There's a lot here for Linear to address, so I hope he won't mind if I add something. I'm having a "day off" and feel like talking.
Originally Posted By: LinearAqMutation follows that laws that govern chemical reactions in aquaeous solutions. Changes in the DNA of the seed cells is what causes the next generation to be different than the parent. Those changes can be caused by the statistical recombination of the DNA. Since the splitting of the double helix and its recombination is a chemical reaction, the laws governing chemical reactions would apply.
Not always. Disease and chemicals can alter this beyond those laws.
Can you explain please?
This is more of an explaination of the suruvival of the fittest. Where domanace rules the game, and only those genes get passed on. But that is not always true as it has been observed where non-dominant males have neen able to mate and pass on their genes.
But you are making an assumption that the dominant male is the most well-adapted male in that environment. What would actually happen is that the offspring, regardless of the father, would be subject to selection pressures. Maybe a subordinate male has some good genes to pass on, such as a hair colour which offers better camouflage.
A viable scientific theory should not only be able to show our past, present, but also make predictions on where we are headed. There are no existing models that even touch on making predictions the evolution of any life form to what it will become.
I've addressed this in reply to one of your claims in another thread:
Post 39277.
And we have yet to see any life form evolve into another kind of life form.
That's because there are steps in between, which is what the fossil record shows. Evolution observes that birds evolved from dinosaurs; it does not say that one day we had a dinosaur and the next day it morphed into a bird.
There is no such thing as a "highest point" since evolution has no particular direction.
Then you guys don't know as much as you think you do. Answering questions with broad answers only shows how much less is actually known about evolution.
I don't follow how your reply addresses Linear's comment. We don't observe that evolution has a direction or goal. How does this show ignorance of evolution?
Has any life form become a different kind yet? I'm not speaking of speciation. Where a bird can become a different bird. Because kind creation allows this as long as it stays a bird. But when has a bird, or anything else, become a non-bird?
We can see this in the fossil record. Since radical changes like what you are suggesting above typically take a very long time, we can't expect to see them in real time.
Before you claim again that we can't learn anything about the past from evidence in the present, you would need to explain how the geological record does
not show very old rocks at the bottom and younger ones toward the top, with layers of fossils in faunal succession within.
