LogFAQs > #908092478

Vindris_SNH posted...

How has evolution been observed first hand if our current scientific methods aren't old enough to have recorded evolution as it has been theorized to have occurred? Evolution supposedly takes a very long time, even for small changes to occur, yet you claim we've seen evolution in action? I think perhaps we've observed some minor levels of adaptation and hybridization, but have we observed speciation?

First, you don't have to observe speciation in order to observe evolution. The phenomenon of evolution is merely the change in genetic traits in a population over time. Even Darwin himself observed the phenomenon in action (although we've obviously come a long, long way since his initial findings).

Second, though evolution does indeed take a very long time, we can still observe small speciation events thanks to the exceedingly fast generation cycles of certain organisms (such as bacteria). If you are asking whether we've directly observed one creature changing into a significantly different looking creature after countless successive generations, then no.

Third, while the concept of speciation is important to us as we try to understand the creatures on this planet, it's important not to get too wrapped up in it. Taxonomy is essentially an ambitious exercise in labeling things based on certain criteria. While this is obviously helpful in our understanding of life on Earth, the phenomenon of evolution itself is largely separate from the process of labeling the creatures which result from it. After all, from the standpoint of evolution, every organism is just a different variation on the original lifeform. It doesn't really care how we choose to label said variations.

Fourth and last, for all the effort made to poke holes in evolution, there's still a need to provide evidence for intelligent design if that's what you would propose. Going back to the theory of gravity as analogy; even if you were to demonstrate that the theory of gravity is a completely untenable model to explain what we observe, that still wouldn't make it reasonable to assume some intelligent being was personally moving the objects in space themselves. You'd have to demonstrate that claim separately.