Quote:
Originally posted by asaris
CSflim -- you're not really being fair to creationists. It seems to me to be a valid point that there's a difference between evolution within a species and evolution between species.
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Well, if that is the challenege then what should be said is:
"Nobody has ever observed speciation".
But saying "nobody has observed
evolution" just
sounds so much more impressive, doesn't it? (Too bad that it happens to be false)
The claim that no one has observed speciation is similarly a lie. Take breeds of dogs. There are breeds of dogs which cannot produce viable offspring, and hence are of a "different species". Now certainly no
one person has seen speciation occur among dogs, it has happened over many generations. Regardless, doesn't change the fact that it was observed (and directed in some cases).
This is simply the most well known case, but there are plenty of cases of observed speciation.
Actually observing speciation in a single lifetime is of course very difficult, given that
a)Even small changes are painfully slow to evolve
b)Speciation requires massive changes in a creature
So speciation takes a
looong time. Regardless, we still have quite a number of examples of observatuons of speciation,
See
Observed Instances of Speciation by Joseph Boxhorn for an introduction to the concepts of what a species is, and what speciation is, along with plenty of examples of speciation being observed.
and also
some more observed speciation events