OooSnap said:
Phenotypic changes? You mean phenotype? The way things looks does not always change? What? So get me this straight. You actually believe that organisms supposedly 100+ million years old, and some that are supposedly 400+ million years old, can remain the same physically, but humans supposedly evolved from an ape ancestor in just 7 million years? Really? If you want to believe that story. There are many amber fossils, supposedly millions and millions of years old, and they look exactly identical like their modern counterparts. Somehow they just said no to evolution. Evolutionists are shocked to see it. It was not expected. It goes against their evolution story pressupposition. Hence the following quote: “Many leading evolutionary theorists ... have been persuaded by punctuated equilibrium that the maintenance of stability within species must be considered as a major evolutionary problem.”Gould, S.J. and Eldredge, N., 1993. Punctuated equilibrium comes of age, Nature, 366:223–224. To say "well, some organisms just don't evolve even after 400+ million years" is a cheap cop-out. Seriously, it makes me laugh to think people think of evolution as scientific. Prove that bats evolved. The following scientistswill take issue with your claim: “Like the bats, the whales (using this term in a general and inclusive sense) appear suddenly in early Tertiary times, fully adapted by profound modifications.”
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it is eminently clear that you don't really understand what you are quoting. A phenotype, or phenotypic trait can be preserved because it is evolutionarily successful, having claws for example. At a genetic level all species are evolving an all species today that resemble ancient species do so because they have inherited traits, not because they are the same species and have not evolved. i called macro evolution BS because the genotypic changes do not always have large phenotypic changes. Large phenotypic changes can occur without a change in speciation. I have never claimed that species don't evolve, they are all constatnly evolving. Similar inherited traits due to ancestry do not equate to the same species remaining unchanged for long periods of time.
The punctuated equilibrium hypothesis is largely discredited since it conflicts with a considerable amount of evidence. While shifts in morphology can occur in relatively short evolutionary time (still millions of years) this does not mean that the underlying mechanism of change is any different. Changes in hox genes create very noticable differences but it is still just one genetic mutation. The gentic difference between hair, scales and feathers, very different ectodermic manifestations are really just a few base pair mutations. Small genetic changes can have large manifestations or subtle phenotypicly invisible ones.
Humans are apes, we have a few traits that are different than the other apes, but really not that many. The genetic differences between us and the other chimps is less than the natural genetic variation within many spcies. We even give ourselves our own genus, Homo, even though if we were to follow our own nomenclature rules the genus of humans should be Pan. The three extant species of chimps are us Pan sapien, the regular chimp Pan troglodytes, and the bonobo Pan paniscus. They share common traits because they have common ancestry, all three species have evolved genetically since the last common ancestor.
A collegue and occasional drinking buddy of mine is an evolutionary biologist, he works on the area of post sexual selection (mainly at a molecular level), and while there is debate and research in the filed of evolution about things like the relative importance of selecetion methods, all of those debating understand that evolution is a fact. In his words "I don't believe in evolution, it is a fact, there is no need for belief." Debate in science is normal, but the evidence (facts) are agreed upon because they are verifyable. That evolution occured is considered as much a fact as gravity. Evolution is better understood than gravity. we know the mechanisms and we have ample evidence.
In science the term theory is not used casually. A well reasoned and supported conjecture is called a hypothesis, when something in science is called a theory, it is because there are mountains of supporting evidence and it represents our best understanding of how things work based on many well tested hyponthesis.
Rather than cherry picking quotes from papers that you clearly don't understand, why not read the papers? Have you read them or do you just grab the quotes out of context from some creationist disinformation site?