TOE and the Reasons for Doubt

But A and B are independent, so the process does not "start all over again." In sexual populations two (or more, many more) mutations can be selected independently.Look at it like this. For the sake of discussion, let's say if A had occurred alone that it would have taken a hundred generations for A to spread through a population, and the same for B. Since they're independent, if they had both occurred at the same time it would still have taken a hundred generations for both to spread through the population.You later mention the possibility of clonal interference, but that only applies to asexual populations. But let's consider what happens if our two mutations A and B are not independent. If they interfere with one another in some way, then their spread through the population will be slower. And if they reinforce one another in some way, then their spread through the population will be faster.--Percy

Hi Calypsis4,If you click on your name it will take you to a page that lists all the threads in which you're participating. Under the New Replies column it says "Yes" if there are replies to your messages that you haven't answered yet. The up arrow takes you to the first unreplied-to message, the down arrow to the last.When reading one of these unreplied-to messages you'll see a notation that says "Calypsis4 has not yet responded." This notation is actually a link, and if you click on it it will change to say, "Calpysis4 has taken note of this reply." If you reply to the message it will change to say, "Calypsis4 has responded."When you've replied to or marked as noted all the messages in a thread, then the indication under the New Replies column on your thread list page will change to "No" or "Noted". Using these features will make it easier for you to keep up with all the responses you're getting.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Change subtitle.

Beneficial mutations may be rare when compared to deleterious mutations, but they occur at a more than sufficient rate. Try this hypothetical example for the ancestor humans 10 million years ago. Assume a constant population size of one million, 10 random mutations per generation, and a generation time of 20 years. Further assume that only one out of a million mutations are beneficial. Plugging in the numbers you'll find that during that period of 10 million years there would have occurred 5 million beneficial mutations.--Percy

Civilization and science have advanced in the face of mountains of bad ideas because we throw away the bad ideas and keep the good ones. Evolution works in the same way, throwing away the bad mutations and keeping the good ones.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Hi Calypsis4,In my example I assumed a ration of good to bad mutations of one in a million. You don't provide any details about the fruit fly (not house fly) experiments, but they seem consistent with my low occurence rate for beneficial mutations.The important point to keep in mind is that evolution discards bad mutations and keeps good ones, and that's why it works so successfully at producing adaptation.--Percy

You're combining Haldane, Kumura and Ohta (not Ohno) to reach a conclusion of your own devising that none would endorse. Natural selection doesn't just "come along" when the accumulation of deleterious mutations reaches some imagined threshold. Natural selection operates all the time, 24x7. If populations actually experienced diminishing fitness over time due to "genetic entropy" then the most rapidly reproducing life (like bacteria) would have evolved their way to extinction long ago.I agree that if evolution could not select beneficial mutations as fast as it could discard deleterious mutations that it would be a serious problem, but this isn't consistent with observation. Theory interprets what we actually observe about reality, which is why scientists like Kumura and Ohta did not theorize that neutral and nearly neutral mutations diminish adaptation over time.--Percy

The target you're thinking of that you've been told evolution does not have is the one creationists ask about, for example, "How does evolution know that a fish needs legs to crawl about on land?" Naturally evolution has no knowledge of or plan for the future. It just keeps what works and discards what doesn't.Evolution does have a target, just not the kind that creationists always imagine. Evolution's target is whatever causes the most successful reproduction. For evolution operating in the wild it's a very general target, but the principle of successive selection is best illustrated with a single specific target, and that's what Dawkins did with his program. A little bit of work could modify the program to select any sequence of English words, and a lot more work could select for any grammatically correct English sentence (detecting correct grammar is a tough software problem), and an absolutely huge amount of work could select for any factually accurate statement about EvC Forum (comprehending semantics is a largely unsolved software problem). This would yield a program more closely analogous to evolution in that it would have many, many "correct" targets. Dawkins explained in his book The Blind Watchmaker that his program was an illustration of the power of successive selection using the "monkeys banging away on typewriters to produce Shakespeare" example as a basis. It was neither intended or presented as a model of biological evolution, but as an illustration of how evolution works successively over many generations rather than all once in a single generation, and of the power of successive selection to home in on a desired result.--Percy

