Peter & Rosemary Grant, Darwin's Finches and Evolution

They haven't noticed it because they assume the processes of evolution are open-ended because that's what the ToE requires. We OBSERVE that offspring are born with mutations not found in their parents.

But the vast majority of those mutations are either deleterious or "neutral" and proving even a single beneficial one that could be passed on is rare and often not even a certain thing.

We OBSERVE that populations diverge over time if we restrict gene flow between the populations.

As do I, which is what this is all about.

We OBSERVE new phenotypes emerging due to mutations, such as the change in fur color in rock pocket mice.

No, you observe new phenotypes emerging but the idea that this is due to mutations is purely theory. In the case of the pocket mice you have some basis for believing it though I think it's pretty iffy myself, and in the majority of the cases it's all theory that is in fact highly unlikely, even impossible since mutations are random and mostly of no benefit whatever. The new phenotypes emerge due to the shuffling of the allele frequencies brought about by the reproductive isolation alone working on the BUILT-IN alleles shared within the new populations.

BUT EVEN IF MUTATIONS WERE THE SOURCE OF THE NEW PHENOTYPES, you still have to have a reduction, sometimes elimination, of the competing alleles for the traits that emerge in the new population.

What I said was that the only evidence is for the normal variations within a Species (microevolution), and there is no evidence whatever for any variation beyond that. That's an actual fact. What genetic event, if observed, would prove you wrong? What would we need to see in a comparison of the human and chimp genome in order to conclude that they share a common ancestor?

There isn't such a thing. You would run out of genetic potentials for change in phenotypes long long long before you get to any kind of change that isn't simply a variation in a built-in trait that belongs to the Kind.

It is a simple fact that mutations occur in every generation that adds to the mutations that occurred in the previous generation. This increases genetic variation.

It would if mutation had anything to do with creating viable alleles but even you all acknowledge that the vast majority are either neutral or deleterious.

It is a simple fact that separate populations will accumulate different mutations, causing those separated populations to diverge over time.

I think you extrapolate this from the observed fact of new mutations occurring from generation to generation, plus the theory that requires you to believe that they are the source of functioning alleles, although this is belied by their generally nonbeneficial nature. Unfortunately the result of the accumulation of these different mutations in any population is ultimately most likely genetic disease, not the emergence of new healthy phenotypes.

Again, the observed divergence between populations needs no other source than the change in gene/allele frequencies that is the natural result of the splitting of the populations itself. The best you can say for mutations is that the built in alleles wre originally the result of mutations, because the new mutations would not be of any use in bringing about this divergence, since they would have to be passed on in the population, which is not too likelyl to happen to any given mutations in individuals.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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I am not going to read a whole thread to find a few posts of yours. This is a typical ploy of yours to confuse and obfuscate, which is a violation of decent debate practices. It is your job to produce the evidence you are claiming, a link to the relevant posts or just a restatement of the evidence.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't recall reading anything you wrote about any of that except the American Curl, which is a completely different breeding process than the normal one, with different objectives. It doesn't produce just one single breed but a large variety of cats with curled ears. When enough numbers of cats with curled ears exist so that the trait is assured continuance, then the usual breeding process I've been talking about takes over, the process which requires the reduction of genetic diversity in the effort to develop a distinctive breed of cat with curled ears.

Remember, I'm talking about what happens in the development of a race or breed or subspecies, not a single trait.

ABE: HOWEVER, I would also point out that to get that curled ear in any population requires the suppression, reduction or complete elimination of the alleles for straight or any other kind of ear. So the same principle operates even here.

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Bingo!

?

Um, there is a large variety of human beings with brown eyes. They don't constitute a race which of course means this has nothing to do with the processes I am talking about.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

So we can imagine that in the future people might reduce the diversity of the breed.

Black cats, calico cats, longhair cats, shorthair cats, all having the curled ear, do not constitute a breed. In a dog or cat show the whole animal is judged as to whether it is a good representative of its breed, not one single feature.

But unless they do so by making them all clones of one another, the diversity of the breed will still have undergone a net increase from the point at which it consisted of only one cat.

But you are talking about the diversity of the "breed" (which is not a breed precisely BECAUSE of its diversity) -- that is, the phenotypic diversity of the species, the cats themselves, which is NOT what I've been talking about. The diversity of the phenotypes may increase for many reasons in the wild too but this has nothing to do with the creation of a race or breed. The ONLY diversity I've been talking about is GENETIC diversity, and this gets reduced for the characteristic traits at least when an actual race or breed is developed, which ideally does NOT have phenotypic diversity but quite the opposite, a recognizable phenotypic portrait which is what MAKES it a breed. Or in the wild a race, a subspecies.

