What prevents evolution?

[arahant]

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What I believe is completely beside the point. Apparently that's the best you can do. I had hoped for more. Oh, well.

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Yeah, it is beside the point...i just thought i'd throw it in there. We know you don't accept evolution though. You'd never believe something that made no sense.

[Hopey]

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It may as well be about arguing with doorknobs.

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I sure hope that everyone now sees that Skidoo == Sharkey. It looks like he created this "Skidoo" account in order to slip under the radar long enough to get people to debate with him so that he can troll some more. He couldn't do this anymore with the Sharkey account because people stopped replying to him once they realized he was just a troll.

[drzen]

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Languages change due significantly to intelligent design.

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I hope you realise that intelligent design says that God (whoops, I mean "the designer") created English and German as separate languages and they have evolved from that point.

Okay, that's just about feasible. We don't know for certain that English and German have a common origin. We don't quite have enough textual material to say that it's a "fact" they did. (Hey, this is sounding familiar.) We're a few hundred years short. (A gap that can be filled, I think.) The evidence all points to it but if we allowed Goddidit (sorry, designerdidit) as a hypothesis, well, maybe they did get created in 2000BC or whatever as separate languages.

But dude, your thesis is [censored] by Icelandic/Danish. We *do* have the textual material. They *are* separate languages. They are not mutually intelligible, although Danes can easily learn Icelandic and vice versa. There is textual material that shows clearly their evolution from a common origin. Oh dear. The languages "speciated" for a reason that species do, as well. The population in Iceland was isolated geographically from the bigger population group that spoke the same language. (Danish and Swedish have drifted apart too but remain reasonably mutually intelligible. They are likely to remain that way too.)

It's a lot easier to show that languages evolved from common origins because we have a whole bunch of evidence. No creationist would seriously suggest -- or expect to be taken seriously if they did -- that languages really were differentiated in the Tower of Babel, since they so clearly weren't. The best they could hope for is to suggest that they had been differentiated *somewhat* by "the designer" and have differentiated more since. That's precisely what creationists do with evolution, faced with the overwhelming evidence that it happens. They rely on lack of evidence of its past happening. It's as though you had two roads that can be seen to be converging. Science will say "the roads probably meet in the distance". Creationists say "yeah, but you can't see that they do, so I can say they do not even though they look like they will". So they can say "okay, a bacterium can evolve to become drug resistant, but dogs and cats did not evolve from a common ancestor" simply because we can see the former happen but not the latter. But dogs and cats are in many ways like English and German, the two bacteria Danish and Icelandic.

[Skidoo]

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What I believe is completely beside the point. Apparently that's the best you can do. I had hoped for more. Oh, well.

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Luckily for progress, what you believe IS beside the point. But if this isnt about your beliefs, this thread, then what IS it about?

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Luckily for progress, what you and/or I can PROVE is the point.

(Thanks for helping me clarify that thought. I appreciate that about you, even though we disagree on almost everything.)

[Skidoo]

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That's precisely what creationists do with evolution, faced with the overwhelming evidence that it happens.

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Overwhelming evidence that it happens?

Float down from the heights and show me a concrete instance.

[Prodigy54321]

Skidoo, there are a bunch of people arguing in this thread...you happen to be the only one that I see that has some problem with speciation (from a single group, to at least 2 mutually infertile groups)

but I don't exactly see what your problem is...

at first, I thought that you were trying to argue that speciation cannot happen the way that we believe it to happen because there is a certain problem in the realm of fertility as the evolution takes place that cannot be overcome...

as for this, I am not sure of what exactly this problem is..I do not see the problem that you apparently do.

but now, it seems that you just find it unlikley..

but in that case, I'm sure you could see why that doesn't matter..so I'm guessing that I am just misinterpreting some of your more recent statements.

so care to give an explanation of the problem that you see?..because I am confused

[Prodigy54321]

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That's precisely what creationists do with evolution, faced with the overwhelming evidence that it happens.

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Overwhelming evidence that it happens?

Float down from the heights and show me a concrete instance.

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are you implying that there is not overwhelming evidence that speciation occurs...or just that there is not overwhelming evidence that it is the process of evolution that is causing it?

[Skidoo]

Speciation, for purposes of discussion, is where one internally fertile group develops into another.

There is no applicable instance of this phenomenon in the data. In fact, it's unlikely even from the perspective of logic. How can there be descent of any sort through a discontinuity in fertility? The usual answer is that it happens gradually, but that solves nothing. If offspring that are infertile with the parent are produced at any generational juncture, how could they be fertile with each other? If the drift is cumulative so that the potential infertility is manifested only over many generations, then how is fertility within the group maintained? If it is maintained through the propagation of each mutation so that all members have it, how does the presence of the same mutation in both prospective partners negate its detrimental effect? If it doesn't, and the mutation is counteracted by being selected against, how is it the line doesn't go extinct considering the overwhelmingly predominant effect of random change per se is to decrease function?

If you don't think this matters, then maybe you can explain how "evolution" could proceed otherwise.

[MidGe]

Read Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable it makes mince meat of your silly arguments and lack of understanding.

[Skidoo]

If that were true, you would repeat the argument here, not to mention provide examples.