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Evolution Never Observed Trick

Evolution deniers will say that evolution has never been observed. They will claim that "micro evolution" exist to explain how lines of animals tend to adapt to situation and to see the kinds of change that we have seen in animals in a couple thousand years (or less). But "macro evolution" has never been observed to produce a new species.

To accomplish this trick they need the listener to accept a very narrow view of what "observe" means. Sometimes they say observed in the lab. It means that a person saw the line of animals before it changed into a new species, and a person saw it after.

They know full well that large changes take a long time, around a million years to see significant change. We know how fast DNA can drift on the average, and we know how different the DNA is in different species, and we can estimate how long it would take under optimal conditions.

It is dishonest to say that looking for 2000 years "proves" a millions years can not produce this change. That is like waiting from midnight to 12:05 and claiming that there is no such thing as a sunrise.

The fact is that one CAN observe longer periods by looking at the fossil record. Each fossil is like a photograph at a point in time. If you look at the photographs of a crime, for example the security footage, from that series of photos you can have a good understand of what must have happened. They act as is if photographs don't count for observation: you have to have a human sitting there or else it was not observed.

They they make the further assumption that if it was not observed, it could not have happened. This would be like seeing a person start a marathon, and then watch them end, and claiming that they did not exist between the start and end.

Also, they don't extrapolate from known causes. We know that animals can change at a certain rate when being bred for a particular trait or two, and one can easily assume that wait 100 times as long, and you should be able to see 100 times as much change. That is like saying that you have seen a person walk across the room, but nobody has ever seen a person walk 500 miles. Is is just not possible because you didn't directly watch the whole thing.

All this logic is nonsense, but it is what their audience wants to hear, so it is greedily lapped up.

Changing Kinds​

Why can't an animal of one kind change into an animal of another kind? The only difference is the DNA. The basic material is the same: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen. The organic chemistry founded on molecules consisting of chains of carbon atoms are the same for all life on earth.

It would seem that evolution deniers believe in a kind of "essence" which each kind of animal has. dog has essence of dog. Cats have essence of cat. Wolves have essence of wolf. A wolf can't evolve into a dog because where would the essence of wolf go? And where did the essence of dog come from.

This is magical thinking. Sure dogs and cats look different, but that difference is purely in the genes. Take a dog egg and put cat genes in, and fertilize with cat sperm and you get a cat. There simply is no different except the DNA is written a little differently.

What About Breeding by Humans?​

What Changes the DNA?​

When dog breeders actually do the job of breeding, there is no question that the DNA has been changed by the process of breeding. But what is it really in the process that causes the changing of the DNA?

Seriously: what does the breeder do, to actually CAUSE the changing of the DNA? Has this been observed? Can anyone actually demonstrate how they change the DNA?

The breeder does not do ANYTHING to change the DNA, because the DNA is changing all on its own. All the breeder has to do is to select which changes that they are interested in. The breeder does not actualy DO anything to change the DNA. That happens all on its own.

Can Breeder Plan DNA Changes?​

What if a dog breeder got the idea that a dog that was colored so that the head, the front legs and the front were colored yellow, while the back end and back legs are black. How would a breeder do that? They wouldn't because as a breeder you can not decide what variations you get. The DNA does all the changing on its own, and if the front-back coloring does not appear by itself, there is nothing the breeder can do to make changes along a plan.

Creationists say that DNA does not change on its own, and that you need something intelligent to cause DNA to change. That is simply not true.

Can the Changes be Observed?​

Creationists cynically claim that evolution can't be true because the mechanism to change the DNA can not be observed. Note that the same problem exists with breeding: you can't actually observe the DNA changing (whatever observe means here). What you can observe is the animal changing form over time, and it is the same with evolution: the fossil record shows that the form of animal changed over time. Of this there is no question. But the claim that evolution has never been observed is a dishonest requirement thrown up as a last ditch effort to continue rejecting the scientific results of biologists.

