It disturbs me the ..."dangling"...that goes on in relation to this topic. The stalling.
Me, too. But I sense we're not talking about the same side.
The questions have been risen, The contradictions outline the sources hightlighted and now we await a response to directly counters this information.
Which questions? What sources? Please outline your arguments directly and cogently, with their relevant sources. You surely can't be talking about the pit-picking that IAC's been offering.
Reasonable doubt has certainly been raised.
Of what? Evolution? Descent with modification? Microevolutionary change? Macroevolutionary change? Genotype-phenotype correlation? Which?
The odds and the failures of evolutionary experiments in the labs of the world...Where is macro evolution...show not adaptation, and natural selection...
I regret to inform you that this is simply not the case:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/335636722147273l/
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/290/5491/519
You might also restart your argument by identifying how the coefficients of evolution via natural selection differs fundamentally from those produced via artificial selection. In other words: in what functional way are they different?
I also add that speciation - as per the biological species concept (BSC) of reproductive isolation - itself has been observed in a number of plant species and even several animal taxa:
Plants - Speciation via hybridization
Butters, F. K. 1941. Hybrid Woodsias in Minnesota. Amer. Fern. J. 31:15-21.
Butters, F. K. and R. M. Tryon, jr. 1948. A fertile mutant of a Woodsia hybrid. American Journal of Botany. 35:138.
Clausen, J., D. D. Keck and W. M. Hiesey. 1945. Experimental studies on the nature of species. II. Plant evolution through amphiploidy and autoploidy, with examples from the Madiinae. Carnegie Institute Washington Publication, 564:1-174.
de Vries, H. 1905. Species and varieties, their origin by mutation.
Digby, L. 1912. The cytology of Primula kewensis and of other related Primula hybrids. Ann. Bot. 26:357-388.
Karpchenko, G. D. 1927. Polyploid hybrids of Raphanus sativus L. X Brassica oleraceae L. Bull. Appl. Botany. 17:305-408.
Karpchenko, G. D. 1928. Polyploid hybrids of Raphanus sativus L. X Brassica oleraceae L. Z. Indukt. Abstami-a Verenbungsi. 48:1-85.
Muntzing, A. 1932. Cytogenetic investigations on the synthetic Galeopsis tetrahit. Hereditas. 16:105-154
Newton, W. C. F. and C. Pellew. 1929. Primula kewensis and its derivatives. J. Genetics. 20:405-467.
Owenby, M. 1950. Natural hybridization and amphiploidy in the genus Tragopogon. Am. J. Bot. 37:487-499.
Rabe, E. W. and C. H. Haufler. 1992. Incipient polyploid speciation in the maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum, adiantaceae)? American Journal of Botany. 79:701-707.
Soltis, D. E. and P. S. Soltis. 1989. Allopolyploid speciation in Tragopogon: Insights from chloroplast DNA. American Journal of Botany. 76:1119-1124.
Animals - speciation via hybridization
Bullini, L. and G. Nascetti. 1990. Speciation by hybridization in phasmids and other insects. Canadian Journal of Zoology. 68:1747-1760.
Lokki, J. and A. Saura. 1980. Polyploidy in insect evolution. In: W. H. Lewis (ed.) Polyploidy: Biological Relevance. Plenum Press, New York
Vrijenhoek, R. C. 1994. Unisexual fish: Model systems for studying ecology and evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. 25:71-96.
Plants - Speciation without hybridization
Gottleib, L. D. 1973. Genetic differentiation, sympatric speciation, and the origin of a diploid species of Stephanomeira. American Journal of Botany. 60: 545-553.
Macnair, M. R. and P. Christie. 1983. Reproductive isolation as a pleiotropic effect of copper tolerance in Mimulus guttatus. Heredity. 50:295-302.
Pasterniani, E. 1969. Selection for reproductive isolation between two populations of maize, Zea mays L. Evolution. 23:534-547.
I highlighted one of special interest since it involves speciation/isolation by selection.
Animals - Speciation without hybridization
Dobzhansky, T. and O. Pavlovsky. 1971. Experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila. Nature. 230:289-292.
Kilias, G., S. N. Alahiotis and M. Delecanos. 1980. A multifactorial investigation of speciation theory using Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution. 34:730-737.
let's not waste time on mutations that deliever no helpful genetic information and retreat not to the static remains of the fossil record which couldn't tell a story or processes for the fact we're dealing with dead inanimate fossils.
Indeed! For, as I've illustrated above, speciation occurs within quite contemporaneous timeframes, and has already been therefore observed, besides genetic mechanisms for leap evolution having been demonstrated. The fossil record is supportive, of course, in the sense that it illustrates descent with modification, but frankly the implication of the fossil record - which, indeed, tells a story via deposition, succession and radiological dating - should be sufficiently clear. However, as someone once said, there are none so blind as will not see.