However, most mutations are deleterious and lead to an impaired as opposed to improved function.
Actually, most mutations are neutral. And beneficial mutations aren't that scarce. We've seen too many within our own lifetimes. The mutation that gave bacteria the ability to digest nylon, mutations that occur to pathogens that make them resistant to antibodies (biggest example is HIV). I could give plenty more if you'd like.
This means that the mutation would not be expressed unless it was passed on from both parents,
Not necessarily. Mutations are changes in the DNA. A mutation can change a gene slightly, giving a different allele. The new allele can code for a slightly different protein. If the normal allele codes for an active enzyme, the new allele may still code for the same active enzyme, may code for an inactive protein, or may code for an active enzyme that catalyzes a different reaction. Of these options, coding for the same active enzyme may be the most common, but then we don't usually notice there's been a mutation. Coding for an inactive protein is the next most likely outcome. So, most of the time when there is a mutation that produces any noticeable effect at all, it produces an allele that codes for an inactive protein. A heterozygote Aa produces some active enzyme and some inactive protein. Most often, one "dose" of active enzyme catalyzes the normal reaction enough to produce a normal appearance, so we say that the allele A is dominant, and the mutant allele a is recessive. Remember that not all genes are Mendelian. And you forgot that most mutations occur after fertilization, and this negates the need of both parents having the same mutation. In future generations, the offspring that express that mutation (if beneficial) the most, would have survival advantage over the others.
Nonetheless, there are plenty of exceptions. Certain types of dwarfism in humans are caused by a dominant mutant allele, for instance.
Just a side note.. Since sexual reproduction involves many cell replications, humans have about 1.6 mutations per generation. This is likely an underestimate, because mutations with very small effect are easy to miss in the studies. Including neutral mutations, each human zygote has about 64 new mutations. Another estimate concludes 175 mutations per generation, including at least 3 deleterious mutations.
These are real scientific findings produced by real scientists. You can find the above numbers in these two books:
Drake, J. W., B. Charlesworth, D. Charlesworth, and J. F. Crow. 1998. Rates of spontaneous mutation.
Genetics 148: 1667-1686.
Nachman, M. W. and S. L. Crowell. 2000. Estimate of the mutation rate per nucleotide in humans.
Genetics 156(1): 297-304.
However, the fossil record indicates that speciation has occurred in leaps as opposed to gradually.
The fossil record has huge gaps. We are lucky enough with what we find, seeing how hard the process of fossilisation is. However, still though, we do find many, MANY intermediate fossils that show gradual evolution in almost every single class of animals out there. You ask for it, I name it.
I don't see a selective advantage unless we have a fully functional process.
Each step along the way had its own selective advantage, like I briefly explained above. Did you watch the two attached videos? It really is useless to discuss this point before you do.
I don't deny that ToE is widely known and reasonably well accepted in the scientific community
Well over 99.85% of biologists in America alone accept evolution as a true theory. (Robinson, B. A. 1995. Public beliefs about evolution and creation.)
I disagree with your statement
Not mine, mate. It's Dobzhansky's. And he's a biologist.
In a strange sense of the word, I am a practicing evolutionist.
True. That makes me even more surprised that you don't accept evolution.
Assuming that someone is able to eventually prove ToE beyond a shadow of doubt and it becomes the Law of Evolution
No no no no no no no.. First of all evolution IS proven beyond all reasonable doubt to be true. Ask any honest biologist and they will tell you so, even the religious ones. Second, theories don't become laws.. Theories use laws to explain facts, in the broadest sense. Evolution is a theory. And even if you had a time machine and fast-forwarded the last 65-million years to see mammals and birds evolving from reptiles with your very eyes, it would still be called a theory. A law is a law, like the law of natural selection, which the theory of evolution uses to explain the many relevant facts.
what will be the practical application of it to everyday life.
Here's some of what understanding evolutionary theory is good for:
1. Wider biology: The evolutionary approach is key to much current research in biology that does not set out to study evolution per se, especially in organismal biology and ecology. For example, evolutionary thinking is key to life history theory. Annotation of genes and their function relies heavily on comparative, that is evolutionary, approaches. The field of evolutionary developmental biology investigates how developmental processes work by using the comparative method to determine how they evolved.
2. Medicine: Antibiotic resistance can be a result of point mutations in the pathogen genome. The antibiotic action against the pathogen can be seen as an environmental pressure; those bacteria which have a mutation allowing them to survive will live on to reproduce. They will then pass this trait to their offspring, which will result in a fully resistant colony. Also, understanding the changes that have occurred during an organism's evolution can reveal the genes needed to construct parts of the body, genes which may be involved in human genetic disorders. For example, the Mexican tetra is an albino cavefish that lost its eyesight during evolution. Breeding together different populations of this blind fish produced some offspring with functional eyes, since different mutations had occurred in the isolated populations that had evolved in different caves.
Computer science: As evolution can produce highly optimised processes and networks, it has many applications in computer science. Simulations of evolution using evolutionary algorithms and artificial life started with the work of Nils Aall Barricelli in the 1960s, and was extended by Alex Fraser, who published a series of papers on simulation of artificial selection. Artificial evolution became a widely recognised optimisation method as a result of the work of Ingo Rechenberg in the 1960s and early 1970s, who used evolution strategies to solve complex engineering problems.
I could write a whole book on what benefits we gain from understanding evolution.. Just Google "Applications of evolution."
Is the objective to prove that God does not exist except in the minds of theistic people?
Not at all. God and evolution are perfectly compatible. Even Islam and evolution are compatible. Evolution only contradicts the literary interpretation of the Bible.
without having a need to know the how of it.
This is the only part I don't agree with. Even the Quran tells Muslims to work out the how's of things..
