If you *genuinely* have a degree in physics, then I assume you are aware of the objective nature of science. There are no "alternate realities" or other New-Age crap, and my job, like that of any scientist, is to catalog and characterize the physical world around us. My profession is not my religion; don't insult me or my intelligence by saying it is. Darwin was a scientist; he was neither a bible nor even a prophet.
I know that at least one of the charlatans who promote young-earth literal creationism constantly speaks of the "religion of Darwin". The glib repetition ad nauseum of that lie does not make it true.
Unfortunately for you as I said before, or really I plagiarized before the little Darwin says about speciation "is seen by most modern evolutionists as muddled or wrong." This actually comes directly from Coyne and Orr's text, Speciation.
Coincidentally, I just happened to find a quote by Coyne discussing how he was quote-mined to give the false impression that he questions the theoretically/evidentiary basis of evolution when he does not:
I am painfully and personally acquainted with Behe's penchant for fiddling with quotations [quote omitted]. Apparently I am one of those faint-hearted biologists who see the errors of Darwinism but cannot admit it. This was news to me. I am surely numbered among the more orthodox evolutionists, and hardly see our field as fatally flawed. The paper in question (actually by Allen Orr and myself)3 addresses a technical debate among evolutionists: are adaptations based on a lot of small genetic mutations (the traditional neo-Darwinian view), a few big mutations, or some mixture of the two? We concluded that although there was not much evidence one way or the other, there were indications that mutations of large effect might occasionally be important. Our paper cast no doubt whatever on the existence of evolution or the ability of natural selection to explain adaptations. ...
By inserting the period (and removing the sentence from its neighbors), Behe has twisted our meaning. Our discussion of one aspect of Darwinism -- the relative size of adaptive mutations -- has suddenly become a critique of the entire Darwinian enterprise. This is not sloppy scholarship, but deliberate distortion.
Quote mining is a despicable practice. It is bad enough to lie about people, but to cherry-pick their words to make it appear that they said things they did not say is extremely dishonest.
No denies that evolution can take place within a species, as it did with man over the millennia when our different races evolved. But then intercontinental travel began and mirabile dictu we were still all able to breed with one another. I guess you will tell me that our separation wasn't long enough. We all still have our 23 chromosome pairs if we are normal and hope to have grandchildren.
It is utterly ludicrous to claim that the process of evolution occurs by the exact mechanisms that scientists have described all along, except that it's "adaptation" and really happens several orders of magnitude faster than actual evolutionary processes occur in order to fit it into a literal creation 6000 year time-frame, while simultaneously denying that evolution occurs. Tell me, book and verse, where is this process of "adaptation" discussed in the Bible? And is it discussed in enough detail to make it useful in experimental design? I'll just say it: the "creation science" invention of rapid "adaptation" is neither scientific nor biblical.
Were there really any gradual morphing of one species into another we would see large numbers of species with mixed chromosome (e.g. 22 and 23 pairs, or 7 and 8) counts but we don't. It's really just simple math. Maybe your PhD didn't include enough if it?
And, once again, you're placing WAY too much importance on chromosome number. Chromosome number does not make us human. Gene copy number and expression levels of genes do. This article, written by a biology professor, explains how chromosome number can change without significantly affecting gene copy number. And, before you get the idea that this mechanism is theoretical or hypothetical, I will point out that these mechanisms have been observed many times.
As I have posted previously, I have Freeman and Herron's Evolutionary Analysis 3rd Edition among other texts. It has 802 pages. It has one chapter on speciation, which is all we're talking about here. The chapter begins on page 583. It runs on to page 614. The rest is primarily fluff, not very different from the stuff in Genesis where Jacob breeds spotted goats. The index references to speciation are: 37, 102-3, 574, 583-614. In other words a book on evolution has 36 pages out of 802 pages which even attempt to touch on the topic. I haven't looked at the speciation chapter recently but my recollection is that it doesn't do much to explain how a new animal species might arise; and answers no questions like the ones I raise here. If you think this is science, you should return your degrees.
You may have the book, but do you have the requisite background knowledge to understand it? I could not find excerpts from the book on Google, probably because its publisher wants to guarantee they'll always get a premium price for selling to a captive audience. What I did find out was that this is a textbook meant for upper level biology students, meaning that they are already familiar with topics such as genetics, anatomy, metabolism, etc. Since I found a syllabus for a course using that book being taught right now at U of WI, I was able to examine it and the linked lecture slides to get an idea of what is actually written in the book. I saw that quite a bit of the book, several chapters, in fact, are devoted to speciation. I surmise that, being unfamiliar with the discipline of biology, you simply don't recognize the terminology being used. As far as I can tell, the bulk of the book is spent familiarizing students with the various mechanisms of evolution (genetic drift, mutation, recombination, selection, etc.), before tying them all together in the "big-picture" view of speciation. What I did NOT see was the book trying to "gloss over" speciation, as your lack of familiarity with the subject led you to believe it does. If you *genuinely* want to understand how speciation occurs, read that book, cover to cover. Or, better yet, start taking some classes on biology so that you get the necessary background.
Of course I think biology is science, and no, I'm not about to "turn in" my degrees just because reality conflicts with the Biblical creation story.
You impute to me views which I deny holding and question my honesty.
I do know who Behe is and even have one of his books, but I know nothing of his quoting Coyne or Orr or both. I have the Coyne and Orr text I referred to, because I am genuinely interested in learning what I can about the topic of speciation. The quote I "cherry-picked" sort of hits one right between the eyes as it is the opening sentence of Chapter One of Speciation. My marginal note which I wrote when I first read this was/is Like what are Darwin's "Immense Achievements" if he didn't have anything to say about speciation? The phrase "immense achievements" is in the second sentence which I didn't bother to quote before but here it is: "The study of speciation is thus one of the few areas of evolutionary biology not overshadowed by Darwin's immense achievements."
You're quite correct that science is supposed to be objective. When contradictions arise in chemistry or physics the underlying theory is discarded (except to my mind when it comes to the concept of tunneling). But when it comes to "evolution" the theory just turns into a bigger kludge.
It is utterly ludicrous to claim that the process of evolution occurs by the exact mechanisms that scientists have described all along
Are these the same objective scientists you referred to previously?
I really don't know how to say things better than I already have. I ask you why there has been no separation in the human species given the obvious breeding populations into which we were, until recently, separated and you start talking about 6000 years and creation science.
You can say chromosomes don't matter and point me to a website with some Sharpie doodles, but Sharpie doodles aren't science. If evolution is an on-going, long, gradual process, we should be able to observe what is represented by the Sharpie doodles, at least in all those poor fruit-flies we've been bombarding with radiation for decades. So far as I am aware, we don't.
Your suggestion that I am unable to understand basic college texts is insulting. Is that really how your science operates?
ML/NJ