Evolution (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, July 23, 2009, 23:30 (5398 days ago) @ David Turell

Dr. Turell
> 
> My sentence does not say what you imply. Parse the sentence. Perhaps I should have written it differently and used 'would' rather than 'will'. Note I said "with proper evidence"; there is none at this time, and there may never be evidence to prove him correct, that it takes tiny steps to go from existing species to new species. 
> 
I didn't communicate myself clearly... when you say "Darwin hasn't been proven right yet" that translates in my own and (perhaps) to George's mind directly to evolution itself and bypasses the debated mechanism entirely. I understand you mean the mechanism, I'm just trying to explain why your phrasing comes off as creationist in nature. I can see that you accept evolution, but as I tried to say before, Darwin is more synonymous to evolution itself to most people rather than natural selection. If you were to throw that phrase in alt.atheism, alt.talkorigins or alt.biology on usenet you'd start a knee-jerk flame riot. Most defenders of evolution I've met haven't even read the Origin of the Species, and your point about Darwin's version of natural selection would go right through their ears as you would be attacking evolution and not natural selection as a slow and continuous process. I hope I've made this a little more clear? - > Darwin's famous quote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." It is still evolution if a complex organ appeared in a large jump. We know Darwin's proposal. We see evolution, but once again, there is no absolute proof that it is tiny modifications, or large jumps or both. It is evolution either way. With large jumps the only thing that breaks down is Darwin's theory of a series of slight modifications. I also understand that philosophically large jumps are disturbing to many people. It adds a large measure of complexity to the evolutionary process, because it makes the coding in DNA/RNA very potent. For the moment I'll leave it at that. - - As for the content of your post, I know what you're saying. You're saying that even though we have a succession of whale fossils that lead from point a to point b, this doesn't negate the possibility that those collections of traits happened in fits and starts vs. a more sinuous, continuous process. I would add that we also have no reason to think it isn't a combination of both, depending on the background context. I find nothing wrong (or creationist) in this. Nor even disagreeable. But using the above language this finer point would be lost on most ears.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"