You impute to me views which I deny holding and question my honesty.
I do know who Behe is and even have one of his books, but I know nothing of his quoting Coyne or Orr or both. I have the Coyne and Orr text I referred to, because I am genuinely interested in learning what I can about the topic of speciation. The quote I "cherry-picked" sort of hits one right between the eyes as it is the opening sentence of Chapter One of Speciation. My marginal note which I wrote when I first read this was/is Like what are Darwin's "Immense Achievements" if he didn't have anything to say about speciation? The phrase "immense achievements" is in the second sentence which I didn't bother to quote before but here it is: "The study of speciation is thus one of the few areas of evolutionary biology not overshadowed by Darwin's immense achievements."
You're quite correct that science is supposed to be objective. When contradictions arise in chemistry or physics the underlying theory is discarded (except to my mind when it comes to the concept of tunneling). But when it comes to "evolution" the theory just turns into a bigger kludge.
It is utterly ludicrous to claim that the process of evolution occurs by the exact mechanisms that scientists have described all along
Are these the same objective scientists you referred to previously?
I really don't know how to say things better than I already have. I ask you why there has been no separation in the human species given the obvious breeding populations into which we were, until recently, separated and you start talking about 6000 years and creation science.
You can say chromosomes don't matter and point me to a website with some Sharpie doodles, but Sharpie doodles aren't science. If evolution is an on-going, long, gradual process, we should be able to observe what is represented by the Sharpie doodles, at least in all those poor fruit-flies we've been bombarding with radiation for decades. So far as I am aware, we don't.
Your suggestion that I am unable to understand basic college texts is insulting. Is that really how your science operates?
ML/NJ
You are speaking in the manner of someone who holds to the "young earth" creation idea as if it is literal fact, and that is how I have responded to you. I do not question the honesty of most people who are literal creationists; in most cases they are sincere, but scientifically naive, and endlessly repeat the "facts" that they find on various literal creation advocacy sites, because they don't have enough science education to be able to discern the difference between true science and quackery. You repeated some of the exact same kinds of "facts" that I have come to associate with those invented by the charlatans who run organizations like The Discovery Institute and its ilk.
I do know who Behe is and even have one of his books, but I know nothing of his quoting Coyne or Orr or both. I have the Coyne and Orr text I referred to, because I am genuinely interested in learning what I can about the topic of speciation. The quote I "cherry-picked" sort of hits one right between the eyes as it is the opening sentence of Chapter One of Speciation. My marginal note which I wrote when I first read this was/is Like what are Darwin's "Immense Achievements" if he didn't have anything to say about speciation? The phrase "immense achievements" is in the second sentence which I didn't bother to quote before but here it is: "The study of speciation is thus one of the few areas of evolutionary biology not overshadowed by Darwin's immense achievements."
What I quoted was Coyne's own commentary about how his words were cherry-picked by Behe to make it seem like Coyne was saying something he did not say. The cherry-picked quote in question was very similar to the quote you used. Did you go to the link I provided and read the entire commentary surrounding Coyne's quote that I posted?
As for Darwin's achievements, they were truly amazing, especially considering that he had no clue about genetics, and could not know anything about the underlying mechanisms. (True, Gregor Mendel was a contemporary, but for all his great work, he also knew nothing about the underlying mechanisms.) When speaking of the *modern* theory of evolution, it's kind of silly to keep bringing up Darwin, anyway--our understanding of biology has progressed far beyond Darwin's understanding--just like our understanding of every other science has progressed since then.
You're quite correct that science is supposed to be objective. When contradictions arise in chemistry or physics the underlying theory is discarded (except to my mind when it comes to the concept of tunneling). But when it comes to "evolution" the theory just turns into a bigger kludge.
Like any scientific theory, the theory of evolution is revised as new discoveries are made. Science would not progress if theories weren't revised to fit the observations. Having been through the PhD student process myself, and lived, first hand, the experience of using the best knowledge I had to formulate a hypothesis and design an experiment to test it--then having the experiment fail, causing me to reconsider and revise the hypothesis and devise a new experiment, probably hundreds of times--this idea that, somehow, a theory that is reconsidered and revised in response to new data must, as a result, be invalid, is absolutely dumbfounding.
It is utterly ludicrous to claim that the process of evolution occurs by the exact mechanisms that scientists have described all along
Are these the same objective scientists you referred to previously?
No, this is a statement of the beliefs of the "creation scientists" aka "young earth creationists", and is the same belief you seemed to express. "Creation scientists" claim that "adaptation" proceeds at a breakneck pace, while simultaneously claiming that evolution (the exact same process) occurs too slowly to have progressed as far as it has within the ~13 billion year existence of the universe. Sorry, you can't have it both ways.
I really don't know how to say things better than I already have. I ask you why there has been no separation in the human species given the obvious breeding populations into which we were, until recently, separated and you start talking about 6000 years and creation science.
The first time you asked that, you answered the question yourself almost immediately. Homo sapiens sapiens populations simply have not been separated for a sufficient length of time for speciation to occur. And now, with modern travel and migration patterns, we're mixing up gene pools that were well on the way to irreversible divergence. Many genetically distinct populations still exist, mostly in isolated places. This isn't to say that human populations have NOT speciated--other species of humans preceeded us, and at least a couple of other species coexisted with us (Neanderthals and Denisovans).
You're the one who appears to be trying to fit everything into a literal creationist framework. So that's how I respond.
You can say chromosomes don't matter and point me to a website with some Sharpie doodles, but Sharpie doodles aren't science. If evolution is an on-going, long, gradual process, we should be able to observe what is represented by the Sharpie doodles, at least in all those poor fruit-flies we've been bombarding with radiation for decades. So far as I am aware, we don't.
Did you read the explanatory text at that website? Do you know what those "Sharpie doodles" represent? Are you familiar with the processes they were illustrating? How much do you know about meiosis, and how familiar are you with the terminology, both referring to the stages of meiosis, and to the names of the various structures involved? FYI, the person who made those "doodles" is a university professor, a fact which you can verify for yourself with a quick search at the university website. His explanation was factually correct. What makes you think that the processes he was describing have NOT been observed, measured, described, and reported on in the scientific literature many times?
Your suggestion that I am unable to understand basic college texts is insulting. Is that really how your science operates?
Really? I'm sorry to be so blunt, but your comments about the "Sharpie doodles" made it painfully clear just how little you truly understand about biology. Nothing you've said indicates that you have even a basic understanding of biology, much less the depth of knowledge needed to understand an upper-level textbook. Just about the entire text of that book (Evolution) discusses speciation, even though only a couple of chapters actually have the word "speciation" in the title.
There really is nothing shameful, and no reason to be defensive, about being ignorant of fields you have never studied. And biology is such a complicated discipline, with many many branches, that no one can possibly learn it all. I was serious when I suggested taking a couple of basic biology classes, if you genuinely want to understand the nuts and bolts of how speciation occurs. At the least, an introductory biology course (BIO 101) and a genetics course will go a long way towards preparing you to understand the "Evolution" textbook.