Re: Evolutionary Theory

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 98-02-20 03:32:13 EST, JSeward123@aol.com writes:

<< My high-school biology teacher (who hates creation) taught us that
99.9999...%
 of all mutations are destructive and don't get passed on in future
 generations. So I fail to see how random mutations could result in something
 better. Even if there was a beneficial mutation, would it get passed on to
its
 offspring in future generations? >>

The idea is that a population comprises millions of individuals, so that even
the 0.00001% of mutations that are non-destructive will appear in a few
individuals, whose offspring will benefit from them and thus survive
preferentially and breed larger numbers of offpsring that carry those
mutations. It doesn't take many generations for a beneficial mutation to
spread in this manner to a large fraction of a population.