"Dawkins lizards" and hyper-evolution

[csvan]

I was in Croatia recently, and came to think about the Pod Mrcaru lizards which Richard Dawkins discusses in The Greatest Show on Earth. A summary from National Geographic is here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

My question: doesn't this give credence to the kind of extremely rapid evolution that Creationists claim happened in the approx last 4000 years? After all, if these lizards could begin evolving complex new biological features over a matter of decades, would not 4000 years allow for much more extensive diversification among other species?

 

[Mr_Wilford]

I was in Croatia recently, and came to think about the Pod Mrcaru lizards which Richard Dawkins discusses in The Greatest Show on Earth. A summary from National Geographic is here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

My question: doesn't this give credence to the kind of extremely rapid evolution that Creationists claim happened in the approx last 4000 years? After all, if these lizards could begin evolving complex new biological features over a matter of decades, would not 4000 years allow for much more extensive diversification among other species?

Not really. They require something much more extreme than the origin of a new cecal valve. What they require is that we somehow go from some number of kinds (I believe they last said 14,000, but don't quote me on that) to the millions of species we have today, in at best 200 years. And as one christian laid out on a blog post:

But what do we find in the scriptures? We find that even in the earliest records, people easily distinguished between foxes, wolves and domestic dogs and probably jackals. We can also go to extra-biblical sources like Egyptian writings and see images of domestic dogs which look like breeds of dogs – which aren’t even full-fledged species – that live in Egypt today. We even have mummies of dogs and other animals that confirm that they are indistinguishable from those we see today. It seems that there is no evidence of speciation here at all but rather fully formed species that have maintained the distinguishing characteristics of their kind since their very first mention in scripture.

So \the bible doesn't support Young Earth Creationist's claims of hyper speciation. Thus, YECs need to rely on Hyper HYPER speciation, on the order of a few centuries at best, to get all the diversity we see today from only a small number of kinds. The evolution of cecal valves over several decades, a significant chunk of the timescale they need everything to form in, doesn't help them at all.

Hope this helps,

~Itsdemtitans

 

[Sparhafoc]

I was in Croatia recently, and came to think about the Pod Mrcaru lizards which Richard Dawkins discusses in The Greatest Show on Earth. A summary from National Geographic is here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

My question: doesn't this give credence to the kind of extremely rapid evolution that Creationists claim happened in the approx last 4000 years? After all, if these lizards could begin evolving complex new biological features over a matter of decades, would not 4000 years allow for much more extensive diversification among other species?

Let's be clear, Creationists don't actually claim that extremely rapid evolution happened in the last 4000 years, rather it's an amusing side-effect of their claim that only 'kinds' were taken onto the fantasy ark, and therefore that all the various species you see today originate from one of those kinds. As such, the form of evolution they're suggesting would require hundreds of positively selected mutations occurring in every birth to attain fixity in those genes across the population, and this has to happen however many times depending on the species concerned to achieve all this differentiation.

Basically, it's the same tired old appeal to magical guff with no respect whatsoever for reality.

Is it realistic? Not according to anything else we know. Species can evolve very dramatically under certain conditions, but not such sweeping morphological difference as, say, between a fox and a panda in 4000 years.

 

[Sparhafoc]

While I don't dispute the thrust of what the chap on the blog is saying...

But what do we find in the scriptures? We find that even in the earliest records, people easily distinguished between foxes, wolves and domestic dogs and probably jackals. We can also go to extra-biblical sources like Egyptian writings and see images of domestic dogs which look like breeds of dogs – which aren’t even full-fledged species – that live in Egypt today. We even have mummies of dogs and other animals that confirm that they are indistinguishable from those we see today.

This is probably not the best line of explanation if he's trying to convince religious people - the domesticated dog phenotype, for example, has proven to be extremely amenable to human ingenuity, and therefore has been molded extraordinarily quickly. While his point might remove the 'why are there still monkeys?' type of question from the table, it's still offering up a folksy interpretation angle where Great Danes and Chihuahuas seem a compelling example of 'hyper-evolution' while still remaining a 'kind' in the folksy interpretation sense.

What he should note is that we don't go off of solely visible appearance because what's under the hood is also evolving too. Whether something's indistinguishable from a normal guy on the Stone Age street is not much of a marker as to whether it is readily distinguishable in genetic terms.

