Back to index of science pages by Donald Sauter.

Table of contents:

• Evolution FAQ
• Dumb evolution - recent examples from the news media.
• End notes - serves as kind of an intro, actually.
• Evolution in a work of fiction. (Not too redundant!) Just for fun.
• Feedback on the Evolution FAQ, Round 1 - not-so-friendly fire from the talk.origins gang.
• Feedback on the Evolution FAQ, Round 2 - still standing their ground. Anybody who can slog through this wins the Bob Dylan Third Eye award.
• A positive comment - (!!!)

• 1. What's all this about evolution?

1. What's all this about evolution?

Well, I'll tell you...

I went through most of my life accepting evolution without any problem. We see Creature A now which is similar to and somewhat more advanced than Creature B, which died out so many years ago and was itself somewhat more advanced than Creature C, which passed from the scene even earlier, etc. etc.

Makes sense, right? Species "evolve" just like an individual organism matures during the course of its life. Why not? What's all the fuss about?

Then, like others before me, I started paying closer attention to what the scientists were saying and realized I couldn't make sense of it. They go on and on about natural selection - the process of a beneficial character trait becoming more pervasive throughout the population of a species. But when you give it a moment's thought, you realize that natural selection is never going to give rise to a new species.

Even in a recent book, Full House, by the evolution guru Stephen Jay Gould, we read such silliness as this (p139): "As the earth enters a glacial age... possession of more than the usual amount of hair becomes a decided advantage. [In general, ] the hairier elephants will be more successful [at living] and therefore [have more] offspring... Since hairiness is inherited, the next generation will contain more elephants with increased hair... Continue this process for a large number of generations, and eventually Siberia will [have] a population of woolly mammoths - the evolutionary descendants of the original elephants."

Well, no. Siberia will have hairy elephants. Maybe. Actually, there is nothing in the above argument to suggest that an ice-age elephant could ever hope to be any hairier than the hairiest elephant from the preceding balmy climate.

In school, we were taught examples like, "the turtle developed a shell because the ones that didn't got eaten and died off," or, "the giraffe developed a long neck to reach the higher leaves and the ones that didn't, died out."

All well and good for a noncritical mind, but then you start to wonder, well, if a long neck is such a great idea, where is the super-giraffe with a neck twice as long? Or wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just develop a longer tongue? Why not longer legs - or simply learn to stand upright? And surely the conditions would have been ok somewhere for giraffes to develop half-length necks. Where are they?

If the shell was so crucial for the survival of the turtle, how come so many shell-less reptiles hung in there? And, now that you mention it, where's my shell? That could really have come in handy now and then for my ancestors, not to mention a pair of wings. How about some gills and flippers, too? Talk about survival - I'd be set!

With a few more seconds thought you're wondering: why aren't all species in transition all the time? Why are there any defined species at all? Why isn't every single organism at its own unique point on some branch of an inconceivably huge and dense evoutionary tree? Why isn't there a great big, confused mess?

If you think I am exaggerating what scientists say about how quickly and easily evolution is supposed to proceed, see the Dumb Evolution section at the end of this discussion.

When these doubts of mine came up in conversation with a friend, he got worried, fearing I was becoming a lost soul to science. He gave me a reading assignment in the hopes of saving me from the clutches of the "other side". It was an essay by Stephen Jay Gould called "Evolution As Fact And Theory" (1981) from the book Hen's Teeth And Horse's Toes. I want to use that essay as a basis for this discussion.

Obviously, tons have been written on the subject of evolution, so you might wonder what is the purpose of responding to a single, puny essay. As I have said, I was directed toward it. It was written by the biggest name in the field. It is addressed mainly to creationists, and so should be overkill for anyone who merely has questions about party line thinking on evolution. Moreover, it sounds so much like the pro-evolution camp in the internet group talk.origins and has a lot in common with the talk.origins FAQ. As far as I can tell, the essay serves as an accurate representation of current thinking on evolution.

Right off (p253) Gould denies that evolutionists have generated any "serious internal trouble" to provoke the new round of attacks on evolution. But a few pages later (p255) Gould concedes, "We have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms... by which evolution... occurred."

It's hard not to see that as a delusion or bald-faced lie. Evolution has always been presented - in my lifetime, at least - as some combination of natural selection and mutation - with no acknowledgment of any uncertainty about this.

Gould goes on: "From the 1940s through the 1960s, Darwin's own theory of natural selection did enjoy a temporary hegemony... While no biologist questions the importance of natural selection, many now doubt its ubiquity. In particular, many evolutionists argue that substantial amounts of genetic change may not be subject to natural selection and may spread through populations at random. Others are challenging [the] linking of natural selection with gradual, imperceptible change through all intermediary degrees; they are arguing that most evolutionary events may occur far more rapidly than [previously] envisioned."

That's not "serious internal trouble"? Gould tosses it all off as healthy, exciting - "and how else can I say it?... fun" (p256). (Does anybody else get a mental image of a bunch of little boys in lab coats romping about in a play room?) He dismisses the doubters' question (p254), "If... scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory [of evolution], then what confidence can we have in it?" Sounds like a reasonable question to me. It's not like we can't haul plants and creatures into the laboratory to test out a theory - or observe the huge observatory in which we are immersed.

Gould insists over and over that evolution is "a fact". By this, Gould means that evolution "is" - just like gravity "is" - never mind the what, how or why. "Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in midair pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered." (p254)

First of all, reasonable people may have valid questions about that statement of "fact." What if, upon closer examination, our ancestors were actually more "human-like" as opposed to apelike? Would it still be evolution?

Moreover, there is an unacceptable circularity here. Gould says, in essence, that evolution is the fact that "humans beings [or whatever] evolved." Nobody can argue with that one - but the statement has no value. It's funny to note that "evolution is evolution" fails the falsifiability criterion of science as badly as creationism.

Gould is like an ancient astronomer triumphantly proclaiming, "The sun goes across the sky! It's a fact!" Ok, man, if you say so. But many of us are keenly interested in how it moves across the sky - in what's going on. Does it move on crystalline spheres... or a giant turtle's back? If you can't come up with a convincing theory, we might start doubting that it even moves at all.

This proclamation, "Evolution is a fact," has become ubiquitous in defenses of evolution. It is proclaimed in the talk.origins FAQ and discussions. I suggest Gould and his allies would do themselves a big favor to drop it and return to the old-fashioned usage of "fact" - for example, "the fossil record shows such and such a species existed at such and such a time."

By the way, Gould says something near the end of the essay which puts the lie to his innocent belief that evolution is just "a fact". He says evolution is "one of the half dozen 'great ideas' developed by science." In the previous analogy with gravitation, would he say that falling bodies are one of the "great ideas" of science? One would think the "great ideas" are the theories - the explanations of observed phenomena. (So to speak. We all know that science doesn't explain, it only describes, right?)

Gould says (p257), "We have abundant, direct, observational of evolution in action, from both field and laboratory." He talks about experiments on the fruit fly - but somehow forgets to tell us what the fruit fly evolved into. I'd be fascinated to hear. And he talks about moth populations that change from light to dark. I'll bite, where's the evolution?

Gould writes something I can't make sense of (p258), even after reading it over and over. Maybe someone can help. "Evolution lies exposed in the imperfections that record a history of descent. Why should a rat run, a bat fly, a porpoise swim, and I type this essay with structures built of the same bones unless we inherited them from a common ancestor? An engineer, starting from scratch, could design better limbs in each case."

What gives? Those animals do extremely well at those activities with the bones they have. And how could anyone say they have the same bones??? And what engineer has ever started from scratch on anything? If this is supposed to serve as an argument for evolution over "something else", somebody clue me in.

Gould duly admits (p258), "preserved transitions are not common." He is more exasperated on page 260 when he barks defensively, "Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups." He doesn't make clear, to me at least, what he means by "larger groups" and how fine the transitions are. Is a frog a transitional form between a fruit fly and a human?

Gould presents an example of a transition. Paleontologists have dug up animal fossils with double jaw joints, which represent the transitional state between animals with multi-boned jaws and animals with a jaw and ear-bones.

Admittedly, that's very interesting - intriguing even - but far from a knockout punch. It raises obvious questions - which are no less valid for their obviousness.

Why would - and how could - an animal with a multiboned jaw give birth to one with a double jaw joint? Why would - and how could - an animal with a double jaw joint give birth to one with a jaw plus ear-bones? (Again, there's no claim to an original insight here; for instance, Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box deals at length with problems like this, I think.)

In a talk.origins discussion, an annoyed evolutionist said something like, "What do you want from us? For every transition we identify, there will be two new gaps to fill in!" Right. A less polite opponent might respond, "Keep digging!" The fact is, it's your responsibility to show that these complex, new features can be gotten in one-generation-at-a-time increments. Never mind (for now) the boggling question of how the appearance of just one ever-so-slightly evolved creature results in the demise of the entire population of the robust species which bore it.

Gould is annoyed that a writer accuses his punctuated equilibria theory of saying "a reptile laid an egg from which the first bird, feathers and all, was produced." He bristles, "Any evolutionist who believed such nonsense would rightly be laughed off the intellectual stage." But is this so much more fantastic than the first birth of an animal with ear-bones?

To his credit, but to the detriment of his position, Gould admits (p261), "It is true that scientists have often been dogmatic and elitist... We derive benefits from appearing as a new priesthood." Good boy. My advice: work on that. (Please visit my web page on the topic of dumb science.)

Gould closes the essay with a whimper. Apparently the "healthy debate" among evolutionists is a little too healthy. Some of Gould's colleagues feel that it gives the enemy too much ammo, and maybe they should stonewall it. But remember (p256): "Amidst all this turmoil no biologist has been led to doubt the fact that evolution occurred"! (Emphasis mine.)

There you have it; an impassioned defense of evolution from the most well-known name in the field - and what do we get? Sounds like a scientific field in shambles, to me.

Where do we go from here? I haven't read all of the discussion in talk.origins, or even much of it, but everything I have seen coming from the evolutionists has been evasive. Here is a representative sample:

Doubter: Demonstrate to me the actual evidence that proves evolution by showing me the evolution of a new body part or organ... if you can.

True believer: Evolution doesn't require this and those of us who know that aren't interest[ed] in arguing against your misrepresentation.

Skeptics are told that they don't understand; that evolutionists "never said that!" They are sent somewhere else - "Go read such and such!" If you ask, why is there something as insanely complicated as sexual reproduction?, you're told, "We never said evolution gives the simplest, most efficient solutions!" If you wonder about the progression toward complexity, you are now told, "You are sorely mistaken! We never said there was any such trend!" How did life get started? "That has nothing at all to do with evolution!" All we get is the mantra, "Evolution is a fact." Evolutionists just won't put up a target.

There can't be a meaningful discussion until this changes. I suggest, for a start, we put aside the question of "how" and concentrate on the "what" of evolution. Take gravity, for example. We might not have a clue as to why bodies come together (curved space blather notwithstanding), but at least we know what happens. The apple starts here. It ends there. It follows a path described by a known equation. It speeds up according to a known formula. No problem. Nothing to argue about.

