On Feb 17, 2006, at 5:17 PM, John Francis wrote:
Then you're not looking, or you're ignoring the evidence. Where do all those disease-resistant bacteria come from?
Perhaps the best example of evolution at work is some moths in England. They rest on the bark of trees during the day and matched the bark perfectly. Then came the industrial revolution and coal heating and the trees all got covered with soot and were black. In only a few years the moths had all darkened to the same shade as the soot. The mechanism was simple. Birds ate the moths that kept the old coloring and didn't see and eat the few black ones that appeared as a result of natural mutations. Those dark moths mated and produced dark offspring. Birds weeded out the lighter ones. Today the smoky old factories are gone and fewer people heat with smoky, sooty coal. The trees are losing their soot coating and returning back to their old coloring -- and so are the moths. This example is well-documented.
Personally, I am certain evolution happens. But I don't think it is the total explanation, since there seem to have been bursts of evolutionary "creativity", for lack of a better term, in the history of life on this planet. We have no theory to explain those spurts of extremely rapid and diverse evolution. This has been called Punctuated Equilibrium, I believe by Stephen Jay Gould.
I have my own Eristic theory, which I call Punctuated Creationism. Every so many millenia, the Creator gets bored and lets loose a whole passel of new critters into the existing equilibrium. This periodic upsetting of the cosmic applecart keeps things interesting and insures entertaining new animals and plants.
Bob
