Posted by rpcman on August 26, 1998 at 10:53:52:
In Reply to: Do We Know? posted by GaDS on August 26, 1998 at 03:41:35:
: But I have yet to see humans make a dog into a cat, or a salamander into a frog, or a seal into a porpoise.
Your latter example of 10 lb. and 200 lb. dogs is one of many such scenarios--even if we still call them both dogs. It is physically impossible for some dog breeds to mate. I don't know why we call them different breeds instead of different species.
This change in dogs has happened over just a few thousand years. Evolution has been doing the same for more than 1,000,000 X as long a time period. Also see our previous discussion in the archives on speciation.
I'm reading an excellent book on the topic called Darwin's Dreampond. Dozens of new species of fish have evolved in just the past hundred years in Lake Malawi and all of the hundreds of species in Lake Victoria are descended from one common ancestor of a few thousand years ago. One needs to completely ignore the evidence at the molecular level to conclude that different species aren't related.
: For more specialized adaptations, the argument is even stronger.
Not really. A little research will show you that the more specialized the adaptation the stronger the evidence for evolution becomes.
: How, for example, does a complex eye evolve through the mechanism of natural selection?
See: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/eye.html and the link below.
: So, DO we know how evolution works?
Yes. Do we know all the specific details of how each species and each adaptation formed? No, but we are getting better and better answers over time.
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