Question for KSC

Hi Karl,I was wondering if you have been able to find any credible evidence that all structures within, say, a limb require specific mutations in order to alter their morphology, as you have implied numerous times in the past with your claims regarding 'multiple, serial mutations' or whatever it was. Remember? Like the time you posted a litany of structures found in a limb (veins, muscles, etc) and insisted that each of them requires their own mutations to change?

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Originally posted by ksc:
My original post (now lost) if my memory serves me correct was in reference to the changes required to change a leg into a flipper or a scale into a feather.
Lets look at the leg, mutations were needed to lose the fur of the animal. Mutationswere needed to change the bone structure. Mutations were needed to grow the "new" flipper material. Mutations to the DNA coding at practically every instance isneeded to produce this change. It is not an issue if a bigger flipper will be covered completely with skin.

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And therein lies your error - which has been pointed out to you many times. Changes in developmental genes - and sometimes in genes not directly impacting development - can have profound phenotypic effects. My favorite is the point mutation in the gene encoding the receptor for FGF-3. This mutation produces achondroplasia (dwarfism). That single point mutations changes: bone length and proportion for ALL limb bones; alters the propoprtion of certain bones in reference to others; alters all relevant muscle size and shape; alters all blood vessel routing; alters all nervous tissue in the limbs; etc.What "new flipper material" are you referring to? What does a flipper have that a terrestial limb does not?As for the "mutations were needed to lose fur" , you are doing the old creationist cart-before-the-horse trick. Why do you assume that a whale needed to lose its fur? That it did (I guess...) is a bonus, but otters do quite well and they have more hair follicles per unit area than any other animal alive. Taking the extant and coming up with a list of things that HAD to have happened in order to get where that creature is today is illogical. Take computers. Look at all of the things that HAD to happen - in order - for us to be having this exchange right now. Gee - what are the odds? I guess the computer that I am using could not have been built by humans improving on earlier versions - clearly, it was created as is by some deity...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ksc:
[b]Considering evolution doesn't happen on the macro-level, there can't possibly be any proof. [b][/QUOTE]Proof of what? And thats quite a matter-of-fact statement there. Any supportive evidence?

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BUT

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It is up to the evolutionist to present proof that a single mutation has the ability to change a fin into a leg or a leg into a flipper.

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Why is that? Who said that this was the case?[b] [QUOTE] Now considering that there are evos who claim that it is a slow process lasting many of millions of years with scads of mutations I would venture to say that your theories dictate that multiple serial mutations are required to produce the evolutionary changes you evos claim happens when a leg is mutated into a flipper. [/b][/QUOTE]What are "multiple serial mutations"?

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Originally posted by ksc:
slpx
s for the "mutations were needed to lose fur" , you are doing the old creationist cart-before-the-horse trick. Why do you assume that a whale needed to lose its fur? That it did (I guess...) is a bonus, but otters do quite well and they have more hair follicles per unit area than any other animal alive. Taking the extant and coming up with a list of things that HAD to have happened in order to get where that creature is today is illogical. Take computers. Look at all of the things that HAD to happen - in order - for us to be having this exchange right now. Gee - what are the odds? I guess the computer that I am using could not have been built by humans improving on earlier versions - clearly, it was created as is by some deity...

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No tricks slpx, the fact are that the whale lost it's fur. sorry. According to YOUR theories...mutations were needed....

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You simply do not get it, do you?

As an addendum - creationism needs mutations, too. How else are you going to explain getting all those cats from the original cat-kind?

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Originally posted by ksc:
There is variation with in an already established gene pool from the created kind. There was and still is no requirement to bring about the different cat species thru mutations.

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Now it sounds like you are claiming that the whale flipper came about with no mutations. Is that true?

