Dr Page's best example of common descent explained from the GUToB.

Have you ever tried to discuss something with someone who describes your position as "horse dung"? No thanks. salty

Hi Salty,The raison d'etre of this board is allow people to air and defend their views. You've already done the airing part, so if you're not interested in the defending part then there's no need to post anymore.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Try dogs for starters. No speciation whatsoever. Also I would hesitate to assume cichlids or any other assemblage were of necessity reproducing sexually, especially since those transformations were not observed. The hard definition of Dobzhansky should be applied before any firm conclusions can be drawn. I know it came as a surprise to many that a male St Bernard could breed successfully and spontaneously with a Dachshund bitch. Yes and the offspring was fertile. If you want t0 know how far one can go with sexual reproduction I refer you to Luther Burbank. Of couse he was not an academic thank God. As far as the Cambrian explosion is concerned. I cannot imagine those body forms being generated by any known mechanism. The simplest explanation might be that they were separately generated by as yet unkown devices. Since the origin of life is miraculous, I see no problem wharsoever with multiple miracles. salty

Salty: I have defended my position in my publications.From what I have read, you have not. You have made a series of assertions. You have been challenged on several points. You have repeated your assertions. This is not defending your position. Defending your position, as someone who has been a professor should certainly know, involves answering criticisms. All you do in response to criticisms is insult, as shown by the following:Salty: Go on believing in your mutationist, selectionist, atheistic, formless, purposeless and random view of the world. It has led you nowhere and it never will.You have no earthly idea what my view of the world is, you cranky old (bites his tongue). Do not presume to know my views on anything. Just answer the criticisms, or go away.Salty: Where are your published views on evolution?I also have multiple publications on my views on evolution. If I feel the need to point you in that direction, I shall do so. For now, I will just defend my views here, as it becomes necessary.Salty: Have you ever tried to discuss something with someone who describes your position as "horse dung"?No, but I once tried discussing with someone who presumed that I have an "atheistic, formless, purposeless and random view of the world". I got the distinct impression that he was really trying to say he considered my position to be "horse dung", despite not knowing what my position actually is.FK

I do not regard it as an insult to describe the views of the vast majority of the members of this forum as I have. I was only trying to summarize the typical gradualist position. You are certainly not the first to suggest that I go away. I find that at odds with the stated purposes of this forum.
"If you tell the truth you are certain, sooner or later, to be found out" Oscar Wilde

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Try dogs for starters. No speciation whatsoever. Also I would hesitate to assume cichlids or any other assemblage were of necessity reproducing sexually, especially since those transformations were not observed.

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I have not been able to get the dog reference but am still looking. As to the others, are you familiar with the Rice's work on Drosophila? His group has observed speciation based on partial reproductive isolation using the crossbreeding criteria.

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As far as the Cambrian explosion is concerned. I cannot imagine those body forms being generated by any known mechanism. The simplest explanation might be that they were separately generated by as yet unkown devices.

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As to this I refer you to the work of Conrad Simon on the organism of the period. His work , along with the work of others goes into the mophology of the creatures of the Burgess Shale. Actually, my point was that if sexual reproduction does not allow for large morphological changes then how did the obviously sexually reproducing species of the Cambrian evolve into the later families, groups and species within the separate groups, ie arthropods, chordates, ect? Either they evolved from the forms of that time or they didn't. If they didn't then they were "created" and there is no data for that. If they evolved then species which reproduce sexually can evolve.------------------
"Chance favors the prepared mind." L. Pasteur
Taz

I don't think it is at all obvious that the Cambrian forms utilized sexual reproduction. The same can be said for many fossil forms. The semi-meiotic hypothesis suggests an alternative mode. It seems to me that if sex can produce new species that one could demonstrate that experimentally. I don't think that has been done yet. Until it is I will stick to my semi-meiotic guns. salty

I don't think it is at all obvious that the Cambrian forms utilized sexual reproduction. The same can be said for many fossil forms. The semi-meiotic hypothesis suggests an alternative mode. It seems to me that if sex can produce new species that one could demonstrate that experimentally. I don't think that has been done yet. Until it is I will stick to my semi-meiotic guns. salty

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I do not regard it as an insult to describe the views of the vast majority of the members of this forum as I have

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And I do not see it as an insult ot have referred to your positon as horse dung. Nor do I see it an insult to refer to you as a fringe crank. Your "argumentation style" (i.e., repeated unsupported assertions, wild extrapolations, use of "its obvious" as evidence, hero worship, labelling anyone that does not agree with you as "bigoted" etc.) more than justifies my characterizations.Again, EVERYONE that has attempted to actually discuss anything with you gets the same treatment.Evolution is not finished. Sexual reproduction does not make this so. And yes, populations are an integral part of evolution.Your repeated assertions to the contrary are hollow sound bites. Devoid of substance, purpose, or reason.

