Some religious believers are Creationists that deny, to varying extents, that Evolution is ‘proven’ and that God created humans from scratch, and that humans did not evolve from earlier animals, even from ape common ancestors, never mind from fish. Yet, many can no longer find enough faith to deny what they term ‘micro evolution’, even speciation. So, that particular species of the Creationist family have to take a different route to Evolution denialism, and it goes something like this, to paraphrase …
We [now have to] accept that micro evolution can be observed in the lab, and that Speciation via DNA changes occurs. So, generations of fruit flies can be observed to ‘evolve’ to create different fruit flies, or different species of fly. But, they are still flies. We never observe them evolving into something different, like a bird, or a cat.
Here’s a post on the Creationism Facebook group that makes this point. And, of course, the point being that Young Earth Creationists have a special place in their heart for dinosaurs – “They must have roamed the Earth with early humans, 6,000 years ago, because the fossil record contains dinosaurs, but the world isn’t that old, and ‘macro’ evolution didn’t happen.”
Throughout a series of posts, including this one, opponents of evolution have made an argument from observation, or rather the lack of observed evolution, as emphasised in my paraphrasing above. Here are some examples from one contributor, Mark Lambert:
And that’s where it stops. Never above the species level. A species is not a kind – Mark Lambert comment
Religion only looks for the truth. Truth : evolution has never been observed above the species level. – Mark Lambert comment
As I and others try to put Mark straight, he’s having none of it.
Nope only conjecture by using assumption and guessing – Mark Lambert comment
And you don’t understand it enough that you have no evidence of adaptation in anything other than species. If it’s not observed it’s only conjecture – Mark Lambert comment.
I and others tried to point out some details:
- Everything above Species is just futher categorisation, and so ‘Kind’ has no useful meaning outside categorisation, and what he thinks is a different Kind (of Family, or Genus, etc.), is still a difference in Species, which in turn is determined by sufficient differences in DNA making attempts at breeding between species fail: producing no offspring, or offspring that are sterile – this is the only way in which speciation has any significant meaning.
- Speciation to the extent that there appear to be different ‘Kind’, or Genus, Family, etc. is merely the accumulation of differences in different branches, and is not something different. Observing ‘mico-evolution’, which they accept, is what constitutes ‘macro-evolution’.
- It’s not ‘observed’ by humans personally, with large animals that they give as examples because humans don’t live on the time scales required to observe it. While new species of large animals have evolved in human lifetimes, the larger scale accumulation of differences that Mark sees as different ‘Kind’ takes much longer, and so is unobservable personally.
So, is it the case that if we don’t observe something personally it didn’t happen? This seems to be Mark’s contention. I tried to point this out …
Base on your own view your great great grand parents x 10 are not proven to exist. Their existance is ‘just a theory’, a ‘conjecture’. So, anyone claiming they were created by magic fairies has just as much credibility as your claims about God.
The reality is science works and the evidence for evolution on all scales is compelling, while all claims for gods have zero evidence, and your use of ‘not observed’ is irrelevant and a dishonest and laughable attempt at a “Gotcha”. – My comment
When mark pointed out that his recent ancestors were documented by people that did observe them, I tried the following:
You didn’t observe those people observing it [your N x grand parents, or Jesus] so by your criteria there’s no evidence, so it didn’t happen as you claim it did.
Humans can lie about what they observe, and can be convinced of nonsense. Just look at how many religions there are, sects within religions and even indivudual believers that disagree in the detail of what they believe their gods want of them. So, by your own criteria, nobody alive today observed anything that happened and all ‘written’ records could be fake. Your criteria discredits all knowledge of the past, especially religions. Your criteria.
So you putting any significance on written work from the past contradicts your own position.
But if you do want to admit written work, DNA is written in every living thing and it tells us the relationship between all categories of evolution, and it tells us large scale differences all occurred through speciation via DNA differences. And, that record is more reliable than any written work from the distant past because it can be examined, observed, today …. and it is not written by humans who are often motivated to lie, as is the case with religions, where absolute assertions are made based in written words that nobody today observed being written, and from when ignorance and claims about gods were abundant. My comment
Mark still didn’t seem to get the significance and implication of his claim that if it isn’t observed it’s only conjecture or it didn’t happen by Evolution, God did it. He didn’t get that his criteria for observation could be applied to anything he used from the past, or out of reach of personal observation, and as such contradicted his own claims.
Eventually he blocked me and others trying to point out his errors, so we didn’t get the opportunity to challeng him further. I’d welcome further discussions.
Ramblings 