dgilman said:
I had a zoology teacher who was of the opinion that the evolution theory was a "Fairy Tale". (her words)
I hope that zoology teacher was fired. No one that incompetant can possibly be an effective teacher.
And I had a botany teacher who believed that the evidence was clear and obvious and that the fossil records detail the changes.
The botany teacher was correct. The fossil record clearly shows the history of evolution--with the standard caveat that we don't have it all yet.
Here's a big problem with the evolution theory:
Nowadays, when a subset of a population is separated from the main body, the genetic diversity is much less than the main body and remains at about that same level indefinitely.
Felled at the first hurdle. You're taking an EXTREMELY short view of this--let's call it 100 years on the outside--and attempting to apply it universally. To put this into perspective, the Holocene--the most recent geologic unit, which is amazingly short--is 100 times that length of time. The fossil record for animals is 6 MILLION times longer.
You simply cannot say "We don't see increase in genetic variation in a few generations, therefore it doesn't happen." It may not happen in one or two, but it will happen in fifty or a hundred. Speciation is speculated to take around 10,000 generations.
And that's the second reason your argument fails here: you're not talking about evolution, but about speciation. Speciation is a consequence of evolution, yes, but it IS NOT evolution. Evolution would happen just fine if speciation never did.
In the case of the Mexican Cave Fish, the separation has been estimated to be as long as two million years, yet all the subsets and the main population are still the same species.
Even if this were true, this is cherry-picking. Of course you can find species that haven't evolved very far in a long time--modern evolutionary theory doesn't preclude that. However, you're ignoring Nylonase and all the rest of the creatures that have speciated since humans have kept track
and the even more numerous organisms evolving just now.
If you don't like the Cracked.com article, you can look up Mojave Greens. Rattlesnakes in general have evolved novel traits relateively recently (specifically smaller rattles, due to human activities). The entire field of medicine could justifiably be included as an example of rapid evolution.
If the subset is too tiny, then the subsequent inbreeding eventually results in infertility or a heavy load of mutations that severely prejudices their viability. That condition is currently being faced by pedigree pet breeders.
The underlying assumption here is that mutations are always bad. This simply isn't true. Some are beneficial, and most are in fact neutral. What inbreeding actually does is allow traits to more rapidly reach fixation, which is bad if the trait is bad, but it's actually good if a trait is good. And the mutations are the raw material of evolution--what you are saying is in fact that evolution cannot occur because there's too much fuel for it!
Each development by series of mutation must be independent of each other yet result in full cooperation and they must synchronize with each other.
This is not necessarily true.
I also want to mention that Dawkins isn't exactly a god among evolutionary biologists (which, given the rest of your post, you REALLY should know). de Vrise is my current favorite. Gould is always popular. Valentine is good, and Eldritch is better. Dawkins is a bit player, really, among researchers. His strength is, essentially, advertisement.
The developments (there are thousands) must occur independently in two subsets of the population simultaneously.
This doesn't even make sense. What makes you think that two sexes constitute two separately evolving subsets of a population? The reality is that in sexually reporducing organisms the two sexes constitute a single population. Hardy-Weinburg Equilibrium proves this. I'd have more sympathy for you if you didn't pretend that you understood evolutionary theory, by the way--this is Creationist drivel at its worst, something that no one who understands biology should fall for. Different sexes evolved AFTER sexual selection, and evolved IN THE SAME POPULATION.
Also, I still awaiting a credible theory or hypothesis on how multi-cellular organisms could have evolved from unicellular ones.
How hard are you looking?
Here are two articles on exactly that, found via thirty seconds of googling.
The amount of necessary developments needed are staggering. I've lost count how many papers I've read on the subject.
I find that very hard to believe, considering that I've read a fair number and the developments aren't really that bad. And there are modern analogs. Bryozoans aren't terribly uncommon, after all.
Secondly, are you seriously suggesting that because we can't fully explain something to your satisfaction RIGHT NOW, we should therefore abandon the theoretical framework of the question entirely? This is insane. This is an area of active research, as you should well know, and there are multiple competing theories. We may not know enough to answer the question--but that
in no way proves that we NEVER will know enough, which is what you are essentially arguing for. What we have may not satisfy you, but there's a really simple solution to that: jump in and contribute. Even if it's just writing letters critiquing the papers to the relevant journals. To say "We don't know this one aspect, therefore we should abandon the theory" is to ignore the mountains of evidence (I've personally seen literally tonnes of it, on two continents) for the theory.
* the genome will always be the common denominator in all of this). These are molecules, not bits. I assume that I am misinterpreting what you've said though because I figure that you are aware of this.
Dinwar his name is Niles Eldredge, not Eldritch. If it was Eldritch it'd be far more sinister and the Old Ones would be more than myth...actually I wish it was Eldritch now.