Has natural selection really been tested and verified?

How do you know that the process wasn't gradual? If the environmental pressure wasn't there then the change wouldn't take place, would it? That the end result was rapid really says nothing about the rate of the process.

This statement is ridiculous. I don't need ToE to be an atheist or agnostic or whatever and I don't believe most people who reject the Creation Myth do either.

Mutations are not the only source of genetic variability. Crossing over during meiosis, population isolation and hybridization (in plants) are some other sources.

Typically the advantage of a mutation is usually small and the challenge of the environment is reasonably surmountable so the replacement of the old with the new will take ages. (AbE: This should read closer to "Typically the advantage of a mutation is minuscule and the challenge of the environment is easily surmountable so the replacement of the old with the new will never fully take place but both alleles will survive side by side in the population in proportion to their value.") However, the ToE would predict that if an advantage is great enough and the challenge is severe enough the evolution will happen without even showing up on the books. Say there is a mutation that cause the heart to be three sizes too small. Contrary to popular belief, one does not grow up to be an ill tempered hermet peering enviously down upon the denizens of Whoville but dead in the womb. So, there is no prediction that the kind of evolution you're talking about here will be necessarily gradual. You made that up.

No. What the study didn't show was your ill concieved notion of what the ToE would predict. Their studiy has proven your hypothisis wrong. Will you accept the evidence or ignore it?

No they didn't. As you yourself said in an earlier post, that mutations always show up like the cavalry is beyond reason. This gave cause for biologist to suspect that, as the ToE predicts, mutations show up at random and become useful or harmful when NS demands it. That could take ages. It's not a wild speculation, but a prediction of the ToE.

What is wild speculation is that the mutation did pop up just in the knick of time and, therefore, must have been done on purpose.

Now, I can certainly understand why so many people WANT to believe in purpose, because it is the only theory that can protect their believe in theism. No other theory will do that. So even if a test shows otherwise, its best to still believe it MIGHT be true. Because once purpose is not enough to explain things, all hope is lost. There is no other theory that is going to give you the misconceptions you need to believe in theism. Once the purpose is gone, your entire world view is gone, and that is not something most people will readily accept, so they will interrupt all data the way they want it. Not that I would want to impune your motives, of course. I'm sure you have perfectly sound reasons for the blatant expression of misconception throughout your posts.

You have been asked several times to answer these questions to help define your position:

• Could you tell me what you mean by "evolutionary change"?
• Could you tell me what you mean by "complexity" in organisms?

The first one was asked in Yes. (Message 5) and has not been answered yet, even though Balder-dash has made 66 posts that are mostly complaints about being misunderstood. Instead we get additional comments that raise more questions than they answer, such as:

This shows a typical failure to understand the mechanism of natural selection and the difference between natural selection and evolution.

First off, this raises the question, why is this a contradiction? The same process occurs just in a different time frame from the one you have fixed in your mind as being Darwin's.

Second, Darwin wasn't committed to a slow time frame, he predicts "punk-eek" after all, can you show where he absolutely requires natural selection of be slow and occur over many generations? See http://darwin-online.org.uk/ for all his works in searchable text.

Third, you are talking about natural selection in this specific example, and not evolution, Dawin's theory of Descent with Modification through Natural Selection was that the descent with modification usually took a long time, but that natural selection was virtually instantaneous when death occurred in an individual organism before it reproduced.

Why should an example where a whole bunch of people died NOT occur rapidly by comparison to the time it took for the (one of several ways) mutation to occur in the ancestral population (where it had to have been several generations in the past to spread as far as it did) -- why should death be unexpectedly rapid?

A contradiction would mean that it was not natural selection at all but something else, and this is patently false.

By the way, natural selection operated in two different modes in that example: it selected people with the beneficial mutation to survive and breed, and it selected the people with the behavioral modification (don't eat the dead person) to survive and breed. The second instance of natural selection was more complete and even faster than the mutation selection. Note that for this second selection, no mutation was needed, just natural selection of a different behavior pattern. Behavior patterns can change in a population in a generation, and if you want I can furnish examples where this was observed and documented.

If you see a film at high speed and at slow speed you still see the same frames, the same movements and scenery.

Certainly if something can happen in a short time, then it can also be spread out over a longer time.

Please stop insulting my intelligence: I am no atheist, I am a deist, and deism has absolutely no problem with evolution in general and natural selection in particular -- it would be the method that was set up with the creation of the universe for the formation of life as we know it, putting in place the "natural laws" that govern evolution and other aspects of the universe as we know it.

Science is agnostic. It explains how things happen, not why. Why do you think you need to discuss atheism in order to discuss natural selection?

Of course science is biased. Reality is not up for vote, and so it is biased to what the evidence actually shows rather than any - ANY - a proiri assumptions.

When you refuse to define what it is you are really looking for, you will reap what you sow eh? It seems you generate more questions for you to answer than you resolve by your failure to answer the previous questions. I started with one, now we have at least four on my book that are not answered (including the first one still unanswered), and several other questions by others.

Summary - unanswered questions (rather than resolutions of issues):

1. Could you tell me what you mean by "evolutionary change" so we don't waste another hundred posts on missing a dodging mark?

2. Could you tell me what you mean by "complexity" in organisms?

3. Can you tell me why natural selection cannot operate in one generation on a breeding population?

4. Can you show where Darwin absolutely requires natural selection of be slow and occur over many generations?

5. Can you tell me why an example, where a whole bunch of people died, NOT occur rapidly by comparison to the time it took for the (one of several ways) mutation to occur?

6. Can you tell me why you think you need to discuss atheism in order to discuss natural selection?

You reach resolution by answering questions, not ignoring them.

Enjoy.

Do you say that because thats what the theory of evolution tells you?

also, i dont think i mentioned the word 'hybridized'

what I said was that the Grants showed that the different 'species' of finches could still breed together. Perhaps this shows that they are not really different species at all. Couldnt this be evidence that the 13 different species of finches are really just 1 species of finch with variying features?

We know that dogs come in great variety, but we dont say that a bulldog and a poodle are a different species....they are one species and, even though they are very different, can still breed together.

Cant the finches on galapogas be experiencing the same genetic variety which is found in dogs/cats/horses/cows/sheep/humans etc etc