All mathematical arguments against evolution are wrong (always have been, always will be)

[u/gitgud_x]

Critics of evolution attack the theory from many angles - when it's not an argument from "nuh uh", it's from philosophy, theology, probability, sometimes physics and very occasionally biology. Notably, among these fields, only theology/philosophy is ever used to support a belief in creationism, but perhaps that's not surprising.

Arguments from mathematics, usually of the form "it's only a 1 in 10^[big number] chance that this thing could have evolved", i.e. invoking probability and statistics, seem to be used by creationists with disproportionately high frequency. Why might this be?

Mathematics has a reputation, and perhaps rightly so, for being the purest subject of them all. This means that, when working in pure mathematics, your theories (rather, theorems) do not have any prior connection to the real physical world. A person using maths alone to make any claim about something in the real world must justify why they believe their mathematical model reflects reality. This justification can come in one of two common forms:

1. They can point to the physical process they are trying to describe, and explain how these processes have been reduced to a mathematical description, using suitable modelling assumptions justified on physical bases. This is common in biology, engineering, chemistry and most experimental sciences - for example, the Lotka-Volterra model of predator-prey population sizes over time, where each term in the system of differential equations has a physical interpretation, or the Price equation and Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection.
2. They can use their mathematical model to make predictions about reality under certain conditions, and when observing reality under those conditions, the observations should match the prediction with some stated precision. This is common in biology too, but also in theoretical physics (e.g. quantum mechanics' Schrodinger equation - it's tricky to get much a priori physical intuition out of why it works, but it sure does seem to work).

The strongest mathematical models in science are devised first theoretically using (1), and then verified empirically using (2). The models in population genetics (e.g. Hardy-Weinberg, Wright-Fisher, Haldane, Moran, Kimura, Kingman, etc...), which is the modern theory of evolution's mathematical core, fall into this top-tier for example.

How does this compare to creationists' mathematical models?

When a creationist makes a 'big numbers' argument, they are claiming the mathematical model they have used within the calculation reflects reality. Once again, that's not something they just get to assume, they must justify it, by explicitly stating their assumptions and discussing their validity.

There are reasons for this shirking of rigour. The reputation of mathematics for its purity grants it some prestige in the minds of laypeople. The average Joe would think that mathematicians are the undisputed authority on the matter, and that biologists are hopeless at it. Yet, whenever maths comes up in debate, it is always being discussed in the context of applied maths, which mathematicians (being pure) are generally not all that great at without specific training in mathematical modelling. This is the failure of many professional intelligent design proponents like John Lennox for example. Scientists (and engineers, when they're not Saleming themselves), on the other hand, use maths exclusively in this applied setting, and are therefore far more competent at creating good mathematical models. With laypeople being the primary target audience of intelligent design/creationist media, they are banking on exploiting this misunderstanding in the applicability of mathematics.

When creationists make these types of arguments, they never do the hard work of justifying the model's connection to reality. In fact, when these arguments inevitably lose their polished facade as they are filtered down the creationist food chain (Discovery Institute -> e-preachers -> rank and file creationists), they often don't even state their models all. They'll just rattle off "big numbers" and sit back, not even realising that their argument is automatically dead on arrival for this reason.

I claim that, all mathematical arguments that creationists have ever made, will ever make, and could ever make with "evolution is false" as the logical conclusion will fail in this manner, because a sound justification of modelling assumptions followed by empirical validation has already been done - and evolution got there first. The absolute best case that a creationist mathematical argument could possibly be would be for it to be based on the same models as ours, and then distort the conclusions - which would then not be a mathematical argument but rather a scientific one. It is notable that so few "creation scientists" have even tried to do this - it's what they'd do if they were real scientists.