Hi Kaichos Man,I don't know if you saw my Message 418, but if you have then I'm at a loss to understand why you're carrying on in the same vein. Dawkins wasn't trying to model biological evolution, so you can't criticize the program for not being a model of biological evolution when it was never intended to be. Dawkins didn't claim it was a model of biological evolution, so you can't criticize Dawkins for making a claim he didn't make.Dawkins was drawing upon something familiar, the tale about how given enough time a monkey banging away at a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare, to help him explain something unfamiliar, how successive selection can greatly accelerate the process of obtaining a desired result.The desired result of Dawkins weasel program is the phrase "Methinks it is like a weasel". No one in their right mind thinks the goal of evolution is the phrase "Methinks it is like a weasel", least of all Dawkins. The program is an illustration of how successive selection greatly accelerates the process of arriving at a desired result by building upon random change.If I counted correctly, the phrase has 28 letters and spaces. If our monkey were to type 28 letters and spaces randomly for line after line after line, the odds of any given line having the correct phrase would be one in 27²⁸, which happens to be: Rather short odds by anyone's standards.Dawkins program illustrates that if instead the monkey keeps each correct letter of the previous line and only enters a random letter for those that are incorrect, in other words discarding the wrong letters and keeping the correct ones, that the monkey can produce the correct phrase in much, much less time, probably around 30 lines.Dawkins program of keeping correct letters and discarding incorrect letters is an illustration of the evolutionary principle of keeping good mutations and discarding bad ones.About software models of biological evolution, scores of them exist, probably hundreds and hundreds if you count undergraduate and graduate projects, and a number of them are in the public domain. Good ones are huge programs with thousands and thousands of lines of code, which is far, far more complex than Dawkins simple weasel program.The bigger puzzle is why this has to be explained over and over again to you. I share Dr Adequate's suspicion that you're working very hard to find deception where none exists, and to misunderstand something very simple.--Percy

You're misinterpreting what he's saying. Rather than me explaining it, I think if you just read the rest of the paragraph that you'll see he's not saying anything like you think he is. Here's the rest of it: All he's saying is that in recognition of the fact that the greater portion of DNA is non-coding, therefore the greater portion of random mutations will occur in non-coding regions and so will have no effect on the phenotype. It's in the next paragraph ("The neutral theory also asserts...") that he gets to the interesting stuff.AbE: Mr Jack in Message 440 correctly points out that there are other types of changes at the DNA level that do not result in any change in the organism itself.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add AbE sentence.

I wasn't objecting to anything you said about your example. I was objecting to your accusation that Dawkins misrepresented his weasel program as a model of biological evolution.I understand that you think Dawkins' simple weasel program and your fruit fly example are somehow commenting on the same or similar points, but they do not. Dawkins' program is an illustration of how successive selection upon random change can arrive at a desired result far, far more quickly than mere successive random change alone. The program attempts to address the common misunderstanding that evolution is purely random, hopefully making clear the error in drawing the associated conclusion that it would take literally forever to arrive at even a simple cell, let alone an eye or a kidney.But your fruit fly antennae example is making a different point. It attempts to make the case that the fruit fly antennae's evolution is very unlikely even when the relevant genes are already very close to the necessary state. Since you're drawing your example from the real world (as opposed to typing monkeys) you can't ignore that evolution has no target. You can't talk about improvement by 0.5% or whatever, because that assumes direction. You can't talk about NS kicking in or being enabled, because NS applies 24x7. If you're going to falsify evolution you have to falsify it based upon principles it actually holds, not upon ones you misunderstand it as holding.I haven't gone back and reread the responses to your Message 140, but I assume others have already pointed out the problems with your example. But even if it's redundant, just let me point out a couple things.First, 25 random mutations in a single gene is devastating. The number of mutations in your average reproduction is probably more on the order of 10 across the *entire* genome. You need to reconstruct your example using a reasonable number of mutations in the gene, like one, or perhaps two.Second, you failed to consider that nature is conducting a genetic experiment with every reproductive event, and in the case of fruit flies that has got to be billions and billions and billions of experiments per year. Since evolution keeps the good mutations and discards the bad ones, populations are able to maintain adaptation to their environment, as long as the environment doesn't change too fast.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Minor clarification made to last para.

You're apparently certain that Kimura doesn't accept evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life, and for some reason you've latched onto this sentence as the place where Kimura says this.But you couldn't be more wrong. All Kimura is saying here is that the vast majority of change at the molecular level has no effect at the phenotypic level. You want to look to Kimura's next paragraph to find something more easily misinterpreted to say what you mistakenly think he believes. That's the paragraph that begins, "The neutral theory also asserts..." Check it out: --Percy

Just for clarification, the Darwin quote belongs in a different category from purposeful distortion by taking out of context. Darwin believed it, he would still believe it today, and all other biologists believe it, too, as do we.The creationist fallacy in this case is that they misinterpret the quote as indicating that Darwin doubted his own theory, rather than just being an example of the standard scientific practice of seeking possible falsifications of one's theory.--PercyAbE: I urge resisting temptation before embarking upon the same explanation already offered many times to no avail. There's apparently no light bulb to go on.Edited by Percy, : AbE.