The End of Evolution By Means of Natural Selection

There is more than one way to skin a cat. . .Along with the issues brought up by others concerning the frequency of mutations and their contributions to diversity, I find that Faith is oversimplifying possible solutions to selective pressures. A main crux of her argument is that natural selection will pare a population down to a single allele.This is not the case. Genes are not mutually exclusive, changes to one gene can result in changes to more than one trait. In order to see this more clearly we can look at the afformentioned frog tongues.Long tongues may be beneficial for catching some food sources but this does not mean that they are the best tongue type for catching all prey. A longer tongue would in turn result in more tongue weight. The increase in tongue weight without an equal increase in expellatory forces would result in a slower tongue. Although there will be an ideal tongue length vs tongue speed in this 2 variable set of equations, that ideal would be based on the frog's prey size, prey speed and average striking distange from prey. These factors could result in multiple solutions for the frog.A situation like this could easily result in speciation or just increased diversity.

I see what you're saying. But I think you're wrong in assuming that large dogs and small dogs can't mate. Yes, it is a physical barrier for a large male dog to impregnate a small female dog. And it is a physical barrier for a small female dog to carry a large dog offspring to term. But if you flip the genders reproduction is easily possible. Other than the fact that the large female dog would have to be laying down, is there any reason why a small male dog physically could not impregnate her? Is there any reason why the large female could not carry a small offspring to term?My wife's old roommate had a rotweiller/dacshund mix. Rotweiller mother, dacshund father. The smaller father had minimal issues impregnating the larger mother and the larger mother had minimal issues carrying the pups to term. The dog grew to be larger than a dacshund but smaller than a rotweiller, a hybrid. A male dog from the litter could easily impregnate another female rotweiller or a female dachshund and then you would have fourth and fifth size variants.Unless there is a mechanism that would create barriers for a large mother/small father combination then I don't think size could be the lone cause of a speciation event.

I'm not sure. I don't breed dogs for a living. However, logistically I think the main issue would be ejaculation of the male chihuahua into the female dane. This is where I could see an issue. Is the male chihuahua's phallus large enough to make enough contact with the vaginal wall of the dane in order to induce the ejaculation?Sorry, didn't mean to be so graphic with that. But i can't think of another way to explain it scientifically.

However, through this Faith is also suggesting that almost every vertebrate and more specifically every known mammal except for one rare Argentinian rat (tetraploid) has undergone the a level of "ploid" reduction resulting in the almost unanimous diploid scenario we see currently. However, during this decrease her humans would have not undergone any speciation events where as every other animal would have. Also no more "ploid" reduction would be available in the future unless these future creatures are uniploid/asexual.The sheer mental gymnastics required to adhere to such an illogical and unfactual stance is ridiculous.

Its not deception at all. Replication "errors" ARE just changes resulting in imperfect copies. It is merely human point of view that could consider them an error. The beneficiality, neutrality or harmfulness of these changes is only partially due to the previous state of the DNA. The result of the change has more to do with the environment of the organism than its previous state.You seem to be under the delirious impression that DNA has a set perfect state for each organism and that any change from this perfect state is automatically deleterious.

I would even restrain from using the term "imperfect copy" because it implies that the parent copy was perfect.I would prefer "inexact copy" because exactness does not imply perfection. Someone, as Faith has shown, can be exactly wrong. An inexact copy can be preferable as compared to the original as long as that inexact copy is more beneficial.