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But speciation has been observed in labs. Surely this is proof that natural selection can occur. The results might be different in the lab than in nature, depending on what the environmental factors are, but the process still happens.
Artificial selection isn't natural selection. I don't care if it's achieved by poisoning or starving, artificially killing off unwanted members of the population is not natural selection. I do not intend to confuse one for the other. Is not that one of the secrets for believing in natural selection?
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In nature, natural selection is only observed in the past tense. It's used to create a story of how such-and-such may have taken place. But science requires predictive power. Anyone can use natural selection to explain any past result.
We've watched it happen in modern times. Why would we now have antibiotic resistant bacteria and pesticide resistant weeds if natural selection were not occurring?
This is both past-tense and artificial. There have always been resistant strains. Poisoning the others demonstrates that the poison works.
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As regards pathological bacteria in the gut: Which ones are going to be "fitter" in that environment, those that get killed by antibiotics or those that are resistant? It's not always so hard to see which traits have turned out to be successful adaptations.
Poison works? That's not news.
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Without natural environmental stress, there is no struggle. The "unfit" thrive right along with the "fit".
Show me a single species that is unaffected by disease. Most also are prone to predation. Natural selection says that the individuals that are best adapted to the environment will have the most offspring, and over time their genes will be the ones which survive in the population.
So was Darwin wrong when he said struggle was required? Even with the benefit of struggle he couldn't convince Huxley.

I suspect the common reasoning is that natural selection is a proven observation, thus it must take place whether it can be justified or not. I don't advocate assuming natural selection is true without investigating.
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There's also the idea I've been discussing that organisms are always adapting themselves to their environment. And there's the morphic fields idea.
And the purpose of refusing to address things one-at-a-time? If Darwinism can stand, why do you call for reinforcements?

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You might be interested in this article: New Evidence That Natural Selection Is A General Driving Force Behind The Origin Of Species
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The first paragraph is an eye-grabber:[quote] The famous scientist would be pleased because a study published this week finally provides the first clear evidence that natural selection, his favored mechanism of evolution, drives the process of species formation in a wide variety of plants and animals. But he would be chagrined because it has taken nearly 150 years to do so.
If any evolutionists believed this to be true... well, who're we kidding? They don't.

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If you agree that observations of self-regulation run counter to Darwinian natural selection
I'm not sure that you've made a case for a completely self-regulating population, as can be seen in your conversation with LinearAQ.
"Completely self-regulating"? I don't even know what you mean by that. Is that what you require before you can admit Darwin was wrong when he maintained that all populations are growing as fast as they can until checked, frequently overpopulating, forcing themselves to struggle, and thereby enabling natural selection to operate?

If you want to pick a model and discuss it, fine. If you want to throw multiple models into the discussion & hope nobody notices that Darwinism fails, I promise not to fall for it. I don't think you'll have more than one taker.

Dark Matter + Dark Energy = Dark Truth

"We find that such evidence demonstrates that the ID argument is dependent upon setting a scientifically unreasonable burden of proof for the theory of evolution." - Judge Jones Kitzmiller case
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/Falsify.cfm

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