Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Discussion about scientific issues as they relate to God and Christianity including archaeology, origins of life, the universe, intelligent design, evolution, etc.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by RickD »

Kurieuo wrote:
hughfarey wrote:
Kurieuo wrote:Are you talking to me? I'm not sure I understand the question. And admit my ignorance so-far-as Miacids are concerned.
Not really; it's just that whatever the subject, even the slightest mention of the a-- word is enough to divert it towards Noah's Fludde. Again. and the second part was not aimed at you, as I think we understand ourselves sufficiently well. It was a sort of general comment on the fact that however one describes the version of creation one believes in, if it happened, it must have been observable, and I'd like to know what believers in the spontaneous creation of whole organisms envisage.
Miacids aside, It does have me looking into how we got all our different looking domestic dogs.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Philip »

K: Miacids aside, It does have me looking into how we got all our different looking domestic dogs.
In how genetics dictate limitations, it is interesting of what people assert was possible through chance and randomness, even given the conditions, etc. For thousands of years, since men sailed ships, canines across the glove have been collected and selectively bred, so as to achieve desired characteristics. You have everything from a hairless chihuahua to St. Benardes, to ever imaginable body type, hair type, and characteristic imaginable. Unlike what supposed blind, unguided process might have produced, this the intentional, selective process of careful breedings, over thousands of years, with a wide range of original stocks collected. The resulting range of types is extraordinary. But they are ALL, to a one, still canines. Still look like canines, all that. Intentional breeding and a world-wide range of a diverse array of canines, selectively bred, has produced nothing but - YEP - canines. I find that interesting.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by thatkidakayoungguy »

Philip wrote:
K: Miacids aside, It does have me looking into how we got all our different looking domestic dogs.
In how genetics dictate limitations, it is interesting of what people assert was possible through chance and randomness, even given the conditions, etc. For thousands of years, since men sailed ships, canines across the glove have been collected and selectively bred, so as to achieve desired characteristics. You have everything from a hairless chihuahua to St. Benardes, to ever imaginable body type, hair type, and characteristic imaginable. Unlike what supposed blind, unguided process might have produced, this the intentional, selective process of careful breedings, over thousands of years, with a wide range of original stocks collected. The resulting range of types is extraordinary. But they are ALL, to a one, still canines. Still look like canines, all that. Intentional breeding and a world-wide range of a diverse array of canines, selectively bred, has produced nothing but - YEP - canines. I find that interesting.
An argument counter to that is if we had millions of years instead of thousands, the dogs will become something non canine.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Mazzy »

hughfarey wrote:
Mazzy wrote:I also believe this bit of the following article... "Actually the assignment of a certain number of millions of years to a rock formation does not derive from the strata itself. The standard Geological Column became the reference point, even though it does not appear anywhere on earth except in text books. And the ages assigned to the layers were derived from long age evolutionary assumptions – not from the scientific facts, – as the column was established long before we even had radiometric dating. Yet the column and its assumptions are used along with index fossils to assign dates to sedimentary rock layers and which in turn is used to date any fossil in that rock layer." http://qccsa.org/the-end-of-long-age-ra ... ic-dating/
It's a shame that the article doesn't quote any sources for its claims, so it will be difficult for me to track down and attempt to refute them. It seems to be based on the RATE research carried out mainly by Andrew Snelling and Russell Humphries, for the Institute of Creation Research, which has, hardly surprisingly, been criticised in detail, such as in the response by Gary Loechelt. Broadly, the statement above, that the standard geological column was established and used as a reference in the 19th century, before there was any radiometric dating, is true, but by the same token, its usefulness does not depend on radiometric dating, and it stands as much as a refutation of creationism on its own today as it did then. And then, of course, far from discrediting the column, radiometric dating has verified it in almost every case, and helped to clear up anomalies. The circular reasoning so often claimed by creationists of evolutionists is not demonstrated by the research.

What is slightly amusing is the curious tone adopted by the article, as if speaking to somebody wholly unversed in any geology at all. This: "And today we know through lab experiments and natural disasters (such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens) that major layering of rock strata can happen catastrophically in a short period of time" and especially this: "Why else do we find marine fossils on the tops of all the major mountain ranges?" suggest that the authors cannot imagine that any other explanation than a global flood has ever been thought of!
I don't go too much on the Creation Research site myself. One certainly has to check their claims which is why I only referred to a part of the article, as you may remember.

