Creationist challenge

[jillery]

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/i-get-more-creationist-email/

Many self-identified Creationists reply to Jerry Coyne's "Why
Evolution is True" blog articles, in part because many of Coyne's
articles have nothing to do with Evolution, but instead have to do
with his opinions about religion, since Coyne is a self-identified
atheist.

The article I cite above refers to one of those replies. According to
Coyne, the author was inspired to reply to an article Coyne wrote
about the genealogical consequences of a literal Adam and Eve. In his
reply, the author posted two challenges:

**************************************************
We have been studying and recording nature scientifically for
thousands of years. If eveolution is true you must be able to show me
one instance, ONLY ONE, of a mother giving birth to another species.
One mutation after another, yes, but there must be a point where the
DNA goes from that of a man to that of a “whats to come”.

[...]

Further, when have you seen, ever, where a mutation has aided an
animal in both life and finding a mate:
**************************************************

The first challenge obviously refers to the Creationist myth of
croccoducks, that Evolution expects new species to be borne in a
single generation. One can only wonder how the author conveniently
ignores the concept of small incremental changes over time.

And of course every generation *is* "what's to come", in that every
offspring inherits imperfect copies of their parent(s) genes. But
just as rainbows gradually shade from one color to the next, there is
no "point" where the offspring are so different they can't
successfully mate. If it worked as the author described, Darwinian
evolution would be false.

The author's second challenge is less clear. I am unfamiliar with his
claim that mutations can't be advantageous to both survival and
reproduction at the same time. Perhaps the author is confused about
runaway sexual selection, where one gender sports apparently
maladaptive features, ex. peacocks.

I couldn't find any comments which comment on this second challenge.
Does anybody here have any idea what that Creationist might be
referring to?

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This space is intentionally not blank.

[Andre G. Isaak]

In article <vehp7c9505aiukilm...@4ax.com>,
jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:

> https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/i-get-more-creationist-ema

Another possibility would be that they're thinking of saltationism -- a
mutation which affords some survival advantage but also imposes a
reproductive barrier all on one shot. Since evolution doesn't work this
way it's not really a problem.

Andre

--
To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail service.

[*Hemidactylus*]

Saltation could apply to instantaneous genic incompatibility or to rapid
onset of discrete morphological shifts having great magnitude. Each of
these, genic or morphological onsets, could happen rarely, but it would be
more unlikely they occur together, unless genic incompatibility is also an
allele that was responsible for the discrete morphology change. Or maybe
the morphological or other phenotypic change makes interbreeding highly
unlikely or impossible.

But there are interesting instances from what I recall where genic
incompatibility or morphological change have happened. Hugo de Vries made a
big deal of an evening primrose that appeared to instantaneously speciate.
Not generalizable.

Pocket gophers seem to be a prima facie example of large magnitude changes
of morphology.

Father of the hopeful monster Richard Goldschmidt speculated about systemic
mutations but that was never found to be a tenable concept. In the early
days of evodevo early acting genes were thought to be potential
facilitators of huge macro events. Or so called rate genes. The early
hoxology work producing bizarre fruitflies captured the imagination.

Goldschmidt had developed the concept of phenocopy where environmental
factors create phenotypic outcomes that mimic genetic mutations. If a
population of organisms are exposed to a mutagen that disrupts development
in a beneficial way and this mutagen stays active over many generations the
principle of genetic assimilation would suggest that the mutagen inspired
phenotype would slowly be stabilized by genes, so upon removal of mutagen
the effect remains.

Prothero's quote from this wiki article suggest that possibility:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltation_(biology)

"Embryology has shown that if you affect an entire population of developing
embryos with a stress (such as a heat shock) it can cause many embryos to
go through the same new pathway of embryonic development, and then they all
become hopeful monsters when they reach reproductive age.[33]"

Interesting but how applicable to real world and how common? Still it
couples quasi-lamarckism and hopeful monsters, so should make folks such as
Dawkins blanche though maybe not eat his hat.

[jillery]

Your cited Wiki article also points out that polyploidy can be
responsible for abrupt, single-generation changes. This happens most
commonly among plants and invertebrates.

IIUC saltation better applies to the first challenge than to the
second. Am I missing something?

