First, huge fan of your work. Regardless of what we happen to agree or disagree on.
I'd encourage you to take a look at PROBABILITY ZERO which is presently the #1 bestseller in Biology on Amazon and very clearly demonstrates the mathematical impossibility of natural selection accounting for much in the way of variation, much less speciation. One thing that will very likely surprise you is that the top mathematicians and physicists have known that it was nonsense since 1966, when they absolutely destroyed Mayr, the father of the Modern Synthesis, and three other top biologists at the Wistar Symposium.
However, they didn't have access to the genomic data that we do now, so the biologists were able to very convincingly play dumb, since the transcript shows they didn't understand what the mathematicians were talking about anyhow. Now that we have the data, it's easy to show that at its absolute peak, natural selection can only account for a maximum of 0.00013 percent of the observed genomic differences between Man and the CHLCA.
I've also written a paper providing empirical evidence supporting Haldane's substitution limit. There is no "dilemma" because he was right all along and his limit is consistent with the MITTENS limit. It's under embargo right now, but I'd be happy to email it to you along with the ebook if you like.
The book also addresses parallel fixation, neutral theory, and drift in detail, and even provides a more accurate fixation model than Wright-Fisher or Kimura, because insects and humans don't reproduce like bacteria.
Hey Vox Day, thanks for the kind words, and I appreciate your serious and rigorous effort at taking on the current paradigm in biology, even though I do agree with that paradigm. But I fear we are at cross-purposes. You are focusing exclusively on neo-Darwinism, “differentiation on a genetic level,” and whether the morphological differences between marine iguanas of Galapagos and the bright green iguanas of Ecuador (or the spiny-tailed iguanas of Latin America) are the result of an accumulation of beneficial random mutations. But Charles Darwin never wrote about genes, genetics, mutation, or, of course, neo-Darwinism. These are ideas that were unknown at the time, and my comic never mentions this either. What is more, you seem to agree with the thrust of Darwin’s conclusions on the origin of morphological differentiation of marine iguanas and even use his language and his discoveries. You also seem to agree with every panel of my comic (except perhaps for quibbling with the centuries-old and popular use of the term “species”--so let's agree to change that to "type").
Correct me if I'm wrong but it appears that:
1) Unlike nearly all of civilization prior to 1859, you accept that marine iguanas of Galapagos and green iguanas of Ecuador are actually related and descend from the same ancestors.
2) You accept that a population of South American iguanas that had rafted (or somehow made it) to Galapagos experienced “dramatic local adaptations” on Galapagos, resulting in a great “morphological and physiological gulf” between marine iguanas and their continental counterparts.
Well, that's the entire point of the comic, which is based on Darwin's main points. And I would like to stress that prior to Darwin’s great discovery, Victorians believed that marine iguanas, spiny-tailed iguanas, green iguanas were all independently created. But as you, Darwin, and that comic point out: nope, they are closely related—and descend from a common ancestor—and the morphological differences of marine iguanas are the result of “dramatic local adaptations" occurring on Galapagos.
The text of the article implies that the comic expresses a truth that conflicts with my Christian beliefs about God and creation, but when I examine the comic I don't find anything that frustrates those beliefs so I'm genuinely confused as to why you made the connection.
Yes, sorry! You’re right. Agreed, biologists use the term “directional” in that sense. But I wanted to stress it’s not teleological or directed toward an end (and I know that’s not what you were saying.)
I would argue that every natural thing has an inherent natural end. It's the reason cause/effect repeatability exists. Acorns are inherently directional toward producing oak trees, not randomly toward producing elephants or ice cubes. We're getting into Scholastic philosophical arguments, which is WAY off topic, but I do agree with them - if you couldn't tell already. Sorry for the deviation Dennis. I've cluttered up your substack so I will end it here. Cheers!
Well, I agree the title is provocative, but I do have Creationists deny the claims of the comic quite frequently. Also, if you agree that continental iguanas reached Galapagos and then evolved, transforming over generations into the marine iguanas that inhabit them today, then, at least in this case, you agree to an evolutionary rather than religious explanation for the origins of marine iguanas--and accept one of Darwin's most compelling arguments from "On the Origin of Species."
As for me, I agree with both explanations. If Vox Day's book is correct, the science over the past few decades shows that Darwin actually explained very little.
Well, I'm not trying to be a wise guy here, but, as I understand it, either God zapped marine iguanas into existence in the Garden of Eden or they evolved on Galapagos from a South American population that had rafted there. I don't see how these views overlap.
I don't think you're being a wise guy. There's another option besides God "zapping" things into existence, and that option is God working through, or with, the natural order to achieve various goals/natural ends. One of those goals/natural ends being speciation. To be more specific, in my view, the reason both explanations are needed is because in the midst of all of that random mutation going on we have natural selection taking place, which is non-random and directional. Non-random effects require something, which I believe is God, to maintain that orderliness over time and keep it from devolving into chaos. Much more has been said on this topic so you can look into it if you wish.
Well, “fixed boliological reality” is your first mistake. First thing an inventory of the natural world confirms is just how malleable species are. It’s proved in labs, proved with livestock, proved with dogs, proved in the fossil record, proved with biogeography. Refusing to see any of this because of a fairytale your mother told you when you were five is exactly what I think you’re trying to suggest with the phrase, “fake and gay.” Smile and wink.
