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To: Thatcherite
I'd got the mistaken impression from reading reviews of his work that he accepts macro-evolution and that he is arguing about mechanisms.

He seems to make this question as obscure as possible, but here's a quote from the reference in post #83 where he describes his work. You can take "evolution A" and "evolution B" to refer to micro and macro evolution, despite the handwaving.

The distinction between these two meanings of evolution is often ignored by those defending neo-Darwinian evolution, but the distinction is critical. The claim is made for Evolution A, but proof is often limited to Evolution B. The implication is that the observation of Evolution B is a substantiation of Evolution A. But this is not so. Since Evolution A is not observable, it can be substantiated only by circumstantial evidence. And circumstantial evidence must be accompanied by a theory of how it relates to what is to be proved. Neo-Darwinian theory (NDT) is generally accepted to be that theory. The thesis of my book is that NDT cannot account for Evolution A.

145 posted on 02/15/2005 10:11:19 AM PST by donh
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To: Thatcherite
...accepts macro-evolution and that he is arguing about mechanisms.

On musing about it, I think this requires a bit more of an answer. The extra fillup that S has added to the argument here, is that God had to intervene to whip up a new macro-species from DNA rather than to whip up a new macro-species from scratch each time. That doesn't seem like a significant distinction to me, nor does it seem particularly new. We've been bickering within biology for years about how long it apparently takes to do stuff, and how long it ought to take to do stuff--without a felt need to throw up our hands in dismay, any more than fossil gaps produce this effect.

148 posted on 02/15/2005 11:21:34 AM PST by donh
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