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Evidence that mutation is the cause of change in evolution has not been proven

First, I will rebut my opponent's arguments. First, the fruit fly. Pro claims the studies on the fruit fly amount to "millions of years of supposed evolutionary time". I dispute this claim. The total number of fruit flies in the world is most definitely in the billions (considering there are 4,400 species, and their numbers, they being prolific, far greater than our own), and they live three weeks. I would like to ask Pro how scientists compiled "millions of years of evolutionary time" in what has been studies from the '80s and 90's - only 20 to 30 years. Scientists would have to have trillions of fruit flies, all being tracked, to meet this requirement. Even a thousand, or a hundred years of evolutionary time is a wild exaggeration. As to Pro's point about the fruit fly changes - do you have any studies to back that up? That no changes to the fruit flies were made because of mutations? In the human genome, 2-3% codes for proteins[1]. The rest have no effect that we know of. The same would hold for the fruit fly. The great probability is that Goldschmidt hit these bases repeatedly, and produced no new effect. Here is a study where scientists did get a The total number of fruit flies in the world is most definitely in the billions (considering there are 4,400 species, and their numbers, they being prolific, far greater than our own), and they live three weeks. I would like to ask Pro how scientists compiled "millions of years of evolutionary time" in what has been studies from the '80s and 90's - only 20 to 30 years. Scientists would have to have trillions of fruit flies, all being tracked, to meet this requirement. Even a thousand, or a hundred years of evolutionary time is a wild exaggeration. As to Pro's point about the fruit fly changes - do you have any studies to back that up? That no changes to the fruit flies were made because of mutations? In the human genome, 2-3% codes for proteins[1]. The rest have no effect that we know of. The same would hold for the fruit fly. The great probability is that Goldschmidt hit these bases repeatedly, and produced no new effect. Here is a study where scientists did get a change in phenotype via muations - [2]. Take, for another example, nylon-eating bacteria. Bacteria were discovered in 1975 that could eat nylon - which was not invented until 1935[3]. Japanese scientists discovered the point of mutation[4]. While the exact mechanism of it has been disputed (frameshift, deletion, insertion, etc.), the fact remains mutations produced a beneficial trait in these bacteria, and they evolved. Scientists later discovered 470 of these types of muations in the human genome[5]. Finally, I shall respond to Pro's point on the fossil record. Pro claims because we have a lack of transitionary forms, this disproves evolution via mutation. I would like to introduce the theory of punctuated equilibrium to explain this[6]. As the theory states, stasis is the dominant state for most of a species' history, and is only broken when environmental or other such circumstances force an evolutionary change from the original form that was largely beneficial in the past. This theory makes sense; if the form a species has is working, why evolve away from it? It is only when the form is no longer useful or advantageous that it would need to change. And, as an example of one such form, perhaps in a period of breaking away from stasis, I present Archaeopteryx[7,8]. It is thought to be a transitional form between small, predatory dinosaurs and today's birds, and is a perfect example of what Pro is looking for. All in all, Pro's arguments have not stood up to close inspection. I would also like the voters to consider that Pro dropped, and thus conceded, my argument considering the chimpanzee-human relation. You're on, Pro. http://www.ornl.gov... http://www.genetics.org... http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.pnas.org... Okamura K, Feuk L, Marquès-Bonet T, Navarro A, Scherer SW (December 2006). "Frequent appearance of novel protein-coding sequences by frameshift translation". Genomics 88 (6): 690–7. doi:10.1016/j.ygeno.2006.06.009. PMID 16890400. http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu... http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu...