[quote mine] if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits

Bob, Are you making a case for front-loaded evolution via pre-existing information which is then culled by selection? Or are you merely saying that regardless of selection pressures there has not been time enough for random variation to arise?

The latter. Ah, after a quick google: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7941 So the genetic base of racehorses is tiny (it's larger than for bananas though), so there is not be a lot of genetic variation in the population, and a couple of hundred years would not be time enough to create it through mutation. Bob Bob OH

I don’t agree with the statement that “evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture”. Evolutionary analysis has led to the recognition that there are certain positions in the amino acid sequence of a protein/enzyme that cannot be mutated without impairing or destroying its function. Therefore a high-priority target in designing many vaccines is the conserved region in a pathogen’s crucial protein since this region will always be the same even if the pathogen has mutated in other, less critical positions. Evolution helps us by telling us not to try to predict but to go with what we already know. ofro

"Evolution predicts that species can undergo unlimited change." You are giving evolution too much credit. Even with near-unlimited time on hand, evolution will never end up with a racehorse that can run at 500 mph. There are independent limitations (physics, chemistry). ofro

I'm not into horse racing, so my understanding of breeding practices for racehorses could be fundamentally wrong. Please correct my mistakes. From what I imagine, the selection process for racehorses is controlled by humans (artificial selection), thus limiting the potential of novel ways of gaining speed. Natural selection allows for more leeway of what gets passed on to the next generation as long as the trait is "good enough" or doesn't really affect survival. So, horses that are not necessarily the "fastest of the fast" could still reproduce in natural selection, while the same horses may be culled in artificial selection. This would allow for more variance in traits that could potentially lead to faster speeds via (humanly) un-imagined ways. I guess my point is that human intelligence is not necessarily the best "designer" for organisms. Monimonika

Bob, Are you making a case for front-loaded evolution via pre-existing information which is then culled by selection? Or are you merely saying that regardless of selection pressures there has not been time enough for random variation to arise? Charlie

Evolution predicts that species can undergo unlimited change.

Only with unlimited time. As any animal breeder should know, evolution needs variation. I believe that racehorses come from a limited genetic base, which means that there was not a lot of variation available for evolution, and that may well have been exhausted. Bob Bob OH

On the issue of unlimited change, let's not forget that Darwin believed that if you toss a bear into the water, and wait a few million years, it will eventually turn into a whale. I have been told (or I saw it in here) that such a quotation only apears in the first edition of Origins. Seeing that science has shown that animals can't go on changing without limits, that is yet another Darwinian prediction refuted by science. Mats

Arrrg! I wrote a post about the non-evolution of racehorses, but it was eaten by internet gremlins. In short, racehorse speeds have not increase in recent decades. Evolution predicts that species can undergo unlimited change. ID would predict that only limited change can happen (because there is no new information being added to the genome). This is a simplistic version of the argument, but I don't feel like typing the whole thing out again. StephenA

Alan Fox:

Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. Well, is’nt that what is supposed to happen with random mutation?

Its the cases where evolution has followed a very predictable pattern that cause me notice. - We had a cool article here about the paralells between the marsupial and placental animals. - Denton points out the difficulties presented in the fact that Cyclochrome "C" presents a perfect phylogenic tree. - Polydactylism is unexpectedly avoided in nature -- according to Gould. Convergence is a much more predominant phenomenon than RM+NS predicts. Convergence seems to provide evidence that certain patterns in nature are inevitable. Contingency, it would seem, is not supported by the evidence -- even though microbes mutate unexpectedly. bFast

Jack, I do applaud your concern, however, that was decent of you. Salvador scordova

By the way, she is a creationist listed by the (gasp) ICR. Apparently her rejecting of KCFS style Darwinism didn't dull her mind. Being a patent attorney and PhD, she's probably filthy rich too! Salvador scordova

Jack wrote: Does this woman know you have posted her picture? Some people, especially attractive young women, might have a problem with that.

Jack, Kelly Hollowell is one of the most respected columnists at WorldNetDaily, the photo is from an article Kelly Herself published here.

Kelly Hollowell, J.D., Ph.D., is a scientist, patent attorney and adjunct professor of bioethics at the University of Richmond and Regent University law schools. She is the executive director of The Center for Bioethics and Culture in Virginia, on the Web at www.thecbc.org, and founder of SMI, an education-based nonprofit corporation addressing issues in science and biotechnology, on the Web at www.scienceministries.org.

Salvador scordova

Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. Well, is'nt that what is supposed to happen with random mutation? Alan Fox

The AAAS (the publisher of Science) tends to weigh in on the controversy without understanding it at all. For instance, here is a response article I wrote to one of their editorials in a local paper. johnnyb

Does this woman know you have posted her picture? Some people, especially attractive young women, might have a problem with that. Jack Krebs

"Coyne’s article in Nature was accompanied by the following Doonesbury comic strip. A first rate scientific journal is now starting to look and sound like Pandas Thumb!" Well no wonder, with all the free publicity you're giving them their circulation is probably up. Next thing you know I'll be buying an issue at Kroger. Jon Jackson

An article on my blog says,

We keep hearing of all the wonderful applications of evolution theory. Well, one area where evolution theory is not applied is in the breeding of racehorses. A 2002 New York Times article, titled "Winning Races, but Not Records", reports that the speed of racehorses has been stagnant for several decades ( indeed, it has even been theorized that racehorses are actually getting slower because the speeds have been stagnant while race courses have been getting faster). . . . . .a perverse result of exorbitant stud fees -- as high as $½ million for the best stud horses -- is that the fastest horses transmit their superior running abilities to few offspring . . . . The smart thing to do would be to offer the stud services of the fastest horses for just a nominal charge or even for free, in exchange for a share of the future winnings of the offspring

-- from http://im-from-missouri.blogspot.com/2006/05/unnatural-selection-in-racehorses.html Larry Fafarman