Random mutations shot down on this site.

I found this site that seems to clearly disprove the commonly accepted idea that random mutations and natural selection are driving evolution. I'm no expert on the subject but I am skeptical. I was wondering if anyone who knows more then me on this subject can find any holes in this reasoning, or is it correct. I'm still undecided so I'd appreciate your criticism and opinions.RandomMutation.com is for sale | HugeDomainsEdited by DigDug Master, : "Expanding my thesis"

Welcome to EvC:Although I think your link is very interesting and I'm certain that your premise will make for a good conversation among members, we tend to look down on bare links-- meaning, we want the writer to post at least a small critique with a central theme in one's own words, and then to use the link to support your thesis.Tell us why random mutations couldn't possibly account for the vast array of complex organisms and then use the link to support the assertion.If you have any further questions on what is expected of you, feel free to address them here or in the Suggestions/Questions Forum.

---

Thou shalt not have any other Mods before Me

I expanded my thesis. I'm just asking for other people's opinions on something I don't understand.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

The analogy the author uses - language - is not a very good one. The rules of grammar and spelling are very tight, without very much room to move. Not only is the genetic code for proteins much more lax in allowing for mutations (as it has to be. If a single mutation could kill or disable the function of a cell, nothing would live), but also natural selection allows for many ways for things to reproduce and survive.Also, the mutations they were looking at are only point-mutations. A quick look in a biology textbook or on the net for types of mutations will list the many types there are, such as replications and translocations.A better analogy would be that of music (I first read of this analogy in 'The Fifth Miracle' by Australian physicist/author Paul Davies). It goes something like this:Imagine a scribe working over a piece of music. Of course, it will be very small, perhaps only a dozen notes in length. But this piece of music is copied by the scribe over, and over, and over. During this copying process, the scribe sometimes makes mistakes - maybe accidentally deleting or adding a note, or changing the pitch of a note, or even accidentally copying the chorus one too many times. And every copy is heard by a group of critics, who ask for more copies of the pleasing songs, and less of the unpleasant ones. The scribe does NOT add information to the song, having no musical training, only random changes. The music critics, on the other hand, know what good music sounds like. Thus, during this process, the musical tastes of the critics are transferred to the symphony without them even editing it themselves.Evolution works in the same way. The DNA is copied over and over, the organisms replicate again and again. Mistakes are made, random changes occur. Only those copies that code for organisms better suited for survival are copied in greater numbers. So, in effect, the information contains in the environment is transferred to the DNA transcript.I hope that helps. I'm sure other members of this site will have some further criticisms of the reasoning of the engineer who wrote that article, Percy Marshall.Edited by Doddy Curumehtar, : added that Paul is an Aussie

---

"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

Hi, Dig, and welcome to EvC.Well, the problem I see with that particular website's experiment is that it doesn't have much to do with natural selection or real-life biological evolution.Whether or not evolution has occurred can only be determined by examining empirical evidence, not by simplistic experiments. And there are better experiments to determine the plausibility that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change (check out the video on this page).

---

This world can take my money and time/ But it sure can't take my soul. -- Joe Ely

Simply put, that whole page is a strawman designed to fool people like you who don't know that much about evolution. Why do you think it requires many years of study and research to understand the concepts within the theory of evolution? If it is as simple as that page put it, everyone would be phd biologist.If I were you, I'd ignore that page. If you want to understand evolution more, just take some classes on it. Read some books that were written by real biologists and not pastors.

Welcome DigDugLet me try to use another analogy to highlight the flaw in the analogy presented.Assume someone demonstrated an attempt of setting water on fire with a match and then extrapolating the results to liquid gasoline as proof that gasoline is not flammable.

(Paraphrased from another thread)Yes, creos do love their analogies, don't they?Here's the problem. This is how adding "information" by mutation works. We begin with a DNA molecule. In one of a number of different ways, when it is copied the new molecule is different from the old one, different because the gene sequences are no longer identical. Sometimes there's stuff missing, sometime there's extra stuff, sometimes some of the stuff has changed.Sometimes the change is meaningless, sometimes the change alters how the gene works. In the second situation, what creos call "new information" has been added. No laws of thermodynamics have been violated. There was no author. It was simply an error in copying, a mutation.That these changes occur is indisputable. That these different kinds of effects can result is indisputable. Creos can argue until they are blue in the face, but no matter how persuasive their analogies are, they cannot overcome readily observable facts.

