The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #154775   Message #3636957
Posted By: Steve Shaw
26-Jun-14 - 08:08 PM
Thread Name: BS: Scientific misconceptions.
Subject: RE: BS: Scientific misconceptions.
Dear chap, get your self up to date. There is nothing wrong with that sentence. Natural selection does not operate at species nor even at individual level, but on characteristics which can be selected for (surprise, surprise). You appear, sadly, to be sharing the delusions of the petes and the fascists of this world who seek to usurp Darwin's notions for their own causes. Your supposed point about phenotype and genotype is so removed from what we're talking about here as to make one suspect (along with all the other evidence) that you simply like to bandy words and haven't really got a clue as to what you're talking about.

As for this piece of almost impenetrable prose:

If what you are actually talking about is natural selection, then, yes, it has absolutely everything to do with individuals and species. It is driven by the reproductive success, relative to other members of its species, of an individual organism. If its physical characteristics, derived from its genome, lead to it producing more offspring than its rivals, then its genetic inheritance becomes more widespread in the population.

Natural selection operates on heritable traits, not individuals or species, whether you like it or not. Darwin was at pains to point this out. Yes, differential "reproductive success" [sic] is worth discussing, but your last statement is meaningless gibberish. Do look things up before you post. You're not Wacko, you know.