Isolation---by distance as well as barriers?

Can it be that you're attributing too much of an active roll to natural selection? It's not a thinking entity. Crossbreeding doesn't "counter it." Natural selection is more like the consequences of the circumstances facing organisms.Edited by CosmicChimp, : fixed the subtitle

Nice post I agree with most of it. I am mainly trying to counter the personification of Natural selection. All of these verbs keep getting attached to it that I just can't make myself accept no matter how hard I try over all these years. =)Even you say this tidbit in your above clarification of the other man's post: I see Natural Selection as a passive force. There's nothing behind it. To me the "moving components" are the organisms, their genes and the genetic drift in the population.{ABE}Plus, I'm trying to find out whether or not InGodITrust believes that NS is a god or maybe even a devil, thinking entities he would presumably believe are capable of action.Edited by CosmicChimp, : zpe11inEdited by CosmicChimp, : added new material

Am I not correct when I contend that the term Natural selection is a sort of cobbled together (and inaccurate) way of expressing the ideas you quite well gave in your above post Coyote? I still cling to the notion that it is not an active force, it is a passive force. It does no selecting in and of itself. It doing so would even imply that it is deciding. These verbs are limited to living beings (or some mechanisms of chance I suppose). You cannot apply them to an inanimate phenomena like NS. Your post is quite good but please realize that I am objecting to the personification of NS.Also when I said "... nothing behind it." I did not mean as I think you may have interpreted that it is immaterial or of no consequence. I have always been a strong adherent to the ToE since I first learned about it. Accordingly I wouldn't want you to think I thought NS was anything other than a profound and mighty force or phenomena in the natural universe.

Your definition is a good one and I'm sure the official one. But I still think it is an indirect way of describing the phenomena. I'm going to consult a few dozen textbooks soon, when I get a chance, and see where I'm getting hung up on the semantics of this. Thanks for your input.{ABE} A not too small point that I think is of importance on this issue is that "selection" has a substantive meaning which is meant in the term Natural Selection. Selection, the noun, better explains the concept.Edited by CosmicChimp, : new info today, ABE