On Fri, 21 Jul 1995 12:19:18 -0400 you wrote:
TG>To the group:
>I'm just finishing up Weiner's _The Beak of the Finch_ that describes the
>work of Peter and Rosemary Grant in documenting rapid evolution among the
>Galapagos finches in the wild. Now I know that some of you will dismiss
>this work as uninteresting and unimportant on the "big" questions about
>evolution. But I'm quite intrigued by the conclusion that ordinary
>neo-Darwinian natural selection and divergence works on the itty-bitty
>variations that are present and that it works very rapidly (e.g. just a few
>generations under extremely stressful conditions).
I don't think anyone disagrees with such micro-evolution, Terry. Even
Creation-Science books that I have read believe that Darwin's finches
came from a common ancestor. I certainly have no problem with it.
TG>I think that the message of the book (other examples besides the
finches
>are discussed) is that evolution is not slow under certain conditions and
>that fairly traditional Darwinian principles do in fact work.
Is there any need to still prove it? :-) And indeed is this really
"evolution"?
The finches still stay finches.
I find it interesting that you are still defending "fairly traditional
Darwinian principles" when Glenn in a recent post has chided
"Christians" for still
attacking Darwin's views. In the interests of clarity, perhaps you
should take
this up with Glenn, for the benefit of us all?
This ongoing fuzziness of debate seems to be a major feature of
evolutionary
argument. I can empathise with Gould who wrote:
"All these statements...are subject to recognized exceptions- and this
imposes
a great frustration upon anyone who would characterize the modern
synthesis in order to criticize it." (Gould S.J., "Is a new and
general theory of evolution emerging?", Paleobiology, vol. 6(1),
January 1980, p120).
God bless.
Stephen
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