What are the 8 premises of natural selection?

Question

What are the 8 premises of natural selection?

Answer 1

This guy listed 8 gulfs that are claimed by creationists to be impossible gulfs.  I wouldn't know how to break it down into "the eight" premises otherwise.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-meri...

"There exist impossible gulfs between animal/vegetable, invertebrate/vertebrate, marine animals/amphibians, amphibians/reptiles, reptiles/birds, reptiles/mammals, mammals/humans.

Eight impossible gulfs. Impossible to find gulfs.

1) Between the living and non-living or dead matter

This is the abiogenesis debate.

The rest is a taxinomy of man with the similarity argument turned into the gaps argument. Is the glass half empty or half full?

What is this gulf? I have yet (despite looking and asking many) found it at all, let alone found it to be an impossible gulf.

The spectrum between clearly living and singular elementary particles is wide, and not linear (few things really are) but it appears to be continuous.

2) Between the vegetable and the animal kingdoms

Animal cells have some similarity with plant cells, and indeed there are forms, euglena, with cloroplasts and flagellae, that look like intermediates. Cells from both kingdoms are eukeryots that are distinct from other cell types belonging to at least three other kingdoms.

There are quite a few plant/animals in the same creature. Most microscopic because a plant doesn't collect enough energy to be mobile in large scale. But there are plenty of small ones. What is a euglena? And where do protista & viri fit in here?

3) Between the invertebrates and the vertebrates;

The vetebrates are biochemically closest to the echinodermata, and urochordates. The free swimming soft chord animals are similar to the sessile forms.

See also sharks and squids.

4) Between marine animals and amphibians;

A steady change from fish to lobefined air breathing fish to amphibians with fish like larval stages can be observed in extant species and in the fossil record.

See also mudpuppies and frogs. An amphibian that never leaves the water is a marine animal. This gulf is not only impossible, it is non-existent.

5) Between amphibians and reptiles;

Amphibians predate reptiles in the fossil record. The development of the amneonic egg, with shell and the difference in the skin of extant reptiles and amphibians suggests that the reptilian characters were adaptations developed on amphibian ancestors. The time in the fossil record when the reptiles became important was one when amphibian habitats were being reduced and when reptiles could have succeeded on drier continents.

What is this gulf, and what was a dinosaur? (warning: trick question! Specifically what is the impossible gulf between, for instance, a salamander and a chameleon?

6) Between reptiles and birds;

The ornithischia, with bird-like pelvises appeared before the modern birds, whch began to appear in Cretaceous time. Intermediates are known.

7) Between reptiles and mammals;

The therapsida in permean time, Mammal-like reptiles appear before the first mammals, but intermediate forms are known, and a fairly complete record of the changes in the facial bones between these reptiles and true mammals is known from Permean time. Does anyone know if mammalian dentition is documented into this time. Did the Therapsida have differentiated dentition?

8) Between mammals and the human body;

The distinguishing characteristic of living MAMMALS is lactation. Despite the invention of baby bottles, human females still lactate."