Radiocarbon dating requires calibration. Hence I believe one can tweak to uphold the status quo. That includes calibrating against tree rings. Depending on whose research one likes, trees can form less rings differently during droughts and have been known to develop more in a year. I am not saying radiometric is all rubbish, but I am skeptical.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarb ... iderations

And next, leaping from geology to biology in one bound:
Mazzy wrote:Here is what Wiki has to say about Miacids ..."Since Edward Drinker Cope first described the genus Miacis ...
No. You have mistaken the genus Miacis with the family Miacidae, which I was careful to avoid myself. Kurieou, I think, can see the point of my scenario, and agrees that it is possible that to an observer there might be no observable difference between what a Theistic Evolutionist would expect of the emergence of dogs as separate from cats, and what a Progressive Creationist would expect. The difference might be either microscopic, or one exclusively of philosophy rather than molecular construction. It would be very interesting to me to know what you think actually happened. Sometimes I think people construct castles in the air which don't look quite so solid at foundation level. Do you think there was once an empty patch of North American forest, in which, suddenly and spontaneously, a small group of canids popped into existence? Roughly how many? Were they all adults? Or was it a family group? Try to describe exactly what one might have seen. You need not claim it was exactly what happened, any more than I did, but I would be good for you to suggest at least a plausible possibility consistent with your philosophy.
I am not confused at all. Miacis is a genus. Miacids are extinct primitive carnivoramorphans within the family Miacidae (Wiki)

I'll reiterate that the above come mostly from single bones evolved into an entire creature on paper alone.

I'd say the above taxa is a mix of dogs, cats and other animals thrown into one vague bucket of bones called various names like Miacis, Miacudae, Miacoidea, carnivoramorphans. What appears to be demonstrated from the bits and pieces of bones are that cat and dog like creatures suddenly appear in the fossil record.

I think that a progressive creationist, theistic evolutionist and ID'ers see a lot of the same things. In relation to your discussion with Kurieou, what I don't see is any line of descent before there being cats and dogs. They can be called felis, felidae, carnivora; canidae, canis, c. lupis etc to make it appear that macroevolution occurred from something totally unlike either. However what shows up in the fossil record are dogs and cats appearing rather quickly.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Mazzy »

Kurieuo wrote:
hughfarey wrote:
Kurieuo wrote:Are you talking to me? I'm not sure I understand the question. And admit my ignorance so-far-as Miacids are concerned.
Not really; it's just that whatever the subject, even the slightest mention of the a-- word is enough to divert it towards Noah's Fludde. Again. and the second part was not aimed at you, as I think we understand ourselves sufficiently well. It was a sort of general comment on the fact that however one describes the version of creation one believes in, if it happened, it must have been observable, and I'd like to know what believers in the spontaneous creation of whole organisms envisage.
Miacids aside, It does have me looking into how we got all our different looking domestic dogs.
Different looking dogs come about by breeding for traits on a somatic level eg immunity, epigenetic change, breeding of varieties of dogs, cats, mankind and horses that become breeds and races. That is why they are all the same species. Evolutionists sometimes call somatic a change in 'species' eg ring species. Of course we can't do dna comparisons of ancient 'kinds' of animals. It has to be guessed at, sometimes from a single bone or a few. That goes for evolutionists and creationists.

You probably already know this but somatic mutations can occur in any of the cells of the body except the germ cells (sperm and egg) and therefore are not passed on to children.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Kurieuo »

Re: Dogs and interbreeding, the question before a Progressive Creationist, Day-Age (and even YECs who believe "kinds" of animals were taken on the ark), isn't just declaring an interbreeding hypothesis. Or, perhaps it is, if one believes God initially created many different "breeds" of dog who can create unique offspring together.

A main question I see for a PC person like myself (or any non-evolutionary person really) to investigate re: dogs (and this is like a "first step" to what Hugh is perhaps wanting to know in regards to going as far back as Miacids) would be:
  • Did God seed a number of initial dog "breeds" which then interbred, or did God create just one Canis lupus (which both 'grey wolves' and 'domesticated dogs' fall under) that then evolved other traits over time to provide our present-day wolves and wide variety of domesticated dogs.
Now this is about to get a whole lot interesting, because I'm also Traducian (believing that like biology gets transmitted from parents to offspring to certain degrees, so too an inheritance of our spiritual or soul-ish nature). And, it would seem to me, like the soul can be affected by physical ailments, that the soul can also affect the physical, change brain chemistry, we can stop our natural inclination to do something, etc. (this is something secular scientists largely reject, it is believed the physical can only influence consciousness and not vice-versa in what is philosophically known as epiphenominalism).

