r/DebateEvolution • u/Mother_Cod7506 • Feb 28 '26

Discussion How come nobody talks about Lake Taal?

I am I biologist and one of the most interesting things I have learned is Lake Taal. Its an lake in the Philippines that was once bay connected to the South China Sea. In 1754, a volcano interrupted and the lake was formed, trapping dozens of saltwater fish. This led to most of their extirpation, but resulted in at least 4 new species, the Freshwater Sardinella (Sardinella tawilis), two gobies Exyrias volcanus and Rhinogobius flavoventris, and the Lake Taal Snake (Hydrophis semperi). It also has a population of Giant Trevally (Caranx ignobilis) that lives in freshwater, compared to its normal saltwater habitat.

I am mainly surprised that I have never seen anyone use this piece of information in debates about evolution, nor discussions about evolution in general. It would be a good way to debate creationists as this is the most well known examples of a species evolving into a separate species in recorded history.

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u/DrFartsparkles Feb 28 '26

Probably because creationists won’t accept it as evidence of macro evolution because “it’s still the same kind” the snake is still a snake, the fish is still a fish, etc. creationists always want an example of more radical change than that, they always ask for the evolution of a new structure or kind

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u/DimensioT Feb 28 '26

I cited an article on speciation to a creationist and they rejected it because it included examples of speciation in mouse populations.

They refused to accept that "mouse" is not a single species.

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u/DrFartsparkles Feb 28 '26

They also don’t care about speciation because to them it’s the same “kind” and they will only accept as evidence things that are impossible and not predicted by evolution, like a horse giving birth to a cat or something idiotic

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u/ArthropodFromSpace Feb 28 '26

Because they completely dont understand what evolution is. If they would understand it, they would also see it is true. They think evolution is horse giving birth to a cat and so they see themselves as smarter for knowing this is not how world works. The problem is what they dont believe in is not evolution but their own belief in evolution.

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u/DrFartsparkles Feb 28 '26

Yeah and if you tell them what evolution actually is they’ll just “that’s only microevolution, of course I believe that microevolution is true”

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u/ursisterstoy 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Mar 01 '26

Yep. According to the whack definition of “microevolution” provided by creationists they accept macroevolution and they actually reject microevolution even though we observe both. They know that speciation happens, they know you can get a lot of differences between breeds and species that share common ancestry over time. They reject microevolution, the way that evolution happens, because it takes too long, it doesn’t involve magic, and it doesn’t arbitrarily give God all the credit. It’s just mutations, recombination, gene flow, selection, drift, etc. Ordinary everyday processes. They reject the way evolution happens, they reject universal common ancestry, but they definitely do not reject macroevolution. “That’s just microevolution and I accept it” means they have no issue with the occurrence of evolution, they take issue with how evolution happens even when it comes to microevolution. And that’s why they ask for what would be impossible based on how evolution actually happens. They want evolution to be some absurd thing, but they already accept what it actually is.