I am always shocked when I read creationist literature - shocked because real-world examples of evolution occur all the time. Whether it is drosophila flys that genetics students breed for their increasingly bizzare mutations, or as in this case, the effect of poaching on elephant populations.
By culling large tusked elephants through poaching, the remainder of the population - especially those with a gene that produces small or no tusks, reproduce more successfully.
Just another example of how human beings affect the environment - and thus play a role in the evolution of all other things.
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Let me take the opportunity to shake some straw out of my sleeves and note that you're taking an extreme--and generally rejected--view of creationism. That is, that no evolution ever, ever occurs.
You may want to check your "creationist lit" sources, but I believe that most creationists accept that evolution as a mechanism occurs within a given species. They don't reject the genetic mutation of fruit flies, and even the shrinking tusks of elephants. But this is all change within the single species. (Lack of tusks doth not a non-elephant make)
What they reject is the mechanism of evolution changing one species into another. The fact that they keep going on about it leads me to suspect that it is a little more difficult to prove.
Okay, back to frightening away the crows.
--Richard.
You are correct, the specific complaint wielded by creationists is not that evolution doesn't occur at all, but that speciation isn't explained by evolution (hence their insistence on being shown the evidence of 'transitional forms' where one species moves to another). However, that specific complaint is merely the tip of their ice-berg - the enterprise of ID and creationism itself is bent on repudiating 'darwinism' at every turn - and in particular there is a heavy element of the creationist movement that is still 'young earth' and 'no evolution at all' in their outlook.
Yes... but showing that the moron fringe of a philosophy is not paying attention to facts does not dismiss the entire philosophy.
Kind of like foiling the Christians who go around announcing that the Bible was written by God, and is therefore proof of God's existence, does not dismiss the entirety of the faith... just the moron contingent.
Anyway, my latest cause for intraspecies evolution is dogs. I don't think great danes and chihuahuas can physically interbreed... therefore, fringe edges of different species.
--Richard.
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