Extent of Mutational Capability

The creationist use of macro- and micro- evolution is exclusive to them, thus in this context it is reasonable to regard them as creationist terms.Modern evolutionary theory certainly allows neutral mutations to spread by drift, so changes that require multiple mutations before achieving benefit are certainly possible and arguably it is inevitable that some will eventually appear.Given the limited timescale for observation it is rather obvious that no evolution that is directly observed would be counted as evolution from one "kind" (an ill-defined creationist term) to another. The relevant evidence we do have points rather strongly towards evolution between groups that creationists would consider separate kinds (dinosaurs to birds seems a good example, although the common ancestry of dogs and cats or the evolution of whales as well as human evolution all seem good candidates)I believe that gene duplication has been observed in bacteria, and even subsequent divergence of the duplicates.

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The terms micro and macroevolution are usually credited to evolutionist Yuri Filipchenko, and they are certainly not exclusive to evolutionists

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[ improved example ]The diversification of the cat family is a clear example of macroevolution under the definition used by your reference. Yet you would call it microevolution. You are not using the word in the same sense.Simply looking at the words and ignoring the fact that they are used with quite different meanings is only going to confuse the issue.

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In small populations with long reproduction times, such as humans, the waiting time becomes prohibitive, especially when larger numbers of neutral mutations are required to get a benefit

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The difficulty is in neutral mutations appearing and spreading in a short timescale. If the time scale is not an issue - and it need not be - then the problem does not exist.

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Gene duplication has certainly been observed in bacteria, but I'm not sure about conversion. Perhaps if you want to count Nylonase but that was a small variation to an existing enzyme that changed the target but not the function.

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I believe that I read of another example. However, it must be pointed out that there is no reason why it cannot occur. Once you accept duplication I cannot see any reason to suppose that one of the copies cannot change and be useful. And obviously small changes are most likely in short timescales anyway. In longer timescales we should expect bigger changes in function, through cooption, for instance.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

I note a significant difference. "Species" represent an attempt to describe biological reality, which has trouble because that reality is not easily described - but still the concept is based on observation. "Kinds" on the other hand are based on assumption. The concept of species, then, has a place in science but the concept of kinds needs to earn it.If that is not enough, we should expect "kinds" to be quite clearly defined, if they exist, whereas if evolution is true we should not expect species to be clearly defined.

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btw ID is not synonymous with Creationism. Many Intelligent Design proponents are evolutionists. Many creationists have reservations about some ID.

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I think that it should be noted that it is generally only Young Earth Creationists that have a problem with ID and that is only because the ID movement refuses to take a position on the age of the Earth. This is because the ID movement is dominated by Old Earth Creationists who want to build a coalition to oppose evolution.I also rather doubt that "many evolutionists" are ID proponents, for much the same reason.

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RAZD has also proposed a definition "A "kind" would then be a clade with no previous ancestor." I think this is workable so long as you suspend the inherent assumption of cladistics that all clades are subsets of the LUCA clade. (Please note that RAZD does not accept that such kinds actually exist.)

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Unless you plan to argue about bacteria and nothing else, that is hardly workable.Common ancestry is less an assumption of cladistics and more of a conclusion. If dogs and cats were entirely separate creations than cladistic analysis would be expected to show that.So really, if you want to stick to creationist views of "kind" boundaries you have to insert arbitrary divisions not supported by cladistics.So, again we see that the creationist definition of macroevolution is, as I said, a creationist invention.

I think that to call common ancestry an assumption is at best an oversimplification. For a start, isn't the use of outgroups a test of that assumption ? And on a less formal level, why should cladistics produce a nested hierarchy if it is dealing with disjoint groups ? And surely there are characters - not to mention the genetic evidence - which are naturally explained in terms of common descent.

I think that we are still talkin past each other.For instance, even your example of taking distantly related groups will still produce a nested tree showing that somewhere much more closely related than others, with a high degree of confidence, which it need not do if they were truly unrelated.I suppose that selection of traits is also important - some traits can be more easily be produced than others (i.e. convergent evolution)

Tomanswer the actual arguments:

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When a chain of beneficial mutations lead to a favourable result we can expect evolution to find this fairly easily. A single point mutation is the easiest and can be readily achieved. When multiple non-beneficial mutations are required the probability is the multiplication of individual probabilities

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In the case where a specific chain of mutations is required in the short term this argument may be relevant. In the more general case it is not, as I have aleady explain. Neutral mutations continually appear and spread through the population. Those that are in the population are available, and newly-occurring mutations may take advantage of them. A simple multiplicative probability calculation is not relevant to that situation.

