Replies

"You've totally missed the point. I'm not offering an alternative theory to Darwin. I'm saying that the current theory is passe, and not worth the paper it's written on. Darwins theory has so many holes in it, it can barely be considered science anymore. "

You seem to say that a theoretical framework must be PERFECT before you will give it any credence whatsoever. While I, and most people who actually study evolution, will gladly admit that it is not perfect, that doesn't mean it is without merit. One of the critical features of a good theory is that you can make predictions based on it, some of which will hold up when new discoveries are made, some of which will not. When a theory is challenged by experiment, or other real world evidence, it forces scientists to rethink old ideas and fill up holes in the theory based on the new information. It doesn't make the old theory wrong or bad science. Newton's law of gravity was good science, but proved to be incomplete. Einstein was able, using ideas based on new information that was unknown and really unknowable in Newton's time, to fill in the holes with general relativity. Einstein never called Newton's work "passe", in fact he considered his work to be the most important advances in physics. The theory of evolution isn't perfect, but it does give us the ability to make predictions about speciation which can be tested. Our lack of knowledge has more to do with the difficulty of performing these tests! In the absence of a time machine the best we can do is look at the fossil record for large scale evidence, and do experiments on smaller organisms such as bacteria and fruit flies that have short reproductive cycles and thus allow us to study evolution in real time. Unfortunately, those results, while valid, don't grab headlines the way a sudden evolution of, say, a mammal species might. (Badgers suddenly evolve to Uber-Badgers. Darwin is Vindicated!)

"Your example of competition in natural selection is too elementary. Give an example of it. Name one instance when a species evolved into another species. You can't. It's never been recorded. There is no fossil evidence for it. So how then is there so much diversity in the world? "

I think the others answered this far better than I could, but I don't think you accepted their answer, because you want to see a truly intermediary creature. No matter what two species I trot out, you will automatically ask for what came between, even if the two species are almost identical.

"I propose that evolution as it really exists is quite a bit different than what Darwin proposed. "

This is entirely possible. I, for one, doubt it, but that doesn't mean you won't be vindicated by research fifty years from now, or even next year for that matter. The critical thing is, you can't completely discount the current ideas because something better will come along eventually. You shouldn't just accept the party line, either, and truly salute you for standing up to the rather withering critcism you've faced on this thread! A good scientist strikes a balance between skepticism and the need to have some framework to start from, however rickety it may be.

I contend that evolution is well constructed, well supported, and while it may not be PERFECT, is a great place to base further research on.