Help with School

I think a germaine question is: do you have access to contemporary evidence? Or are you limited to what was known at the time? If you can introduce modern evidence, you might point out that no new evidence for the Lamarkian view has been introduced in the last hundred years or so, if not longer.Also take the time to review the basic fallacies of informal logic. (Search google.)

That's a good one, John. One can pretty much compare any mammal's skeleton with any other and find all the same bones. Even the whales and other sea mammals.Here's another - cellular chemistry. Many simply one-celled organisms (yeast, for example) use a basic anaerobic (non-oxygen) process to metabolize and use energy from food. More complex organisms use an aerobic process (oxygen-using), which is much more efficient - it produces about 15 times as much energy, if I remember my basic biochemistry.The thing is, those complex cells, with their aerobic metabolic pathways, still have and use the simpler anaerobic pathways, too. They have the cellular mechanisms for the simpler cells rolled in as well. There's not much of an advantage to this - the anaerobic process could never produce enough energy for a complex organism by itself, and the energy it does add is nearly unnoticable when combined with the aerobic process.So, why would it be there unless those complex cells were the decendants of the simpler anaerobic cells?When you look at it, animals only differ from each other in superficial forms. At the cellular level, we're very, very much alike.But like John said, even though you're related to both your parents and your great, great-uncle you look much more like your parents.

Wait... so, they have a fictional character as one of their key witnesses?Here's an obvious question on cross-examination: "Dr. Malcom, do you exist? Are you or are you not a fictional character?"Now, whether or not the thoughts of Michael Crichton are germaine is another question. By training I think he's a doctor, not a biologist, albiet a subtle distinction. As a writer I think he's a hack.Given that everything Ian Malcom has to say is written in two books, you have the advantage - you know what he's going to say. Perhaps you could summarize his points here - it's been ages since I read those books and I can't remember. I do remember he was kind of an ass, and honestly I don't find the thoughts of mathematicians relevant to many issues - they live in their own world of perfect predictability and geometric precision, not the very fuzzy world we inhabit.

Likely the paleontologist is going to bring up the lack of transitional fossils. He/she's wrong, of course - there are transitional fossils. But fossilization itself is a relatively rare event. That might be an angle to take.I don't know what the farmer is going to say. Why would a farmer be qualified to address biological data beyond what's required for animal husbandry?

It's the breeding and care of livestock populations. I don't know why they call it "husbandry". What I'm meant was, a farmer would have a basic knowledge of how heredity works, and hybrid vigor and all that, but the actual mechanisms of genetics aren't something generally considered to be in his/her field (so to speak). So I don't see how a farmer has knowledge relevant to scientific inquiry.