>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Mccarrick Alan D CRPH
>Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2001 1:27 PM
>To: 'Jonathan Clarke'; 'ASA List'
>Subject: RE: Examples of new species
>
>
>Jonathan,
>
>Thanks for the references on new species - I'll try to look some
>of them up.
>
>It is interesting to note that Christian apologist Hugh Ross (Old
>Earth Creationist) make the unqualified statement that NO new
>animal species have arisen in "modern times" and claims that this
>proves his thesis that new species/genus arise only through God's
>direct creation. I don't know whether he means "POOF" there it
>is, or if God messes with the DNA secretly and the mother is
>surprised. (The last one sounds like the "hopeful monster" idea).
> Ross maintains that God created countless millions of times over
>the 4 by of life.
>
>Al McCarrick
>
Claims like those Hugh Ross makes are what drives me up a wall about
Christian apologetics. It is merely bald faced craziness. It really is a
case of his theology dictating what facts are allowable in nature. This is
from my web page http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/rossrev.htm
The most interesting item that came into focus during my reading of this
book is the fact that Hugh Ross is a committed special creationist. By that
I mean he holds the view that God created each species individually. He does
not believe ANY significant morphological change occurs. I quote:
"Genesis offers this explanation: God created the first sea mammals on the
fifth creation day. As the fossil record documents, sea mammals have
persisted on Earth from that epoch until now, though not without
interruption. Multiple extinctions of sea mammals imply that God repeatedly
replaced extinct species with new ones. (See chapter eight for further
discussion of this issue.) In most cases the new species were different from
the previous ones because God was changing Earth's geology, biodeposits, and
biology, step by step, in preparation for His ultimate creation on
Earth---the human race. "The many 'transitional' forms of whales and horses
suggest that God performed more than just a few creative acts here and
there, letting natural evolution fill in the rest. Rather, God was involved
and active in creating all the whale and horse species, the first, the last,
and the 'transitional' forms." (p. 52)
Being surprised by this, I went looking back through some of his other
writings. The book says that dinosaur transitional forms were specially
created by God in Ross (1998, p. 3).
This explains why Ross has occasionally written that the speciation rate is
zero today. He writes:
"Research indicates that natural evolutionary processes, the observable
microevolution, occurs at roughly the same rate today as it did before
humans. Science offers no explanation, as yet, for the sudden change in the
speciation rate, but the Bible offers one: the difference comes from the
change in God's level of creative activity. Before Adam and Eve, it was
high. After Adam and Eve, it dropped to zero."(p. 65)
This claim of no speciation is so blatantly absurd that it would be
laughable, if it were not being used to 'support the Bible. Here are some
examples for Ross to consider:
"Hawaii harbors several moths of the genus Hedylepta that feed only on
banana plants. Other species of the genus feed on other Hawaiian plants, and
similarities of form demonstrate that one of these that feeds on palms is
the ancestor of the banana- feeding species. Each of the banana-feeding
species is restricted to high mountain forests on only one or two islands,
and the reason they must bear a descendant rather than ancestral
relationship to the palm-feeding species is that, while palm trees are
native Hawaiian plants, banana trees are not. In fact Polynesians first
introduced the banana plant to the Hawaiian Islands only about a thousand
years ago. This sets an upper limit for the evolution of the new
banana-feeding insect species. For all we know, they evolved in a small
fraction of this interval." (Stanley, 1983, p. 21)
Prior to the voyages of exploration, rats did not live on the Island of
Mauritius. Some of the rats, deserted the first ships that landed there.
Today, the rats of Mauritius have a chromosome count and type that is
unique. Nowhere else in the world do we find rats with this chromosomal
arrangement. Yosida et al write:
"There are many researchers who have studied the chromosomes of the black
rats from several locations of the world, but none has observed in them the
karyotype characterized by the Robertsonian fission as seen in the Mauritius
type." (T.H. Yosida, et al, 1979, p. 59)
This has arisen in the past 400 years and would prevent interbreeding.
Many, many examples of speciation by polyploidy could be cited by sophomores
in Biology courses. Ross does allow for plant speciation, but claims "No
plant species radically different from already existing species has arisen
under human observation." (p. 42). This is falsified by cotton,(only
cultivated cotton has lint-Sauer 1969,p.78), corn (which is huge by
comparison with the ancestor and little looks like the earliest teosinte).
Cox and Moore (1985, p. 221-222) write:
"Indeed, both maize and teosinte are now regarded as subspecies of Zea mays,
but structurally they are very different, and in particular the evolution of
the all important flower and fruit structure is still in dispute."
