Selective breeding has produced only very limited change with no new structures occurring over thousands of years and multitudes of generations of selection. This clearly demonstrates that there are natural limits to biological change. Examples: dogs, cattle, pigeons …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Selective breeding (or\u00a0artificial\u00a0selection)* was used by Darwin as an example of how evolution works. \u00a0Evolution, remember, is nothing more than a change in the allele frequency of a population. \u00a0When dog breeders have gone from this<\/p>\n
to this<\/p>\n in just 10,000 years or so, I don’t see the problem. \u00a0Look at what has changed in this animal. \u00a0It is much smaller, much chunkier, the muzzle is shorter, floppy ears, curled tail, etc.<\/p>\n “Ah HA!” The creationist shouts. \u00a0“But it’s still a dog.”<\/p>\n Is it really? \u00a0This is an example of a cline or a ring species. \u00a0Basically you start with a population (A) and near one edge of its range or feature is population B. \u00a0Near the edge of population B is population C and so on. \u00a0You have something that looks like this.<\/p>\n A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H<\/p>\n In this case, A is a gray wolf and H is a pug. \u00a0Are the pug and wolf able to breed together without human assistance? \u00a0Technically, I suppose yes. \u00a0But, in practice, I think it would be problematic. \u00a0A male pug just doesn’t have the stature to mount a female wolf. \u00a0In either case, I think the wolf would be more likely to kill the pug than mate with it.<\/p>\n Are they different species? \u00a0Species is such a problematic concept. \u00a0We humans want to divide everything into neat little boxes, but reality just isn’t that way. \u00a0Let’s say that we know for sure that animals in population A and animals in population H cannot interbreed. \u00a0But A can interbreed with B and maybe C. \u00a0C can definitely interbreed with B and D, maybe A and E. \u00a0Etc. until G can definitely interbreed with H and F and maybe E. \u00a0But we know that, for whatever reason, A and H cannot.<\/p>\n Are A and H different species? \u00a0If so, where do we draw the dividing line between the species? \u00a0Anywhere we draw that line will be separating two populations that can interbreed.<\/p>\n Are A and H the same species? \u00a0If so, then the biological species concept<\/a> is useless (which it really pretty much is anyway).<\/p>\n So, instead we look at the evolutionary history of the organism. \u00a0Now this isn’t a case of us using evolution to prove evolution. \u00a0The theory of evolution predicts that the more closely related two populations are, then the more likely they will be able to interbreed. \u00a0By interbreeding here, we mean not only have offspring, but have grandchildren. \u00a0Horses and donkeys can interbreed, but mules are sterile.<\/p>\n No one doubts that there are limits to evolution. \u00a0It is not possible to breed cats and have them turn into pigs.<\/p>\n Evolution, unlike a designer, only has the genetic history of the organism to work with. \u00a0Which explains a lot of the problems that modern humans face. \u00a0Hernias are the result of a hole in our body lining to let testicles through. \u00a0This issue can be traced all the way back to the common ancestor of us and modern sharks.<\/p>\n Part of this creationist concern is simply that we humans haven’t existed long enough. \u00a0It’s like planting a tree in your yard. \u00a0Month after month, you don’t really notice any change. \u00a0Then, 15 years later, you realize how big that tree has gotten. \u00a0Look at Lenski’s work. \u00a0It took nearly twenty years for a major event to happen.<\/p>\n Evolution tends to be very slow changes over hundreds of generations. \u00a0Sometimes, the population remains stable and those minor changes result in a new population. \u00a0Sometimes, in just a few generations, speciation can occur.<\/p>\n That’s why we look at the fossil history of a group of animals. \u00a0Fossils give us a way to compress time, if you will. \u00a0We can see, in just a few layers, the massive changes that took place over millions of years. \u00a0The evolution of cetaceans is an excellent example of this.<\/p>\n _____________________ We’ve finished talking about fossils and now we move to ‘presently observed nature weaknesses’ (I’m not even going to comment on the exceedingly poor wording.). What the Texas creationists have done is set up a system where each bit of evidence for evolution is considered individually and dismissed. Then, they claim that the entire theory has problems. As we shall see here, this causes them some problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,8,6],"tags":[939,938,283,112,937],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creationism","category-evolution","category-science","tag-creationism","tag-evolution","tag-intelligent-design","tag-ring-species","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Wolf_on_alert\"](\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/smilodonsretreat\/files\/2013\/02\/Wolf_on_alert.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n\n
\n* I actually prefer the phrase ‘selective breeding’ to the more common ‘artificial selection’. \u00a0There’s nothing artificial about selection except for the fact that it it human directed instead of environmentally directed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"