does natural selection and evolution cause a species to change to another speices?how so?

Question

As a process of nature, natural selection was familiar to biologists before Darwin, who defined it as a "mechanism that keeps species unchanging without being corrupted". Darwin was the first person to put forward the assertion that this process had evolutionary power and he then erected his entire theory on the foundation of this assertion. However, since Darwin’s time, there has not been a single shred of evidence put forward to show that natural selection causes living beings to evolve. Colin Patterson, the senior palaeontologist of the Museum of Natural History in England, stresses that natural selection has never been observed to have the power to cause things to evolve:
“No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever got near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question1.”
Natural selection holds that those living things that are more suited to the natural conditions of their habitats will prevail by having offspring that will survive, whereas those that are unfit will disappear. For example, in a deer herd under the threat of wild animals, naturally those that can run faster will survive. That is true. But no matter how long this process goes on, it will not transform those deer into another living species. The deer will always remain deer.
When we look at the few incidents the evolutionists have put forth as observed examples of natural selection, we see that these are nothing but a simple attempt to hoodwink.

Answer 1

[Note to other responders ... this "question" is copy-pasted word-for-word from an essay by Turkish creationist Harun Yahya (a.k.a. Adnan Oktar). Here is the entire article:
http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1158321449047&pagename=Zone-English-HealthScience%2FHSELayout
So the asker ('thinker61') is already demonstrating an inability to even ask a question in his own words, much less actually listen to answers. ]

Yes. Of course it can. The overwhelming majority of scientists would not accept evolution as the backbone explanation for the origin of species, if it really had "not one shred of evidence" as you say. Scientists live, eat, and breathe evidence ... they would not accept a theory without a *lot* of it. The fact that you think there is "not one shred of evidence" indicates that you haven't researched this evidence very hard at all.

>"Darwin was the first person to put forward the assertion that this process had evolutionary power and he then erected his entire theory on the foundation of this assertion."

This shows that you haven't actually read Darwin, or at least not understood him ... and don't know very much about him ... if you (or more correctly, Harun Yahya) think that Darwin built his entire theory on nothing but an assertion. The man spent 5 years sailing from island to island on the Beagle, collecting and sorting samples, making copious notes, followed by 20 years preparing his theory for publication ... in short he erected his theory on a foundation of painstaking (to a fault) analysis of *observations*.

>"Colin Patterson, the senior paleontologist ..."

Colin Patterson is one of the most heavily *misquoted* scientists ... a constant target of the tactic of "quote mining" ... taking a quote out-of-context, leaving out other things the author said, in some cases editing out words (!), and trying to leave the impression that the author is saying precisely the opposite of what the author intended.

One way to recognize quote mining is that the author is being quoted not just for what he said, but because of *who he is*. In other words, it is a reverse "argument from authority." Unable to produce a scientist with any credibility who refutes evolution, creationists will take a respected scientist (so that they can exploit his name for their cause), and twist his words to make it *sound* like he is arguing against evolution.

Even here, if you read Patterson's quoted words carefully, you can see that he is NOT saying what you (or Harun Yahya) are paraphrasing him to say ... Patterson's words say only that "no one has ever produced a species by natural selection" ... which is trivially true since if someone had, it would by definition not be "natural selection" (selection happening in the wild), but artificial selection (selection affected by humans) ... but that is NOT the same as saying that natural selection does not "have the power to cause things to evolve." How blatantly dishonest can you get?

For more on the misquotation of Colin Patterson, see:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

>"When we look at the few incidents the evolutionists have put forth as observed examples of natural selection, we see that these are nothing but a simple attempt to hoodwink."

An "attempt to hoodwink"???

Simple question ... ***WHY***? Why would the scientific community expend 150 years of effort, hundreds of thousands of papers, journal articles, symposia, conferences, panels, books, photographs, university courses, thousands of fossils, detailed workups of genome comparisons, comparisons of protein structures across species, morphological comparisons, embryological studies ... etc. etc.

... all in a massive effort to "hoodwink"???

Just how badly to you have to hate scientists to actually believe that?

This is what is truly despicable (and dangerous) about creationism. The need for a complete and utter *CONTEMPT* for science, the scientific method, the scientific community, and just scientists as human beings ... that you would flat-out accuse them of an "attempt to hoodwink" ... a massive community-wide fraud involving tens of thousands of dedicated professionals ... for over 150 years.

Thank you (and Harun Yahya) for demonstrating that creationism is founded in deceit rooted in a fundamental *hatred* of science.

Answer 2

This is a fascinating and certainly not a trivial question.

The first issue is what do we mean by a species, since if that cannot be defined, then nobody can say if a new species has been created by evolution or not. The old and most conventional definition (but one of many) is that a new species will have been created if and only if a mating between one of its kind and one of the originator’s kind consistently fails to give offspring that can reproduce themselves.

Darwin’s finches for example are often cited as examples of evolution in action. Indeed they do show natural selection and evolution, but you are right to think, not speciation (the creation of a new species). The birds really just differ in beak shape, because of adaptation to different diets. Put together they would produce viable offspring: they are not separate species, just races.

