My Understanding (hypothetically)

Uncalled for. No one is forcing you to read or respond to Brad’s posts, so why on earth are you going out of your way to simply go down the ad hominem road? Remember that time when Dan jokingly implied that you were stalking Salty? Remember how you didn’t like it, calling it an unsavory implication? If you thought that was offensive, why on earth are you offending Brad? Hell, your comments are several times worse than the unsavory implication that you’re a stalker. What do you hope to get out of this?I suggest you take Brian’s advice.

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"Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially nonrandom."
--Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

Brad, I think I may be starting to understand what you’re saying. You write: I think you may be trying to develop some sort of analogy between mathematics and evolutionary theory in order to sidestep the question of, what is the mechanism that prevents microevolution from accumulating and becoming macroevolution? that creationists have yet to address.A similar concept to what you may be propounding might be that a closed set, i.e. (1, 2) can be defined to be a kind which allows for infinite variation given that the numbers that fall between 1 and 2 are infinite. Yet this set does not include members of another kind i.e. (3, 4).This allows for infinite variation within a kind, which therefore allows you to claim that this is why there is no indication that there exists any limit on how much the genome can mutate. But then this begs the question as to why you arbitrarily draw a line at kinds. More importantly, what is a kind? If a kind allows for infinite variation, why can’t we assume that the closed set we’re looking at is all of the life that exists on earth? Why would we suggest that we should subdivide groups of organisms into multiple "kinds" given that the evidence for common descent of all organisms on earth is so overwhelming?

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"Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially nonrandom."
--Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker

I don't understand your question. If something has "value" between 1 and 3, like 1.5, it only belongs to one of those closed sets: (1,2) and not (2,3). That was my only point. Did I mess up somewhere?Edited to add:Dude, you edited your post, and now I'm even more confused. What?This message has been edited by Snikwad, 02-21-2005 20:08 AMEdited [again] to add:Ok, now you say: I'm not sure how to explain it to you. You distinguish them by checking in which set they belong, I guess. A value that belongs in one set doesn't belong in the other. I think your question may make sense if you were wondering how I would distinguish any member of the set (1,2) from the (1,3) set, if the number chosen were, let's say, less than 2. But that's not what I said. I don't understand your objection. Please clarify.This message has been edited by Snikwad, 02-21-2005 20:18 AM

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"Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially nonrandom."
--Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker