ME!!!

...Oh. I have to actually support ID first.

Bummer.

I'm detecting a reccurring theme in which any challenge that forces them to play by the rules of logic is simply ignored.

     I seem to recall the now notorious debate between the C & C comedy team  vs.RRS wherein  the pro creationist  couldn"t get through their opening statement without violating the ground rules. (useing biblical quotes)

     I wouldn't hold my breath Hambydammit   waiting for the challenge to be taken up.

There are some lurkers about.  (Yes... we have the power... we know you're watching!!  We're like God... )

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/14590

You need to finish this thread first. Take your fights one at a time.

Hamby, maybe you could make it IDers who believe in theistic evolution vs you taking the naturalistic evolution side. Otherwise, they're just going to get squashed right away. Give 'em a fighting chance....

The question was actually for him, so I'd appreciate no-one else giving the answer. The language in your explanation could be far more tight. What I am really looking for is a summary of the five distinct theories that constitute the theory of evolution.

But DG, is that really fair? After all, they can't define 'god', either.

What are you looking for, exactly? By the way you phrase the question here, I could just say "some species evolved into other species", but I doubt you're after that.

Close. Three right, two wrong (ie, there is a redundancy in the list. You left out the most important parts).

It should look like this:

Evolution: Over time, the characteristics of a lineage change.

Common Descent: All organisms have diverged from a common ancestor

Gradualism: Every organism, however different and distant from each other, is  related, some distantly. Radical changes in phenotype and genotype have occured by incremental processes by which lineages diverge from a common ancestor

Gene Frequency: The method by which evolution (the change in lineages) occurs is by changes in gene frequencies of populations. It is the change in proportion of individuals which have certain characteristics that determines the characteristic divergence of a lineage.

Natural Selection: The process by which gene frequencies are latered is characterized by the variations of organisms in a population, and how those variations determine the ability of the organism to survive and reproduce. The selection of alleles over others in a population will accordingly alter the frequency of genetic particles and hence the phenotype of a lineage.

With respect to the centerpiece of the five, natural selection, it can be subdivided into three concepts:

1. Heredity: All organisms pass genetic information from parent to progeny

2. Variation: Within a population of organisms, mutations and sexual recombinations will ensure that there is phenotypic and genotypic variation among the organisms

3. Selection: Those variations and the selection pressure exerted by the environment will determine the most proliferative alleles in the struggle for resources such that the frequency of alleles will change over time

And can be combined to look like this:

According to the Theory of Evolution, all life is descendant from a common ancestor, and the process by which the divergent taxa are produced from a common ancestor is due to the gradual changes in lineages from that ancestor by means of the non-random gradual change in gene frequencies within a population over generations by means of natural selection.

I wasn't expecting anything, I just wanted to see if you could answer the question. Most cannot. 

Actually, the primary thing which was missing was selection by the environment  in terms of the struggle for resources being responsible for changes in gene frequency, the centerpiece theory. The concepts of changes in a lineage and gradualism etc. had been around since before Linnaeus, but nobody knew how such a thing would be possible until Darwin and Huxley formalized the dual concepts of selection and gene frequencies. Also, now would be a good time to point out that we never talk about species in evolutionary biology, for evolution does not act on “species”, it acts on populations. The first three postulates of Darwin and Huxley’s theory were accepted almost immediately when Origin of Species was published, but selection and gene frequency changes remained contentious. This was primarily because the prevailing view at the time was the hereditary traits were miscible, and hence should fade out and blend the way paints mix. Mendel refuted this by demonstrating the inherited characteristics were passed via particular inheritance of genetic particles, stable traits that could propagate throughout a lineage. As a result, with the formalization of molecular genetics in the 1930s, the modern synthesis of evolution was complete, and all the  competing explanations (mutationism, orthenogenesis and Lamarkism) were refuted. In the 1960s and 70s, with the formalization of molecular biology and the discovery of DNA in the 1950s lead to the hypothesis that gene duplication and divergence were primarily responsible for evolutionary innovations, and as such, common descent could be explained in terms of gene duplications as opposed to the assemblage of new characteristics from scratch, which prior to this time was considered a major problem. This idea was given due credence in the 1980s with the formalization of the polymerase chain reaction and the ability in the 1990s to sequence genomes and use massive computational power to compare them. The precise molecular mechanisms that allowed for the functional relationship between homologies in physical characteristics of  different multicellular organisms (teeth, claws, bones, brain, eyes e tc.) and the genes of the same organisms remained a mystery until the 1990s with the formalization of molecular developmental biology and the ready ability to explain ontogeny in molecular terms.

Eek!  Did you see what I was just doing?!

*evil snicker*

(Did you like what you saw?)