You can still discuss it.

I am still waiting for your explanation as to why descent with modification produces a nested hierarchy.

However you don’t seem to understand nested hierarchies…

I would enjoy some more discussion about the tree of life, but my posts are now under moderation, which means that I can no longer reply in real time. I suppose the reason is that I got a little personal with bornagain77 the other day, for which I apologize. Should the moderators see fit to revoke this measure, I’ll be happy to discuss once again.

The evidence can only be seen in the light of Common Descent, so that has to be established first.

Good luck with that.

There are known incremental pathways for many transitions in the history of evolution.

Only in a “gross anatomy” sort of way.

No one can link the genetics with the alleged transitions.

In bats, the distinguishing structures are modifications of existing structures.

Yet to modify the structures means the DNA must be modified.

But there isn’t any genetic data which would demonstrate the transformations required are even possible.

Nothing in genetics that shows mutations build useful things and create new body plans.

Again, we have to start with Common Descent or these statements lack context.

That is the problem

You want to start with something that needs to be scientifically demonstrated in the first place.

Clive Hayden: No, small mutations to the genes cannot bring about novel and beneficial changes of the sort required to bring about a bat from a mouse.

The evidence can only be seen in the light of Common Descent, so that has to be established first.

Clive Hayden: small mutations to the genes cannot bring about novel and beneficial changes of the sort required to bring about a bat from a mouse.

There are known incremental pathways for many transitions in the history of evolution. In bats, the distinguishing structures are modifications of existing structures. Again, we have to start with Common Descent or these statements lack context.

Clive Hayden: And as far as “nocturnal flying insectivore” being a “wide open niche” as “evidence”, is really just “after the fact” speculation, like saying that fruit-bearing trees exist because “upright, wooden, tall, non-sentient, pear-bearing” was a “wide open niche”.

Did you have actual evidence that the niche was already filled? Or are you really saying you don’t consider insectivore a valid and important ecological niche?

For instance, common descent of bats and other mammals is strongly supported. It doesn’t require a theory of genetics to have a high level of scientific confidence. In addition, we can show that small changes to genes consistent with mutation can bring about many of the required changes. We can show that “‘nocturnal flying insectivore’ was a wide open niche,” meaning the changes were selectable and a rapid radiation is expected.

You should read Chesterton’s essay Doubts about Darwinism pertaining to bats evolving. His criticism is just as valid today as it was when he wrote it. No, small mutations to the genes cannot bring about novel and beneficial changes of the sort required to bring about a bat from a mouse. And as far as “nocturnal flying insectivore” being a “wide open niche” as “evidence”, is really just “after the fact” speculation, like saying that fruit-bearing trees exist because “upright, wooden, tall, non-sentient, pear-bearing” was a “wide open niche”. Or we can speculate even further, and say that “blue jumping carnivores that eat upside down from pear trees was a wide open niche”. You can always tell a story, whether that story has any actual purchase on reality is questionable, and should be questioned. I’m not interested in story-time retrofit into the gap where there is no actual evidence.

Sexuality has brought joy to the world, to the world of the wild beasts, and to the world of flowers, but it has brought an end to evolution. In the lineages of living beings, whenever absent-minded Venus has taken the upper hand, forms have forgotten to make progress. It is only the husbandman that has improved strains, and he has done so by bullying, enslaving, and segregating. All these methods, of course, have made for sad, alienated animals, but they have not resulted in new species. Left to themselves, domesticated breeds would either die out or revert to the wild state—scarcely a commendable model for nature’s progress.

(snip a few paragraphs on peppered moths)

Natural Selection, which indeed occurs in nature (as Bishop Wilberforce, too, was perfectly aware), mainly has the effect of maintaining equilibrium and stability. It eliminates all those that dare depart from the type—the eccentrics and the adventurers and the marginal sort. It is ever adjusting populations, but it does so in each case by bringing them back to the norm. We read in the textbooks that, when environmental conditions change, the selection process may produce a shift in a population’s mean values, by a process known as adaptation. If the climate turns very cold, the cold-adapted beings are favored relative to others.; if it becomes windy, the wind blows away those that are most exposed; if an illness breaks out, those in questionable health will be lost. But all these artful guiles serve their purpose only until the clouds blow away. The species, in fact, is an organic entity, a typical form, which may deviate only to return to the furrow of its destiny; it may wander from the band only to find its proper place by returning to the gang.