Taking as an example the grizzly bear to whale transition discussed in talk.origins, what would we see if we captured the whole process in time lapse photography, say? In this thought experiment, suppose we devoted one frame of the film to each generation. The first frame will show all of the grizzlies bears alive now. In fact, it will show only those animals which will reproduce, and it will show them at some standard point in their lives - sexual maturity, say. Imagine that it is not only a photographic image, but contains any and all biological information of interest. (Remember, this is a thought experiment.)

What would the film show, frame by frame, generation by generation? We'll even arrange the animal images conveniently from most grizzly bear-like on the left side to most whale-like on the right. How many frames does it take to get to the first whale? What do the intermediates look like? How many are in each frame? How many transitional stages are represented in each frame? In the last frame, do we have all whales? Whales and grizzly bears? Other creatures, too?

If that example is too overwhelming, take a lesser transition; from non-feathered to feathered, say, or from double jaw joint to ear-bones. Does anyone accept the challenge? After evolutionists have presented a plausible picture of what this "fact of evolution" is, then we can get down to the "how".

1. Leaping lizards (Washington Times, 1997 May) -

A recent study shows that evolution, commonly thought of as operating over eons, can happen over just a few years.

That's nothing new to biologists, who have witnessed remarkably rapid evolution in bacteria, snails, moths and a host of other creatures since Charles Darwin first documented the process in finches. But nobody had ever demonstrated rapid evolution in an actual experiment before researchers took lizards from the Bahamian island of Staniel Cay and introduced them to 14 even-smaller islands nearby.

The smaller islands had sparser, shorter vegetation than Staniel Cay. And since these particular lizards, of the species Anolis sagrei, spend a lot of time sitting on branches, the biologists predicted that the smaller vegetation would lead to correspondingly shorter hind limbs in the lizard.

After introducing lizards to 11 islands in 1977 and to three others in 1981, the researchers returned in 1991 to find exactly what they expected. [End article.]

Leaping Lysenkoism, where does one start??? Because my legs are so long that I almost always take 2 steps at a time, will my descendants have short, stubby legs??? You would think having length to spare would be an advantage.

And exactly how short is this shorter vegetation so that it requires smaller steps from the lizard? Quarter knee-high as opposed to half knee-high? Can we assume all the vegetation on these islands is less than knee-high to a lizard??? And why just the hind limbs? Do these lizards walk upright???

And can we be so sure (haha) it's the vegetation height? Maybe it's the nutritional value of the stunted vegetation. Or maybe the smaller islands themselves give the lizards less running room. (Warning! Sarcasm spoken here!)

The last sentence of the article should set off alarm bells. "[They returned] to find exactly what they expected," indeed. This is what I call the "ouija board effect" in science. In case you don't know, the ouija board pointer goes where the participants nudge it, much as they swear they're not. (Gravity waves, Dr. Weber?) An alert mind will realize that measuring lizard legs is far from a straightforward proposition, allowing for all manner of vaguely conscious nudging.

And we're still left with the biggie: does Anolis sagrei transforming into Anolis sagrei count as evolution?

2. Mother of all nests (Washington Times, 1997 July 20, page D8) -

Several hundred yellow jackets are in the process of rebuilding a monster nest removed by entomologists last week from an abandoned house in Brunswick, Georgia [USA].

About 50,000 insects were removed by scientists from the University of Georgia, along with the 4-by-3-foot nest built into a sofa.

A typical yellow jacket nest is about the size of a basketball.

Entomologist Robert Matthews described the nest as a "real monster" and said it was unusual because it had apparently been growing undisturbed for years.

Mr. Matthews said researchers found at least 100 queens in the nest; a normal yellow jacket nest contains only one. Mr. Matthews called the discovery a "significant evolutionary step." [End article.]

Comments: Yeah, right. And I had a really big sneeze yesterday.

I don't know if there's anything there that the typical evolutionist would defend, but I got a big kick out of the juxtaposition of that article with a neighboring one. About a third of the newspaper page was devoted to "Deformed frogs offer mystery - scientists consider viruses, predators, parasites; chemicals can't be ruled out".

When something big is happening, there's not a single mention of evolution!

Although all the points made here may sound familiar (overly familiar) to talk.origins participants, they were arrived at independently of any prior discussion, either printed or electronic.

My biggest surprise was searching old talk.origins articles after this page was essentially completed and finding A. Pagano taking evolutionists to task for their tautological "evolution is a fact, come what may" position. I thought maybe I was the first to recognize this and worried that no one would understand what I was getting at. Pagano stated the case much better than I do here, but even so, his opponents remained blissfully unaware of how badly ravaged they were. What can you do?

There is an excellent short story crafted around the idea of big evolutionary jumps in Twilight Zone Magazine (June 1988). It's called Quantum Leap, by Anita Evangelista. Of course, copyright laws being what they are, you'll never enjoy it and Evangelista will never make any more money from it. Makes a lot of sense, right?

After putting up my "Evolution FAQ" web page, I invited participants of the discussion group talk.origins to look it over. Here are virtually all of the comments that I received. I closed the invitation with, "Thanks for dropping by. Try not to get too worked up." You will see that got some mileage.

You can find the original postings easily enough by searching Deja for "talk.origins", "evolution faq" and "sauter". Keep me honest.

[DS: My responses to the feedback are in brackets like this.]

howard hershey: Why get worked up? It's merely the same old clap-trap, cant, and nonsense (misrepresentation, misinterpretation) presented by someone with a decidedly superficial understanding of the biosciences, although I will admit it was presented in a nicely sarcastic fashion with the unstated arrogant implication that the writer actually knows something (clearly contradicted by the content) that "real" scientists do not. Have you been taking lessons from Peter Nyikos? So I would rank it fairly high (B, perhaps) on style but only a gentleman's D for content (graded on a curve; it is darn sight better than most of what passes for anti-evolutionary "FAQs" but still doesn't pass muster.) [DS: Just a B? I know I'm no great shakes as a writer, and I hate to scrounge for points, but aren't those links that hop you down the page a single line good for a B+ ? And I'm giving all of the responses an "incomplete", since none of them addressed my main point.]

Larry Moran: Calm down, Howard, you're being very unfair to young Donald. He's probably just a child. Besides, he states clearly in the Forward to his web pages that he doesn't know anything about science. Here's what he says,

"This collection of pages came out of my own head with no research into the sorts of things other people put in their websites."

See? He doesn't even pretend to have studied evolution or any other topic. These are just the ramblings of a uneducated mind.

Adam Noel Harris: Larry's right on the mark. Donald seems to be one of those people who thinks he can debate and solve all the world's problems just by hashing it out in his head. Never mind if he's got his facts wrong to begin with, he can work through it!

Take, for example, his "criticism" of a report on evolution in lizard leg length after introduction to new islands. He speculates about the kinds of measurement errors which can be made and gaffaws when he asks questions about the height of vegetation growing on the islands. But does he bother to look up the original research paper to get answers to his questions or to find out how the measurements were made? No, that won't be necessary, because in Donald's mind it was probably done all wrong and no facts are necessary. [DS: I'm not budging on this - if scientists can't convey what they mean to say to the public, I say sit down and shut up. I'm fed up with nonsense science stories in the media. See my web page on dumb science.]

Still, this is more interesting than Donald's previous forays into this group. I didn't think Donald could discuss things other than how if there were life on other planets, it would have contacted us already. [DS: Still waiting to hear a vaguely plausible explanation for the Fermi Paradox. I get a kick out of finding other people who have also independently discovered it. For example, at a talk at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., Alan Bean, the 4th man on the moon, made the statement, "Humans don't realize how special they are." He concluded there was nothing like us for hundreds of light-years, or so, because, if they were out there, they would be helping us cure cancer, etc., rather than hiding out. After all, humans would be glad to help alien races where possible. And mosey around my website, Adam, for discussion of many other topics - guitar, Beatles, justice, democracy, scrabble, football, antarctica, breakfast cereal, etc. Recently added a page on how to make ice water.]

FROM MY FAQ: If the shell was so crucial for the survival of the turtle, how come so many shell-less reptiles hung in there?

Tedd Hadley: Has it ever occurred to you that different environments have different predators, different food sources, different energy requirements and that in some environments a shell may be more of a detriment than others? [DS: Turtles share the exact same environment with numerous shell-less animals.]

[DS: Bonz wrote the most extended rebuttal to my FAQ. You can read the entire thing further below. Here, I respond to the points which I think are most in need of response.]

Bonz: Why do turtles have shells? In the natural course of having trillions of babies, some were "shellier" than others, just as some humans are taller than others. And the shellier they were, the more they prospered. [DS: Humans must have surpassed a trillion babies by now. So have rabbits.]

FROM MY FAQ: If the shell was so crucial for the survival of the turtle, how come so many shell-less reptiles hung in there?

Bonz: You're not going to like the answer, but - no particular reason. [DS: Oh.]

FROM MY FAQ: And, now that you mention it, where's my shell? That could really have come in handy now and then for my ancestors, not to mention a pair of wings.

Bonz: Possibly so. So what? Evolution has no interest in whether humans make it or not. [DS: But it did with elephants? The weather gets a bit nippy and they turn into woolly mammoths?]

Bonz: So if I raise a population of mice that doesn't interbreed with the original population I took if from, it's a separate species. Explain to me why this cannot happen. [DS: Sure, humans have the wherewithal to fiddle around with the DNA, ensure that the newly created mice breed and flourish, and even exterminate the entire population of the parent species and bury them somewhere so that their fossils can be dug up some time in the future. Exactly what position are you arguing?]

Bonz: And if you don't know that bats and porpoises and rats have the same bones, you need a course in remedial anatomy. [DS: ...or a new dictionary. According to the American Heritage, "same" means "conforming in every detail."]

FROM MY FAQ: All well and good for a noncritical mind, but then you start to wonder, well, if a long neck is such a great idea, where is the super-giraffe with a neck twice as long? Or wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just develop a longer tongue? Why not longer legs - or simply learn to stand upright? And surely the conditions would have been ok somewhere for giraffes to develop half-length necks. Where are they?

Tedd Hadley: Has it ever occurred to you that there are constraints on evolution just like there are constraints on everything else in this world? Every feature carries a cost in terms of energy consumption which has to be balanced with the advantage.

Victor Eijkhout: Or to put the ball back in [Sauter's] court: if evolution doesn't explain this, what's the creationist explanation of the absence of super-giraffes? [DS: A very telling question there, Victor. It doesn't exactly drip with confidence in evolutionary explanations. You'd do better to ask a creationist, but I'm guessing he'd say that super-giraffes were never created.]

Boikat: That's not a FAQ. It's an admission that you do not understand evolution. Maybe this will help (but I doubt it):

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html

I WROTE: Thanks for dropping by. Try not to get too worked up.

Boikat: Not a problem. We see people that don't understand the basics all the time. We're used to it.

Wesley R. Elsberry: Checked [the FAQ] out briefly. I stopped after finding this gem.

And surely the conditions would have been ok somewhere for giraffes to develop half-length necks. Where are they?

Check the encyclopedia for "okapi".

I WROTE: Thanks for dropping by. Try not to get too worked up.

Scott Chase: You're welcome. No problem, I needed the laugh. You're amazing. How many misconceptions about evolution can be crammed into a couple of webpages?

FROM MY FAQ: With a few more seconds thought you're wondering: why aren't all species in transition all the time? Why are there any defined species at all? Why isn't every single organism at its own unique point on some branch of an inconceivably huge and dense evoutionary tree? Why isn't there a great big, confused mess?

Tedd Hadley: This is exactly what you see, actually. Species is a man-made concept. If you geographically split two populations of the same animal and wait a few hundred years, you will find considerable genetic and physical differences between those two populations. Wait a thousand years and they probably won't even be able to interbreed. All animals are, in fact, points on a vast, extremely bushy evolutionary tree.

Jthomford (to Tedd Hadley): No kidding. In fact, it's so accurate[,] in light of everything else I'm wondering if the whole thing isn't a troll.

Tedd Hadley: [There were] many more misconceptions which would be fun to go over if Sauter is interested.

All in all, an exhibition of ignorance. I'd say Donald Sauter is an intelligent person who has not allowed himself to make any serious attempt to understand evolution, perhaps for fear it will prove incompatible with other beliefs.

[DS: Here is Bonz's complete rebuttal to my FAQ. I've already responded above to what I thought were his most important points. Like everyone else, he made no attempt to describe any transition in generation-by-generation steps. He also used analogies that I don't get. But see what you think.]

I WROTE: Thanks for dropping by. Try not to get too worked up.

Bonz: Not worked up at all. But you have some serious misapprehensions about evoluton.

FROM MY FAQ: I went through most of my life accepting evolution without any problem. We see Creature A now which is similar to and somewhat more advanced than Creature B, which died out so many years ago and was itself somewhat more advanced than Creature C, which passed from the scene even earlier, etc. etc.

Bonz: No, NOT "more advanced". Organisms gain limbs, lose limbs... one generation to the next is SIMILAR. There is no notion of "advanced".

Just different.

FROM MY FAQ: Then, like others before me, I started paying closer attention to what the scientists were saying and realized I couldn't make sense of it. They go on and on about natural selection - the process of a beneficial character trait becoming more pervasive throughout the population of a species. But when you give it a moment's thought, you realize that natural selection is never going to give rise to a new species.

Bonz: Let's give it another moment's thought. We know new species can arise today because we see them all the time. Hel, we had to have a Supreme Court ruling in the US over whether companies that produce a new species can patent it. (They can.)

Now. What would make a population of mice a new species of mouse? Let's look at what makes all the species of mice we already have separate species: they don't interbreed.

So if I raise a population of mice that doesn't interbreed with the original population I took if from, it's a separate species.

Explain to me why this cannot happen.

FROM MY FAQ: Even in a recent book, Full House, by the evolution guru Stephen Jay Gould, we read such silliness as this (p139): "As the earth enters a glacial age... possession of more than the usual amount of hair becomes a decided advantage. [In general,] the hairier elephants will be more successful [at living] and therefore [have more] offspring... Since hairiness is inherited, the next generation will contain more elephants with increased hair... Continue this process for a large number of generations, and eventually Siberia will [have] a population of woolly mammoths - the evolutionary descendants of the original elephants."

Well, no. Siberia will have hairy elephants. Maybe. Actually, there is nothing in the above argument to suggest that an ice-age elephant could ever hope to be any hairier than the hairiest elephant from the preceding balmy climate.

Bonz: Absolutely correct. We get THAT information from living organisms today, and apply it to fossil life in the past. We know, without any doubt, that tiny changes in living orgamisns can make LARGE changes in, for instance, how much hair something has. Humans and chimps have the same NUMBER of hairs, for instance, ours are just thinner and shorter.

FROM MY FAQ: In school, we were taught examples like, "the turtle developed a shell because the ones that didn't got eaten and died off,"

Bonz: Then you either had a terrible teacher, or you misunderstood. Turtles, or any other organism, cannot see the future, plan for it, and develop things to protect itself.

Why do turtles have shells? In the natural course of having trillions of babies, some were "shellier" than others, just as some humans are taller than others. And the shellier they were, the more they prospered.

Because we know that "not getting eaten for lunch" is a good thing from the standpoint of getting older and laying more eggs, the defensive explanation makes sense.

FROM MY FAQ: or, "the giraffe developed a long neck to reach the higher leaves and the ones that didn't, died out."

Bonz: Same misunderstanding as above.

FROM MY FAQ: All well and good for a noncritical mind, but then you start to wonder, well, if a long neck is such a great idea, where is the super-giraffe with a neck twice as long?

Bonz: How much good would that do? Are there really, really tall trees where giraffes live? Nope. Were there dinow with really, really long necks when there were really, really tall ferns? Yep.

FROM MY FAQ: Or wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just develop a longer tongue?

Bonz: Not necessarily. Giraffes, like everything else, have to make do with what they have. If you have logs, you build log houses. If you have sod, you build sod houses. If you have ice, you build igloos.

A longer tongue would have worked. So would the ability to climb, or to fly, and hey, the ability to live without food at ALL would be GREAT. The ancestors of giraffes didn't have the raw materials for any of these. They did have the raw materials for long necks.

FROM MY FAQ: Why not longer legs - or simply learn to stand upright? And surely the conditions would have been ok somewhere for giraffes to develop half-length necks. Where are they?

Bonz: All over the place. Look at the okapi. A short necked giraffe, alive and living today in Africa right alongside the giraffe. And medium length giraffes are in the fossil record as well.

FROM MY FAQ: If the shell was so crucial for the survival of the turtle, how come so many shell-less reptiles hung in there?

Bonz: You're not going to like the answer, but - no particular reason. Why didn't I win the lottery? Why did one kid die from the flu, and another stay healthy?

FROM MY FAQ: And, now that you mention it, where's my shell? That could really have come in handy now and then for my ancestors, not to mention a pair of wings.

Bonz: Possibly so. So what? Evolution has no interest in whether humans make it or not. You had the raw materials for a big brain and grasping hands. Turtles got a better deal. Live with it.

Are you asking why turtles are so much more successful than humans are? Unless everything is the same, some have to be more successful than others. Turtles won, we lost. {shrug}

FROM MY FAQ: How about some gills and flippers, too? Talk about survival - I'd be set!

Bonz: No.. because there is a COST to having all those things.

Why doesn't a soldier carry three spare rifles, a million rounds of ammuntion, a bazooka with a thousand rounds, and a thousand fragmentation grenades into battle? He'd be SET!

FROM MY FAQ: With a few more seconds thought you're wondering: why aren't all species in transition all the time?

Bonz: They are. Every species that is now or ever has lived is a transitional species - unless, of couse, it goes extinct.

FROM MY FAQ: Why are there any defined species at all?

Bonz: There aren't all that many. We consider lions and tigers separate species, even though they can mate and have offspring.

It gets VERY blurry when you have species that look alike, ring species. hybrids, and the like. How separate is separate? If one population is 100% infertile with another, we KNOW they are different species. But how about 99.9%? 92%? 89.8%?

FROM MY FAQ: Why isn't every single organism at its own unique point on some branch of an inconceivably huge and dense evoutionary tree?

Bonz: It is.

FROM MY FAQ: Why isn't there a great big, confused mess?

Bonz: There is. You've never seen taxonomists argue, have you?

I've read the rest of your page, and all it shows is your poor understanding of what evolution is.

Suppose you went to a NASCAR rally and heard everyone talking about "gas". Price of gas, running out of gas, gas tank... and you get suspicious. So you sneak over to a car, look into the "gas tank".... and there is no gas there! It's a LIQUID!!!

So you run over to your friend from London and tell him what you've found. HE goes over, and actually sticks his finger inside, and comes back. "You're right," he says, "there is no gas there. It's just bloody petrol."

So you and he get a web page exposing the nutty NASCAR drivers who can't tell a gas from a liqiud called petrol.

Let me help you out here.

ANY change in the genetic makeup of a population from generation to generation is evolution. If you have 50% green eyes in this generation, 75% in a later generation, then 50% in a still later generation, you have seen evolution.

Now here is where YOU go nuts. :) I can almost hear you - "Yeah, they always say that, but that doesn't explain how {whatever} and that doesn't mean {whatever}.

No, it doesn't. It's not SUPPOSED to.

If you can start a car, move it around for a mile or two, then brake, and park it, I would say you can "drive".

Doesn't mean you can win the Indy 500. It doesn't even mean you can get a license. But you CAN drive. It is a definition. That's all. It says nothing at all about whether you're a good driver or a bad driver.

Describe 99% of life on Earth: single cells.

What do we know from this? Mostly, almost no organisms change a whole lot, at least in the ways you are talking about. Billions of years ago, 100% of life was single celled, and now 99% is.

Why isn't everything transitional? Everything IS transitional. It's just that most things aren't dramatic, even when they ARE transitional. Most people don't become multibillionaires out of nowhere. Bill Gates did. He's newsworthy. You're not, even when you get a promotion.

Why is that? Because people like flash. They like THE FIRST. That has nothing to do with how evolution works, it has to do with what people like to read in the newspaper.

You also seem to have difficulty separating "evolution" from "the theory of evolution":

FROM MY FAQ: Gould insists over and over that evolution is "a fact". By this, Gould means that evolution "is" - just like gravity "is" - never mind the what, how or why. "Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in midair pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered."

First of all, reasonable people may have valid questions about that statement of "fact." What if, upon closer examination, our ancestors were actually more "human-like" as opposed to apelike? Would it still be evolution?

Bonz: Yes, of course. Any change in heritable genetics between generations is evolution.

But listen to yourself. Since, at one time, humans did not exist, and now we DO exist, and since evolution takes place in small steps, then our RECENT ancestors HAVE to be "apelike".

Humans are in the ape family. We are African Great Apes, along with gorillas and chimps. In this context, "apelike" means "more like the other apes."

FROM MY FAQ: Moreover, there is an unacceptable circularity here. Gould says, in essence, that evolution is the fact that "humans beings [or whatever] evolved." Nobody can argue with that one - but the statement has no value. It's funny to note that "evolution is evolution" fails the falsifiability criterion of science as badly as creationism.

Bonz: I wish SOMEONE would tell Creationists that there is nothing wrong with circularity. Definitions are SUPPOSED to be circular. My father is my male parent.

Rain is rain. Gravity is gravity. A rock is a rock. Evolution is evolution. You can do that with everything.

We know that the Earth is billions of years old. We know that no humans existed a billion years ago. We know that organisms evolve, and that all of the organisms today, bunnies and antelope and ostriches and whales and pine trees and sharks and mosquitos and corn and mushrooms are descended from critters that lived a billion years ago, when they did not.

THAT they did is not at question. HOW they did is of infinite value to us, because it is still happening today.

You seem to have an odd notion of how it happened yourself,

FROM MY FAQ: Is a frog a transitional form between a fruit fly and a human?

Bonz: What in the name of Billy blue blazes makes you think that either fruit flies or frogs are ancestral to humans at all? [DS: See my question in context in the FAQ for the point I was making.]

And if you don't know that bats and porpoises and rats have the same bones, you need a course in remedial anatomy.

My evolution "FAQ" took a unanimous drubbing from the 11 people who posted responses. However, not a single person responded to the whole point of my page. All of the responses fell into the "evasive" category which I devoted a paragraph to in the FAQ. They fell along the lines of:

"You're ignorant."

"You don't understand."

"Go read this."

"Anything that happens is 'evolution'."

"Well, what's your theory???"

In a follow-up posting to talk.origins, I took another shot at explaining what I was after. I said:

Forget about the definition of evolution. Forget about how evolution happens. Forget about why evolution happens. Forget about the word "evolution" itself. Just describe some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. Account for all of the descendants of all of the members of the source species until you arrive at an established population of the destination species.

In my page I mentioned transitions from not feathered to feathered; single jaw joint to double jaw joint; double jaw joint/no ear bones to single jaw joint/ear bones; and grizzly bear to whale.

Talk.origins participants are knowledgable about an animal called the okapi. They indicate that it is in every respect identical to a giraffe except its neck is half as long (and, presumably, it does not mate with giraffes, at least normally.) If you'd like, use the okapi to giraffe transition.

I have trouble envisioning it. Although some respondents are adamant that one is not allowed to apply his own accumulated knowledge and common sense to the matter, I will try to explain my difficulty.

For a jumping off point, let's consider a 1-generation transition. An okapi bears a giraffe. The giraffe species becomes established.

That such a mutation could occur is hardly conceivable. And if it did happen, it is harder to conceive how the new giraffe species could become established. The first giraffe has no giraffes for mates and so must mate with an okapi - in spite of this being itself either impossible or very rare. (Zoologists?) Ultimately, the first giraffe must produce at least 2 giraffes. If it doesn't produce any, the new species dies. If it produces only one, then that giraffe is in the same predicament of having to produce at least 2 giraffes without the benefit of a giraffe mate.

The probabability of these 2 nearly inconceivable events occurring is near-zero**2 . (** = exponentiation.)

All right, then, the answer is smaller steps in the transition, right? Suppose there are 99 intermediate species between the okapi and the giraffe, each with a neck 1 cm longer than the species from which it emerged.

But now the two big problems described above must be overcome 100 times. Even if the random mutation which gives a smaller change in neck length is not quite as unlikely (and that's not obvious to me), the probability of all these events occurring and arriving at an established giraffe species is near-zero**200 .

On top of this is some unimaginable guidance overseeing the whole process. Let's suppose we managed to get through the first 20 stages (probability = near-zero**40 ). How did that happen so neatly - with no other random mutations going off in other directions? What about the tail disappearing? Growing an eye in the top of the head? Thumbs? Purple hair? No, just a sequence of completely random mutations giving successively 1 cm longer necks - nothing else.

No wonder some evolutionists have had to back off and start thinking about near-instantaneous, big jumps. Near-zero**2 is a lot easier to swallow.

And given how hard it is to swallow near-zero**2 , it's no wonder someone like Senepathy theorizes the first members of each species walked independently out of the primordial soup-bowl - without the benefit of parents, even. According to him, the probability of giraffe DNA coming together randomly in the broth is astronomically more probable than getting from okapi DNA to giraffe DNA via random mutations.

If everything I've said above is wrong or confused, don't waste your energy on it. Just clear the table and describe the okapi to giraffe transition in generation-by-generation steps. If it wasn't the okapi the giraffe came from - no problem. Start with the akopi or the opaki or whatever the predecessor was.

Talk.origins participants indicate that there are no defined species; they all melt into each other in one big rubber-sheet continuum. Each individual creature in fact has its own branch on the evolutionary tree. Can we take that with a grain of salt? I haven't walked the whole world wide, but it doesn't seem to jibe with what I see. Can we assume the okapi was an established species before the transition occurred, meaning that there was a sizable population of animals that looked okapi-like and behaved okapi-like and bred almost exclusively with other okapis? In any case, clearly describe what you believe to be the starting conditions for the emergence of the giraffe.

If you're an up-to-date evolutionist who never once no not ever said anything about increasing complexity, progress or advancement, feel free to go the other way - describe the giraffe to okapi transition.

Use diagrams, graphs, equations or whatever it takes to describe the transition, generation by generation. Take another look at my web page where I solicit a description of the grizzly bear to whale transition if you don't understand what I'm after. Part of me wants to say I'll only accept an answer reviewed and approved by a majority of "name" evolutionists; part of me thinks it would be very interesting to get them all in separate rooms and see how their answers compare.

Here's the deal. Describe this or any transition in generation by generation steps clearly and compellingly, and I'll add it to my web page. [End of post to talk.origins.]

You've noticed in the first round of feedback the shellacking I took for not being aware of the okapi. My damage control was to calmly work the okapi into the discussion, and make it part of the problem. It should be pointed out, though, to anyone who was given the impression that the okapi is like a giraffe with a half-length neck that that's not the case at all. There is nothing at all noteworthy about the length of the okapi's neck. In the pictures I've seen, the okapi's neck has about the same proportion to body and head size as a horse's, dog's, person's, bird's, turtle's, you-name-it... What's the big deal? In any case, my posed question remains the same whether there were 0, 1, 2, 3, or many intermediates between the giraffe and its short-necked predecessor.

This time around, a few people took a stab at what I was asking for. None of it sounded any more compelling (to me) than the familiar explanation of random mutations and natural selection working like an incredibly well-orchestrated team.

Describing once again my own problems with that explanation is not what I had in mind, and will surely be redundant to some extent with what I've already said and what many others have said, but it's only fair that I respond to the people who responded to my challenge. Putting it here saves the trouble of repeating myself several places below. Here goes.

It is inconceivable that a tiny, 1 centimeter or less, increase in neck length of the "okapi" (that is, the pre-giraffe) could give even an infinitesimal increase in survival advantage. If I accepted that, I'd have to believe that all the females, being naturally shorter, died. Now there's a big problem for emerging giraffes.

I have very nearly as hard a time believing that even a "whopping" increase in neck length - 10 centimeters, say - would increase the survival advantage. I'm willing to bet that there are much greater variations than that in the height of okapi - without the shorter ones keeling over with starvation. If they did, young okapis - even those with the abnormal neck - would be doomed.

I even have more than a little difficulty imagining the first freak okapi with this 10 centimeter longer neck. For instance, I've seen millions of people and I've never seen any mutation like that. I see a big range of heights, but never (as far as I've seen) as the result of one abnormally long body part. I suspect a bit of sleight of hand in trying to pass off a longer-necked okapi as being as mundane and expected as a taller okapi.

But supposing I do accept the first occurrence of these mutations, and somehow swallowed that after many generations this minor difference spread to the rest of the population (via natural selection), we come to the next barrier. This one, as far as I can see, is insurmountable. We need the same, or very similar, random mutation to happen again! Not longer legs, not bigger brains, not better vision, and on and on and on and on... but another little tweak to the neck length. No way. Forget it.

My understanding is that humans in the U.S. are on the average a few inches taller than they were a few hundred years ago. Is that all due to the appearance of one 5 foot, 9 inch (1.73 meter) "giant" 12 generations ago in 1776? This one person's "deformity" gave a survival advantage and therefore spread throughout the population? But it doesn't happen that fast, you say, it takes maybe 30 generations! So I'm to believe our current average height traces back to one individual 5' 9" freak from 1460?

Ok, so I'm being a pain in the neck harping on very small height differences with their tiny survival advantages (although I claim that's what you all are doing in the okapi to giraffe transformation.) Let's take an extreme case - like Wilt Chamberlain. Now here we have a major deviation in height, and an unquestionable survival advantage. He may have had hundreds of times as many offspring as the average human. Will the population eventually all become 7 feet tall because of one Wilt Chamberlain? Or will we just continue in that direction as long as basketball maintains its popularity? (Did the drought that gave the first longer-necked okapi a survival advantage last for all the hundreds of thousands of years it took for the transformation to giraffe to be completed?) Even if basketball remains popular, isn't it hard to imagine that other pressures and effects - billions of them - wouldn't come into play, disrupting the straight-ahead march to a population of 7 foot people?

And continuing the analogy with what we are supposed to swallow regarding the hundreds or thousands of intermediate step transformation from the okapi to the giraffe, are we to believe that Wilt Chamberlain is just the first step in an evolution to 100-foot people? (I can hear your cries now - "after a certain point, height becomes a disadvantage because it actually gets harder to sink a basket way down there!")

And to reiterate, all of the preceding scenarios, as ridiculous as they sound, are actually much more plausible than bizarre transformations to single body parts. Height variation is easy - nobody is surprised to see it in humans, or within other species of animals.

And how come we aren't all beautiful? What single quality could provide more of a direct and immediate survival advantage? There are lots of good-looking people; why don't we all become gorgeous within a few generations? That makeover should be a breeze. It doesn't require speciation, or any new body parts at all. It should be much easier and faster than changes in the length of lizard legs, for example.

And to those who have heard all of this a million times before from a million kooks, keep in mind that someone of the stature of Stephen J. Gould doesn't hide his doubts about natural selection. I'm sure he must get sick of being latched onto by skeptics, but how could he expect not to?

For example, he writes, "Darwinian theory is fundamentally about natural selection. I do not challenge this emphasis, but believe that we have become overzealous about the power and range of selection by trying to attribute every significant form and behavior to its direct action." (The Flamingo's Smile, page 53.) He summarizes his theory of punctuated equilibrium on page 241: "...the pattern of normal times is not a tale of continuous adaptive improvement within lineages. Rather, species form rapidly in geological perspective (thousands of years) and tend to remain highly stable for millions of years thereafter. Evolutionary success must be assessed among species themselves, not at the traditional Darwinian level of struggling organisms within populations."

If what everyone in talk.origins is saying is so trivially self-evident, how come someone who's given it as much thought as Gould doesn't get it either? (At least on some days; other times he'll turn an elephant into a woolly mammoth at the drop of a snowflake. Yes, I see the irony in latching on to Gould here; it was his essay that set me off and provoked my original "FAQ".) Snicker if you must, but if you say he's the dummy, how come your name's not the one in lights?

I can't imagine anyone plowing through all of the discussion that follows, so a quick overview is in order. Admittedly, it's sprawling, unfocused and repetitive, but I can't risk editing what other people said. You will see that all of the responses attack, with varying degrees of civility, what I have said above. What I really wanted was a detailed model of some transition in generation-by-generation steps, and this time a few people took a stab at that (search for "Colin Peters" and "Kalandros M"). To my mind, these explanations were just more hand-waving, but you decide.

You might notice that even though everyone appears unified in their opposition to me, they don't all necessarily say the same things. But I just don't have any more energy for pulling together a "big analysis", or even for organizing the comments in a helpful way. In some places, I forwent the obvious comment of my own since even I get tired of hearing myself say the same thing over and over.

Now, on to the feedback generated by my second posting to talk.origins.

I WROTE: Just describe some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. Account for all of the descendants of all of the members of the source species until you arrive at an established population of the destination species.

David Johnston: Sure thing. But first, you recite your genealogy for the last 6,000 years. [DS: Humans bore humans for about 333 generations, at which point I was born.]

I WROTE: Suppose there are 99 intermediate species between the okapi and the giraffe, each with a neck 1 cm longer than the species from which it emerged. But now the two big problems described above must be overcome 100 times.

David Johnston: Right. After all, as we all know, it's impossible to breed one breed of dog to another, right? [DS: I might be missing your point, but, dogs breeding with dogs have always given rise to dogs, so far. I think you're alluding to the controlled breeding of dogs by more intelligent beings (humans) to maintain various desired traits. If so, I think you had better be careful with that argument. I doubt that dogs, left to themselves, would be so picky about their mates.]

I WROTE: Even if the random mutation which gives a smaller change in neck length is not quite as unlikely (and that's not obvious to me), the probability of all these events occurring and arriving at an established giraffe species is near-zero**200 .

David Johnston: No mutations are required for such a change, even though some will occur. [DS: Mutations not required? Is there general agreement on this? How, then, does a new feature first appear?]

I WROTE: On top of this is some unimaginable guidance overseeing the whole process. Let's suppose we managed to get through the first 20 stages (probability = near-zero**40 ). How did that happen so neatly - with no other random mutations going off in other directions? What about the tail disappearing? Growing an eye in the top of the head? Thumbs? Purple hair? No, just a sequence of completely random mutations giving successively 1 cm longer necks - nothing else.

David Johnston: Hey, it's your phony scenario.

I WROTE: If everything I've said above is wrong or confused, don't waste your energy on it. Just clear the table and describe the okapi to giraffe transition in generation-by-generation steps. If it wasn't the okapi the giraffe came from - no problem. Start with the akopi or the opaki or whatever the predecessor was.

David Johnston: {Shrug} Most of the shorter necked ancestors starve before reproducing. Longer necked ancestors survive. Eventually they end up with really long necked offspring. [DS: You're saying that if an okapi were born today with a 1 cm longer neck, all the others would keel over dead? If one lousy cm is so crucial for survival, how do you explain the continued existence of the females?]

I WROTE: Just describe some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. Account for all of the descendants of all of the members of the source species until you arrive at an established population of the destination species.

Honus: Generation by generation? Surely you're not serious. (Or I'm really misunderstanding what you mean?) Can you provide us with generational evidence that you're a descendant of Adam? [DS: Is there any reason to doubt I descended from the first humans?] And remember...no gaps, or we'll assume said gap to be evidence that you're NOT related to him. I sure hope that none of your ancestors were ever blown apart in an explosion, leaving no remains behind. You'd have to disappear in a puff of smoke. You couldn't exist, and everyone would have to ignore you. :) [DS: You may use modelling.]

Bonz WROTE: Evolution has no interest in whether humans make it or not.

I WROTE: But it did with elephants? The weather gets a bit nippy and they turn into woolly mammoths?

Honus: And it's stuff like this that makes me believe that your drubbing was well-deserved. Everyone that told you to read up a bit on the subject wasn't picking on you...they were trying to do you a favor. Trust me. By the way... the vast majority of species (+90%) didn't make it. Bonz was right. ;) He meant (obviously by extension) that evolution doesn't care whether anything makes it or not. [DS: Then how come we never hear the end of finch beaks evolving to just the right size and shape for what they need to do; and moths evolving to just the right color to keep them camouflaged; and lizard legs evolving to just the right length for the new vegetation. And all of that in just a few generations. Geez, you'd think all of evolution theory is contained in Bob Dylan's lyric, "If he needs a third eye he just grows one."]

I WROTE: [Alan Bean] concluded there was nothing like us for hundreds of light-years, or so, because, if they were out there, they would be helping us cure cancer, etc., rather than hiding out.

Honus: Or eating us for breakfast. Shees. [DS: Ok, so why is nobody eating us for breakfast?]

I WROTE: Visit my website, Adam, for discussion of many other topics - guitar, Beatles, justice, democracy, scrabble, football, antarctica, breakfast cereal, etc. Currently working on a page on how to make ice water.

Honus: Put baseball in instead of football, and you'd be an alright kinda guy. ;) [DS: Take a closer look, Honus - although I doubt you'd be too pleased with my baseball page either.]

I WROTE: Suppose there are 99 intermediate species between the okapi and the giraffe, each with a neck 1 cm longer than the species from which it emerged. But now the two big problems described above must be overcome 100 times. Even if the random mutation which gives a smaller change in neck length is not quite as unlikely (and that's not obvious to me), the probability of all these events occurring and arriving at an established giraffe species is near-zero**200 .

Geoff Sheffield: Read "The Beak of the Finch" by Jonathan Weiner to see how small changes can happen in a population in a relatively short period of time. [DS: How about a book that describes the transition from one species to another in generation-by-generation steps? In any case, thanks for the recommendation. Here is my book report on The Beak Of The Finch.]

I WROTE: On top of this is some unimaginable guidance overseeing the whole process. Let's suppose we managed to get through the first 20 stages (probability = near-zero**40 ). How did that happen so neatly - with no other random mutations going off in other directions? What about the tail disappearing? Growing an eye in the top of the head? Thumbs? Purple hair? No, just a sequence of completely random mutations giving successively 1 cm longer necks - nothing else.

Geoff Sheffield: The "unimaginable" process is called natural selection. If a longer neck provides a survival advantage, that mutation will be favored. If a very long neck provides a survival advantage, a series of mutations may lead to a very long neck, each step along the way being favored over its shorter necked ancestor. [DS: The probability of the first random mutation occurring was near-infinitesimal. That such a tiny change should prove to be so advantageous is hardly thinkable. That the whole process of the same tiny change randomly popping up again and giving the same large survival advantage is repeated many times over is flat-out not thinkable.]

The alternative mutations you describe would not provide a survival advantage - in fact, things like purple hair would be a disadvantage, so those mutations would be selected against. [DS: I pulled those 3 examples of possible mutations out of the air to make a point. I leave as an exercise to the reader to list a million random mutations that are just as likely as an extended neck, but would give an even greater survival advantage. Remember, mutations are random - let your imagination go wild. By the way, purple hair might be extremely attractive to a mate. And what's so bad about thumbs or extra eyes?]

But this raises another issue. In making an honest argument against a particular point of view, one is responsible for making an honest representation of the opponent's best argument. In the case of evolution, natural selection is one of the most important elements of the theory. [DS: See Stephen Jay Gould's above comments downplaying the role of natural selection in evolution.]

Since you are so certain that evolution does not occur, you must be familiar with natural selection. Your failure to mention natural selection in the above passage implies either ignorance or deceit. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and attribute that failure to ignorance, but in either case I see no reason to attach any value to your opinion of evolution. [DS: To reiterate, my contribution to the discussion is only to ask for a description of some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. When there is good agreement on that, we can start to discuss how it happens.]

I WROTE: My evolution "FAQ" took a unanimous drubbing from the 11 people who posted responses. I'll survive, but I am more than a little miffed that not a single person responded to the whole point of my page. All of the responses fell into the "evasive" category which I devoted a paragraph to in the FAQ. They were along the lines of: "You're ignorant." "You don't understand." "Go read this." "Anything that happens is 'evolution'." "Well, what's your theory???"

mel turner: You consider those responses "evasive"? Sounds like they're to the point, and potentially helpful if you'd only "go read that"...

I WROTE: Forget about the definition of evolution. Forget about how evolution happens. Forget about why evolution happens. Forget about the word "evolution" itself.

mel turner: Why? This is the neresing stuff, whereas your challenge below is just silly. [DS: It's silly to get a grip on what happens before tackling how and why?]

I WROTE: Just describe some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. Account for all of the descendants of all of the members of the source species until you arrive at an established population of the destination species.

mel turner: That'd be just as silly as someone asking for detailed accounts of all members of all populations of any currently extant species. "Tell us about each and every one of the raccoons in the SE USA..." [DS: I suppose they all look and behave raccoon-like, have raccoon DNA, and came from a long line of raccoons. If raccoons were in the process of evolving into raccoonaphants, I'll bet many "silly" scientists would be observing the transition in as much detail as possible.]

How about if we ask you for detailed biographical documentation of every one of your ancestors back to Adam and Eve, with photographs and/or skeletons, please... [DS: All of my ancestors back to the first humans were humans. They looked like humans and had human skeletons.]

You want to know what happens during speciations? There are lots of studies. You want to know about changes in characteristics in a population over time? There are lots of studies and some well-accepted models. It all has to do with the stuff you asked us to "forget about" above... By the way, what makes a transition "interesting"? [DS: Whatever is interesting to you. Personally, I'm bored with tiny variations in beak sizes.]

I WROTE: In my page I mentioned transitions from not feathered to feathered;

mel turner: And how about them new feathered dinos? Neat, huh? Just as we'd have predicted. There are discussions of the likely structure of scale/feather intermediates... [DS: What happened between the intermediates?]

I WROTE: ...single jaw joint to double jaw joint; double jaw joint/no ear bones to single jaw joint/ear bones;

mel turner: And intermediate fossils do exist. The therapsid "reptile" to mammal series is a very nicely worked out one indeed. [DS: That series is the one I'm referring to. Based on what I understand from Gould, it seems like the smallest gaps in the series still represent large jumps.]

I WROTE: ...and grizzly bear to whale.

mel turner: Oops! Sorry, but bears aren't considered at all closely related to cetaceans, which are part of the hooved animal group. There are indeed good fossils of intermediate stages in the series from land animal to whale. [DS: Enough intermediates so that we could make a good model of the whole transition in generation-by-generation steps?]

I WROTE: Talk.origins participants are knowledgable about an animal called the okapi. They indicate that it is in every respect identical to a giraffe except its neck is half as long (and, presumably, it does not mate with giraffes, at least normally.) If you'd like, use the okapi to giraffe transition.

mel turner: Okapis and giraffes are members of the same family, but modern okapis aren't the ancestors of giraffes. The last common ancestor of both did undoubtedly have a shorter neck like an okapi, however. [DS: I gave full permission to use whatever short(er)-necked ancestor you want to start from.]

I WROTE: I have trouble envisioning it. Although some respondents are adamant that one is not allowed to apply his own accumulated knowledge and common sense to the matter, I will try to explain my difficulty.

mel turner: Nothing wrong with applying those things, so long as "knowledge and common sense" is not just an euphemistic renaming of "smug ignorance and stubborn incredulity"...

I WROTE: For a jumping off point, let's consider a 1-generation transition. An okapi bears a giraffe. The giraffe species becomes established.

mel turner: That's a ridiculously false assumption right there. No biologist thinks species transitions are events of single generations (apart from some important exceptional cases like allopolyploid speciation in plants...) Why don't you try it with say 50,000 generations instead... [DS: I used this "jumping off point" precisely to show how hard it is to imagine.]

I WROTE: That such a mutation could occur is hardly conceivable.

mel turner: Species differences aren't single mutations. [DS: They require multiple mutations working in harmony? Not thinkable - until somebody explains that mutations are not random, but are somehow made-to-order.]

I WROTE: And if it did happen, it is harder to conceive how the new giraffe species could become established. The first giraffe has no giraffes for mates and so must mate with an okapi - in spite of this being itself either impossible or very rare. (Zoologists?) Ultimately, the first giraffe must produce at least 2 giraffes. If it doesn't produce any, the new species dies. If it produces only one, then that giraffe is in the same predicament of having to produce at least 2 giraffes without the benefit of a giraffe mate.

mel turner: You're badly misinformed. That's not the way it works. An exact analogy to your spurious argument: Linguists understand that Spanish, Italian and French, etc. are "new species" descended from a common "ancestral species" in Latin. So, then who did the first French speaking person have to talk with? Clearly, two or more individuals in the same Latin-speaking village must have spontaneously started talking French at the same time. Too bad they couldn't converse with their parents... [DS: Again, I am trying to show how hard the single, huge-jump mutation scenario is to swallow. Moreover, I have a very difficult time accepting analogies between the evolution of languages and the evolution of species. Languages do not have anything at all like DNA, random mutations and sexual reproduction.]

New biological species typically arise by the gradual divergence of whole breeding populations over thousands of generations. There's no assumption that geographically isolated sub-populations of an ancestral species must change and become reproductively isolated all at once. (This explains why the old "chicken-or-egg" question is biological nonsense.) [DS: How so?]

I WROTE: The probabability of these 2 nearly inconceivable events occurring is near-zero**2 . (** = exponentiation.) All right, then, the answer is smaller steps in the transition, right? Suppose there are 99 intermediate species between the okapi and the giraffe, each with a neck 1 cm longer than the species from which it emerged.

mel turner: There are presumably lots of genes affecting neck length. Why do you assume each slight change would be a "species"? [DS: I'm presuming we have to get all of the population up to the latest, longest neck length before proceeding to the next. Otherwise, we would see a whole spectrum of giraffe neck lengths.]

I WROTE: But now the two big problems described above must be overcome 100 times.

mel turner: Since neither "problem" is real, there's no problem. Why would you assume that each slightly different individual couldn't have mated freely within its breeding population? Don't you suppose that the dialects that became modern French and Spanish and Italian couldn't have gradually diverged from the ancestral Latin over time without individual villagers ever being unable to talk with their parents and neighbors?

Rest of the confusion snipped...

I WROTE: The probabability of these 2 nearly inconceivable events occurring is near-zero**2 . (** = exponentiation.)

John Wilkins: 1 generation mutations causing speciation are well documented in plants. Since plants are sometimes self-fertilising, a species can arise with a single individual. [DS: I have no problem with that. In fact, in the case of self-fertilising organisms, the problem is flip-flopped in my mind: Why aren't there unbelievably fantastic new species appearing all the time? Millions and millions of them? Every day?] Often, though, the phenotypic "distance" is greater relatively than the genetic "distance". In fact, genes are quite forgiving in their ability to recombine. Mostly the problem arises in development - if a gene is activated too early, the zygote may be inviable.

However, Darwin thought that incipient species first arise as varieties within species. Consider the dog (Canis familiaris) - high degree of morphological variation, low degree of genetic variation. If proto-giraffe and proto-okapi are members of the same species, and the proto-giraffe morphology is genetically dominant (or even if it is recessive so long as there are enough copies in a given population), then that morph can exist long enough to breed up a respectable-size population of "true" proto-giraffes, and they can remain "true" if separated geographically, ecologically or behaviourally until they lose the ability to breed back.

So your "calculations" of probability of these events is unnecessary. The probabilities are quite high: that variations will occur and that they will spread, in the right conditions of population structure, through a breeding population.

Furthermore, the probability of a major phenotypic change occurring is also high, given any viable mutations at all. Many phenotypic changes are just a matter of how long a given gene is turned on in growth. If there is a single "homeotic" gene (a control gene that activates other genes during development) that controls neck growth, and it suffers a mutation that leaves it on for much longer, a giraffe's neck is very likely to occur. [DS: You make this sound so likely as to be inevitable. Consider humans. You've seen millions of them. They vary somewhat in height. But you've probably never seen anyone with a natural neck even 10 cm longer than the average.]

So your probabilities should rather read

    pr(long neck) * pr(viable development and reproduction)

As I have argued, both of these are well within conceivability. Given that mutations occur all the time, and that each individual carries some mutations of gametes, if you replace the first assignment by

    pr(mutation)

then the probability that some phenotypic change will occur in a population of appreciable size is almost 1. [DS: But we're not talking about some mutation, we're are talking about one, specific mutation - another increase in neck length of 1 centimeter. The probability of that is pr(single, specific, desired mutation) = 0.000000000000000000000+]

I WROTE: All right, then, the answer is smaller steps in the transition, right?

John Wilkins: I'll be interested in your reaction to the more biologically plausible account I have given.

I WROTE: Talk.origins participants indicate that there are no defined species;

John Wilkins: On species: they are almost universally held to be well-defined at a given time and place. [DS: In the first round of discussion, Tedd Hadley and Jthomford disagreed vehemently. In this round, see Mark Issak below.] There are some exceptions, as is the only reliable rule in biology. But what evolution says is that the overall makeup of a species is subject to change unless prevented, usually by stabilising selection. Since you only get to see part of a species segment at any one time or place, they appear, correctly, stable. At that resolution they are indeed stable. Occasionally enough, though, they are not, and we have observed this in action, particularly in plants and unicellular organisms and a few short-lived animals.

On "akopis" :-) consider the scenario above - that the changes occurred in a polytypic species (one with many variants maintained in the overall species range either as persistent varieties or as geographical variants). I know squat about that family of organisms, but the dynamics are pretty well universal.

(Many think that "generalist" species are less evolutionary than "specialist" species. Elisabeth Vrba has documented how the gazelles have had a mixed evolution, with those that have a restricted lifestyle being subject to more speciation than those that eat and live everywhere.)

I WROTE: If you're an up-to-date evolutionist who never once no not ever said anything about increasing complexity, progress or advancement, feel free to go the other way - describe the giraffe to okapi transition.

John Wilkins: How would okapi to giraffe transition be an increase in complexity? It's certainly an increase in the size of neck bones and various muscles, but that's no more an increase in complexity than the transition from a Maserati to a Mack truck. [DS: Admittedly, I was trying to get a little dig in. Still, some people, such as truck builders, might consider a Mack truck with a 200-foot bed to be more complicated than a Mack truck with a normal 20-foot bed.]

I WROTE: Use diagrams, graphs, equations or whatever it takes to describe the transition, generation by generation.

John Wilkins: Maybe someone will take the time, or be able to refer you to a journal article that does this. [DS: No one did.] If they do, I hope you will take the trouble to mosey into your local university zoology library and make a copy. You may find that your difficulties are not well founded. As a non-biologist, I love doing this, mainly because it makes me feel like a Real Scientist for a few minutes.

{Old and new Donalds deleted.}

Paul Smith: Questions: Do giraffes and okapis have the same number of neck vertebrae?

Bonz: Yup. Same as you and I or your dog do.

Splifford (patjames): So far as I know, all mammals have seven neck vertebrae. Some merely have longer neck vertebrae than others. Other vertebrates don't seem to have this limitation. Some birds have a dozen and more neck vertebrae.

mel turner: Nearly all mammals have seven. Oddly, most of the exceptions are in the group including the sloths and anteaters. The range there is 5 to nine, depending on the species. The only other exception I know about are manatees, with 6.

In some vertebrate groups like plesiosaurs, longer necks involved forming more numerous vertebrae. In giraffes, the same ancestral number of vertebrae were elongated.

howard hershey: All mammals with the exception of (I believe I remember this correctly) the sloths have seven cervical vertebrae. Sparrows, on the other hand, have significantly more than 7 (the number 23 rings a bell, but I would not swear to it). The okapi and giraffe certainly do have the same number of neck vertebrae (but they differ in length).

[DS: I think I detect big sighs of relief in the above responses to Paul Smith's question. Not having to come up with more neck bones makes the transition to the giraffe so much "easier". But should extra neck bones slow you down a bit? Remember, there was a time when no life forms had any bones.]

Paul Smith: Do humans with differing neck lengths have a variable number of vertebrae in the neck...

Bonz: Not generally, no. You can have an extra vertebra and have the same length neck, too. Consider people with extra digits. They DO have a different number of bones than I do, because I have only 10 fingers.

Paul Smith: ...or would a difference in this count constitute a more major genetic aberration?

Bonz: Nope. You run across that sort of thing now and then, if you see enough people. I know a healthy guy who is 4F for the military because he is "backwards". His heart is on the right side, for instance. He's healthy as a horse, but they don't want him showing up at a MASH with everything on the wrong side.

Paul Smith: If one is born with a "deformed" skeletal structure, such as an extra vertebra in the neck, will that individual's descendants share the deformity in most cases?

Bonz: In MOST cases, no.

howard hershey: Depends on whether the "variation" (to use a less loaded term than "deformed") is genetically based. And further depends upon whether the "variant" allele is dominant, recessive, additive, or what in the heterozygous state. If recessive, its expression in descendants may depend on the extent of inbreeding in the population.

Paul Smith: As an ignoramus in biology, I really don't know the answers to these questions, but I do imagine those answers could change the perspective of evolutionary paths required to produce certain species as descendants from certain other species. Can someone enlighten me? Thanks.

I WROTE: Talk.origins participants indicate that there are no defined species; they all melt into each other in one big rubber-sheet continuum. Each individual creature in fact has its own branch on the evolutionary tree. Can we take that with a grain of salt?

Mark Isaak: No.

Your argument assumes that you get from one species to another by a quantum jump. That doesn't happen (except sometimes with plants). Instead, you get gradual changes from one generation to the next, but those changes accumulate eventually to the point that you have a species different from one that started from the same parents but which accumulated different changes. You can find plenty of examples of species in all stages of reproductive isolation - from those which interbreed but not commonly, to those which can have offspring but only if they're forced to mate, to those which can't interbreed at all. Start taking a close and extended look at grasses or leafhoppers for some examples.

I WROTE: Forget about the definition of evolution. Forget about how evolution happens. Forget about why evolution happens. Forget about the word "evolution" itself. Just describe some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. Account for all of the descendants of all of the members of the source species until you arrive at an established population of the destination species.

catshark: Forgeting a lot already, aren't we?

I WROTE: For a jumping off point, let's consider a 1-generation transition. An okapi bears a giraffe. The giraffe species becomes established.

catshark: Huh? What gives you the idea that an okapi bore a giraffe? Anymore than a Chimp bore a homo Sapiens or vice versa? (They are "cousins" - much removed - not progenitors!) And as far as okapis and giraffes having common ancestors (a point you don't seem to grasp), you seem hung up on the length of their respective necks. Tell me, how many cervical vertebrae do giraffes have? (Hint: it is the same number you do!). In short, you seem to think that because me and my first cousin don't look much alike, we must not have had the same grandfather! Wrong!

I WROTE: If it produces only one, then that giraffe is in the same predicament of having to produce at least 2 giraffes without the benefit of a giraffe mate.

Thomas Paine: If this is an example of what's on your web page, no wonder you were trounced. If you can "invent" a single generation okapi/giraffe transition... [DS: I was showing how hard it is to imagine a single generation transition.] I can add to your fantasy by stating that single generation transitionals can mate with either their own or the parent species. [DS: Sure, but my requirement stands that one giraffe ultimately parent 2 giraffes, whether its mate is its own offspring, parent, or a non-giraffe.]

Now.. Getting back to reality. There is no such thing as a single generation transition.

I WROTE: The probabability of these 2 nearly inconceivable events occurring is near-zero**2 . (** = exponentiation.) All right, then, the answer is smaller steps in the transition, right? Suppose there are 99 intermediate species between the okapi and the giraffe, each with a neck 1 cm longer than the species from which it emerged. But now the two big problems described above must be overcome 100 times.

Thomas Paine: Why?

Why wouldn't the ability to sucessfully mate with the parent species gradually diminish? Why couldn't something happen, as on Darwin's island, an isolated group of okapis gradually changed together... while, in other areas, other okapi didn't change.

