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To: Dante Alighieri
Proof doesn't exist in science.

No, but experimental evidence does. I refer you to post 83.

Look, you keep pointing me to bodies of information where researchers have looked and said "This information seems to be highly compatible with a macro-evolution model." Well, sure it does.

But that doesn't mean that we know for certain that the model is correct.

Look, let's dispense for a moment (for the sake of discussion) with natural selection, and address the process of manipulated selection. Let's say you start in a laboratory with a population of organisms in a controlled environment...no other living things get in or out of the environment, no exposure to other populations can happen. (I'd suggest something with a short life cycle and sexual reproduction, to maximize the rate at which genes are exchanged.) Let us also say that it's your express desire, as a researcher, to see if you can divide up the homogeneous population into multiple groups and force macro-evolution to happen in the lab, not through natural selection, but through human selection. Human selection should be much faster, because you'd have intelligence guiding the process, and likely-looking mutants can be selected for and fostered. How many generations of, say, earthworms would have to go by before you could produce two groups of earthworms that were not cross-fertile?

Yes, you can change the morphology...yes, you can change the behavior. Yes, you can change any number of traits you want to select for. Dog breeding has shown us that, as the teacup Chihuahua and the Irish Wolfhound are the same species.

But breeding two different species from a single one...that's a high bar to get over.

234 posted on 08/17/2006 11:02:39 AM PDT by Oberon (As a matter of fact I DO want fries with that.)
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To: Oberon

Scientists are never absolutely certain. They may be highly certain however.

What of artificial selection? Speciation has been observed and the resultant species in many cases does not breed at all with the precursor species. Ergo, speciation, ergo, macroevolution.


235 posted on 08/17/2006 11:08:11 AM PDT by Dante Alighieri
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