[gallo]

Quote by: anak There are a set number of genes for every species.

Do you know what a gene is? I suspect not.

Quote by: anak If there was some genetic mutation in an offspring of one species, making that offspring have a different number of genes than their parents, then that offspring would quite simply not be of the same species as her parents or her playmates.

That's just not true. Gene duplication has been observed and documented. See, for example,

Alves, M. J., M. M. Coelho and M. J. Collares-Pereira, 2001. Evolution in action through hybridisation and polyploidy in an Iberian freshwater fish: a genetic review. Genetica 111(1-3): 375-385

Brown, C. J., K. M. Todd and R. F. Rosenzweig, 1998. Multiple duplications of yeast hexose transport genes in response to selection in a glucose-limited environment. Molecular Biology and Evolution 15(8): 931-942.

Hughes, A. L. and R. Friedman, 2003. Parallel evolution by gene duplication in the genomes of two unicellular fungi. Genome Research 13(5): 794-799.

Knox, J. R., P. C. Moews and J.-M. Frere, 1996. Molecular evolution of bacterial beta-lactam resistance. Chemistry and Biology 3: 937-947.

Lenski, R. E., 1995. Evolution in experimental populations of bacteria. In: Population Genetics of Bacteria, Society for General Microbiology, Symposium 52, S. Baumberg et al., eds., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 193-215.

Lenski, R. E., M. R. Rose, S. C. Simpson and S. C. Tadler, 1991. Long-term experimental evolution in Escherichia coli. I. Adaptation and divergence during 2,000 generations. [i]American Naturalist[i] 138: 1315-1341.

Lynch, M. and J. S. Conery, 2000. The evolutionary fate and consequences of duplicate genes. Science 290: 1151-1155.

Ohta, T., 2003. Evolution by gene duplication revisited: differentiation of regulatory elements versus proteins. Genetica 118(2-3): 209-216.

Park, I.-S., C.-H. Lin and C. T. Walsh, 1996. Gain of D-alanyl-D-lactate or D-lactyl-D-alanine synthetase activities in three active-site mutants of the Escherichia coli D-alanyl-D-alanine ligase B. Biochemistry 35: 10464-10471.

Pennisi, E., 2000. Twinned genes live life in the fast lane. Science 290: 1065-1066.

Prijambada, I. D., S. Negoro, T. Yomo and I. Urabe, 1995. Emergence of nylon oligomer degradation enzymes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO through experimental evolution. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 61(5): 2020-2022.

Quote by: anak Since the genetic anomaly cannot reproduce with other animal of her parent's species, then she would have to find another animal of the exact same genetic mutation.

Nonsense. Read the above examples. Besides, you talk as if all organisms reproduce sexually. Quite limited thinking. What about the vast numbers of asexually reproducing organisms? What about the examples of parthenogenetic organisms, including examples of plants, fish, invertebrates (bees, wasps, aphids), reptiles, and sometimes birds. Even more importantly, gene duplication doesn't seem to create an impediment to normal sexual reproduction in sexually reproducing species (see examples in the above cited works).

Quote by: anak The sheer possibility [sic] of that proves that evolution will forever be an unproven theory.

Hopefully you are aware that you just said that evolution is possible. However, your statement displays a complete lack of knowledge of what science is and how it works. In science, the best it ever gets is a theory. It gets so tiring explaining to those who haven't bothered to learn what they are talking about before they speak over and over again.