The claim that the speciation rate is zero or nearly zero today is clearly
false. The claim that morphological change has not occurred is clearly
false. Ross should not be advocating a view that is so easily falsified.
***end of web page***
Other examples of modern speciation are:
"At the margin of Lake Victoria, in Uganda, there sits a
small body of water called Lake Nabugabo that has an areal extent
of some fifteen miles. The smaller lake obviously formed from
the larger one when a sand spit grew across a channel that
formerly united the two bodies of water. Radiocarbon dating of
fossil plant material in the spit shows that Nabugabo was
separated from the parent lake approximately four thousand years
ago. Within Lake Nabugabo are, five species of cichlid fishes
unknown from Lake Victoria or any other locality in the world."
For the creationist who thinks that carbon 14 dating dates things
too old, the problem is even greater. It means that the
speciation has occurred in even a shorter time.~Steven M.
Stanley, "Evolution of Life: Evidence for a New Pattern", Great
Ideas Today, 1983, (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1983), p.
22
"It is not clear how many species of the current flock of >300
species of Lake Victoria survived the episode of drying 14,000
years ago. They may have survived in smaller marginal lakes,
springs, or headwaters of rivers and recolonized the lake after
it filled up again. It appears unlikely, (abut not unthinkable)
that most of these species of Lake Victoria arose in less than
14,000 years.
"That rates of speciation in cichlids can be astonishingly
fast has been known since the discovery of five endemics in Lake
Nabugabo, a small lake that is less than 4,000 years old and
separated from Lake Victoria only by a sand bar. These five
species are believed to have close relatives in Lake Victoria
that chiefly differ in the male's breeding coloration, pointing
to the potential importance of sexual selection for the fast
rates of speciation in cichlids."~Axel Meyer "Phylogenetic
Relationships and Evolutionary Processes in East African Cichlid
Fishes," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 8:8(1993), p. 283?284
**
modern speciation
"Even faster rates of speciation were suggested by the finding
that the southern end of Lake Malawi was arid only two centuries
ago and is now inhabited by numerous endemic species and 'color
morphs'. These are believed to have originated during the last
200 years!"~Axel Meyer "Phylogenetic Relationships and
Evolutionary Processes in East African Cichlid Fishes," Trends in
Ecology and Evolution, 8:8(1993), p. 284
**
modern speciation
"This high degree of mtDNA similarity and the earlier allozyme
data suggested a very young age for this flock, probably less
than 200,000 years. This age estimate for the species flock is
younger than the lake, and supports the notion of intra?
lacustrine speciation, that is, the adaptive radiation of this
species flock is likely to have occurred in Lake Victoria itself
rather than resulting from several immigrations of different
ancestral lineages."~Axel Meyer "Phylogenetic Relationships and
Evolutionary Processes in East African Cichlid Fishes," Trends in
Ecology and Evolution, 8:8(1993), p. 280
**
modern speciation
"Lake Victoria, with an area of 68,000 km2, . . ., appears to
have experienced a period of almost complete desiccation as
recently as 14,000 years B. P. There was probably ample
opportunity for spatial isolation within the larger basin,
providing the necessary pre?conditions for geographic
speciation."~Axel Meyer "Phylogenetic Relationships and
Evolutionary Processes in East African Cichlid Fishes," Trends in
Ecology and Evolution, 8:8(1993), p. 283
And here is how much morphological variation can take place in 300 years:
"A population of the West African Green monkey (Cercopithecus aethiops
sabaeus) has been established for some 300 years (100 generations) on the
West Indian island of St Kitts. Earlier studies carried out between 20 and
30 years ago showed this island population to have greater dental and
cranial dimensions to be less variable in these dimensions, to be more
variable in certain meristic dental characters (e.g. supernumarary teeth)
and to be less symmetrical in dental and cranial features than the
contemporary mainland descendants of the parent West African stock. The
extent of divergence in dental and cranial dimensional characters between
the West Indian and West African Green monkeys appeared to be on the same
general scale as that obtaining between the West African Green monkey and
certain other groups of African cercopitheques commonly accorded distinct
subspecific or specific status." ~ E. H. Ashton, et al, "The Results of
Geographic Isolation on the Teeth and Skull of the Green Monkey
(Cercopithecus aeithips sabaeus) in St. Kitts--a Multivariate Retrospect,"
J. Zool., Lond., 188(1979):533-555, p. 533
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jan 31 2001 - 13:56:22 EST