I'm trying to get away from the reproductive fitness definition to point out that any disease process that is allowed to accumulate in a population, simply because it escapes the selection processes and does not interfere with reproduction, in itself works against the idea of evolution.
No, it really doesn't.
Yes it does.
This is because it tends to overall reduction in health of that population, which bodes ill for that population's prospects of survival in the long run, let alone the thriving condition one would expect would be required to evolve.
What makes you think that evolution requires a species to "survive in the long run"?
Oh how tiresome is this same old irrelevant refrain. What "evolution requires," given the observed rate of disease-producing mutations and assuming this rate has been constant, per the uniformitarian assumption, meaning it allows the proliferation of all kinds of genetic diseases, apparently leads to such a condition of ill health, no species could gone on for long let alone evolved over millions of years.
Indeed, the history of evolution on Earth is that over 99% of all species have gone extinct.
A case in point. And more extinctions coming up. Surely evolution will triumph with the extinction of all living things. No way this theory could explain the survival let alone vigor of any living thing.
The incredible rate of mutation people have referred to here
I am not sure what you refer to here.
What "incredible rate of mutation" do you speak of?
Please review the thread a few pages back. I'm sure you'll encounter the claim.
suggests to me that disease factors must be accumulating in all species at the present time. If this had been the case over millions of years, life would simply not exist at all at present.
But it has has already been explained, most mutations are neutral.
And I've answered this. Pay attention or get off the thread. "Neutral" in the examples others here have given means destructive disease conditions, including your missing wisdom teeth, since that involves the destruction of the gene for wisdom teeth, things that evolution couldn't care less about since they don't affect reproductive success. Which I've been arguing only proves that evolution can't be the explanation for the abundance of life on this earth.
Neutral mutations don't do anything.
Follow the argument. They don't do anything by the definition of evolution. They do plenty in terms of compromising the ability of anything living to thrive.
I would think that for evolution to be possible, mutation would have to be able to produce healthy specimens,
It does.
I am healthy, and I have a mutation.
The mutation did not produce your state of health, and superficially it confers no disease on you, but it's still a destruction of genetic material, and this is ALL that we see in mutations and they often produce active disease, NEVER anything beneficial. Oh, excuse me, except bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Nothing beneficial to human beings certainly.
And "healthy" WRT evolution simply means "able to pass on one's genes successfuly."
I am trying to discuss this problem as a problem for evolution outside its own cramped definitions and parameters. Clearly you cannot follow the discussion.
but it appears to do a much better job of producing genetic diseases.
Antibiotic resistance in bacteria has produced "superbugs" which are very healthy, wouldn't you say?
This is the ONLY "positive" mutation anyone has been able to come up with as against the LONG LONG list of genetic diseases.
This is a different problem from the one that inspired me to start this thread in the first place, the fact that the majority of the "processes of evolution" are misnamed, because they are all selective processes that decrease genetic variability.
No, they are not.
Yes they are. This is elementary and others have acknowledged it. I'm sorry if you are unable to appreciate the argument, but that only means that you shouldn't be participating in the discussion.
That this has been explained to you multiple times seems to have done no good at all, so I'm going to leave it to someone else to slog on ahead and try again.
Oh good.
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