Why is evolution so controversial?

You've seen it in English. It was in English on that website that you cited. You remember, the one that said you were completely wrong?So it is pretty much your move. Find me one paper, published any time in the 170 years since Verhulst, that says that the logistic equation does not have a stable equilibrium at K.

Zaius has made the following mistakes:* He has implicitly assumed that he can count the number of mutations that have occurred by measuring them, which is obviously false, since one mutation deleting 1,000,000 bases of non-coding DNA is in fact one mutation and not a million of them.* He supposes that math shows that for a constrained population to stay around the same number is an unstable situation, whereas the math (including his own citations) and indeed common sense shows that it is stable.* He supposes that in order to account for the degree of genetic diversity in humans the population must have stayed at exactly the same level for oodles of years, whereas math and indeed common sense shows that the same result can be produced if the population fluctuates.

Also, please speculate on what would happen if ifs and buts were apples and nuts.

He's only talking about positive selection; this is worthless with regard to the merely quantitative calculations you've been embarrassing yourself with.

Yes, if epigenetic modification completely switched off a gene throughout a gene pool for a million years, one might well expect the gene to be turned into garbage by mutation and drift. However, in order for your argument to work you would need to find a case where the former has happened and the latter has not. So far, your argument seems to be based on imagining that this happens --- though two paragraphs up you professed yourself "a firm believer in empirical evidence".

There's always an alternate explanation for everything, often a very stupid one. But the thing is that evolution explains a vast variety of phenomena at a single stroke, whereas the attempts to argue it away, besides often being very stupid, are piecemeal and ad hoc, a collection of ifs and buts with no common factor except what they wish to deny.It's like a defense attorney saying: "Well, my client bought a gun two days before the crime because he wanted to shoot the raccoons in his yard; and he was seen running from the scene of the crime because he suddenly decided to take up jogging, and he had the victim's blood on his shoes because last time they met the victim had a violent nosebleed, and he had all the victim's valuables in a sack in his garage because the victim gave them to him to pay off a gambling debt, and when he told the witnesses "I'm going to kill that bastard", this is the sort of intemperate language we all use from time to time, and he was absent from work the day of the crime because he had a nasty cold that cleared up very suddenly, and the confession he gave when he was arrested was because the police unduly pressured him, and the fingerprints found on the bullet, well, someone must have broken into his house and stole some of his ammunition, and ..." ... and so on. The prosecution has a global view of the evidence, the defense has many particular views.It's the same with evolution, only magnified a thousand times. The evolutionists have a global view, the deniers have a disparate collection of excuses. Well, it hasn't yet --- and as you don't seem to have taken a global view, you have no reason to expect that it would.

Nah, you still don't get it.

A non sequitur is not an argument.

The problem is that since your value for k is the divergence between the genomes, then is not, in fact, "mutations (%)".This has been explained to you. And explained to you. And explained to you. They didn't make your mistake. This has also been explained to you. This is why they did a different calculation and got a different answer. This has been explained to you.Your mistake was passably interesting when you first made it. Watching you make it again and again and again is boring.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

If you want to include indels, you must take into account the fact that they are not single nucleotide substitutions. They are indels.Sheesh.

NOOOOO. As a mechanism for fixation. No. That's why it differentiates between them. They are different things. That's why they have different names. Of course you can.This does not justify your error, which has been explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you.Let's try it again. One substitution explains one divergent base.But one indel can explain the divergence of a million bases.So when you start counting divergence caused by indels as well as substitutions, you are not counting mutations.This has been explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you. Try harder. Because your error has been explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you.If you really don't get it, maybe this is the point at which you should notice that everyone else reading this thread knows that you've made a simple, trivial error. We all know why you're wrong. If you don't, maybe that's your problem.

Here's an analogy. Not a perfect one, but it's pretty good.Suppose someone wants to know how old I am. But all they know is how far I've walked in my lifetime, and how far an average person walks in a year. Then their best estimate would involve dividing the first number by the second. It might not be a perfect estimate, but given the data they have, it's the best that they can do.Now, suppose someone, as it might be you, comes along and says, well, we should actually measure how far he's traveled by any means, by cars, by trains, by planes, we should add it all up, and then we should divide by how far an average person walks in a year.Then we say: "But you are dividing by the wrong thing". And you answer: "But the people who did the previous calculation also divided by how far an average person walks in a year. I'm just doing what they did, I'm performing the same calculation, if you have a problem take it up with them."

To begin with, that no-one proposed it.Please try to find out what a mutation is. This would be kind of essential to the discussion.Sheesh.This has been explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you, and explained to you.You are the one person reading this thread who doesn't understand what mistake you're making. If you are really incapable of understanding it, then you should just resign yourself to the fact that you don't understand it, and move on. Everyone else knows why you're wrong. Your mistake will not deceive anyone but yourself. Try making a different mistake. Move on.

Well, I think we can see why. Zaius has put forward his best "scientific" attempt at trying to controvert evolution, and everyone with a brain in his head can see why it's a ludicrous failure. So we think: if this is the best anyone can do to argue against it, it must be pretty much perfect. A scientific theory stands by the efforts made to controvert it, and on that basis --- well, we've seen what creationists can do. So on that basis, the theory of evolution is the most reliable scientific theory we have.

But since this is only happening in your head, it doesn't have the significance you wish to place on it.