Evolution describes what is known as a steady state process. The changes are gradual and constant.
In a steady state process, time is not a factor in the process (assuming enough time has passed for one cycle of the process to complete; in the case of evolution, one full speciation).
Therefore, we should be able to observe macro evolution occurring at present within the biosphere. We should even be able to calculate a percentage of transitions occurring based on the rate of species creation from the fossil record.
Let me use an example to illustrate. A human being takes about 70 years to pass through all the stages of life. However, we don't have to wait 70 years to observe a human being in all stages of life. This is because human life is a steady state process: humans are constantly being born, growing old and dying. Therefore, all we have to do to observe every stage of human life in a short period of a few minutes is take a sampling from a representative population, say the entryway at Disneyland on a Saturday morning.
The lack of observed macro evolution occurring in the biosphere TODAY is a massive failure of the theory of evolution.
Evolutionary biologists know this (it's one of the dirty little secrets). This is why the theory of punctuated equilibrium keeps getting bandied about. If you can demonstrate that evolution occurs in spurts instead of gradually and incrementally, you can simply declare that the current lack of speciation occurring today is because we are in a "lull" period.
Hope this helps.
O.K. Very rough calculations, but feel free to quibble...
Let's say there are 6 million species alive on earth today. Let's assume that the average "lifetime" of a species from first appearance to extinction is 1 million years. That means you'd only have to evolve one new species, somewhere on the entire earth, every six years to maintain the current level of biological diversity. Heck, the observed rate of speciation is probably higher than that. (And the vast majority of speciations will never be observed. They'll get lost in the mix, considering that we've only even named, after several hundred years, a small percentage of living species.)
"Massive failure"? I fail to see how it is even a small problem. Besides, a single speciation every few years wouldn't even contradict creationism (which hasn't insisted on fixed species for nearly two hundred years).
I suppose that depends on where you put the goalpost and whether you are allowed to move it after the play begins. There are species in transition as we speak. Good examples are found in ring species. There are countless examples of species that can be hybridized with varying degrees of viability. You don't have to search for fossils to see intermediates. They are all around us.
Maybe I don't understand what you're saying. What kind of observations does evolution predict that we're not seeing?
To be honest, I think that evolution would only meet the conditions you describe if the environment were constant. Since it is most decidedly not, due to the interdependence of species, and also due to global environmental changes (e.g. ice ages), I don't think evolution could be described as a steady-state process. I may be wrong, and this is not a scientific opinion, but I would need more convincing to see evolution as a steady-state phenomenon.
Even then, though, the calculation you describe would be interesting, because we could assume that evolution would probably work at about the same rate on average in any environment, since environmental changes are most likely very slow anyhow. You're assuming that the rate will come out to be something observable, of course. What if it comes out to one every 300 years? We haven't been observing species all that closely for 300 years yet. And then, do you include bacteria that become resistant to various medicines? Could that be considered a new species and the old an extinct one?
I'm not supposing answers to these questions. I don't know them. If the rate of speciation comes out to one every 10 years and we're not seeing it, then evolutionary theory is going to have to change or be replaced or whatever needs to be done, but I can't say I've seen any such calculations, so I'll withhold judgement until I do.
Well said.
How do you know speciation when you see it? (when we identify a new insect species as we do thousands of times a year how do we know whether it speciated last week, or 3 million years ago?)
Your arguments are ill-thought-out bunkum. I expect that you got them from a creationist website. They have that kind of quality.