# Rapid Divergence?  :)



## BANDERSNATCH (May 16, 2013)

http://www.newswise.com/articles/untangling-the-tree-of-life


Does anyone actually believe the 'rapid divergence' theory?   If you look at the shell diagram on the right, it shows three major snail families....(shells are great at leaving fossil evidence) but these groups just seemed to appear out of nowhere.   No problem to evolutionists....'rapid divergence' covers the lack of evidence....when there should be lots of evidence.   

That Cambrian explosion was a major problem for Darwin, and still is for evolutionists after 150 years.    The fossil record just is not filling in the gaps, but is offering contradictory evidence, as the article states.


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## Four (May 16, 2013)

Another one of these posts...

Look, people are doing science, refining human knowledge by considering new evidence. Isn't science silly?!


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## BANDERSNATCH (May 16, 2013)

It's silly when they have to resort to wild guesses without evidence...like this "rapid divergence" hokiness.   

It would be better for them to just say, "we haven't got a clue how all these species showed up without predecessors in the fossil record" than to say they evolved super fast.    It's forcing evidence into a theory, and not science.


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## stringmusic (May 16, 2013)

Four said:


> Another one of these posts...
> 
> Look, people are doing science, refining human knowledge by considering new evidence. Isn't science silly?!



I think the problem arrises when atheists use specific catagories of science as a way to try and disprove God, and then the evidence for that specific catagory of science changes....

In reality, science doesn't disprove God and never will, just like religion is not going to disprove scientific theories, because science and religion are two different things.


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## Four (May 16, 2013)

stringmusic said:


> I think the problem arrises when atheists use specific catagories of science as a way to try and disprove God, and then the evidence for that specific catagory of science changes....



Its a matter of scale though, someone might use evolution as proof against some part of the bible, but articles like this say nothing against evolution, its just a new piece of evidence found to try to explain the phenomena. Evolution at its core is change overtime.

Not having reasons for the Cambrian explosion nailed down doesn't change the fact that organisms change overtime due to genetic mutations and natural selection, we can see it in a lab.

Posting articles like this isn't going to do anything to someone who enjoys and appreciates science besides reaffirm the love, because this article shows the reason why science works and is awesome, its ability to admit the faults, the drive to prove itself wrong and find more evidence.

Its like: "Look at science doing all this awesome research and work to better understand the world we live in, checkmate atheists!"



stringmusic said:


> In reality, science doesn't disprove God and never will, just like religion is not going to disprove scientific theories, because science and religion are two different things.



I tentatively agree. Depending on how you define god, science can't disprove it. I would go so far as to say God is generally now defined in a way to make it a non-scientific topic.


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## bullethead (May 16, 2013)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_01.html


Finch Beak Data Sheet


Peter and Rosemary Grant spent years observing, tagging, and measuring Galapagos finches and their environment. During that time they documented environmental changes and how these changes favored certain individuals within the population. Those individuals survived and passed their characteristics on to the next generation, illustrating natural selection in action.

Credits: Peter R. Grant; Ecology and Evolution of Darwin's Finches. Copyright © 1986 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.



Topics Covered:
Adaptation and Natural Selection
Backgrounder



Finch Beak Data Sheet:


Few people have the tenacity of ecologists Peter and Rosemary Grant, willing to spend part of each year since 1973 in a tent on a tiny, barren volcanic island in the Galapagos. Even fewer would have the patience to catch, weigh, measure, and identify hundreds of small birds and record their diets of seeds.

But for the Grants, the rewards have been great: They have done nothing less than witness Darwin's theory of evolution unfold before their eyes. That would have stunned Darwin, who thought natural selection operated over vast periods of time and couldn't be observed.

In their natural laboratory, the 100-acre island called Daphne Major, the Grants and their assistants watched the struggle for survival among individuals in two species of small birds called Darwin's finches. The struggle is mainly about food -- different types of seeds -- and the availability of that food is dramatically influenced by year-to-year weather changes.

The Grants wanted to find out whether they could see the force of natural selection at work, judging by which birds survived the changing environment. For the finches, body size and the size and shape of their beaks are traits that vary in adapting to environmental niches or changes in those niches. Body and beak variation occurs randomly. The birds with the best-suited bodies and beaks for the particular environment survive and pass along the successful adaptation from one generation to another through natural selection.