 

[leroy]

I was in Croatia recently, and came to think about the Pod Mrcaru lizards which Richard Dawkins discusses in The Greatest Show on Earth. A summary from National Geographic is here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

My question: doesn't this give credence to the kind of extremely rapid evolution that Creationists claim happened in the approx last 4000 years? After all, if these lizards could begin evolving complex new biological features over a matter of decades, would not 4000 years allow for much more extensive diversification among other species?

it is an uncontroversial fact that big changes can occur in a few decades or even in a few months, as Dawkins puts it, you evolved from a single celled organism in 9 months....... the question is .............where this changes where caused by random genetic change ? or by some other preexisting and already complex mechanism ?

 

[Sparhafoc]

I was in Croatia recently, and came to think about the Pod Mrcaru lizards which Richard Dawkins discusses in The Greatest Show on Earth. A summary from National Geographic is here:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080421-lizard-evolution.html

My question: doesn't this give credence to the kind of extremely rapid evolution that Creationists claim happened in the approx last 4000 years? After all, if these lizards could begin evolving complex new biological features over a matter of decades, would not 4000 years allow for much more extensive diversification among other species?

it is an uncontroversial fact that big changes can occur in a few decades or even in a few months, as Dawkins puts it, you evolved from a single celled organism in 9 months....... the question is .............where this changes where caused by random genetic change ? or by some other preexisting and already complex mechanism ?

Changes caused by random genetic change? Aren't tautologies already sufficiently tautologous without tautologizing them?

Sorry, why don't you talk about evolution instead of whatever notion you've spontaneously coined this time?

 

[leroy]

Changes caused by random genetic change? Aren't tautologies already sufficiently tautologous without tautologizing them?

Sorry, why don't you talk about evolution instead of whatever notion you've spontaneously coined this time?

whatever, .......


the point is that creationists don't believe in super evolution, they believe that big changes occurred in a small amount of time doe to a preexisting mechanism, not by Darwinian mechanisms.

 

[Gnug215]

Changes caused by random genetic change? Aren't tautologies already sufficiently tautologous without tautologizing them?

Sorry, why don't you talk about evolution instead of whatever notion you've spontaneously coined this time?

whatever, .......


the point is that creationists don't believe in super evolution, they believe that big changes occurred in a small amount of time doe to a preexisting mechanism, not by Darwinian mechanisms.

So... creationists believe in a mechanism that changes the genes of being over time, and in this case, at a fast pace.

A kind of... rapid development, one could say.

Would you agree?

 

[Sparhafoc]

whatever, .......


the point is that creationists don't believe in super evolution, they believe that big changes occurred in a small amount of time doe to a preexisting mechanism, not by Darwinian mechanisms.

No they don't - you're making it up as you go along.

There is no mechanism or scientific application behind Creationists rejection of science - it's purely religious belief that underlies their rejection of evolution.

Instead, when they warble about the fictional ark and the ludicrous notion of an early Iron Age man traversing the world to find 2 of each animal.... and they think that only 'kinds' or representatives of kinds were taken aboard, and they think that all the ensuing variety occurred post-Flood, then regardless of the fact that they don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about, and the fact that they are making up bullshit to protect their mind-virus, it still necessarily results in populations needing to undergo absurdly fast evolution - thus "hyper-evolution" - way above and beyond any rate of evolution detected throughout history.

This is independent of what you think, understand? You are not Mr Representative Creationist and just because you don't think X, that doesn't mean that one is not justified in generalizing a point Creationists believe which you don't share.

 

[Sparhafoc]

So... creationists believe in a mechanism that changes the genes of being over time, and in this case, at a fast pace.

A kind of... rapid development, one could say.

Would you agree?

Let's just coin a term for it..... something pithy.... oooh how about hyper-evolution?

Other words might be 'bullshit', 'intellectual dreck', 'Morton's Demon doing Overtime' or 'Gooooooooooooooooooooooooodidit'.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

My question: doesn't this give credence to the kind of extremely rapid evolution that Creationists claim happened in the approx last 4000 years? After all, if these lizards could begin evolving complex new biological features over a matter of decades, would not 4000 years allow for much more extensive diversification among other species?

I see these lizards as evidence of punctuated equilibrium. They are such a rapid change that one would not be able to see this in the fossil record. Punctuated equilibrium works well within our modern understanding of evolutionary theory and has nothing to do with creationism.

whatever, .......


the point is that creationists don't believe in super evolution, they believe that big changes occurred in a small amount of time doe to a preexisting mechanism, not by Darwinian mechanisms.

