On Tue, 11 Jul 1995 23:06:41 -0400 you wrote:
GM>I honestly don't see how the embryological data contradicts the
pattern we
>see in the fossil record. You say that we should see thousands of
>transitional forms. O. K. But developmental biology has shown that these
>massive changes may only require a few mutations to achieve the goal. Not
>the millions of mutations that classical Darwinism had believed and which
>creationist literature still believes.
The point is that "classical Darwinism" (ie. Neo-Darwinism) is right.
If
evolution is to be a fully naturalistic process it must work by "slow,
gradual,
cumulative selection" (Dawkins).
Your hopeful monsters, even if they could occur naturally, would have
to find
another hopeful monster to mate with. The point is that millions of
fruit-fly
generations, bombarded with every known mutating agent, keeps coming
up
with what Lester and Bohlin call, "The Natural Limits to Biological
Change".
That is, even if they do change, they still stay fruit flies. And the
mutants
either die out or revert back to type.
GM> Developmental biology would predict
>that the fossil transitions should be chimaerical creatures with parts
>looking like the ancestor and parts looking like the descendant. This is
>what we find in the fossil record even in the case of Ambulocetus. Both
>parts of science fit together.
Even if this were true (and you haven't shown it to be for a creature
as
complex as a large mammal), what is your *mechanism* for effecting
this
major genetic changes?
GM>Now I have answered your question. How about answering mine? What
>data (as opposed to old quotes) can you present to show that evolution must >produce thousands of transitional forms?
This is an old Darwinist ploy. "What data..."? The problem is not in
the
*data* it is in your *interpretation* and *extrapolation* from the
data! :-)
And the "old quotes" are from *evolutionists* and they are not that
old. I
have posted quotes from Dawkins (1986) to the effect that
macro-mutations
don't work and that evolution must be by "slow, gradual, cumulative
natural
selection". Is Dawkins wrong?
GM>And how does that fit into the hierarchical nature of genetics
which
>has been observed?
Even Gould does not agree with macromutations as a general rule. Who
are
your authorities for your claims that this is the genetic mechanism
that
changed a mesonychid into an ambulocetus?
God bless.
Stephen
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