A Usenet persona calling itself Michael Daly wrote:

On 18-Feb-2005, Scott Weiser wrote:

Could you please
post a reference to such a definition and also a reference that
clearly demonstrates that such definition is the only one that
is widely accepted by the scientific community.

Do you have an alternate theory?

You still didn't answer the request. But then, you can't.

Quite right, because the question is unanswerable.


Once again, it's because you don't know what you're talking about.

No, it's because I disagree with you.


Which simply dismisses intelligent design while touting evolution without
explaining your version of evolution and without a rational analysis of my
question as to why sharks are still sharks 400 million years down the
evolutionary line.

You haven't identified what _my_ version of evolution is

Correct. I asked you for your theory above, and you chose not to answer.

- in fact you
haven't identified what any version of evolution is and you haven't
demonstrated that _your_ version of "evolution" even exists in the
scientific community.

I disagree.


You understand nothing about evolution of any kind.

That's a remarkably broad statement, given the fact that you don't know what
I know.

You don't understand
sharks, either.

I understand that they have not "evolved" noticeably in 400 million years.
You have yet to explain why they have not.


First of all, the only thing that remains constant in shark evolution is
gross morphological characteristics.

Well, it's not the only thing, but it is the most noticeable.

In fact, over millions of years,
many shark species have died out and have been replaced by new species.

Does that constitute "evolution" in your dogma? And, how do you know this?
Is the fossil record complete and unbroken for sharks? Can you say with
absolute certainty that none of the species in evidence today never existed
before?

The fact is that DNA is changing all the time. We know that. However,
we know that most DNA plays no apparent role in morphology, so a mutation
is not always likely to result in a visible change.

Agreed.

In fact, many
mutations produce no change at all. If you move beyond gross morphology,
sharks have changed a lot over time; Compare a great white to a whale
shark.

But they are all still sharks. They are not the aquatic version of human
beings. Given that the emergence of identifiable humans dates back a bit
over 1.5 million years, and that in that time we've "evolved" from
simian-like proto-humans to creatures capable of flying to the moon, one has
to wonder what the problem is with sharks, who have had 400 million years to
become something other than what they are. They have shown no signs of
substantial increases in intelligence, communication or technology. They
don't even communicate as complexly as whales or dolphins.

Changes to gross morphology do not prove the theory of evolution. What would
prove the theory of evolution is documentation of an unbroken series of
biological changes that result in not just gross morphological changes but
enhancements in intelligence, communication and the ability to conciously
and deliberately manipulate the organism's environment. No such continuum of
change has yet been found, and no scientist can say with certainty how, for
example, eohippus became modern horse. At best they can conjecture and
extrapolate, but they cannot identify the actual mechanism or process of
change, either gradual or sudden, that causes one species to become another.
The same is true of sharks. While a "Mega-mouth shark" may be
morphologically different from a white shark, there has been no
demonstration of how, or even if one became the other.

At best, you can say that over time, different gross morphological examples
of sharks have existed. You cannot say, at this point, how they came into
being.


We know that DNA mutations occur in humans as well, and at a fairly quick
rate. In spite of that, there have been no morphological changes in
skeletal remains during the entire history of Homo Sapiens.

I disagree. If nothing else, the average height of humans has increased
substantially in recorded history. And how do you link, for example, Homo
Neandrathalsis to Homo Sapiens? Where are the intervening morphological
changes that show that one became the other? Sorry, but that record simply
does not exist. There is not just one "missing link," there are BILLIONS of
missing links. If DNA shifts cause gradual morphological changes that result
in the evolution of a species, one would expect to find a panoply of
slightly different specimens in different geological strata that would show
the evolution. Instead, what we see are a very, very few examples of fossil
remains that are morphologically distinct from one another, with no evidence
of the co-existence of different "Darwinian dead-end" variants. Some
paleontologists posit that Neanderthal and Sapien may have co-existed, but
the overlap is speculative at this point.

No favourable
change means no lasting change.

But one would expect to find some evidence of these unfavorable changes. A
minute morphological change, such as the number of fingers or the presence
of an extra thumb ought to be in evidence, showing some proof of non-viable
changes. But, there are no gross morphological changes to proto-humans or
humans that show such shifts. We don't see fossil records of hominids with
four arms or four legs, or no neck, or ten fingers to the hand. Even the
earliest proto-humans all have the same gross morphological pattern. I
believe this indicates that something other than gradual evolutionary change
is at work.


Changes do not necessarily result in morphological differences.

Indeed.

There is a
single species of iguana that swims - all others are dry land creatures. The
swimmer evolved as a result of a change in habitat from a change in ocean
levels.
It lost its food supply and survived by learning how to swim and feed on the
bottom of the ocean. Only an expert can visually tell the difference between
the swimming and dry land species, since the morphology is much the same.

Which constitutes ADAPTATION, not evolution. The marine iguana has not
"de-evolved" into an aquatic form with gills, for example. Nor has the land
iguana evolved intellectually to a tool-using species, despite millions of
years of opportunity to do so. Can you explain this lack of evolution?


In the Amazon, there are flowering plants that produce a toxin used by the
Yanomami to hunt and fish (by putting the toxin on their spear and dart
points).
There are two species - one that produces a strong toxin and one that produces
a weak one. There are _no_ morphological differences between the two.
Evolution isn't just about morphology.

True, but not really relevant. The question is how many millions of years
does it take for a shark to evolve intelligence, communication and
tool-using capacity? Evidently, 400 million years isn't enough for sharks,
while 1.8 million years is enough for hominids. Please explain why evolution
evidently doesn't apply to sharks, but does to hominids.


As Rick has pointed out, Darwin did not observe constant change - he observed
statis. He observed that when an environment changes, an organism _may_
change
to match its new environment. This is due to DNA mutations or recombinations
that produce a favourable result in the new environment. Once that match
has established, there is not reason to change again and the organism retains
its current characteristics.

And yet there is a universe of "favorable change" out there for any organism
to take advantage of that would provide a Darwinian leg up. For marine
iguanas, the development of gills would be an entirely useful evolution that
would produce a favorable result. In the case of sharks, the development of
a sophisticated intellect and communications capability that permits sharks
to communicate sophisticated concepts to one another (along the lines of
whales and dolphins) and thus band together to obtain resources (food) ought
to have occurred sometime in the 400 million years they've been "evolving."
In both cases, the lack of evidence of evolution casts doubt on your theory,
and indeed the entire theory of incremental evolution.

And here's another little conundrum: Even if the theory of evolution is
true, it does not preclude the possibility of intelligent design. What
prevents such an intelligence from creating evolution? If, as some posit,
that intelligence is capable of creating matter and formulating the physical
properties of matter, creating DNA based evolution would hardly be a
stretch. Thus, evolution, even if true, does not disprove the existence of
God. Rejecting the possibility of God's existence merely because one
believes in the theory of evolution is shallow thinking indeed.

--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

"I love the Internet, I no longer have to depend on
friends, family and co-workers, I can annoy people WORLDWIDE!" TM

© 2005 Scott Weiser