As to whether the process I've described is completely different from normal, I would point out that I've produced six instances of it happening, and you've produced no instances of a breed being produced the way you say must always happen.

I've produced a description of the normal way breeds have normally been developed, from a limited gene pool of selected characteristics, and by ELIMINATING those traits or characteristics that interfere with the breed. When you eliminate traits you eliminate the alleles for those traits.

This should be recognizable, I shouldn't have to produce a specific example, but I probably could if I read up on the various breeds of cattle or even the different subspecies of wildebeests. As I recall it took about a hundred years to develop a "truebred" Hereford. That's a cow with NO phenotypic diversity in its identifying characteristics, all Herefords, all genetically having the same identifying characteristics WITHOUT BEING CLONES. How did they do it? By eliminating cattle that had the "wrong" traits from the breeding pool. Of course this is eliminating the genes/alleles for those traits.

What you have produced on the other hand is an example of something completely different, not the production of a breed but really the opposite that came about through the pursuit of the preservation of a single trait. For that single trait there had to be the same kind of elimination of competing traits, but a single trait does not constitute a breed.

[qs] Remember, I'm talking about what happens in the development of a race or breed or subspecies, not a single trait.
ABE: HOWEVER, I would also point out that to get that curled ear in any population requires the suppression, reduction or complete elimination of the alleles for straight or any other kind of ear. So the same principle operates even here.

And yet despite the words you have written, the six breeds I've instanced have in fact increased in diversity. It's almost as if your words don't magically make facts disappear.

Again you are talking about phenotypic diversity which is not what I am talking about. I have not read anything you wrote about other "breeds" than the American Curl. If the other "breeds" follow the same pattern then they are all NOT what has normally been regarded as a breed, as a single trait is not sufficient to define a breed, the way brown eyes are not sufficient to define a human race.

If you don't understand my words you will continue to be in thrall to the wrong facts.

Exactly so. Evolution is about creating new species and not about creating new races or breeds. Hence the title "Origin of Species" for Darwin's book. Did you really think evolution is about black people evolving into white people? Or vice versa? (Not trying to offend.) Or about creating wiener dogs from collies?

This is pure nonsense that proves only that you don't have a clue about what I'm talking about. I said it is not easy to grasp, it requires THOUGHT, thought over TIME, a few hours over a few pots of coffee at least. All you are doing here is semantic juggling. You all DO call a new race of animals in the wild a "species" but that's really a tendentious term when you are merely assuming something based on your theory. The terms were not all that clear in Darwin's day. Darwin called his finches "species" but they were merely races or subspecies of the finch. Same with his Galapagos turtles. But you know what, it doesn't matter what level we're on, the processes that bring about a new population that is identifiably a new race or breed or SPECIES are all the same.

Just think, NN, stop blathering about your definitions.

Evolution is about the creation of new species, and is about the processes by which that result is brought about. (for about the 200th time) If the curly ear creates an evolutionary advantage (and I don't believe that it does) then the mutation could lead to a new species of curly eared cats. And as you noted, that species might well be quite diverse. Breeds, on the other hand, are intentionally made, non-natural non-diverse groupings because we define any offspring that does not look right as not being part of the breed and because we deliberately mate similar looking parents.

The difference is academic and irrelevant. The processes that create breeds or races or "species" which are really subspecies, are all the same. The cats with the curled ears are not a breed or species in the historical sense.

You are also of course emphasizing evolutionary advantage which I don't even mention. I figure if it exists as an extant healthy population we don't need to get into what advantages might or might not have brought it to that existence in order to discuss what I'm focusing on here. HOWEVER, I also dispute that tenet of the ToE, I think the idea of evolutionary advantage is completely unnecessary to the formation of new races, breeds, subspecies or SPECIES. Certainly it has to be able to survive in its environment but the theory posits a struggle that does not necessarily exist. There MAY be a struggle, there may be natural selection in some situations, but it is far from necessary in the development of new subspecies.

The blue wildebeest probably split off from the black wildebeest a hundred or so years ago and formed simply by some limited number of the beasts walking off into a new region where they were reproductively isolated from the former herd. Or perhaps a lion attack split the herd and they ended up in different locations. It doesn't matter. There is no reason to suppose the new region posed any special problems as to its food sources or anything else. So its own peculiar characteristics developed due to its own new gene/allele frequencies that differ from those of the original population. Nothing else is needed to get a new breed or race, or SPECIES.

