Natural Limitation to Evolutionary Processes (2/14/05)

From schraf From you After people had pointed out sickle cell anemia.Edited by DrJones*, : No reason given.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

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A completely irrelevant point it seems to me. It's rare to the point of singularity for one thing, and as such it's wasting this thread.

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Not irrelevant, on at least these two points:1) your claim that there are no beneficial mutations is refuted.2) your claim that the retention of genetic diseases in a population runs counter to the ToE has been refuted.

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All it takes for a genetic disease to be retained within a population is that the victim of it survive to reproduce.

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Not quite.It also needs to confer a reproductive advantage to remin prevalent in a population.That's why SCD continues to flourish in places where malaria is endemic, and also why it is tending to decline in the US among populations with recent ancestry in places where SCD confers reproductive advantage. Edited by schrafinator, : kan't spel

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

Yes it does. 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. 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. Please review the thread a few pages back. I'm sure you'll encounter the claim. 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. 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. 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. 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. This is the ONLY "positive" mutation anyone has been able to come up with as against the LONG LONG list of genetic diseases. 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. Oh good.

One "beneficial" mutation that is won at the expense of a terrible disease is NOT an example of a benefit. And who cares if there are one or ten, the point is that they are astronomically outstripped by destructive mutations. Follow the argument. I didn't say prevalent. I said retained. Follow the argument.

Oh for pete's sake, FOLLOW THE ARGUMENT!!! I've answered this a dozen times already. I said ****TRULY**** BENEFICIAL. There is no way a mutation that protects against one disease while causing another is TRULY beneficial.There are NO examples ANYONE has produced yet of a TRULY beneficial mutation, one that produces health and vigor.Except for bacterial resistance to antibiotics, and this doesn't count. I want examples of beneficial mutations in humans, because we have tons of examples of destructive mutations in humans.And again, even if you could produce a dozen beneficial mutations, this would be interesting certainly, but it still would not meet the requirement that beneficial mutations outstrip destructive mutations by some enormous percentage if a species is going to survive and evolve.This continuing refrain about how reproductive success is the criterion just points up the poverty of evolution as an explanation for living things, especially when everyone is agreeing that so many "neutral" mutations are of course not selected out, but not one of them shows any benefit that I can see. They all describe at least some latent disease process, something that works against health and vigor.

Faith, you are begining to become belligerant.You are simply repeating your initial assertions and willfully ignoring or selectively misinterpreting what everyone has been trying to say to you.Intelligent, productive conversation is impossible with one such as you, since you refuse to learn or. All you do is project personal incredulity in place of rational argument while twisting what everyone tries to tell you about science.The same thing has happened in every thread you attempt in the science fora.Perhaps it really isn't "everybody else" who refuses to accept your obvious brilliant understanding of Evolution and the scientific method, but your own inability to debate the issues in good faith.

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"Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends! Well I say there are some things we don't want to know! Important things!"
- Ned Flanders"Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

How can there be a genetic disease which is not selected against?

I have been. The arguement is Natural Limitation to Evolutionary Processes in the Biological Evolution forum. Because we're talking about evolution "beneficial" is defined as: helping the organism live to reproduce. Says you. How so? Living things reproduce and pass on their genes. If they have bad genes they don't live to reproduce and therefore don't pass on those genes, if they have good or neutral genes then they do live and those genes are passed on. It's not very complicated. And again, health and vigor only matter up until the point of reproduction. If the health and vigor don't show up until after the organism has reproduced then they are irrelevant to evoltution. Evolution is not about species getting bigger, faster, stronger, smarter, it is about species surviving.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

Well, obviously it does count, because that's an example of many, many beneficial mutations. There is no such requirement. Bad mutations can outnumber good mutations by thousands to one. The good will be selected FOR, the bad will be selected AGAINST.I don't see what it is that you don't see, but the words "NATURAL SELECTION" probably loom large in the explanation.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I think the problem is the definition of 'truly beneficial' (see, you can say it without shouting ).You are using a human intellectual viewpoint to define it - the sickle cell mutation can't be truly beneficial because as well as giving people some protection against malaria it also adversely affects their health.Unfortunately in evolutionary terms this definition is completely worthless. The only thing that counts in an evolutionary definition of truly beneficial is does it give you an advantage in reproduction. As counter-intuitive as it seems, health and vigour are not, in and of themselves, worth anything at all. It's all about having offspring. Of course health and vigour may well help you have more offspring than your competitors - but it ain't necessarily so.Mind you, I'm not a biologist so I may be talking out my backside

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Oops! Wrong Planet

Read the last few pages.

I'm trying to raise something that is OUTSIDE your usual kneejerk assumptions but all you do is repeat them. Good grief.

THIS HAS BEEN DISCUSSED OVER THE LAST FEW PAGES.

Would you please just read the whole argument. This has been answered umpteen times by now. Thank you.

One of the guys I work with is red-green colour blind. We were both sent to Austin in Texas to work in the early '90s and he was horrified to discover that at many junctions near where we worked the traffic signals weren't on poles they were suspended on cables over the junction. Unfortunately for him they were suspended horizontally rather than vertically, and of course at first he didn't know whether the red was at the right hand end or the left.It turned out it didn't actually matter - as anyone who drove in Austin in the early '90s will be able to confirm, the traffic signals had three shades of green rather than the traditional red, amber and green. At least that's how it seemed since nobody ever seemed to stop at a signal Apparantly nowadays the traffic is so bad you don't have to worry about people shooting signals any more because of the gridlock...

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Oops! Wrong Planet