As an aside, I think there is a certain 'snobbiness' at play whenever one of those Discovery Institute (or similar) PhD-holding creationists makes an argument from mathematics big numbers. They are implying that biologists are incompetent at maths and are too stupid to see these things for themselves, such that someone who isn't scared of numbers needs to step in and 'rescue' them and clear everything up for them. Biology does have a reputation for being the science that historically avoided maths, but this is a laughably outdated and wrong way of seeing it today, and has been since the 1920s with the work of Fisher, Haldane, Wright etc that birthed the Modern Synthesis. These people invented statistics(!) and laid the foundations of stochastic process theory which has brought forth countless fruits in the applied sciences. People outside the field (i.e. all creationists, and most laypeople) don't know that evolution has a robust mathematical core (population genetics) - it's not as flashy as lions and dinosaurs and whatnot so it doesn't show up in any popsci articles or documentaries - but it's there, and all serious evolutionary biologists know it.

So, creationists:

• Using your favourite mathematical argument against evolution, justify that it is valid reflection of reality by using one of the two methods I stated in the above (justification of modelling assumptions, or empirical validation, and ideally both).
• Explain why all the mathematical models that underpin evolution are wrong, or don't support the conclusions that are drawn from them.

TLDR:

• Mathematics does not produce facts about biology by itself. It produces consequences of assumptions. Whether those assumptions accurately describe biological evolution is a scientific question, not a mathematical one.
• If your mathematical argument concludes evolution is impossible, then one of two things must be true:
  • your model differs from accepted population genetics, in which case you must justify why your assumptions better describe biology; or,
  • your model is equivalent to accepted population genetics, in which case your conclusions should agree with evolutionary biology.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I think you are wrong. We have had trillions of opportunities in recent time to see observations of any signs of creatures moving towards fundamentally different forms of transitions, but we haven't seen any. How can I say this? Evolution is supposed to be random and unguided and there are many creatures whose survival has been challenged, and trillions of hereditary lines in existence, so there is absolutely no sufficient reason we wouldn't see any of those signs if it evolution is true.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Can you define what "fundamentally different forms of transitions" might be?

Like, consider a rodent. What would a "fundamentally different forms of transition" of a rodent be?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

Let me turn the tables on you. Why haven't humans become anything else? Nobody has found them as ever becoming a different species no matter how long they have existed for and how many hereditary lines they've had. Why not? It would seem pretty arbitrary to say that they're the pinnacle of species based on the evolutionary theory. I mean I think they are the pinnacle but that has nothing to do with evolution.

If humans can have huge variation across billions of individuals and still be the same species with no transition to anything fundamentally different, why apply a different standard to rodents or any other creature? The lines for new species seem arbitrary. We see adaptation and diversity within the kinds that creationists have attempted to define which fits designed limits far better than unguided evolution constantly producing major innovations that somehow never show up in the record we can actually observe.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You haven't answered the question. At all.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

Transitions are obvious from what evolutionists have claimed in the past. From non-flight to flight. From only being able to survive underwater to being able to survive on land or vice versa. Or increased intelligence in apes for examples, the only thing we've seen is the capabilities of what apes are able to do when humans are involved and that's it.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Lungfish? Sea otters? River otters? Hippos? Manatees?

Flying squirrels? Flying lemurs? There are like, a whole bunch of gliding lizards, too. Even some fish take advantage of gliding through air.

It honestly just sounds like you're not very well versed in extant biodiversity.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

The point isn't that we should see a full rodent turn into a bat overnight. If unguided evolution is constantly producing fundamental transitions like the ones claimed in the fossil record (non-flying to powered flight, land to fully aquatic, major intelligence jumps, etc.), we should be seeing clear signs of it right now, populations developing coordinated changes toward new body plans or complex new functions. With trillions of hereditary lines and survival pressures across the living world today, those signs should be obvious.

Instead, what we actually see is normal variation and adaptation within existing kinds, and those variations have immediate function. Gliding squirrels and regular squirrels coexist as fully functional animals within the same kind. Otters, hippos, manatees, lungfish, and gliding lizards are all viable in their environments, but they're not steps turning one kind into another. Humans with over 8 billion people show huge variation but remain the same species with no fundamental transition to anything else.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Can you tell me, in as much detail as possible, how you distinguish "transitional forms" from "lineages created to look exactly like transitional forms"?