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Now look at it from another point of view. How frequent are functional proteins in the sequence space of all possible combinations. Ann Gauger offers a neat analogy about the rarity of functional protein folds, calculated by her colleague Doug Axe. Hitting upon one is akin to standing outside the Milky Way and trying to strike a single quark held in the hand of a bather lying on the shore of Lake Michigan. It's that specific, mind-bogglingly beyond the reach of blind, unguided evolutionary groping. http://www.evolutionnews.org/...biologist_ann_g_2103194.html . Where there is a chain of beneficial mutations a result is achievable but a chain of a few neutral steps will blow the waiting time out of practical possibility, even for bacteria let alone humans.

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I generally don't waste my time with watching videos, especially propaganda videos (and the text makes it clear that is what it is). If there are actual arguments there, you can produce them (and you will need to do a little better than offer the opinion of an ID proponent like Axe or Gauger). I would point out, for instance, that the probability of getting a functional protein by modifying another functional protein is rather different fromte probability of randomly assembling a functional protein from amino acids.

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This is not a case of we don’t know; therefore God. We have the data and we can say we do know; therefore not Evolution.

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Does this data of yours show that evolution requires specific sequences of mutations in the short term, rather than neutral mutations spreading through the population providing opportunities for beneficial changes ? If not, then your argument is something of a failure, relying on an unsupported and unlikely assumption.

Oh look, a Creationist is quote-mining. Let's look at the context: Answering that will require more than basic math.

You know, citing Walter ReMine is hardly going to prove your case. And I recognise "saintpaulscience" as ReMine's site and the claim of 1667 mutations as his assertion. ReMine's opinions are not accepted science.The first problem is that Haldane's Dilemma assumes hard selection. Soft selection can work in parallel so it does not hit the same limit, so you have not even got a limit on the number of beneficial substitutions.The second problem is that you don't go anywhere with your number. You don't offer any argument that the number is insufficient, and since your number explicitly leaves out substitutions due to drift the actual differences in the genome are going to be considerably larger.(As a side note, even the number of changed bases due to selection will be considerably larger - mutations that affect multiple bases are less common than point mutations but not so rare that they can be ignored)

I very much doubt that you have fairly evaluated the talk origins archive.If you can come up with valid criticisms then please start a thread. You won't be the first to try, and wouldn't be the first to fail.

It's even worse for CCR than that.If you want to consider differences in the genomes there will be some from mutations that occurred before the split. If one allele is fixed in the human lineage, and another in the chimpanzee lineage - or even if an allele is fixed in one lineage and lost in the other - that would contribute to the differences.

You seem to have missed the significance of the context:

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This is an underestimate. Why? Because it doesn't take into account the diversity which existed before the split, which will have been lost in different ways on the way to me and the chimp. (Usually this will involve fixation in the two populations as a whole. )

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This refers to alleles already in the population at the time of the common ancestor, so mean time to fixation is not really relevant (because there is no fixed start point). The correct way to handle it is to look at the number of alleles fixed by drift in the time period since the split without reference to time to fixation.(Granted it is possible that an allele will independently fixed in both populations but I think that is uncommon enough that it can be ignored for an estimate)

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Taking into account the diversity which existed before the split is not going to save the situation. You would have to consider the amount that were "partially fixed" but common and the effect that would have.

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The diversity that existed before is certainly relevant - and I do not find your objection significant. Certainly there would be significant variation in the ancestral population, and even the population splits that occurred when the human and chimp lineages diverged should have caused some to move closer to fixation in each population.

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Then you have to consider minimum time to fixity and that the mean time to fixity can not be linearly extrapolated to 100% mutations fixed.

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Except that we obviously do not unless we have a clear starting point. What is wrong with taking the number of alleles we expect to be fixed in that time ? It is obviously a better estimate.

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Of course you can make the proposition work if you make enough dubious assumptions along the way

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You do realise that it is your arguments that rely on dubious assumptions ?

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As well as the 35 million base pair differences there are also over 700 non-homologous genes to be explained, the increase in brain mass, as well as the obvious ability to walk on two feet and talk.

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The increase in brain size is rather well documented in the fossil record. Chimpanzees have quite good communication skills for an animal and the increase in brain size is rather obviously related to improvements in the human lineage. And I don't see any problem in the change in locomotion either.That leaves the (allegedly) non-homologous genes. I'd expect these to be generally genes lost in one lineage and not the other (horizontal transfer is not completely out of the question but I would not expect it to account for more than a very few, if any)

A better suggestion would be for you to deal honestly with the situation.Dr. Adequate has been perfectly clear on when he is talking about fixed alleles and when he is not. He cannot be blamed for your confusion.Demanding that the completely irrelevant issue of time to fixity be included doesn't help either.