args

Evidence that mutation is the cause of change in evolution has not been proven

I wish to thank my opponent for his arguments. Pro claims I did not have sources for R1. I did. I, unfortunately, forgot to add them, and so I added them to the commments section instead. If the voters wish to penalize me for it, so be it. I apologize, but Pro still should have brought up why he wasn't responding to them in R2, as I would have directed him to the comments. Pro brings up a catastrophe argument. This i addressed with punctuated equilibrium. I said that as environments change (which is part of any environmental catastrophe), the forms that used to be tolerable were not longer tolerable, and evolution, or a break from stasis, happens[1]. Punctuated equilibrium explains why forms change so rapidly after catstrophes, and why previously succeassful forms die out. Pro then attacks punctuated equilibrium, calling it untestable and a "metaphysical idea". I do not understand where this comes from. Punctuated equilibrium can be tested. If, in the fossil record, we were to identify a place where the environment changed rapidly, we could then test it. If animal forms continued to evolve slowly and did not really react to the change, punctuated equilibrium is wrong. If the survivors rapidly diversify to take advantage of their new environment, punctuated equilibrium is roght. We can identify such a time and place; it is the K/T extinction event, where the dinosaurs died out. That, for sure, was a huge change in environment. Right after the K/T event, there were approximately 40 genera and 10 families of mammal[4]. 10 million years later, there were between 130 and 200 genera, 78 families and about 4,000 species[2,4]. That is rapid, punctuated diversification from a mammalian body plan that had worked well since their emergence in the Triassic - 150 mya before K/T. In 10 million years, they had diversified to almost 8 times as many families of mammals. That is evidence and is a scenario in which the predictions of punctuated equilibirum proved true. Archaeopteryx, according to Pro, is an "odd creature", completely isolated and not surrounded by close relatives. I would direct readers to Ornitholestes, a dinosaur with a similar body structure, living at the same time and place, who was closely related and is a viable predecessor[9]. Later, Jeholornis, the first known bird, appeared, and is very much a more advanced version of Archaeopteryx[10]. Pro, it seems, did not read the article on the nylon-eating bacteria. The article clearly showed that a double replication followed by a frameshift mutation caused the change in the enzymes, allowing them to consume nylon. Pro talks of transposase enzymes, which function to move genes around the genome[3]. They do not change the gene or mutate it in any way unless they, too, are deficient because of a mutation. Pro then asks why extremely sturdy bacteria have not evolved. The answer is they have. Take extremophiles, which can survive in temperatures as high as 125 degrees Celsius, as low as -15 degrees C, a high a pH as 9 and as low a pH as 2[6]. Pro's questions about why malaria hasn't evolved to handle colder temperatures do not take into account that the type of host may also be important, and making malaria resistant to cold would not solve that issue. As for Pro's comments on fruit flies - here, he is not discussing macroevolution. He is not discussing mutation. He is discussing microevolution, or the change in allelic frequencies (an allele being the different versions of a gene[7]) in a population[8]. The study was not creating any mutations, and the flies' genomes were unchanged. They were changing allelic frequencies in the population, and it is completely unrelated to the resolution. Thus, the resolution is negated. I wish to thank my opponent for this engaging debate, and Vote Con! Due to the length my sources will, again, be posted in the comments.