Natural selection at its most powerful winnowed certain finches harshly during a severe drought in 1977. That year, the vegetation withered. Seeds of all kinds were scarce. The small, soft ones were quickly exhausted by the birds, leaving mainly large, tough seeds that the finches normally ignore. Under these drastically changing conditions, the struggle to survive favored the larger birds with deep, strong beaks for opening the hard seeds.

Smaller finches with less-powerful beaks perished.

So the birds that were the winners in the game of natural selection lived to reproduce. The big-beaked finches just happened to be the ones favored by the particular set of conditions Nature imposed that year.

Now the next step: evolution. The Grants found that the offspring of the birds that survived the 1977 drought tended to be larger, with bigger beaks. So the adaptation to a changed environment led to a larger-beaked finch population in the following generation.

Adaptation can go either way, of course. As the Grants later found, unusually rainy weather in 1984-85 resulted in more small, soft seeds on the menu and fewer of the large, tough ones. Sure enough, the birds best adapted to eat those seeds because of their smaller beaks were the ones that survived and produced the most offspring.

Evolution had cycled back the other direction.


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## JB0704 (May 16, 2013)

bullethead said:


> Evolution had cycled back the other direction.



The problem in the above example of the galapogos islands is the fact that the genetics which were passed along existed pre and post drought.  There was not a beneficial mutation which caused one species to become another.  

We can see, and most likely force, natural selection if we wanted too.  That is nothing more than determining which genetics survive from one generation to the next.

The problem with rapid divergence is you would need an extradinary amount of beneficial genetic mutations to take place within a few generations, leading one species to become another.  Evolution requires these mutations, otherwise, you are left with natural selection of existing genetics.

I tend to think that life has evolved on this planet, however, I also believe the theory of species changing over short periods of time is just finding an idea to fill a gap in science......you guys typically reject that sort of thinking.


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## Four (May 16, 2013)

JB0704 said:


> The problem in the above example of the galapogos islands is the fact that the genetics which were passed along existed pre and post drought.  There was not a beneficial mutation which caused one species to become another.



It is a beneficial mutation, it just wasn't beneficial prior to the drought... what is it a problem that the mutation occurred prior to the change in environment? 



JB0704 said:


> We can see, and most likely force, natural selection if we wanted too.  That is nothing more than determining which genetics survive from one generation to the next.



"Nothing more" why belittle it? This is what natural selection is.



JB0704 said:


> The problem with rapid divergence is you would need an extradinary amount of beneficial genetic mutations to take place within a few generations, leading one species to become another.  Evolution requires these mutations, otherwise, you are left with natural selection of existing genetics.



I don't think so.. Like you pointed out in the beginning of your post, the genetic mutations might already be in the gene pool. Rather than having an extraordinary amount of mutations happen in a short amount of time, you might be able to get away with a relatively large genetic diversity in a group of organisms of the same species.


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## stringmusic (May 16, 2013)

Four said:


> I would go so far as to say God is generally now defined in a way to make it a non-scientific topic.



I think God has always been defined outside of science, people on both sides of the spectrum tried and sometimes still try to blur those lines.

That's not to say that a serious conversation can't be had about theology and science at the same time.


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## Four (May 16, 2013)

stringmusic said:


> I think God has always been defined outside of science, people on both sides of the spectrum tried and sometimes still try to blur those lines.
> 
> That's not to say that a serious conversation can't be had about theology and science at the same time.



Well.. it seems  that god/gods used to be very much in the realm of science. If you went high enough, you found the god(s), right? Or maybe in the ocean, or rivers, or the sun was god, etc. These things are scientific in nature because it describes the physical world.

At some point science continued to rule these beliefs out, god(s) became more ethereal, outside of time/space, etc.


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## JB0704 (May 16, 2013)

Four said:


> It is a beneficial mutation, it just wasn't beneficial prior to the drought... what is it a problem that the mutation occurred prior to the change in environment?



There was no mutation.  Just a change in which genes got passed.



Four said:


> "Nothing more" why belittle it? This is what natural selection is.



I think natural selection and evolution are two different things.  One requires certain charcteristics to survive, and others to die.  The other requires the genes to mutate, and for such a mutation to be beneficial to the detriment of existing genes.

A whale becoming a cow, or vice-versa requires a whole lot of "re-coding."  A bunch of big beaked birds surviving, and having big-beaked off spring while the little beaked birds die, and having zero offspring does not require a mutation.



Four said:


> "I don't think so.. Like you pointed out in the beginning of your post, the genetic mutations might already be in the gene pool. Rather than having an extraordinary amount of mutations happen in a short amount of time, you might be able to get away with a relatively large genetic diversity in a group of organisms of the same species.



