165 this time around. 93rd percentile. Good, but not great. oh well. Ave here I come. Merry Christmas!

recant

Dammit. this is what happens when you date someone smarter than you. All your pet theories are short-lived. What took me over an hour to write he tore apart in ten seconds by pointing out that what I just posted can't follow because not only do animal populations not increase exponentially they remain the same overall size throughout unless they have room to spread out which most do not. Dammit. Well, I grudgingly sacrifice my theory on the altar of truth. Dammit.

Who's your daddy?

Where to begin? I have so many objections to Darwin. One is that he never shows that what he claims is even possible, much less probable much less unquestionable, namely, that a mutation that happens to be useful could become the norm and consistently passed down with few exceptions from generation to generation, and secondly, that that helpful mutation is so much more helpful than other mutations or even the old way that it beats out everyone else. For example, a big pack of wolves: most are the same, a few are born with slightly bigger tails- I don't know. But all the parents of that generation looked the same. It's only 3 out of 800 that had the slightly bigger tails. Then, say, 600 of those 800 cubs grow up (the rest die as cubs). Let's say those 3 mutated-tail cubs are among those 600. However, of those 600, maybe 2 are born with a mutation (and by mutation I mean, something different from their parents) of having especially white fur, another 3 have especially dark fur, etc. But these are freak occurences. Again, maybe another 1 or 2 have abnormally good eyesight, another 2 or 3 have abonormally bad eyesight, and perhaps so forth till about 40 or 50 of the 600 who made it to maturity have some sort of abnormality, be it beneficial, harmful, or indifferent. That sounds pretty reasonable, right?
The assumption here is that- and must be that- starting with this generation, be it ever so gradual, these slight little mutations are important enough to actually cause the especially white wolves (let's say it's snowy weather) or the bigger-tailed wolves or whatever, to survive longer and produce young. But wait! There's more!
Not only do these slightly different wolves have to reproduce, but they have to reproduce children who inherit the same slight trait that they themselves only got by a freak occurence. And these cubs in turn have to mate with other freak cubs etc ad infinutm to affect any change. And under Darwin's theory, there can't be an ongoing coexistence of mini-breeds of freak-wolves who have their advantage due to different mutations; i.e., it's either the long-tails or the white-furs, or the sharp-sights, etc etc etc, but no more than one. In other words, different mutations can't give equal advantage (ie, equal survival rates) to a group. Not only does the, say, white fur have to be an advantage, but an advantage consistently passed down, and not only that, but it has to be significantly more advantageous than the freak cubs born with bigger tails, which, while helpful, don't make the cut. Darwin says that any advantage, no matter how slight, will win out given enough time. I do not see that that follows. And of course, the biggest objection that I can think of at the moment is, well, it's twofold, and I've mentioned them already but I want to drive home how absurd it is, that
1. Cub A is born with mutation X. Siblings do not have mutation X. Maybe one other cub (Cub B) in the pack has mutation X. Same with mutations Y, Z, etc. Of course, these will not be the majority, even put together, because if we proceed from experience we see that children are usually born in the image of their parents; not that all kids are slightly mutated but it's so slight we don't notice. Cuz that's a different can of worms but if anyone wants to duke that out I'd be more than happy. Anyway, so that mutation happens to be beneficial and Cub A grows and has his own cubs. Chances are he did not mate with that one other cub in the pack that had X. He has 6 cubs, maybe one of which has the same mutation. meanwhile, the rest of the pack is expanding almost exponentially (granted a pack can't actually grow like that; only the Grimms can, but you see it's like that in nature). Keep in mind, it's only been one generation, and while Cubs A & B have had about 6 cubs each, so has every non-mutated member of the pack. Which means, that with every successive generation, those cubs born with mutation X, while possibly more and more in number each generation, but less & less percentagewise, will have to have a bigger and bigger edge over the non-mutated or differently-mutated cubs in order to even eventually phase them out. And remember, this "accumualation" in concentration of mutation X is so gradual that it can barely be noticed from one generation to the next, yet somehow it's responsible for, in every generation, a decided advantage to the Xers. And it DOES have to be a decided advantage in every generation in order for this to work. If someone wants to argue with me, please address this, and don't come to me with "but we know that evolution is true to some extent because yada yada yada" unless your defense actually relates to what I'm talking about. I really would love to know the answer to this.
I have more to say but I'm spent.

I was a Darwinist until I read Darwin.