ABE: That is, there need to be no adaptive advantage or disadvantage in the situation of blue or black wildebeest that affects their genetic expression, they simply display the fact that the genome of each Species (in the sense of Kind) is designed with many genetic potentials that allow it to form new races and breeds. /ABE

ABE: The idea that evolution comes about by adaptive pressures, or advantage in the environment, AND the idea that mutations are the source of viable alleles, are both pure unverified theory. These are assumptions accepted because that's what the ToE says. But in reality what is actually OBSERVED is the formation of divergent populations by reproductive isolation; NOT an assumption. And the very method of isolation of a limited gene pool as the cause of such divergence is well observed in breeding, which is just the conscious version of what happens randomly in nature. These things ARE observed, but the mutations and the evolution by struggle are just the theory, the ToE that is believed without proof. /ABE

So if you are talking about something else, like breeding then while some processes might be common to evolution, you are not addressing the theory of evolution (also for about the 200th time). And that means even if you were right, your point is irrelevant. You would instead be making the rather tautological and pointless observation that a collection of extremely similar animals is not very diverse. Yeah, I get that.

What you don't get, of course, is that I AM talking about the ToE, and these facts blow it to smithereens.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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It would if mutation had anything to do with creating viable alleles but even you all acknowledge that the vast majority are either neutral or deleterious. Neutral mutations - by definition - must produce alleles just as functional (at least in the sense of fitness) as the pre-mutation version.

In other words it's a good thing they can change the order of the DNA sequence and not do any real damage. Basically good design I'd say, that can survive such assaults on its integrity to the extent you all say occurs. A few more assaults on that same sequence might produce a different outcome though.

Deleterious mutations often produce alleles that are still functional. Moreover the judgement of "neutral" and "deleterious" is relevant to an environment and can change if the environment changes. Equating "less helpful in the current environment" (deleterious) to "non-functional" is just wrong.

All assumption, all theory, all Creed. The reality is that mutations are mistakes that change things that were working perfectly well. If the DNA manages to go on functioning, hooray for the DNA. Meanwhile you hold on to this idea that a destructive process can destroy the sequence of a gene and produce something "helpful" given the right environment. Does probability enter into any of these suppositions?

More importantly there is no theoretical reason why there should be a problem. Our knowledge of how mutations occur does not point to the existence of any mechanism that would prevent useful mutations from occurring. So, that observation is not very helpful to your argument at all.

No "mechanism that would prevent useful mutations from occurring?" Pretty hypothetical statement that. I'd suggest the improbability of it for one thing, given the fact that mutations are a basically destructive occurrence, interfering with the normal functioning of DNA. For another, the extreme rarity of such an occurrence, and in fact the iffiness of the evidence when you are able to trace it at all. Meanwhile there are those thousands upon thousands of known genetic diseases.

In fact your argument relies heavily on the difficulty of making the observations that you personally require, not on anything that makes a real case against the theory.

The difficulty of making the observations that I require? You mean because I said it takes thought, it's not all that easy to grasp? That's somehow a proof that it can't be a real case against the theory? This is strange logic indeed.

If you held that to be the basis of personal skepticism then it would still be a little unreasonable, I think, but that is your right. To try to make an argument of it, to say that other people should be convinced by it, is on the other hand completely unreasonable. A demand that other people should share your prejudice is not an argument.

Then it sure is fortunate that I have made no such "demand," isn't it? On the other hand you all DO demand that those who disagree with the ToE should have it shoved down the throats of our children against our will. Go figure.

I think you extrapolate this from the observed fact of new mutations occurring from generation to generation, plus the theory that requires you to believe that they are the source of functioning alleles, although this is belied by their generally nonbeneficial nature. Unfortunately the result of the accumulation of these different mutations in any population is ultimately most likely genetic disease, not the emergence of new healthy phenotypes. Of course there is nothing really unhealthy about neutral mutations (the majority) and even deleterious mutations can become beneficial or form the basis for future beneficial changes.

More theory, creed, assumption. This is sheer blindness to the fact of what mutations really are. It's a good thing the DNA design is hardy enough to withstand these frequent assaults on its integrity to the extent it can.

