EvC Forum: Is there really such a thing as a beneficial mutation?

What is a "beneficial" mutation REALLY,

thats a good question, but from your posts you don't seem to think the examples people give as they think of beneficial mutations are, so really you need to define it as you see it not us.

Is it possible that at least one form of "mutation" is not a "mistake" but a normal predictable method of producing variations in the normal processes of reproduction, just as the process of mixing of alleles is?

from my understanding mutations tend to not be part of the system until they happen so unless its already found in the system its not part of the system

Mutations are a failure of some sort, or a mistake.

i would say they are errors in copying not mistakes, how is this bad?
it would be like a boat getting a side breach and people patching it

So, mutations are both the driving force of evolution AND mistakes.

i don't see this as a problem, other than showing that you need to read more about evolution

, mutations are mostly like a break in a chain that may or may not get repaired

From the point of view of the ToE, which is that mutations are its driving force, the origin of everything living, of course it must be true that these mistakes are essential, and perfect replication would be a disaster, as Nosy says.

nosy is right, ever read about the difference between pure bred dogs and mutts? they say mutts are better because they arn't perfect.

But if the ToE is NOT true, then mutations really probably are mistakes, whose supposed benefits are an illusion, and really simply evidence of the gradual deterioration of all life since the Fall. In this case the fact that most of them have no effect at all just underscores the gradualness of the deterioration process, and the occasional apparently beneficial mutation is a mere anomaly that occurs in the nature of the chemistry involved.

how is this relevent really? this is a false dilemma, there are more options than your so called "Fall", like.. i don't know...god made us to do this?

you see this is why you get in trouble faith

The examples so far given on that thread of supposedly beneficial mutations are to my mind highly questionable.

because your definition is not what science defines beneficial as

But of course I was taken to task for my definition of "beneficial" which is too strict apparently as I can't accept most of the examples given as beneficial

you don't think a mutation that causes immunity to black plague in the 1200s and decendents to be immuned to HIV not beneficial?
i would..
beneficial mutations allow the population to survive to procreate, so if sickle cell aenima allows the population to survive without dying out it is a beneficial mutation by the definition

as to the wisdom tooth, the envirment selected that the teeth were not useful anymore, i think mainly due to how flat the human face became and being omnivorus too

I dunno. We're talking about THE supposed "driving force" of evolution, the system that brought us the eye and the hand and the human brain and in fact the whole stupefyingly elegant system of genetic coding -- it makes your jaw drop to begin to appreciate the mathematical precision involved in the coding process that creates proteins that actually do things in the cells of living things that make all functions possible -- except for those "mistakes" of course. So I have a hard time accepting that whatever produced the incredible coordinated functions and variations of living things has to resort to such trade-offs in dealing with disease, or explaining how so many genetic diseases keep occurring, if the ToE is correct, and evolution really is the amazing system that brought about all the amazing perfections that are obvious despite the errors.

they arn't mistakes at all its suppost to do that, see thats just it this sounds like you just don't know enough about evolution, its not that amazing, unless you believe that a billion years wouldn't be enough time, i'm sorry but what perfections do you mean? the system works because laws of nature and physics effect life and so does envirment

OK, that's my view of the examples of supposed beneficial mutations.

faith this is just handwaving this isn't even an arguement this is just more of "its too much for me to imagin any other senarios for the forms of life we have, other than god, so its not possible!"

But there is this other question about mutations for a creationist who believes in the Biblical Flood. What sort of genetic situation could conceivably account for the development of all the observed variation in living things from the few individuals of each Kind that were on the Ark?

false dilemma, there could be other reasons, like aliens

Is it possible that there was an enormously bigger genome at that time?

we would have evidence of this

Is it possible that the great proportion of nonfunctioning DNA in the genomes of (I think) every living thing was once functioning? Crash has confirmed that pseudogenes are just that, once functioning genes.

yes but they found turning on those genes turn on things from eariar evolution like genes that turn chicken feathers to scales

Or, is it possible too that there is a kind of "mutation" that IS beneficial, that is in fact normal or natural or part of the normal way things reproduce, that is predictable?

as i said if its part of the genome its already there, or do you know what a mutation does? it adds something to the system, that is adaptiblity and is part of the ToE but is not mutation

ON the old thread I think it was Percy but I may be misremembering, maybe it was Wounded, who said that even if mutations are predictable they are still random the way the six sides of a die come up randomly and yet there are only those six possibilities. My answer to that is that genetic variation is random in THAT sense anyway, as in the linking up of various possible alleles from a large array in the population, and from the options in the combining of germ cells from two parents.

yes its random, in the sense that we don't know what mutation will come out, but NS filters the bad ones that would be like the dice, if 6 is what it takes to survive then all that don't come up 6 will be rerolled, or dead if its life and the 6 might be say anything

So it is still a possibility in my mind that there is a method to the madness of SOME so-called "mutations" that is really part of the normal reproductive system rather than merely a mistake and could somehow be part of the explanation for (micro) evolution since the ark.

but you see this would not be a mutation this would be part of the genome, i wouldn't call them merely anything, they are quite important to the theory and how it works

All this could easily get bogged down in context because of the different basic assumptions, the ToE vs YEC, or simply because genetics is too complex and the varieties of mutations complex enough to choke a dinosaur let alone get digested by the likes of me.

i'm sorry faith but this is the reason people call you on so much, you really don't understand it, its not assumptions its basic understanding of mutation, it doesn't help that you bring up the ark, the ark story is not science it has no evidence, its all pure ad hoc reasoning to box in something that doesn't fit the evidence - i mean hyper-evolution? wheres the evidence why doesn't it happen now? animals losing genetic information? were is the evidence? why does this happen? the fall?

if you can't answer this stuff people won't really take it serously

So, I hope it is possible to make a thread out of this stuff.

maybe, not sure

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