Well, you thought wrong, again. Smile and wink. 'Fixed reality' is the 450-million-year stasis of sharks and other 'living fossils' such as the coelacanth, horseshoe crabs, Wollemi pines, ginkgo, sponges, brachiopods, crocodilians, and sturgeons to name a few. To get thousands of such mutations to 'fix' in the correct order to create a shark or a dragonfly requires more time than the universe has existed. This is the Divergence Problem: if you use the 'slow-mutation' defense of bradytely to explain 400 million years of stasis, you've mathematically destroyed the time needed for all life to diverge from a single cell. Dogs, finches, and livestock demonstrate horizontal variation; your fish-to-philosopher leap is vertical fantasy. Evolution is 'fake' because of the 0.00013% fixation rate, and it is 'gay' considering the fairytale of the primordial soup. Just as Narcissus looked into the pool and saw only himself, a dividing cell looks at its progeny and sees only its own reflection. There is no genetic 'stranger' involved, and Probability Zero shows that the transition to complex sexual reproduction is impossible regardless of vast timescales. This is homosexual narcissism peering into the primordial soup—a fluidity that the fossil record rejects. The 3.5-billion-year stasis of cyanobacteria, along with thousands of unchanged species, is proof against the gay fairytale of evolution by natural selection.
I'm about to answer every question above while you can't the simplest ones--like why do human fossils never appear with any dinosaur fossils? Or where do endemic island animals come from?
Anyway, evolution is proved repeatedly by: paleontology, stratigraphy, radiometric dating, comparative anatomy, homology, vestigial structures, comparative genomics, molecular genetics, population genetics, phylogenetics, molecular clocks, biogeography, island biogeography, evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo), embryology, comparative embryology, endogenous retroviruses, chromosomal fusion evidence, experimental evolution, artificial selection, observed speciation, transitional fossils, horizontal gene transfer, microbial evolution, antibiotic resistance evolution, genetic drift, natural selection studies, ancient DNA analysis, proteomics, and systems biology.
“Horizontal variation” is not a scientific category. It’s rhetoric.
Speciation is vertical divergence. We observe it in real time.
4. “Thousands of mutations in the correct order”
This assumes evolution works like scooping up millions of random mutations, tossing them into the air, and hoping they land assembled into a shark or a wing. That is not how evolution operates. Mutations arise one at a time in populations of organisms that are already fully functional. Each mutation is filtered immediately by natural selection and genetic drift. If it is harmful, it is usually eliminated. If it is neutral, it may drift. If it is beneficial—even slightly—it can spread. Evolution is cumulative, not combinatorial. It has workable intermediates at every stage--and the fossil record confirms this.
5. Cyanobacteria and “3.5 billion years of stasis”
Stromatolites appear early in the fossil record and persist today.
But Cyanobacteria diversified enormously. Their genomes show extensive evolution
Oxygenic photosynthesis itself transformed the planet (Great Oxygenation Event)
6. Sexual reproduction and “Probability Zero”
Sex did not appear fully formed in a single step.
Evolutionary biology has extensive work on:
Horizontal gene transfer in early microbes
Cell fusion
Meiosis evolving from DNA repair systems
Stepwise advantages of recombination
Sex increases genetic variation and helps purge deleterious mutations (Muller’s ratchet). It’s not impossible—it’s advantageous under many conditions.
There is no credible mathematical demonstration that sex is impossible over deep time.
7. “Fish to philosopher”
No one believes a fish laid eggs and out popped a philosopher: The broad evolutionary sequence from fish to philosopher—all shown in the fossil record-- proceeds from early jawless fish to jawed fish, then to lobe-finned fish and lungfish-like sarcopterygians, followed by early tetrapods that bridged the fish–amphibian transition, then amphibians, early amniotes, reptile-like amniotes, synapsids on the mammal line, pelycosaurs, therapsids, cynodonts, early mammals, mammaliaformes, true mammals, placental mammals, early primates, anthropoid primates, Old World monkeys and apes, early apes, great apes, hominins, australopithecines, early members of the genus Homo, Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, and ultimately Plato, Socrates, etc.
8. The “stasis destroys divergence time” claim
Evolution is not a constant-rate morphing process.
Different lineages evolve at different rates: Some undergo rapid adaptive radiation.
Some sit in stable niches for long periods. Rate heterogeneity is expected.
Anway, evolution does not require constant visible novelty. It requires heritable variation, mutation, and differential survival.
Those are observed facts.
If someone thinks 400 million years of morphological conservation disproves divergence from a common ancestor, they haven’t grappled with how population genetics actually works.
And the math—real math, not rhetorical math—doesn’t collapse under scrutiny.
It holds. As I have shown over, and over, and over again
I appreciate your time Mr. McCarthy, but you are mistaken yet again and I didn’t ask any questions. And all you’ve “shown over, and over, and over again” is a standard, high-level "Defense of the Narrative" that has been the academic consensus since the late 1960s. Defending the natural history museum by pointing at the plaques on the wall.
Human and dinosaur fossils do not appear together because of ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, etc. They occupied different biomes at different elevations and were buried sequentially during a catastrophic event, much like you do not find elephants or polar bears or penguins mixed in the wild today.
Endemic island animals are the result of post-catastrophe migration and horizontal variation, where animals adapt by isolating or losing existing genetic traits through a reshuffling of the pre-existing deck rather than a vertical gain of new information.
Your 8 Points:
1 and 5. Claiming internal genomic change occurred while physical fossils remained identical for eons is an unfalsifiable ghost variable because you have no 400-million-year-old control genome to check against, making your claim of diversification an unscientific speculation rather than an observed fact.
Your 1960s 1/2N formula for single neutral mutations is mathematically irrelevant to the waiting time problem, which demonstrates that coordinated mutations required for vertical complexity cannot fixate within the assumed age of the universe.
Speciation is observed as a horizontal loss or isolation of information, but there is zero evidence for the vertical gain of a novel, complex organ system, as a dog becoming a chihuahua remains strictly within its kind.
Natural selection lacks the foresight to preserve neutral or slightly harmful intermediates that offer no benefit today, meaning that without immediate function, any workable intermediate is erased by genetic drift long before the next piece of the puzzle can arrive.
Male and female reproductive hardware must be fully functional, compatible, and present simultaneously on day one, as any stepwise transition results in immediate sterility and extinction.
Your opening to point 7 was funny, but your fish-to-philosopher sequence is built on ghost lineages, relying on imagination to connect disparate, fully formed fossil groups across massive anatomical gaps. And supposed transition fossils are simply extinct species like any other, no gaps bridged.
You cannot mathematically reconcile a mutation rate slow enough to explain 400 million years of shark stasis with a rate fast enough to build them from a supposed common ancestor in the window of time before that stasis began, proving your variables are bankrupt.
Listing 30 fields of science is not an argument it’s an appeal to authority and the data inside them bankrupts your theory: paleontology yields polystrate fossils proving mass rapid burial, proteomics and ancient DNA have found intact soft tissue and collagen in dinosaur bones that cannot survive deep time despite iron-mediated excuses, and population genetics proves genetic entropy as a record of decay rather than rising complexity.
Theophilus: "Human and dinosaur fossils do not appear together because of ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, etc. They occupied different biomes at different elevations and were buried sequentially during a catastrophic event"
Dennis: Can you give me a citation for this--so I can see it more completely described and perhaps look at an image. Human fossils are found throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia. More recently human fossils are found in the Americas and Australia too. Dinosaur fossils appear on every continent including Antarctica. Where was this biome? Are you saying humans never walked downward? Can't birds fly to the different biomes? And couldn't pterodactyls fly to the human biome? And wouldn't a great flood mix all the fossils together rather than assorting them into billions of years of stratigraphic layers in exactly the way that evolution predicts?
Intriguing question I hadn’t thought about in years, detailed zonation diagrams for this model are available in ICR’s fossil guides, which explain how the Flood was a sequence of hydraulic pulses that sorted ecosystems through hydrodynamics rather than random mixing. Pre-Flood humans lived in localized, concentrated east of Eden, a mountain with four major rivers flowing from it, a specific location for the pre-flood civilization rather than being spread across every landmass or ecosystem. This area was specifically targeted for erasure to 'blot out' an ancient civilization whose only thoughts were evil all the time, while animals were collateral damage, also probably corrupted by genetic experimentation, the flood waters dispersed them globally. Even if humans encountered dinosaurs in these upland cities, fossilization is a rare forensic anomaly requiring immediate, deep burial in watery sediment not typical of those high-altitude environments. During the flood itself there is the float and bloat aspect proposed by creationists for decades, preserved creatures like whales needing to breath air being in the upper layers and sharks and coelacanth buried in lower layers even though they can swim together today.
The vertical data also contradicts evolutions slow-accumulation narrative. Hurricane rain storm clouds reach 50,000 to 60,000 feet, while even the largest pterosaurs had a flight ceiling of roughly 15,000 feet. They couldn't fly over the disaster. Torrential rain would waterlog their leathery membranes, and when escape is impossible, animals instinctively hunker down. We see the forensic proof of their failure to escape in the broken-wing fossils of the Solnhofen Limestone and the mass mortality beds of the Hami Basin (PLOS One).
Most importantly, the Flood model predicts that you would not find the humans who were the target of the destruction. They were intentionally 'blotted out'—and God is thorough. Would He leave behind artifacts of a sinful pre-flood world to contaminate the post-flood descendants he had spared, only to be unearthed by ancient well diggers, miners or oil explorers? No. We find exactly what the model predicts: a record of ecological zones being overwhelmed.
The hominid fossils that are found are post-Flood, post-Tower of Babel dispersal. This is evidenced by the sudden appearance of written languages in the Middle East and Asia Minor such as Sumerian, Egyptian, and Proto-Chinese—all sharing commonalities and appearing fully formed. This dispersal is further confirmed by the existence of Flood legends (matching the Genesis account of eight survivors) found in cultures as diverse as the Mayan, Aboriginal Australian, and Chinese. This is the same pattern explains biogeography where have polar bears in the north and penguins in the south and marsupials in Australia as each pair leaving the Ararat region would self isolate in geographic regions because of their low populations post flood and the land or ice bridges eroded or melted.
Since 95% of fossils are marine, land-dwellers are rare; however, Mary Schweitzer’s peer-reviewed stretchy T-rex tissue, found a short drive from where I live, (Proc. R. Soc. B) confirms biological survival that defies the standard millions-of-years timeline. The fossil record isn't a map of time—it's a forensic record of mass burial and total erasure. Which is why I think that the billions of years of evolution is a gay, gender fluid, asexual information ex-Nilo fantasy and Jesus said that there will be a time like the days of Noah again only the second global judgment won’t be with a flood, as promised by the rainbow, which as you know has been co-opted by the Sodomites.
Disappointingly predictable Mr. McCarthy. Evolution is "gay" because it replaces fixed biological reality with infinite fluidity. It conflates horizontal adaptation (finch beaks) with the vertical impossibility of fish-to-philosopher transitions. This "fantasy" relies on astronomical reproductive coincidences and non-reproductive "rescue variables" to bridge gaps the math cannot pay for. Evolution is fake and very gay.
