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Author Topic:   Reduction of Alleles by Natural Selection (Faith and ZenMonkey Only)
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 33 of 87 (554395)
04-08-2010 12:06 AM
Reply to: Message 32 by Blue Jay
04-07-2010 11:05 PM


You can't make a healthy allele out of a sick mutation
(Yes, I know you aren't claiming to make healthy alleles out of unhealthy ones so please don't try to claim I mean the title that literally. It's meant to be a play on the proverb you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. But of course the full message would be that you can't get healthy alleles out of a system that produces sick mutations. At the very least you haven't proven that you can.)
====================================
I think we're going to have to change direction here.
I have answered your posts completely honestly. I am not even close to "ranting." I may repeat myself because of having been misunderstood so much, but that shouldn't be more than boring if you're getting what I'm saying.
Yes, you are insisting that even if it's a sick allele it's still an allele and yes I'm coming to realize that it probably doesn't deserve the term, but OK I'll call it an allele too, with the usual qualifiers, "deleterious" and so on. That's why I started using the term "normal" -- just another way to contrast with "deleterious" that seems to me to make the point better -- an allele that produces all the traits that are talked about when adaptations are being discussed, which is a normal healthy process as opposed to a genetic disease.
There is a great deal of difference between genetic disease and normal adaptational alleles, same difference as between going from a disease of the legs that requires braces or crutches for walking to normal walking. There is no normal progression from one to another as in your erroneous example of going from walking at all to walking a distance. Simple traits such as eye color and hair color and body type come from normal genes; genetic diseases come from diseased genes. I'm sure this is clear enough.
I have no problem at all understanding the difference between the mechanism of mutation and the product. I'm sorry, you've cleared up nothing. You've in fact strengthened my understanding that evolutionists have got themselves seriously deceived and I believe I've gone a long way to showing that in my last two posts and it is you who is not understanding and even possibly not approaching this honestly if you don't see that -- not intentionally probably but simply as a result of your solidly unyielding evolutionist bias.
You think our argument unfolds as follows:
(1) Assume that all alleles come from mutations.
(2) Observe an allele that we have never seen before.
(3) Conclude that the allele came from mutation.
Sure looks like that as it is normally encountered.
In actuality, our argument unfolds as follows:
(1) Demonstrate that mutations create new alleles.
Yes, but if the alleles being created are all disease-producing or apparently functionless they can hardly be accepted as the same as alleles that produce the traits that make for all the interesting variations in nature. They're sick and broken alleles.
(2) Observe that no other means of creating alleles has been demonstrated.
(3) Disregard these undemonstrated means of creating alleles.
(4) Conclude that, to the best of our knowledge, all alleles come from mutations.
You really think I've been missing this obvious progression of how you all think? It is the ToE that leads you to even have to have a means of creating alleles. And it does so to such an extent that evolutionists will even apparently accept a disease process as a normal process. That seems to me to be getting confirmed more and more as we speak.
Your conclusion is really that, to the best of your knowledge if the ToE is correct, there is no other source for alleles than mutations. But if the mutations are producing no true useful trait-making alleles but only disease or untranslatable garbage, your conclusion may continue to be an hypothesis but it should be getting harder and harder to hold onto it with all the evidence against it.
Then, only after that, we tack on two more steps:
(5) Observe an allele that we have never seen before.
(6) Conclude that the allele came from mutation.
I'm sure, yes. This is the part we normally encounter in evolutionist presentations, but truly, bluejay, the steps you have added to this don't make it any more reasonable. They only demonstrate your assumption of the ToE, and you simply want to MAKE me accept it. Is that debate?
AND none of this in any way justifies calling it FACT. It's all still an unconfirmed hypothesis at best. To call it FACT is really to commit a fraud. Again, true science never treats its hypotheses as fact -- the whole enterprise is toward proving or disproving them. You all insist on treating it as fact simply because, well, you don't have an alternative. How many times in the history of science do you suppose an alternative didn't appear to replace a hypothesis that wasn't working or was outright disproved? You don't hold onto it just because you don't have an alternative when all the evidence is pointing against it, as it obviously is against mutation as any kind of normal process.
Your argument is that the first three steps never happened. This is simply false.
No, that is not my argument. What's false is the idea that this is my argument. I have no problem at all accepting that those are the steps you go through. But there's a basic flaw in the reasoning, that's what I'm trying to point out.
The first three steps don't help you as I say above; they merely show how the whole system is assumed based on the ToE and remains unproven, while evidence galore has been mounting that demonstrates that mutation could not possibly be the source of genuine healthy traits and adaptations.
If you are insisting on equating disease with health and that I accept this as proof that mutations produce alleles, I'm very sorry, I consider this to be a staggeringly glaring case of where science goes wrong.
If you take these points under consideration, I think we're prepared to discuss the role of mutation in the processes of speciation and diversification.
I cannot accept any of this reasoning. But just as I started out, I can go with the common assumption that mutations produce alleles anyway for the purpose of argument, as I have been assuming that it doesn't make any difference for the argument I've been trying to make. If you want to just leave this discussion as a place where we agree to disagree that's OK with me.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Edited by Faith, : added a sentence somewhere above but most edits are for grammar and typos

