(December 6, 2019 at 11:29 pm)Haipule Wrote:(December 3, 2019 at 5:25 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: You're describing punctuated equilibrium (Eldredge and Gould) which caused no end of fuss when it was first presented. Many of the stricter Darwinians had a lot of trouble accepting that the gradualism proposed by Darwin might not be the case (some still haven't).Really? How many times has the earth been destroyed by catastrophes including the last Snowball Earth, which is not pseudo-science and which was not too long ago. Many atheistic scientists agree that NOTHING could survive the "snowball". But, somehow, we did because we are here: aren't we? Gradualism my ass!
Current thinking is that gradualism and PE are both true, depending on the circumstances in which groups of organisms find themselves.
Boru
Well, the Earth has never been 'destroyed by catastrophes'. I leave it to you to determine the evidence for that statement.
'Snowball Earth' is a hypothesis with a lot of serious problems. But not even proponents of this notion propose that nothing could survive the Snowball - eggs, spores, cyanobacteria (in places where the ice was thinnest) and marine extremophiles would have come through all right.
Whether evolution occurs gradually or rapidly is largely dependent on conditions.
Boru
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