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How would there have been variation in a 'gene pool' contributed to by only a single male and female?What were the genetic mechanisms that dictated which phenotype would be expressed?No, it is not true that I believe that the 'whale flipper' came about without mutations. However, you are still hung up on two key issues:
1. The number of mutations
You insist that some large number of mutations were required; that these mutations had to happen "over and over again" and "be directed to" the "DNA strand" that deals with flipper/limb morphology. Ignoring for now the obvious dearth of information you possess regardiong developmental genetics, I have provided a documented example of single point mutations producing relatively large scale phenotypic limb changes. You ignore this.2. You are still using what I call the reverse cart-before-the-horse fallacy. You are looking at the extant 'whale', taking evolutionary hypotheses of its descent, and wondering how evolution could have accounted for the specific mutations that have occurred. You do not/cannot/will not see the fallacy in that.Allow me to demonstrate using an analogy.Karl Crawford exists. Yet his parents were two of several billion humans that could have mated. Each of them have genomes on the order of 3.2 billion nucloetides. What are the chances that their specific sequence of nucleotides existed? that their specific haploid genomes merged to form the zygote with a unique diploid genome that produced Karl? The mutations that produced Karl had to have happened over and ove again in the lineaqges leading to him, in the correct order. It is impossible for this to have happened. Therefore, Karl could not possibly be the result of the mating of his parents.Therefore, sexual reproduction does not occur.Silly? You bet. Then, I just employed the same sort of backwards logic that KSC and those like him do.

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Originally posted by ksc:
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Originally posted by SLPx:

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How would there have been variation in a 'gene pool' contributed to by only a single male and female?

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KSC:
I can see differances in my own kids and they were produced by a single male and female. I've seen litters of dogs that have produced offspring inwhich heavy traits from each parent was expressed in different dogs. To be honest, I think you ought to think about your last question.

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I thought about it before I wrote it, but it seems that you did not think about it at all before you responded. It is YOUR belief that some mythological 'cat-kind' present on the ark produced - in only a few thousand years - all of the extant felids. I seriously doubt that the 'variation' you see in your kids is even remotely like the variation that is ABSOLUTELY REQUIRED in the creation model. Unless, of course, you think that your great-great grandchildren will be members of a distinct species. I am not talking about different breeds of dogs, either. I am talking about getting ocelots, cerval cats, jaguarundis, lions, cheetahs, lynxes, cougars, house cats, etc. from some original 'kind' of cat. You say that the original cat kind had all of this variation 'built in'. And your evidence appears to be 'variations' in your children and differential expression of traits in dog litters.
Noted.

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SLP:
What were the genetic mechanisms that dictated which phenotype would be expressed?

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KSC:
Why would this be a hinderance?

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Hinderance? What are you talking about? I asked for your proposed mechanisms that would, for example, repress all of the alleles responsible for the traits seen in, say, a ceval cat in this original kind. Your 'answer' is a total non-sequitur.

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SLPx:

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No, it is not true that I believe that the 'whale flipper' came about without mutations. However, you are still hung up on two key issues:
1. The number of mutations
You insist that some large number of mutations were required; that these mutations had to happen "over and over again" and "be directed to" the "DNA strand" that deals with flipper/limb morphology.

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KSC:
Absolutely. Or are you now claiming a mutation to the echo-location system will produce change to the flippers?

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This is your standard comeback, and it is as nonsensical now as it was when you first used it years ago on CARM and elsewhere. What is your hang-up with echolocation? The fact of the matter is, mutations that affect limb morphology could very well affect other systems. Indeed, some genetic defects in fact are manifested in what appear to be completely unrelated ways. Am I making any sort of statemtn about the "DNA strand" that controls limb morphology and echo-location apparatus? No. But I do understand that development is not dictated by Karl Crawfords odd take on such things.

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SLP:
Of course, you completely ignore your repeated claim that the mutation must happen "over and over again". What does that mean. What is your evidence?

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KSC:
The mutations must be pinpointed to the area under change and they must occur over and over again. This is a no brainer.

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Whyt over and over again? And what does 'pinpointed' mean? If it such a no-brainer, surely you must have lots of evidence suportive of your position. It is a no-brainer that what you are proposing is in fact the opposite of what evolution indicates - you are proposing that some proto-whale (or some 'designer') wanted flippers and somehow directed specific mutations to occur. You are quite wrong. And THAT is a no brainer.

