Why creationist definitions of evolution are wrong, terribly wrong.

Hi Percy,I agree with alot of what you say but when you talk about the wikipedia definition you seem to be doing the same thing Arphy did previously, you are extending the definition to cover the subsequent sentences which are in fact talking about what the definition means rather than themselves being part of the definition.I think Dr. A is wrong to place the blame for the conflation of evolutionary theory with the natural history of evolution of life on earth as something that creationists have done. Most people without a biological background will think of evolution in terms of the evolutionary history of life on earth, I would suggest that is the concept that is most commonly tied to the term 'evolution' in the general populace.Having said that the fact that the distinct concepts of evolution are clearly conflated by many people is neither evidence of an 'evolutionist' conspiracy to pull off a bait and switch nor of a creationist conspiracy to redefine the meaning of evolution to fit their own purposes.This doesn't mean that creationists don't often try and do this, the OP gives a number of clear examples, but simply wanting evolution to mean the evolutionary history of life on earth doesn't seem to be a case of this to me.The problem here is that people are taking 2 distinct definitions which can both be credibly used for different conceptions of 'evolution' and trying to insist that they are either mutually exclusive or should be rolled into one. The real answer is to be precise in what you say so that there is no ambiguity what definition is appropriate. In many cases the context should be sufficient for this.TTFN,WK

You quote ... When speciation occurs the product is 2 closely related individual species, this therefore is the evolution of groups larger than 1 individual species, QED.If you look at the very next page from Berkeley 'Patterns', you will see that it includes speciation as one of the 4 patterns of macroevolution.TTFN,WK

It isn't, it is the evolution of groups larger than a single species. When your two horses are sufficiently reproductively isolated as to be considered distinct species then your original group of 1 species has become a group of 2 species and is therefore a group larger than a single species.This is really very straightforward, I'm not sure what the problem is that you are having with it.TTFN,WK

I'd be inclined to go with Coyote's answer, that in fact you are just being overly simplistic in thinking that the mere fact that those two horses can't interbreed mechanistically means that they are actually differerent species. Unless there is a genetic barrier preventing them from interbreeding with other intermediately sized horses then there is probably a good chance that there is still considerable scope for gene flow among the different horse populations.Most of the phenotypic diversity selected for by domestic breeding in animals like horses and dogs can at best perhaps be considered examples of incipient speciation since a pre-mating barrier has been introduced for some sub-populations.What your horses are is more probably the non interbreeding ends of a spectrum of overlapping interbreeding populations, in other words the extremities of a horse ring species.If one of your horses had lost its ability to interbreed with all other horse populations as well then obviously that would be the one that had formed a new species, it wouldn't have stopped being a horse, but it wouldn't be part of the potentially interbreeding population which is the species Equus Caballus.TTFN,WK

I'm really not at all sure what Barbara is talking about. If I had to hazard a guess I'd suggest she has gotten a viral origin for transposable elements, which do account for ~50% of the genome, mixed up with a bacterial origin although I guess microbial could include viruses.The information I can find from the human genome project says they identified 200 genes whose closest relatives were found in bacteria rather than another metazoan species, which is not even 1% of genes let alone of the genome.TTFN,WK