the phylogeographic challenge to creationism

Mick requested that you cool it way back in Message 128.Funny how intolerant you are of anybody who really has something to say against evolution.This message has been edited by Faith, 12-06-2005 01:12 PM

Yup, and I've held back for awhile. It gets tempting when you offer such openings.The fact is that you have, indeed, been only repeating yourself.Others of your ilk argue that evolutionary mechanisms can not add information -- it is precisely the selection that you are on about that does so by selecting against the environment. You argue that evolutionary process can not add variability. Mutations do that. Everything born has some additional variablitity. You, yourself, are proof that you are wrong.You will never, ever get it though. I don't understand why you continue. You've already stated elsewhere that none of this matters. That no evidence or reason matters that ony Faith that your views are right matters. In that case why do you contradict that view by pretending to argue using your idea of evidence and logic?All you do is make yourself appear to be inconsistent and amusing.

And you just deny as "others of your ilk" do that all the evolutionary processes DO IN FACT not add information, but in fact reduce the very genetic diversity that evolution depends upon. You ignore all that, allow others to think that they contribute when they don't, and rush to emphasize mutation. For good reason. It is evolution's only hope. And considering that when pressed evolutionists will admit that mutation adds something useful so infrequently as to make a joke of the idea, what we are dealing with here is nothing but hidebound prejudice. At least in your case. In the case of others I see that the idea of evolution is seductive, I see how it SEEMS to be a valid possibility, but when you really carefully examine each of its supports they crumble before your eyes. Mutation too, but I'm leaving that one for another discussion because it is the ONLY additive process and I'd like it to be recognized that despite various confusions ALL THE OTHERS are subtractive. I've made the case over and over. I've answered all the objections as they come up. That does get repetitive but so do the objections.This message has been edited by Faith, 12-06-2005 01:26 PM

Why are you so hung up on the number of proccesses that are either additive or subtractive? Even if there's only 1 additive process (mutation) - if it adds more than the others subtract, you have a net gain. What's so hard about this?
Where does mutation "crumble" before our very eyes? You are saying you want to ignore mutation for now, but if it is the "lone hope" for evolution, or whatever you want to call it, what exactly are you accomplishing by not talking about it?
If you want to make the case that genetic diversity decreases over time, the one thing you better damn well NOT ignore is mutation.

The point is that as soon as somebody, such as yourself in this post, acknowledges that "without mutation the ToE wouldn't work" they very soon turn right around and deny it. You haven't -- yet, and maybe you won't, but this is the reason for what I am doing. It will be stated and then denied, and it is denied either by insisting that the other processes aren't really subtractive after all(see DBlevins last post in which he starts out by saying that genetic drift does reduce diversity but in nearly the same breath insists that it facilitates evolution nevertheless, although all it does is produce new phenotypes.) OR it is denied by adding some other processes that supposedly increase diversity besides mutation, such as epigenetics, or as Modulous just did, fecundity (Mammuthus also added that one), selection and variability, which I have answered by showing that they aren't additive at all, but in two cases subtractive and in one merely a method of increasing the numbers of phenotypes regardless of the genetic picture.If my opponents would simply acknowledge purely and simply that I have made my point without arguing with it in these various ways I would not have to keep repeating it in answer to each new denial.

Because it is not generally recognized that the majority of the processes that are taught to biology students as "evolutionary processes" in themselves do not facilitate evolution at all but in fact work against it. People do have the erroneous idea that somehow natural selection, genetic drift, migration and other "evolutionary processes" could lead to evolution, and the fact is that they do not, they work against the possibility of evolution. If this were acknowledged, if students weren't made to absorb this erroneous idea, we could go on to the next topic which is the only genetically additive process, mutation. But when mutation comes up alone, also there the subtractive processes are described as somehow contributing to evolution when all they do is fix in a new phenotype while overall reducing genetic diversity which is counter to evolution. First absorb my first point. In answer to this point, yes of course, IF it adds more, IF it somehow produces something useful that is selected, and IF this in some way counters the subtracting processes, sure. I've said this over and over on this thread. First acknowledge the subtracting processes, keep them in mind when mutation is discussed, don't let them get blurred in formulae such as mutation+selection, and THEN we can see if mutation really has this ability to counter them. As I've said above, I would HOPE to accomplish making people aware that all the other processes that are called evolutionary processes aren't evolutionary at all but subtractive. It is a necessary starting point for seeing mutation in the right perspective. My saying mutation crumbles was predicated on the other part of the sentence where I remark that evolutionists even admit that a precious few mutations are in any way useful to a species, which makes all the talk about abundance of mutations quite problematic. Of course. First recognize the inexorable trend to the reduction of genetic diversity without taking it back as is being done over and over on this thread, and THEN we can move on.

I am not especially familiar with other process which introduce variability in the ToE, and frankly I don't care about them right now. Mutation, to my knowledge, is the main one. In answering my question of why you are trying to make this point, your response is basically "Because other people keep waffling about it"
I don't think the purpose of your point is to make people waffle - so in just looking at the basic definition of evolution as mutation + selection (and I'm not saying that's all that's involved in evolution), if someone were to conceed the point to you that without mutation, the whole thing falls apart - then what?
WHY are you trying to make this point? Mutation DOES occur so what are you gaining by claiming that without it, evolution doesn't happen?

This seems to be the main point of this post. But evolution IS the combination of all these forces, TOGETHER. Evolution is not simply "the addition of genetic diversity" which seems to be your working definition, at least in this post. The additions through mutation make evolution possible, as does the subtraction/deletion/killing of selection. So the argument that those forces work against evolution certainly doesn't follow, as those forces are part of evolution.

