re: #669 Cato

Irreducible complexity is a losing argument for the reasons you cited. But it leads to further analysis. The more interesting question is whether Dawkins’ gradualism or Gould’s punctuated evolutionary theory is correct. My own bet is on Dawkins in most cases but Gould for certain very interesting cases. And that is where the real fascinating analysis will be. Ultimately, the religiously minded will find God’s hand in the punctuated cases.

It doesn’t have to be either/or; gradualism and punctuated equilibrum may be viewed not as mutually exclusive, but as poles on a rate-of-change continuum. Baseline rates of evolutionary change are different for differing species, and these rates also accelerate or decelerate depending upon the environmental stressors present, or their absence. But of course the stressors themselves cannot selectively reach from the environment into the genome and willfully and intelligently decide WHICH mutations In PARTICULAR will occur; they can just cause, by the very degree of organism stresses that they induce in members of a given species, more mutations or less mutations to occur IN GENERAL.