Is Evolution a Dangerous Idea? If so, why?

The Hopeful Monster belongs to your story, not mine. You believe/hope that an enzyme figured out a way to evolve and become a farmer one day. Along the way you believe this little monster had a few lucky 'profound "saltational" 'changes occur, you sometimes call it P.E. - punctuated equilibrium.

Has the rate of evolution ever been established?

ITS THE BASIS OF YOUR BELIEF, not related to my profession.

No one interested in another's POV tells them (the "other"?) what they think, believe, etc.

You told me that the concept of a "hopedul monster" was my iea,

You do it all the time, if I understand even what it was you were trying to say. You told me that the concept of a "hofedul monster" was my iea, when actually I was trying to draw you a simplistic model of how analogous it was that your "front loading" was nothing more than the "Hopeful monster" concept

Modern science
Some modern scientists have written that hopeful monsters are neither impossible nor should be seen as anti-Darwinian because even if proven to exist would not replace the evidence for gradual evolution by mutation but supplement it. The early neo-Darwinian synthesis theorists had rejected hopeful monsters due to lack of evidence; however there is now evidence that Goldschmidt was not entirely wrong.

Richard Dawkins wrote in his book Climbing Mount Improbable (1996):

“”My suggestion is that Scyllarus may actually present an example in the wild of a homeotic mutation, analogous to antennapedia in Drosophila in the laboratory. Unlike antennapedia, this mutation has been incorporated into an actual evolutionary change in nature. My tentative conjecture is that an ancestral Scyllarid mutated homeotically, slipping the developmental subroutine appropriate to a uropod into a segment where an antenna ought to be, and that the change conferred some benefit. If I am right, it would constitute a rare example of a macro-mutation’s being favoured by natural selection: a rare vindication of the so-called ‘hopeful monster’ theory that we met in Chapter 3.[17]
Donald R. Prothero in his book Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (2007) has written:

“”The past twenty years have vindicated Goldschmidt to some degree. With the discovery of the importance of regulatory genes, we realize that he was ahead of his time in focusing on the importance of a few genes controlling big changes in the organisms, not small-scales changes in the entire genome as neo-Darwinians thought. In addition, the hopeful monster problem is not so insurmountable after all. Embryology has shown that if you affect an entire population of developing embryos with a stress (such as a heat shock) it can cause many embryos to go through the same new pathway of embryonic development, and then they all become hopeful monsters when they reach reproductive age.[18]
In 2008 evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson in her article The Monster Is Back, and It’s Hopeful listed some examples which may support the hopeful monster hypothesis[19] and an article published in the nature journal in 2010 titled Evolution: Revenge of the Hopeful Monster reported that studies in stickleback populations in a British Columbia lake and bacteria populations in a Michigan lab have shown that large individual genetic changes can have vast effects on organisms "without dooming it to the evolutionary rubbish heap". According to the article "Single-gene changes that confer a large adaptive value do happen: they are not rare, they are not doomed and, when competing with small-effect mutations, they tend to win. But small-effect mutations still matter — a lot. They provide essential fine-tuning and sometimes pave the way for explosive evolution to follow."[20]

A paper by (Page et al. 2010) have written that the Mexican axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) could be classified as a hopeful monster as it exhibits an adaptive and derived mode of development that has evolved rapidly and independently among tiger salamanders. According to the paper there has been a recent interest in aspects of the hopeful monster hypothesis in recent years:

“”Goldschmidt proposed that mutations occasionally yield individuals within populations that deviate radically from the norm and referred to such individuals as "hopeful monsters". If the novel phenotypes of hopeful monsters arise under the right environmental circumstances, they may become fixed, and the population will found a new species. While this idea was discounted during the Modern synthesis, aspects of the hopeful monster hypothesis have been substantiated in recent years. For example, it is clear that dramatic changes in phenotype can occur from few mutations of key developmental genes and phenotypic differences among species often map to relatively few genetic factors. These findings are motivating renewed interest in the study of hopeful monsters and the perspectives they can provide about the evolution of development. In contrast to mutants that are created in the lab, hopeful monsters have been shaped by natural selection and are therefore more likely to reveal mechanisms of adaptive evolution.[21]
Evolutionary developmental biology
Goldschmidt presented two mechanisms for how hopeful monsters might work. One mechanism, involved “systemic mutations”, rejected the classical gene concept and is no longer considered by most modern scientists however, his second mechanism involved “developmental macromutations” in “rate genes” or “controlling genes” that change early development and thus cause large effects in the adult phenotype. These kind of mutations are similar to the ones considered in contemporary evolutionary developmental biology.[22]

Guenter Theissen
Guenter Theissen a professor of genetics has classified homeotic mutants as hopeful monsters and documented many examples for animal and plant lineages that may have originated as hopeful monsters in his scientific publications (Theissen, 2005 and Theissen et al. 2006).[23][24]

Creationist quote mining
Creationists are known for notoriously quote mining Goldschmidt, misrepresenting his views on purpose and for setting up a straw man definition of the hopeful monster. Thousands of creationist books since the 1960's have described the hopeful monster hypothesis as a bird hatching from a dinosaur egg or a reptile laying an egg with a bird popping out. The creationist Duane Gish was known for promoting this misrepresentation thoughout his books which he described as believing in a miracle.

In Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism (1983) Philip Kitcher has discussed this issue, and wrote:

“”So far as I know, nobody is currently defending the idea that the birds evolved through the emergence of a single individual bird from a reptilian egg. The principal suggestion has been that some mutations - perhaps mutations in regulatory genes - might produce large effects by altering the timing of developmental events. By modifying the pattern of development, they could produce organisms with a different form from that of the parents.[25]
Unfortunately creationists out of dishonesty never choose to really study what Goldschmidt actually said and continue to peddle the lie that he promoted the view that birds popped out of reptile eggs. According to Stephen Jay Gould the scientist who speculated that the first bird may have hatched from a reptile's egg was Otto Schindewolf who linked cosmic radiation to mutational rates from supernova explosions.[26] Creationists have obviously confused the ideas of Goldschmidt with Schindewolf.

See also

I no longer recall why I bowed out of this thread. I just read most of the first ten pages and am amazed at the erudite responses and how restrained, comparatively, most posters were. I find that I was in some instances disrupting the flow and for that I am truly sorry. I plan to read on, next week. Thank you all who have so far participated.

As we have discussed before, we've never actually seen any evolution directly