What is the mechanism that prevents microevolution to become macroevolution?

Actually, *small genetic changes* (hair color, anatomical size, etc.) are tolerated by most YECs, as per NS.Only beneficient chromosomal mutations are viewed as unpalatable, except those science-hyped "hot-spot mutations" ... *mutations* that seem (to me) *built-into* prokaryote genes (A.K.A. ... just another form of NS).Fortunately, many YECs don't expect to see such raw chromosomal mutations in nature that are really beneficial, ... any more than they would expect to see computer programs evolving by coding accidents, program-flip-flipping, re-combinant operating system *mutations*, or similar choatic events.Unfortuantely, macro-ToE theories DO require *unusual yet chaotic* chomosomal mishaps (not a few). Such *freak-miracles*, "hopeful-monster" theories, etc., seem to require a great deal of pseudo-faith, I think some here would agree.Evo-Science seems to require true-faith that mutational-hypotheses can be proven. Beneficial Mutations (proper) in nature (if there be such a thing): have they ever really been proven, AT ALL?I suppose we'd be better off to debate what a beneficial chromosomal mutation REALLY is. A great oxymoron? a mega-science-paradox? A giant fluke of nature? Spontaneous generation? Etc.(OFF TOPIC: Not all *devout-YECs* require YECism to mathamatically support the Bible, the Flood, etc. Even while scientists vainly *prove* mega-evolution, the Christian-YEC would hope somewhat beyond this *backyard-universe*, anyway ... i.e., for sin-redeeming-love. He/she might continue to observe Biblical chronologies as symmetries of time more than equations of time. ... like the periodic-table of elements, octaves of sound-frequencies, light-spectrums of color, and/or other symmetries of nature)(Archer ... My wife is from TaiSan, beautiful country over there)

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One reason they may be intransigent on this point is because we have not even the tools to discover the predicates responsible for formal and normal restrictions on what species groupings (in and out of biogeographic homology) can be rationalized to show where coincidentally the first figure of its truth rotates.Logic will prevent it if it exists.I feel fairly confident in this assement based on a limited purview of the vertebrates(that I have). It seems like this should be true as the issue of hoxology wends it way in another 100 yrs.You are a clever poster but I have seen like you before on-line.

I have no idea why Cheetahs are such a popular creationist pick. They are living proof of how fragile a species becomes when evolution is halted by an extreme population bottleneck, resulting in a limited gene pool. African Cheetah population was only reduced to hundreds. Taking this to the next level the tiny gene pool
caused by God's flood would make us all a lot less diverse than cheetahs (or more likely dead). Interestingly the cheetah population of today has
an exceptionally high mutation rate. Evolutions reaction against a shallow gene pool???? (don't attack that last bit it's just a personal hypothesis).PS. Who ever heard of evolutionist physics or geology, I've always wondered why Creationists tend to call any opponents Evo's, i.e. if you're going to challenge every field of science at once why not be forthcoming about it.Edited by qed, : fact checking

I dont know bout the cheetin cheetahs'cheetoh either as a "pick."The "bootleneck", "constriction," "allopatric isolation", particular path in path analysis, problems with defining effective population number, difference of Fisher, Wright OR Huxley do not necessarily have the same theorectical nor sufficient consequence unless specific geographic regions are more than implicated. Creationist criticism simply looks on all of the(se) possibilities as something "outside" their own banna(b) of an anngram.You will see something forthcoming from me over in the thread on benefical mutations and intentionality soon. I have a souce I do not have the reference title for.

Off course it is debatable (Everything is). But the fact that most observed mutations are deleterious or neutral does not make mutations insuficient to play the driving force of evolution as long as there some small but non-vanishing set of benefical mutations.

Jar wrote:

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If the flood happened we should see a genetic bottleneck in all living species where all of the indicators point to an event that happened about 4500 years ago. This would be great supporting evidence for there having been a flood (but of course no support for any theological implications).

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If that isn't seen, then we can toss the idea of a flood on the trashheap of great ideas that just turned out to be wrong.

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Wow, this is an easy to understand, powerful test. Biologists can find and approximately date past bottlenecks as RickJB gave an example of. A bottleneck often reduces a population down to just a few hundred or thousand individuals. Imagine how MASSIVE a bottle neck the flood is by comparison - just 4 or 14 individuals - what a massive signal to look for. It would be obvious to any biologist that a species underwent such a bottleneck. Dating would show species after species that underwent a huge bottle neck - and they would all show the approximately the same date, even if there was some noise in the dating method.Faith wrote:

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I figure that whatever it is in the genome you expect to see as evidence of a bottleneck of the magnitude of the Flood is simply misinterpreted.

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You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s not like we are looking for a needle in a haystack. Biologists very often find and approximately date bottlenecks based on genetic evidence.The fact that this hasn’t been found speaks volumes. I guess it goes back to the creationists who claim that God created everything with the appearance of age - now I guess creationists must also say that god miraculously changed the genomes of every living thing on the planet after the flood to wipe out the evidence of this bottleneck. How else could we explain the glaring absence of a universal bottleneck in 2,500 BCE?Claiming that the bottleneck has been misinterpreted sounds like claiming that God created the world’s tallest mountain in Kansas, and that it’s still there, but has been “misinterpreted”. Geologists can find, (and approximately date) mountains.I haven't heard any good creationist reason for the missing bottleneck.

philip wrote:

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Beneficial Mutations (proper) in nature (if there be such a thing): have they ever really been proven, AT ALL?

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Um, we came up with over a dozen on a recent thread. Are we going to go over them all again?

when you get ready to respond to someone, on the lower right you will see the "Little Green Reply Button" (LGRB).If you use that it links your post to the one you are replying to, and if the poster has reply notification turned on, will let them know you replied.The LGRB is your friend.

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Please specify exactly what this genetic evidence looks like if it's so obvious.We know about the cheetah's severe bottleneck by the fact that it has an extreme scarcity of alleles for a great number of genes, but this is unusual and shows a very recent bottleneck. What would you expect to find from 4500 years ago?I think evidence for the Flood bottleneck is probably in the junk DNA.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You might as well say its behind the sofa Faith.How could there possibly be evidence in the 'junk DNA' which would somehow contradict the patterns of diversity we do see in various genetic populations in favour of your bottleneck from 4500 years ago.You could maybe try and argue that 4500 years is enough time to obscure the bottleneck but I don't see how you can possibly argue that the evidence is hiding in some magical form in the 'junk DNA'.TTFN,WK

This shows a highly faulty grasp of what the ToE 'requires'. At most it requires, in order to fit the diversity of life we see today, occasional duplications at the gene and higher levels up to that of the entire genome. These need not be 'chaotic' although they are likely to be random.The evidence for such duplications is hard to ignore look at the [i]Xenopus [i] family of frogs. Xenopus have genetic complements ranging from diploid (2n) to dodecaploid (12n). Are all of these frogs from different 'kinds' if not then kinds can clearly accomodate very large scale duplications of chromosomes or even entire genomes.Such duplications, of genes and genoes, provide a wealth of material for diversification of gene families otherwise constrained by selection and the families of genes we find throughout the kingdoms of life reflect this.TTFN,WK

I understand junk DNA or pseudogenes to be nonfunctioning DNA that previously had a function. Dead DNA. So much defunct DNA in the genome may suggest to an evolutionist previous incarnations as other creatures, but to a creationist it suggests a lot of death of human beings over the millennia, and the death of a lot of genetic material too, by killing off all the viable alleles for those no-longer- functioning genes. I don't know how the genetics of it works exactly but that's the ballpark idea.But let me ask YOU what you expect to see genetically that would demonstrate an earlier bottleneck? It's been asserted here that it is easily recognizable in the DNA. Is it? And what does it look like? How would a bottleneck be "obscured" over time, as you suggest? This does imply that you expect it to be something specific when it's fresh.Added by edit: You asked: OK, so you wouldn't expect to see "patterns of diversity" if there had been such a bottleneck?Well, my answer to that is there is still a lot of diversity in the functioning DNA.The cheetah is merely an extreme caused by a much more recent bottleneck, which is why it is down to one allele per locus. But there was still a lot of genetic potential in the individuals on the ark -- how is unclear, larger genome is postulated.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

We could start by listing all the species that we know had bottlenecks and then see how the data cluster for those species.For instance there is evidence of a human bottleneck ~100,000 years ago:
BBC - Human Bottleneck Evidence (click)
And then from
The population bottleneck, supervolcanoes and the coming end of the world - Everything2.com Also see
Toba catastrophe theory - WikipediaAnyone know when the cheetah bottleneck occurred?Enjoy.

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The important thing is we don't see the same bottleneck across ALL species at the same time. If there had been a Flood as described in the Bible there would be this monstrous flashing neon sign in the genetic record that would be the first thing ever geneticist in the world saw. It would be out there standing like a giant among the signatures waving at all that pass, "Notice ME!"

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

How can current human genetics suggest to you 'a lot of death of human beings over the millennia', except in as much as it suggests that people are human and we know that humans die?Rather than not knowing how the genetics work 'exactly' you don't seem to know how they work at all. I think my punctuation may have confused you, my point was that the diversity we do see contradicts the idea of such a recent bottleneck. So your 'answer' is just agreeing with me that there is diversity which under your schema should not be there.For a review of some theories on ancient human bottlenecks there is an interesting review by Hawks et al. (2000). This covers a range of genetic markers used to measure genetic diversity and estimate historical population sizes. The most conservative estimate covered is for a population of 175,000.Some theories, not in that paper, go as far as estimating a population of as few as 1,000 - 10,000 individuals as the result of some global catastrophe, but even estimates for that date are at around 70,000 years ago. As far as I can tell the genetics for this dating is mostly from X chromosmome and mitochondrial data and the coclusions drawn are somewhat iffy.TTFN,WK