Talk:Macroevolution

The current version is nothing short of inane. It can't even get the creationist canards correct. For example, the claim is made that no known mechanism adds "genetic material" - this is so false it isn't even funny. Many forms of mutations add genetic material. Examples include polyploidy, single-bit insertions and gene duplications. The claim made is that no mechanism adds "information" or a new "function" Note that even this claim is woefully false. Examples include: Negoro, et al. "The nylon oligomer biodegradation system of Flavobacterium and Pseudomonas" Biodegradation 5: 185-194 which discusses bactera that through a mutation became able to digest nylon. JoshuaZ 23:15, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Joshua: About how many artificial breeding experiments exist that show the genetic barrier has been crossed? I mean how many produced a non-sterile organism? Ray Martinez 23:10, 7 March 2007 (EST)

Ray that's charmingly irrelevant, you'll note that nothing in the article mentions any issues with such breeding, and that the objection above had nothing whatsoever to do with any "genetic barrier" (not surprisingly, since no such concept is mentioned in the article at all). The main point was that the article claims among other things that genetic material cannot increase which is so false that even AIG agrees that such a claim is false and make the distinction between increasing material and increasing information . See for example, here where Sarfati asserts that "Gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, etc., do not help explain evolution, however. They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic information" - so AIG agrees that genetic material can increase, but disagrees about genetic "information." JoshuaZ 23:18, 7 March 2007 (EST)

"Ray that's charmingly irrelevant...SNIP"

So there are none. Evolutionists insist that scientific facts are exclusively determined by experimentation; yet the main assertion of ToE (= speciation) has no breeding experiments to justify its reason for being? Are you saying it happens behind our backs in the wild? I ask again, Joshua, how many scientific experiments have breached genetic homeostasis? We know Darwin withdrew the only example of macroevolution from the second edition Origin of Species (bears to whales) leaving his book with zero content about the main claim of evolutionary theory (macroevolution). I would appreciate if you would just answer the question - thanks. Ray Martinez 12:23, 8 March 2007 (EST)

Ray, the question was completely and utterly irrelevant, but if you insist I'll answer anyways(why I'm bothering I don't know)- see for example Dobzhansky Pavlovsky's 1971 paper- "An experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila" Nature 23:289-292. Note furthermore, that speciation is so well demonstrated that AIG, one of the world's largest creationist ministries lists claiming speciation has not occured as an example of an argument that creationists should not use.[1]. In any event, this is all not germane to my original point- that the claim made here that mutation cannot increase genetic material is so wrong that even AIG agrees that that is inaccurate. JoshuaZ 13:04, 8 March 2007 (EST)

Are you claiming that speciesiation has never been observed in the lab? Nematocyte 12:37, 8 March 2007 (EST)

In fact, the ability for bacteria to mutate in ways that produce novel effects has been observed in the lab for over fifty years. See for example Lederberg and Lederberg, Replica plating and indirect selection of bacterial mutants. Journal of Bacteriology 63: 399-406 (1952). JoshuaZ 23:23, 21 February 2007 (EST)

Since the page is now protected, I'll use this space to suggest that the entry start by clarifying that the term is used very differently by adherents and critics of evolutionary theory. How long before all pages on Conservapedia are locked, I wonder? Moioci 05:02, 1 March 2007 (EST)

For that matter, why is the page protected? There's been precisely one case of vandalism, and that was fully three days before the page was locked. Tsumetai 08:55, 1 March 2007 (EST)

A small point that should be attended to: "data" is plural, so the last sentence should read "the data are..." rather than "the data is..."--Murray 23:53, 8 March 2007 (EST)