This message is a reply to:
 Message 32 by Blue Jay, posted 04-07-2010 11:05 PM Blue Jay has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 36 by Blue Jay, posted 04-08-2010 12:25 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 34 of 87 (554401)
04-08-2010 1:25 AM
Reply to: Message 32 by Blue Jay
04-07-2010 11:05 PM


break time?
Wanna take a little decompression side trip and just talk about stuff like, oh, junk DNA or something, before we come back to the topic? Or how genes with thousands of codons can be identified with their phenotypes and so on? I'm really interested.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 37 of 87 (554479)
04-08-2010 1:17 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by Blue Jay
04-08-2010 12:25 PM


Re: You can't make a healthy allele out of a sick mutation
Yeah, I had a feeling you were going to say that there is no difference between disease and health genetically speaking, it's all still gene and its phenotype. This is of course implied by what you have been saying.
The idea that there is no distinction at this level doesn't even fly with observations of nature that evolutionists make in other contexts all the time. That is, when evolutionists describe various species they describe them in terms of their adaptive healthy normal functions, and disease is regarded as something that happens occasionally to interfere with them, fortunately rare -- which is the normal way we all view these things. The preponderant recognition is of adaptive and healthy function and the logical distinction is clearly made between health and disease and deformtiy. That is you clearly and naturally distinguish between "healthy" and "diseased" at this level of discussion, like any normal person does.
Oh right, the unhealthy phenotypes were selected out. That would fly if the ratio of healthy to unhealthy were not the tiny-to-huge that exists in known mutations which would prevent any living thing from ever having existed at all if they were actually the source of all alleles.
When you get to the area of mutations then it becomes useful to evolution to discard the normal way of thinking and blur health and disease all together into gene and phenotype no matter what disease or deformity is the result. You can convince yourselves of this because of course evolution is "blind," but no evolution could possibly have ever got off the ground with predominantly disease-producing alleles, and the actual evidence you have is almost exclusively of disease-producing or nonfunctional mutations, NOT the normal proportion of health to disease that is seen in living things themselves.
Why is it so hard to come up with a real example of an actual mutation you can point to that produces a genuine normal trait in the organism? Why? If you have so many examples of mutation-caused diseases you can point to, even locate on the DNA strand, there's no reason at all why you shouldn't have examples of normal functioning alleles too if your hypothesis is correct. The fact that you have none is STRONG evidence that mutations don't do what you think they do. The EVIDENCE is that they are only a destructive event.
No, as a creationist I don't have to give a source of alleles because I assume them all to have been there from the beginning, and they are demonstrably already there in any species and in any example we discuss. There is certainly no evidence that shows this couldn't be the case.
Evolution has the task of finding a source for them, not creationists.
I'm writing this in a rush as I have to get back to work, simply wanted to get this much said. I'll be back later and see if I missed anything in your post, but I've got to say right now there's probably no hope for this debate. You're going to go on saying I don't understand things I perfectly well understand, simply because I disagree with you and explain everything through a different set of assumptions -- for which the evidence is every bit as good or better than it is for evolution. I not only disagree with you and the evidence supports my view, but I've shown that the evolutionist thinking is absurd.
You will of course refuse to accept this barring a miracle.
Back later.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by Blue Jay, posted 04-08-2010 12:25 PM Blue Jay has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 39 by Blue Jay, posted 04-09-2010 11:13 AM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 38 of 87 (554537)
04-08-2010 7:13 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by Blue Jay
04-08-2010 12:25 PM


Re: You can't make a healthy allele out of a sick mutation
Looks to me like I pretty much answered your post but thought I might say more about this part of it:
Even under creationism, there would need to be a means of creating alleles. Otherwise, how did any of us ever end up possessing alleles? The creationist means of creating alleles is whatever design process was used by the Designer.
The actual observable situation is that all species have genomes and alleles for variations of different traits. They are already in place, and a creationist has no need to explain their origin beyond their having always been there. The evidence of their actual existence and also their operating acccording to laws such as Mendel's is in favor of this claim. Science can be carried on with them and about them just fine without our knowing anything specific about their origin.
Because no such process has been demonstrated to exist, scientists are required to exclude it from our models.
Nonsense. They are there. You are required to take them for granted as there. It is only your theory that requires you to explain their origin OR exclude the creationist idea. The actual facts, the evidence itself, the empirical evidence, correspond just fine with their originating all together at a point of time called the Creation.
If you want it to be considered in scientific models, demonstrate that it exists.
The evidence is so heavy in favor of such an explanation that it has to be evolutionists who have the burden of proof against it.
In science, we can only use those means of creating alleles that have been demonstrated to exist, and, so far, mutation is all we’ve got. We are literally---literally---out of options, Faith. We don’t really have a choice but to conclude that mutations are all there is.
Yes, bluejay, and I feel your pain, but a single one-time origin at the beginning of life does just fine with the actual facts, and it is only your evolutionary theory that demands a means of creating alleles.
But truly, if mutations have been shown so far never to have produced an actual healthy normal allele but only diseases and gobbledygook -- in the thousands yet -- if mutations are all you've got, clearly you have to abandon the whole idea that you need a source of alleles beyond the assumption that they are built in. It is mystification and in fact lying to talk about alleles AS IF they were the product of mutations when there isn't one iota of evidence that they are and plenty that they aren't.
In religion, we have the luxury of tossing around indemonstrable processes, but the standards in science are such that we can only base our models on things we can demonstrate.
Well, with mutations the demonstration has failed. Science at that point has an obligation to look elsewhere in that case instead of insisting on something that CAN'T be demonstrated, has NEVER been demonstrated despite LOTS of evidence.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 41 of 87 (554776)
04-10-2010 5:26 AM
Reply to: Message 39 by Blue Jay
04-09-2010 11:13 AM


Re: You can't make a healthy allele out of a sick mutation
Trying to find some information to include in my answer.

This message is a reply to:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 42 of 87 (554856)
04-10-2010 3:20 PM
Reply to: Message 39 by Blue Jay
04-09-2010 11:13 AM


