E MICHAEL WITE RESPONDS:
This is an argument for gradualism the notion that it takes thousands and millions of years to accumulate diversity.
This has been proven to be false with the study of Darwin's finches by Peter Grant for over twenty years.
In 1977 there was a drought on the island of Daphne Major. It lasted for 551 days.
The smaller seeds became scarce and those finches that had smaller beaks died out from starvation.
The finches with the larger beaks could crack open the larger seeds and survived.
In 1978 the Grant's returned to Daphne Major to see what effect the drought had on the finch population.
From previous measurements they found that the Finches with the larger beaks had increased their beak sizes by 3 percent.
And that was in just 551 days !
So if you do the math, in only a couple of hundred years, diversity can occur quite rapidly.
