What would you accept as a macroevolutionary event?

[Inferno]

I was bored and, after the completely unsatisfying end of AC3, quite annoyed. When I checked the Bob Duko thread, Bob Enyart had just posted his reply to Gnug. In the reply was a link to one of his websites. From that you can go to a few other sites, including the Center for Scientific Creation. The link takes you to the site I take issue with. It's incidentally about a sliver of the "debate" that's always made me quite angry. Since I'm already annoyed, I thought I'd let it all out. If my tone seems slightly more harsh than normally... duck.

Before considering how life began, we must first understand the term "organic evolution." Organic evolution, as theorized, is a naturally occurring, beneficial change that produces increasing and inheritable complexity.

No. Evolution is a theory describing biodiversity in general. Even Wikipedia knows that: "Biodiversity is the result of 3.5 billion years of evolution."

Complexity is a silly word creationists like to sneak into the discussion, while using it in a way biologists don't use it. Most articles I read use it as "an extremely specific usage of an organ", while in creationist terms it can be anything from that to "something with a lot of parts" or "something that looks crazy".

It's also not true that evolution always increases complexity: Trilobites are comparatively simple creatures and they've survived for ages. As Aron documents, a generalized template is often more successful at adapting and thus at surviving.

Increased complexity would be shown if the offspring of one form of life had a different and improved set of vital organs.

This is what gets me so mad. What exactly would a creationist accept as "a different and improved set of vital organs"? Also, what is "vital"? Wings aren't "vital", but they are what makes a bird a bird.

We've got fish developing legs (Tiktaalik), Flavobacterium Sp. K172 (and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, as I just learned) adapting to eat byproducts of nylon (also called nylonase), E. Coli evolving to live off of citric acid, catfish adapting to new environments and finally some weird egg-laying salamanders evolving to give live birth. These should all count, well maybe save for the catfish. I just wanted to chuck that in because a friend showed me today and I thought it was pretty cool.

So I asked a bunch of creationists what they would accept as "a different and improved set of vital organs". They will either agree to something science has already found (although only before you've told them, they'll vehemently deny it later on) or they'll give obvious absurdities and impossibilities that can never happen, such as pegasus (pegasi?) or crocoducks. Oddities evolution wouldn't even allow! By doing this, they betray their inherent ignorance of what evolution is.

This is sometimes called the molecules-to-man theory,or macroevolution.

Only creationists call it that.

Microevolution, on the other hand, does not involve increasing complexity.

Bullshit. Even by the warped definition creationists give, "microevolution" definitely increases complexity. All the above mentioned examples are definitely increases in complexity and you can find quite a few (5,000+) instances of that in PLOS Genetics and Biology.

It involves changes only in size, shape, or color, or minor genetic alterations caused by a few mutations.

Whereas macroevolution is what, exactly?

Each example of macroevolution would require thousands of "just right" mutations. Microevolution can be thought of as horizontal (or even downward) change, whereas macroevolution, if it were ever observed, would involve an upward, beneficial change in complexity. Therefore, microevolution plus time will not produce macroevolution. (micro + time ≠ macro)

As explained, that's simply wrong. The first sentence seems to miss that nature is basically trial and error, with thousands and millions of species dying all the time. Microevolution can not be thought of horizontal or downward, because it is the same as macroevolution, the only difference is time scale. Additionally, beneficial mutations have been found that constituted a "loss of information", meaning a deletion of bases or nucleotides.
Creationists seem to propose that micro- and macroevolution are two distinct processes, but that couldn't be unless two different portions of the DNA were affected. That's not the case; Micro- and macroevolution are the same thing.

It is macroevolution,which requires new abilities and increasing complexity, resulting from new genetic information,that is at the center of the creation-evolution controversy.

But they have already occurred and been documented. What now?

Picture[/url]"]Figure 4: Microevolution vs. Macroevolution. Notice that macroevolution would require an upward change in the complexity of certain traits and organs. Microevolution involves only "horizontal" (or even downward) changes,no increasing complexity. Also note that all creationists agree that natural selection occurs. While natural selection does not result in macroevolution, it accounts for many variations within a very narrow range.

Notice how their picture displays something I've already said evolution couldn't even account for: A blend of two living species, in this case bird and lizard.

Science should always base conclusions on what is seen and reproducible. So what is observed? We see variations in lizards, four of which are shown at the bottom. We also see birds, represented at the top. In-between forms (or intermediates), which should be vast in number if macroevolution occurred, are never seen as fossils or living species. A careful observer can usually see unbelievable discontinuities in these claimed upward changes, as well as in the drawing above.

I don't know of a single scientist who proposes that modern birds evolved from modern lizards. This prompts me to dig up an earlier (badly drawn) picture I put up a while ago:

Ever since Darwin, evolutionists have made excuses for why the world and our fossil museums are not overflowing with intermediates.

In fact, many scientists today will tell you that for some genera, there are so many fossils that we can't see the forest through all the trees. I've been to two museums (Hamburg and Vienna) and they have thousands of fossils and millions of transitions of insects.

So all this leads me back to the question I posed earlier: Can any creationist or anyone who has talked to a creationist and gotten an answer tell me what would constitute "a different and improved set of vital organs."? What would you accept? Or tell us what an intermediary species would look like, because even though scientists will say that we've already found them, you obviously disagree. Give us some idea of the relationship we're looking for.

A few excellent videos on the subject are obviously AronRa's "Falsifying Phylogeny" series, in this case especially the video Foundations of Feliforme Families. A precursor of my question appeared in Ida done better.

Just to end this on a funny note: Looksie
This must be the silliest page I've ever seen...

 

[Isotelus]

Now that is a terrible site! The picture of the lizard-birds is particularly bad. Good rebuttal of it!

I will comment on this:

It's also not true that evolution always increases complexity: Trilobites are comparatively simple creatures and they've survived for ages. As Aron documents, a generalized template is often more successful at adapting and thus at surviving.

A very good point that I wish more people were aware of. Referring to trilobites in particular, the secondary reduction or complete loss of eyes is fairly common, and it should come as no surprise that examples of this are found in rock associated with deep marine environments.
Still, while trilobites themselves are certainly comparatively simple, they as a group did undergo a general increase in complexity, which peaked around the Ordovician. There was a trend to increase the number of thoracic segments, for example, as well as the degree of spinosity: see Hoplolichas. Trilobites also diverged to fill a variety of ecological roles, and some were highly specialzed, like the pelagic and filter feeding forms.

Just to end this on a funny note: Looksie
This must be the silliest page I've ever seen

I don't even...know what to say about that. I feel as though I should be laughing, but the laughter won't come. It's only this: :shock: