Destroying Darwinism

You havent produced a short version of darwinism though, all you have done is rename reproductive fitness as natural selection.I cant see why you think we should have difficulty in comparing the relative fitness of populations in different environments provided you allow us to look at the proportional spread of alleles in the population. If the different alleles interact differently with the two environments then this should be reflected, unless the new environment is just generally more permissive in which case the allele frequencies may not change at all.Obviously if you are thinking of your theoretical genetically homogenous population again then it makes no difference however much reproduction goes on as nothing is ever going to happen in evolutionary terms in a homogenetic population with no capacity for variation. You seem to have decided that population dynamics rather than population genetics should be the focus of evolutionary biology.Your photosynthetic and non photosynthetic organisms would still be competing for many of the same resources if they reamined in the same environment. If your photosynthetic organism can colonise new environments then obviously it will have managed to avoid the pressure of competition from the previous non photosynthetic form.If the original environment has a limited carrying capacity in any of a number of limiting factors, such as space, other than food then natural selection will still operate on the proportions of the population showing photosynthetic and non photosynthetic traits.[This message has been edited by Wounded King, 06-10-2003]

Well maybe the differential reproductive success of photosynthesis/nonphotosynthesis was a million to one. Some microbe in the ocean getting the trait and then spreading wildly. Of course there's supposedly a cost with maintaining the photosynthesis trait, so we can assume that in the dark caves along the shore the photosynthetic trait will not penetrate. So what you have as a Darwinist is the 1000000 to 1 figure, which wrongly leads you to suspect that the original population will be wiped out, as by Darwin, will be encroached upon and replaced, until it finally becomes extinct. With encroachment to replace carries the wrong presumption that the populationsize remains stable. It becomes more clear how wrong it is to compare when the trait is more unique, applying to a different resource. Obviously it's better to describe the non-photo and photo-organisms separately. You just end up comparing apples with oranges, frogs with elephants, microbes in dark caves, with photosynthetic microbes in the light outside.You just have no argument as far as I can tell.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Dear Syamsu,Looking at two populations in completely different environments is very different from looking at two populations or sub populations in the same environment. Once again you ignore the concept of a carrying capacity. The upper limits of the two populations probably is relatively stable within a limited environment due to one of any number of limiting factors. It is the presence of both populations within this limited environment which leads to competition for space/raw materials etc..Obviously any competition between two populations one of which is located in the photic layers of the sea and one which is restricted to deep see caves without light, is going to be of the most indirect kind imaginable if there is any at all. But your model presumed the photosynthetic arise from the non photosynthetic, presumably this was not in the environment of a lightless cave as if it was then the development of photosynthesis would not be much advantage. The original population from which the photosynthetic strain arose probably would be wiped out, that doesnt mean that some spooky action at a distance wipes out similar strains in completely different environments.If you made the initial assumptions of your model a bit more explicit it might help.

Here is one of the most telling statements that you have made so far in the demonstration of the your lack of understanding concerning biological systems.

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Of course there's supposedly a cost with maintaining the photosynthesis trait, so we can assume that in the dark caves along the shore the photosynthetic trait will not penetrate. So what you have as a Darwinist is the 1000000 to 1 figure, which wrongly leads you to suspect that the original population will be wiped out, as by Darwin, will be encroached upon and replaced, until it finally becomes extinct.

