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Author | Topic: The End of Evolution By Means of Natural Selection | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
Faith has made it clear via PM that she will not return, so I'll leave this open a couple more days so people can post summations.
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Coyote Member (Idle past 2106 days) Posts: 6117 Joined: |
Whenever creationists start talking about "no new information" or "no beneficial mutations" or "degradation of the genome" and the like you can assume that they are coming from a biblical belief in "the fall."
This religious belief has not been confirmed by empirical evidence, but that hasn't stopped creationists from scratching for any shred of evidence that might be twisted to support their belief. That the vast majority of empirical evidence argues against their position does not seem to make any difference. Or, as a poster on another board repeatedly said, "Divine revelation is the highest form of knowledge." That religious belief was the driving force behind Faith's arguments, and no manner of evidence was able to persuade her to the contrary, became more and more obvious as the thread went on. Thus we summarize this thread. Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge. |
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Iblis Member (Idle past 3895 days) Posts: 663 Joined:
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I tried to follow the argument but it didn't stand up at all. While it is fairly easy to get rid of dominant genes simply by killing all instances of them, it is virtually impossible to get rid of recessives. They ride along and keep popping up whether they are good for survival or not.
While isolating recessives does tend to increase their likelihood of being reinforced due to the greater likelihood of inbreeding, this doesn't magically make them dominants without some further beneficial mutation. Nor does mere isolation produce anything like real speciation, the new "variety" remains capable of breeding with their cousin group unless mutation intervenes. After RAZD smacked me down about chromosome mismatches, I did better research and learned that a lot of what prevents interbreeding amongst otherwise similar species like apes and men is due to mismatches on the much more granular level of the genes themselves. This is overwhelming due to insertions and deletions which tend to cause the genetic structure for specific traits to drift away from the very similar structures in slightly different locations on cousin species. So the thread wasn't a total waste, I learned something. Thanks. Edited by Iblis, : brain mismatch
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Admin Director Posts: 12998 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
EvC's latest run-in with Faith reminds me of the Chicago 7 trial. Most here are probably too young to remember this trial from the 1960's, and the details are unimportant anyway, but what is important is how a determined group were able to disrupt the American justice system and cast themselves as victims through images like this one of Bobby Seale at trial after he refused to stop interrupting proceedings with vocal and profane outbursts:
Whether Seale and the Chicago 7 were innocent or guilty, whether their complaints about the legal process held any merit, everyone agrees that this was a low point for American justice. I believe the way courts handle problem defendants today is to remove them from the courtroom. In the 1960's Seale was kept in the courtroom because American justice requires that a defendant be able to face his accusers, but I think they've developed legal strategies that while still honoring this requirement are able to keep court proceedings from being disrupted. I recognize it's melodramatic to compare what just took place here with the Chicago 7 and Bobby Seale trials, but what is apt in the comparison is how effective complete non-cooperation with a process can be. EvC Forum's claims to fair and open discussion of the claims of creationism have taken quite a blow. Unable to muster any effective arguments or evidence for her point of view Faith fell back on a "site nullification" approach by questioning our fairness and impartiality. Sure she broke every forum guideline within her reach, but what stands out most visibly in Faith's threads are her constant complaints about this site. You have to read for at least several minutes to begin seeing how what Faith is saying is nonsense, but you can read and understand phrases like these instantly (these are, of course, pulled out of context, see Message 698 for the full context):
Faith writes: The lack of intellectual honesty in this is on the evolutionist's side... ... That is a self-serving lie. ... It's accepted by self-serving delusional evolutionists... ... ...science is a sham. We never delete posts at EvC Forum and so they will stand as long as this site does, and this makes me very sad. Edited by Admin, : Typo.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17822 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
This thread served once again to demonstrate the arrogance and closed-mindedness of creationists. Refusing to learn from the original thread, Faith never tried to quantify the loss or gain of genetic diversity, not even proposing a measure or even a basis for one, although it is clear that the simplest and most obvious - a count of the differing alleles found at each locus - was no good to her.
The OP should have served as a clear warning sign. Despite quoting the major counter-argument from the original thread Faith utterly failed to deal with it. Aside from apparently asserting that adding variation didn't add variation her sole attempt to deal with mutations only allowed one single mutation, begging the question. She went on to assert that it was not "a simple addition and subtraction problem" but never explained what the complications were, let alone how they actually helped her case. And this continued throughout the thread - Faith posted well over 200 posts, and never once managed to clearly address this major counter-argument from the original thread, a point that she herself acknowledged and intended to address. In fact it is quite likely that Faith did not understand what she was saying much of the time. Some of her statements were jaw-dropping, obvious falsehoods. Her argument was often vague and she was even unable to explain the relevance of points she made. I am thinking of her idea that there was some problem with mutations "blurring" the "character' of the species, which seemed to be somehow based on the idea that dog-breeders deliberately maintain the appearance of particular breeds. However, by that point it was already clear that breeders had taken advantage of at least one mutation - causing the short legs of the dachshund - so it was far from clear that mutations were automatically a problem even in dog breeding, let alone in wild species. We also saw her typical attempts to arbitrarily exclude evidence that she could not answer. In this case from bacteria. Granted it is not so bad as the time she insisted that we should only look at ONE END of a diagram because the other depicted strong evidence against her claims, but still it is pretty bad. Indeed, her excuse that bacteria have greater genetic diversity rather begs the question given that bacteria, because they evolve rapidly and reproduce asexually, should be prime candidates for the very loss of diversity that her argument demands. And if her argument doesn't apply to bacteria, why assume that it applies to anything else ? Perhaps the climax was when it became clear that Faith actually accepted macroevolution, as it was defined within the scientific community. Rather than accept that she meant something else by the word she went on to make completely unfounded accusations of dishonesty in a post that practically begged for a suspension (accusing other participants in the discussion of lying is frowned on here, even when it is justified). I wish that I could say that it was surprising, but anyone familiar with Faith's history here should have expected it. I kept silent when she returned, giving her the benefit of the doubt and not wishing to cause trouble but I did not expect her return to work out in any other way. Sad to say, perhaps the biggest question raised by this thread is "why was Faith allowed back ?"
