:The first thing I should say in response to your comments is that I am obviously much older than you. I'll be 58 next Wednesday, whereas you, as an undergraduate  unless you are an older student  must be in the 20±2 range. More than thirty years difference. When I was your age, I was majoring in math (my undergraduate degree is a B.S. in mathematics). But I switched to genetics, in which I first got a masters and, eventually, a Ph.D. It seemed to me that there was a lot more to find out in biology than in mathematics, also I've been interested in evolution and human prehistory since I was in about the fourth grade, which led me to focus on population genetics. But it was about thirty years ago that I first really got into studying evolution in a formal setting. In the time since, of course, I've had innumerable conversations about evolution and evolutionary theory with friends, colleagues, and students. I've also read, probably, thousands of papers and books bearing on the topic. I've also spent a large part of those years thinking and writing about this subject. Given all this, you'll probably believe me when I say that very little of what you have said is, in any inherent way, new to me. Perhaps the only thing that's new there is the way that you've phrased your claims  the exact sentences that you've produced are new, but the basic claims are things I've heard many, many times before. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing you. You're young and it's not easy to come up with anything that's really new in the field of evolutionary biology. There are plenty of brainy people who have tried for years to do that and failed. Now, given all this, perhaps you can imagine  simply because I have had far longer to study and think about these issues than you have  that I might see what I think are flaws in your way of thinking about evolution. So I'll just say that, if you want, I'm perfectly happy to explain the problems that I see with your ideas. But they'll have to be dealt with one at a time, and in a certain order. I can easily imagine, too, that you might just consider me arrogant to say all this, and not be interested at all. But if you want to do this, then the logical place to start, in my opinion, would be a discussion of the term species. In your last post, you placed a lot of emphasis on this word, but I notice also that even you yourself are aware that there are problems with defining species. The first question I would ask you, then, is: Do you think it's sensible for people to reason with each other using arguments that depend on terms that lack any clear and consistent meaning?