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Have you ever heard of different ecological niches or demes. Along with your misstatements concerning differential reproductive success (i.e. your erroneous attribution of the frog/elephant pairing to me when it sprung like a half-witted Athena from your low brow) and their effects, your lack of understanding concerning competition between species vs. competition with the environments vs. splitting of species to exploit different ecological niches, demonstrates your complete lack of comprehension concerning evolution, natural selection and speciation RE: Darwinian Natural Selection. Some groups, recently split or not, compete within an ecological niche for resources for survival (the current thinking on the out of Africa theory) if one of two competing groups originating from a species split becomes extinct then THAT is speciation with replacement. Some groups compete with the environment in general (ie ONE aspect of this is your often misused moth comparison concerning predation) if a species merely becomes extinct by selective pressures without splitting then that is merely extinction. If the survival of a non-interbreeding group occurs based on this pressure with one genetic subpopulation surviving based on shifted allelic frequencies (or presence of a couple of new alleles over time) then that is speciation, but not replacement persay. Another aspect is that some groups move into new niches (the probable photosynthesis v.s. non-photosynthetic that you spout on with photosynthetic organisms being able to move more w.r.t. availability of energy sources, not to mention the post extinction radiation of species which you have never given an indiaction that you understood). Alll of the proceeding is a truly abbreviated list of possibilities and highlights the woefully incomplete nature of your self-purported overall example of evolution.Throw in your total lack of understanding concerning genetic variability and phenotypic expression (your totally ignorant statements demonstrating your lack of knowledge concerning the mixed phenotypic expression based on particulate genes and the fact that not all Mendillian inheritance is expressed as simply as the good friars peas were) demonstates your inability to grasp even the simplest aspects of population genetics and variability within populations and how it might or might not relate to Natural Selection. You constantly dance around the edge of REAL use by living systems of variation but can never seem to understand its role in the various systems, probably due to a total lack of understanding of the systems IMO.Moving on to your total lack of honesty when caught in either a stupid and sloppy mistake or an outright lie (see my earlier comments re: saltation which I documented for you in an earlier post, and your erroneous attribution to me of the frog/elephant breeding rates which you, in your ignorance, first mentioned) makes your arrogant moral posturing re: the misuse of Darwins scientific theories by people like the Nazi's rather tiresome. Your lack of an ability to apply the same yardstick to the use or misuse of the koran by muderers merely highlights your hipocrisy.Syamsu, your level of arrogant presumption in stating that you know more about Natural Selection than most or all others on this board is only matched by your oft demonstrated ignorance on the subject and the hypocritical depths which you will plum in not applying the same yardstick you apply towards the misuse of a scientific theory towards others use of your own religion as a reason for murder. You would be funny if you were not so pathetic.------------------
"Chance favors the prepared mind." L. Pasteur
Taz[This message has been edited by Dr_Tazimus_maximus, 06-11-2003]

Can you present your argument in a formulaic structured way? It's not clear now what your argument actually has to do with Natural Selection. There is no point in your argument now, since you don't relate your argument to the application of Natural Selection theorySo for instance when you write:"Looking at two populations in completely different environments is very different from looking at two populations or sub populations in the same environment."then you add to it things like:"Natural Selection doesn't apply when the variants are in different environments. Natural Selection only describes encroachment and replacement of a variant on another variant."regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Your emotional incoherent babble, does not refute my argument, nor the argument of historians like Fischer about the relationship between Darwinism and Nazism, and general argument about the relationship of Social-Darwinism to Darwinism.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

It shouldnt be neccesary for me to mention natural selection every second line for you to grasp the point. Since we were discussing a hypothetical example that you came up with I would suggest any irrelevance to natural selection was rather your doing.You stated that NS only applies to variants to the extent they use the same resources, which is fair enough. But you seem to fail to see that if there is no limit to the resources then such a permissive environment will produce very little selective pressure. Such permissive environments are very rare except perhaps in instances where a new environment is colonised and one or more limiting factors are thereby alleviated, such as rabbits on introduction to Australia.You then gave the example of the evolution of photosynthesis. Even allowing your non gradual evolution of photosynthesis there is still no rationale behind your apparent belief that the gaining of photosynthesis would mean the two variants were not competing for the same resources. They might not both be competing for one specific resource but there are a lot of other limiting factors they would need to compete for IF they are in the same environment. If the photosynthetic variant had such a reproductive advantage as to take up all of one of those shared resources then it could drive the non photosynthetic variant to extinction.

Hiding agin Syamsu? Actually the statements were far less emotional than insulting (to you that is). I pointed out with several examples exactly where the flaws were in both your purported theory as well as your examples or your rather simple attempts at misdirection. I notice that rather than refute them you prefer to hide in attempts to misdirect again, typical for the moral coward that I take you to be.As for Fischer, can you site a reference as I have done for you, and which you have either screwed up (Genetics re: phenotypic expression), attempted to misrepresent (the frog article), or ignored (some of my later articles which merely restated with new or different data the same support for natural selection and variation as the frog article) or will you just run and hide some more. By the way, you have refuted none of the articles which I have posted as you have not restated ANY of them accurately in your arguements. Errors are not refutations child. Start with the frog article, read it this time and try again. If you can not get the article I will do my best to get a copy although it may be copyrighted.SO Syamsu, what about your brother Moslems who use the Koran as justification for their murders? Motes and Beams much? Any comments bearing on this subject and its obviousl relevance or will you just hide some more?------------------
"Chance favors the prepared mind." L. Pasteur
Taz