I WROTE: Even if the random mutation which gives a smaller change in neck length is not quite as unlikely (and that's not obvious to me), the probability of all these events occurring and arriving at an established giraffe species is near-zero**200 .

Thomas Paine: What's not obvious to you is logic and reasoning. For example... what the hell is this "zero**200" crap? Zero to any power is zero. That's why mathematicians use zero and never "zero**X. You can't get more zero than zero.

I WROTE: On top of this is some unimaginable guidance overseeing the whole process.

Thomas Paine: Unimaginable? You mean like physics? Chemistry? Adaptability?

I WROTE: Let's suppose we managed to get through the first 20 stages (probability = near-zero**40 ). How did that happen so neatly - with no other random mutations going off in other directions?

Thomas Paine: Who said they didn't? We'll never know how many random mutations died. We only see evidence of the successful mutations.

I WROTE: What about the tail disappearing? Growing an eye in the top of the head? Thumbs? Purple hair? No, just a sequence of completely random mutations giving successively 1 cm longer necks - nothing else.

Thomas Paine: Apparently your knowledge of science is just as confused as this whole paragraph.

I WROTE: No wonder some evolutionists have had to back off and start thinking about near-instantaneous, big jumps. Near-zero**2 is a lot easier to swallow.

Thomas Paine: "near zero**2" has no meaning - no substance. Fantasies are always easy to swallow - that's why the ignorant fight to keep them alive. [DS: I said near-zero**2, not near zero**2.]

I WROTE: And given how hard it is to swallow near-zero**2 , it's no wonder someone like Senepathy theorizes the first members of each species If everything I've said above is wrong or confused, don't waste your energy on it. Just clear the table and describe the okapi to giraffe transition in generation-by-generation steps. If it wasn't the okapi the giraffe came from - no problem. Start with the akopi or the opaki or whatever the predecessor was.

Thomas Paine: Why?

One would doubt that you would accept the facts, or even understand them anyway.

(bullsnip)

I WROTE: But now the two big problems described above must be overcome 100 times. Even if the random mutation which gives a smaller change in neck length is not quite as unlikely (and that's not obvious to me), the probability of all these events occurring and arriving at an established giraffe species is near-zero**200 .

Colin Peters: The point is, however, that the two 'big' problems are nowhere near as large for an intermediate with a neck 1-cm longer.

First: finding a mate will be difficult. Even for the single-generation mutant this is not a huge problem. Perhaps okapi would find very long-necked okapi unattractive, but other than that (and that is by no means guaranteed) a single mutation that changes neck length is unlikely to interfere with reproduction (in my opinion). The chances that a long-necked mutant would be able to find a viable mate are probably somewhere around 100% (or at least the same as the chances for any 'normal' okapi). [DS: I wasn't talking about a long-necked okapi finding a mate, I was talking about a brand-new, never-before-seen giraffe, complete with giraffe DNA.]

Second: producing more of the same mutant as children of a mutant-'normal' mating is unlikely. Not true. Let's say the mutation was a point mutation on one chromosome. How many of the mutant's offspring will have this mutation? On average half. If we reason that a species producing at replacement rates will have two offspring per pair that survive to reproduce themselves the chance of at least one of these being a 'mutant' as well is 75%. Pretty good odds. If both of them are 'mutants' (25% chance, not bad) then next generation will have more of that mutant strain and much less chance of disappearing through simply not being passed on to offspring. In a second generation with two mutants the chance of the mutation disappearing is roughly 6%. [DS: See previous discussion initiated by Paul Smith about the likelihood of a parent passing along a "deformity" to an off-spring.]

Furthermore this assumes that the mutation doesn't make any difference to the animal's survival rate. If a 1-cm longer neck is an advantage [DS: sounds like a very big "if" to me] then the chances of both (or one) of the offspring being a mutant goes up. Remember that every animal will have many more than two offspring initially. The ones we were talking about above were only the ones which survived and mated in the next generation.

Thirdly: mutations producing 1-cm longer necks are rare. Not as rare as you might think. There was a thread in talk.origins some time earlier about the rate of mutations. It turns out that every human being probably has a half dozen mutations or so - most mutations have no visible effect (a 1-cm longer neck is not really visible either if you think about it, at least on an okapi).

Furthermore, I don't think one has to go that far. It is not inconceivable that the mutations may have been larger; 5 cm, even 10 cm. The whole way is probably out of the question, but this is because such a long neck would be a disadvantage without other changes, not because large mutations are rare in themselves. [DS: What I hear you saying is, it wouldn't be at all remarkable if a horse were born with a 10-foot neck, just that it might have trouble surviving.]

So... Chance of a small mutation occuring: in any reasonably sized population there will be many small mutations available for natural selection to act against. Chance of being transmitted to the next generation (all other things being equal): 75% initially, quickly rising with each generation. Unless a mutation is significantly detrimental it is unlikely to be wiped out simply by the action of drift for some time.

In other words the chances are pretty_good**200, and even that is too low, see below.

I WROTE: On top of this is some unimaginable guidance overseeing the whole process. Let's suppose we managed to get through the first 20 stages (probability = near-zero**40 ). How did that happen so neatly - with no other random mutations going off in other directions? What about the tail disappearing? Growing an eye in the top of the head? Thumbs? Purple hair? No, just a sequence of completely random mutations giving successively 1 cm longer necks - nothing else.

Colin Peters: Not at all. There are plenty of other mutations and they have no particular impact on the overall process. Those that are disadvantageous disappear, those that are neutral drift, and those that are advantageous increase. If a slightly longer neck is an advantage it will quickly spread to a large proportion of the population. The chances that a second neck lengthening mutation will occur in that population rapidly approach the chances of the initial occurence. [DS: Near zero.] The other mutations going off in other directions are not important, if purple hair is an advantage it will be selected. If purple hair and long necks are both advantages they may be selected in different populations (leading to speciation?) or the same one (more likely). If a short neck mutation occurs it will be a disadvantage and it will not be selected (or else we could not expect long necks to evolve anyway).

So there is no reason to expect, or be awed by, any "control" over the set of mutations that occurred. We simply see the results of a hundred independent acts of selection on the population. If evolution had gone in a different direction (purple hair instead of long necks, or both instead of just one) we would be looking at a different set of choices and wondering how they could have all occured "just so". It is like wondering how you possibly could have been dealt the particular poker hand you got, given the chances of that hand are less than one in two million.

The idea that the chance has to be p**100 would only be correct if we were looking for a specific set of 100 mutations instead of any set that works. [DS: But we are looking for the same, specific mutation to happen over and over - or, more accurately, a string of mutations in which each one is an exaggeration of the previous one.]

I WROTE: If everything I've said above is wrong or confused, don't waste your energy on it. Just clear the table and describe the okapi to giraffe transition in generation-by-generation steps. If it wasn't the okapi the giraffe came from - no problem. Start with the akopi or the opaki or whatever the predecessor was.

Colin Peters: The request for a generation to generation description is going to be hard to fulfill, since that level of detail is impossible to obtain even in field studies of living animals except for very small groups over very limited number of generations. In broad outline though, here is a possible scenerio:

Generation 1 - Okapi population

Generation 2 - A mutant with a slightly longer neck (1, 5, 10 cm, whatever)

Generation 3 to 30 - The mutation spreads through the population, since long necked animals have a better chance to survive in the particular environment where these particular okapi live. [DS: It's hard to swallow that even the extreme, 10 cm increase would make any difference.]

Generation 31 - A mutant with a slightly longer neck. [DS: Near impossible to swallow that the same random mutation strikes again.]

Generation 32 to 60 - The mutation spreads through the population. Our proto giraffes now have significantly longer necks than the originals. [DS: 2 cm is "significant"?]

Generation 61 - A mutation of some related part (neck muscles, neck tendons, heart, whatever). [DS: Even more just-what-the-doctor-ordered random mutations. Hmmm...]

Generation 62 to 90 - The mutation spreads through the population. At the same time the animals are moving into parts of the area where original okapi don't do so well, but where long necked okapi do better. [DS: Isolation of populations is often put forth as a required part of the evolutionary process. This explains why there is only one species of sea life.]

Generation 91 - A mutant with a slightly longer neck. The above process 2 to 90 repeats. [DS: Sorry, I didn't made it through the first 90.]

Continue repeating until there is no longer any advantage to having a longer neck or it is balanced by some other selective pressure. You have your giraffe and it only took, perhaps, a few hundred generations, a few tens of thousands of years should suffice.

Do you need more detail than that? If so, why? [DS: I was hoping for someone to take the explanation beyond the realm of "hand-waving". Even if I were satisfied with your account of the first 91 generations, and could swallow that it could repeat itself many more times, I still don't get the big picture. What did we get out of this? Just giraffes? Giraffes and okapis? Giraffes and okapis and all of the possibly thousands of intermediates? What about all the okapis that had slight birth defects at the same time the first one with a 1-cm longer neck was born? Did they all spawn a different "target" species? Or perhaps a target species with thousands of intermediate species as well? This would get us into millions of millions of new species descending from the okapi alone, in a few tens of thousands of years. If you say I am being ridiculous, listen to how natural and simple all of you make it sound for the tiniest birth defect to spread to the rest of the population. Of course, you will say that all those other birth defects wouldn't be beneficial like a slightly longer neck. But, be honest now, couldn't we all list any number of mutations that would be unquestionably more advantageous than a slightly longer neck?]

Oh, I should have also mentioned the other mutations that occur in the long necked population, and, since they no longer mix with the original okapi as much, lead to infertility in hybrids. This is why the two can't interbreed, not because a long neck mutant okapi (with only a long neck mutation) couldn't breed with a normal one.

I WROTE: Use diagrams, graphs, equations or whatever it takes to describe the transition, generation by generation. Take another look at my web page where I solicit a description of the grizzly bear to whale transition if you don't understand what I'm after.

Colin Peters: Grizzly bear to whale? Okay, I'm nitpicking, but the whales pretty much definitely didn't evolve from anything much like bears. Mesonychids is the currently best supported ancestral group. Considering the process occurred millions of years ago you are never going to get a generation-by-generation account. However, why do you need such a thing? [DS: That's the way it had to have happened.] Do you need a centimeter by centimeter account to accept that I walked to work this morning? [DS: I understand that a line is a continuum of points.] Do you find films hard to believe because of all the gaps between the frames? [DS: I know that each frame of a film is not created by a random alteration of the previous frame.]

Mike: Stage One: For the sake of argument, lets assume that okapis are the ancestors of giraffes (as opposed to common ancestor). In our population there is naturally a range in neck lengths, some longer, some shorter. This range alone is most likely larger than the 1cm increments you are proposing. This shouldn't be too hard to swallow, since we see similar variation in the human population. (I'm 5'6", my brothers 5'9", I have friends over 6' as well as shorter than me.)

Stage Two: Now lets say that the climate begins changing in one area where the okapi live. A drought begins. In the beginning, everyone is doing fine. Then, as the drought continues, most of the vegetation is picked from the bushes. The okapi that are taller have access to food that the shorter okapi can't reach (i.e. they can eat from taller bushes). ON AVERAGE more of the tall okapi survive than the shorter okapi. The next year, the population is on average taller. As this continues for a few years, the the population continues to get taller. A similar trend was observed on one of the Galapagos islands, where the average size of a finch's beak increased during a decade of droughts. [DS: See the relevant section in my book report on The Beak Of The Finch.]