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You are certainly not the first to suggest that I go away. I find that at odds with the stated purposes of this forum.

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You have been REPEATEDLY "warned" (false warnings, actually) that your 'discussion' style is counter to the stated purposes of this forum, namely, you don't discuss anythiing. You assert then blabber about your online essays, your theoretical musings in a fringe journal, and how much (who in the world is) Phillip Engle likes you.Fedheem might be onto something.Oh and Salty - which of your research-oriented publications have anything to do with evolution in any way?[This message has been edited by SLPx, 04-19-2003]

You have lost none of your charm Scott. Some time ago I challenged you to provide a single case demonstrating macroevolution (true speciation) through sexual reproduction. You failed to come up with a single example. Now you claim it is going on nevertheless. Good for you. If it could be done it would have been done long ago. The gradualist, mutation/selection model is the only hypothesis in science that is accepted even though it cannot be demonstrated. Your adherence to populations as the units of evolution is equally absurd. All genetic changes originate in the germinal cells of individual organisms. That is just basic genetics. Schindewolf and Broom had it right and so I follow their lead. Obviously I am wasting my time with you, but I had hoped I might reach others on this forum who might maintain a more open mind on evolutionary matters. I see also that when you can't respond to challenges you attack the messenger, in this case the journals in which I have published. Those journals by the way include in addition to Rivista di Biologia, The Journal of Theoretical Biology, The Journal of General Physiology, The Journal of Heredity, Americsn Naturalist, Experientia and three papers in Science, the most widely circulated scientific journal in the world. You even find it necssary to deprecate Phillip Engle who is your intellectual superior ten times over as well as being a gentleman which is something of which you are obviously incapable. You bring nothing to this forum but venom. I am getting ready to move into a new dwelling so you won't have me to insult for a while. Find someone else if you can find someone with the guts to expose the Darwinian myth. salty

Dear Taz, The dog reference is in the bibliography of the Manifesto. It is in Winge's Inheritance in Dogs. I really don't think you will find it on the internet any more than you will find much on Grasse, Berg, Broom, Bateson, Schindewolf, Punnett, Petrunkevitch or a host of others who have demolished the neoDarwinian myth. I wonder why they are not available on the great worldwideweb? Don't you? I thank the good Lord that I was a grown man before the advent of the personal computor. Soren Lovtrup put it very well. DARWINISM IS A DECEIT. salty

Salty, please see What is Salty's 'semi-meiotic hypothesis'Adminnemooseus

Thank you moose. I recommend you go to my home page Retired Service | The University of Vermont There you will find three short published paper (Rivista di Biologia) and the 56 page Manifesto which is unpublished. The three Rivista papers pretty much summarize my hypothesis as well as presenting the arguement against Darwinism. I am very busy right now moving and if I were to present a capsule view here I'm sure it would only inflame some. I am happy to respond to any questions or criticism as long as it is specific and presented in a civil fashion. Also, if someone does not choose to use this forum, they can reach me at my email address jdavison@zoo.uvm.edu salty

Thank you moose. I recommend you go to my home page Retired Service | The University of Vermont There you will find three short published paper (Rivista di Biologia) and the 56 page Manifesto which is unpublished. The three Rivista papers pretty much summarize my hypothesis as well as presenting the arguement against Darwinism. I am very busy right now moving and if I were to present a capsule view here I'm sure it would only inflame some. I am happy to respond to any questions or criticism as long as it is specific and presented in a civil fashion. Also, if someone does not choose to use this forum, they can reach me at my email address jdavison@zoo.uvm.edu salty

Populations are critical to evolution because the term "species" has no meaning outside of populations. An individual is just an individual. Only when that individual is in a population of individuals can you even have a species, and thus only then can you make decisions about what constitutes speciation.It looks like what you're looking for is an example of an individual giving birth to an individual of a different species. If that's what you mean by "speciation" then you're stacking the deck (and using a different definition that biologists). Individuals always give rise to individuals different from themselves, especially in sexual reproduction. Since this is normal and observed, you don't allow it to be called speciation. What you fail to recognize is that a population's worth of these differences, over many generations, causes the entire population to change. Eventually they change so much that they can't or won't breed with populations they used to be able to. That is speciation, and that is why it's a population-level event. Individual genetics has little to do with it. Speciation is an aggregate of hundreds of individual's genetics.------------------
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