I'm just stating my beliefs here upfront, ok? Whether or not one agrees, I'm about to introduce something likely relevant to such. Which is, I stumbled across a documentary which seemed like something made for really odd "dog lovers". It was a PBS Nova documentary called "Dogs Decoded". In it, they have people try to raise wolves and foxes as domesticated animals.

The experiment has been running for more than a good 50 years. Wolves, they struggled to tame and had to release after several months. Foxes, there were approximately 1% on fox farms who didn't appear aggressive, which they took and raised domestically. By the third generation, in addition to loosing their aggression, foxes became as tame as domesticated dogs and even craved human companionship -- they'd adapted to have a new-found co-dependency upon humans. Then by I think 8th or 9th generation, something surprising happened, which was physical attributes started changing like floppier ears, shorter tails, and different coloured fur coats.

The video can be found here (I've fast-forwarded to the interesting bit fore-mentioned):
https://youtu.be/HHtN3sprvo8?t=26m20s

I'm still yet to confirm the authenticity of actual study, I remain skeptical as this documentary seemed to try justify a lot of seemingly odd claims that dog owner "freaks" would make. Nonetheless, if true, then such is quite fascinating on so many levels.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Kurieuo »

RickD wrote:
Kurieuo wrote:
hughfarey wrote:
Kurieuo wrote:Are you talking to me? I'm not sure I understand the question. And admit my ignorance so-far-as Miacids are concerned.
Not really; it's just that whatever the subject, even the slightest mention of the a-- word is enough to divert it towards Noah's Fludde. Again. and the second part was not aimed at you, as I think we understand ourselves sufficiently well. It was a sort of general comment on the fact that however one describes the version of creation one believes in, if it happened, it must have been observable, and I'd like to know what believers in the spontaneous creation of whole organisms envisage.
Miacids aside, It does have me looking into how we got all our different looking domestic dogs.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Philip »

K: Miacids aside, It does have me looking into how we got all our different looking domestic dogs.
Philip: In how genetics dictate limitations, it is interesting of what people assert was possible through chance and randomness, even given the conditions, etc. For thousands of years, since men sailed ships, canines across the glove have been collected and selectively bred, so as to achieve desired characteristics. You have everything from a hairless chihuahua to St. Benardes, to ever imaginable body type, hair type, and characteristic imaginable. Unlike what supposed blind, unguided process might have produced, this the intentional, selective process of careful breedings, over thousands of years, with a wide range of original stocks collected. The resulting range of types is extraordinary. But they are ALL, to a one, still canines. Still look like canines, all that. Intentional breeding and a world-wide range of a diverse array of canines, selectively bred, has produced nothing but - YEP - canines. I find that interesting.
The Kid: An argument counter to that is if we had millions of years instead of thousands, the dogs will become something non canine.
Yeah, Kid, that's because blind, random chance of time and place always triumphs over calculated, planning, strategic selections, collecting animals from diverse areas where the breeding parents would never have encountered each other naturally - perhaps even dogs from different continents. Really, time is the answer??? Yeah, I'll put some rocks in my backyard, give em a few billion years, and eventually they'll create and learn how to do complex calculus problems. :roll: (actually, rocks are smarter than I am at math, :( )
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Mazzy »

Kurieuo wrote:Re: Dogs and interbreeding, the question before a Progressive Creationist/Day-Age (and even YEC who believes God took "kinds" of animals on the ark), isn't just declaring an interbreeding hypothesis. Or, perhaps it is, if one believes God initially created many different "breeds" of dog who can create unique offspring together.

A main question I see for a PC person like myself (or anyone really) to investigate re: dogs (and this is like a "first step" to what Hugh is perhaps wanting to know in regards to going as far back as Miacids) would be:

.
No, I don't think God created every breed of dog let alone all breeds being on the ark. I suggest God created a breeding pair or several that were either alike or had some variation, but were what we call wolves. Either way, if Noah's Ark ever existed it only needed to have one breeding pair.