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AZPaul3 Member Posts: 8513 From: Phoenix Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
I know we are not supposed to reply to summations. So fire me.
Sad, Percy? For Faith or for this site and the community it harbors? The scenario was sad in that Faith failed to appreciate the opportunity you and this site provided her to air her views, to teach and, ultimately, to learn. From the perspective of a member I say you should be proud of this site, this community and yourself precisely because of Faith. How many sites accept this level of responsibility? Is there any other site with such an active community on so many sides of so many diverse issues? How many have taken on the duty to give voice to so many different views on so many different topics and survived the inevitable clashes of cultures, personalities and philosophies? This site provides a platform for discussion, disagreement and compromise (heavy on the first two). It is the responsibility of the user who wants to be a member, regardless of station or philosophy, to recognize the value of free and open discussion and maintain at least some small level of respect and tolerance for the diverse views which this site amply supplies. It is the responsibility of the user to teach and to learn. Faith's personality did not allow her to recognize this. That is her loss. Not ours. Not yours. The archives of topics reflects this diverse mission and the ample tolerance by Admin, the moderators and the members. Nothing sad in that. Edited by AZPaul3, : syntax Edited by AZPaul3, : spelin Edited by AZPaul3, : more boo-boos
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Wounded King Member Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
I can't see the point in a summary for this thread. It was deja vu all over again from the last time Faith made exactly the same arguments. Lest anyone think this particular bit of nonsense is unique to Faith I would direct them to a post that just went up on Pharyngula describing a very similar argument from a creationist website, although they didn't seem to have gone to Faith's extent of making up highly polyploid supergenomes to allow the flood story to make biological 'sense'.
TTFN, WK
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Percy Member Posts: 22391 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
Wounded King writes: ...although they didn't seem to have gone to Faith's extent of making up highly polyploid supergenomes... This is from Faith's Message 681:
Faith in Message 681 writes: Percy writes: What we never see: polyploid chromosomes in large populations hiding extra variation that isn't expressed. Good thing I never suggested such a thing then. There was no mention of what she actually thought she had suggested. --Percy
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ZenMonkey Member (Idle past 4510 days) Posts: 428 From: Portland, OR USA Joined: |
I am also, in a strange, perverse way, going to regret seeing this thread close. I feel even more remorseful that Reduction of Alleles by Natural Selection (Faith and ZenMonkey Only) will have to close, too. If nothing else, it showed me how really ignorant I was about genetics myself. What I was attempting to to was to go step-by-step with Faith through her argument to see how it held up just in terms of its own logic. How well that was going to work will now never be known. It does look as if this thread went on to cover a lot of the ground that I suspected I was going to get to as well.
My thanks to Bluejay for sustaining that debate as long as he did. I was not worthy to follow him. I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die. -John Lydon What's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.-Steven Dutch |
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ZenMonkey Member (Idle past 4510 days) Posts: 428 From: Portland, OR USA Joined: |
I'm pretty sure that that's what Faith was going to have to fall back on: some magical form of universal polyploidy that was present at the Creation Event and has now utterly vanished (exept maybe in bacteria, with their "packed genome").
Edited by ZenMonkey, : Clarity. I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die. -John Lydon What's the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a new puppy? The puppy eventually grows up and quits whining.-Steven Dutch
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barbara Member (Idle past 4802 days) Posts: 167 Joined: |
The bacteria did not evolve to become resistant because there were studies done on bacteria with no exposure to antibiotics yet they still had the resistance.
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jar Member (Idle past 394 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
barbara writes: The bacteria did not evolve to become resistant because there were studies done on bacteria with no exposure to antibiotics yet they still had the resistance. I assume you can provide links to those studies. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 284 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The bacteria did not evolve to become resistant because there were studies done on bacteria with no exposure to antibiotics yet they still had the resistance. The bacteria are known for certain to have evolved resistance because you can check at the start of the experiment that they are not resistant. This is easy to do: you just check that the antibiotic kills the population you start off with. Do you think biologists are morons? Your claim, even if true, would be irrelevant to such experiments. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 9972 Joined: Member Rating: 5.5 |
The bacteria did not evolve to become resistant because there were studies done on bacteria with no exposure to antibiotics yet they still had the resistance. The Lederbergs' plate replica experiment starts out with a single bacterium.
Link. Either that first bacterium is resistant or it is not. If it is then 100% of the subsequent population is also resistant. This is not what the Lederbergs observed. They observed that a tiny percentage of the descendants of that single bacterium were resistant, and that this resistance was clonal in nature and inheritable. Therefore, the resistant phenotype had to arise due to a mutation sometime between the original common ancestor of the entire bacterial population in the study and the time when the descendants were exposed to antibiotics.
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barbara Member (Idle past 4802 days) Posts: 167 Joined: |
Thank You for the clarification.
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