But there is that assumption again, that theory, that fantasy, that says you can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, I mean a useful mutation out of a deleterious one that pretty much destroyed a functioning gene, if the "right environment" happens to come along to make use of it. Of course you offer no evidence of such a thing, because it's all creed, assumption based on the theory. But really maybe it's more like this familiar scenario where it gives you a painful chronic skin rash but it also protects you against frostbite? That's the usual kind of thing we get from a "good" but "deleterious" mutation. You know, malaria protection in exchange for sickle cell anemia. Wonderful.

And then there is the existence of beneficial mutations and the role of natural selection to consider.

But again this is just based on the theory, with such a minuscule bit of evidence for it that it hardly exists at all.

Considering the other evidence for evolution ...

What other evidence? You mean all those assumptions piled on assumptions? Don't know what you mean here.

...at best you would have a weak case for an unknown source of beneficial genetic changes - and that would clearly fit the evidence better than your own views.

I'm sorry, you've completely lost me. "Unknown source of beneficial genetic changes?" But of course I'm claiming that all beneficial genetic changes -- if we're talking about observable change from population to population at least -- that are known to occur are explained by the processes I'm laying out here. Nothing unknown about it.

--although I wouldn't put the word "beneficial" in there because that's an artifact of the ToE and has nothing to do with what really happens in reality, which is that change occurs with the shuffling of gene/allele frequencies and in most cases the change is just as viable as the original population, no better, no worse.

In a ring species there's no more or less advantaged or adapted species, they are all simply interesting variations on the genetic theme as it were.

And that is hardly what you want. (Michael Behe would be happy - but even he doesn't go that far. And he can't find the evidence he needs to support his own arguments).

Well you really HAVE lost me, I have NO idea what you are talking about now.

Again, the observed divergence between populations needs no other source than the change in gene/allele frequencies that is the natural result of the splitting of the populations itself. The best you can say for mutations is that the built in alleles were originally the result of mutations, because the new mutations would not be of any use in bringing about this divergence, since they would have to be passed on in the population, which is not too likelyl to happen to any given mutations in individuals. This argument is just confused. Even if we accept that a particular mutation is unlikely to be passed on it does not follow that it is unlikely that any mutations are passed on. And natural selection will skew the odds away from deleterious mutations and towards beneficial mutations.

Seems to me it is VERY unlikely that any single mutations, that is, mutations possessed by single individuals, WOULD be passed on at all. As I said, only if you are assuming that all alleles were originally mutations can you suppose that mutations have anything to do with the formation of a new species.

But anyway, again, this is pure assumption, that mutations have anything at all to do with the formation of species/subspecies, and that natural selection is always the reliable hero ready to save the day when things go a bit wrong. The ToE says it's so, therefore it is so.

Moreover, the observed genetic diversity requires additional alleles to enter the population whether using your YEC ideas of the history of life, or those of mainstream science.

WHAT "observed genetic diversity?" This is FICTION, PaulK. You say it is "observed," where is the evidence? Which dog breed has more genetic diversity than a mutt? Where's your vaunted Evidence? And don't give me that rabbits in Australia scenario which ended with someone questioning the facts in the story.

You have no observations which give us any positive reason to believe otherwise.

Getting anyone who is steeped in the ToE to see anything I have to say is not something I have any illusions about any more. The argument has been sufficient but the eyes are closed.

So again it is seen that you are relying on assumption, against the evidence.

What's really odd here is that you all keep complaining I'm ignoring the evidence but what I've been getting from you is mostly theory and assumption, no evidence at all.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I do not want to continue this discussion with you. But I have to correct this idiotic thing you are doing with the term "race." The way I am using it is perfectly correct to describe subspecies of any animal, and this was confirmed and in fact suggested as the correct term by dwise just a short while ago when he said I should not use the term "variety" to refer to animals but only to plants. Darwin used the term "race" to apply to animals too, it's the right word, you have a narrow contemporary bias on it. However, just because there must be such silly minds here, I will try to stick to the term subspecies.

GET A CLUE. You don't understand the argument I'm making and you don't even know the proper terms for things.

Faith's argument is worse than you are allowing for here. Because despite her disbelief that there can be any substantial number of beneficial mutations, her claim is that even if she allows us to have those mutations, evolution is still a dead end because making new breeds chews up any diversity.

Which is true exactly as I've presented it. The example of breeding is the only accessible example of how this has to happen to get the new traits of a new breed, and it's perfectly good as an example of what has to happen in the wild too. The alleles for other traits can't remain in the population, period.