Dandan/Leroy loves to speak for all creationists while sharing very little with what they actually think.

Who should I believe speaks for the majority of creationists; a random nobody on a internet forum or the people that made a creationist "museum" and write books and TV shows about this subject?

By the way, since evolution is simply change in allele frequency over time, what preexisting mechanism would cause big changes to occur in a small amount of time that is different from evolution?

 

[Sparhafoc]

I've two things to add to that, although I will state up front that I am not much of a fan of punctuated equilibrium for the most part - it just doesn't seem to offer much explanatory power beyond a few events, and I wonder if that's an artifact of spots in our data.

Transparency concluded, back to the two things...

Firstly, I think it's always important to note that any population is always undergoing evolution on all manner of traits, including morphological ones. Tails might lengthen on average for a while, then shorten. Eyes might be bigger on average for a few generations then shrink back to 'normal' again.

This fluctuation wouldn't be well recorded in the fossil record or will simply be normalized by averaging the fossils from the location and time, but would fit the kind of Gaussian distribution of traits we see everywhere in nature. In other words, it's just normal variation captured for millennia in rock form, and it's a bit confusing to the kind of brain that is good at cladistics!

With a population always in flux in multiple ways, there are also plenty of opportunities for the genetic fringes to be in the right place with a minor shift in climate or availability of resources but historical populations can shrink and grow far too rapidly for us to detect in the fossil record, so we could end up seeing momentary monsters, as it were - a sidebranch of a larger population that existed just for a few generations in a fleeting environmental niche but was, perhaps due to terrain preference, over-represented in the fossil record.

Interestingly, Gould spent several essays worrying about how representative any given fossil was at a given point of a 'normal' span of time a species exists, now terms background extinction rate, and what we should expect to see in terms of representation of that species in the fossil record early and late in the species' life span, and how this was contrary to common sense but appeared to be a real factor.

Mostly, I think we always need to be on guard for our usually unhelpful propensity to look for platonic forms, or 'normal' dimensions (and this is particularly of extant species which aren't done doing that evolving malarkey yet) unless we have a very complete record of their entire history. Normal always has a problem of loaded assumptions, and its so many caused hitches in the past (and present) with identifying a species simply because they couldn't recognize 'normal' variation and instead split it off to its own label. I am glad I am not a palaeoanthropologist.... some of them get positively deadly when it comes to their preferred classification! :shock:


Secondly, I would suggest for your consideration that the founder effect is the primary driver of change in these lizards comparative to the ancestral population rather than punctuated equilibrium. One of the other components of the founder effect, aside from the sudden isolation and restriction of the gene pool which itself alone can result in rapidly accrued easily distinguished genetic and morphological changes from the parent species, is the opening of a new niche and the benefits for getting there first. The sudden opening of a new large territory with widely available resources and little intra-specific competition means that selection pressures revolving around finding food would get relaxed allowing less conventional traits to thrive that might otherwise simply have been a tad less efficient in their ancestral location and therefore rare or even non-existent in the gene pool. Meanwhile, all that space probably makes it hard for a small population to find each other and mate, thereby inducing a new environmental pressure to solve that. I personally think the key moment of punctuation there is the arrival at the uncolonized island, the rest is just what happens when a newly genetically-restricted population opens an untouched niche and sets about making new iterations. It's kind of like the etch-a-sketch ending and GO!

However, and someone please do correct me if I am wrong, I can't imagine we have the genome of the original population of lizards? If so it's difficult to trace what occurred genetically

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Secondly, I would suggest for your consideration that the founder effect is the primary driver of change in these lizards comparative to the ancestral population rather than punctuated equilibrium. One of the other components of the founder effect, aside from the sudden isolation and restriction of the gene pool which itself alone can result in rapidly accrued easily distinguished genetic and morphological changes from the parent species, is the opening of a new niche and the benefits for getting there first. The sudden opening of a new large territory with widely available resources and little intra-specific competition means that selection pressures revolving around finding food would get relaxed allowing less conventional traits to thrive that might otherwise simply have been a tad less efficient in their ancestral location and therefore rare or even non-existent in the gene pool. Meanwhile, all that space probably makes it hard for a small population to find each other and mate, thereby inducing a new environmental pressure to solve that. I personally think the key moment of punctuation there is the arrival at the uncolonized island, the rest is just what happens when a newly genetically-restricted population opens an untouched niche and sets about making new iterations. It's kind of like the etch-a-sketch ending and GO!

