At 09:18 PM 12/27/2012, Jojo Jaro wrote:
David,
The different physical characteristics of individuals within a
species is the result of microevolution. Microevolution is
different from Darwinian Evolution.
Sure. However, the difference is not a sharp dividing line.
Populations diverge when isolated, and can become mutually infertile,
the classic definition of a species.
As I've posted before, Darwinian Evolution says that random
mutations cause changes that result in some feature that confer a
survival advantage resulting in Natural Selection.
That's a straw man presentation. Random mutations change DNA. That
happens. Some DNA changes are expressed as a "feature," most are not.
However, changes accumulate over time.
Darwinian Evolution postulates that if you accumulate enough of
these random changes, the individual becomes a "new" species.
No. This is not worth pursuing. Essentially, the tactic is a common
one, present what you want to attack or debumk as X. And X is
preposterous. But X is not what advocates of the target idea or
philosophy or practice actually propose or believe.
There is no accumulation of random changes that suddenly becomes a
new species. What is accumulated is a combination of random changes
and functional changes (those few mutations that affect survival, and
obviously, to accumulate, they must affect survival positively.) If a
population is cofertile, the genes will keep mixing, and an
individual becoming non-cofertile is not likely to survive. But there
is another factor influencing the gene mixing that keeps populations
together: isolation. Relatively isolated populations will share
traits that will be *different* for other originally similar
populations. Eventually these shifts accumulate until the cause a
failure of co-fertility.
And that is normally considered a species boundary. That's not any
organized philosophy, it's just my own understanding.
What a species is; we don't know other than the rough physical
classifications we use. If something "looks" different from
another, it's a different species
No, the definition is usually that normal members can mate with any
other member of the same species. At least that applies to species that mate.
Such is the problem with Darwinian Evolution. Before we can say
whether Darwinian Evolution is correct; we have to ask ourselves
whether it is clear enough to be correct. Heck, we don't even know
what a "species" is. The process of "species" classification is
more an art and an exercise in consensus building. Before we can
even say that Darwinian Evolution is correct and cram it down
people's throats, ala AGW, we need to establish without a shadow of
a doubt, what we mean by "species". We need to build a new
"Genetic Classification" of species instead of our current physical
features classification system. My friends, establish the science
first before you cram it down people's throats.
Microevolution on the other hand is in the simplest term called
"adaptation". The changes occur because of genetic expression of
what is ALREADY encoded in the DNA. When we turn black under the
sun, that is not a random mutation of our DNA to give us black skin,
that is an expression of what we already have.
That is not evolution at all. It's just a respose to the enviroment.
These responses are not inherited, the idea that they were was
Lysenkoism, promoted by Stalin.
An organism can only change its features within the coding already in its DNA.
Organisms don't really change their features, they simply express
what is already in their DNA. Is this agreement?
Microevolution does not cause DNA changes, it causes expression
of the changes that is dormant in the DNA.
That's made-up. There is no such distinction, and that can easily be
shown. But it's not a job for me. Mutations happen, and mutations are
not *what is already in the DNA.* But some mutations do activate
sequences already in the DNA. That, in fact, is how compex genes can
form out of a sequence of mutations, even if the protogene has no
function and is not expressed. Those would be an example, one might
imagine, of what Jojo is saying, but the changes were not "dormant in
the DNA," they happen from random mutation that hits the jackpot once
in a while.
If you believe in some sort of conscious purpose to evolution, you
could say that everything that happened was part of this plan, and
what appears to be a random process is not. But "random process" *is*
how it appears.
