[annalex]

Descent with modifications and natural selection are not scientific hypotheses, they are often-confirmed facts

confirmed by your fellow cultists and believed by your fellow cultists.

I think my position and criticism of the evolutionary hypothesis has been clear to any reader throughout the thread. Prove the hypothesis by making one species from another: one distinct species from another distinct species. Two subspecies of Zebras that still can produce viable offspring in the lab do not constitute that proof. Creatures that exist today and have similar features do not constitute such proof either: similarity does not prove genetic relation. I leave the choice of the two species to you; obviously the second species does not have to be anything that exists today, but it has be as different from species 1 as a manatee is from elephant.

The last post of yours, by the way, was another example of arguing about words rather than about substance.

[BroJoeK]

annalex: "Prove the hypothesis by making one species from another: one distinct species from another distinct species."

That is meaningless "word salad" because:

1. "Descent with modifications", the first key element of evolution is not a "hypothesis", it's a many-times observed and confirmed fact.
   In one example, random DNA mutations in humans were counted at circa 60 per generation (out of 3 billion "base pairs").

2. "Natural selection", the second key element of evolution is also not a "hypothesis", it's a many-times observed and confirmed fact.
   Natural selection weeds out harmful mutations, and promotes beneficial changes.

3. Evolution itself (both "micro" and "macro") is not just a "hypothesis", it's a many-times confirmed theory, confirmed by the fossil record, by DNA analyses, and by inputs from other branches of science -- from geology, to physics, biology, astronomy and others.

4. While so-called "micro-evolution" can be seen and measured happening one generation at a time -- i.e., 60 random mutations per generation -- fossil and DNA records show major changes, so-called "macro-evolution", or in your word-salad "distinct species", may require millions of new alleles and so take millions of generations.

5. But even short-term human-directed "micro-evolution" can produce the very first steps in speciation -- new breeds in animals, cultivars and varieties in plants.
   And some of these are already so different from their original species, they begin to meet the criteria for "separate species" which do not interbreed.

6. This is confirmed among other methods, by counting up the DNA changes (called "alleles") among related sub-species, species, genera, etc.

7. Bottom line: aside from outright gene-splicing, there is no hypothesis, theory or fact which says that humans can in a short time simulate long-term natural evolution of large organisms -- creating in a lab over just a few generations what in nature took millions of years.
   So, such an event could not be science, so much as magic.

annalex: "The last post of yours, by the way, was another example of arguing about words rather than about substance."

Precise definitions and usage of words are extraordinarily important in science, else communication amongst scientists would be impossible.
The fact that you have no understanding, and no respect for word definitions dictates the efforts I put into unscrambling your otherwise meaningless "word-salads".

annalex: "confirmed by your fellow cultists and believed by your fellow cultists."

Your continued ridiculous anti-science epithets ("cult", "voodoo"), combined with your repeated demand that science, in effect, perform a magic trick in a laboratory, help confirm my hypothesis that you misunderstand and loathe science itself.

So you may be beyond any help I could provide here, FRiend.