[Mike Dworetsky]

Andre G. Isaak wrote:
> In article <vehp7c9505aiukilm...@4ax.com>,
> jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/i-get-more-creationist-ema
>> il/
>>
>> Many self-identified Creationists reply to Jerry Coyne's "Why
>> Evolution is True" blog articles, in part because many of Coyne's
>> articles have nothing to do with Evolution, but instead have to do
>> with his opinions about religion, since Coyne is a self-identified
>> atheist.
>>
>> The article I cite above refers to one of those replies. According
>> to Coyne, the author was inspired to reply to an article Coyne wrote
>> about the genealogical consequences of a literal Adam and Eve. In
>> his reply, the author posted two challenges:
>>
>> **************************************************
>> We have been studying and recording nature scientifically for
>> thousands of years. If eveolution is true you must be able to show me
>> one instance, ONLY ONE, of a mother giving birth to another species.
>> One mutation after another, yes, but there must be a point where the
>> DNA goes from that of a man to that of a “whats to come”.
>>

It's the same question as, "Who was the first man to speak French, and who
did he talk to?"

Creationist reasoning: Once there were no people speaking French in what we
call France, and now there are maybe 60 million. So there must have been a
first Frenchman, right? He would not have been able to speak to his
parents.

Meanwhile I will keep an eye out for a cat giving birth to a dog. Which may
well have been happening outside our bedroom window last night, in any event
there was a lot of yapping and howling around 4am. Proof positive. And
kept me awake for a while.

Mike Dworetsky

(Remove pants sp*mbl*ck to reply)

[*Hemidactylus*]

Mike Dworetsky <plati...@pants.btinternet.com> wrote:
> Andre G. Isaak wrote:
>> In article <vehp7c9505aiukilm...@4ax.com>,
>> jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/i-get-more-creationist-ema
>>> il/
>>>
>>> Many self-identified Creationists reply to Jerry Coyne's "Why
>>> Evolution is True" blog articles, in part because many of Coyne's
>>> articles have nothing to do with Evolution, but instead have to do
>>> with his opinions about religion, since Coyne is a self-identified
>>> atheist.
>>>
>>> The article I cite above refers to one of those replies. According
>>> to Coyne, the author was inspired to reply to an article Coyne wrote
>>> about the genealogical consequences of a literal Adam and Eve. In
>>> his reply, the author posted two challenges:
>>>
>>> **************************************************
>>> We have been studying and recording nature scientifically for
>>> thousands of years. If eveolution is true you must be able to show me
>>> one instance, ONLY ONE, of a mother giving birth to another species.
>>> One mutation after another, yes, but there must be a point where the
>>> DNA goes from that of a man to that of a “whats to come”.
>>>
>
> It's the same question as, "Who was the first man to speak French, and who
> did he talk to?"
>

What about conversational Klingon, Esperanto, or other higher magnitude
transitions?

>
> Creationist reasoning: Once there were no people speaking French in what we
> call France, and now there are maybe 60 million. So there must have been a
> first Frenchman, right? He would not have been able to speak to his
> parents.
>

I'm more interested in high rise terminals or why the Scottish always seem
to be asking questions?

>
> Meanwhile I will keep an eye out for a cat giving birth to a dog. Which may
> well have been happening outside our bedroom window last night, in any event
> there was a lot of yapping and howling around 4am. Proof positive. And
> kept me awake for a while.
>

Whatever instances of saltation may have happened they wouldn't be dogs
from cats. Minor genetic change with great phenotypic impact or a major
genetic mishap that causes loss of interfertility between subgroups but
negligible phenotypic impact. Jillery got at that with ploidy. I think
plants that self fertilize and/or propagate by asexual budding can get away
with that.

So there would be genic jumps on the one hand and morphological jumps on
the other. Both seem to be called saltation but are different things.

There could arise genic incompatibility between groups morphologically
indistinguishable. There could be disparate morphs that either belong to
the same species or at least freely interbreed if they can stand to look at
each other.

[Robert Carnegie]

Or the existence of mules. But perhaps the
commentator is most interested in reproduction
starting from humans. Which is odd, because
humans are the finishing-off species. We have
already finished off lots of other species.