Of course I'm liberal, I believe in liberty.

Monday, January 31, 2005

Evolution Of New Species Witnessed; Proves Creationism

I've often heard creationists say no one has seen one species arise from another. I've always assumed this was technically true because the fossil record only shows points on a graph, while there will always be at least a little bit of guess work connecting the dots. I imagine it is nearly impossible to differentiate between a direct ancestor and, say, a great aunt.

However, it turns out there are at least two directly observed cases where one species evolved into another right in front of our eyes:
  1. A laboratory population of Nereis acuminata evolved to a new species unable to breed with the parent species.
  2. A natural population of bird-biting Culex pipiens mosquitoes trapped in a London tunnel evolved into a rat and human biting species, unable to breed with the parent species.
Now that first link is to the Defender's Guide, an evolutionist site, but the second is a link to Answers In Genesis, a young Earth creationist site. Why does a creationist site promote this directly observed example of evolution in action? It is because they believe the world is only a few thousand years old and, more to the point, they believe in the literal story of Noah's flood. However, they did the math and realized there wasn't enough room on the ark to save two of each species. That's a problem, so it would seem. But they realized the Bible doesn't say Noah collected two of each species, it says he collected two of each kind. How do they get from kind to species? You guest it, evolution! For example, "an original dog/wolf kind on Noah’s Ark [gives] rise to wolves, dingoes, coyotes, etc."

No, really. I'm not making this up. That's what it says. Go click on the link yourself, if you don't believe me.

UPDATE: From the comments:
If we are going to be selective in our quoting (which we both do!), we should be less obvious. The link you use for the evidence of evolution (actually evidence of speciation) has a link to the very Answers in Genesis you quote - which states clearly that "Evolution hasn't made any new species" is a BAD argument to attempt to use.
Sorry if I left the wrong impression. Yes, AIG says the species argument is a BAD argument and shouldn't be use. However, I still hear it from time to time, like from Paul over at Wizbang! The AIG argument is based on "loss of information", which I'll write about some time in the future.