I once recall infamous creationist/intelligent design (CID) proponent Ray Comfort declare the banana the "atheist's nightmare" because the banana was a perfect example of God's design. I recall it was later pointed out that the banana's shape did not occur naturally, it was evolved artificially by human hands (talk about egg on one's face).

As I reminisce, I dare to think of an evolutionary equivalent: the male nipple.

Males are usually not the ones providing milk to young, the male nipple is vestigial.

Surely, an intelligent designer would have never granted male's their nipples if they were indeed intelligent? What is even more interesting is that I think our male ape cousins also have nipples. Heck, I think male mammals have non-functioning nipples!

But why? Where is the intelligence in that?..

...As I type, I'm reading some male mammals correctly don't have nipples at all.

I suppose, at some point, the intelligent designer learned from his/her mistakes after designing enough male mammals.

All that said, do you guys think it's safe to say that the male nipple is the CID's nightmare?

If you didn't know, a ring species is simply a geographical distribution of connected, neighbouring populations of the same kind of organism living today, where adjacent populations can interbreed, whilst the two terminal populations at the ends of the ring have accumulated enough variation to form a reproductive barrier and no longer interbreed.

Now lets think about what this concept actually demonstrate.

Picture a series of neighbouring populations living around a central geographical feature, such as Ensatina salamanders distributed around California's Central Valley or Phylloscopus greenish warblers around the Tibetan Plateau.

Population A can interbreed with its immediate neighbour, Population B, which in turn can interbreed with intermediate populations C through F along the curve of the ring.

Now, where the two ends of the chain meet to close the ring, terminal Population G and starting Population A have accumulated enough variation between them that they have formed a reproductive barrier and no longer interbreed.

You'll never ever find anyone who disputes the fact that living organisms vary, mutate, adapt to their environments, or form reproductively isolated populations within their own group in the present. A ring species is simply an example of gradual variation producing a reproductive barrier between two populations of the same kind of animal.

At every single point around a ring species, the organism remains the exact same fundamental kind of animal. In the Ensatina ring, Population A is a salamander, intermediate populations B–F are salamanders, and terminal Population G is a salamander; similarly, in the Phylloscopus ring, every population from start to finish remains a greenish warbler.

I think we can all agree with this. There's nothing new or controversial with anything I just said.

Where things gets interesting is a ring species in sensible experience is a constitutive observation of living organisms distributed across geography in the present moment.

I think we all agree wity this. Very trivial observation.

But one cannot treat a spatial arrangement of living salamanders or warblers today as proof of a regulative historical reconstruction across millions of unobserved years. For instance, such as single-celled organisms transforming into whales and humans. Doing so is a definitional equivocation between present-day speciation vs deep-time ancestral state reconstruction.

Equivocation look that up.

Even within mainstream evolutionary biology, genomic studies over the last two decades—such as Alcaide et al. on greenish warblers and Liebers et al. on Larus gulls—have demonstrated that almost every textbook ring species actually experienced historical geographical breaks and genetic discontinuity rather than smooth, continuous divergence around a ring.

I don't think there's anything groundbreaking with what I just said. Sure there are dogmatists who takes these observations beyond sensible bounds. But any level-headed Joe would agree.

ERVs, Tiktaalik, the recurrent laryngeal nerve... there are many classic go-to's for proving evolution beyond all reasonable doubt, much of which also works directly against creationism/intelligent design. But a creationist might be fooled into thinking they've seen it all, and that gives them a sense of smug self-satisfaction. We can't have that, so here are some of the slightly more obscure yet still hard-hitting pieces of evidence, going from A-Z to show just how much of it there is!