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The example of breeding is the only accessible example of how this has to happen to get the new traits of a new breed, and it's perfectly good as an example of what has to happen in the wild too. How long have you been thinking about this? Let's suppose in the wild, a mutation gives a wolf a curly ear that presents no advantage over other wolves. The result is of course that wolves as a population becomes more diverse.

Why do you keep talking about phenotypic diversity? That has nothing to do with my argument. Of course you can get traits popping up in a wild population from time to time that make it more diverse at that level. Mutation isn't required, just the occasional expression of a rare recessive allele will do it. That's has nothing to do with my argument.

And that is true regardless of whether that mutation is a gain of a new gene or is a modification of a gene that used to ensure pointy ears.

It won't be the gain of a new gene, only an allele for the gene that makes ear shape. But in any case this has nothing whatever to do with my argument.

The fact that you come along later and declare that the curly eared wolves are a new breed does not change or mean anything.

Of course it doesn't mean anything. It's got nothing to do with what I'm talking about. It IS somewhat similar to Dr. Adequate's case of the curled-eared cat, which gets called a "breed" just for its ear apparently, which is also not what I'm talking about.

The entire population of wolves now has a genetic variation and a corresponding phenotype that did not exist before.

Yeah, and?

And of course if a population of wolves having the curly ear and all of the wolves other variations gets isolated from the other wolves, then at that point they are necessarily less diverse than all of the wolves together,

You really have NO idea what I've been arguing, at all.

What do you mean "They" are necessarily "less diverse?" Within a generation or two of their isolation they could be much more diverse as new traits from new genetic combinations start appearing among them. But I'm not focused on the diversity of the phenotype, ONLY the fact that the GENETIC POTENTIALS reduce AS YOU GET THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW SUBPOPULATION. In new populations split off from old you have new gene/allele frequencies. Some alleles for some genes are MORE frequent, some less. This brings about some changes in the phenotype. Maybe the curly ears become more frequent. But it's only when the new group inbreeds for enough generations to begin developing a characteristic look to the whole population that we can talk about the formation of a new race or breed or subspecies. That's when it begins to look appreciably different from the other population, when the divergence between the two becomes evident, when the various traits of individuals that make the population diverse in the sense you are talking about start to blend into a trait picture shared by all the individuals, some disappearing, some spreading to all members etc. If the process goes on long enough you may even have a new species in the sense of a distinctively different population that cannot interbreed with the former population any more. Isn't that when you want to talk about speciation? A new species?

What I've been trying to point out in this scenario is that there will be a loss of genetic material for the characteristic traits, a loss of competing alleles for those traits. That has to happen for those traits to become characteristic.

but nothing then prevents new mutations from generating spots, or bobbed tails, or an enhanced sense of smell etc. In time the grouping might be just as diverse as the original pool, and that is regardless of the fact that the new group lacks a gene for pointy ears.

All quite true and all quite irrelevant to the point I've been trying to make. You are talking about phenotypic diversity, I am talking about genetic diversity, specific the loss of it as a POPULAIION acquires the haracter of a race or breed or subspecies. To get the second species in a ring species requires that the alleles for the new traits be more frequent and alleles for traits that are different from it stay behind in the old population. And so on around the ring. Ultimately a "true breed" may have ONLY those alleles for its characteristic traits and they may become homozygous or "fixed loci" while ALL alleles that are different from that character have been completely eliminated from the population. Complete elimination doesn't have to happen for the new species to exist, of course, there can be a few lingering old alleles that still pop up from time to time.

The alleles for other traits can't remain in the population, period. Well, I could construct a scenario where an old trait could be recovered,

And so could I but it would interfere with the trait picture that characterizes the new population or new species. The point is that you have to eliminate the alleles for other traits to preserve the characteristic traits. This is what breeders do intentionally, nature does it randomly.

but the point is that the loss of one trait does not prevent diversity from increasing with regard to other traits as long as mutations are allowed.

But we're not talking about increasing diversity, that's another subject, we're talking about creating a new subspecies or even species in which a new trait picture is formed that's different from the other populations of that Species, and that is what requires the overall reduction of genetic diversity. GENETIC diversity. GENETIC.

And the second point is that making breeds is not what evolution requires.