Sort of. Dawkins put it this way:"...strong 'selection pressure', we could be forgiven for thinking, might be expected to lead to rapid evolution. Instead, what we find is that natural selection exerts a braking effect on evolution. The baseline rate of evolution, in the absence of natural selection, is the maximum possible rate. That is synonymous with the mutation rate."Note, however, that he is talking about the rate of evolution. What we find most interesting about evolution is not how fast it goes, but where it goes.

Well, what is neat about it is the fact that it demonstrates speciation in action in a way that in a certain sense is frozen in time, so that any time one visits the place, one can see the living evidence. Wipe out that which connects the two extremes and they are no longer members of the same species -- but are they members of the same species while the bridge exists? Well, yes and no. Is cyan blue or is it green? At this point, we are asking the wrong question.Additionally, oftentimes those who deny the reality of macroevolution will do so at the level of species, claiming that one species cannot evolve into two. Or maybe they pick a somewhat higher level, such as denying that an autocatalytic RNA strand (essentially, a viroid with the ability to reproduce) could ever evolve into a human being. But once one admits speciation, the rest is largely just a matter of degree.As for the generation of "new information," this is something which occurs principally in terms of the populations. For example, a single nucleic polymorphism ("snip") will result in a new allele, one which didn't exist in the population before -- and that is the generation of new information, but simply noise until it passes through the filter of natural selection into the general population. However, the more interesting ways of generating new information consists of gene duplication, segmental duplication, chromosomal duplication, and polyploidy -- or the mutation of regulatory DNA which is responsible for determining when, where and how much a given gene gets expressed.The duplications make possible sub-functionalization (which is responsible for the dichromatic vision of our ancestors becoming our own trichromatic vision) and neo-functionalization (which is responsible for an enzyme involved in digestion being co-opted for the coagulation of blood). And the mutation of regulatory DNA? A great deal more, evidentally. 99% of our 25,000 genes are homologous to the 25,000 genes found in mice. 96% of those genes are in the same exact relative order. So it would seem that the majority of evolution does not occur as the result of mutations in the genes themselves but in terms of the DNA which regulates gene expression.In any case, mutations take time. Natural selection will reduce the genetic diversity for a while when there exist strong selective pressures, but then new mutations will occur within the population, replentishing its genetic diversity. Moreover, once the two populations have been separated (for whatever reason), the mutations which occur in one population will no longer be communicated to the other population. The two populations will diverge, then tend to adapt to different environments and different pressures. At some point, even if the two species come into contact with one-another, they will no longer be able to produce fertile offspring -- and they will continue to diverge. Quite simple, actually.Of course, if you are looking for really good smoking guns as far as demonstrating the reality of evolution, some of the best I am aware of are pseudogenes and endogenous retroviruses. Not exactly what you would call conclusive -- nothing is in empirical science. As Duhem's thesis shows, it is always possible for someone to choose a less reasonable interpretation of the empirical evidence over a more reasonable interpretation -- indeed, one can coherently maintain that the world is only five minutes or five seconds old without fear of self-contradiction. But for the good majority of people who understand what they are and how common they are, I suspect pseudogenes and ERVs would be enough. (Additionally, I am rather fond of the idea of having 30,000 retroviruses in every one of my haploid genomes -- quite a collection!, or the idea that nearly fifty percent of my genome appears to be retroviral in origin [e.g., consists of retroelements].)This message has been edited by TimChase, 12-06-2005 03:03 PM

I would say evolution = species + changes - selection, and write the equation as This allows you to include genetic drift and environmental effect on the expression of genes during development, especially if they result in copy errors for their descendents, and any other sources of change with mutations.A mother passes resistance to diseases to her child in the milk, not the genes, and there are other factors (like diet) that affect fitness survival rather than just the number of available allele modules.In each generation C and S are independent, sometimes one bigger than the other other times not.I also think that if you remove selection from the equation that you end up with just as much problems as removing mutation.Are copy errors being considered mutations here? I don't think they can be so considered, as only the offspring with the errors can "inherit" them, while other offspring would have their own errors.just some thoughts.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
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Or recognise the others as potential mates even if they were able to produce fertile offspring. This is in essence what has happened with the asian greeshish warblers where the two ends overlap. The change in song and coloring is enough that they do not see the others as {our-type}Once inter-breeding fails - for whatever reason - divergence continues.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand

​

RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Why wouldn't they be? The same is true of mutations caused by exposure to radiation, mutagenic chemicals, whatever.

No I'm not defining evolution, merely pointing out that evolution depends on genetic diversity but there is only one process that brings this about and that is mutation. Most of the processes that act upon populations to produce changes that ultimately get called "speciation" in fact reduce genetic diversity and that simply works against the whole idea of evolution. They are part of the DEFINITION of evolution, certainly, but I'm challenging this definition. If the subtractive "forces" work toward extinction rather than allelic abundance, then they are working against evolution in the process of producing new types. That's all they do: Selection and all the other processes merely promote the expression of new phenotypes, but don't produce new alleles, only mutation does that. All the subtractive "evolutionary processes" produce new phenotypes, which is how they appear to further evolution, but if in the process they always tend toward reduced genetic diversity this production of new phenotypes appears to be merely an illusion of evolution.

This is a huge problem for evolution if you ask me. Have evos ever gone about to quantify the effects of the first set of factors with observed rates of mutation, one wonders?