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: : : : You said: : : : : "As usual, you still fail to comprehend the : : : : difference between microevolution which is : : : : caused by natural selection, and macroevolution : : : : (speciation) which has no known mechanism." : : : : Like many other creationists, you acknowledge that microevolution occurs but not macroevolution. Yet all of us supporting evolution say that macroevolution is just a long series of microevolutionary events. : : : : Why can't a 10 million- or 20 million-year sequence of microevolution involving millions of generations produce macroevolutionary change? : : : Because you have not explained the mechanism for : : : this change to occur. MIcroevolution works on : : : all ready present genes and changes in the : : : frequencies of such and cannot be extrapolated : : : to macroevolution. If you think it can, let me : : : ask you this question: If we started out with : : : a population of bacteria all of which have 1 : : : chromosome as there entire genetic makeup, how : : : can simple variations in these genes and selection, : : : after any amount of time, cause organisms with : : : say, 8, 20, or 46 chromosomes to appear? These : : : genes were never present, how then does natural : : : selection work on what is not there? : : Three points: : : 1. You have not asked easy questions. Indeed, they are cutting edge questions for evolutionary biologists to tackle. How, indeed, can we go from a prokaryote to a eukaryote. For some good ideas on how this could have happened check out Lynn Margulis's work. She is the originator of the endosymbiont theory, but also considers the origin of the nucleus and chromosomes. : : 2. That you can ask difficult questions in no way lessens the evidence that exists in favor of evolution : : -- fossil record (superb and getting better) : : -- developmental biology (Why do humans have gills?) : : -- Anatomical atavisms (goose bumps in humans) : : -- Molecular biology (DNA similarity between monophyletic groups, i.e. groups of common heritage) : : -- Geology (The time and origin of oxygen atmosphere.) : : -- Evidence for genetic changes in populations (incipient speciation in Rhagoletis pomonella, the apple maggot. Darwin's finches [see any work by Peter and Rosemary Grant].) : : 3. Again, I implore, I beg, I plea, I lay prostrate on the ground beseeching you to produce an alternative to evolution by descent. You are hung up on the biochemcal possibility (you say impossibility) of producing beneficial gene changes through mutation. O.K., legitimate concern, but you deny the existence of evolution based on this? That's not how science works. Science is ogous to a murder mystery. You take all the evidence you can find, and then try and make the best case that you can. The judge and jury, in science, is the scientific community and the trial never ends, in fact the investigation never ends, the case must be tried over and over again. So far the prosecutors have produced huge, mive sets of experiemental, observational and theoretical support for their side (a murder occurred; evolution occurred). The defense has found some gaps in the record, some disagreement about the exact nature of the killing. But the jury (scientific community) agrees, the defense can not disprove that a murder occurred. The jury is not exactly sure how the victim was murdered but there is definitely a corpse. : : The victim: Ignorance. The inability to see a beautiful theory if it bit you, with beatifully evolved jaws, derived from gill arhces, in the flesh that surrounds your atavistic tail bone, the cocyx. (Scientists battle the unknown, the "unknowable", and try to stamp out, murder ignorance) : : The prosecution: scientists : : The Defense: creationsists, exobiologists, other ...ists : : The jury: scientists : : The judge: scientists : : Ethical question: Is there a problem that scientists are the prosecution, the judge and the jury? : We are separated by this grreat span of time, so it is difficult to see everything in our micro-second lifetime. Maybe jumping genes 1billion years ago were the rule rather than the exception. : What about translocation of chromsomes?? Or one break in the chromosome creating a pair?? It is all there and happening today. One in 500 humans today is a balanced translocted carrier. Chromsomes split and recombine(the 1st with the 4th, 2nd with this one or that one ,etc.) It si the balancing that creates the healthy sometimes better indiviual. So imagine the first single chromosome breaking in two and creating a pair.

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