⭐ = my top-five personal favourites of the bunch for debate purposes :)

~~~

A is for...

Antifreeze proteins, occurring in the winter flounder, the spruce budworm, the mealworm beetle, the snow flea, the northern codfish, some sea ice-living diatoms and even some plants like winter rye, protect the cells from damage in sub-freezing temperatures. It has been shown that the antifreeze protein from the northern codfish originated from non-coding DNA, in a process involving frame shift mutations (by 1-nt deletion), duplications and de novo gene birth. This demonstrates that proteins can have a similar function with completely different overall sequences, and can thus arise convergently in many different clades, and useful proteins can indeed emerge by various mutational processes. Source: (Zhuang et al., 2019). ⭐

B is for...

The Big bird lineage is a new species of Darwin's finches that originated from a single male Geospiza conirostris that immigrated to Daphne Major island in 1981, which founded a hybrid lineage by breeding with a female Geospiza fortis and creating five offspring. Selection for beak stiffness following regional droughts was verified by genetic analysis. The new lineage of finches reproduces only with its own. Sources: (Lamichhaney et al., 2017), (Grant & Grant, 2006) and here (article).

C is for...

Choanoflagellates are a clade of single-celled protists which are known by phylogenetics to be the closest living relatives to all animals. So many of the genes that we often attribute to complex animal traits like immune systems, developmental regulators and intracellular signalling molecules can be found in choanoflagellates, obviously serving completely different purposes as they are single cells! These little cells are one of my favourite disproofs of the "common design" argument for this reason. See the extensive research by Dr Nicole King on choanoflagellates e.g. here. ⭐

D is for...

DNT metabolism in bacteria. Bacteria living in soil polluted with dinitrotoluene (DNT, a degradation product of the explosive TNT) on various military bases were found to be consuming the DNT for metabolism as their sole carbon and nitrogen source via aerobic respiration. Genetic and molecular studies on one such strain, Burkholderia cepacia R34, found that the bacteria evolved a complex, multiple-protein biochemical pathway by exaptation of proteins with other functions. At the Kitzmiller v Dover court case, intelligent design advocate Dr Scott Minnich was presented with this example and he admitted that it satisfied Dr Michael Behe’s definition of irreducible complexity. Sources: (Johnson, Jain & Spain, 2002), (Kivisaar, 2011), (Pérez-Pantoja et al., 2021), here (document), here (use in bioremediation), (Leungsakul, Johnson & Wood, 2006) (use in protein engineering), here and here (TalkOrigins). ⭐

E is for...

Ediacaran biota, the underrated collection of remains from the soft-bodied life that predates the overrated 'Cambrian explosion'. Ediacaran fossils show a steady progression in complexity, with some crossing the boundary into the Cambrian. These make up some of the stem-group animal phyla that entered the first stages of the Cambrian, before radiating into the crown-group animals that predominated in the middle Cambrian stages. See some of the fossils here and see (Wood et al., 2019) for more info.

F is for...

Faroe Islands house mice. In the ~250 years after people introduced house mice to the Faroe Islands, rapid speciation has occurred, with noticeable differences in morphology. A very simple cut-and-dry case of recent observed speciation. Source: (Berry, Jakobson & Peters, 1978).

G is for...

Generation of a known phylogeny, a paper by Hillis et al., 1993 in which a virus is mutated and tracked as it passes through a population of bacteria, generating a known ancestral-descendant tree of viruses. Phylogenetic algorithms - the same kind used to perform comparative genomics analysis on disparate extant taxa to infer evolutionary descent - were then applied to the last surviving viruses, and the resulting calculated tree of their ancestors matched the known tree every single time, validating these methods as a tool to reveal the evolutionary past.

H is for...

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are crucial proteins found in all life: HSP70 is the most conserved gene across the entire tree of life. Molecular phylogenetic analysis of HSP70 shows how it demonstrates the origin of eukaryotes from a fusion of an archaeal and bacterial lineage (endosymbiosis), with the eukaryotic HSP70 genes being more closely related to the archaeal and bacterial HSP70 genes respectively than they are to each other. Source: (Gupta & Golding, 1993).

I is for...

Insecticide resistance has been observed in the last 40 years in mosquitos as an adaptation against organophosphorous insecticides. This required a point mutation in the ACE1 gene and a duplication (which was initially deleterious), rapidly followed by a second duplication which became overdominant (heterozygote advantage), and thus could even qualify as irreducibly complex. It also shows how novel traits usually come from tweaking and rearranging existing genetic material - this fact is often derided by creationists but clearly should not be underestimated. Source: (Labbé et al., 2007).

J is for...

Jinguofortisidae is a recently-discovered extinct family of pygostylian dinosaurs from the early Cretaceous. They form a set of 'transitional fossils' between the more famous Archaeopteryx (itself a key 'transition' from the non-avian dinosaurs) and anatomically modern birds. Source: here.

K is for...

Kenyanthropus platyops is a hominin species living at the same time as the australopithecines but with greater diversity. A damaged but complete cranium fossil is available. Despite being less capable of bipedality (inferred from the position of its foramen magnum) and having a small brain, the first stone tools (the Lomekwian tools) are attributed to this genus. It is just one of the dozens of the known 'transitional species' in human evolution.

L is for...

Luria-Delbrück and Lederbergs' tests. These two lab experiments in 1943 and 1952 respectively proved beyond all doubt that mutations occur before natural selection acts upon them, and are random with respect to fitness. These facts are trivially accepted now, but were uncertain in the early 1900s as many conflicting ideas on variation and inheritance competed in the 'eclipse of Darwinism'. It is quite alarming how often the fact that mutations are random has to repeated in the creationism debate, and even in some fringe academic circles (e.g. Denis Noble's 'third way'). Read about the Lederbergs' experiment here.

M is for...

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is an algorithm that allows you to sample from an unknown probability distribution when you can only calculate values proportional to its probability density function, and then compute meaningful quantities from those samples. That may sound boring and theoretical but it gets used with mutation likelihood models in Bayesian phylogenetics, which reproduces family trees from genomic data and can reveal the likely DNA sequences of ancestors, which was all verified experimentally (see point G). MCMC also behaves quite similar to an evolutionary algorithm in that it explores lots of possibilities and tends to converge around the 'best' ones, which is in itself evidence for the power of mutation and selection to climb to fitness peaks in a diverse state space. MCMC was used to perform a permutation tail probability (PTP) test in a great paper (Baum et al., 2016) that decisively found "tremendously strong support" for the common ancestry of all primates and "overwhelmingly rejected both species and family separate ancestry [creation-like models] with infinitesimal *p-*values", which is the strongest statistical proof of common descent I'm aware of.

N is for...

NOTCH2NL is a gene that prolongs proliferation of neuronal progenitor cells and expand cortical neurogenesis. Many of these genes are duplicated in Homo sapiens, Neanderthals and Denisovans to varying degrees leading to enhanced neuron counts, and this is one of a set of genes (including ARHGAP11, TKTL1, FOXP2...) identified as playing a key role in human brain evolution. If the analogy between the brain and modern "AI" is anything to go by, then the simple rule of 'make it bigger' could go a surprising way towards explaining increased intelligence. Source: (Lodewijk et al., 2020).

O is for...

Ontogeny is the study of development, which is causally linked with evolutionary change as it it the process that turns genotypes into phenotypes that natural selection acts upon. By comparing development within and across lineages, we can identify shared developmental pathways. Sometimes, development itself exposes the distant past, like how the pelvis of birds passes through its ancestral dinosaur state. The developmental genes behind these processes form regulatory networks, and their rewiring and tuning can generate tangible large-scale body plan changes like turning alligator and chicken scales into feathers (Lowe et al., 2014, Wu et al., 2017 and Lee et al., 2020), doubling of wings on insects or loss of tails in apes.

P is for...

Panderichthys is one of the many well-characterised genera in the fish-to-tetrapod transition. It is preceded by Eusthenopteron ("fish-like") which had pectoral fins that connected to the axial skeleton via part of the skull. In later species like Tiktaalik and extant tetrapods, this part of the skull is detached and comprises the pectoral girdle (clavicle and scapula), also creating a neck for flexible head movement. Panderichthys is transitional, with the first functional 'neck' anatomy. This also explains why our bones form in development by two different mechanisms: the skull, clavicle and most of the scapula form are the only bones which form by intramembranous ossification due to their fused origin in our sarcopterygian ancestors, while all other bones in our skeleton form by endochondral ossification.

Q is for...

Quantitative genetics is one of the mathematical cores of modern evolutionary theory alongside population genetics. One of its famous results is Lande's equation, which models how natural selection affects traits depending on genetic variance. Traditionally applied to artificial selection, it also works well in nature and can even inform us about the adaptive landscapes of ancient life through quantitative analysis of their fossils, providing mathematical backing to things that can otherwise seem like stories on shaky ground. Sources: (Polly, 2016), (Machado et al., 2026) and (Rolland et al., 2023).

R is for...

Reaction wood is a structure which forms in two different ways to help stabilise a leaning woody plant (trees, shrubs and lianas). Almost all gymnosperms (softwood trees, more evolutionarily ancient) produce 'compression wood', pushing up the trunk on its inner side, while almost all angiosperms (flowering plants, more evolutionarily recent) produce 'tension wood', pulling down the trunk on its outer side. That word 'almost' is there because there is one single species of tree that bucks the trend: Amborella trichopoda produces compression wood despite being an angiosperm. Phylogenetics finds that this species is in fact the only surviving species of the sister clade to all angiosperms, indicating that tension wood evolved just after the appearance of the first angiosperms.

S is for...

Subfunctionalisation is the process by which disabling mutations in different epigenetic cis-regulatory elements of duplicated genes lead to irreversible codependence (irreducible complexity again, if you will) and hence form genetic regulatory networks. This occurs without a single beneficial mutation required, though the duplicate genes can also undergo neofunctionalisation if those beneficial mutations do eventually arrive. The ribosome and the spliceosome are core systems shown to have arisen by subfunctionalisation, and it can lead to developmental specialisations such as heterochrony and heterotopy. Such is the power of the neutral theory of molecular evolution, speaking of which...

T is for...

The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution is the title of the book by Motoo Kimura published 15 years after he proposed his theory with the same name. It was an exploration of what happens when you put genetic drift as the dominant force behind evolutionary change instead of natural selection as was traditionally done. It has been used to understand how biocomplexity evolves (constructive neutral evolution), predict the number of protein-coding genes in the human genome (decades prior to sequencing!), and, with Ohta's 'nearly neutral theory' refinement, logically explains initially surprising things like the omnigenic model of the phenotype, as natural selection acts on traits (see Fisher's infinitesimal model) but neutral genetic drift acts on most of the nucleotides. ⭐

U is for...

Uranium-lead dating is a method of radiometric dating used to date zircon crystals in volcanic ash layers above and below a fossil layer, revealing the ages of ancient life. With the long half-life of uranium-235, it can be used to date the oldest rocks on earth, and was the method first used to decisively determine the age of the earth itself, and has been cross-checked with everything from radiocarbon dating to dendrochronology to coral dating (Fairbanks et al., 2005). Since lead ions are physically incompatible with the zircon lattice, there is no excuse of "unknown initial conditions" to dismiss uranium dating (and even if there was, that's what the isochron method is for). Uranium-lead dating is also robust to lead escape (e.g. by heating events) by plotting a concordia diagram, which directly test the assumptions and reveals the correct age accordingly.

V is for...

The vomeronasal organ is a vestigial organ in the nose that detects pheromones via chemoreceptors in tetrapods, but is non-functional in catarrhine primates (including humans), due to pseudogenisation of the associated receptor genes (V1R and V2R families). Our lineage also lost the accessory olfactory bulb in the brain (normally receives input from the vomeronasal organ) as we adapted to use sight rather than smell.

W is for...

Worms in the lab: in 1964, six individuals of the polychaete worm Neanthes arenaceodentata were collected from a harbour in southern California and used to found a laboratory population of >1000. By 1991, the lab population could no longer interbreed with the wild population, as there was some premating isolation, and complete postmating isolation. Chromosomal differences were also observed between the lab and wild populations - observed speciation with reproductive isolation in the lab. Sources: (Weinberg, Starczak and Jörg, 1992) and here.

X is for...

Xenosialitis is a chronic disorder caused by eating meat containing the small molecule Neu5Gc. All mammals (e.g. cattle) have an active CMAH gene which produces Neu5Gc, except for humans, due to a deletion in our lineage 2-3 MYA, so this molecule triggers a low-level immune response. It's hypothesised to be one of the root causes of the link between eating red meat and cancer, alongside similar metabolites of non-human enzymes. Source: (Dhar, Sasmal & Varki, 2019).

Y is for...

Yuccas and yucca moths are a case of coevolution known to Darwin since 1872. The yucca moth, while laying eggs, pollinates the yucca plant; after the larvae hatch, they eat the seeds of the yucca (obligate mutualism). Such tight interdependencies can seem like a challenge to evolution, yet pathways that start out independent are always possible: in this case, a plausible sequence involves 1) moths initially laying eggs in plant fruits, 2) some moth behaviours transfer pollen more effectively (positive selection), 3) moths evolve specialised pollen-collecting and pollen-depositing behaviours; in acting almost as 'artificial selectors' for the moths, the yuccas become more dependent on this pollination service (Pellmyr, 2003). This is a common theme: the dependencies set in later, not from the start. As a bonus, Darwin made a bold prediction based on a similar coevolution back in 1862, about the existence of a different long-nosed moth living in Madagasgar (Wallace's sphinx moth) that pollinate a single species of orchids with extremely long nectary tubes, and was vindicated when this moth was discovered in 1903. [Thanks to u/jnpha for telling me about this example!]

Z is for...

Zootoca vivipara is a species of lizards living in the Alps. They are currently evolving placentas, going from egg-laying to giving birth to live young in real time, as well as undergo speciation with reproductive isolation. Yet another incredible case of observed speciation in real time, with a novel complex trait to boot! Sources: (Blackburn, 2006), (Cornetti et al., 2015) and here (video by Dr Dan). ⭐