Eucyon & Canis ferox were no more varied from a modern wolf than the variety we see in wolves and dogs today. There may be a few fox bones thrown in as well. Who knows? Before eucyon were miacids, the mixed bag of bones. What is being put forward as evidence for dog evolution is akin to suggesting a chihuahua evolved into a pug then a staffy and then into a bull mastiff. All these are very very different looking dogs and yet the one species. Evolutionists use a single bone and may I respectfully say, a giant leap of faith and come up names to demonstrate evolution, that really mean nothing at all. Researchers give a single bone, or if lucky a few, an entire life history. It's truly amazing!!

So after all that, if I were to answer your question for you I would say that some miacids were wolves that were then named eucyon that were wolves, that were then named Canis ferox that were wolves. These wolves remained wolves until about 15mya when wolves were domesticated and then bred for certain traits to become the great variety of dogs we see today.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Kurieuo »

Mazzy wrote:
Kurieuo wrote:Re: Dogs and interbreeding, the question before a Progressive Creationist/Day-Age (and even YEC who believes God took "kinds" of animals on the ark), isn't just declaring an interbreeding hypothesis. Or, perhaps it is, if one believes God initially created many different "breeds" of dog who can create unique offspring together.

A main question I see for a PC person like myself (or anyone really) to investigate re: dogs (and this is like a "first step" to what Hugh is perhaps wanting to know in regards to going as far back as Miacids) would be:

.
No, I don't think God created every breed of dog let alone all breeds being on the ark. I suggest God created a breeding pair or several that were either alike or had some variation, but were what we call wolves. Either way, if Noah's Ark ever existed it only needed to have one breeding pair.
Yes, of course neither do I, but I break-away from a traditional understanding of Noah's story anyway. The minimum I believe any Christian ought to affirm regarding such is as Jesus specifically stated in Matt 24:37-39:
  • 37“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. 38“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.
So then, affirming points in Jesus' own reported words:
  • there was a man called Noah
  • this man built an ark
  • many people unexpectedly died due to a large flood
Such points aren't necessarily controversial in and of themselves. So, I think it's a good foundation to start from.
Mazzy wrote:Eucyon & Canis ferox were no more varied from a modern wolf than the variety we see in wolves and dogs today. There may be a few fox bones thrown in as well. Who knows? Before eucyon were miacids, the mixed bag of bones. What is being put forward as evidence for dog evolution is akin to suggesting a chihuahua evolved into a pug then a staffy and then into a bull mastiff. All these are very very different looking dogs and yet the one species. Evolutionists use a single bone and may I respectfully say, a giant leap of faith and come up names to demonstrate evolution, that really mean nothing at all. Researchers give a single bone, or if lucky a few, an entire life history. It's truly amazing!!

So after all that, if I were to answer your question for you I would say that some miacids were wolves that were then named eucyon that were wolves, that were then named Canis ferox that were wolves. These wolves remained wolves until about 15mya when wolves were domesticated and then bred for certain traits to become the great variety of dogs we see today.
Yes, it is important to know the all domestic dogs and wolves are same species. It'd is tempting, given how different many dog (Canis lupus) subspecies and breeds look, to even accidentally call them different species. I expect, if they all existed 100k years ago and died out, in the evolutionary tree many would be regarded as distinct and separate species rather than subspecies.

Makes me wonder too how much such casts a shadow of doubt upon certain taxonomic groupings, branch orders and the like, especially so-far-as humans (homo genus) is concerned which is often put together by skull fragments.

So Mazzy, are your beliefs still forming as to what you believe regarding evolution and creation?
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Mazzy »

Kurieuo wrote: Yes, of course neither do I, but I break-away from a traditional understanding of Noah's story anyway. The minimum I believe any Christian ought to affirm regarding such is as Jesus specifically stated in Matt 24:37-39:
  • 37“For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. 38“For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be.
So then, affirming points in Jesus' own reported words:
  • there was a man called Noah
  • this man built an ark
  • many people unexpectedly died due to a large flood
Such points aren't necessarily controversial in and of themselves. So, I think it's a good foundation to start from.
I think I lean more towards agreeing with you.

Perhaps a mega flood in Europe and many deaths. Then again I have seen some interesting reasoning about the Noah's Ark story being literal.
Yes, it is important to know the all domestic dogs and wolves are same species. It'd is tempting, given how different many dog (Canis lupus) subspecies and breeds look, to even accidentally call them different species. I expect, if they all existed 100k years ago and died out, in the evolutionary tree many would be regarded as distinct and separate species rather than subspecies.