If  mutations already exist.  If evolution has occured to life from the beginning, a tree and an elephant came from the same place.  Did each already have the genetic make-up to be the other?  Of course not.  That's why genes "must" mutate in order to have an evolution from one species to the next.  That's also why I believe it could not have been rapid.

I think we are crossing between natural selection and evolution, perhaps I am a bit confused on the language.  Even the most die-hard 7-day, young-earth person would admit that natural selection is constantly occurring in this world.


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## JB0704 (May 16, 2013)

stringmusic said:


> ....people on both sides of the spectrum tried and sometimes still try to blur those lines..



If god exists as you and I believe, then he created everything that science is based on, even if he cannot be contained within known boundaries.  That's why I can embrace science, and faith, at the same time.


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## BANDERSNATCH (May 16, 2013)

Four said:


> At some point science continued to rule these beliefs out, god(s) became more ethereal, outside of time/space, etc.



Still a loonngggg  way away from that here in the good ole USA.   Science continues to uncover more and more evidence of design....so much so that scientists are saying that life could not have originated on Earth  (panspermia)  

Origin of Life and the complexity of the cell will always keep scientists busy, guessing, and getting paid.   

As to the finches, I wonder if their genetic information changed?   Were there more or less genes over time?    Was the genetic material in the older finches incompatible with the later?


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## JB0704 (May 16, 2013)

BANDERSNATCH said:


> As to the finches, I wonder if their genetic information changed?   Were there more or less genes over time?    Was the genetic material in the older finches incompatible with the later?



^^^That's what I was gettin' at.


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## BANDERSNATCH (May 16, 2013)

Heterozygosity.     explains variation within a species.


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## Four (May 16, 2013)

JB0704 said:


> There was no mutation.  Just a change in which genes got passed.



Wait.. do you deny that genes mutate?




JB0704 said:


> I think natural selection and evolution are two different things.  One requires certain charcteristics to survive, and others to die.  The other requires the genes to mutate, and for such a mutation to be beneficial to the detriment of existing genes.



They are different things, but they're related. They certainly aren't mutually exclusive. I'll assume by evolution you're meaning evolution by natural selection.. Natural selection is the method by which a trait in a population of organisms is passed onto future generations. Evolution is the change that occurs, but is often used to generalize the whole process...



JB0704 said:


> A whale becoming a cow, or vice-versa requires a whole lot of "re-coding."  A bunch of big beaked birds surviving, and having big-beaked off spring while the little beaked birds die, and having zero offspring does not require a mutation.



It's really just a factor of time. a beak slightly changing shape takes relatively few generations compared to a whale becoming a cow... 

It does requires a mutation. One organism doesn't have the Phenotype that creates a large beak AND the Phenotype that creates a small beak. It can only have one or the other. 



JB0704 said:


> If  mutations already exist.  If evolution has occured to life from the beginning, a tree and an elephant came from the same place.  Did each already have the genetic make-up to be the other?  Of course not.  That's why genes "must" mutate in order to have an evolution from one species to the next.  That's also why I believe it could not have been rapid.



Every time DNA replicates it's mutated... that mutation might not cause any discernible change, or if it is discernible, it could be good, bad, or neutral.

A Population (group of organisms of the same species in the same area) has a genetic variance... The population already has the same gene with different mutations in different organisms, its just that sometimes a change in environment causes one to be more positive than before.

Mutation isn't just required to go from one species to another, but to have any changes at all in a population



JB0704 said:


> I think we are crossing between natural selection and evolution, perhaps I am a bit confused on the language.  Even the most die-hard 7-day, young-earth person would admit that natural selection is constantly occurring in this world.



No.. no offence i think there is just a misunderstanding of how genes mutate, or how evolution by natural selection works in general. Not that i'm an expert.


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## stringmusic (May 16, 2013)

Four said:


> Well.. it seems  that god/gods used to be very much in the realm of science. If you went high enough, you found the god(s), right? Or maybe in the ocean, or rivers, or the sun was god, etc. These things are scientific in nature because it describes the physical world.
> 
> At some point science continued to rule these beliefs out, god(s) became more ethereal, outside of time/space, etc.


That's why all those other "gods" aren't real and the God of Abraham is.


JB0704 said:


> If god exists as you and I believe, then he created everything that science is based on, even if he cannot be contained within known boundaries.  That's why I can embrace science, and faith, at the same time.


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## Four (May 16, 2013)

stringmusic said:


> That's why all those other "gods" aren't real and the God of Abraham is.



I'm referring to god as a concept, which was around longer than the Abraham religions.


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## JB0704 (May 16, 2013)

Four said:


> Wait.. do you deny that genes mutate?



No.  Just that this case does not represent such mutations.



Four said:


> They are different things, but they're related. They certainly aren't mutually exclusive. I'll assume by evolution you're meaning evolution by natural selection.. Natural selection is the method by which a trait in a population of organisms is passed onto future generations. Evolution is the change that occurs, but is often used to generalize the whole process...



I think we are mixing our terms.  For this situation, I see natural selection.  I do believe genes mutate, and cause change over time, however, I do not see that this scenario really represents that.




Four said:


> It's really just a factor of time. a beak slightly changing shape takes relatively few generations compared to a whale becoming a cow...



Yes.  But we are discussing rapid divergence, and I am explaining why I currently don't "buy it."



Four said:


> It does requires a mutation. One organism doesn't have the Phenotype that creates a large beak AND the Phenotype that creates a small beak. It can only have one or the other.
> 
> Every time DNA replicates it's mutated... that mutation might not cause any discernible change, or if it is discernible, it could be good, bad, or neutral.
> 
> ...



No I'm having to think back to biology, which I admittedly had little interest in, but I believe that we are discussing the degree in which change occurs.  For instance, my kids will not look exactly like me....because my genes are not exactly replicated.....however, they will be humans.

The mutation I believe which would drive species change would be one which occurs and is advantageous over those who do not have such mutation....for instance, that which caused the kangaroo to have a "pouch," but other critters on that continent had no need for such a thing....thus, we have marsupials.

The birds on the gallapogos islands reproduced other birds which looked like them....much like my daughter looks like my wife.  That is ""natural selection" and not really a phenomena that I think adds evidence to the rapid divergence concept.


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## stringmusic (May 16, 2013)

Four said:


> I'm referring to god as a concept, which was around longer than the Abraham religions.



I can't agree with your premise. By definition, God existed prior to anyone having a concept of anything.


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## Four (May 16, 2013)

One more try!

Clarification: I'm not tackling any specific case of rapid divergence, i'm just speculating how there might be rapid change in a population in a relatively short period of time.



JB0704 said:


> No.  Just that this case does not represent such mutations.



Yes, it does. Just not mutations that happened during the timeframe of the rapid divergence. For any complex organism you can just assume any allele we have is a mutation of a previous one, regardless of when.



JB0704 said:


> Yes.  But we are discussing rapid divergence, and I am explaining why I currently don't "buy it."



Ok, here is how i would explain it (as a software engineer.. not an evolutionary biologist!)

First, terms:

Population: Group of organisms of the same species in the same geographic area (such that they can breed, etc)

Gene Variance:  The difference in genetic makeup between the organisms in the population.

Natural Selection: Force exhibited on a population by it's environment.

You can only have so much difference between genes in a given set of generations for a population. So if we have like, Y generations of a population of size X, we're limited with how many NEW mutations have occurred in that population in that timeframe, and how many of those are positive for a given. 

Since we cannot expect many new mutations, the only way I could see any rapid change in genetics of a population is for other factors to occur.

1. An exceptionally high gene variance in the population.
2. An exceptionally high form of natural selection (for example, climate changes, flooding, volcano spewing, etc)

The result would be a drastic drop in the number of organisms in a population, combined with a narrowing of genetic variance in the population, which would be a pretty big divergence from the original population of organisms.

Again, this is just me speculating how a population's genes might change by a relatively large margin in a short period of time.


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## bullethead (May 16, 2013)

http://www.livescience.com/7745-swine-flu-evolution-action.html

 Anyone who thinks evolution is for the birds should not be afraid of swine flu. Because if there's no such thing as evolution, then there's no such thing as a new strain of swine flu infecting people.

For the rest of the population, concern is justified.

The rapid evolution of the influenza virus is an example of Nature at her most opportunistic. Viruses evolve by the same means as humans, plus they use tricks such as stealing genetic code from other viruses.

The strategy is what makes the flu so virulent and often keeps the microbes one step ahead of scientists who would destroy or neutralize them.

Pigs to you

While much of the modern controversy over evolution centers around whether humans evolved from non-human primates (scientists overwhelmingly agree this is the case), some people still try to poke holes in the theory of evolution, one of the most solid theories in science. In addition to evidence from ancient fossils and modern DNA studies, one of the many lines of evidence supporting evolution is that it can quite simply be seen in action among some species that evolve particularly rapidly, such as fruit flies.

But on no stage does evolution unfold more quickly or with more potentially sickening or lethal consequences for humans than among viruses. It is, to pass on a scary phrase used among scientists and marketers, viral evolution. And you could be the star host of this all-too-often deadly show.

The sudden ability of the new swine flu virus to hop from pigs to humans and then to skip from person to person, at least in Mexico, is an excellent example of evolution at work.

"Yes, this is definitely evolution," said Michael Deem, a bioengineer at Rice University in Texas.

Deem studies how evolution is affected not just by mutations but by the exchange of entire genes and sets of genes. Viruses, which are basically packets of DNA with a protein coat, are really good at this. Viruses are also really good at exploiting the fact that we humans cough and sneeze without covering ourselves and generally don't wash our hands frequently in a day.

"Viruses have evolved to exploit human contact as a way of spreading," points out Peter Daszak of the Wildlife Trust, whose team 14 months ago predicted just this sort of evolution in an animal flu, coming from Latin America to the United States after evolving to infect people.

David Schaffer, a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at the University of California at Berkeley, explains the mechanics of how a flu virus morphs:

"For flu, there are multiple ways that diversity can arise (the virus has multiple strands of RNA in its genome, and it can mix and swap strands with different flu variants to give rise to fully novel variants … in addition, each strand can individually mutate)," Schaffer explained this week.

"Furthermore, in this case, the 'enhanced' property from the virus' point of view is the ability to infect humans. So, this is viral evolution."

But are they alive?

One of the little hole-poking exercises used by critics of evolution is to argue that viruses are not alive. Tell that to the host.

"Viruses may be living or non-living, depending on the definition of life," Deem explained in an email interview with LiveScience. "Viruses + the host (pig or human) are definitely alive. So, this for sure is an example of evolution in the living system of the virus + pig + human."

Schaffer takes a slightly different view:

"Viruses are not alive, in that they do not have the ability to replicate themselves independently, without infecting and relying upon a cell to do so," Schaffer said. "That said, biological entities need not be alive in order to evolve."

And viruses do evolve, swapping new genetic material in and out of their genomes. That's why we can have immunity to a virus we've had in the past, but be wiped out by one our body has never seen before.

The biochemical processes in evolution of a "simpler" biological entity such as a virus are very different from a living organism, Schaffer notes. "However, broadly speaking evolution still always involves two steps, genetic diversification and selection."

At the Understanding Evolution Web site, set up by the University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education, researchers put it this way:

"To evolve by natural selection, all an entity needs is genetic variation, inheritance, selection, and time, all of which viruses have in spades."

Way sneakier

When humans evolve, the cause is typically random genetic variations that prove beneficial — eventually leading to thumbs for grabbing or brains that process fear impulses more successfully.

Viruses don't have to count on such long odds. They steal DNA that they find useful to their success.

"Many viruses can easily incorporate ready-made genes from other viruses into their genomes," as explained at Understanding Evolution. "This is a possibility anytime a host is infected with two different viral strains."

That's likely what's happened with swine flu.

"It appears the H1N1 swine flu may be a reassortment of the H (hemagglutinin) gene from typical North American pigs with the N (neuraminidase) and M (matrix) genes from European pigs," Deems said. "If so, this new virus is an example of the importance of recombination in evolution. That is, evolution proceeds not only by small mutations of individual DNA or RNA bases, but also by transmission of large pieces of genetic material from one individual to another."

And then what?

Let's say you have a run-of-the-mill flu that's normally transmitted between humans but causes only mild symptoms. Then you also contract a really deadly influenza virus that heretofore was only transmitted between pigs. The two viruses can get together inside you, swap genes, and now you're the host of a newly evolved swine flu virus that can infect your whole family, your colleagues at work, some people at the airport you later fly out of who touch the same armrest you held, and then some folks in the country you fly to. Voila, pandemic!

And it doesn't stop there. Each time another person is infected, the new strain of the virus can grab more genes and mutate further. So if you came from Mexico and infected people in the United States who might have been packing around a different flu, the U.S. swine flu could be different than the Mexican swine flu.

And that's why there's no cure for the flu.

Scientists say it could take six months to develop a vaccine for the new swine flu, and by then, nobody knows what it will have evolved into.


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