what is evolution supported by?

Question

what is evolution supported by?

Answer 1

See novangelis' answer, and his link to the UC Berkeley evolution web site.



Or see my answer to this question: https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20061114162706AAJ3vs9





CRR copy-pastes from creationist website creation.com (Creation Ministries International) in an attempt to confuse you about whether the evidence supports evolution.



I don't have time to rebut all of his copy-pasted paragraphs. So I'll just address the first one.



Biogeography, the distribution of life.

>"The data can be seen to fit the biblical account of recolonisation following the Genesis Flood, and particularly the hypothesis that the observed patterns arose from global dispersal on natural rafts."



A pretty astounding avoidance of the key issue. The problem is not just the "dispersal" of species, but their ISOLATION (endmism). Saying that (e.g.) the marsupials "recolonized" Australia on natural rafts, doesn't explain why they did NOT "recolonize" Africa or Asia by walking.



Evolution *as a process* explains endemism as dispersal followed by radiation (speciation from a common ancestor) ... both of which take TIME.



Creationists TRY to twist post-Flood "recolonization" into the same concept ... by accepting that species can disperse and radiate (at a breakneck pace) ... but we should not call this "evolution" ... but simply 'microevolution' within "kinds".



I would ask CRR ... is 'marsupial' a "kind"?



Are kangaroos, bandicoots, koalas, wombats, wallabies, Tasmanian devils, thylacines, opossums, sugar gliders, bilbies and on and on ... all just speciation within the same "kind"?



Is it more believable that the over 230 different species of marsupials endemic to Australia (the remaining 100 species endemic to the Americas) took 50 million years to speciate from a single ancestral species ... or that this happened within the last 3,000 years since the Genesis Flood?



And IF you are willing to accept the absolutely *ASTOUNDING* pace of speciation "within kinds" needed to support Flood explanations of biogeography ... why do you think this makes a good argument *against* evolution? Does it really come down to a time limit?





So back to the original question "What is evolution supported by?"



Just remember that when we refer to how evolution is "supported by" evidence, keep your eye on the ball ... the CONCEPT of change over time.



Creationists are quite good at convincing each other that the evidence does not support evolution, even while they make arguments that clearly DO support evolution but can simply be denied by refusing to call it "evolution".



But such arguments fail to persuade even a sliver of a significant percentage of scientists. Why? Because accepting the CONCEPTS, but refusing to use the word "evolution" to describe it, is not much of an argument.

Answer 2

Comparative embryology within phyla.

Zygote cleavage patterns and cell fate mapping by cascades of regulatory proteins: Hox & homeobox sequences can be used to define evolutionary history of phyla.

‘Cleavage patterns and the topology of the metazoan tree of life’

http://www.pnas.org/content/94/15/8001.full

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleavage_%28embryo%29#Types_of_cleavage

Hox mapping in vertebrate ancestry

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/06/18_lancelet.shtml



At the end of gastrulation & neurulation embryos are very similar. They have differentiated enough to form the basis of a bilateral organism with distinct tissues and the origins of each organ’s development is mapped.

This is now called the phylotypic stage in vertebrates, where they show many basal shared traits common to their phylum. Embryos of different species look similar to each other in shape because they are still establishing the basic patterns common to the vertebrate group. This does NOT mean the embryos are identical only that they are most similar to each other during this stage, more than they will be during later stages of growth. The embryo’s framework is most evident now; a bilaterally organized creature with a well-developed notochord, a dorsal neural tube, a set of branchial arches (gill arches) and a newly-completed set of somites to the end of the tail. Here vertebrate embryos resemble each other and define the phyla.

Answer 3

Everything and anything. Watch on the internet NOVA- What Darwin Never Knew.

Answer 4

Biogeography, the distribution of life.

Although studies of biogeography provide strong support for the process of speciation, they do not fit the wider predictions of evolutionary theory, and are inconsistent with the ancient earth geologists’ model of slow continental drift. Evolutionary theory has difficulty explaining areas of endemism and the disjunct distributions seen in both the fossil record and the living world. The data can be seen to fit the biblical account of re-colonisation following the Genesis Flood, and particularly the hypothesis that the observed patterns arose from global dispersal on natural rafts.



The distribution of fossils by stratum (time) and location.

The reality of the geologic column is predicated on the belief that fossils have restricted ranges in rock strata. In actuality, as more and more fossils are found, the ranges of fossils keep increasing. Stratigraphic-range extension is not the exception but the rule. The constant extension of ranges simultaneously reduces the credibility of the geologic column and organic evolution, and makes it easier for the Genesis Flood to explain an increasingly-random fossil record.



Comparative anatomy and embryology.

Most people have absorbed some form of the belief that a human embryo passes through past animal stages while it develops in the womb—e.g. the “fish stage” with alleged “gill slits”. It has been known for decades that this idea, called “embryonic recapitulation”, is not held by leading evolutionists themselves. (For instance, a human embryo has no slits or gills at any stage. The misidentified grooves develop into important structures of the head and neck.)



Despite this, the idea still surfaces in some textbooks, and Yahoo Answers. The originator of this idea, German zoology professor Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), has long been known to have “fudged” his diagrams to support that notion.



Molecular biology and biochemistry.

Many hoped that molecular genetics would confirm evolution. It did not. It confirms taxonomic distances between organisms, but not the postulated phylogenetic sequences.* It confirmed Linnaeus, not Darwin.

Molecular genetics presented new problems. Genomes [all the genes in an organism] have multiple copies of genes or of noncoding sequences, very homogeneous within a species but heterogeneous between species. Such 'repeats' could not have been formed by random mutations acting on a common genome of a postulated ancestor. Some unexplained 'molecular drive' is postulated to account for these copies. It is simpler to assume there was no common ancestral genome.**



Direct observation.

Although adapation and speciation has been observed there is no observational evidence that evolution can produce new genera. On the other hand adapation and speciation are consistent with the Creationist explanation for diversification of animals after Noah's flood

Answer 5

Biogeography, the distribution of life.

The distribution of fossils by stratum (time) and location.

Comparative anatomy and embryology.

Molecular biology and biochemistry.

Direct observation.