Evolution Simplified

(Note: I am not a cosmologist and I'm going off memory)The abundance of hydrogen is determined by two major things. One is the hydrogen produced as the big bang cooled and the other is the consumption in stars.It is my understanding that the current hydrogen abundance fits very nicely with calculations done on these. The hydrogen abundance is support for the age of the universe not the contrary.Note: this is NOT a biological evolution subject. Biological evolution is NOT cosmology.

NJ, I suggest you maintain your focus and think before you post. You seem to have trouble following the discussion. Since we already have discussed the idea that some mutations are detrimental and the NS can remove some of them from the gene pool how does it further the discussion to point out that some changes are not beneficial in regards to reproductive success? This is both jumping ahead in the discussion and something that is obviously silly in light of what the evolutionary explanation actually says.You have been given an opportunity to learn something. Those kinds of statements demonstrate that you need to take advantage of it.

In "The Origin of Species" Darwin is talking about exactly that the origin of new species from old. If you read it you find that the origin of life is passed over in a single sentence and is not an issue for the theory.If you note the fundamentals of the theory it is apparent that it can not be talking about the origin of life. It involves the behaviour of imperfect replicators. It ONLY applies to imperfect replicators. "Imperfect replicator" is as good a rough definition of life as any other given how hard it is to define.The first "life" could have arisen in any way you most like: hand of god; alien invasion; time traveler's muddy boots; chemical inevitability; probabilistic inevitability (low chance but billions of worlds to try it on) and so on. None of that makes the tiniest difference to the nature of the theory of how life evolves after that.

EZ, I'm not sure that the answer to RR's question is being made clear. Your post is on track but we need to show reasons why an assumption of long term excess of births is a good assumption.The sizes of clutchs for dinosaurs for example. We can show that a population that did an exact replacement 1 child per adult can NOT survive by doing the math etc. Shouldn't the absolute need of an excess of births be shown first?Then the impossibility of a sustained pop growth from that. We've all seen the flies calculation (at observed fecundity how long to equal the weight of the earth) for example.When that is in place your discussion of pop dynamics fits in.Maybe RR can help by clarifying what he is looking for or why he is asking what appears to be a question with an obvious answer. (It makes sense to ask all the questions in a thread laid out like this one though)

The individual is the unit of selection. I'm not sure why there is a hang up at this point in the step by step explanation but it seems to be a problem with "assuming" that populations do reach some maximum value and may (or may not) then hoover around that for some number of generations.Involved in this is the idea of "excess" births -- that is more than enough born to replace the two (in sexual organisms) parents. If individuals each produced, at birth, only one child then the species would rapidly go extinct. If someone needs to have that shown then we can go into more details. It is why the replacement level of north american humans is given as (I think) 2.2 children per couple.