Is Syamsu a creationist or an evolutionist?

Sorry to butt in, but I think the word 'determinism' was
brought in in error.To be deterministic one must, from the same initial conditions
arrive at the same result.Change the initial conditions and you change the result
without affecting the 'determinism' of the process.Natural selection operates per-generation, but there are so
many possible variables (and time-dependencies)
that the outcome is always uncertain.Uncertain, except that one can be sure that any population,
over time will tend to be dominated by the individuals
best suited to the environment in which they find themselves.Not the BEST organism for the environment, but the best suited
of the available options....oh and if you look at a single individual aren't it's peers
a part of the environment (so you cannot neglect interactions
with them).

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That adaptive changes in allele frequency within a breeding population as a whole cannot occur unless there are members of a population that are fitter than others."

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Perhaps Syamsu missed the 'adaptive' in your suggestion ...?

Perhaps Syamsu believes in Lamarkian evolution.That's the only way that I can see an objection to what you
have said.If all members of a population produced the same, mutated phenotype
that was a better fit for the environment.Or of some higher being tweaked the genomes every now and then.Maybe there's a genome configuration tool somewhere ....

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It basicly says that the variation produced is not random in respect to contributing to reproduction, but that the variation is potentially useful in contributing to reproduction. That is of course not true, most variation disappears without contributing to reproduction at all, it's deceptive to treat them as potentially doing so.

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You almost had it there!!!Variation does NOT disappear. Variation is present in almost every
population of organisms.Question: Are you identicle to your a) Mother
b) father
c) siblings (if applicable)
d) children (if applicable)If the answer to any of the above is 'No', then there IS
variation within your population, even amongst directly
related individuals.Variation does not disappear.Whether or not that variation will influence reproductive rates/
outputs depends on the environment (and if you are looking
at an individual that includes the rest of the population).Simplified examples of the relationship with the environment
include for example anything that helps to stop you getting
killed without leaving young, or anything that makes you more
attractive to a potential mate.Whether the variation arose ten generations ago and just hung
around in a small group of the population, or just arose last
breeding season -- if it makes you more likely to leave
viable offspring then the effect on the population will be
that that trait will increase in frequency given sufficient time
under the prevailing enviroment.Evolution is founded in lucky coincidence -- we tend
to call that random mutation + selection.

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Q: But how can you describe evolution with selection, when you don't include variations?

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A: I can't describe evolution with just selection, I also need mutation for that. Of course, I am defining evolution here in the sense of descent with modification, where Darwinists more commonly define evolution as a change in allelle frequency in a population.

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Again you nearly had it ... what you are mainly describing IS
natural selection (I've said this to you before), but you
are using a differing view of fittness.What is descent with modfication if it is not a change in allele
frequency in the population .... as soon as you have offpspring
you are no longer focussing on an individual but on a population.Individuals do not evolve, populations do.The reason that ToE focusses on populations is that it is
a populational effect.

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in a population where no new variation is introduced, variation is reduced via selective processes until the variation & heritability = 0.

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With the somewhat curious heritability thing -- I maybe agree,
but variation does not get reduced by selective processes unless
ALL traits are subject to selective pressure -- and maybe not even
then depending upon the genetic characteristics leading to the
trait.The only way to have zero variation in any population is for
no variation to ever get introduced.This does not happen, so any hypothesis based upon such a
population is mis-leading. All you can accomplish is to say that
evolution cannot happen without variation -- and we know that
already.

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Variation does disappear, as also by the standard version of Natural Selection. I'm at a loss how you can say otherwise.

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Because there are few (if any) living populations that do
not exhibit variation -- even if that is marginal in their
current environment.How can you say that variation disappears, when we can observe
almost any population and see that it doesn't?

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Again, my point is that the mutations are not really random if you say the variations provided by mutation are for contributing to reproduction when the environment changes.

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That's not what they are FOR.IFF there are variations that increase the chances of leaving
offspring then they will appear in hindsight to be adaptive
changes.

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Mutations are usually deleterious, and so become extinct through competition with variants, or they have no phenotypical effect whatsoever.

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What on earth makes you think this?PS: I'm sure I already posted a response to this, but
it's not here ... hmmmm...

Fair enough -- I thought Syamsu was saying that
variation disappears though (like altogether).

No, my answer is A & B.

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But it's just like saying that the individuals in the population have changed, but they don't change of course, a change occurs, and this change spreads, or not as the case may be.

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Precisely why you cannot get useful insight from study in
this area by focussing on an individual.

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Again it would be no problem to describe same events without comparing,

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Focussing on ONE individual tell me why there are more
camouflaged prey-animals than not witin then population.

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And so what was this ratio then with the camouflaged and the colorful? What was the ratio with the nyloneating bacteria and their ancestor? It seems meaningless. I was told that the mutation that enables the nylon eating bacteria to eat nylon, makes them unable to eat what their ancestors eat. So reasonably the population splits along the lines of this mutation, where in stead you repeatedly talk about the population as a whole.

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Why do you define a population by what it eats?Am I (a non-vegetarian) in a different population to my
friends who are Vegans?I suppose if your populational criterion is 'what do they eat?'
then it's true, if it's something else it's false.What do YOU mean by population?

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But I can't really describe the fitness when I'm describing the relative fitness, that is just very confusing. The colorful are fit in respect to mating, the camouflaged in respect to predators, two completely different things. Besides the predators, the camouflaged are a downward selective pressure on the colorful. Focusing solely on real relationships seems to me more easy then mixing comparitive relationships with real relationships.

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Nothing wrong with referring to relative fitness (i.e. fitness
of a trait wrt to some specific environmental factor).You have just compared the reproductive success of the variants
wrt to multiple environmental factors -- that's good and that's
what most of the people arguing against you are saying.There IS variation and that variation affects reproductive rates
relative the the environment as a whole (i.e. all factors). It
can be measured after the fact by allele frequencies.