[r9etb]

You honestly believe that evolution predicts that fruit flies could turn into something like a whale in a laboratory?

Please do not add words that I did not say. One might infer from a continuation of such practices that you are not engaged in an honest discussion.

The theory of evolution explicitly claims that whales evolved from Very Small Non-Mammalian Organisms. (Yes, I realize there's a lot of steps between there and here.) As such, and in the same way, the theory of evolution cannot preclude the possibility that some race of fruit flies may at some point evolve into something whale-like. A smart boy like you could probably even spell out the necessary mutations to make such a thing come to pass.

[NJ_gent]

"As such, and in the same way, the theory of evolution cannot preclude the possibility that some race of fruit flies may at some point evolve into something whale-like."

Convergent evolution is something that's especially tricky, but yes, by the theory itself, it could happen. Now, for something that incredibly complex to occur, one must also allow for a significant amount of time to pass. Without trying to claim I'm any sort of expert, I'd guess that no less than 200 million years would be necessary under optimal conditions. Optimal conditions in this case would be those conditions that specifically favor traits in fruit flies that lead them down the long, winding path toward whales. The conditions would need to change at the right times, in the right ways so as to favor each of the necessary traits while eliminating those who do not share those traits, without eliminating a proportion of the species significant enough to nullify genetic diversity. Divergent evolution is far easier to make happen than convergent evolution. Simply allowing species to diverge in order to fill available niches is most certainly easier than attempting to force a species into a specific and completely different niche.

[DouglasKC]

The theory of evolution explicitly claims that whales evolved from Very Small Non-Mammalian Organisms. (Yes, I realize there's a lot of steps between there and here.) As such, and in the same way, the theory of evolution cannot preclude the possibility that some race of fruit flies may at some point evolve into something whale-like. A smart boy like you could probably even spell out the necessary mutations to make such a thing come to pass.

I'll even give you the experimental setup to make this come to pass. For the first stage have a food source close to the surface of the water. Gradually, over many many fruit fly generation put the food source closer and closer to the water. Eventually the food source will be below the water and eventually at the bottom of the tank.

You can run thousands of similiar experiements in one room. Eventually through random chance/mutation/natural selection or whatever you would have to have some fruitflies that evolve into a creature that can swim to the bottom of a tank and get food.

Absurd? Doesn't evolution ask us to believe that something similiar has happened (albeit without any invervention) literally trillions of times to millions or billions of different species?