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Author Topic:   Can you disprove this secular argument against evolution?
Percy
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Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 208 of 293 (804963)
04-14-2017 4:21 PM
Reply to: Message 196 by forexhr
04-14-2017 8:48 AM


forexhr writes:
A definition cannot change the concept. Origin of a thing and modification of a thing are two entirely different concepts.
What Darwin termed the origin of species was via descent with modification and natural selection, a process of gradual change over time.
If an animal hits the fence at your backyard with force and modifies it, this doesn't explain the origin of the fence.
This analogy doesn't work. Species aren't like fences. Species evolve gradually as populations of interbreeding organisms into new species. It isn't as if there was no species and then suddenly there was.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 215 of 293 (805060)
04-15-2017 10:25 AM
Reply to: Message 214 by forexhr
04-15-2017 9:36 AM


Dwise1 is correct that fitness assessment is how the adaptive pressures of the environment are modeled in evolutionary programs. Your example problem seems to be insisting that there be no fitness assessment, as if evolution were no more than random change. You're leaving selection pressures out of the process. Any valid evolutionary program has to include both random change and selection, and selection will always be according to some criteria.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 231 of 293 (805372)
04-18-2017 9:05 AM
Reply to: Message 229 by forexhr
04-18-2017 8:51 AM


But if the DNA of an organism's offspring is different in only one or a few nucleotides, then the change they cause in a "specific 3D shape" of, say, a protein, would be very small and would be selected for (or not) by the environment. Additional small changes would accumulate in the descendants, with change proportional to the number of generations and passage of time. Small changes gradually accumulate into large changes. Your scenario doesn't occur in evolution.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 235 of 293 (805382)
04-18-2017 10:45 AM
Reply to: Message 232 by forexhr
04-18-2017 10:06 AM


forexhr writes:
The color variation in the peppered moth is an instance of phenotypic plasticity - a pre-programmed feature of an organism.
The peppered moth changing to a dark color is an example of a type of mutation known as a transposon, or jumping gene. One position results in normal coloration, the other in dark coloration.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 272 of 293 (805683)
04-20-2017 7:16 AM
Reply to: Message 271 by forexhr
04-20-2017 4:29 AM


Re: Your capacity for non sequiturs is breathtaking
forexhr writes:
...to find this specific 3D structure.
You're still committing the sharpshooter fallacy. There is no single correct target. There are many correct targets.
I have a contextual question. When is this supposedly impossible search that you insist evolution requires supposed to happen? During a reproductive event?
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(2)
Message 283 of 293 (805855)
04-21-2017 7:25 AM
Reply to: Message 279 by forexhr
04-21-2017 6:03 AM


forexhr writes:
But, jumping genes have absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
Evolution is descent with modification combined with natural selection, and the example of the peppered moth with its jumping gene is exactly that.
Evolution on the other hand, is supposed to explain the origin of higher life forms...
Evolution explains the diversity of life by explaining how adaptation happens, namely descent with modification and natural selection.
You're still committing the sharpshooter fallacy. The sheer diversity of life itself shows that there are vast numbers of satisfactory targets.
--Percy

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Replies to this message:
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