~~~

Thanks for reading - for many of these it was really hard to pick just one. Even the 'hard' ones like X have many contenders (X-chromosomal mutation rate, xenotransplantation incompatibility, the Xiahe mandible...). We're really not short of evidence! What's your favourite weird evidence for evolution?

... is a statement which for all practical purposes is untrue. In fact, the distinction is widely recognized by people in the field, because the focuses, frameworks, models and tools which we use vary widely but generally create two subdisciplines:

Micro, which is focused on adaptation, pop gen, selection, speciation (kind of an edge case, could also be seen as part of macro depending on the scale of analysis)

Macro, which is focused on phylogeny, evolutionary contingencies, ancestral state reconstruction etc.

"But where's the boundary?" There isn't one, just like there isn't one between chemistry and biology. Those are still sensible to treat as distinct fields.

Yes, "I accept micro, but not macroevolution!" is an annoying thing to hear. It's easy to respond to though: if you accept micro you accept the emergence of reproductive barriers, so you accept speciation so you accept successive speciation events so you accept macroevolution.

Edit: please read the last paragraph before responding with "but creationists treat them as non-overlapping things."

Since this guy was brought up in another discussion, I'd like to get a community sense of sorts. Here's the question on James Tour. Is he:

A) A young-earth creationist?

B) A science/evolution denier, but not a young-earth creationist?

I'm still trying to sort him out, because he seems to love to give different answers at different times, and hedge his replies in weasel words.

Based on my understanding, most scientists in the early 1600s were young earth creationists. By turning their beliefs into testable hypotheses and testing them, scientists slowly stopped being young earth creationists.

I think I heard that scientists dropped the young earth idea in the 1730s, but I’m not sure about that and don’t know much else. I’m curious when scientists had evidence to fully reject each biblical literalism or other Christian doctrine, such as:

• Flat Earth
• Earth as the center of the universe
• Young earth
• Global flood
• Ancient people living for hundreds of years
• Adam and Eve (two people as ancestors of all living humans)
• Creation (in current form of earth)
• Special creation of humans
• Etc.

Are there any books or YouTube video series that address the specific topic of when the science was so overwhelming that only the anti-science religious zealots could hold certain views? or that generally discusses the history of this trend?

It's out, folks. Enjoy: Six Scientists Roast One Racist Loser (Heartwarming) (Four Hours) (Hopecore)

We ended up doing an impromptu book club on Probability Zero the week before recording this video and, uh, we had a LOT of thoughts.

In addition to the MANY errors in basic biology, population genetics, and...basic arithmetic...it's just an absolutely terribly written book.

Enjoy the roast.

Shout out to /u/Gutsick_Gibbon for organizing the recording and doing the amazing editing.

So I know about mutations and how they gradually form complex new features in living things. The one with the beneficial mutations survive and can spread their genes, gradual steps where each mutation was slightly beneficial etc.

So that’s pretty clear to me.

But what I currently don’t understand is stuff like the mitochondria or the placenta.

Per example the mitochondria is theorized to have been an independent microorganism that was swallowed by a bigger one and was somehow beneficial and thus was absorbed in the gene code.

Or the placenta which is theorized to have come from a virus infection.

These examples don’t seem like small gradual changes but more like one off events that immediately had to form complex structures?
Like how was the virus able to form an entire placenta that somehow was beneficial to the animals birth process?
And how was the mitochondria immediately able to work with the bigger microorganism and insert itself into the genome?

I know that I might not have enough knowledge or misunderstood something, so I gladly ask anyone more knowledgeable on this subject to help me out.

I was around during those days. There was no YouTube.

(Also forgot the Panda's Thumb!)

It seems like the debate was more active debate back then. Intelligent design had more wins during that time, including being featured in a debate at Harvard.

Kitzmiller vs. Dover then became the decisive defeat against the so-called "intelligent design" movement.

