A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis

If no one has been experimenting to cross 'the barrier', the nature of which is obscure in the extreme, then its not having been done is proof of nothing.Ifyou want to talk about experiments to do with speciation in terms of the development of reproductive isolation then I would be happy to join in, while you persist in your own peculiar 'macroevolution' terminology of barriers and humans breeding with other non-specific species I fear we are going to get nowhere.TTFN,WK

Because the sort of things that have been attempted with breeding have not been the sort of things Ray is describing as macrovolutionary. They are almost always performed with enhancing an existant trait, they are not concerned with the generation of completely novel traits.Consequently you have the selective part of the equation but without much longer timescales than a century you are not going to have the same degree of novelty generated by mutation to select from.To take Rays example of roses, there are a number of pigments involved in flower colour and allelic variation in any of these, or in their regulation, could lead to changes in colour. But if, for example, the family of enzymes required for producing blue pigmentation is absent, for whatever reason, from the roses there is no reasonable expectation that that enzyme will be generated de novo during the course of a breeding program, even one of decades or centuries. This might be changed if the required enzyme were merely a variation of one already present in roses in which case there would be a better chance of an appropriate mutation ocurring, I don't know exactly what those chances would be however.And in terms ofanimals what on Earth do you think the breeders would havebeen trying for that would have been suitable? Flying dogs?Those engaged in animal husbandry certainly don't try and breed for reproductive isolation.The point is what those hundreds of experiments have been trying to do, if 99% have been concerned with making cows that produce more milk or chickens that lay bigger eggs then I fail to see how they could be considered to be suitable for the sort of things Ray seems to be looking for.If I say there are thousands of experiments showing bacterial resistance to WD40 and when questioned point to the thousands of bacterial experiments regularly carried out I haven't given any evidence that any of them have been carried out to investigate resistance to WD40.If Ray says there have been 200 years of experiments that failed to 'cross the barrier', whatever that means, and then points to 200+ years of animal husbandry it is only suitable if that animal husbandry was carried out with the intent to 'cross the barrier'.TTFN,WK

Because whenever one provides JAD with a reference he will not read it, but will instead claim that it is entirely consistent with, and supportive of, his hypothesis.One of the best things about you Randman is that you do generally actually look at a substantial proportion of the references you are given.There is an insane amount of evidence of sequence level mutations unassociated with substantial chromosome rearrangements being the basis for phenotypic changes of the type JAD puts forward as only being due to chromosomal rearrangements, I already mentioned some examples right at the start here in terms of reproductive isolation.TTFN,WK

I suppose that your form of creationism with its emphasis on a supernatural force influencing the direction of contingent events, and the fundamental assumption that there were alternative outcomes, is essentially the antithesis of John's prescribed highly deterministic theory where there is no room for contingency or alternatives.TTFN,WK

Thank you, sir! May I have another?TTFN,WK

I think Jonathan Slack might already have the title of Dr. Frankenfrog for his generation of headless frog embryos and he subsequent media speculation about headless cloned humans.TTFN,WK