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SLPx:
Ignoring for now the obvious dearth of information you possess regardiong developmental genetics, I have provided a documented example of single point mutations producing relatively large scale phenotypic limb changes. You ignore this.

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KSC:
No you haven't. All you did was produce a larger or smaller phenotypic limb change. The structure remained the same. I think labeling that as a relatively large scale is incorredct. In the case you provided the leg was still a leg. Just a different size.

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have you ever seen the bone structure of an achondroplastic limb? By the way, ALL of the structures in the limb are altered by that single point mutation. All of those structures that you cut and pasted from some anatomy book and claiming that each one required a 'pinpointed mutation' to change - all are changed by that one mutation. I thus refuted your repeated claim regarding some huge number of 'pinpointed mutations' being required to alter limb morphology.
By the way - a flipper is just a limb with 'webbed' digits and altered proportions. But you knew that... Also by the way, there is quite a bit of information in the literature regarding the fin-limb transition:Chiu CH, Nonaka D, Xue L, Amemiya CT, Wagner GP.
Evolution of Hoxa-11 in lineages phylogenetically positioned along the fin-limb transition.
Mol Phylogenet Evol. 2000 Nov;17(2):305-16.Kondo T, Herault Y, Zakany J, Duboule D.
Genetic control of murine limb morphogenesis: relationships with human syndromes and evolutionary relevance.
Mol Cell Endocrinol. 1998 May 25;140(1-2):3-8. Review.Sordino P, van der Hoeven F, Duboule D. Related Articles
Hox gene expression in teleost fins and the origin of vertebrate digits.
Nature. 1995 Jun 22;375(6533):678-81.

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SLP:

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2. You are still using what I call the reverse cart-before-the-horse fallacy. You are looking at the extant 'whale', taking evolutionary hypotheses of its descent, and wondering how evolution could have accounted for the specific mutations that have occurred. You do not/cannot/will not see the fallacy in that.

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Allow me to demonstrate using an analogy.

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Karl Crawford exists. Yet his parents were two of several billion humans that could have mated. Each of them have genomes on the order of 3.2 billion nucloetides. What are the chances that their specific sequence of nucleotides existed? that their specific haploid genomes merged to form the zygote with a unique diploid genome that produced Karl? The mutations that produced Karl had to have happened over and ove again in the lineaqges leading to him, in the correct order. It is impossible for this to have happened. Therefore, Karl could not possibly be the result of the mating of his parents.

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KSC:
Your really out there. The example you just presented is not evolution nor has anything to do with evolution.

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It was an analogy, Karl. It was noit meant to be an explicit treatise on evolution. Of course, it amply demonstrates that what you say has little to do with evolution, as I emulated your logic.

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KSC:
Now, if you want to talk about chances, what are the chances of two other ancestors producing a linage that creates a person that is exactly like the other? In this case the answer is ZERO.

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Your point?

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You might as well said what ar the odds of hitting the lottery? We all know it's not very good, but people hit it. Now what are the odds of a person hitting it again in their life time? Almost if not zilch. Now lets go to 3 then 4 major lottery wins in a single life time by the same person choosing the correct numbers. Now the odds are to the point that you just might as well say, now way. Impossible. This example is more like evolution with the need to repeat mutations in the DNA strand(s) responsible for the changing of a leg to flipper or the developement of echo-location. It is quite obvious that evolution fails.

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There you go again with your repeated (but wholly unsupported) assertions. You STILL don't get it. Changing developmental genes or genes that influence morphology can alter phenotype WITHOUT being 'directed at the DNA stand'. You still have not answered my earlier question - what do you mean by "DNA strand"? The only thing that is obvious is that you are relying on your shallow grasp of the science to prop up your belief.

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SLP:
Therefore, sexual reproduction does not occur.

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KSC:
You'll excuse me if I don't respond to that ignorance

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That 'ignorance' follows directly from your logic re: repeated mutations in the 'DNA strand' being so unlikely that evolution fails. Just following your lead.