Originally posted by BlackJackal
The slow accumulation of mutations over time passed from one generation to the next eventually resulting in a new species
The slowness is fundamental to strict darwinism, but not evolution nor modern natural selection itself.
So now give or take a little you are up to speed on the origins of genetics and the basis for the theory of evolution
Genetics provides the details, however, as you noted, darwin and his contemporaries had no real understanding of the mechanisms of heredity. So genetics isn't fundamental to evolution.
This flies into the face of modern evolution thinking because without mutations there could not have been any modification through decent as proposed by Darwin
That doesn't contradict evolution. It shows that some organisms can have traits that are maladaptive.
So the question is do humans and other higher organisms have this automatic repair process also and if so what can explain the Origin of the Species
Apparently most organisms don't. As far as evolution, mutations provide the new random variation. If one population of organisms have destroyed their sources of variation, well, that population is quite probably headed for extinction. Of course, if that population is 'challenged' by the environment/conditions of existence, then its entirely reasonable to say that any members that don't have this 'mutation correction mechanism', or have a less effective one, might very well be favoured, and thus the population will be able to adapt, inspite of this correction mechanism. IOW they well evolve so as to shut down this deleterious mechanism.
Also, the fact that the mechanism itself exists demonstrates evolution. A lineage with it can under a different set of conditions be favoured, because most mutations are neutral and harmful, while very few are harmless. So suppressing inhereted mutations can be beneficial.
So if the genes and DNA can fix themselves there is no way to pass on adaptations.
DNA is already known to have mechanisms that correct mutations and limit their numbers. A 'balance' has to be struck between helpful and harmful rates of mutation.
marg
I find Darwin theory very interesting but I doubt that we came from the monkey.
Why?
Rren
This [chimp stuff] something one would not expect if the theory of common descend
was true
Why?
intelligent design is as valid a scientific theory as evolution.
Design theory is anti-scientific tho. Science cannot detect supernatural design, design theory is based on that.
(1) show how information can be reliably detected and measured
Detecting information is not detecting design. Evolution will also 'mimic' design, because all design is is finding solutions to problems. In nature the problem is the environment and the solution are adaptations.
[quopte]mccory1
Granted, one of the biggest holes in the evolution of humans is the missing link. There is a gap somewhere in the evolutionary tree.
Indeed, there are many gaps. First it was a gap between chimps and man. Then it was two gaps between chimps and the australpithecines, and the australpithecines and man, and then double, and then more. Each time a new intermediate fossil is found to put in the old gap, you end up with, effectively, two new ones.
This link doesn't talk about the missing link per se, but it does mention Lucy, the skeleton found in 1974 that people had considered to be the missing link for a while.
The consensus is that Lucy, an australpithecine, is the "missing link". Notice, the consensus, there are some researchers who don't think Lucy is quite as intermediate, but the consensus amoung workers is that she is. And then more were discovered to add to the sequences and offshoots.
Here is a good source:
Fossil Hominid FAQ
IMPerial
but instead something that happens in leaps and bounds.
I think that perhaps you are conflating an argument for the lack of transitional fossils in some expected lineages with the missing link between man and ape. There are a numebr of fossils that link man and ape. In general, with other species, there aren't as many 'transitional' fossils as would be expected. Normally this was considered to be a problem of the chanciness of a specimin being preserved as a fossil and found. Gould and Eldridge, two evolutionary biologists, proposed a theory (in the 70s I think), that also sought to address this issue, called "Punctuated Equilibrium". Essentially, they wanted to move away from the darwinian idea of very slow, very gradual change within linages from one form progressively to the next, with something like Ernst Mayr's (the great and recently late evolutionist) "allopatric speciation model". Breifly, Mayr's idea was that new species arise at the edges of the range of a big population, often in isolation from the big population. If thats the primary way in which species arise, G&E reasoned, then there isn't much likelyhood of finding specimins, since the 'critical' changes occured in relatively small and limited populations.
