u/DarwinZDF42

Video version.

 

We've all heard some variant of "we can only observe microevolution", "we've never seen macroevolution", etc.

First thing you do is establish the correct definition: Evolution above the species level (in other words, speciation or greater degrees of evolutionary change). That's the definition. Creationists want their own special definition that varies from person to person but is usually something like "new body plans/parts", "new complex structures", something like that. That's wrong. If you accept speciation, you accept macroevolution. If creationists want to dispute something else, make THEM articulate clearly. Don't help them by saying something like "It sounds like you mean something like evolution of a new phylum or new body plan". No, make THEM establish the standard clearly and using the correct words.

 

Once they do that, you can just provide a bunch of examples, and dare them to say they aren't macroevolution.

Some of my favorites are multicellularity (and also here), reproductive mode, and photosynthetic animals.

 

Best outcome is the creationists admits that yes, even by their bespoke definition, these are examples of macroevolution. Second best outcome is they do the opposite and claim this is all just "microevolution". Really? First of all, lol okay. But second and more important, great! "Microevolution" can accomplish all this? Not much need for "macroevolution", is there?

Video: Directly Observed Mutation Rates Disprove Young Earth Creationism

I've covered a bunch of reasons the YEC calculations of a recent "mitochondrial eve", the mitochondrial most recent common ancestor, are wrong.

 

But here's another!

We have directly measured mutation rates in the mitochondrial DNA going back to known common ancestors in the pretty recent past (centuries, rather than millennia or longer), and if you calculate the time to most recent common ancestor based on those directly observed rates calculated from known points in the past, you get numbers that are tens of thousands of years behond the YEC timeline.

Here are the three studies I briefly cover that are useful and convenient to smack down the YEC position:

Soodyall et al., 1997, on the Tristan da Cunha lineage

King et al., 2014, on identifying the remains of Richard III based on his mtDNA lineage (via his sister)

Connell et al., 2022, on the Norfolk Island population

If you take the these back linearly, you get TMRCAs of 44-60 thousand years, and it's worth noting that you can't just take these rate back linearly. Because of selection, the substitution rate is a curve; the rate slows the further back you go. So these simple calculations are unrealistically friendly to the YEC position. And yet...44-60 thousand years.

YECs don't have a leg to stand on, here.

EDIT: I recorded the above video first, so this paper isn't in it, but if you want another example, Arnadottir et al. 2024 provides yet another example: https://youtu.be/gnuhi-Te0ZI?si=Wjuy7wf8kGi_8t1O

Bonus in this one: I included the numbers for Neanderthals, because Neanderthals are post-flood in most YEC models, so you have to account for their divergence as well. Gets you about 50kya.

Video version

 

I know we've been talking a lot about the recent debate on "genetic entropy" between Dr. Zach Hancock (/u/talkpopgen) and Paul Price (can't link a reddit account because he keeps deleting them), but I wanted to highlight the most important moment of the debate for everyone.

 

The format was opening-cross-opening-cross, and Paul went first, and the important part happened in Zach's five-minute cross-examination immediately after. Click the video link at the very top of this post to watch the actual exchange, but basically what happened is Zach got Paul to admit that 1) slightly beneficial and slightly harmful mutations do NOT behave the same as strictly neutral mutations, and 2) proportionally fewer beneficial mutations can compensate for the effects of proportionally more harmful mutations.

And...that's it! Debate over. "Genetic entropy" relies on 1) slightly harmful mutations cannot be selected out of a population, and 2) beneficial mutations cannot compensate for the accumulation of those harmful mutations.

In those 5 minutes, Paul conceded that both points are wrong. He didn't realize it, but that was the end of the debate right there. So I want to make sure everyone gets the importance of what happened there.

 

Genetic entropy is fake. It's popgen fanfic. The data prove it, and Paul, a committed young earth creationist, a former writer for CMI and AiG, agreed. The end.