---

Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

Also from the same thread (this one): But, we really shouldn't just copy our old responses...but meh.Edited by Doddy, : Fixed alias

---

"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

It's not surprising at the level of questionability of that website.I took the time to scroll down and found a link about the fruit fly experiments. Lo and behold I found exactly what I suspected. The site claims that the fruit fly experiments failed to produce a new species or something other then a fruit fly over millions of generations. This is a classic example of outright fraud. Fruit fly experiments are designed to track specific type of genes, or damage to specific genes as a way of understanding genetics, not as a means of producing new species. They even cite what the experiment is designed to do as its own failures!So yes, the website is correct in that the experiments failed to produce new species, but that was never their purpose in the first place.Don't put much weight in that website.

Another glaring problem with this site is the the author make the very basic error of assuming a given outcome to his "evolution". The process does not work towards a given goal.If the author had taken any trouble to do some research into the development of written human language he would see a transition far more analogous to evolution. Take a look at comparisions between old, middle and modern english.This site provides nothing more than a straw-man argument based on ignorance.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

That is ironic, given what the author says in the footnotes:

quote:

---

Random Mutation fails computer simulations: Some readers will object to this statement, as there are many evolutionary programming algorithms available - for example Richard Dawkins' 'methinks it is like a weasel' program, Thomas Schneider's 'Ev' program, and Cal Tech's 'Avida'. But in every case, the computer program does NOT evolve the same way Darwinian Evolution allegedly evolves. All of these programs either 1) randomly mutate carefully selected portions of the code while keeping everything else intact (hey, that's design!), or 2) are designed to converge towards some pre-determined (pre-designed) state. In the case of Schneider's 'Ev', "evolution" is merely defined as creating more bits of information, but the information itself is totally meaningless. I'm not sure Schneider's program demonstrates much of anything at all. Every successful evolution simulation I'm aware of is, ironically, an example of intelligent design.

---

And yet, he assumes that the sentence must get more colourful, or more desriptive. But in fact, it merely has to get more likely to attract people to click on the ads (on the form of selection he uses). So, if the word 'fox' was changed to 'sex', he'd probably find that sentence to be strongly selected for! Also ironic, because the author asserts that

quote:

---

• Language, plans and instructions do not evolve from the "bottom up."
• Language, plans and instructions do not evolve in microscopic increments, one or two letters at a time. They evolve in increments of entire words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs.

---

Whereas clearly language does evolve from the bottom-up, and does quite often change one letter at a time. Why, American readers will notice I used "colourful" before, instead of "colorful". Is that a one letter change?! It can't be!And, as I said before, mutations don't just occur in one to two base pair substitutions - they can involve replications of patches of the genome, translocations, changes in reading frame and so on.

---

"Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will." (Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills.) - Arthur Schopenhauer

Hi Doddy,I spotted the language section but I totally missed the "pre-defined goals" reference.Ironic indeed!

DigDug Master,First off, I wouldn’t worry too much about posters like Tasmanian Devil in Message 7:

quote:

---

Simply put, that whole page is a strawman designed to fool people like you who don't know that much about evolution. Why do you think it requires many years of study and research to understand the concepts within the theory of evolution? If it is as simple as that page put it, everyone would be phd biologist. If I were you, I'd ignore that page. If you want to understand evolution more, just take some classes on it. Read some books that were written by real biologists and not pastors.

---

If you crowded TD, Dan Carroll, and crashfrog into one room you will have cornered three quarters of the world’s obtuse opinionation. If you were to posit that catsup is better on your hotdog than mustard they would beat you up for it and try to steal your lunch. So forget ”em.Back on topic: One thing that I think is important to remember about microevolution is that random mutation and natural selection are not the only ways to bring about a speciation. There are other important influences to consider, namely random genetic drift, gene flow, differential mating, and differential reproductive success. These considerations apply more to populations that are relatively small when compared to those of microbes, bacteria for example.Let’s single out random genetic drift, for example, as a causal factor in microevolution. Drift occurs under “founder” and “bottleneck” conditions, when a population’s size is sharply reduced somehow. Scientists often look at the proteins to determine precisely what evolves in microevolution. Two British evolutionary biologists, Nick Smith & Adam Eyre-Walker (Adaptive protein evolution in Drosophila, Nature, 2002) have studied adaptive protein evolution in two fruit-fly species D. melanogaster and D. yakuba. They determined that the two species separated about 6 million years ago, and that 45% of the separation could be attributed to natural selection. The remaining 55% of the protein differences were determined to be selection-neutral, and these difference were attributed to genetic drift.This is an interesting departure from the POV that microevolution is entirely an adaptive affair cause by natural selection. Add to that the experiments done by Daniel Hartl (2002, Essential Genetics/A Genomic Perspective) leading to predictive modeling of genetic drift, and one can easily see that selection is not the only cause of microevolution.”Hoot Mon