What we know and observe now about evolution is applied to origins arguments, yes? Or no?
Here it is. Strange behavior.
@thoughtful, thanks for the input because I agree that even though you started the thread without deep-time involved, it was the evolutionists here who actually brought deep-time into the discussion, not you. They accused you of bringing up deep-time when they were the ones who did it first.
I am waiting to hear the responses to @thoughtful 's post here.
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Sure, but that isn’t what you were talking about. And if you want to change subjects to that, we should finish the topic you mentioned first, first.
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It’s an uncontroversial point within a naturalistic framework that the processes we see working in the world around us now can also be applied to the past and future.
(I have a whole TED talk about how scientific theories have descriptive, predictive and explanatory power.)
Creationists tend to create a discontinuity between current observations and origins, but it is not evident in the natural world.
Agree. It was brought by others into this conversation. It wasn’t my first goal. I wanted to understand evolutionary biology. And also how it applies to origins. But if the rules change, then I’m not going to keep up. 
I appreciate rules being bent though. Since English was my major in college, and genetics is sort of like language, once you know the rules of grammar, you can ignore them occasionally. Probably not a great analogy to what’s happening here. 
Oh well.
Link to your TED talk please.
Hehe, I was slightly exaggerating/using an expression, but this article I wrote does the job:
You realize that they are proving evolution as an origins theory is wrong based on current observations right?
The classical modes of evolution are selection, mutation, drift, and gene flow. HGT is a form of gene flow, so it isn’t even bending the rules.
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Who is ‘they’ in this claim? And which specific elements of the modern evolutionary synthesis are ‘they’ proving wrong?
Biological evolution is not an origins theory, so what is being disproved?
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Ok, I suppose I have to read through the original paper. It was just unexpected in this research?
Thought as much. My YouTube search for a video recording turned up empty. Thanks for the link.
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Origin of life itself in the abiogenesis sense, no, but origin of biological diversity? I think it does that.
‘Origins’ encompasses at least the beginning of the universe, the beginning of life and the diversification of life. It’s the explanation of why the world is as we see it now.
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I don’t think it was even unexpected, but the exact parameters hadn’t been tested empirically.
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I really don’t understand. Evolution is this and not that. It can be applied to origins but it can’t be applied. Everyone on the thread seems to be talking both ways.
No, they use it as an explanation of some of the observed differences among species, especially the adaptive ones.
Yes, that author doesn’t understand neutral or nearly neutral evolution, and he apparently doesn’t understand the lengthy history of those concepts in biology. Some biologists, sadly, are confused about evolution.
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I think also this thread has run into a common problem: the scientists write the paper, then the university marketing department gets onto it, then the headline writer of the popular magazine gets onto it… and the headline bears little or no relationship to the science.
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Here’s the actual title and info of the scientific paper:
- Laura C. Woods, Rebecca J. Gorrell, Frank Taylor, Tim Connallon, Terry Kwok, Michael J. McDonald. Horizontal gene transfer potentiates adaptation by reducing selective constraints on the spread of genetic variation . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 2020; 202005331 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2005331117
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