A barrier to macroevolution & objections to it

You are conflating two completely seperate issues. Just because we cannot test in a lab the particular divergent evolutionary pathway for a particular trait does not preclude that they CANNOT form via successive mutation! It would be equivalent to saying that because we cannot necessarily calcuate the precise trajectory of a ball that was thrown after it has hit the ground means that we cannot know anything about the trajectory and that the whole theory of gravity needs to be questioned.No only are you assulting a fortress with a B-B-Gun you are firing it in the wrong direction. Then explain to us what they do, becaues it seems quite aparent that you have no clue what HOX genes actually are based on what you are claiming they show about evolution.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Let me put it this way. Would you say that creationism is falsified as scence because we can't get God to create a new species or "kind" for us in the lab, on cue ? Or is it an unreasonable test that doesn't allow us to draw that conclusion ?

These have been posted earlier as evidence that mutation can answer all the genetic-diversity-reducing processes. They haven't been ignored, they've been discussed and answered.

There's a big difference between a species and a kind, according to creationism. The distinction is vital because if you're asking about God creating a new kind, then yes that is empirically untestable. If you're talking about the generation of new species then that should be observable (it is).Would you mind specifying precisely what you feel should be falsifiable in Creationism?

I'm not going to go off my planned line of argument.So you agree that the test is unreasonable. Does the fact that that test is unreasonable allow me to conclude that creationism is unfalsifiable ?

I was asking you to specify what test you mean, not go off you planned line of argument.If you would pose the test question exactly as you want it answered, i will do so..

The test is the one I stated. To get God to create a new "kind" in the laboratory, reliably and repeatably (you know that's a requirement for experiments, right ?). We agree that this is not a reasonable test.So I repeat the question. Does the fact that the test is unreasonable allow us to conclude that creationism is unfalsifiable ?

Hehe.Oh really? Answered by a couple of layman YECs with little or no scientific training? Please forgive my incredulity!I'm a scientific layman too, but I know the limits to my knowledge...Anyway, do you have any evidence for a barrier to speciation/limit to mutation?Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.Edited by RickJB, : No reason given.

Genetic Surprise: Mobile Genes Found To Pressure Species FormationThis is an important bit - it confirms what I've been saying. No mention of incompatible alleles causing speciation anywhere. Presumably you could get similar effects with incompatible alleles. But I'm not aware of any such case, and I think that it would be more difficult so we certainly can't say that it is the usual situation. - not when there are known alternativesEdited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Your position seems to hold no water. In one hand you accept that mutations do happen, in real life. You also accept that these mutations sometimes may be benefical. (You had to accept these to points because they have been observed directly). But then you refuse to accept that these benefical mutations might play an important role in the increase of genetic variability (number of alleles) in a population??? how come? and you give us no good reason for not accepting this. Tell me why don't you accept the logical consequence of benefical mutations? namely - new alleles.

You managed to everyway say,

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Anyway, do you have any evidence for a barrier to speciation/limit to mutation?

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I take it you meant actually and not conceptually. If not, I sit corrected.
Let’s make sure however that in our collective EvC “limits to knowledge” that we all know how to CONCEPTUALLY retain a potential limit via mutation to form-making and translation in space for the full gamut of biological change.
To me it is not difficult to conceive where a stumbling block exists. I started to respond in fleshy detail how forms could be made reproductively and I introduced Gould’s notion of a DIFFERENCE between “franklins” and “miltons”
http://EvC Forum: Reality is not based upon our perception. -->EvC Forum: Reality is not based upon our perception.

