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To: autumnraine

Amusing. But it’s not “survival of the cutest,” it’s “selective breeding of the cutest,” or of the most useful for various human purposes.

It’s not blind chance that results in different breeds of dog.

Also, of course, no one doubts that there is intraspecies evolution, natural as well as human guided. It’s general evolution, guided by blind chance, that is in question.

The article concludes with one of the good Darwinian doctors saying: “This study illustrates the power of Darwinian selection with so much variation produced in such a short period of time. The evidence is very strong.”

No, it illustrates how human intervention can produce remarkable variation within a species.


5 posted on 01/26/2010 2:16:59 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Cicero

I’m a huge dog fan but the Darwinians certainly speak as evidence for the failure of their thesis, else how did they survive? They sure aren’t the smartest and I’ll bet not the cutest.


6 posted on 01/26/2010 2:20:28 PM PST by dumpthelibs (dumpthelibs)
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To: Cicero

Dogs continue to be but ONE SPECIES.


8 posted on 01/26/2010 2:25:09 PM PST by muawiyah ("Git Out The Way")
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To: Cicero
"It’s not blind chance that results in different breeds of dog."

It's also not "blind chance" that results in different species. Evolution does not operate by "blind chance." Point mutations do... but they only increase genetic diversity... replacing the genetic diversity lost through natural (or artificial) selection. And that is only half of the process, providing raw material than can then be acted on by selection.

But the selection itself is anything but "blind." It instead is driven by external and objective standards of fitness, driving inexorably towards those standards in a completely deterministic and non-random way.

What the article misses here is actually the key point... modern varieties of dog lay completely outside the natural variation of their wild lupine ancestors. Not only has artificial selection taken advantage of the natural genetic variation of wild wolves, it has also taken advantage of new genetic information that arose during the period of domestication via random mutation.

Dogs are not only the result of selection, they contain a vast amount of evolutionary innovation that cannot be blamed on an "intelligent" breeder.
31 posted on 01/27/2010 10:38:23 AM PST by EnderWiggins
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