list every step in the evolutionary line of descent. In reality, that isn't possible. You're dealing not with individual animals, but with
species of animals made up of many individuals in each generation. If you're looking at fossils, you will never find an animal in a particular line of descent from every generation. What you find, generally, are pieces of animals that can be organised according to the date that they lived, and by morphology. In the end, what you are faced with is the same three possible explanations for the fossil record: evolution happened as advertised by Darwin, or it's all an astoundingly improbable coincidence, or God is the Great Deceiver.
Those tree-like diagrams you see showing evolutionary relationships ought not be misinterpreted, either. They generally do not represent
descent of one fossil from another. That can almost never be established, for obvious reasons. Rather, they represent degrees of relatedness, based on morphology and the geological timeline.
Studies of DNA can do better than the fossils, although many types of life are known only through fossils and we have no DNA for them. But DNA cladograms similarly do not show descent, but again show degrees of relatedness, in this case indicated by degree of equivalence of the genetic code. Descent is inferred because there's no other explanation that isn't ludicrously improbable and/or unscientific. And, of course, because it's the simplest, logical explanation of the observations.
Not according to all, involved in those fields.
Again, the Creationists are lying to you. Proper biologists all accept evolution. It's only the Creationist fringe who question the basics. The most prominent Creationists tend to be either unqualified in science and/or biology, or else regarded as irretrievably off with the fairies by their former colleagues in science. When a trained biologist starts taking Creationism seriously, he (it's almost always a "he") typically drops off the scientific radar and thereafter only publishes in the Creationist propaganda rags.
It seems I have no reason to accept that, and every reason to think that thousands of generations ago, my ancestors would be as human as I am.
In light of my example above, perhaps you like to explain why animal "00110010" would say he has every reason to think that thousands of generations ago his ancestors would be as duck-like as himself.
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* There is, of course, the muddle called "intelligent design", but we all know that this is merely a smoke-screen for special Creation by God. At best, stripped of its Creationist stigma, ID is little more than the suggestion that Darwinian evolution-as-usual has been mysteriously tweaked now and then by some kind of advanced being, although there is no actual evidence in support of such a hypothesis.