I don't agree with what you said about "Every mutation we've seen has resulted in premature death for the most part." There is a lot of diversity in the human race. For example, there are some people who bald earlier, some who don't, some are born with 10 fingers, some 11, some with extra nipples, some with two. Now these are trivial examples (either that or we haven't been able to see their relevance in our survival). But I will attempt to list some examples of diversity in humans that shows significant difference that have obvious potential to be considered a beneficial mutation/adaptation.
The first one would be the native americans in south america that lived in the Andes (don't know if too many of them are around today?). They are shorter then average, and have larger lungs then the average human to help them cope with getting enough oxygen at such high altitudes efficiently. If I went to live in the Andes tomorrow, I would probably survive, true. BUT, i would have a much harder time then one of the natives of the area. I wouldn't be able to run around as much or engage in as much rigorous physical activity as one of them would. This would contribute to my overall ability to survive in that climate and environment, if i had to run from some animal or if i got sick, i would probably die before one of the shorter dudes with larger lungs would.
Another example is that some people are less susceptible and in some cases even immune to diseases, while others are not. Many native americans died of diseases that were considered common in Europe when Europeans first came to the Americas and brought the diseases with them. There are certain people who are actually immune to HIV/AIDS. Something about how their blood is structured (i think their T-Cells, i only heard about this a long time ago and didn't pay much attention to it) makes it so that the HIV virus can't attack their blood cells. This is a pretty good example in this discussion, because it moves the examples from "silly" abstract ones like the "tom" tree one (i liked the example, just some people might find it too abstract to see the significance of it) to a real world situation. Assuming we didn't have modern medicine (including information about the spread of STDs, and condoms, etc), pretty much everyone would be getting AIDS right about now, and these people who are immune would be the only ones left alive. That's an example of some abrupt evoultion.
I don't think that the majority of evolution comes about in such abrupt circumstances. The most fit species are the ones who survive the best when it comes down to it. My example of living in the mountains is a good example of this. I could survive in the mountains if i had to, but if the going got tough, the people already adapted to living there would be better suited and more likely to survive there (and it might be that they lived longer then me, and were able to have more kids then me, and their kids would have more then my kids, and so on, see the trend?).
I definitely understand you guys who say that the sheer luck of the right mutations occuring to produce something as complex and arbitrary as a human being is just dumbfounding. I mean, an eye. I sometimes think, did someone animal just get born one day, and it had a fully functional eye? How likely is that? Not likely at all i think. But scientists have found that things like this are more gradual then that. Some sea creatures had "eyespots" before eyes came about (and some alive today i think still have the eyespot, if it ain't broke don't fix it right?). These eyespots could detect light and dark, and helped them in life by being able to detect prey, and predators. These eyespots could have then evolved into eyes. All our complex systems evolved a bit at a time in such a manner. And the beautiful thing about it is, that it's sort of like inheritance from Object Oriented Programming; organisms benefit from the adaptations of all their ancestors that have been passed down in their DNA. And from my thinking about this a lot, it seems like the systems which control life are amazingly organized like a well designed computer program for modularity and "upgradeability". It seems as if life on earth has evolved the ability to become responsive to beneficial adaptations. I'm getting more abstract here without any examples, and I could go on like this for pages and pages if i were to explain it, so I'll let you guys get back to the rest of your day in peace. I like this discussion tho, and look forward to participating in it some more. What do you guys think?
You obviously take issue with at least some of evolutionary science. What problems do you see with the Theory of Evolution? Inconsistencies, inadequate explanations, contradictions, etc...whatever you disagree with.
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