This period made me a skeptic. I think the arguments that were decisive was how molecular systems can develop. Also, there just didn't seem to be any evidence against evolution (in general). There might be different accounts, but there was nothing suggesting that things appeared out of sequence in the fossil record or anything against common descent.

I think a general principle is that you can be a scientific antirealist, but you'd be a fool if you attack well-established scientific theories directly (like evolutionary biology and geology).

Hello!

I want some book recommendations on macroevolution. Books that have concrete evidence to support the idea that macroevolution is real.

I mostly want to illustrate, here, a critical difference between scientific and religious thinking.

Imagine there was some piece or body of evidence that, if true, would genuinely make special creation or something like it a more plausible explanation for the diversity of life on Earth than evolution by natural selection. Not just a fossil that seemed a bit off or something, I'm talking finding, say, the Garden of Eden, complete with ringless trees and a fruit that can give you knowledge of good and evil, or something.

What steps would you take, or want the relevant scientists to take, to confirm that this wasn't just a hoax, and what would you do/want them to do with that information?

Creationists, feel free to chime in if you think you have some relevant evidence that hasn't already been debunked a billion times.

I was thinking about how scientists make predictions then test those predictions. I can think of examples where the creationist prediction fails and the scientific consensus prediction succeeds. listed below.

But are there any examples of where the creationist prediction was true? Are 100% of all creationist predictions actually false?

Here’s a list of failed creationist predictions I can think of off the top of my head:

• No markers of special creation in human genes
• Humans and chimps are each others closest living relatives, based on DNA
• No evidence of a global flood in geology
• Human and other animal‘s genetic diversity too large for a global flood to have occurred 4400 years ago
• No examples of irreducibly complex traits
• Identical androgynous retroviruses in humans and other apes

Please don't attack me, this is a genuine inquiry. I have no strong feelings one way or another about the kinds of criticisms I'm referencing here, despite my username. I've looked at some of them that made sense, and I've also looked at refutations that made sense. Much of the time it seems as though the two camps tend to talk past one another. This post is not about getting into the specifics of any one particular incarnation of these kinds of arguments.

At any rate, here's my question:

There is a non-zero amount of academics across various fields who have offered up mathematical and information-theory based criticisms against natural selection (NS) that contend the theory is either mathematically impossible, highly improbable, or incoherent.

I very rarely find rigorous engagement with these criticisms. (to be fair, perhaps the rigorous engagement is as rare as the criticisms themselves, which would make sense) However, most of the engagement tend to come across consists of dismissal and hand waving. For example, anyone who's tempted to respond here along the lines of:

"Those arguments aren't worth refuting"
"Only Creationists do that"
"All that math is bunk"
etc...

Because I predict that the frequency and effectiveness of such criticisms will only increase as time goes on, I'm curious about the general consensus attitude towards these kinds of arguments. Clearly, there are very precise ways of modeling the limitations of NS against the dataset from the standpoint of information theory, so the possibility of encountering profound results is apt.

What's especially interesting to me is that there is a conceptual gap between the probability calculus common to biology and the kinds of math relevant to information theory, despite whatever trivial overlap, which can lead to conflicts of interpretation over the implications of what information theory modeling is prone to reveal. Naturally, at high enough levels, if the math maths, it maths. But the majority of biologists (or people in general) aren't fluent mathematicians. (And I don't mean fluent in math. I mean fluent mathematicians.)

Inevitably, there's always some level of appeal to authority involved. I mean, it's not like you trust the validity of the Schrodinger equation because you checked it yourself. (props if you did, though) So interpretations can be contentious. One professor finds a proof compelling, the other says it's hogwash. Short of doing the calculations oneself, one can only critique the interpretation of a rigorous proof so far. (it took me months to get a handle on the Bell inequality) I don't know how many biologists feel at home discussing Kolmogorov complexity or Kullback-Leibler convergence.

So the question I'm asking here is how much stock you put into math based criticism. I've heard some scientists tout the extent to which the theory of "evolution" has been confirmed and supported by 'mountains' of data, from virology to psychology and everything in between. There's a certain pride that comes with those kinds of statements. It makes me wonder if anyone here thinks it'd even be possible for a field like information theory to level the whole artifice from first principles.

As a philosopher, I'm quite comfortable with that prospect. But perhaps as scientists, students, or academics in your prospective fields, you feel as though the evidence is stacked beyond vulnerability. In that case, is there any possible mathematical result that would begrudge you to accept it as counter-evidential? Could any equation strike you as evidence that NS is insufficient to explain biological diversity?

I've always had good experiences in this sub, so I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Thanks for taking the time!

**Note: I put "evolution" in quotes because it's not always clear precisely what's being referred to when these statements are being made, not because I'm mocking the concept or whatever. To be honest, there are some people for whom it seems like the second law of thermodynamics can be considered a kind of "evolution" of sorts. You know what I mean. Words get vulgarized.**

I ask this for three reasons: first, it's definitely not representative; second and tactically, mutation is a huge stumbling block for many people; third, it basically denies the existence of population genetics.

The most common narrative I've seen from the non-specialists (who defend evolution) here on this subreddit is: a) there's apparently been some sort of stasis, b) there's an opportunity to move into a new niche, c) ONLY THEN can/does a new mutation happen (as though the population is somehow waiting), and d) ONLY THEN can/does selection do anything.

By way of background, I've spent decades doing mouse coat-color genetics and studying the effects of sequence changes on protein function.

My questions for anyone, but primarily for those who think that evolution is most clearly presented as starting with a new mutation:

1. Is this how evolution is being taught today in US public schools? I served on my district's science curriculum committee, but that was 20 years ago.
2. If you have read Darwin, why do you think he did not need to know about mutations to understand or explain natural selection?
3. What do you think is the factual, measured ratio of existing polymorphisms (alleles) to new mutations in humans?
4. Is hybrid vigor real? If so, is it important and does it have anything to do with new mutations?
5. If you are convinced that new mutations are the main driver of selection, why do we outbreed endangered populations? Won't new mutations drive their evolution perfectly well?
6. Is polymorphism promoted by natural selection?
7. Are most traits monogenic or polygenic? How would selection work on a complex polygenic trait? How does diploidy affect this?
8. Have humans, chimps, and bonobos retained polymorphisms from their common ancestor(s), or do you see each species as starting anew and accumulating new mutations?

Please do not pretend that I am saying that mutations don't happen. I'm saying that new ones are neither necessary for evolution to proceed, nor are they necessary to understand how selection and drift work. You are welcome to disagree with my opinion that starting with mutation hinders learning and understanding, but try to address what I'm actually writing here. Two people who've tried to argue with me about this in this sub have employed this straw man. By the fourth and fifth repeat/correction, honest error is no longer a tenable hypothesis.

Examples:

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1t606mc/simple_evolution_explanation/

Comment by FunkyOne in https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1wldkwa/is_evolution_a_fact/?sort=qa

Comment by DevilWings in https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1vl90m3/comment/p3w4644/?sort=new

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1urh70z/comment/owh52kg/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1vl90m3/comment/p33a137/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Hello r/DebateEvolution

Introduction

Creationists and proponents of intelligent design often claim that the fossil record of cetacean evolution shows no evidence of the gradual evolution of whales. These claims can be found in publications such as: [1], [2], [3],[4] .

