>
> Lloyd Eby writes:
>
> LE>Wrong. Dawkins holds this view.
>
> ...Followed by a quote from Dawkins that shows that he did
> *not* hold the view referenced.
>
> <giggle>
>
> Wesley
Sorry, mac, but you'll have to do much better than that if you want to
make a point.
I agree that it would have been quite amusing if I had done what you
assert I did.
I wrote:
> > 6. 3 + 4 together (i.e., mutation + natural selection) can
> > account for *all* changes in biological organisms (i.e., can
> > account for all speciation and the coming into being of all
> > biological differences and biological structures, after the
> > first living cell appears).
>
> No evolutionists believe this.
Wrong. Dawkins holds this view.
Richard Dawkins, *The Blind Watchmaker* (Norton, 1986):
"EVOLUTION basically consists of endless repetition of
REPRODUCTION. In every generation, REPRODUCTION takes the genes
that are supplied to it by the previous generation, and hands
them on to the next generation but with minor random errors --
mutations. [p.56] ... Mutation is random with respect to adaptive
advantage, although it is non-random in all sorts of other
respects. It is selection, and only selection, that direct
evolution in directions that are non-random with respect to
advantage. [p. 312] ... The theory of evolution by cumulative
natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in
principle *capable* of explaining the existence of organized
complexity. [p. 316]" (Emphasis in Dawkins's text.)
My #6 claims that mutation coupled with natural selection (tacitly
understood as operating over many generations) accounts for the appearance
and existence of all the beings and structures ("organized complexity" in
Dawkins's terminology) in the biological realm. I think that any fair or
reasonable reading of Dawkins will see him as saying that.
Lloyd Eby