Makes me wonder too how much such casts a shadow of doubt upon certain taxonomic groupings, branch orders and the like, especially so-far-as humans (homo genus) is concerned which is often put together by skull fragments.

So Mazzy, are your beliefs still forming as to what you believe regarding evolution and creation?
I support your comments above. I feel the only reason researchers use 'races' to describe the range of homo sapiens is because saying mankind are made of different species sounds ridiculous.

Oh Yes, I can't say that I am 100% convinced that God used some form of instant creation. If ever there arises substantial evidence for evolution I will make my mind over. I just think observation,the most credible form of evidence, supports a creationist paradigm.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by hughfarey »

Fascinating living in the UK, and waking up to find all these interesting posts accumulating overnight!

Dogs. Yes, it took dozens of generations to make them look and behave like dogs rather than wolves, so I'm not very surprised that you can't produce a domestic dog from a wolf just by treating it like a dog. Although they are the same species and readily interbreed, they are certainly different varieties. However, I don't really follow Philip's suggestion that by now they should have evolved into different species, as if speciation were an inevitable result of variation, or as if there have been some sort of speciation attempts which have failed. Neither of these is true. Of course it could take more time - ten thousand generations might be the sort of thing - but unless there was some pressure to derive different species, then there is no reason why they should have diverged so far. I have no doubt whatever that if there was a determined breeding program to produce legless aquatic dogs, or winged flying dogs, it could be achieved, those animals being so different that they could be classified as different new families, let alone species, but to my knowledge that has never been attempted.
Mazzy wrote:I suggest God created a breeding pair or several that were either alike or had some variation, but were what we call wolves.
That's OK, and fits in with a spontaneous creationist belief. Presumably at more or less the same time he also created a breeding pair of some sort of cat. And probably, while we're on the subject of carnivores, another pair of ancestral bears. Would that be correct? The sudden appearance, in an appropriate habitat, of a pair of mature animals, with all their behavioural traits (the kind usually learned from their parents) complete, and sufficient diversity of DNA to produce the variety of descendants we see today. I can accept that as a coherent belief, although it is not one I hold myself. It is not unlike the sudden appearance in the USA of a pair of breeding hamsters in the 1940s, from which all modern pet and laboratory hamsters may derive.

Given that scenario - the spontaneous creation of breeding pairs - I wonder what timespan you see this happening over? Wolves, after all, mostly eat deer of various kinds, so presumably the deer had been created some time before, so as to have diversified enough to provide food for the wolves. And so on. At some point, I suppose, there was also the spontaneous creation of a breeding pair of Tyrannosaurus rex, and before that, the prey species they ate.

Is all this more or less how you see things happening, or am I being fanciful? I don't want to misrepresent anyone, but I do want to discover exactly what a spontaneous creationist really thinks.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by Kurieuo »

Kurieuo wrote:Re: Dogs and interbreeding, the question before a Progressive Creationist, Day-Age (and even YECs who believe "kinds" of animals were taken on the ark), isn't just declaring an interbreeding hypothesis. Or, perhaps it is, if one believes God initially created many different "breeds" of dog who can create unique offspring together.

A main question I see for a PC person like myself (or any non-evolutionary person really) to investigate re: dogs (and this is like a "first step" to what Hugh is perhaps wanting to know in regards to going as far back as Miacids) would be:
  • Did God seed a number of initial dog "breeds" which then interbred, or did God create just one Canis lupus (which both 'grey wolves' and 'domesticated dogs' fall under) that then evolved other traits over time to provide our present-day wolves and wide variety of domesticated dogs.
Now this is about to get a whole lot interesting, because I'm also Traducian (believing that like biology gets transmitted from parents to offspring to certain degrees, so too an inheritance of our spiritual or soul-ish nature). And, it would seem to me, like the soul can be affected by physical ailments, that the soul can also affect the physical, change brain chemistry, we can stop our natural inclination to do something, etc. (this is something secular scientists largely reject, it is believed the physical can only influence consciousness and not vice-versa in what is philosophically known as epiphenominalism).

I'm just stating my beliefs here upfront, ok? Whether or not one agrees, I'm about to introduce something likely relevant to such. Which is, I stumbled across a documentary which seemed like something made for really odd "dog lovers". It was a PBS Nova documentary called "Dogs Decoded". In it, they have people try to raise wolves and foxes as domesticated animals.