Saying that it is caused by the founder effect and saying it is punctuated equilibrium are one in the same for me. Whether that lizard population had the trait before getting to the island and the population being bottle necked into expressing that trait, or it being a mutation that arose after getting there seems like nit-picking. We know what the original population was, and we know what this population looks like now. They went through a rapid change, one so rapid that it would not be seen in the fossil record.

This is how I also thought punctuated equilibrium should be understood, on geological timescales and looking through the fossil record. Two things can drive it, founder effect or the arrival of a very useful mutation. Either way, the change would move through a population so fast that it would be undetected when looking at the fossils.

Another way to think of this using fossils and the founder effect is thinking of a population of sea snails that stretches from Alaska down into Mexico. The vast majority of those snails will live along California, but there will be variation in their population for living in hot and cold climates. Say an ice age comes and the population that lives near Alaska is able to extend its traits down into most of California. When we look at those fossils, it will look like a rapid change in that population. This is why I think saying something was caused by a founder effect does not erase punctuated equilibrium as well. It is a different way of saying the same thing. After all, all populations have variation within them.

 

[Sparhafoc]

There is definitely some overlap between the ideas as both are primarily models of peripatric speciation.

I am just not convinced that punctuated equilibrium is a better explanation than the founder effect in this case.

The two problems I have with the model are that a) it proposes equilibrium as the primary status of a population which I think we know is mostly untrue genetically if not morphlologically and b) it relegates all significant change to being undetectable in the fossil record. Now while the latter could possibly be true, it would also be problematic as it'd be a suggestion we can't find grand morphological change in the fossil record, and aside from that not being exactly correct, would also undermine any scientific process seeking it. Personally, I do accept that rapid change can occur, I just think that gradual change must also happen and must also accrue significant morphological changes over time.

I loved Gould - I like crusty old curmudgeons getting into feuds with their peers, and I think the idea of punctuated equilibrium was an excellent way of provoking discussion and worrying at our own abilities. All good stuff and necessary to recast the way we think. I just don't think it holds very much explanatory power in terms of what we do see in the fossil record. I also think Gould's justifications were not really based in science or evidence, but in fine rhetoric and strength of personality. For me, the apparent punctuations are actually just artifacts of the paucity of data points, and a more representative catch of fossils from any given species will show that a huge problem still plaguing our cognitive understanding is the intrinsic platonic form.

 

[leroy]

[

whatever, .......


the point is that creationists don't believe in super evolution, they believe that big changes occurred in a small amount of time doe to a preexisting mechanism, not by Darwinian mechanisms.

Dandan/Leroy loves to speak for all creationists while sharing very little with what they actually think.

Who should I believe speaks for the majority of creationists; a random nobody on a internet forum or the people that made a creationist "museum" and write books and TV shows about this subject?

By the way, since evolution is simply change in allele frequency over time, what preexisting mechanism would cause big changes to occur in a small amount of time that is different from evolution?

I saw the images very closely and I was unable to note anywhere where these creationists banners, say or even imply that these changes where caused just by random mutations and natural selection.

creationists typically mention non random mechanisms to account these rapid changes (natural genetic engineering, jumping genes, plastic responses, etc)

 

[leroy]

So... creationists believe in a mechanism that changes the genes of being over time, and in this case, at a fast pace.

A kind of... rapid development, one could say.

Would you agree?

yes and a big portion of these big changes are caused by none random genetic changes. this is what creationists would say.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Dandan/Leroy loves to speak for all creationists while sharing very little with what they actually think.

Who should I believe speaks for the majority of creationists; a random nobody on a internet forum or the people that made a creationist "museum" and write books and TV shows about this subject?

By the way, since evolution is simply change in allele frequency over time, what preexisting mechanism would cause big changes to occur in a small amount of time that is different from evolution?

I saw the images very closely and I was unable to note anywhere where these creationists banners, say or even imply that these changes where caused just by random mutations and natural selection.

creationists typically mention non random mechanisms to account these rapid changes (natural genetic engineering, jumping genes, plastic responses, etc)

:facepalm:

By the way, since evolution is simply change in allele frequency over time, what preexisting mechanism would cause big changes to occur in a small amount of time that is different from evolution?

Perhaps one day you will learn to read for comprehension. Until than, I am just glad I know how to use the quote function.