I think it would be enlightening to formalize more.The relationship of variants in terms of influencing each other's reproduction.Where - (minus) means one variant reduces reproduction of the other variant"-/- encroachment/replacement
-/0 encroachment/replacement
0/0 neutral variation
+/+ symbiotic relationship
+/- predator-prey relationship
+/0 I don't know what to call that, but I believe it exists somewhere in the richness of NatureSo seemingly you are ignoring 4 out of 6 in this row, maybe 5. With encroachment until extinction the -/- relationship is only temporary, since obviously when a variant is extinct it can't limit reproduction anymore of the other variant.It has to be understood, that a +/0 relationship means that one variant has increased reproduction through the other variant it's presence, but not vice-versa.So you see that you're doing something very odd from the point of view of organizing knowledge. Why don't you have a theory of Natural Symbiosis for instance, why just focus on encroachment and replacement?I think you were too quick to agree that Natural Selection only applies to to variants to the extent they use the same resources.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

The only reason you're angry is because you insist on more authority then your argumentation merits. You're very bad at theory, abstraction, systemization.The relationship of Islam to some attrocities is not at issue, nor the relationship of alcohol consumption to violent behaviour. Darwinism is.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

I ignored most of those types of relationship as they are much more often interspecies rather than intraspecies relationships. Most predator prey relationships are not seen within species and symbiosis almost invariably refers to an interspecies relationship.We dont have a theory of natural symbiosis as natural selection is sufficient to explain the origin of symbiotic relationships.You have yet to say anything about the idea of carrying capacity. If we assume a population at carrying capacity then your +/+ and +/0 relationships are obviously impossible.

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The only reason you're angry is because you insist on more authority then your argumentation merits.

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Boy, First trust me when I say that this is not angry. You would not want to see me when I get angry. Second, it is not authority that I insist on but data. Barring data I insist on real world examples that reflect the real world. You have provided neither and have refused to address the data presented to you. That is why I am naming you a coward; not because of any authoriy, but because you refuse to address the data and instead try to obscure, misdirect and otherwise run from the debate.

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You're very bad at theory, abstraction, systemization.

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Oh, and you are good at these . Boy, your analogies have been so bad that I have turned everyone of them against you. Do you still not understand the relationship between variation of building height if the builders reside therin and the potential for selection based on environmental factors. Guess not.

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The relationship of Islam to some murderes is not at issue

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Sure it is, in the same way that the misuse of a scientific theory for social reasons is what you have at issue with Darwin. Boy, talk about bad at abstraction, or concrete example.------------------
"Chance favors the prepared mind." L. Pasteur
Taz[This message has been edited by Dr_Tazimus_maximus, 06-11-2003]

I don't think that "this seems to occur much more then that" is a valid enough reason to focus on the one and ignore the others. This is supposed to be science, and science is supposed to be a type of highly formalized and systemize knowledge about the world.Environmentalists are always talking about a minimum amount of variation being required for preservation of a species. So then the relationship of variants is not seen by them as cannonfodder to encroach and replace to extinction the other variant, but as an essentially symbiotic relationship where variants increase each other's chance of reproduction long term, possibly even escaping extinction by it.Since those endangered species are at carryingcapacity or you might say they are above carrying capacity, it is shown that there still can be symbiotic +/+ relationships at caryingcapacity.So what is a +/0 relationship called? And can you give some examples of a persistent -/- relationship between variants?I think you may have missed the point that + doesn't refer to the relationship of the variant to the environment whole, it just refers to the relationship to the other variant.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

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The relationship of Islam to some attrocities is not at issue, nor the relationship of alcohol consumption to violent behaviour. Darwinism is.

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You, who were just belittling someone's abstract reasoning, make yourself look really bad when you fail to acknowledge the parallel. Over and over again in this forum you have claimed that a particular idea should be condemned because of its misuse by extremists. Now, after repeated attempts by several of us to deal with your hypocrisy, the closest you can come to acknowledging the issue is to simply handwave the comparison away, and then throw in another, truly irrelevant issue as a distraction. It's great that you can stay on topic (for once) but you're being so strict as to exclude relevant, related issues from your scope. Way to avoid the hard questions.

Well I'm happy that you're not angry, but your posts are still not clear enough for me to respond to. I did respond to your frog paper, which you just dumped without any argumentation. Again, if it is shown that small and large have their own niche, then the paper is deceptive IMO. And I provided more argument then that, which you just dismiss as misdirection and whatever, without actually meaningfully engaging my arguments.If you're able at theory, abstraction and systemization, then present an example of A's and B's as Natural Selection, in the context of whatever else can happen to A's and B's in regards to reproduction/evolution/selection, why don't you.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu