Evolution and Religion

[dusken]

Confirmed speciation events? My reply to it is the same as before. Within species variation, is within species variation. If you are insinuating that this leads to changes of one species into a totally different new one, then you are displaying no less faith than a creationist is in God.

Speciation, by definition, is the formation of new species. It is not variation within a species; they cannot breed.

[loseyourname]

I don't understand how it is a display of faith when one species has been seen changing into another. When you have two separate species, when you have enough genetic difference that two individuals can no longer produce viable offspring, that is macroevolution. That is the very definition. This is not within species variation. I don't see why you have so much difficulty seeing that.

[Anonymouse]

I don't understand how it is a display of faith when one species has been seen changing into another. When you have two separate species, when you have enough genetic difference that two individuals can no longer produce viable offspring, that is macroevolution. That is the very definition. This is not within species variation. I don't see why you have so much difficulty seeing that.

You see, we arrive at yet another point in which semantics is manipulated to support evolution. In this case the definition of "species" is elastic. There is a strong definition of species and a weak one. The strong definition of species offered by Dobzhansky states, "That stage of evolutionary progress at which the once actually or potentially interbreeding array of forms becomes segregated into two or more arrays which are physiologically incapable of interbreeding." The weak definition offered by Ernst Mayer states, "Groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups."

Notice the clarity in the first definition and the ambiguity in the latter? Strangely enough the evolutionists' position has been one that that has exploited the second, weaker definition.

[Anonymouse]

For example, I've been often told how fruit flies produce "new species" and they "can't reproduce". This is pretty flimsy since it is pretty easy to artificially inseminate a female with sperm from the male of the "new species". A fruit fly changes into nothing more than a fruit fly. This is how the semantic manipulation makes people believe "Oh look we are evolving, hooray".

[dusken]

..."That stage of evolutionary progress at which the once actually or potentially interbreeding array of forms becomes segregated into two or more arrays which are physiologically incapable of interbreeding."...Strangely enough the evolutionists' position has been one that that has exploited the second, weaker definition.

That is not true. That is basically saying that one type of organism branches into two different organisms that can no longer interbreed. Look up the definition of speciation; it is the same thing. There is no denial or manipulation and if you read past posts, it has been discussed that way.

[Anonymouse]

Dusken, I wish everything were black and white in a world of unambiguity, but it is not. The examples given by evolutionists for "speciation" are flimsy, and cannot be accepted unless one accepts the semantic pliability espoused by the second weak definition.

[dusken]

I am sorry, but I have never heard an evolutionist feel a species is anything other than a classification of organisms that can interbreed.

species: A fundamental category of taxonomic classification, ranking below a genus or subgenus and consisting of related organisms capable of interbreeding.

[loseyourname]

The speciation events I've posted were mostly of the first, stronger definition. The two species may be capable of interbreeding - obviously, hybridization is found in nature all the time - but they are not capable of producing viable offspring. If this can happen over a relatively short span of time, it isn't hard to see how, given much more time, the two forms would eventually diverge to the point where they don't even resemble each other anymore. This shouldn't be so difficult to accept.

[Anonymouse]

The point is all the "evidence" for speciation falls short, in other words they can breed.

[loseyourname]

So can a donkey and a horse. So can corn and wheat. This doesn't make them the same species. You have no point.