Why is it false,Interbane?Interbane wrote: Will the paradigm of evolution change? Possibly, but the true agnostic will admit that this is something we can't know. What we do know is that if evolution is to undergo a paradigm shift, it will not shift backwards. To say that evolution doesn't explain whales, as Flann mentions, is simply false. Any paradigm shift that evolution may possibly undergo will not make it true.
I've used the analogy of a river before. The fact that erosion is much simpler than evolution isn't a mark against this analogy. I'm picking a simple analogy to explain a complex point. We haven't witnessed a river carving a canyon. All we've ever seen is "micro" erosion. But how can micro erosion possibly explain "macro" erosion? You can see the parallel arguments.
What theists fail to see here is that the process itself is an explanation of instances of things; of whales, of germs, of humans. We haven't witnessed the erosion of the grand canyon. Yet we understand the process of erosion well enough to know that it's capable of creating a canyon. We know the process creates instances of things, even if we've never seen it happened.
What needs to be demonstrated is that the mechanisms of random variation and natural selection,and you can add on whatever other factors many biologists now think are involved,are sufficient and capable of producing the kinds of coordinated changes for a land dwelling mammal to evolve into a whale.
There are time constraints also. You can question Sternberg's data assumptions but even if you were massively over generous you still have a whopping inadequacy.
Two coordinated mutations would take 43 million years he thinks to become fixed in a population.
How many coordinated mutations do you think would be required to transform entire biological systems of animals from land mammal to whale? Surely vast numbers.
And how do partial changes to these systems actually work if it's gradual and incremental?
Your river canyon analogy is not the same. Where there is severe flooding such comparable phenomena can be observed though on a lesser scale.
Hydrolics are measurable in terms of force and volume and effects on various materials.
What you have in evolutionary theory is an extrapolation which laboratory work with fruit flies and bacteria do not indicate will produce fundamental changes in the nature in these things.