evolution and the standard responses...

[acroyear]

Finches on Galapagos Islands evolving - Yahoo! News:

A medium sized species of Darwin's finch has evolved a smaller beak to take advantage of different seeds just two decades after the arrival of a larger rival for its original food source.

The altered beak size shows that species competing for food can undergo evolutionary change, said Peter Grant of Princeton University, lead author of the report appearing in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

scientists: well, it never hurts to document the obvious...

creationist wackos: but it's sitll a bird!

Comments

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

micro vs macro distinctions are unnecessary

From the Berkeley site I mentioned earlier, there is this about microevolution:
Biologists who study evolution at this level define evolution as a change in gene frequency within a population.

Macroevolution is what most people mean by evolution -- the development of one species into another. (Some scientist break it down further, saying that "speciation" is the creation of a new species, and that macroevolution is at an even larger scale). Yes, I know that "species" is an unclear term. These two ideas are very different in many ways. First, microevolution is potentially reversible, macro is not. Micro can happen in one generation. Macro takes geologic periods of time. Also, according to Wiki's microevolution page, creationists don't dispute microevolution.

Multiple microevolution steps can lead to macroevolution, in fact, if macroevolution occurs, it must involve microevolution steps. But the existence of microevolution does not prove the existence of macroevolution.

According to this short article, Darwin also separated natural selection and speciation -- in fact, changes within species were already well known by then (and practiced in creating new breeds).

So my main point here is that micro- versus macro- is an important distinction, and that the former is not controversial.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

I am not arguing against creationist illogic here, nor did i ever state my intent to prove micro must lead to macro. please stop setting up strawman interpretations of what i have said just to prove your point that i haven't said everything possible about evolution in a mere 2 line charicature of a creationist talking point.

i had no intention of using this to "prove" macroevolution, so i didn't, so stop bitching at me as if i tried to. i accept macro evolution up front and creationists can just fuck off if they don't accept that its 1) possible and 2) the best explanation for what has happened in the 4 billion years of this planets history, including us.

i said that a possibility of this is that macro might happen among these finches through these micro steps. i also said that is a predictable outcome by applying the whole theory (which includes macro) as we currently know it which makes it different from creationism which makes no predictions at all.

there are two sides to scientific theory - 1) what predictions or patterns does it make to knowns and unknowns that will support or refute it, and 2) what predictions does it make that can increase our knowledge about other things unknown but in its field.

there's supporting the theory vs. applying the theory.

the movement of the planets supported the Newtonian theory of gravity - Newton's equations had to match the already observed behavior (and fit the mathematics Kepler and Galileo had already calculated - for exaple Kepler's "K" constant ends up a ratio of Newton's G constant to the mass of the sun - Kelper's maths still hold up under Newtonian theory).

the application of the theory of gravity supported the idea that there may be a planet or other large mass beyond Uranus that is causing Uranus's orbit to fluctuate. Neptune was discovered using this application of gravity 150 years ago.

the variety of finches on the islands supported Darwin's theory. the presence of these new finches is yet more evidence supporting the current theory of evolution (specifically, the Natural Selection part along with the concepts of invasive species) with all of its genetics and populations yada yada yada.

the potential for a new species to arrive as a result of this population change is an application of modern evolutionary theory. a prediction of future events based on a solid understanding of the past with an awareness of current conditions. the science of evolution in action.

and dozens, hundreds, or thousands of years from now, however long it takes for final undeniable speciation to occur (if it ever does - ecological stability (part of natural selection) may keep things the same as they are now, and at the same time, our awareness of these changes should not be allowed to lead to interference with them thus changing natural selection into artificial selection), creationists will still be saying "well, its still a bird".

which was my f'in' point in the first place.

if macro/speciation doesn't take place in this instance, fine, macro didn't take place. the theory never said it had to, only that it is possible. is that lack of certainty a refutution of macro's relevance or support? no. it goes to show that natural selection, in and of itself, still has a huge number of variables involved that, like other chaotic events, can't have its results pinned down to any relevant certainty.

they want their fucking certainty, they can go to church and be indoctrinated in all the certainty they want. science is utterly uncertain (yet always hopeful) about everything, and scientists see no problem with that at all.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

If I misinterpreted something, I'm sorry. If I went off on tangents, well, that's what I do. I thought we were engaged in a fairly good discussion about the meaning of evolution. Didn't mean to step on your toes.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

sorry if i seemed harsh - i didn't want to get into the "meaning" of evolution as much as the application of it. messing with semantics wasn't (and normally isn't) my game when there are bigger issues at stake than what i saw as mere vocabulary.

my point was its evolution and evolution is evolution at the main level, even if in the details it gets, well, detailed. as all science theories do.

to creationists, "its still a bird" is going to be their standard reply even if scientists did decide that its a new species. they widened their net by talking about "kinds" instead of species when the fruit fly speciation experiments were published ("well, its still a fruit fly").

to them, macro evolution means a dog giving birth to a cat and no amount of evidence or definitions to the contrary will break them of that strawman - which is why i didn't really feel like getting into that distinction. it was irrelevant to my point.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

this kinda said what i was trying to say - that this isn't trying to "prove" evolution so much as demonstrate how the process is ongoing and a specific example.

from a scienceblogger

But the Grants never set out to prove evolutionary theory. The "this" in Pennisi's story isn't evolution itself, but one of the details of the mechanisms behind evolution. In the current paper, the Grants deal with a process until now never documented called "character displacement," in which one characteristic of a species changes in response to competition. In this case, the character is beak size: when times got tough, the beaks shrank, as the finches with larger beaks died off and those with smaller beaks fared better. Sounds bit dry for those who don't study evolution for a living, but this has been the meat and potatoes of evolutionary research since, well, Darwin's day.

Indeed, the very fact that biologists don't waste their time trying to prove evolution is real should tell the creationists something. Unfortunately, instead of marvelling at the how complex and fascinating evolution really is, the more hard-core among them will probably jump on the first sentence of the paper's abstract, pointing out that language like "Competitor species can have evolutionary effects on each other" proves how narrow-minded biologists have become.

"Look how they assume the very thing they're trying to prove," is what they'll say. Never mind that they aren't trying to prove anything.