wait wait wait wait........ newb here
what about random mutations, etc. etc.....?
They find things which are "indistinguishable"???
Do they not
necessarily randomly mutate?
Is their relationship to their environment so specific that
no mutations survive -and if not, where are the non-survivors?
If there are no random mutations among them at all, how might they evolve unless mutation is caused by environment?
It says that
"If they were in an environment that did not change but they nevertheless evolved, that would have shown that our understanding of Darwinian evolution was seriously flawed."
but certainly there would be some mutations which also survived, even if they did not evolve much. Would there not be?
Not
every mutation is a life or death change, right?
I get that the bacteria are more simple than apes, for example, but even if the environment of apes remained unchanged, would we not still see random mutations passed on?
If so...
Does not evolution move sideways, so to speak? Why can't things evolve by random mutation into different species which are eventually unrecognizable compared to the original, but equally fit to survive?
We find fish that have not evolved -living fossils, or whatever -but why would they not have mutated at all? Are all mutations passed on within a group -and only the survivors remain -or should we expect that random mutation will change every species over time regardless of environment? If that fish is a mutation of something else over time, why did random mutation stop? Did it? Why would one line randomly mutate -and not another?
Maybe environment initially caused mutations -which eventually caused random mutation to become internalized, but not always present?
If environment is credited with causing life in the first place -as environment existed before earthly life existed within it -that seems reasonable.
Perhaps random mutation is a mutation which is not passed on to all?
My head hurts.
I need to read up on this stuff.