Surely the making of new species is what it is all about. It's about how there are four different kinds of finches discovered by Darwin, whole populations of them that have different habits from the other finch populations. It's about his Galapagos turtles which look different from those on the mainland they sprang from. What else could it be about? Supposedly it's about CHANGE, change in whole populations, not just change in individuals, which happens among human beings all the time, even from parents to children. What I'm talking about is change that comes to characterize a whole group, race, breed, subspecies, whatever you want to call it, a group, a population, that is isolated from the other members of the Species to inbreed long enough to develop its own peculiar characteristics. Again take the ring species, I'm talking about the kind of POPULATION-WIDE differences that exist between one species and another around the ring.

If your argument is simply that humans are unlikely to regain things that were lost during evolution, like tails or gills, I'm down with that. But there are so many other ways to gain diversity that such a principle does not make evolution a dead end.

Dear nukeywukey, you really really aren't getting this at all.

Down any path where the changes I'm talking about are occurring there has to ultimately be an end where no more variation is possible becaue there is no more genetic diversity left in that population. And since it's these paths that are definitive of evolution this clearly shows that macroevolution simply cannot happen.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Since you said that I am allowed to use mutations, I provided a mutation that created the new phenotype. Therefore I have by definition provided an example involving genetic diversity. And since you've asked nicely, I will tell you that the new allele I introduced is dominant, not recessive.

But what are you trying to prove by this? I'm really not getting your point. Yes a (putatively viable) mutation will add genetic diversity and if it's expressed also a new trait. There's nothing about that to challenge anything I'm saying.

Nothing more is required genetically to produce a separate classification of wolf. You simply separate the curly eared wolves from the rest. Or you just name them in place after you've seen a few of them.

This just seems like a semantic game to me, like Dr. A's examples. You get a new population that is distinguished by only one trait and call it a new breed or subspecies. OK, where do we go from there?

I guess I could point out that for the population with the curly ears, the alleles for other kinds of ears are reduced or eliminated, which is the pattern I've been talking about. And if you keep the curly-eared wolves reproductively isolated from the rest of the population over many generations of inbreeding, their new allele/gene frequencies will probably change more traits than the curly ears (depends on the genetic diversity of the species to begin with and I don't know in the case of wolves. If it's high enough you should get the new traits). This would occur simply because it IS a smaller reproductively isolated population. It will certainly have different allele frequencies from the mother population. And that's the basis of microevolution. And it would have reduced genetic diversity as a result. The curly ear becomes just one of the traits, and its allele may even become fixed over time, while all the alleles for other kinds of ears disappear from the gene pool, along with the alleles for whatever other traits are becoming characteristic of the group, which is the process of reducing genetic diversity I'm talking about.

I invite you to reconsider your last post. At this point, even your fan Raphael must be wondering about the horse he's backed in the derby.

I would if I knew what to reconsider but I'm not getting what you are trying to prove here.

If you want to try to prove that evolution continues even with increases in genetic diversity or that you can get distinctive new subspecies by such increases you'll have to come up with a few more examples.

ABE: If you bred together all the cats with the curled ears, which are a pretty motley crew at this point, keeping them all reproductively isolated from all other cats, while inbreeding completely among themselves, I think then you might get a very interesting new breed that really would be a new breed, with a distinctive character all its own plus the curled ear. it would take many generations of inbreeding to do that. It would be really interesting to see what traits would emerge from the pool that has already been created. Of course my principle would apply, the traits that do emerge and become characteristic of the breed would be created from their own alleles, all alleles for other versions of those traits gradually disappearing from the breed. That's the necessary genetic reduction for producing a truly new breed.

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I don't need more examples. Since your claim is that it is impossible to generate new groupings without decreasing diversity, any single example is sufficient to show that you are in error.

Where did I say "NEW GROUPINGS?" You can create new "groupings" a lot of different ways. I am talking about creating a new SUBSPECIES with its own gene pool. That takes reproductive isolation over many generations. That you cannot create without reducing GENETIC diversity. Again you use "diversity" ambiguously which shows you are missing the whole point.

At this point, I have provided two, extremely simple hypothetical examples, only to have you attempt to say, in effect, that the conditions I invented were not what I said they were.

They are not what is required to deal with my argument. They almost seem like a silly simplistic parody. You are simply not understanding my argument although of course you think you are. I keep telling you its not easy to grasp. It isn't. It's simple enough but it's also tricky. You don't have a clue about it yet.

On top of that Dr. Adequate cited real life examples; examples which you dismiss without saying that they are wrong. At this point I think you have more than enough to think about.

Dr. A's examples completely miss the point too. Neither of you understands this argument.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes, you could point that out. Our you could read from my post were I acknowledged exactly that point and then dealt with it.

Kindly reproduce the part of the post where you believe you did that.