Except those finches actually didn't evolve into any new species, they still all belong to the same species... nor did humans ever breed any new species, despite extreme selection, so Darwin's model was mistaken to begin with... short answer.. we still don't know how new species emerge... and Darwin didn't even claim to know... dogs, wolves, coyotes... all the same species...
Amazing Fly writes: "dogs, wolves coyotes ... all the same species." Well, then it seems you agree with one of Darwin's most shocking and important discoveries: that all canidae (dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals) are actually related and descend from the same ancestral population--and one presumes you think the same with all bears, felines, iguanas, horses, deer, weasels, etc. The nearly universal-belief prior to Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was that every "type" of canid (wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals); every "type" of bear (Polar, Gizzly, American black, Giant Panda, etc), every "type" of iguana (Green, Spiny-Tailed, Marine), etc. (which every one else on planet earth at the time of Darwin and still today categorizes as different "species") were independently created by God. Darwin confirmed that all these different varieties are all actually related. He showed that they all descend from the same ancestral population and that the variations in canids, felines, iguanas, etc. arose due to their adaptation to different environments. In other words, the different varieties evolved.
By using semantic quibbles to deny that these groups include different "species" does not change this fact. That you still might deny what you probably call "macroevolution" does not negate the stunning explanatory power of Darwin's theory regarding microevolution, which does explain the great variety of taxonomic types on this Earth.
Darwin "confirmed" nothing, he merely speculated. He believed he could explain "the origin of species", but the finches and dogs aren't new species. And species isn't "semantic quibbles", it's a fundamental concept defined by reproduction. And Darwin wasn't even first to propose evolution, he was first to claim a key role of natural selection, which remains completely unproven... Thanks for playing though...
Regardless, it seems you agree with one of Darwin's most shocking and important discoveries: that all canidae (dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals) are actually related and descend from the same ancestral population--and one presumes you think the same with all bears, felines, iguanas, horses, deer, weasels, etc. The nearly universal-belief prior to Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was that every "type" of canid (wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals); every "type" of bear (Polar, Gizzly, American black, Giant Panda, etc), every "type" of iguana (Green, Spiny-Tailed, Marine), etc. (which every one else on planet earth at the time of Darwin and still today categorizes as different "species") were independently created by God. Darwin argued that all these different varieties are all actually related. He explained that they all descend from the same ancestral population and that the variations in canids, felines, iguanas, etc. arose due to their adaptation to different environments. In other words, the different varieties evolved.
"Regardless"?? 1) This wasn't a Darwin discovery, 2) tells us nothing about natural selection, 3) and tells us nothing about speciation. And why do keep talking about "God", I've never mentioned any such thing .
The Comic is to illustrate Darwin's argument about why the evidence confirms marine iguanas were not independently created but evolved on Galapagos from South American forms. Now, before we move on to natural selection, we are agreed that this particular argument of Darwin's is correct, right?
Amazing Fly writes "And species isn't "semantic quibbles", it's a fundamental concept defined by reproduction."
1) And essentially every person on planet Earth for the last three centuries describes foxes, coyotes, and wolves as different "species." This is standard in zoology, ecology, genetics, wildlife law, evolution, taxonomy, cladistic biogeography, etc. Plenty of well-accepted species hybridize. In fact, the very reason so many different species can still hybridize--and classification of many organisms remains difficult--is that all species are related and are mutable.
2) Accepting that they are related --and weren't independently created--is one of the foundational claims of the theory of evolution. Glad you're on board.
No, it was just a misclassification because people didn't know they could mate and produce fertile offspring. "Darwin's finches" are another such example. There are many such cases. No new species. But species exist, it's a fundamental and important concept, and Darwin couldn't explain how they emerge.... his dog breeder analogy was false to begin with and his finches weren't different species, either....
The comic is to explain the origin of "marine iguanas" on Galapagos. Darwin explained the origin of "marine iguanas" on Galapagos. No one thinks mainland iguanas and marine iguanas are the same species--and they can't hybridize.
It's still being discussed to what extent offspring is fertile, but given so many other examples, I'm pretty sure even these iguanas aren't a new species... it's just variation of the same species...
As I said, better focus on Shakespeare. Darwinism is dead.
Thanks for playing, I have to move on and can't respond anymore.
Forget it. Darwin didn't explain the origin of species, and natural selection seems to play a minimal and mostly destructive role in it. Even human selection hasn't created any new species, but destroyed quite a few.. better focus on Shakespeare than defending the failed Darwinian dogma...
First, huge fan of your work. Regardless of what we happen to agree or disagree on.
I'd encourage you to take a look at PROBABILITY ZERO which is presently the #1 bestseller in Biology on Amazon and very clearly demonstrates the mathematical impossibility of natural selection accounting for much in the way of variation, much less speciation. One thing that will very likely surprise you is that the top mathematicians and physicists have known that it was nonsense since 1966, when they absolutely destroyed Mayr, the father of the Modern Synthesis, and three other top biologists at the Wistar Symposium.
However, they didn't have access to the genomic data that we do now, so the biologists were able to very convincingly play dumb, since the transcript shows they didn't understand what the mathematicians were talking about anyhow. Now that we have the data, it's easy to show that at its absolute peak, natural selection can only account for a maximum of 0.00013 percent of the observed genomic differences between Man and the CHLCA.
I've also written a paper providing empirical evidence supporting Haldane's substitution limit. There is no "dilemma" because he was right all along and his limit is consistent with the MITTENS limit. It's under embargo right now, but I'd be happy to email it to you along with the ebook if you like.
The book also addresses parallel fixation, neutral theory, and drift in detail, and even provides a more accurate fixation model than Wright-Fisher or Kimura, because insects and humans don't reproduce like bacteria.
Hey Vox Day, thanks for the kind words, and I appreciate your serious and rigorous effort at taking on the current paradigm in biology, even though I do agree with that paradigm. But I fear we are at cross-purposes. You are focusing exclusively on neo-Darwinism, “differentiation on a genetic level,” and whether the morphological differences between marine iguanas of Galapagos and the bright green iguanas of Ecuador (or the spiny-tailed iguanas of Latin America) are the result of an accumulation of beneficial random mutations. But Charles Darwin never wrote about genes, genetics, mutation, or, of course, neo-Darwinism. These are ideas that were unknown at the time, and my comic never mentions this either. What is more, you seem to agree with the thrust of Darwin’s conclusions on the origin of morphological differentiation of marine iguanas and even use his language and his discoveries. You also seem to agree with every panel of my comic (except perhaps for quibbling with the centuries-old and popular use of the term “species”--so let's agree to change that to "type").
Correct me if I'm wrong but it appears that:
1) Unlike nearly all of civilization prior to 1859, you accept that marine iguanas of Galapagos and green iguanas of Ecuador are actually related and descend from the same ancestors.
2) You accept that a population of South American iguanas that had rafted (or somehow made it) to Galapagos experienced “dramatic local adaptations” on Galapagos, resulting in a great “morphological and physiological gulf” between marine iguanas and their continental counterparts.
Well, that's the entire point of the comic, which is based on Darwin's main points. And I would like to stress that prior to Darwin’s great discovery, Victorians believed that marine iguanas, spiny-tailed iguanas, green iguanas were all independently created. But as you, Darwin, and that comic point out: nope, they are closely related—and descend from a common ancestor—and the morphological differences of marine iguanas are the result of “dramatic local adaptations" occurring on Galapagos.
The text of the article implies that the comic expresses a truth that conflicts with my Christian beliefs about God and creation, but when I examine the comic I don't find anything that frustrates those beliefs so I'm genuinely confused as to why you made the connection.
Yes, sorry! You’re right. Agreed, biologists use the term “directional” in that sense. But I wanted to stress it’s not teleological or directed toward an end (and I know that’s not what you were saying.)
I would argue that every natural thing has an inherent natural end. It's the reason cause/effect repeatability exists. Acorns are inherently directional toward producing oak trees, not randomly toward producing elephants or ice cubes. We're getting into Scholastic philosophical arguments, which is WAY off topic, but I do agree with them - if you couldn't tell already. Sorry for the deviation Dennis. I've cluttered up your substack so I will end it here. Cheers!
No, thank you! I thought this discussion was helpful and interesting.
Well, I agree the title is provocative, but I do have Creationists deny the claims of the comic quite frequently. Also, if you agree that continental iguanas reached Galapagos and then evolved, transforming over generations into the marine iguanas that inhabit them today, then, at least in this case, you agree to an evolutionary rather than religious explanation for the origins of marine iguanas--and accept one of Darwin's most compelling arguments from "On the Origin of Species."
As for me, I agree with both explanations. If Vox Day's book is correct, the science over the past few decades shows that Darwin actually explained very little.
Well, I'm not trying to be a wise guy here, but, as I understand it, either God zapped marine iguanas into existence in the Garden of Eden or they evolved on Galapagos from a South American population that had rafted there. I don't see how these views overlap.
I don't think you're being a wise guy. There's another option besides God "zapping" things into existence, and that option is God working through, or with, the natural order to achieve various goals/natural ends. One of those goals/natural ends being speciation. To be more specific, in my view, the reason both explanations are needed is because in the midst of all of that random mutation going on we have natural selection taking place, which is non-random and directional. Non-random effects require something, which I believe is God, to maintain that orderliness over time and keep it from devolving into chaos. Much more has been said on this topic so you can look into it if you wish.
Evolution is a gay fantasy.
Well, “fixed boliological reality” is your first mistake. First thing an inventory of the natural world confirms is just how malleable species are. It’s proved in labs, proved with livestock, proved with dogs, proved in the fossil record, proved with biogeography. Refusing to see any of this because of a fairytale your mother told you when you were five is exactly what I think you’re trying to suggest with the phrase, “fake and gay.” Smile and wink.
Well, you thought wrong, again. Smile and wink. 'Fixed reality' is the 450-million-year stasis of sharks and other 'living fossils' such as the coelacanth, horseshoe crabs, Wollemi pines, ginkgo, sponges, brachiopods, crocodilians, and sturgeons to name a few. To get thousands of such mutations to 'fix' in the correct order to create a shark or a dragonfly requires more time than the universe has existed. This is the Divergence Problem: if you use the 'slow-mutation' defense of bradytely to explain 400 million years of stasis, you've mathematically destroyed the time needed for all life to diverge from a single cell. Dogs, finches, and livestock demonstrate horizontal variation; your fish-to-philosopher leap is vertical fantasy. Evolution is 'fake' because of the 0.00013% fixation rate, and it is 'gay' considering the fairytale of the primordial soup. Just as Narcissus looked into the pool and saw only himself, a dividing cell looks at its progeny and sees only its own reflection. There is no genetic 'stranger' involved, and Probability Zero shows that the transition to complex sexual reproduction is impossible regardless of vast timescales. This is homosexual narcissism peering into the primordial soup—a fluidity that the fossil record rejects. The 3.5-billion-year stasis of cyanobacteria, along with thousands of unchanged species, is proof against the gay fairytale of evolution by natural selection.
I'm about to answer every question above while you can't the simplest ones--like why do human fossils never appear with any dinosaur fossils? Or where do endemic island animals come from?
Anyway, evolution is proved repeatedly by: paleontology, stratigraphy, radiometric dating, comparative anatomy, homology, vestigial structures, comparative genomics, molecular genetics, population genetics, phylogenetics, molecular clocks, biogeography, island biogeography, evolutionary developmental biology (Evo-Devo), embryology, comparative embryology, endogenous retroviruses, chromosomal fusion evidence, experimental evolution, artificial selection, observed speciation, transitional fossils, horizontal gene transfer, microbial evolution, antibiotic resistance evolution, genetic drift, natural selection studies, ancient DNA analysis, proteomics, and systems biology.
Now let’s take your argument piece by piece.
1. “450-million-year stasis” (sharks, coelacanths, horseshoe crabs, etc.)
These organisms are often called “living fossils,” but that phrase is misleading.
Sharks today are not identical to Devonian sharks. Their lineages have diversified massively.
The modern coelacanth differs anatomically and genetically from its fossil relatives.
Horseshoe crabs show morphological continuity in overall body plan—but internally and genetically they have changed.
Ginkgo and Wollemi pine lineages show genomic change even if their gross morphology looks conservative.
What you’re pointing to is morphological stability, not genetic stasis.
Evolution does not predict constant visible change. It predicts:
If a body plan is well adapted to a stable niche, natural selection will conserve it.
That’s stabilizing selection—not stasis in the sense of “nothing happening.”
2. The “Divergence Problem” and fixation rates
You mention a 0.00013% fixation rate as though that kills evolution. It doesn’t.
In population genetics, for a neutral mutation:
Fixation probability= 1/2N; in a population of 10,000, that’s 1/20,000 per mutation.
Humans alone experience ~100 new mutations per individual
With billions of individuals across lineages over hundreds of millions of years, the mutation supply is enormous
Neutral fixation rate equals mutation rate
That means substitutions accumulate at the mutation rate—not at some impossibly tiny compounded probability.
There is no “mathematical destruction of divergence.” The math was solved in the 1960s.
3. “Horizontal variation” vs “vertical fantasy”
Dogs, finches, livestock, cichlids, sticklebacks, bacteria—these show:
Speciation
Major morphological shifts
Reproductive isolation
Genomic restructuring
“Horizontal variation” is not a scientific category. It’s rhetoric.
Speciation is vertical divergence. We observe it in real time.
4. “Thousands of mutations in the correct order”
This assumes evolution works like scooping up millions of random mutations, tossing them into the air, and hoping they land assembled into a shark or a wing. That is not how evolution operates. Mutations arise one at a time in populations of organisms that are already fully functional. Each mutation is filtered immediately by natural selection and genetic drift. If it is harmful, it is usually eliminated. If it is neutral, it may drift. If it is beneficial—even slightly—it can spread. Evolution is cumulative, not combinatorial. It has workable intermediates at every stage--and the fossil record confirms this.
5. Cyanobacteria and “3.5 billion years of stasis”
Stromatolites appear early in the fossil record and persist today.
But Cyanobacteria diversified enormously. Their genomes show extensive evolution
Oxygenic photosynthesis itself transformed the planet (Great Oxygenation Event)
6. Sexual reproduction and “Probability Zero”
Sex did not appear fully formed in a single step.
Evolutionary biology has extensive work on:
Horizontal gene transfer in early microbes
Cell fusion
Meiosis evolving from DNA repair systems
Stepwise advantages of recombination
Sex increases genetic variation and helps purge deleterious mutations (Muller’s ratchet). It’s not impossible—it’s advantageous under many conditions.
There is no credible mathematical demonstration that sex is impossible over deep time.
7. “Fish to philosopher”
No one believes a fish laid eggs and out popped a philosopher: The broad evolutionary sequence from fish to philosopher—all shown in the fossil record-- proceeds from early jawless fish to jawed fish, then to lobe-finned fish and lungfish-like sarcopterygians, followed by early tetrapods that bridged the fish–amphibian transition, then amphibians, early amniotes, reptile-like amniotes, synapsids on the mammal line, pelycosaurs, therapsids, cynodonts, early mammals, mammaliaformes, true mammals, placental mammals, early primates, anthropoid primates, Old World monkeys and apes, early apes, great apes, hominins, australopithecines, early members of the genus Homo, Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens, anatomically modern Homo sapiens, and ultimately Plato, Socrates, etc.
8. The “stasis destroys divergence time” claim
Evolution is not a constant-rate morphing process.
Different lineages evolve at different rates: Some undergo rapid adaptive radiation.
Some sit in stable niches for long periods. Rate heterogeneity is expected.
Anway, evolution does not require constant visible novelty. It requires heritable variation, mutation, and differential survival.
Those are observed facts.
If someone thinks 400 million years of morphological conservation disproves divergence from a common ancestor, they haven’t grappled with how population genetics actually works.
And the math—real math, not rhetorical math—doesn’t collapse under scrutiny.
It holds. As I have shown over, and over, and over again
I appreciate your time Mr. McCarthy, but you are mistaken yet again and I didn’t ask any questions. And all you’ve “shown over, and over, and over again” is a standard, high-level "Defense of the Narrative" that has been the academic consensus since the late 1960s. Defending the natural history museum by pointing at the plaques on the wall.
Human and dinosaur fossils do not appear together because of ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, etc. They occupied different biomes at different elevations and were buried sequentially during a catastrophic event, much like you do not find elephants or polar bears or penguins mixed in the wild today.
Endemic island animals are the result of post-catastrophe migration and horizontal variation, where animals adapt by isolating or losing existing genetic traits through a reshuffling of the pre-existing deck rather than a vertical gain of new information.
Your 8 Points:
1 and 5. Claiming internal genomic change occurred while physical fossils remained identical for eons is an unfalsifiable ghost variable because you have no 400-million-year-old control genome to check against, making your claim of diversification an unscientific speculation rather than an observed fact.
Your 1960s 1/2N formula for single neutral mutations is mathematically irrelevant to the waiting time problem, which demonstrates that coordinated mutations required for vertical complexity cannot fixate within the assumed age of the universe.
Speciation is observed as a horizontal loss or isolation of information, but there is zero evidence for the vertical gain of a novel, complex organ system, as a dog becoming a chihuahua remains strictly within its kind.
Natural selection lacks the foresight to preserve neutral or slightly harmful intermediates that offer no benefit today, meaning that without immediate function, any workable intermediate is erased by genetic drift long before the next piece of the puzzle can arrive.
Male and female reproductive hardware must be fully functional, compatible, and present simultaneously on day one, as any stepwise transition results in immediate sterility and extinction.
Your opening to point 7 was funny, but your fish-to-philosopher sequence is built on ghost lineages, relying on imagination to connect disparate, fully formed fossil groups across massive anatomical gaps. And supposed transition fossils are simply extinct species like any other, no gaps bridged.
You cannot mathematically reconcile a mutation rate slow enough to explain 400 million years of shark stasis with a rate fast enough to build them from a supposed common ancestor in the window of time before that stasis began, proving your variables are bankrupt.
Listing 30 fields of science is not an argument it’s an appeal to authority and the data inside them bankrupts your theory: paleontology yields polystrate fossils proving mass rapid burial, proteomics and ancient DNA have found intact soft tissue and collagen in dinosaur bones that cannot survive deep time despite iron-mediated excuses, and population genetics proves genetic entropy as a record of decay rather than rising complexity.
Theophilus: "Human and dinosaur fossils do not appear together because of ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, etc. They occupied different biomes at different elevations and were buried sequentially during a catastrophic event"
Dennis: Can you give me a citation for this--so I can see it more completely described and perhaps look at an image. Human fossils are found throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia. More recently human fossils are found in the Americas and Australia too. Dinosaur fossils appear on every continent including Antarctica. Where was this biome? Are you saying humans never walked downward? Can't birds fly to the different biomes? And couldn't pterodactyls fly to the human biome? And wouldn't a great flood mix all the fossils together rather than assorting them into billions of years of stratigraphic layers in exactly the way that evolution predicts?
Intriguing question I hadn’t thought about in years, detailed zonation diagrams for this model are available in ICR’s fossil guides, which explain how the Flood was a sequence of hydraulic pulses that sorted ecosystems through hydrodynamics rather than random mixing. Pre-Flood humans lived in localized, concentrated east of Eden, a mountain with four major rivers flowing from it, a specific location for the pre-flood civilization rather than being spread across every landmass or ecosystem. This area was specifically targeted for erasure to 'blot out' an ancient civilization whose only thoughts were evil all the time, while animals were collateral damage, also probably corrupted by genetic experimentation, the flood waters dispersed them globally. Even if humans encountered dinosaurs in these upland cities, fossilization is a rare forensic anomaly requiring immediate, deep burial in watery sediment not typical of those high-altitude environments. During the flood itself there is the float and bloat aspect proposed by creationists for decades, preserved creatures like whales needing to breath air being in the upper layers and sharks and coelacanth buried in lower layers even though they can swim together today.
The vertical data also contradicts evolutions slow-accumulation narrative. Hurricane rain storm clouds reach 50,000 to 60,000 feet, while even the largest pterosaurs had a flight ceiling of roughly 15,000 feet. They couldn't fly over the disaster. Torrential rain would waterlog their leathery membranes, and when escape is impossible, animals instinctively hunker down. We see the forensic proof of their failure to escape in the broken-wing fossils of the Solnhofen Limestone and the mass mortality beds of the Hami Basin (PLOS One).
Most importantly, the Flood model predicts that you would not find the humans who were the target of the destruction. They were intentionally 'blotted out'—and God is thorough. Would He leave behind artifacts of a sinful pre-flood world to contaminate the post-flood descendants he had spared, only to be unearthed by ancient well diggers, miners or oil explorers? No. We find exactly what the model predicts: a record of ecological zones being overwhelmed.
The hominid fossils that are found are post-Flood, post-Tower of Babel dispersal. This is evidenced by the sudden appearance of written languages in the Middle East and Asia Minor such as Sumerian, Egyptian, and Proto-Chinese—all sharing commonalities and appearing fully formed. This dispersal is further confirmed by the existence of Flood legends (matching the Genesis account of eight survivors) found in cultures as diverse as the Mayan, Aboriginal Australian, and Chinese. This is the same pattern explains biogeography where have polar bears in the north and penguins in the south and marsupials in Australia as each pair leaving the Ararat region would self isolate in geographic regions because of their low populations post flood and the land or ice bridges eroded or melted.
Since 95% of fossils are marine, land-dwellers are rare; however, Mary Schweitzer’s peer-reviewed stretchy T-rex tissue, found a short drive from where I live, (Proc. R. Soc. B) confirms biological survival that defies the standard millions-of-years timeline. The fossil record isn't a map of time—it's a forensic record of mass burial and total erasure. Which is why I think that the billions of years of evolution is a gay, gender fluid, asexual information ex-Nilo fantasy and Jesus said that there will be a time like the days of Noah again only the second global judgment won’t be with a flood, as promised by the rainbow, which as you know has been co-opted by the Sodomites.
Unfortunately, a few of the deniers quickly descend to this level of debate. Many however make sober and interesting points
Disappointingly predictable Mr. McCarthy. Evolution is "gay" because it replaces fixed biological reality with infinite fluidity. It conflates horizontal adaptation (finch beaks) with the vertical impossibility of fish-to-philosopher transitions. This "fantasy" relies on astronomical reproductive coincidences and non-reproductive "rescue variables" to bridge gaps the math cannot pay for. Evolution is fake and very gay.
Except those finches actually didn't evolve into any new species, they still all belong to the same species... nor did humans ever breed any new species, despite extreme selection, so Darwin's model was mistaken to begin with... short answer.. we still don't know how new species emerge... and Darwin didn't even claim to know... dogs, wolves, coyotes... all the same species...
Amazing Fly writes: "dogs, wolves coyotes ... all the same species." Well, then it seems you agree with one of Darwin's most shocking and important discoveries: that all canidae (dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals) are actually related and descend from the same ancestral population--and one presumes you think the same with all bears, felines, iguanas, horses, deer, weasels, etc. The nearly universal-belief prior to Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was that every "type" of canid (wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals); every "type" of bear (Polar, Gizzly, American black, Giant Panda, etc), every "type" of iguana (Green, Spiny-Tailed, Marine), etc. (which every one else on planet earth at the time of Darwin and still today categorizes as different "species") were independently created by God. Darwin confirmed that all these different varieties are all actually related. He showed that they all descend from the same ancestral population and that the variations in canids, felines, iguanas, etc. arose due to their adaptation to different environments. In other words, the different varieties evolved.
By using semantic quibbles to deny that these groups include different "species" does not change this fact. That you still might deny what you probably call "macroevolution" does not negate the stunning explanatory power of Darwin's theory regarding microevolution, which does explain the great variety of taxonomic types on this Earth.
Darwin "confirmed" nothing, he merely speculated. He believed he could explain "the origin of species", but the finches and dogs aren't new species. And species isn't "semantic quibbles", it's a fundamental concept defined by reproduction. And Darwin wasn't even first to propose evolution, he was first to claim a key role of natural selection, which remains completely unproven... Thanks for playing though...
Regardless, it seems you agree with one of Darwin's most shocking and important discoveries: that all canidae (dogs, wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals) are actually related and descend from the same ancestral population--and one presumes you think the same with all bears, felines, iguanas, horses, deer, weasels, etc. The nearly universal-belief prior to Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" was that every "type" of canid (wolves, coyotes, foxes, jackals); every "type" of bear (Polar, Gizzly, American black, Giant Panda, etc), every "type" of iguana (Green, Spiny-Tailed, Marine), etc. (which every one else on planet earth at the time of Darwin and still today categorizes as different "species") were independently created by God. Darwin argued that all these different varieties are all actually related. He explained that they all descend from the same ancestral population and that the variations in canids, felines, iguanas, etc. arose due to their adaptation to different environments. In other words, the different varieties evolved.
"Regardless"?? 1) This wasn't a Darwin discovery, 2) tells us nothing about natural selection, 3) and tells us nothing about speciation. And why do keep talking about "God", I've never mentioned any such thing .
The Comic is to illustrate Darwin's argument about why the evidence confirms marine iguanas were not independently created but evolved on Galapagos from South American forms. Now, before we move on to natural selection, we are agreed that this particular argument of Darwin's is correct, right?
Amazing Fly writes "And species isn't "semantic quibbles", it's a fundamental concept defined by reproduction."
1) And essentially every person on planet Earth for the last three centuries describes foxes, coyotes, and wolves as different "species." This is standard in zoology, ecology, genetics, wildlife law, evolution, taxonomy, cladistic biogeography, etc. Plenty of well-accepted species hybridize. In fact, the very reason so many different species can still hybridize--and classification of many organisms remains difficult--is that all species are related and are mutable.
2) Accepting that they are related --and weren't independently created--is one of the foundational claims of the theory of evolution. Glad you're on board.
No, it was just a misclassification because people didn't know they could mate and produce fertile offspring. "Darwin's finches" are another such example. There are many such cases. No new species. But species exist, it's a fundamental and important concept, and Darwin couldn't explain how they emerge.... his dog breeder analogy was false to begin with and his finches weren't different species, either....
The comic is to explain the origin of "marine iguanas" on Galapagos. Darwin explained the origin of "marine iguanas" on Galapagos. No one thinks mainland iguanas and marine iguanas are the same species--and they can't hybridize.
"and they can't hybridize. "
Oh yes they can, they even have their own Wiki page :D https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_iguana
It's still being discussed to what extent offspring is fertile, but given so many other examples, I'm pretty sure even these iguanas aren't a new species... it's just variation of the same species...
As I said, better focus on Shakespeare. Darwinism is dead.
Thanks for playing, I have to move on and can't respond anymore.
Forget it. Darwin didn't explain the origin of species, and natural selection seems to play a minimal and mostly destructive role in it. Even human selection hasn't created any new species, but destroyed quite a few.. better focus on Shakespeare than defending the failed Darwinian dogma...
Exactly. As I wrote in “Here Be Dragons": “adaptive radiation on islands is noisy, flamboyant, in-your-face evolution. It is evolution-out-loud.”