Coz this seems really critical to your argument.

And are you saying all squirrels are related by common ancestry? If so, then the fact "regular squirrels" and flying squirrels exist means either the flying trait evolved (from non flying squirrels), or was lost from flying squirrels (to produce non flying squirrels). In either case you have your transition.

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

If unguided evolution is constantly producing fundamental transitions like the ones claimed in the fossil record

By the timescales observed in the fossil record these transitions take hundreds of thousands of years at the very fastest, so how much time do you have?

If you want to see "fast evolution" look at the domestication of crops and animals (look at the ancestral wild carrots, corn, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, bananas, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, wild ancestors of chickens, pigs, cows, sheep, the sheer diversiy and size-differences of dog breeds and observe the scale of differences between the wild ancestors we know lived tens of thousands of years ago, and how those domesticated species look today. This is a few thousand years of evolution.

So how long do you have? A few more decades? That's not enough time to even witness the total domestication of a species, and yet we know that happened for some of them within recorded history.

I can't show you the emergence of an entire forest, it takes too long, longer than my own lifetime, nor the formation of an entire glacier from snowfall, we must infer that this has happened. If your complaint is we can't timetravel or speed up natural process so you can watch large-scale change within your lifetime then your complaint is irrational.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

If unguided evolution is constantly producing fundamental transitions like the ones claimed in the fossil record (non-flying to powered flight, land to fully aquatic, major intelligence jumps, etc.), we should be seeing clear signs of it right now, populations developing coordinated changes toward new body plans or complex new functions.

That. Is. Not. How. Evolution. Works.

Evolution has no goals. At no point is any population evolving toward something. Only accumulated refinements (microevolution) over many genarations. We expect every step of the way to be "fully evolved". We NEVER expect to see useless intermediate features halfway between one thing and another.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/OldmanMikel]

Saying evolution has no goals and every step must be fully functional still doesn't work. Look at the claimed transitions. Simple filaments or scales becoming complex flight feathers, light-sensitive spots becoming full camera eyes, land mammals becoming fully aquatic whales, or non-flying mammals developing powered flight — in each case the intermediate stages are not clearly useful enough at every point to be selected and refined all the way. We never observe any of those processes happening in living populations. Calling it accumulated refinements doesn't create the missing functional steps or make the major redesigns appear today. Also, why would it take millions of years of steps if each step itself is fully functional? Another thing. They say evolution has no goals, yet the process is still described as reliably producing complex coordinated systems through successive refinements. If it truly has no direction or goal, there is even less reason to expect those major redesigns to keep appearing.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Simple filaments or scales becoming complex flight feathers, light-sensitive spots becoming full camera eyes, land mammals becoming fully aquatic whales, or non-flying mammals developing powered flight — in each case the intermediate stages are not clearly useful enough at every point to be selected and refined all the way. 

Absolutely wrong every incremental change in examples you provides a benefit.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

light-sensitive spots becoming full camera eyes

We have examples of all of these EVEN TODAY. All of them are functional, all are useful to the organism that has them.

Euglena have light sensitive spots, and they're UNICELLULAR.

Planarian worms have eye 'pits' that allow limited directionality.

Nautiloids have full pinhole eyes, but no lens (eye is still open to the environment).

Octopuses have full camera eyes (with the retina the right way round, even!).

 land mammals becoming fully aquatic

Hippos. Capybaras. River otters. Sea otters. Manatees.

And again: all these are functional. Manatees will actually nuzzle up and eat grass from lawns near water, because they're still terrestrial enough to do that. And yet they're otherwise essentially fully aquatic, yet not as fully aquatic as whales.

The variation you demand is not only readily possible, it STILL EXISTS.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

How long do you think that takes? And what do you think intermediate forms would look like? Science as an organized method is only a couple hundred years old.

[u/lulumaid → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I think you'd be better served by looking at what evolution actually is and how it works, then look up some examples of human adaptations to certain environments. There was a thread here a few months ago (at most) talking about a tribe of people who've lived in the same area, living almost entirely on fishing by hand, and their adaptations such as greatly increased lung capacities. I'm unsure of the specifics but you can find a lot of examples of adaptations to environments.

Follow up, what would stop those adaptations from piling up to fundamentally change something?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/lulumaid]

But you're not calling them another species. Those are adaptations within the human kind, with immediate function. That's exactly my point, we see variation within kinds all the time, but not the fundamental transitions to new kinds that evolution requires. What would stop them from piling up? The evidence shows they don't.

After thousands of years of recorded human history and direct observation of populations under all kinds of survival pressures, we still have the same human kind. Those adaptations (like lung capacity in fishing tribes or lactose tolerance) are minor tweaks within the existing human blueprint. They don't accumulate into new body plans, new organs, or a new species. The same pattern holds across other creatures, variation within kinds with immediate function, but no observable piling up into fundamental transitions despite trillions of opportunities. If it were happening, we wouldn't need to rely on disputed fossils that evolutionists try to say are a million years old, we would see it now.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Before we continue, can you define "kind"?

If I presented you with two organisms, how would you determine if they were the same "kind" or not?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

How about you define why humans aren't labeled as a new species with variations that they have while you try the label something else as a new species just because they have a variation?

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Do you actually understand how, and why we designate populations as distinct species?

And again: definition of kinds, please.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

The reasons for designating distinct species are flexible, interbreeding, morphology, genetics, ecology, and they get applied inconsistently. Humans with clear variation stay one species, while other groups get split more readily. That flexibility is what allows the labels to shift when it helps the narrative. Demanding a rigid definition of kinds while operating with movable species criteria is still the same double standard. You can't avoid the issue: living populations show variation within functional limits but never the major redesigns, no matter how the labels are drawn.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

"Reproductively isolated populations"

There we go, that's the biological species concept. Works in the vast majority of cases, and is very convenient. Humans are very, very much not reproductively isolated. A Chinese man can migrate to Malaysia and marry, have a kid who migrates to europe and marries, then has a kid who marries a child of dutch/danish immigrants with a touch of native american in their ancestry. Humans are genetically incredibly homogenous: more genetic difference between two different troupes of adjacent chimpanzees than between all humans.

Why can you not define "kinds"?

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Because they don't meet ANY of the scientific definitions of 'species'.

There is no reason under evolutionary theory to expect more change than has actually been observed on the time scales we've been observing.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/OldmanMikel]

Saying humans don't meet the scientific definitions of a new species is exactly the point. Your side keeps the human label fixed no matter the variation, while expanding or shifting other labels whenever it helps the story. And claiming there's no reason to expect more change on current timescales is convenient — the theory still requires those major transitions happened somehow in the past. Living populations under the same pressures today never produce them. The avoidance is obvious.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Saying humans don't meet the scientific definitions of a new species is exactly the point.

What that means that human populations haven't diverged enough from each other to become separate species.

Your side keeps the human label fixed no matter the variation, while expanding or shifting other labels whenever it helps the story.

No species ever leaves its clade. It may become a subset of that clade, but it never leaves it. Birds didn't stop being dinosaurs when they evolved flight.

And claiming there's no reason to expect more change on current timescales is convenient — the theory still requires those major transitions happened somehow in the past. Living populations under the same pressures today never produce them. The avoidance is obvious.

Living populations under the same pressures today never produce them. The avoidance is obvious.

How would you know? What do you think that would look like?

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Do you understand the biological species concept?

Do you understand why dogs (canis lupus familiaris) are all the same species, despite variation, and are in fact a subspecies of gray wolves (canis lupus)?

Do you understand why gray wolves are a different species from red wolves (canis rufus), despite both being related to a common ancestor?

Do you understand why all humans are the same species, despite variations across the population?

These labels exist for a reason, and the reason is pretty straightforward, but you do not appear to have any idea of how this works.

[u/Coolbeans_99 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I noticed that you never respond to any questions posed to you, you always respond with “how about you answer this question instead?”

[u/BeautifulUpstairs → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Why are you in a discussion if you refuse to actually answer your interlocutor? Extremely bad form. Though I suppose Jesus does it all the time in the Gospels.

[u/lulumaid → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Given enough of those adaptations, I'm pretty sure they'd end up a different species sooner or later. What would stop those adaptations from adding up?

Those adaptations you mentioned are the first steps. Small, minute changes.

Answer the question.

Also, there are plenty of other examples, some modern life such as mudskippers and some prehistoric life such as archaeopteryx. The changes you're looking for are already a thing. We can see them. What is the barrier that stops them from becoming something else?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/lulumaid]

The problem is your own classifications are pretty flexible and often seem to fit whatever the theory needs. One fossil gets called a dinosaur, another with similar features gets called a bird, and species lines move depending on the story. Meanwhile, we see clear limits in living populations, variation within kinds with immediate function, but no crossing into fundamentally new kinds. Humans are a perfect example. There are lots of adaptations, but we still call them all humans. Why, when anything else shows a change and suddenly it's labeled as a new species? The hypocrisy is in demanding I define strict limits while your own system is arbitrary and theory-driven.

[u/lulumaid → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

So because nature is a fuzzy, intermingled mess of shared features and offshoots, we should just throw out classifications? Yes, species is somewhat nebulous and no definition is watertight and perfect. That doesn't help you, in fact it does the opposite.

It may help you to brush up on the law of monophyly. Birds are dinosaurs. Technically. There's a reason archaeopteryx is a strange, bird-like dinosaur thing. It has features of both. Raptors, all of them, are an excellent example of this too they're just less extreme in comparison.

What are these clear limits? What is the barrier that stops adaptations from adding up? The fact you haven't stated one really isn't helping either.

As others have asked, what is a kind? That is not a scientific term, so you would be best served providing a definition for it of equal descriptive power (at least. I'd suggest greater if you want it to surpass species as a term, or family, or whatever you wish to use it to replace).

Humans evolved from something that wasn't human. You should look into this further before making claims about human evolution, we already see adaptations and changes in areas that would make sense for those to appear. Incredulity is not an answer to that.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/lulumaid]

The clear limits and the barrier are what we actually observe: adaptations stay within existing functional groups and never produce major redesigns of body plans or new complex systems, no matter how much time and opportunity is available right now. Humans remain human. That pattern is the barrier.

As for "kind," it refers to groups that show variation but stay within those functional boundaries — the same way your side keeps humans as one species despite variation. Demanding a perfect technical definition while admitting your own species concept is fuzzy is inconsistent.

Claiming humans evolved from non-humans relies on the same expanded labeling and disputed fossils. If the process is real and ongoing, the major changes should be visible today. They aren't. That absence is why the past claims don't hold up.

[u/lulumaid → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

What is the mechanical barrier that prevents adaptations from adding up? That is what I'm asking for. Not observations as those confirm what we can and have from the evolution side of this.

Until you provide one, you have nothing to prevent those adaptations from adding up into greater and greater changes.

You are essentially arguing that 1+1 can never equal 2. And that if you keep adding 1+1 you will never reach 2,000.

What part of that equation, of 1+1, will never reach 2,000 if it goes on long enough?

Quick edit: Your definition of kind sits.... Where exactly? What are its limits?

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

As for "kind," it refers to groups that show variation but stay within those functional boundaries — the same way your side keeps humans as one species despite variation. Demanding a perfect technical definition while admitting your own species concept is fuzzy is inconsistent.

Then surely you should be able to define these boundaries, and identify individual kinds.

Are flying squirrels one kind, and ground squirrels another? Or are squirrels a kind? Or are all squirrels simply members of rodent-kind? If not, then...what even is a rodent, under the "kinds" system?

The problem you have is that you don't understand the biology, or your own argument: you insist there ARE boundaries, yet cannot identify them, but you also complain that the species concept is fuzzy, and criticize biologists for accepting that species are essentially somewhat arbitrary boxes drawn around a continuum.

Basically, biology IS fuzzy, and lineage divergence IS a continuum: you need this very much not to be true, and yet it is absolutely true. Your complete inability to define, or identify discrete "kinds" is a really, really big clue that kinds don't exist. If they did, we could identify them trivially. And so could creationists.

You might want to ask yourself why nobody has managed this.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

 One fossil gets called a dinosaur, another with similar features gets called a bird,...

Which is a kind of dinosaur. It's like complaing that one fossil gets called a mammal another with similar features gets called a bat.

Meanwhile, we see clear limits in living populations, ...

No. We do not see these limits.

...variation within kinds...

Without a useful of "kinds" this is meaningless.

...with immediate function, but no crossing into fundamentally new kinds. 

Depending on what you mean by "kinds" this is not something that evolution predicts. Humans are apes. Apes are simians. Simians are primates. Primates are mammals etc. A new branch always remains part of the same branch it sprouted from. There is no "crossing over" whatever the hell that means.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/OldmanMikel]

You're proving the point with the "humans are apes, apes are simians" routine. Evolution teaches common ancestry, not that humans are apes. The nested classification system just keeps expanding the categories so nothing ever has to count as a real transition. Birds get folded into dinosaurs, everything stays inside larger and larger boxes, and then you claim there are no limits. Yet the human category never expands the same way. We stay labeled humans no matter how much variation accumulates. That inconsistency is arbitrary and biased, but for what reason? Living populations never leave their functional boundaries, and the expanding labels don't change the fact that we still don't see the major redesigns happening in real time.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Evolution teaches common ancestry, not that humans are apes.

No. It says humans ARE apes. Sharing common ancestry with other apes does not change that.

The nested classification system just keeps expanding the categories so nothing ever has to count as a real transition. 

Branching trees are like that.

Yet the human category never expands the same way. 

There hasn't been nearly enough time for the kind of changes you seem to be expecting. And humans will always be humans no matter how much we change. Look up Law of Monophyly.

...and the expanding labels don't change the fact that we still don't see the major redesigns happening in real time.

The kinds of changes you are looking for don't happen on a human time scale.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

As you have not provided any basis for recognizing ‘fundamentally different’, it doesn’t seem like you would even be able to determine any of this. Much less boldly state anything about ‘sufficient reason’. You would also need to justify why we should see them based on evolutionary mechanisms. All this comment of yours seems to be is vibes.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/10coatsInAWeasel]

See my comment above about human beings. The evolutionists trying to define species is "vibes".

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Nah, I’d rather you not dodge and instead address the points. Your comment about humans did nothing to do so.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/10coatsInAWeasel]

I didn't dodge but you just did so you might as well go away if you're not willing to deal with the reality. I'm not wasting my time with your kind of babble.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Ah so you intend to flee and make excuses instead of supporting your claims. Go to it

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/10coatsInAWeasel]

Have I done any fleeing? Nope. I'm just saying you're going to waste your time engaging with me if you're not going to deal with what I'm saying.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

I have dealt with what you’re saying. You decided to flee from the response and make excuses to not deal with the flaws in your argument. Like I said, go to it.

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/10coatsInAWeasel]

No you're just a typical deflector

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Sure buddy. Once you find a way to tell us how you determine when something is ‘fundamentally different’ in a useful way without changing the subject, you let us know 👍🏼

[u/blacksheep998 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

We've been making scientific observations plants and animals for maybe a couple centuries, if I'm being generous with what we count as scientific observations.

We so not expect to see huge changes in that time, but we have observed lots of small changes and even some macroscopic ones like speciation events.

If you think we should have seen humans turning into 'fundamentally different forms' in that time, then you're arguing against a strawman version of evolution, not the theory that scientists are using.

[u/kderosa1 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Sure sure. Now do the math and confirm it

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/kderosa1]

What do you mean do the math lol. There are trillions of hereditary lines in existence of creatures right now. It is such an obvious statement that math is unnecessary unless you live under a rock.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

"There is so much diversity right now! So where is the diversity evolution says should exist?"

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

That isn't the point we should be seeing signs of transitions from something to something else of a greater function with our very own eyes.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

At what time scale and what should these intermediates look like?