The experiment has been running for more than a good 50 years. Wolves, they struggled to tame and had to release after several months. Foxes, there were approximately 1% on fox farms who didn't appear aggressive, which they took and raised domestically. By the third generation, in addition to loosing their aggression, foxes became as tame as domesticated dogs and even craved human companionship -- they'd adapted to have a new-found co-dependency upon humans. Then by I think 8th or 9th generation, something surprising happened, which was physical attributes started changing like floppier ears, shorter tails, and different coloured fur coats.

The video can be found here (I've fast-forwarded to the interesting bit fore-mentioned):
https://youtu.be/HHtN3sprvo8?t=26m20s

I'm still yet to confirm the authenticity of actual study, I remain skeptical as this documentary seemed to try justify a lot of seemingly odd claims that dog owner "freaks" would make. Nonetheless, if true, then such is quite fascinating on so many levels.
Study appears legitimate, of foxes domesticated by humans eventually changing in their appearance to have more "domestic dog"-like features:
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by hughfarey »

Kurieuo wrote:Study appears legitimate, of foxes domesticated by humans eventually changing in their appearance to have more "domestic dog"-like features
Yes. I note a clear distinction between two experiments here. The wolves on the video were not bred especially. The cubs were taken from the wild, and when they did not grow up like dogs, were returned to the wild. The foxes were originally taken from the wild, and then selectively bred for several generations, to achieve their distinct characteristics. I dare say early man could have derived his 'best friend' from either foxes or wolves, and it was an accident of history that it happened to be wolves.
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Re: Evolving from Simple to Complex?

Post by bippy123 »

This isn't proof for evolution
Here is a very old post I dug up from an old thread here on this subject made my Kevlar .

""""Hello Cubeus.
The foxes are not evolution in the sense of Darwinian evolution, and really nothing new. Scientists have known for centurues that foxes and wolves and dogs and dingos and hyenas are all from one basic kind of wolf-hound. They are of course a result of natural selection in terms of certain existing traits in the ancestoral genes becoming dominat through breeding, though in this case it was artificial breeding doing the same thing. If you go far enough down a particluar line you eventually loose the information from the originals and you cannot go backwards, unless a older (mixed) fox can be breed to reintroduce more of the orginal gene pool.
If you read all the articles you listed, no one - including the Russians, mentions evolution in this context. Apparently the same gene that changes the levels of various hormone levels in the foxes affecting friendly vs aggressive behavior also carries the code for multi-colored furs and variable lengths of tails and some more dog-like characteristics. The breeding program simply kept reinforcing the gene swithces for these characteristics and if it keeps going, then the ability to go back will be lost. In no case does any reputable scientist claim there is new information in the genes. The foxes are still foxes, and could still mix with the orginal foxes. It is no more amazing than other breeding programs humans have done with dogs, and ending up with great danes, poodles, and chihuahuas. All are still considered dogs. In each case the breeding programs for dogs have gone on longer, making it more difficult for opposites to successfully breed. But they are still dogs and of the same original kind.

This is the same tactic used with Spotted moths, finch beaks, butterflies, etc. There is variation and adoptation. That was a creationist idea from before Darwin - Edward Blyth in 1830's. Darwin just extrapolated that idea and said you could go from worms to eagles. Modern genetics has proven Darwin totally wrong. Yet evolutionists look at these micro - adaptation changes (whether natural or artificial) and say something silly like "Presto - proof of Evolution!" They forget the foxes are still foxes, and that many types of foxes with different colorings already exist.

But note also the surprise many expressed how fast the depth of change happened - in "only" 10 generations. That actually fits the young earth interpretation that a single pair of 'wolf-hounds' could have gotten off the ark and 1000's of years later you can have extreme variation developing from that pair.... based on survivability in the environments and human intervention. Long haired dogs doing well in the north, and short hair types doing well closer to the equator for example. The Grant's study of finches also showed a remarkble speed to changes. in finches, though after a draught ended, more varieties of beak lengths could survive just as well (rather than being weeded out) and the succeeding generations went back to being closer to the originals anyway!

By the way, Mutations also do not help evolutionists. They are always a loss of information, such as in this case, perhaps the multi colored fur and loss of the solid silver color could be one. A good book recently published on how the mutation rate is higher than preiously thought and makes Darwinian evolution impossible is "Genetic Entropy" by Dr. John Sanford, the inventor of the Gene Gun.
For more on the Bait and Switch game of evolutionists (which this fox story is) see
http://www.qccsa.org/bait-switch-tactic ... evolution/"""
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