I apologize. My explanation might not have been clear enough.
Imagine you have a group of animals that cover a large range of territory, including on a peninsula. Due to changes in the geography, the peninsula is turned into an island. Perhaps the world's ocean levels rose due to a warming event. Most of the range of our group of animals remains on the continent, but a smaller group is on the island. Over time, the island group and the continent group undergo evolution and they split into related, but characteristically distinct group of animals. The continent group remains most similar to the ancestor group due to existing in the most similar ecological zone.
Some time later, the peninsula reforms and the now different groups of animals compete over the same resources over the same territory. The island group happens to be more fit in this competition and quickly replaces the continent group over the entire territory.
If you were to look at this in the fossil record, almost every where you look, it would look like the island group instantly replaced the continent group because replacement through competition happens very fast in geological scales. A potentially large amount of evolution would look instantaneous. But if you happened to be looking at rocks from the island area, you might find a more transitional period in the fossil record.
This is an example of what punctuated equilibria is. People sometimes confuse this with proposing instant bursts of evolution. Creationist writing habitually misrepresents it, and this contributes to public misunderstanding. The driver of speciation (the development of new species) in this case was what we call allopatric speciation. This was a concept that was developed in the mid 20th century along with related ideas about how speciation happens. Gould and Eldrige took this and other advances in understanding how speciation occurs and logically extended it to the fossil record and offered some examples where there is good evidence that is what happened. They proposed this concept of punctuated equlibria in a landmark paper 1972. There's a lot going on in that paper, including proposing species stay in relative morphological stasis for extended periods of time interrupted by shorter bursts of change, and this contributes to misunderstanding. They also argue that species don't gradually evolve into one another, but always split into daughter groups. This was and remains a radical thesis. Creationists often present PE as a desperate attempt to explain away huge gaps in the fossil record, which badly misunderstands what it is and why it exists.
EAllusion wrote:Despite our search engine being horrible, I actually found an example of this:
I wrote this in a post to you Ceeboo about three years ago:
Ea - What is wrong with you? Do you just have to be right about literally everything?
While I do appreciate your efforts to find a post that you wrote to me 3 years ago - It really wasn't necessary. Really.
I have been wrong countless times in my life EA. Maybe the raccoon did evolve into a whale - I might sure as crap be wrong about that too. So what.
What I want you to know is that it's okay for you to be wrong too. It's really okay. Your friends - if they are really friends - will still be your friends. The people who respect and admire you here at MDB will still respect and admire you. The sun will still provide rays. Children will still play baseball. Babies will still be laughing, Elderly couples will still dance. Flowers will still bloom. Birds will still fly. Puppy breathe will still smell awesome. Nothing will change (With the possible exception being you)
Ceeboo wrote: Ea - What is wrong with you? Do you just have to be right about literally everything?
Ceeboo
Is it your preference that I write posts in which I express opinions on topics I know little about in which I think I'm likely wrong?
I dragged up an old reply because I was certain that your misunderstanding of this topic had been explained in some detail more than once and am pointing out that those explanations aren't having an impact.
Ceeboo wrote: You're simply too stubborn to understand the deep value and wisdom I was trying to share with you.
That's unfortunate.
Peace, Ceeboo
Perhaps a thread in which you are making bad anti-evolutionist arguments is not the time to be also presenting yourself as a font of guru-like wisdom you are deigning to offer others?
Your post was a combination of trying to call me out for behaving like an approval-seeking know-it-all and offering the advice that is Ok to be wrong. This was in response to me poking at something you frequently return to that is wrong.
EAllusion wrote:Perhaps a thread in which you are making bad anti-evolutionist arguments is not the time to be also presenting yourself as a font of guru-like wisdom you are deigning to offer others?
Perhaps.
Your post was a combination of trying to call me out for behaving like an approval-seeking know-it-all and offering the advice that is Ok to be wrong. This was in response to me poking at something you frequently return to that is wrong.
Ceeboo wrote:Darwinian evolution - to put it very simply for the purposes of the exchange we are having at this point - is that all species of organisms (life) have developed from other species, mostly through natural selection and random mutations - over very long periods of time (except for when punctuated equilibrium is required - meaning rapid and sudden change must happens over very short periods of time) . From simple to more complex.
A big part of the problem is not having a good foundation of knowledge in various areas we might discuss when it comes to questions like the age of the earth or how has life changed over time. I would suggest places like EDX, coursera, etc to find really good information free. In regards to this discussion I would suggest watching the lectures for this course. You can watch them in short segments minutes long if one does not have lots of time.
While it does not go into evolution directly it can give those interested a better foundation of biological understanding. It's free and one can just listen to lectures that I find both interesting and easy to understand. Then you can tell people you went to MIT.