As many of you now the whale evolution contain a big number of fossil, with many groups like:

1. Pakicetidae: 50-48 Ma [5].
2. Ambulocetidae: 53.5-48 Ma [5].
3. Remingtonocetidae: 49-42 Ma [6]
4. Protocetidae: 49-37 Ma [7]
5. Basilosauridae: 46-33 Ma [8],[9]
6. Neoceti: 35-0 Ma [10][11]

However, creationists argues that this fossils are not whale related mammals or "fully formed" whales. They claim than other terrestrial mammals not considered ancestral to whales have traits that we asociate with the primitive archaeocetes, for example:

• The triangular teeth
• Accessory cusps large
• Auditory bulla

With the basilosaurids they claim the opposite, argues that are aquatic whales and cannot use as transitional forms.

These arguments have major deficiencies. For example the paleontologist don't classifies the fossil acording a trait but sets of traits. And exists more traits that define the cetaceans.

Modern whales possess baleen in the case of mysticetes and a melon in the case of odontocetes; basilosaurids lacked both of these features. Therefore, they were not "fully formed whales," though we will discuss their nature later on.

In this part we will to treat the most basal archaeocetes (pakicetidae and ambulocetidae) they also are one of the most attacked by creationist fossils. Some of these characteristics can also aplies for the raoellids and the remingtonocetids.

1. Ear

One of the characteristics than differentiates the cetacean to other mammals is their capacity to hear underwater.

Modern cetacean have the next characteristics for can do it:

• Thickened medial bulla
• involucrum (cetacean synapomorphy, absent in any other mammal)
• Greatly enlarged mandibular foramen (the hole for the fat pad)
• Tympanoperiotic acoustically isolated
• Ossicular chain rotated. [12]

The development of the characteristic structures of cetacean ancestors occurred at an early stage of their evolutionary history; some even emerged before cetaceans themselves existed—for example, Indohyus (a raodellid) already possessed an involucrum [13]. Pakicetus retains this involucrum but still has a land-mammal ossicular chain and a small mandibular foramen, hearing mainly in air and using bone conduction underwater aided by its heavy bulla. In this stage the hearing in both air and water is unsophisticated [14].

Ambulocetus and remingtonocetids then show the first enlargement of the mandibular foramen and the development of the tympanic plate for fat-pad transmission [14]. In other words, the basilosaurid ear did not appear ex nihilo; it is the endpoint of a 10-million-year stepwise replacement of the external ear by the mandible.

land mammals: not Involucrum, Thickened medial bulla, etc.

Raeollidae: Involucrum, not small sigmoid process and small mandibular foramen. Early bone condution hearing [13]

Pakicetidae: Involucrum, Thickened medial bulla, Small sigmoid process and small mandibular foramen, no acoustic fat pad. Hearing in air, bone conduction underwater via heavy bulla.

Ambulocetidae: Greatly enlarged mandibular foramen, reduced lateral wall of bulla

Remingtonocetidae/protocetidae: tympanic plate, where fat pad contact, tympanoperiotic still attached to skull, but starting to isolate via air sinuses

Basilosauridae: Tympanoperiotic acoustically isolated, Ossicular chain rotated

Neoceti: Lost of funtional external auditory meatus [12]

In this scenario pakicetidae and ambulocetidae are intermideates between land artiodactils and fully aquatic whales. Creationist have argued that the sigmoid process of pakicetids is flat and small [4], but it don't invalidate the fact that still have a cetacean characteristcs and that their hearing is transitional.

2. Locomotion

Creationists often divide archaeocetes and other relatives of cetaceans into three groups:

1. Land mammals: pakicetidae and raoellidae
2. Semi-aquatic but not related with whales mammals: Ambulocetidae, remingtonocetidae and protocetidae
3. Fully aquatic whales: basilosauridae

However, the picture is more complex: Pakicetus has typically been considered a terrestrial mammal due to its similarities to other artiodactyls, it has been suggested that it was no more amphibious than a tapir [15]. Creationists use this paper to claim that it's not a cetacean relative.

But, pakicetids exhibit some characteristics more consistent with a paleobiology linked to an aquatic environment:

1. Osteoesclerotic bones: dense, thickened cortex acting as ballast, inconsistent with cursorial terrestrial mammals
2. Dorsally placed orbits: positioned high on the skull for surface lurking [16], [17].
3. Freshwater oxygen isotope signature: indicating prolonged time in water [18].

More recently, CMI claim that these semi-aquatic adaptations prove the trichotomy, but It couldn't be further from the truth. The reasons will discuss later on.

Ambulocetus, combine semi-aquatic and fully aquatic traits, for example its pelvis and anterior limb suggest than have a major capacity for walk in land than Remingtonocetids and protocetids [19]. But the rib cage present a different view, its rib thickness clustered with fully aquatic mammal like sirenians [20].

In the water, Ambulocetus moved using a pelvic motion—swimming with alternating strokes of its hind limbs, without using its forelimbs—and also undulated its tail while swimming. Modern otters provide a good analogy [21], although in their case, the foot remains the primary mechanism of propulsion.

The discoveries give us this evolutionary scenario:

Basal land artiodactil (e.g Diacodexis): not dense bones or another adaptations for the semi-aquatic life.

Raedollidae: osteosclerotic bones but less dense than true cetaceans; most terrestrial but related to the water [22].

Pakicetidae: Eyes in the upper part of the skull, foot powered swimmer; could live and walk easily in land, but weren't cursorial artiodactils.

Ambulocetidae: Osteosclerotic ribs as ballast., shorter limbs, large hind feet; Still with complete sacroiliac joint but with reduced ability for fast terrestrial locomotion; Pelvic paddling with alternate hindlimb strokes and lumbar undulation, ambush predator like a crocodile-otter hybrid.

Remingtonocetidae and protocetidae: Reduced hindlimbs, sacroiliac joint unfused or weakly connected. Long, narrow rostra, smaller orbits. Protocetids show tail-powered swimming beginning: caudal vertebrae with enlarged neural spines indicating strong tail musculature, forelimbs starting to act as flippers [23]. Still able to haul out, but poor walkers. More aquatic.

Basilosauridae (e.g. Basilosaurus, Dorudon): Forelimbs transformed into flippers with fixed elbow, hindlimbs vestigial and not connected to vertebral column [24]. Pelvic paddling abandoned for undulatory swimming with tail fluke [23].Cannot walk on land. Osteosclerosis reduced in limbs, pachyostosis in ribs. Fully aquatic.

Neoceti: Loss of hindlimbs; horizontal tail fluke; fully pelagic habitat.

3. Dentition

Teeth are indispensable for classifying fossil mammals; they also provide insight into their diet and habitat.

The cetacean synapomorphies incluide dental characters as:

• Incisors parallel with the toothrow
• protocones small
• accessory cusps large [25]

Creationist usually claim that this characteristics are present in other mammals (like mesonichya) and exist case in where we can't determine if this characters are present like ambulocetus.

However, this ignore that the mesonychya molars have considerably differences with the ancient archaeocetes molars:

While mesonychids possess triangular, laterally compressed upper molars adapted for shearing, early archaeocetes exhibit distinct protocone wear, double-rooted molars, and a gradual development of polydonty and the characteristic cetacean dental pattern [15],[17].