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while as you will read I think he should have stuck with a turn on a Mecury Head(old US coinage) instead(I think he sold out “the American School of Ontogeny” to cheaply for CONTINUOUS Russian tastes).I will link some dozen or so other pages of Gould if necessary to make the following clear:
Gould admits that potential dime turning phrases biologically ARE a valid way to conceptualize cross-level biology only that he had thought about “spandrels” before working harder to structuralize hierarchical relations among levels spanning gene to species or clade. For myself I think the pre-franklinian Gould is more obviously mistaken. There has to be *some* reason that Dawkins disagrees with him. I had thought about potential cross-level effects %without% the notion of spandrels and was actually enrolled at Cornell(in it’s cream de crme “college scholar program”) TO PROVIDE a thesis in this effect(As an aside, interestingly, if there is any VALID cross-level affect, and Gould admits this even better in his most advanced understanding of “evolvability”, then there must be historically traceable apologies agasint vitalism in the literature. There are none and I was failed(by Will Provine) for pointing this out from the “level” of the ”cell.’)Since this time Wolfram has postulated “ a new kind of science.” Gould’s divisions and interest in objects/things that would be Milton’s and Wolfram’s insistence on rule-based cellular automata denote roughly the same region of science that can be known except that for Wolfram to be UNIVERSALLY correct Gould must be actually correct that franklins are demotable by the various formations of Miltons. I personally disagree at this point. That is me.Conceptually now, the limits that mutations induce somatically retains at and primarily is within Gould’s reflection on “Miltons” because it is the potentiation that can extend NS beyond any adherent limit a Milton destructs a Franklin for. But if Franklins are better linguistic phraseology for understanding how “cascades” from the lowest level are really extant (given some causality to “downward causation” nonetheless, then no matter what mutation, its limitation, and Gould’s spandrelized Miltonic spacing was, the continuation, NO MATTER THE RULE, can still ordinally be divided and statistically separated at the joints of coherence even if perfection is ruled out of order. This can not be the case if these are things. Thus I think it is better for Gould to have coined the cross-level discussion of evolvablilty and exaptive pool as Mercury Head Dimes rather than a drink of a screwdriver which is what we at EVC will have with our Beer until we rachet to the “next” level of conversation.Thus it is practically important to distinguish if one is trying to conceptualize the limits to species change and mutation a posterioriness in terms of objects or possibly objectifable entities or rather if one is sloshing around and through a matrix of potential functions that format the same shapes. It is the shapes that tell us if the limit is crossed. But with different theoretical architecture tools across researchers we can not find the coherent limit that is cognizable mathematically and demonstrably divisionable Miltonically.Of course, if you intended "actual" evidence, like we ask for of ID on EVC then no, I have none as of yet. But look I was "killed off" of Cornell before I could gather it. Many biologists have little "intuition" in this 'area' even though there really is no "objection."Edited by Brad McFall, : superflous word

I said I hadn't participated much, not that I hadn't read much. And judging by all the other replies, everyone else missed it, too. Because it wasn't there. You haven't identified a barrier. All you've done is argued that macro-evolution doesn't happen, and you've argued that beneficial mutations don't happen.The micro-walking/macro-walking analogy to micro-evolution/macro-evolution makes clear the problem in your argument. Just as each step you take changes your location, each mutation changes the genome. Just as there are no limits to the number of steps one can take, there is no limit to the number of mutations a genome can experience.The question for you becomes, if there is a limit to genomic change, a barrier of some kind, what is it? The coastline is the limit to walking on a small island. The speed of light, c, is the limit to velocity. That which provides the limit to genomic change is...?--Percy

The formation of novel organs for one thing...

How so?

Because, as I've pointed out previously, the ToE seems to a priori disregard the possibility that there may be obstacles to mutation as a mechanism for accounting for all of life's diversity. ToE makes the grand and sweeping assertion that mutation IS a sufficient mechanism to account for such change. But it doesn't seem to even look for possible obstacles. It just assumes there are none.Now when Darwin posited successive numerous adapations, he wasn't aware of the mechanism of this change. What has changed that informs us that mechanisms are the mechanism Darwin was looking for?I contend that nothing has changed, because very little to no research has been done that demonstrates that mutation is a sufficient mechanism to account for novel organs.Keep in mind that's only one criteria the mutational mechanism would have to overcome. There are others, it seems, but this criterion is sufficient to invalidate the mutational mechanism.