You indeed can talk about Natural Selection without referring to mutations. Natural Selection, as has been shown to you many times, has been tested and shown to be the selecting agent working in the theory of evolution.
Then you shift the goal posts and start yammering about the probability of specific mutations - for light sensitive patches or diseases or what ever. The rarity of any specific mutation does not falsify or bring into question the validity natural selection. The fit-enough-to-breed survive, no matter how rare any specific mutation is.
How do the fittest survive to pass on their genes if
NOT naturally?
How does the rarity of any mutation or series of mutations, bring into question the validity of natural selection?
You are aware that natural selection is negative and positive? Meaning it is understood under the theory of natural selection that species go extinct, that this makes sense under natural selection?
Hopefully Dr. A doesn't mind me responding to this:
I asked him to explain how an eye is made through natural selection, and his response was "it developed through natural selection acting on mutations." That was a verbatim quote!
So why did he mention mutations when I didn't even ask that?
Because your question was specifically about the eye? You know, you can discuss natural selection without a specific example, and therefore
without mentioning mutations.
The argument is about natural selection's effect on the evolutionary process-and that deals DIRECTLY with mutations-as Dr. Adequate so easily demonstrated- so now I guess I should say thank you to him!
Yes, natural selection will act on mutations. Your problem is not being able to discuss the two separately. Which can be done, as Darwin did not know of mutations in the first place.
So unless you wish to propose another theory about how natural selection works without the need for random mutations-bring that theory up or how about stop your whining.
Natural selection selects the fit enough. How they became fit is irrelevant to it's validity. Yes, we know what causes the variation for natural selection to act on, but it doesn't matter when discussing whether or not it selects the fittest, which has been shown to be true with multiple experiments and tests.
What are you so afraid of discussing. I will be happy to hear about a new theory of evolution that doesn't need mutations!
No one is proposing this. You are unable to see your problem here. Natural selection works, and has been
shown to work, regardless of what creates the variation to be selected. Darwin proposed this
not knowing about mutations, only that there was variation to be selected for, or against.
Now, I see we can add guppies oscillating between having spots and not having spots to our slowly growing list of tests to prove natural selections ability to create evolutionary change.I am not really sure how showing species employing the exact same survival method on and off again shows that, but ok, if that's the best we have got so far. so be it.
It does show evolutionary change. I assume when you say "evolutionary change" you are talking about macro-evolution?
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