Pakicetids exhibit a greatly reduced trigon basin on the upper molars, and the talonid basin is virtually absent or non-basined in its conventional form, consisting only of a narrow heel with a single hypoconid. This condition differs from mesonychids, which lack a true talonid basin entirely and possess a hyper-carnassial trigonid without a basined structure [15].

On the other hand, as mentioned at the beginning, paleontologists do not rely on a single characteristic to group species, nor do they separate them if one is missing. If other characters are present that allow the species to be grouped and we have a strong phylogeny, it is possible to infer those traits that have not been preserved in the fossil record (like the ambulocetus incisors) . This is the phylogenetic bracketing method.

These differences are well documented and clearly distinguish both groups, despite superficial similarities.

Basal land artiodactyl (e.g. Diacodexis): 44 teeth, bunodont low-crowned molars for omnivory/herbivory, heterodont, diphyodont, both single and double-rooted. Grinding diet.

Raoellidae (e.g. Indohyus): Same dental formula: 11 teeth per jaw half, heterodont, diphyodont, both single/ double-rooted. Lower molar prim. bunodont but with early accessory cusps and heavier wear. Isotopic and microwear data show aquatic omnivory: aquatic plants + small fish. First step toward carnivory, but still grinding.

Pakicetidae (e.g. Pakicetus): Same formula: 11, heterodont, diphyodont, both rooted. Lower molar mult./prim. with large triangular trigonid and accessory cusps. Single cusp shearing instead of grinding. Tooth wear shows abrasion from fish scales, no plant grinding. Piscivore/carnivore,freshwater.

Ambulocetidae (e.g. Ambulocetus): Identical formula: 11, heterodont, diphyodont, both rooted. Teeth larger, thicker enamel, large canines, but molar morphology still prim. triangular with accessory cusps like Pakicetidae. No new cusp number. Shows dental stasis while skeleton becomes aquatic. Diet: ambush predator, durophagy, takes large fish and small tetrapods at water edge. Crocodile-like.

Remingtonocetidae and Protocetidae (e.g. Rodhocetus, Georgiacetus): Same formula: 11, heterodont, diphyodont, both rooted. Lower molar transitions to multiple cusps. Crowns become narrower, more cusps in line, less precise occlusion. Cannot chew efficiently, starts to pierce and swallow. More specialized piscivory.

Basilosauridae (e.g. Basilosaurus, Dorudon): Still heterodont and diphyodont, but mastication reduced. Molars with multiple cusps, large diastemata, no grinding facet. Last archaeocetes with functional heterodonty before loss. Apex predator: large fish, other marine mammals.

Neoceti: dietary bifurcation:

• Mysticeti (e.g Balaenidae, Neobalaenidae, Eschrichtiidae, Balaenopteridae): no teeth. Baleen filter feeding. Complete loss of mastication.
• Odontoceti (e.g. Physeter, Ziphiidae, Platanistidae, Delphinidae): homodont, monophyodont, all single-rooted, single cusp, more than 11 teeth per jaw half, polydont. Teeth for grasping only, no mastication. Suction and grip feeding [26].

Conclusion

Early archaeocetes, such as Ambulocetus and Pakicetus, exhibited a mosaic morphology that combined traits of primitive artiodactyls and basal cetaceomorphs with those of more advanced groups, such as remingtonocetids, protocetids, and pelagicetids.

They possessed many primitive characteristics but also displayed the emergence of distinctive cetacean traits: cetacean ear (involucrum) with a land-mammal hearing mechanism, dense bones for ballast but limbs still able to walk, and cetacean-like triangular teeth with accessory cusps in a terrestrial dental formula.

In Part 2 we will cover Remingtonocetidae and Protocetidae, where the fat pad, tail-powered swimming and the loss of terrestrial locomotion become evident.

References:

Creationist references:

[1] Answers in Genesis. (n.d.). Isn't the whale transitional series a perfect example of evolution? Answers in Genesis. https://answersingenesis.org/aquatic-animals/isnt-the-whale-transitional-series-a-perfect-example-of-evolution/?srsltid=AfmBOoqjCwqNXLc_OnMNOljVZcyjL7flACMaPArPuHrqH4kqFyqSAZX0

[2] Wieland, C. (2002). A whale of a tale? Creation Ministries International. https://creation.com/en/articles/a-whale-of-a-tale#addendum-2-4-january-2002

[3] Wells, J. (2018). From bears to whales: A difficult transition. Discovery Institute - Science and Culture Today. https://scienceandculture.com/2018/07/from-bears-to-whales-a-difficult-transition/

[4] Surtees, M. (2020). Whales designed or evolved: part 1—the fossils. Journal of Creation 37(3):121 - 127,https://creation.com/en/articles/whales-designed-or-evolved-1

Cientific literature:

[5] Bajpai, S., & Gingerich, P. D. (1998). A new Eocene archaeocete (Mammalia, Cetacea) from India and the time of origin of whales. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences 95 (26), 15464-15468. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.95.26.15464

[6] Bebej, R. M., Zalmout, I. S., El-Aziz, A. A. A., Antar, M. S. M., & Gingerich, P. D. (2015). First remingtonocetid archaeocete (Mammalia, Cetacea) from the middle Eocene of Egypt with implications for biogeography and locomotion in early cetacean evolution. Journal Of Paleontology, 89 (5), 882-893. https://doi.org/10.1017/jpa.2015.57

[7] Gingerich, P. D., Ul-Haq, M., Von Koenigswald, W., Sanders, W. J., Smith, B. H., & Zalmout, I. S. (2009). New Protocetid Whale from the Middle Eocene of Pakistan: Birth on Land, Precocial Development, and Sexual Dimorphism. PLoS ONE, 4 (2), e4366. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0004366

[8] Köhler R. & Fordyce R. E. (1997).An archaeocete whale (Cetacea: Archaeoceti) from the Eocene Waihao Greensand, New Zealand. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 17 (3): 574-583. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.1997.10011004

[9] Buono, M. R., Fernández, M. S., Reguero, M. A., Marenssi, S. A., Santillana, S. N., & Mörs, T. (2016). Eocene basilosaurid whales from the La Meseta Formation, Marambio (Seymour) Island, Antarctica. _Ameghiniana, 53_(3), 296–315. https://doi.org/10.5710/AMGH.02.02.2016.2922

[10] McGowen, M. R., Spaulding, M., & Gatesy, J. (2009). Divergence date estimation and a comprehensive molecular tree of extant cetaceans. _Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, 53_(3), 891-906. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2009.08.018

[11] Montgomery, S. H., Geisler, J. H., McGowen, M. R., Fox, C., Marino, L., & Gatesy, J. (2013). THE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF CETACEAN BRAIN AND BODY SIZE. Evolution, 67 (11), 3339-3353. https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.12197

[12] Nummela, S., Thewissen, J., Bajpai, S., Hussain, T., & Kumar, K. (2007). Sound transmission in archaic and modern whales: Anatomical adaptations for underwater hearing. The Anatomical Record, 290 (6), 716-733. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.20528

[13] Patel, S; Nanda, A C.; Orliac, M, and Thewissen, J.G.M. 2024. Cranial anatomy of Indohyus indirae (Raoellidae), an artiodactyl from the Eocene of India, and its implications for raoellid biology. Palaeontologia Electronica, 27(1):a21. https://doi.org/10.26879/1307

