yes, they were. and darwin's ideas were partly based on mendel's studies on genetics and heritability.
This is incorrect. Darwin just accepted that something was inherited. He had no idea at all of the mechanism and Mendel did his work after Darwin published. Mendel's work was ignored and/or not noticed then for some decades.
quote:
Mutations are mistakes in the genetic copying process.
Arachnophilia writes:
mutation is not the driving force of evolution. heritability is. if something has a feature that makes it survive better, it's more likely to breed, especially with other members of the species with that feature. therefore, according to mendels work, there will be a higher chance of having that feature, and having a more pronounced version of that feature. that's evolution.
Mutation certainly can be considered to be the "driving force of evolution" (with NS the steering I guess
). In addtion, "according to Mendel's work" is out of place here. Mendel never considered the possibility of mutation. You're not totall wrong here but it seems a bit muddled.
but if a donkey has sex with a horse, you get a mule. are donkey, horses, and mules all the same kind?
You skipped over the example given. I don't think we know if offspring could result from a human-chimp breeding. Any volunteers?
quote:
All of the mutations are harmful or harmless, none of them produce a more successful fruit fly, exactly as predicted by the creation model.
Arachnophillia writes:
that doesn't mean evolution is not at work. part of it *IS* trying things out. trial and error. you're a lot more likely to get errors.
You missed the main point: It is demonstarably incorrect that all mutations are harmful or neutral (which is what he meant I think). (LOL, of course they are all harmful or harmless
). The correct statment is that most are harmful or neutral (It may be that "most" are neutral in fact,but I don't know how to measure that) and some are beneficial. The "some" that are beneficial is all that it takes.