 

[Gnug215]

So... creationists believe in a mechanism that changes the genes of being over time, and in this case, at a fast pace.

A kind of... rapid development, one could say.

Would you agree?

yes and a big portion of these big changes are caused by none random genetic changes. this is what creationists would say.

So what you're suggesting is directed/intentional genetic change?

Driven by what?

And what is the rest of those big portion of big changes caused by?

 

[leroy]

So what you're suggesting is directed/intentional genetic change?

?

well it depends on what you mean by directed/intentional, but there are known mechanisms that caused change and are caused by non random genetic change.

some of these mechanisms are plastic responses, Natural genetic engineering, jumping genes etc.

the only assumption that YEC make is that these mechanisms where more frequent and more powerful 4,000 years ago.

Driven by what?

well selective pressure,

And what is the rest of those big portion of big changes caused by?

creationists say that all the diversity of animals came form the "biblical kinds" these diversity was caused by varios mechanisms including random and non random genetic changes

 

[Sparhafoc]

well it depends on what you mean by directed/intentional, but there are known mechanisms that caused change and are caused by non random genetic change.

some of these mechanisms are plastic responses, Natural genetic engineering, jumping genes etc.

Cause change? Not a response to external change? Leave that for the philosophers, eh?

Either which way, what you're talking about isn't evolution, LEROY. You realize that, right? It's not evolution because it's not in the germline, so it's not inherited, and it's not influencing frequencies of alleles in populations over generations. Not sure if this is clear on your part, or another source of your manifest confusion.

So what is 'intentional' here? You answered a question about what someone may mean with the word 'intentional' without actually proposing any scenario that suggests intention. In fact, no intention is present there except human intention in the case of genetic engineering.

As for 'direction', we all know what that is already, it's expressly what Darwin discovered.

Of course, we've discovered other directionality too, rather than just direction towards the contemporary environment.

We've discovered the role of random resampling (something I explained in detail to you but which you, having just learned about it, then proceeded to declare couldn't produce X result because of 'magical barriers' you were unable to articulate or evidence.

We've discovered genetic drift - how change will occur regardless of any net selection factors.

We discovered 'artificial' selection a long time ago, but didn't know how it worked until a couple of hundred years ago when a new scientific theory burgeoned into the foundational theory of all biological science.

Yep, that one you think is a smorgasbord to pick and choose from. Ain't no cherries there, chap. Either hurry up and swallow, or just fucking spit it out. Half way bullshit gets bats killed by both birds and animals.

the only assumption that YEC make is that these mechanisms where more frequent and more powerful 4,000 years ago.

Utter bollocks. The assumptions that the YEC makes is a) that the Bible is literally the word of God and therefore unfallible, and b) that their chosen church's preferred or obligatory doctrinal interpretation is correct, c) that no evidence can exist to overturn this interpretation.

It's been spelled out by Creationists many times. Here's the father of modern Creationism stating it in no uncertain terms:

The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since he has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years of age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology.

The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (Bethany House Pub), 1972


Whereas, most Christians categorically do not believe that the Bible or any scripture provides any form of accurate terrestrial chronology. In fact, the only 'time' of 7 days is usually interpreted as meaning '7 ages' - and it's a quite specific YEC position to believe otherwise. Further, no one credible believes the loon Ussher that the begats chronicle the age of the Earth, and only loons could believe it - loons who haven't fucking read the Bible.

And a more honest admission of intellectual guilt you could not ask for....

No geological difficulties, real or imagined, can be allowed to take precedence over the clear statements and necessary inferences of Scripture.

Biblical Cosmology and Modern Science, 1982

Read it again, LEROY - is that the position you want to take? That no material, empirical, reproducible evidence can ever be allowed if it contradicts your interpretation of scripture?

Doesn't the Bible warn you about hubris and the fall of Man? :facepalm:

well selective pressure,

Duhhh, nope. You cited 'plastic responses' and Lamarckism is not an accepted position today, there being no evidence for it, and mountains of evidence contradicting it. Thanks for playing, though. Back to the 18th century with you.

creationists say that all the diversity of animals came form the "biblical kinds" these diversity was caused by varios mechanisms including random and non random genetic changes

Yes, Creationists SAY that, but molecular evidence, genetic evidence, fossil evidence, biogeographical evidence, geological evidence, palynological evidence, and many, many more lines of evidence say that Creationist's claims are absolute nonsensical bollocks that no honest person in possession of the facts could support.