wombatty: My point is that species are a label invented by man and assigned to organisms. If the organisms are closely related the division may be arbitrary, just like the difference between “bald” and “not bald”. You can never prove that “one species turned into another” for that reason. You can prove that a population evolved, and the sum of those changes may well be enough to warrant calling them a different species.
An example-shrews from Spain can’t interbreed with shrews from Mongolia. But they can interbreed with shrews from France, which can interbreed with German shrews, and so on until you get to Mongolia. So how many species are we dealing with? It’s like asking, how many hairs must be missing from your head before you are considered bald? It’s a pointless question.
Since your definition of evolution seems to be “one species turns into another”, and since species are simply labels put on organisms for scientific convenience, your argument is dishonest. No evidence can satisfy you. If the two organism are too similar, you’ll say they’re different but “the same species”; if they are too different you will say they are “different species” and I didn’t show you one “tunring into another”.
It’s like asking me to show you two 2′s turning into a four.
Evolution is the change, over time, of gene frequencies in a population. It’s not “one species turning into another”.
former driver: Yes, the example I gave IS evolution as biologists use the word. Laymen who don’t know anything about biology and want all their scientific answers from the Bronze Age can make up any definition of evolution they like, but they are arguing with a straw man of their own creation.
IF the characteristic is inherited and IF it enhances reproduction success THEn it will spread through the population. Very testable.
Get cats with tails born with tails and cats born without. Let them live in a big room full of traps that grab cat’s tails. Kill those cats (or humanely remove them from the room) and you will find, in a few generations, that you’re room is full of tailless cats.
How to disprove evolution? If the percentage of tailless doesn’t change. Or, instead of using cats born tailless, cut the tails off regular cats. If cats start being born tailless then, you have proved evolution by Lamarckism and disproved evolution by natural selection.
It’s a small and unimpressive evolution, but people don’t live for millions of years to see impressive ones.
