[dirtboy]

I take it you are arguing that science has not found a mechanism for speciation. It has in fact found several, including geographical isolation and genetic drift (allopatric speciation).

And part of the problem is that the creationists demand we demonstrate speciation within our lifetimes - when even rapid speciation can take thousands of years.

[Tamberlane]

And part of the problem is that the creationists demand we demonstrate speciation within our lifetimes - when even rapid speciation can take thousands of years.

Quite so. The confused argument about fruit flies in the article is a case in point. In fact it was doubly idiotic, as the researchers are presumably interested in, hence selecting for, preserving the species as it is, for the very same reason they picked it in the first place.

[Williams]

Geographic isolation is nothing more than a recognition that species evolve differently in order to cope with their differing environments. Your reference to genetic drift theory is more to the point, because it attempts to find a mechanism for change. However, it refers in the first instance to the fact that parents cannot pass on all of their genetic characteristics to their limited number of offspring. This would not in itself explain new changes which lead to drastically different adaptations. So the discussion gets into random genetic mutations once again. These random mutations at the genetic level get confronted by the natural environment and selection causes the best adaptive changes to survive and propogate.

Once again, I believe science cannot demonstrate that random genetic mutations get confronted by the natural environment and result in the steady evolutionary progress we observe in nature. Even if nature acts through random mutations, why? Why does nature contain these mechanisms? Surely you realize that this approach results in all existence and all life being totally mechanistic and meanigless. Nature has created birds and bees and trees and you by pure accident, just as wind erodes rock. It's all just a very facinating accident of nature.

The first simple celled organism just happened to get started from some chemical elements and then these random changes just happened to evolve into all sorts of more complex creatutres, including those possessed of intelligence and consciousness. There are explanations and reasons beyond the random and science will not address them.

Genetic drift combined with random mutation leading to evolution is a theory, not a demonstarted mechanism for evolution.