Essentialism​

Claiming that minor adaptations are sufficient to explain all biodiversity is a hasty generalization. While adaptation supports the theory of evolution, it doesn’t alone prove the full spectrum of speciation and common ancestry. Beyond that, isolated species is the driving factor for the most extreme adaptations and still we don't see a difference in speciation.

There is absolutely nothing invalid about doing a linear extrapolation.

You are saying: I watch someone walk 20 feet, but it is a hasty generalization to say that in 10x as long they can walk 200 feet. If a builder builds 2 chimneys in a day, it is a hasty generalization to say that they can build 20 chimneys in 10 days. That is ridiculous.

A linear projection is not only logically valid, but also the most reliable prediction absent any information to the contrary.

However, it is the creationist who "invents" a barrier saying there is an essential difference between "kinds". A dog has essential dogness and could never change into a fox, because a fox has foxness. That fabrication that there is some essential difference between species has never been substantiated by anyone.

But the real reason is emotional: the creationist says "no way in hell I am related to any apes". I just don't FEEL like I am descended from any other animals. So I will make up a bogus reason, claiming that DNA change simply can't account for it. Understand that you reject evolution because you just don't feel like it is true, and no other good reason.

Linguistic Confusion​

One barrier to understanding evolution is thinking of a line of animals as a “single thing”. We forget about the individual, and think only of the category.

Two animals produce a baby, we think of all those animals as the same thing. All horses are one thing: horses. All donkeys are one thing: donkeys.

The reality is that each animal is unique. Genes have so many variations that every individual animal is unique: no two animals ever have the same genes. (Except identical siblings, of course, special case).

The two parents are different, and the baby is different from both parents.

Obviously, there is a lot of similarity, because the changes are small. But saying that the baby is the exact same thing is ignoring the difference.

We say animal X turns into Animal Y. No animal X has ever “turned into” animal Y. Instead, animal X parents had an animal Y baby.

I know this sounds like semantic nitpicking, but language structures our thoughts.

The question in a different thread was “Will whales ever become something different.” The answer is NO. No whale will ever be anything different from a whale, but they might have offspring that are not whales.

Let’s say that whales evolve into a new thing called a belubicon. See, there i did it. I said that “whales” would” become” something else, and that is a kind of fallacy to think that way. The belubicon descended from whales, but whales as a category remains as it always was.

When you realize that every baby is a change from the parents, then you see that “whales” remain whales, while the line of animals diverges to the point where we start calling them (the offspring) by a new name.

With this comes the realization is that “whales” don’t exist as a thing in the world, but instead there are things in the world that we categorize as whales because of their features. The population of whales is not identical: there are all kinds of variations: size, weight, slight body proportions, coloration, etc. The population centers around a collection of properties that one might call the “ideal whale” but no single whale is exactly the same as the ideal whale.

The human mind wants to categorize all whales as one thing: whales. This is to reduce the amount things we need to remember about the world. Treat all whales like whales, and you can ignore their individual differences. The difficulty of understanding of evolution is SIMPLY because the mind is not able to think about all animals in the world as individuals. Our simplified view of the world makes it challenging then to see evolution as it works.

Linear Extrapolation​

There is absolutely nothing invalid about doing a linear extrapolation, that a small change over a small amount of time implies a large change in a large amount of time.

You are saying: I watch someone walk 20 feet, but it is a hasty generalization to say that in 10x as long they can walk 200 feet. If a builder builds 2 chimneys in a day, it is a hasty generalization to say that they can build 20 chimneys in 10 days. That is ridiculous.

A linear projection is not only logically valid, but also the most reliable prediction absent any information to the contrary.

However, it is the creationist who "invents" a barrier saying there is an essential difference between "kinds". A dog has essential dogness and could never change into a fox, because a fox has foxness. That fabrication that there is some essential difference between species has never been substantiated by anyone.

But the real reason is emotional: the creationist says "no way in hell I am related to any apes". I just don't FEEL like I am descended from any other animals. So I will make up a bogus reason, claiming that DNA change simply can't account for it. Understand that you reject evolution because you just don't feel like it is true, and no other good reason.