"Change kinds" is something that only people who believe in a rather literal view of the Christian bible say, and only because that's the popular fundamentalist argument against evolution.
Fundamentally, it's impossible to reconstruct something from the fossil record that's convincing to these folks, because they will always arbitrarily decide "fossil 1 is kind X, and fossil 2 is kind Y, you need to find me fossil 1.5," no matter how close in time and likeness the fossils are.
So what they actually want is "evolve a lizard species into cats" which fundamentally misrepresents both A) how evolution works (it does not concern itself with human categories) and B) the vast timescale over which small changes accrue.
"Kinds" are just human categories we've mapped onto the results of billions of years of evolution after the fact.
The entire fossil record and the mountains of shared DNA between very different creatures is pretty compelling evidence. Not to mention the idea of changing 'kinds' is an entirely human-derived categorisation, not something that has some natural definition.
Easy. Covid evolved forms. The genes are different. There are measurable differences in DNA. These are slight.
So from real time observation we know viruses and bacteria can mutate and have small delta changes in their DNA.
From this we can deduce that over long period of time many small changes can equate to big changes in DNA.
Because we know DNA describes macro characteristics of all living beings and effects behavior, physicality and speciation by logic we know that through induction many many small changes together equals big change and thus evolution can result in speciation and different creatures.
This is the literal conclusion through Direct observation and the inescapable logic of induction. Not to mention it's inline with fossil evidence AND covid is clearly not the only species where we observe mutations. Mutations are observed everywhere, including humans. Cancer is mutation and selection as well.
fwip|3 months ago
Fundamentally, it's impossible to reconstruct something from the fossil record that's convincing to these folks, because they will always arbitrarily decide "fossil 1 is kind X, and fossil 2 is kind Y, you need to find me fossil 1.5," no matter how close in time and likeness the fossils are.
So what they actually want is "evolve a lizard species into cats" which fundamentally misrepresents both A) how evolution works (it does not concern itself with human categories) and B) the vast timescale over which small changes accrue.
"Kinds" are just human categories we've mapped onto the results of billions of years of evolution after the fact.
cozyman|3 months ago
rcxdude|3 months ago
threethirtytwo|3 months ago
So from real time observation we know viruses and bacteria can mutate and have small delta changes in their DNA.
From this we can deduce that over long period of time many small changes can equate to big changes in DNA.
Because we know DNA describes macro characteristics of all living beings and effects behavior, physicality and speciation by logic we know that through induction many many small changes together equals big change and thus evolution can result in speciation and different creatures.
This is the literal conclusion through Direct observation and the inescapable logic of induction. Not to mention it's inline with fossil evidence AND covid is clearly not the only species where we observe mutations. Mutations are observed everywhere, including humans. Cancer is mutation and selection as well.
cozyman|3 months ago
Macro Evolution has always seemed like a philosophy/ideology/religion to me with a veneer of science.