What's frustrating is how the common-sense understanding of selecting out for type becomes lost in the miasma of evolution/speciation.
Scientists develop new goat which gives almost twice the butterfat in its milk than other goats! (Well, no, that's the Nubian goat, and it developed through the efforts of livestock breeding/mgt, it also has long pendulous ears which are convenient air-conditioners in sultry places.) New goat is earless in the arctic! (there is a breed of earless goat, quite handy and hardy in nippy climates.)
When you partake in one sort of argument with an evo, he wants to claim that there's no connotation of speciation in the term, "evolution." Then he wants to claim that selecting out for type is evidence of "evolution." Then they try to bully you into signing on to their capricious, obsessive lists of definitions.
They need help. Asberger's Syndrome, Anonymous!!
Yes, and they can still keep a straight face and call it science.
Speciation events are closely tied to punctuation events. During these "speciation" events, a new species experiences a large magnitude of evolutionary change.
so they give us three central postulates:
1. Most evolution occurs in short, rapid bursts (punctuation events) followed by stasis. This produces a large morphological gap. (are'nt they so clever)
2. Most evolution occurs at speciation. (In other words, punctuation events are closely tied to speciation.)
3. Speciation has no inherent directionality. A daughter species tends to originate in a random, non-adaptive direction from the parent species.
Funny how these clever postulates made it difficult to explain adaptation. How can adaptation arise if change is concentrated in events that are random concerning adaptation?
So then they came up with species selection. According to this idea, entire species are selected, rather than individual organisms. Speciation is to species selection as mutation is to individual selection
Then if the Puncutationists are questioned they simply alter the concepts of species and selection.
And these Darwin addicts think we don't understand science?
Seriously, they should hang out with Howard Dean