Dogs will be Dogs will be ???

All the issues you raise have ready answers, but a thread on when morphologically a species has evolved sufficient change to be a different species is not the place.--Percy

In Message 67 of the Evolution is not Abiogenesis thread you said you were going to return to trying to "establish a Creation theory." By this did you mean another non-scientific version of creationism at odds with reality? It sure sounds like it, because kind is a concept of the current version of creationism, and they've never given it a formal definition.It might be a better idea to explore what science knows about classification and speciation before making a decision about whether the concept of kind belongs in your version of creationism, otherwise you'll just be creating another version of creation that makes no sense.If on the other hand you're sort of sifting through current creationism to see what concepts should be retained, then I'd ask from what stems the notion that any of it is worth retaining? It cannot possibly stem from any of your discussions here. Creationism is merely the very odd claim that the tales in a religious book are literally true. Some of that book, the Bible, is true, some of it is demonstrably false, and some of it can't be verified. To borrow a favorite creationist style of inquiry, concerning Genesis 1, was Moses there? Oh, but Moses was inspired by God to write an accurate account of creation. How do you know he was inspired by God? Were you there?These are silly questions, of course, but I'm just trying to make a point. Rather than accepting Biblical and creationist concepts until you prove to yourself they're false, I would suggest barring any concepts not well supported with evidence. Real world evidence. There's really no point in creating a theory that has aspects unsupported by evidence - scientifically it will never go anywhere.Since I'm being critical I should add that I think this new approach is a great improvement from your old.--Percy

Informally, microevolution is change within a species, while macroevolution is change from one species to another or more.Each generation is microevolution, a minute amount of change. Over time the tiny changes of microevolution can accumulate into the large and significant changes of macroevolution. The 4 generations you suggest for a wolf to change into a different species is far too small. For a mammal I would think that something in the neighborhood of a thousand generations is the minimum to produce a new species. If it turned out to be 500 or 10,000 I wouldn't be surprised, but definitely nothing near a mere 4 generations can produce a new species. If that were all it took there would be thousands of new species being discovered every year. You wouldn't even be the same species as your great great grandparents, let alone the same species as Jesus. A daughter population is just a descendant population - it has nothing to do with gender. The original population is the parent population, and the descendant population is the daughter population. I guess we could instead call it a son population, but we don't. It is possible for speciation to happen when two closely related species interbreed, but this is rare. It is also sudden, and most speciation is gradual. The "closely related" part is important. Two species that are closely related and are still to some extent mutually interfertile must have shared a common ancestor species in the not too distant past. Hence, wolves can breed with dogs, asian leopard cats can breed with the domestic house cat, but chipmunks cannot breed with moles.--Percy

Hi Chuck,Dawkins isn't the only source of this information, but he has a gift for writing for the layperson. His writing is both interesting and easy to understand. If you'd prefer books by other authors then just say so, I'm sure you'll get plenty of suggestions.I'd much prefer someone who understood evolution but rejected it anyway than someone who never understood evolution at all.--Percy