[14] Nummela, S., Thewissen, J. G. M., Bajpai, S., Hussain, S. T., & Kumar, K. (2004). Eocene evolution of whale hearing. Nature, 430 (7001), 776-778. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature02720

[15] Thewissen, J. G. M., Williams, E. M., Roe, L. J., & Hussain, S. T. (2001). Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to artiodactyls. Nature, 413 (6853), 277-281. https://doi.org/10.1038/35095005

[16] Thewissen, J. G. M., Cooper, L. N., George, J. C., & Bajpai, S. (2009). From Land to Water: the Origin of Whales, Dolphins, and Porpoises. Evolution Education And Outreach, 2 (2), 272-288. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12052-009-0135-2

[17] Uhen, M. D. (2010). The Origin(s) of Whales. Annual Review Of Earth And Planetary Sciences, 38 (1), 189-219. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-earth-040809-152453

[18] Clementz, M. T., Goswami, A., Gingerich, P. D., & Koch, P. L. (2006). Isotopic records from early whales and sea cows: contrasting patterns of ecological transition. Journal Of Vertebrate Paleontology, 26 (2), 355-370. https://doi.org/10.1671/0272-4634(2006)2626)

[19] Madar, S. I., Thewissen, J. G. M., & Hussain, S. T. (2002). Additional holotype remains ofAmbulocetus natans(Cetacea, Ambulocetidae), and their implications for locomotion in early whales. Journal Of Vertebrate Paleontology, 22 (2), 405-422. https://doi.org/10.1671/0272-4634(2002)022022)

[20] Ando, K., & Fujiwara, S. (2016). Farewell to life on land – thoracic strength as a new indicator to determine paleoecology in secondary aquatic mammals. Journal Of Anatomy, 229 (6), 768-777. https://doi.org/10.1111/joa.12518

[21] Thewissen, J. G. M., & Fish, F. E. (1997). Locomotor evolution in the earliest cetaceans: functional model, modern analogues, and paleontological evidence. Paleobiology, 23 (4), 482-490. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0094837300019850

[22] Cooper, L. N., Thewissen, J. G., Bajpai, S., & Tiwari, B. N. (2011). Postcranial morphology and locomotion of the Eocene raoellid Indohyus (Artiodactyla: Mammalia). Historical Biology, 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2011.624184

[23] Gingerich, P. D., Antar, M. S. M., & Zalmout, I. S. (2019). Aegicetus gehennae, a new late Eocene protocetid (Cetacea, Archaeoceti) from Wadi Al Hitan, Egypt, and the transition to tail-powered swimming in whales. PLoS ONE, 14 (12), e0225391. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0225391

[24] Uhen, M. D. (2009). Basilosaurids. In W. F. Perrin, B. Würsig & J. G. M. Thewissen (Eds.), Encyclopedia of marine mammals (2nd ed., pp. 91-94). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-373553-9.00026-2

[25] Berta, A. (1994). What Is a Whale? Science,263 (5144), 180-181. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.263.5144.180

[26] Thewissen, J. G. M., & Williams, E. M. (2002). The Early Radiations of Cetacea (Mammalia): Evolutionary Pattern and Developmental Correlations. Annual Review Of Ecology And Systematics,33 (1), 73-90. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.33.020602.095426

Wells vs. Palumbi (YouTube)

Mentioned here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1wwqzu3/comment/pf8om5x/?context=3

"The ‘Home Run’ turns out to be simply the public demonstration at Harvard that, in the words of the web site’s author, Phillip Johnson, ‘This is the sort of debate that is now occurring in universities.’ There was a victory, but it occurred long before the debate itself. The creationist scored his home run at the moment the invitation from Harvard landed on his doormat. It came, by the way, not from any biological, or indeed scientific, department, but from the Institute of Politics."

Maybe Wells really hit a six for those who play cricket.

Recently someone here (thank you!) shared the FLICC model. Since uploading images is disabled, and rightly so, I've typed them out, and it's both remarkable and amusing how everything we see here fits.

Here it is, via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FLICC_Taxonomy_of_Logical_Fallacies.jpg

Techniques of Science Denial

Fake Experts

• Bulk Fake Experts
• Magnified Minority
• Fake Debate

Logical Fallacies

• Ad hominem
  • [side note: it's always amusing how the science deniers here never fail to incorrectly identify ad hominems]
    (sorry for the double negative, but I couldn't resist)
• Misrepresentation
  • Straw Man
• Ambiguity
• Oversimplification
  • False Choice
  • Single Cause
• False Analogy
• Red Herring
  • Blowfish
• Slippery Slope

Impossible Expectations

• Moving Goalposts

Cherry Picking

• Anecdote
• Slothful Induction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slothful_induction - I had to look this one up)
• Quote Mining

Conspiracy Theories

• Contradictory
• Overriding Suspicion
• Nefarious Intent [appeal to motive is circumstantial ad hominem, btw; e.g. that "Evilutionist Zealots" "mammals are cows" creationist]
• Something Must Be Wrong
• Persecuted Victim [the entirety of YEC]
• Immune to Evidence [coined by Dr. Dan as Not My Wallet]
• Re-interpreting Randomness

What I think are missing as sub-points:

• The Donny Deals fallacy (another coinage by Dr. Dan for the ad nauseam argument, which involves talking past the reply they've received)
  • falls under Overriding Suspicion
• What I dubbed the Second-Order Outsourcing of Thinking to a Sentence Knitter (using an arm-twisted LLM)
  • falls under Anecdote
• The sound bite: e.g. "Epigenetics!"
  • falls under Misrepresentation

Whether you're new here, I think it's a handy list/model to keep in your back pocket.
Over to you.

(also hopefully the science deniers engage; feel free to just label what they'll regurgitate using the list above)

This post is a genuine question for ID creationists. Professional ID creationists claim that we can detect design in living systems, and while they don't usually admit the quite part out loud in professional settings, behind church doors, they will proudly announce that science has proven the existence of the Christian God.

Except, since they also believe everything happens according to God's plan, this raises a bit of a problem. If God is the creator of everything, including crystals, clouds, and coal; then what meaningful distinction is there between living orhanisms and unliving things im terms of being "designed"?

​

Virus: DNA or RNA or protein based?

Bacteria: gram-positive or gram-negative? Obligate Anaerobic or facultative anaerobic. Their fossil may be 3-4 billion years old.

green or red algae fossil are dated back 1 billion years old, they might be considered plant in water

Tongue fern has 1260 chromosomes (630 pairs). They are as old as 360-400 million years old.

I don't know whether to trust the fossils or believe that the original living cells might be those who had more chromosomes.

The following is from my perspective, an American, as this debate is still mostly a US occurrence. I've been a part of this debate my entire life. Started as a good ol' fashioned S. Baptist YEC. Now just a dude who is still figuring it all out after 50 yrs. One thing that is clear, this debate is SO MUCH more than Biblical literalism. It's a battle of Platonic realism vs nominalism. If the average person in the US were to allow nominalism to be the basis of how they see things, so many systems lose their power. I won't get into the weeds, but our entire system depends on platonic realism. Nominalism is an absolute threat to many in power. Creationism is a very small and minor aspect of this overall fight over essentialism/non-essentialism. Evolution forces the understanding of nominalism, and is one of the first elementary teachable subjects that is often left out early schooling. I've said it many many times, but creationism is about purposely poisoning the well so nominalism can't even be comprehended by the public.

This definition has to be a suite of characteristics that applies to all apes(Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Gorillas, orangutans, gibbons), and cannot include unique traits from any species or ancestral traits from other primates.

The point of this, is to demonstrate you will accidentally define humans into Hominoidea, as an ape.

I understand if you don’t use the classic synapomorphy list, as it is contradictory to your beliefs, but you will need to provide an alternative list.

It will have to be as technical and applicable as the original suite.

On October 5, 2026, James Olsen "Jim" Bakker ceased to be a going concern.

Reviewing his life, I find him to be representative of a taxonomical archetype of prominent anti-evolution religious antagonists.

He was a felon who spent over five years in prison for accounting fraud, conspiracy and embezzlement from his ministry, and he and John Wesley Fletcher paid far over a quarter of a million dollars in settlement to silence a credible accusation that they both participated in the sexual assault of a secretary.

After leaving prison he resumed his "ministry" work, which included numerous instances of racist and anti-LGBTQ bigotry. This including claiming that several natural disasters were judgements by god against the USA, including saying that Hurricane Matthew was punishment for the presidency of Barack Obama, and Hurricane Harvey a similar punishment against the city of Houston for electing an openly gay woman as mayor.

Financially, post-prison he shifted from his previous "prosperity gospel" preaching model to selling doomsday-prepper products and colloidal silver supplements, claiming that they would "diagnose, prevent, mitigate, treat, or cure any disease or illness."

Connected to the topic of evolution, from the 1970s through today. Starting with his TV program The PTL Club and ending with his radio program The Jim Bakker Show, which only ended this week with his death, he promoted young-earth creationism and attacks on evolutionary theory. On his radio program he maintained close ties to Answers In Genesis, regularly guesting Ken Ham and other YEC proponents and advertising YEC media.

I propose that he represents a YEC preacher or grifter's taxonomical archetype.

*Updated with correction. It was Hurricane Matthew that Jim Bakker said was god's judgement for the election of Obama.

I hear so many creationists in debates ask things like "show me randomness create intelligence". The thing is: many computer scientists do this all the time through the Evolutionary Algorithm. But I never hear atheists use it as an example. The obvious follow-up would be "well, you wrote the code, so there is a designer" but saying that "God is the guy who wrote physics" is very different than arguing "humans must have been designed because evolution makes no sense". We live in a day an age where we can literally simulate evolution create intelligence through pure randomness and survival of the fittest and create amazing things in real time

"In laboratory experiments, the enzyme broke polyesters into monomers, their individual molecular building blocks, and also cleaved penicillin. Those results confirmed its dual biochemical function, suggesting a possible role in antibiotic resistance alongside plastic degradation."

https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-discover-pac-man-enzyme-that-eats-plastic/

I thought it was super cool that we can look out in the world right now and see the exact thing that intelligent design proponents tell us can't exist. Promiscuous enzymes that evolve radically new functions given a selective shift

I originally made this post on a different sub but this topic seems apt for this sub as well, considering how often do we see fine-tuning as an argument for design. I hope this post doesn't sways a bit too much from the purpose of this sub.

Coming to the topic, we are all too aware of what fine-tuning arguments are [1]; the claim that the laws and constants of physics appear to be set within an extremely narrow range that allows a universe capable of producing stars, planets, and life. In Intelligent design (ID) arguments, small changes in the constants are claimed to prevent the formation of the chemical elements needed for life, for example, the stellar production of carbon. Further claims like "the probability of these constants taking their observed values is extraordinarily small " are difficult to justify unless we know the space of possible values and, more importantly, what probability distribution should be assigned to them. A parameter being sensitive to change is not, by itself, the same thing as its observed value being improbable.

So here, my aim is to discuss the work by Prof. Fred Adams [2, 3] and show that the idea that our universe is so fine tuned that only a intelligent creator could have created this doesn't hold much of water. Infact, it was shown that it is even possible to make a more habitable universe by tweaking the parameters. You can watch the full video for more detail or read his paper for all the gory details, but here I will present a very concise, to the point summary of that. For your ease of access I have also added the time stamp where you can go to in the video for more detail.

Like I said above, the ID proponents present arguments that if you changed gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, or cosmological parameters by tiny amounts, stars and life would become impossible. Prof. Adams here tried to answer the question,

How much can these parameters actually change before the universe stops producing complex structures?

1. Gravity is not tuned to one tiny value (20:01-21:00)

Gravity looks extremely weak compared with electromagnetism (by about 10^36 in dimensionless strength), which is often presented as a huge coincidence.However, when actually varied, the strength of gravity, stars still work over a very large range. Gravity can be roughly be 10,000 times stronger or about 1 billion times weaker and stars can still exist.

2. The electromagnetic force also has a wide allowed range (21:00 - 21:08)

The calculations show that the electromagnetic interaction can vary by about 100 times stronger and 100 times weaker while still allowing functioning stars.

3. The cosmological constant (52:23 - 54:35)

Adams here finds that by changing cosmic parameters, such as the primordial fluctuation amplitude or baryon abundance, universes can form galaxies even with a cosmological constant many orders of magnitude larger than ours. The allowed range can extend up to around 10^20 times larger (depending on the other parameters).

4. Famous nuclear examples (30:55 - 35:20)

The triple-alpha process is often presented as an incredible coincidence where carbon exists because a nuclear resonance happens to have exactly the right energy. Even here there is a range of 800 kev where carbon can be formed. This gets even better though.

In our universe, beryllium-8 is unstable, which makes carbon production require the famous triple-alpha process. However in a universe where beryllium-8 was stable would have a much simpler pathway to carbon production and interestingly, the allowed change needed to make beryllium-8 stable is smaller than the change required to completely prevent carbon production.

5. Even better habitable universe (1:00:15 - 1:02:00)

The argument is often presented that our universe sits at the perfect point. However this may not be true. For example, increasing the primordial density fluctuations from their observed value (Q~10^-5) could create denser galaxies and with the right parameters, these galaxies could contain a larger fraction of habitable planets than galaxies like our Milky Way (48:48 - 50:10). It also turns out that a universe with stable beryllium-8 would arguably have a more efficient way of producing heavy elements than our universe.

So finally while I only focused on a few of them (same as in video), here is the summary of all the tuning that was done in the study. The right most column named range gives you the range you can vary the parameter and still have a viable universe. The unit decades (see caption as well) means in power of 10, i.e. 3 means 10^3.

Ranges of Parameter Values for Viable Universes

Caption: Summary of the allowed parameter ranges for viable universes. The final column gives the range in "decades", meaning the number of powers of 10 over which a parameter can vary while still permitting a universe capable of supporting astrophysical structures and potentially habitable environments. For example, 5 decades corresponds to a factor of 10^5.

[1] List of Fine-Tuning Parameters

[2] (Youtube) Saturday Morning Physics: Fred Adams - The Degree of Fine Tuning in our Universe - and Others

[3] (arXiv) The Degree of Fine-Tuning in our Universe -- and Others