That definition is all very well for organisms that reproduce sexually, but what about others, such as bacteria? Here we see some very practical examples of evolution happening ‘in front of our eyes’. Bacteria have very short generation cycles so are able to rapidly respond to hostile environments.

For example, if you have an infection and dose yourself with penicillin, the bugs will be undergoing very fast evolution - the DNA of the population will actually change. This is how we have ended up with super-bugs like MRSA - they have evolved to cope with our antibiotics. But are they new species? Well according to the conventional definition of species for bacteria, the answer is.… maybe. The definition of a species in bacteria is rather arbitrary - a threshold in the number of genetic differences, so if surviving your pills required a big enough change in the DNA, then a new species is born.


Apart from this, it seems that natural selection is not sufficient alone to cause speciation. Most examples are so called allopatric - meaning a geographic separation lets two or more populations to genetically go their own way. That is a bit if a cheat for natural selection purists who want to see speciation in sympatric populations (all in the same place). This actually can happen and has been observed, but not by simple natural selection. So far the only cases have involved hybridisation between distinctly different species to create a new one - this is fairly common amongst plants.

Science can certainly not rule out sympatric speciation due to natural selection alone, but it has not been clearly observed yet. However, given a bit of extra help from isolation, hybridisation or uncertainty about what constitutes a species, then it has been seen, to occur.

Finally, we should be careful to keep a sense of perspective about time. It probably takes thousands of generations to see significant evolutionary change; more like hundreds of thousands to see speciation take place. We just haven’t been looking long enough to see this in anything other than bacteria yet. There are however, several possible speciations on the horizon, for example cod fish who are undergoing dramatic evolution due to terrible fishing pressure. One day, the dismal news may break - that a new species of tiny cod-like fish has been created by the worlds trawler fleets. But I hope not.

Answer 3

you are being confused about what natural selection is.


natural selection is not a force. it's an outcome. if it were a force, we'd all be believing Lamarck and not Darwin. Natural selection is not the mechanism of anything. It the outcome.

the mechanism is mutation or new genetic information. you can put the food higher and higher, but it won't cause a giraffe's neck to get longer. mutation will and if the giraffe's benefit from it (i.e., better food access) then it will likely persist. when you look at it you say that's natural selection. but it's the mutation that is the cause.

natural selection is NOT a force that causes mutation

Answer 4

Why do you waste your time regurgitating your nonsense? Do you honestly believe that you would be able to convince any educated, critical thinker? As others have pointed out, you are at best ill-informed simply parroting what you don't understand and at worst, deceitful in how you misuse and twist the words of the dead to suit your wishful thinking.

I could go on about definitions of species and list several examples of observed speciation events in plants and animals, but I doubt that you care about evidence as you have already decided, without study and understand, what you are rejecting.

How about I use the same tactics you use on your holy book? Lets see what kind of enlightenment is to be had in the Quran. One thing that is absolutely lacking is any talk of cosmology. Do you really think that the poetic phrasing of the expanding universe is unique or instructive? (I saw the other question you posted.) There are numerous works of literature and fiction where some connection between "universe" and "expanding" can be made. That doesn't make it a physics text. Where in the quran are the values for the cosmological constant? vacuum energy density? the fine structure constant? Where are the predictions of isotopic abundances?

But what can be found in there...
"Believers, take neither Jews nor Christians for your friends." (Surah 5:51)
"...make war on the leaders of unbelief...Make war on them: God will chastise them at your hands and humble them." (Surah 9:12-)

"Therefore, when ye meet the unbelievers, smite them at their necks" (Surah 47:4-6, 15)

There are some interesting verses on the value and rights of women, etc. but as you would already know, there is another verse that can sweep away any critical examination of this text:

And when you recite the Quran, We place between you and those who do not believe in the hereafter a hidden barrier; (17:45-76)

So much more informative about how life and the universe works. [insert irony for the sarcasm impaired]

Answer 5

The process of natural selection takes millions of years to occur in as far as species change is concerned. The evidence from fossils and dug out bones of prehistoric animals (eg from Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania by Richard Leakey) clearly shows the progression of one species to another over millions of years (time scales proven by carbon dating).

In the much much much shorter term, the observation that moths originally brown when living on tree trunks (to camouflage themselves from predators) gradually developed into green ones (to camouflage against grass) when the wood forest was destroyed by human intervention, illustrates the principle.

The definition of a species is simply that members of the same species can produce fertile offspring. Therefore, it is not a tall story to say that "a new species" can be formed by evolution. It is a perfectly simple easily credible piece of information.

Quite apart from this, it is an even more incredible story to say that some superbeing such as Christ, Krisha, Allah, or whoever you call God suddenly awoke from the dead and created life in its multitude of forms. Is there a slightest grain of tangible evidence for this? None whatsoever!!!

Answer 6

Not enough time has passed since Darwin to see the evolution of any new species. On the evolutionary time line, Darwin's theory was posed probably 5 seconds ago.

Answer 7

Not much can be proven. scientists can be dumb, though because most of their hypotheses and theories get turned into facts by the media and schools, not by actual proof.

Answer 8

Let me ponder your question while I walk my dog and munch on my corn chips.