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From: beth@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (beth d. christy)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: Dog Breath, In the Year of the Plague
Message-ID: <422@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-May-85 15:40:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: sphinx.422
Posted: Sat May  4 15:40:46 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 7-May-85 05:55:58 EDT
References: <1012@uwmacc.UUCP>
Organization: U. Chicago - Computation Center
Lines: 23

Whew, that was a long one.  I'm not even gonna try to wade through it
all again at 1200 baud trying to find the couple pieces I want, so I
hope y'all can trust my memory.

I think the dog example is primarily used as an (extremely powerful)
example of how changes, once induced, can survive and propogate.  It
most certainly is not an example of natural selection per se, as it
is not a case of a live-or-die, reproduce-or-not response to a new
environment.  As your first evolutionist example pointed out, it was
exactly the opposite.  Human's were protecting "degenerate" creatures,
and allowing (actually, forcing) them to reproduce.  And (important
point here), they did it with the goal of *maintaining* most of the
qualities of the species (although in some exaggerated form).  Natural
selection does not offer that protection, and it does *not* have that
goal.  So if indeed dog-breeding was used as an example of natural
selection, you're correct to point out that that's innappropriate.
But as an example of the survival/propogation of change, it's pretty
irrefutable, and that's important to evolutionary theory too.

-- 

--JB                                                  "The giant is awake."