The concept of a jump here is relative. Major changes can occur over "small" period of time in the context of a geological time scale of billions of years. Keep in mind "small" here can refer to thousands of generations of a population.
where are all the intermediate forms?
Everything is technically an "intermediate" form. A necklace with 2 beads is "intermediate" to one with 3 beads and so on. They are all necklaces in their own right.
b. Most important biochemical processes -- the blood-clotting cascade, the vision cascade, and some others -- cannot be reduced to a series of incremental steps.
These (and other examples) of irreducible complexity have been torn to shreds.:
c. During each shake of the bag, it's just as likely that two beads on a string could come off as come one; so "productive evolutionary change" accomplished during one trial might very well be undone during the next.
To make this analogy closer to the truth, you would have multiple strings shaking in multiple bags occuring simultaneously. The string that lose their beads "die" to be sure. The ones that gain beads not only proceed to the next trial, but "reproduce" to be greatly represented in subsequent trials.
he difference is that he took the idea of selective breeding and carried it to absurd extremes and absurd conclusions.
How do you explain the fact that humans, apes, mice, fungi, plants, paramecium, and dictyostelium share many of the same genes and have virtually identical codes (keeping in mind much of the codon designations are for the most part arbitrary) ?
I know, I know "godwanteditthatway".
Excellent. So BY DEFINITION, everything is an intermediate form. No problem!
You see how all the data are made to fit the theory?
To make this analogy closer to the truth, you would have multiple strings shaking in multiple bags occuring simultaneously. The string that lose their beads "die" to be sure. The ones that gain beads not only proceed to the next trial, but "reproduce" to be greatly represented in subsequent trials.
he difference is that he took the idea of selective breeding and carried it to absurd extremes and absurd conclusions.
How do you explain the fact that humans, apes, mice, fungi, plants, paramecium, and dictyostelium share many of the same genes and have virtually identical codes (keeping in mind much of the codon designations are for the most part arbitrary) ?
The same way I explain the fact that refrigerators and air conditioners have similar parts. Nature uses many of the same parts in different species. So what. How do YOU explain that in spite of genetic similarities, an ape never turns into a fungus, and humans have articulate language and a transmissible culture while animals do not? As Sheldrake pointed out, genetics is an interesting technology, but irrelevant for explainnig origins or speciation.
As for major changes, some of them seem to have occurred over tens of thousands of years, of not less -- much too short of a time for any conceivable process of natural selection. Besides, as usual, you omit the important points:
when it is pointed out that many species have NOT changed over millions of years, despite changes in the environment, you cite stupid notions of "genetic stability." When it is pointed out that there's no such thing as "genetic stability" you point to stupid notions of "environmental stability." Not only is neo-Darwinism useless in explaining evolutionary change, it cannot explain non-change. And as Macbeth points out in his book (Darwin on trial), it cannot explain extinction either.
Excellent. Now added to the ever-growing List-O-Links.