Stage Three: Eventually, the cost of growing longer necks is outweighed by the benefit of reaching more food (as tall as most trees, maybe?). Now our population looks pretty much like giraffes, and not okapis. [DS: At the end of Stage Two you had tall okapis (and not even necessarily longer-necked okapis!) At the beginning of Stage Three you had giraffes. You left out the good stuff!]

Stage Four: If we assume that the droughts were (relatively) local, i.e., okapis in the next valley did not suffer as severe a drought, then they may not have changed at all. If they cross to the giraffes' valley, they will very likely not be recognized as being the same species. Again, a similar pattern is observed in Galapagos finches, where beak size is the main factor in recognizing ones own species.

Thus we now have two separate species. Happy? While this is, for the most part, a just-so story, I have tried to keep it in line with real-world observations.

I WROTE: In my page I mentioned transitions from not feathered to feathered; single jaw joint to double jaw joint; double jaw joint/no ear bones to single jaw joint/ear bones; and grizzly bear to whale.

Jim Acker: I'm coming a bit late to the discussion (as usual) and I like to talk about archaeocete fossils, but whenever someone asks about how a pretty-much terrestrial animal starts to become progressively more adapted to the water, I like to show them the nutria, the capybara, and the beaver. [DS: If you want to do beaver-to-whale, fine with me.]

Dr. Fidelius: ...and from the reconstructions I've seen, otters and pinnipeds also offer good analogies. [DS: Otter to whale? Go for it.]

I WROTE: For a jumping off point, let's consider a 1-generation transition. An okapi bears a giraffe. The giraffe species becomes established.

Matt Silberstein: You have done an excellent job in showing that a one generation transition from an okapi like antelope to a giraffe like antelope is quite unlikely. So how about show you [?] analysis for a 1,000 generation transition? One in which one or more mutations spreads through a sub-population at a time. [DS: I went on to explain why that is even harder to conceive. The reason for the difficulty is contained in your own last sentence where you refer to mutations - plural. How can one conceive of a thousand random mutations working in perfect coordination to produce a single, more-or-less sensible change in anatomy?]

I WROTE: Just describe some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. Account for all of the descendants of all of the members of the source species until you arrive at an established population of the destination species.

Pim van Meurs: You are just limiting yourself so that you do not have to look at the data.

I WROTE: I have trouble envisioning [the okapi to giraffe transition.]

Pim van Meurs: That's hardly an argument.

[Control genes and] Hopeful Monsters:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/horizon/hopefulmonsters.shtml

Scientists have discovered what they believe may be the molecular basis of evolution [Hsp 90]:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_222000/222096.stm

I WROTE: Just describe some interesting transition in generation-by-generation steps. Account for all of the descendants of all of the members of the source species until you arrive at an established population of the destination species.

Bonz: How do you determine what a "destination" species is? In the simplest example, the generation before yours is the starting point, and your generation is the destination. [DS: In the transition of your choice, the destination species is the 2nd one.]

I WROTE: In my page I mentioned transitions from not feathered to feathered; single jaw joint to double jaw joint; double jaw joint/no ear bones to single jaw joint/ear bones; and grizzly bear to whale.

Bonz: You cannot get from grizzly bear to whale. Whales are already here, and grizzly bears are not in their ancestry. You could, if you wanted to, change London to LOOK LIKE Paris. You could tear down buildings, build others, etc., but no matter how much you do, it will never BE Paris. [DS: Start with whatever land mammal whales evolved from.]

I WROTE: Talk.origins participants are knowledgable about an animal called the okapi. They indicate that it is in every respect identical to a giraffe except its neck is half as long (and, presumably, it does not mate with giraffes, at least normally.) If you'd like, use the okapi to giraffe transition.

Bonz: Same answer. Today's okapi cannot be ancestral to the giraffe. No Elvis impersonator can BE Elvis. [DS: Then start with the effarig.]

I WROTE: For a jumping off point, let's consider a 1-generation transition. An okapi bears a giraffe. The giraffe species becomes established.

Bonz: No. Evolution does not occur with individuals. A population of okapis would give birth to a population of giraffes. [DS: Well, that certainly speeds things up.]

You seem to be conflating "transitional" and "ancestral".

I WROTE: That such a mutation could occur is hardly conceivable. And if it did happen, it is harder to conceive how the new giraffe species could become established. The first giraffe has no giraffes for mates and so must mate with an okapi - in spite of this being itself either impossible or very rare. (Zoologists?) Ultimately, the first giraffe must produce at least 2 giraffes. If it doesn't produce any, the new species dies. If it produces only one, then that giraffe is in the same predicament of having to produce at least 2 giraffes without the benefit of a giraffe mate.

Bonz: Assume that there are 1 million okapis. Ten thousand of them live somewhere - a caldera of an extinct volcano, let's say - where they very seldom encounter one of the others. Over generations, the ones living in the caldera get longer necks and change their mating behavior a little. [DS: That's my challenge. Describe how the longer necks came about in generation-by-generation steps.]

A huge storm comes along and tears down the walls of the caldera. Now you have one population again, but one part of it does not mate with the other part. You have seen a speciation. [DS: Good. Where did the long necks come from?]

I WROTE: Even if the random mutation which gives a smaller change in neck length is not quite as unlikely (and that's not obvious to me), the probability of all these events occurring and arriving at an established giraffe species is near-zero**200 .

Bonz: There is no "goal". To establish a species, all that has to happen is that the parts of the population do not interbreed significantly. [DS: Ok, but besides not interbreeding there are many other interesting differences between a tulip and a panda.]

I WROTE: How did that happen so neatly - with no other random mutations going off in other directions? What about the tail disappearing? Growing an eye in the top of the head? Thumbs? Purple hair? No, just a sequence of completely random mutations giving successively 1 cm longer necks - nothing else.

Bonz: The tail may or may not disappear. {shrug} The giraffe's or okapi's tails may yet disappear. Or get longer. [DS: Wanna describe the tail disappearing in generation-by-generation steps?]

I WROTE: No wonder some evolutionists have had to back off and start thinking about near-instantaneous, big jumps. Near-zero**2 is a lot easier to swallow.

Bonz: The biggest problem is, you don't have a clue as to how real biologists think it happens. [DS: Check.]

I WROTE: And given how hard it is to swallow near-zero**2 , it's no wonder someone like Senepathy theorizes the first members of each species walked independently out of the promordial soup-bowl - without the benefit of parents, even. According to him, the probability of giraffe DNA coming together randomly in the broth is astronomically more probable than getting from okapi DNA to giraffe DNA via random mutations.

Bonz: He may or may not be right. Since it is a calculation of something that isn't thought to have happened, who cares?

I WROTE: If everything I've said above is wrong or confused, don't waste your energy on it. Just clear the table and describe the okapi to giraffe transition in generation-by-generation steps. If it wasn't the okapi the giraffe came from - no problem. Start with the akopi or the opaki or whatever the predecessor was.

Bonz: A population of organisms in the past were separated by some feature such that they did not encounter each other very often. Populations change slightly over time. If they interbreed freely, the changes get distributed over the whole population, and you get a single population with a lot of diversity. [DS: Why?]

If the population[s?] do NOT interbreed freely, the various changes accumulate in the respective populations. The longer the populations stay separate, the more changes accumulate in each sub population. [DS: Why?]

I WROTE: Talk.origins participants indicate that there are no defined species; they all melt into each other in one big rubber-sheet continuum.

Bonz: In a way, that's true. Some species look exactly like other species. Only an expert (or another member of the species) can tell them apart. Lions and tigers can breed and have viable offspring in captivity, but they occupy different habitats and don't mate much, if at all, in the wild.

It is likely that you can take a sperm or egg from a house cat and the complement from a lion and start an embryo. The difference in size and habit will keep them from mating in nature - and it is very likely that the embryo will spontaneously abort because it will get conflicting signals. It can grow a kitty leg or a lion leg, but there is no "blending", ever, in genetics.

I WROTE: Can we assume the okapi was an established species before the transition occurred, meaning that there was a sizable population of animals that looked okapi-like and behaved okapi-like and bred almost exclusively with other okapis?

Bonz: Nope. [DS: Even if I was using "okapi" as a convenient name for the short-necked ancestor to the giraffe?]

I WROTE: In any case, clearly describe what you believe to be the starting conditions for the emergence of the giraffe.

Bonz: Neither okapi nor giraffes existed back then. Their ancestors did. One population got longer necks than the other. We call the long necked ones the species of giraffe; the others we call the species of okapi.

I WROTE: If the shell was so crucial for the survival of the turtle, how come so many shell-less reptiles hung in there?

Tedd Hadley WROTE: Has it ever occurred to you that different environments have different predators, different food sources, different energy requirements and that in some environments a shell may [be] more of a detriment than others?

I WROTE: Turtles share the exact same environment with numerous shell-less animals.

Bonz: No, they do not. Two species competing for the same resources cannot co-exist for long. Imagine that you and I are species. We are locked in a huge room with a constantly replenishing supply of 1000 sandwiches. We do rather well, since it takes only 200 sandwiches a year for each of us each year. Then I have 6 children and you have 5. NOW we have a problem.

Next generation, each of my kids have 6 kids, and each of yours has 5.

Either you get good at killing my kids, or you starve and eventually go extinct.

I WROTE: Once again, my position in this is that we take a step back from "explanations" and solidify what happens in the emergence of new species. When we have good agreement on that, then we can more productively discuss the whys and hows.

Bonz: No problem. Anything that tends to inhibit free mating between the populations is a step toward speciation. It can be a change in behavior (you can't do the mating dance "right"); a change in morphology (the embryo gets conflicting orders at some stage and aborts); a change in smell (your "I'm ready to mate" pheromone doesn't work as well) or anything else. [DS: All well and good, but that's a long haul from describing how long necks come about, or eyeballs, or feathers, or whales...]

Hooray for your evolution page. Make sure you read Neck of the Giraffe (I think the author is Francis Hitching, a Brit), for a professional biologist and museum curator that's on your side!

The sleight-of-hand goes like this: Microevolution is self-evident fact. The only known "cause" for microevolution is selective pressure. Macroevolution is probably true. Therefore, macroevolution happened via natural selection. Incredible that nobody sees the holes in this logic.

Microevolution happens by shuffling existing genes between individuals of a given genus, like Mendel explained and every goatherd since before Moses has observed. Macroevolution involves (AT LEAST) the creation of whole new chromosomes filled with all new genes. How in the name of hell can this occur via gradual accumulation? Did the deer with 34 chromosomes evolve into a giraffe with 36 chromosomes via a creature with 35.07713 chromosomes?

Your thought experiment with bears and whales is similar to one in Neck of the Giraffe: The idea that a drought made high-up leaves the only good food source, influencing giraffes-to-be that were a few inches taller to have a selective advantage over the average ones, is rubbish. How did any females survive, given that they are a whole meter shorter than the males? How did the adolescents survive, given that they're even shorter? Enough environmental pressure to cause ANY males to starve would wipe out adolescents and females, making the race extinct. Besides, geology proves that the climate was warm and rainy, so where was the drought?

[DS: Thanks for the recommendation, Rick! Here's my book report on The Neck Of The Giraffe.]

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