Stephen wrote:
>No. Animal breeding works because of *selection* by an *intelligent
>human designer*.
ID theory (such as it is) claims that the GENES are designed, not that the
LGGs (or whoever) do the actual culling.
>Variations come and go in the wild but if an intelligent human designer
>spots them, he can save them and breed from them selectively. Many of the
>most useful variations to man are monsters which would never be viable in
>the wild (eg. maize).
humans cull out unfavorable variations just as nature does. A camel is a
monster that would not survive very well in the arctic. A polar bear is a
monster that would never survive the Sahara.
>The *minimal* requirements for successful selective breeding would have
>to include: a) spotting the slight variation in a characteristic wanted; 2)
>mate the plant or animal with another of the same species which also had
>the same characteristic; 3) protect the selected plants/animals and their
>offspring from breeding with others of the same species which did not have
>the desired characteristic (before the advent of ring-lock fencing); 4) avoid
>sterility, defects or reversion by not excessively interbreeding (which
>implies keeping track of who was related to whom over many generations
>and introducing new bloodlines); and 5) being aware of elementary
>genetics, such a correlated effects (pleiotropy).
genetics has only been widely known for about a century.
>If Chris thinks it's simple to spot slight differences in characteristics and
>then to protect selected females from randy males, even with modern
>fencing, then he should go and talk to an Agricultural Show judge on the
>one hand, and to a farmer on the other.
>
>Breeding is highly skilled and unrelenting work!
breeding is, especially as it is practiced today. Domestication is not.
>CC>So, let me ask: If selection of sheep for more wool is done by human beings
>>or by cold climate, what's the difference that *makes* a difference as far
>>as evolutionary theory is concerned?
>
>Well for starters, one "difference" is that human intelligent designers can
>bring out of a genome far more variety, far more quickly, and maintain it,
>than nature can. One only has to think of domestic dogs, ranging from
>Great Danes to Chihuahuas to see that.
>
>This in fact was Darwin's very first point at the beginning of Chapter 1 of
>the Origin:
>
>"WHEN we compare the individuals of the same variety or subvariety of
>our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which
>strikes
>us is, that they generally differ more from each other than do the
>individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature. And if we
>reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been
>cultivated, and which have varied during all ages under the most different
>climates and treatment, we are driven to conclude that this great variability
>is due to our domestic productions having been raised under conditions of
>life not so uniform as, and somewhat different from, those to which the
>parent-species had been exposed under nature." (Darwin C.R., "The Origin
>of Species", [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th
>edition, 1928, reprint, p21).
>
>Chris can bet his bottom dollar that if man disappeared, all the many
>varieties of domesticated sheep on the Earth today, with their many
>textures and colours of wool, would disappear too, back to the same
>limited number of textures and colours that existed originally.
although Darwin didn't rule out reversion, he strongly doubted it. I think
in this wonderful archaic Victorian English, he is trying to say "it
depends."
"Having alluded to the subject of reversion, I may here refer to a
statement often made by
naturalists namely, that our domestic varieties, when run wild, gradually
but certainly revert in
character to their aboriginal stocks. Hence it has been argued that no
deductions can be drawn
from domestic races to species in a state of nature. ****I have in vain
endeavoured to discover on
what decisive facts the above statement has so often and so boldly been
made.**** There would be
great difficulty in proving its truth: we may safely conclude that very
many of the most
strongly-marked domestic varieties could not possibly live in a wild state.
In many cases we do
not know what the aboriginal stock was, and so could not tell whether or
not nearly perfect
reversion had ensued. It would be quite necessary, in order to prevent the
effects of
intercrossing, that only a single variety should be turned loose in its new
home. Nevertheless, as
our varieties certainly do occasionally revert in some of their characters
to ancestral forms, it
seems to me not improbable, that if we could succeed in naturalising, or
were to cultivate, during
many generations, the several races, for instance, of the cabbage, in very
poor soil (in which case,
however, some effect would have to be attributed to the direct action of
the poor soil), that they
would to a large extent, or even wholly, revert to the wild aboriginal
stock. Whether or not the
experiment would succeed, is not of great importance for our line of
argument; for by the
experiment itself the conditions of life are changed."
(http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter1.html) the emphasis is mine.
Susan
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For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
this one.
--Albert Camus