Everything that disassembles, upsets proportions or becomes distorted in any way is sooner or later brought back to the type. There has been a tendency to confuse fleeting adjustments with grand destinies, minor shrewdness with signs of the times.

It is true that species may lose something on the way—the mole its eyes, say, and the succulent plant its leaves, never to recover them again. But here we are dealing with unhappy, mutilated species, at the margins of their area of distribution—the extreme and the specialized. These are species with no future; they are not pioneers, but prisoners in nature’s penitentiary.

The point being, that IF it were left to direct scientific observations, evolutionism fails miserably and all that is left is wishful thinking supported by speculation.

All that is left for Zachriel or any other evolutionist to do is to assert that Dr Sermonti is mistaken. But one will quickly notice the total lack of evidentiary support for such a premise.

The available research is indicating natural processes, e.g. horizontal mechanisms.

Design is also a natural process, ie it exists in nature.

The question is are those “horizontal mechanisms” non-telic- meaning undirected and non-targeted?

What is required in science is entailed predictions, e.g. showing that small changes to regulatory genes can cause the sorts of changes required, or fossils with primitive traits fitting the nested hierarchy.

They wouldn’t fit any nested hierarchy for the many reasons already provided.

Sequences do not make nested hierarchies and transitional forms violate the distinct category requirement.

Also no one has shown that any amount of change in any genome can account for the transformations required.

And blind, undirected processes sure as heck cannot account for regulatory networks.

For instance, common descent of bats and other mammals is strongly supported.

By bald assertion.

You still don’t have any scientific way to test your claim that tghe transformations required can be obtained by modifying genomes.

You don’t have any clue what genes/ DNA sequences would have to be modified.

And yes bats did evolve- from some original populations of bats.

That is what the science demonstrates.

Mung: The “complexity” of the root is irrelevant.

It’s certainly of importance to biology, the understanding of life’s history, and unraveling the complexity of the cell.

Mung: The roots serve a function. The function that the roots serve is teleological.

I have no idea what that means. It sounds like you’re saying it’s a Gap to hide teleology in.

Mung: Since “evolution,” as you are using the term, means “non-teleological,” “evolution,” as you are using the term, is indeed invalidated.

That only follows if you show that the Gap is filled with your predilection. The available research is indicating natural processes, e.g. horizontal mechanisms.

Mung: If the tree shrew is a modern living organism, we would first have to “de-volve” it back to the common ancestor between the bat and the shrew, and then “evolve” that common ancestor into a bat.

Fortunately, such a direct demonstration isn’t required. What is required in science is entailed predictions, e.g. showing that small changes to regulatory genes can cause the sorts of changes required, or fossils with primitive traits fitting the nested hierarchy. Of course, this doesn’t “prove” that evolution occured, but the more of these sorts of predictions and observations that are made, the more confident we can be of our theories.

For instance, common descent of bats and other mammals is strongly supported. It doesn’t require a theory of genetics to have a high level of scientific confidence. In addition, we can show that small changes to genes consistent with mutation can bring about many of the required changes. We can show that “‘nocturnal flying insectivore’ was a wide open niche,” meaning the changes were selectable and a rapid radiation is expected.

Then there’s all that other evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution. We have good reason to believe that bats evolved, just like everything else.

No mind reading required.

Your position doesn’t have any scientific data that supports it.

Neither you, nor anyone else, knows whether or not any amount of genetic modification can account for the diversity of life from some unknown populations of single-celled organisms.

BTW “tin”foil has been replaced by aluminum foil- that was some 60 years ago…

What we can’t do is modify the genome of treeshrews and get a bat.

And I don’t think we should be able to. If the tree shrew is a modern living organism, we would first have to “de-volve” it back to the common ancestor between the bat and the shrew, and then “evolve” that common ancestor into a bat.

I seriously doubt that it is possible to “devolve”
a living organism back into an ancestral form, and thence to “evolve” it into something completely different.

Of course, as with any good empiricist, i’m willing to consider evidence to the contrary.