Yesterday 07:56 PM
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/crea...erarchies/
EXCERPT: The problem with both of these concepts – kind and macroevolution – is that they suffer from a fatal demarcation problem. There are lots of demarcation problems in science, anytime we are trying to categorize a messy continuum of nature. What’s a planet, or species, or continent? The difference is, the YEC argument is contingent on there being a sharp demarcation – evolution can proceed to this amount, but no further. Evolution can account for this degree of change, but no further. The problem is, they never state any reason, based on any valid principles, as to why. They simply assert that kinds are inviolate.
But at the core of their claims is a complete misunderstanding of what evolutionary science actually claims. Ironically, when they say that dogs can only evolve into more dogs, and never into cats – they are correct. Evolutionary scientists agree with this statement, especially if you take a cladistic approach to taxonomy. By definition a clade is one species and all of its descendants. This is why it is cladistically correct to say that people are fish. Once the eukaryotic clade evolved, everything that descends from it are still eukaryotes. So humans are eukaryotes, and animals, vertebrates, fish, lobe-finned fish, reptiles, mammals, and primates. It is correct, for example, to say that all descendants of fish are still fish, but you have to count humans as fish. What you cannot ever do is go back up the cladistic tree. You cannot undo evolution. You also cannot make a lateral move to another unrelated clade. So an animal cannot evolve into a plant.
The YEC misunderstanding of this concept renders all of their arguments as to why evolutionary scientists are wrong into strawman arguments. No one ever said a dog can evolve into a cat – in fact scientists say this is impossible. It is not part of evolutionary thinking.
What creationist do is grossly underestimate how much change can occur within a clade, because they are stuck on the concept of “kinds”. Functionally what is a kind? It’s one of those things that you vaguely sense. You know it when you see it. Everyone knows what dinosaurs look like – they have a dinosaurish vibe. This is why they falsely argue that birds could not have evolved from dinosaurs. Actually, it is more correct to simply say that birds are dinosaurs – they are a subclade within the dinosaur clade. Birds are also reptiles, because dinosaurs are a subclade within reptiles, which are a subclade within fish, etc. It’s nested hierarchies all the way down. But birds look like a different kind than dinosaurs, so this violates their vague sense of what a kind is. They then mock this idea by analogizing it to a dog evolving into a cat – this this is a false analogy. Dogs and cats are different subclades of mammals, and you cannot evolve from one clade into another, only into subclades within your existing clade.
Stephen J. Gould also discussed this idea and zoomed in on an important concept that is highly misunderstood. Over evolutionary time we expect that disparity (not diversity, the amount of differences, but disparity, the degree of difference) decreases. This seems counterintuitive, but it makes sense once you fully internalize the concept of nested hierarchies. Multicellular life achieved maximal morphological disparity soon after the Cambrian explosion, and from that point forward we only see variations of the various body plan themes. Over evolutionary time the nested hierarchy structure of the tree of life means that we see variations on progressively constrained themes. Evolution is constrained by its history, so the more evolutionary history a lineage has, the more constrained its future evolution. If we look at the entire history of evolution, we see this increasing constraint play out as decreasing disparity. At most disparity can stay the same, but extinction is like a ratchet slowly decreasing disparity... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: The problem with both of these concepts – kind and macroevolution – is that they suffer from a fatal demarcation problem. There are lots of demarcation problems in science, anytime we are trying to categorize a messy continuum of nature. What’s a planet, or species, or continent? The difference is, the YEC argument is contingent on there being a sharp demarcation – evolution can proceed to this amount, but no further. Evolution can account for this degree of change, but no further. The problem is, they never state any reason, based on any valid principles, as to why. They simply assert that kinds are inviolate.
But at the core of their claims is a complete misunderstanding of what evolutionary science actually claims. Ironically, when they say that dogs can only evolve into more dogs, and never into cats – they are correct. Evolutionary scientists agree with this statement, especially if you take a cladistic approach to taxonomy. By definition a clade is one species and all of its descendants. This is why it is cladistically correct to say that people are fish. Once the eukaryotic clade evolved, everything that descends from it are still eukaryotes. So humans are eukaryotes, and animals, vertebrates, fish, lobe-finned fish, reptiles, mammals, and primates. It is correct, for example, to say that all descendants of fish are still fish, but you have to count humans as fish. What you cannot ever do is go back up the cladistic tree. You cannot undo evolution. You also cannot make a lateral move to another unrelated clade. So an animal cannot evolve into a plant.
The YEC misunderstanding of this concept renders all of their arguments as to why evolutionary scientists are wrong into strawman arguments. No one ever said a dog can evolve into a cat – in fact scientists say this is impossible. It is not part of evolutionary thinking.
What creationist do is grossly underestimate how much change can occur within a clade, because they are stuck on the concept of “kinds”. Functionally what is a kind? It’s one of those things that you vaguely sense. You know it when you see it. Everyone knows what dinosaurs look like – they have a dinosaurish vibe. This is why they falsely argue that birds could not have evolved from dinosaurs. Actually, it is more correct to simply say that birds are dinosaurs – they are a subclade within the dinosaur clade. Birds are also reptiles, because dinosaurs are a subclade within reptiles, which are a subclade within fish, etc. It’s nested hierarchies all the way down. But birds look like a different kind than dinosaurs, so this violates their vague sense of what a kind is. They then mock this idea by analogizing it to a dog evolving into a cat – this this is a false analogy. Dogs and cats are different subclades of mammals, and you cannot evolve from one clade into another, only into subclades within your existing clade.
Stephen J. Gould also discussed this idea and zoomed in on an important concept that is highly misunderstood. Over evolutionary time we expect that disparity (not diversity, the amount of differences, but disparity, the degree of difference) decreases. This seems counterintuitive, but it makes sense once you fully internalize the concept of nested hierarchies. Multicellular life achieved maximal morphological disparity soon after the Cambrian explosion, and from that point forward we only see variations of the various body plan themes. Over evolutionary time the nested hierarchy structure of the tree of life means that we see variations on progressively constrained themes. Evolution is constrained by its history, so the more evolutionary history a lineage has, the more constrained its future evolution. If we look at the entire history of evolution, we see this increasing constraint play out as decreasing disparity. At most disparity can stay the same, but extinction is like a ratchet slowly decreasing disparity... (MORE - missing details)
