I agree. But my hailstorm analogy is not concerned with the microevolution processes that cause relatively minor genetic variations within species(ie. white moths into black moths), be it through genetic mutations or genetic flexibility. My analogy deals with macroevolution(ie. fish into humans).
Then your objection has a problem. I realize that as,
a priori, the side proposing the ToE, it is on our account to defend it: at the same time, I would be interested to know the defense of anti-evolutionists against the clear series of models in fish-amphibian evolution, horses, and the many branches of humanity.
It is wrongly extrapolated that microevolution(observable and understood) eventually leads to macroevolution(not observable and not understood).
Ah - so you are a saltationist? That's fine. Whether you consider evolution as major leap or minor gradient, there is abundant evidence that relatively few genes need be involved to achieve major morphological differentiation. Eyedness in fish with cave and free-dwelling populations is one such example:
http://genepath.med.harvard.edu/~tabin/Pdfs/Protas2.pdf
http://scienceblogs.com/afarensis/2007/02/20/cave_fish_and_selection/
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/93/1/19.full
I met Borowsky a while back. Seemed brusque at first, but a nice chap when you got to really talk to him.
In geological timescales, all these improbable occurrences of beneficial mutations happened at roughly the same time. For example- take the mouth-cleaning fish and the sharks that let these cleaning fish work in their mouth. That's a perfect example.
This would be a case of commensalism. Evolutionists propose a fitness basis for this joint behaviour: anti-evolutionists propose - what? Godly intervention? Directed evolution? To what end?
In any event, the sheer number of possible animal-animal, animal-plant, plant-plant interactions is a multiple of the number of species involved across all possible species boundaries. Against the number of
possible interactions that could have arisen, the relatively small number of such overt examples should come as no surprise. A handful of explicit commensalist behaviours in the - literally - millions of such that could occur? A trifle.
Take the woodpecker- and the fact that it must have evolved a super-tough bill, better shock-absorbers throughout the body, and a desire/willingness to peck into trees- all at the same time(sync) in order for any one trait to be advantageous and naturally selected to carry on.
This is a different sort of example:
pleiotropy. The phenomenon of pleiotropy is of old date and much interest - I've studied it myself. In point of fact, the evolution of the woodpecker is not so alarming:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodpecker/woodpecker.html. In short, progression is entirely possible for the woodpecker system: short-tongued woodpeckers could use a well-braced bill for pecking into rotten wood for grubs in shallow zones, and long-tongued woodpeckers their fantastical tongues for probing after bugs in their own holes. I'm no ornithologist - a waste of time, if you ask me - but I would expect to find other birds presently occupying such niches. Secondly, morphological integration (Wagner 1996) suggests that related structures should become co-inherited (within the same gene block); mutations within this gene block should permit much more rapid evolution since large deletions or insertions could produce easy co-inheritance of mutations in both traits.
Just consider the diversity of species living on the earth at the same time.
Indeed, as I have above.