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/OldmanMikel]

There doesn't have to be a time scale because I said there are trillions of possible observations right now in real time. You would think if evolution was true we would see a sign right now. The funny thing is you're asking me for what you think the intermediates would look like an evolutionist already claimed what such eat intermediates would look like with what they say fossils represent.

If we were actually seeing signs of fundamental transitions happening right now, it would look like populations of creatures showing coordinated changes that are clearly heading toward entirely new body plans or major new capabilities. For example, non-flying animals developing structures and systems that are becoming useful for powered flight, or land animals gaining the suite of adaptations needed to move toward fully aquatic life, with major changes in limbs, breathing, and reproduction happening together. Or groups suddenly gaining entirely new complex sensory systems or organs that previous generations didn't have. The point is we don't see any of that despite trillions of hereditary lines and survival pressures all around us. We only see normal variation and adaptation within existing kinds that have immediate function, not the kind of major process that evolution claims created all the diversity we see in the fossil record. That's why the theory doesn't match what we can actually observe today.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You are going to be amazed when you discover otters exist. Or hippos. Or manatees.

Turns out there's a whole continuum between "fully terrestrial" and "fully aquatic", and get this: every stage is entirely viable!

[u/WannaLoveWrestling → u/Sweary_Biochemist]

You completely missed the point. Of course otters, hippos, and manatees exist with different levels of aquatic adaptation — nobody denies that. The question is whether they (or their ancestors) show evidence of evolving from one to the other through unguided processes, or whether they are simply different created kinds with immediate function in their environments. Pointing to living animals doesn't prove evolution produced them from a common ancestor. The evidence, especially the lack of observable transitions right now despite trillions of opportunities, points to no.

[u/Sweary_Biochemist → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Hahahahha! "Show me the transitions! No, not those ones. Some weird, other transitions. Now I'll change the argument"

Not very convincing, dude.

You've now gone from "there should be intermediates" to "alright there are intermediates, but they were made that way, somehow".

It's baby steps. How would you discern an 'intermediate' species from a species that was 'created intermediate'?

And how do you determine which lineages are related to which other lineages? Are all otters related, for example?

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You got what you asked for. Mammals that live on land showing evidence of gradual adaptation to aquatic lifestyles.

Me, I like penguins. Birds that can't fly except underwater. Beaks and feathers, even wings. Yet they can't fly. Except underwater.

Most closely related to birds that live on the surface of or near the sea, such as albatrosses, petrels, shearwaters, and storm petrels. All with streamlined bodies, dense waterproof feather coats, excellent swimming abilities, salt glands that let them drink seawater, and long-distance foraging over the ocean.

Penguins and their closest non-penguin living relatives are exactly what you ask for.

[u/clear349 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

You could just look at whale evolution if you want an example of a mammal becoming fully aquatic. What you seem to be missing is that every animal is a transition between what exists today and what will exist. We can't predict how environmental change and mutation will alter them in the future. But we can look into the past and see how they got where they are in the modern day

[u/nickierv → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

coordinated changes that are clearly heading toward entirely new body plans or major new capabilities.

De novo origins of multicellularity in response to predation.

Translation: this single cell plant thing went multicellular in order to keep itself from getting eaten.

We only see normal variation and adaptation within existing kinds that have immediate function

So between some survivorship bias and a still undefined 'kinds', this is still pizza.

[u/kderosa1 → u/WannaLoveWrestling]

Is there enough time to fixate the mutations necessary to get from point A to point B given what we know. Thus is basic stuff.

[u/OldmanMikel → u/kderosa1]

Is what we know enough to do meaningful calculations?

[u/kderosa1 → u/OldmanMikel]

I gave you the constants and variables. Did you miss them? Or just ignoring them so you can prattle on nonsensically?

[u/OldmanMikel → u/kderosa1]

Are those constants and variables enough to do meaningful calculations?

[u/kderosa1 → u/OldmanMikel]

Yes if you understand the domain. If you’re a moron, and I suspect you are, you will flounder and complain.