Yes. We all know that doctrine is sacrosanct. It must not be doubted, let alone questioned.
The only problem is, the paleontological record does not lend a whole lot of support to the macroevolutionary aspects of Darwin's theory.
Even Richard Dawkins is aware of the problem of "missing" intermediate fossil forms.
...[T]he Cambrian strata of rocks ... are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertibrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. [Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1987.]If Darwin's theory is correct — that evolution is a process of gradualism, or as you say, a process of transformations occurring at "a relatively steady rate" — then where are the "missing fossils" in the run-up to the Cambrian Explosion, c. 500,000 B.C.?
I do not argue for Lamarck's theory either.
Thanks so much for writing, exDemMom, and for the valuable link!
Very well put Betty Boop!
To your remarks, I'd like to add Dr. Gerald Schroeder's article on Evolution: Rationality v Randomness which includes this comment:
It is no wonder that the most widely read science journal, Scientific American, asked "has the mechanism of evolution altered in ways that prevent fundamental changes in body plans of animals" (November 1992). It is not that the mechanism of evolution has changed; it is our understanding of how evolution functions that must change to fit the data presented by the fossil record and by the discoveries of molecular biology.
The only difference between "microevolutionary" and "macroevolutionary" (as they relate to the ToE, and NOT as portrayed by advocates of "creation science") is the time scale.
The paleontological record most certainly supports the ToE; observations made on the basis of that record were what led to the formulation of the various competing ToEs in the first place.
I'm not going to comment on Richard Dawkins' quote; without seeing its context, I can guess that he goes on to explain why the fossil record behaves more like snapshots taken at random intervals than a continuous record, but I don't know.
Now, as far as the gradualism goes--most small, gradual changes won't appear in the fossil record. A single amino acid change that makes a trans-membrane calcium transporter able to pull calcium into cells at a lower serum calcium concentration is unlikely to show up in the fossil record. However, we might be able to observe that "newer" fossils exist in an area where the soil contains less calcium than where the "older" fossils were found. Our best bet of revealing such a minute change would be in finding some ancient DNA that we can analyze--but, given the instability of DNA, finding that DNA happens quite rarely. So, in order to build a more complete picture, we have to compare what we know of DNA mutation rates from various other lines of research.
A characteristic of evolutionary research is that there is no single line of evidence that fully supports the evolutionary picture. We have, instead, millions of pieces of disparate evidence that we must piece together like a giant puzzle, we have no picture on the cover of the box to guide us, and most of the pieces are missing.
Technically speaking, every one of us is a "transitional" form. The only pieces of DNA that are passed (mostly) unchanged from parent to child would be the mitochondrial DNA (remnant of ancient bacteria that lived inside other cells) from the mother, and the Y chromosome from the father.