Re: You can't make a healthy allele out of a sick mutation
Bluejay, I'm sorry but I can't concede that. As I said, the best I can do is proceed AS IF mutations are the source of alleles, for the sake of the discussion here. But concede, no way. You haven't proved a thing. I asked a long time ago that bacteria not be used in this discussion for one thing, but for another I doubt that example is of a mutation that produced an allele, but probably just knocked out another allele. There is no clue that that is the case though I couldn't find a reference to make the point for sure.
Well, let me go through the post at least:
Faith: Why is it so hard to come up with a real example of an actual mutation you can point to that produces a genuine normal trait in an organism?
As long as you believe that there are such things as diseased genes, this will not help you. It would be a bit like casting my pearls before swine.
I see, I have to ignore the evidence. Got it.
Seems to me that mutations that reorganize the coding of normal alleles and produce either disease or nothing can be fairly called "sick genes." It’s only evolutionist assumptions — or hypotheses — that claim otherwise.
I’m trying to dispel your notion that disease is genotypic, and not just phenotypic.
Sorry, the evidence is against you.
I thought the best way to do this was to appeal to something we both agreed on (i.e. neutral mutations, which are clearly not pathogenic, but are of the same kind as deleterious mutations).
Perhaps you misspoke? Deleterious does mean pathogenic.
Deleterious Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster:
harmful often in a subtle or unexpected way -- deleterious effects -- deleterious to health
In any case, neutral mutations is a strange concept. Does that mean you don’t KNOW what they do or you know they don’t do anything? They just displace a REAL allele which probably WAS doing something, right? Destruction.
But, since that's not going to work, I present you with a beneficial mutation: here and, for good measure, here.
These papers were done in 1991 and 1989, respectively. They document the genotypes and phenotypes of, collectively, 26 mutations to the gyrA and gyrB genes that confer resistance to a type of antibacterial drug called quinolone. All were confirmed as mutations, because they were induced in populations of bacteria whose genotype for the gene in question was known beforehand.
If mutation is a pathological process, common sense should tell us that it cannot possibly produce something that is useful to an organism.
Depends on HOW it's useful. If it's useful by playing off one disease process against another, as is known to happen, or by simply knocking out an allele that was sensitive to the antibiotic, that's not useful in the sense a normal allele is useful and for all I know that's the kind of usefulness your bacterial mutations have, i.e. a pathological process in its essence.
Yet, I just presented 26 examples of proven, documented mutations that confer a beneficial phenotype on bacteria (13 each from two different genes).
Thirteen mutations to a SINGLE gene? Two genes with 26? What kind of "mutation" could that possibly be? What sort of random process changes the same gene thirteen times all toward the same result and another at the same rate yet? Something very weird about this idea. Sorry, this gets curiouser and curiouser. It may superficially look like a mutation but anything that behaves with such consistency has to be built into the organism somehow or other. No way I can concede anything with such a strange example.
But apart from that, whatever happens in bacteria is a pretty sorry example for answering the glaring fact that there are thousands of known disease-causing mutations in human beings, which has been my example here. There is NO reason you can’t produce a normal allele from a mutation in human beings unless they don’t do what you think they do. Sorry, that’s what you need, not bacteria.
The DNA sequencing study on the family of four that you linked would be a great source of material if such an event has ever happened. Something like 70 mutations were identified. Why can't their function also be identified?
I’m sure Wounded King or some other geneticist could provide a longer litany of these.
Perhaps you should invite him to give the info on the other thread. If we aren't just trying to win points here but get to the bottom of our topic instead, it could only be a good thing to be as complete as possible.
You should concede the point that mutations are relevant to your model,
Such a request is ridiculous. Best I can do is TREAT THEM AS IF they’re relevant because I’ve seen only too clearly that in actual fact according to actual evidence the claims for mutations are all a delusion.
given that I have demonstrated that beneficial mutations exist,
Sorry, bluejay, you haven't demonstrated such a thing. Not any more than I already knew about and took into account here. A questionable adaptation in bacteria can't answer the fact of thousands of genetic diseases in human beings. The puzzle is that the obvious implications of this are denied by evolutionists while you try to make a single effect in bacteria prove what is so amply denied by the evidence.
and have demonstrated the massive potential for new mutations to have been introduced into a growing population, such as the northern elephant seal.
Now this I've already answered many times over. You have certainly demonstrated no such thing, The vast majority of known mutations do not produce viable alleles as I have clearly recognized and shown, and simply assuming that mutations have occurred in the seals is far from evidence that they are anything other than undesirable. No evidence, just assumption — or hypothesis. No evidence.
If you do, we can then proceed to discuss the implications of this for your model of bottleneck speciation.
As I said, I cannot concede what you ask, It’s been soundly disproved, but I can proceed AS IF what you say is true. Sorry, best I can do. If you can’t accept this then we’re at a stalemate.
But if you will, then in my accepting for the sake of argument that mutations produce alleles, how about if you now give me some numbers to work with: Just how many new alleles should I have to take into account and at what point(s) in the life cycle? Not math, just numbers.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 39 by Blue Jay, posted 04-09-2010 11:13 AM Blue Jay has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 43 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 5:14 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 44 of 87 (554878)
04-10-2010 5:19 PM


RAZD and Ring Species -- wow what a miscommunication
Post moved to End of Evolution by means of Natural Selection thread.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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 Message 46 by Admin, posted 04-10-2010 7:07 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 45 of 87 (554879)
04-10-2010 5:29 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by Blue Jay
04-10-2010 5:14 PM


Re: You can't make a healthy allele out of a sick mutation
Just because you see a series of codons in the place where an allele should be does NOT mean it's a functioning allele. It may simply be gobbledygook, and it MAY simply have knocked out a functioning allele that was sensitive to the antibiotic, thus providing the resistance. This is NOT proof of mutations making viable alleles!
And I'm denying nothing!
YOU are missing the point, and possibly not playing with a full deck yourself.
"Deleterious" is not a kind of mutation: it is a kind of phenotype.
"Deleterious" used to desribe the phenotype is new to me, but whether it can be used that way or not, the word is CERTAINLY used to describe mutations:
Mutation - Wikipedia
Therefore, the optimal mutation rate for a species is a trade-off between costs of a high mutation rate, such as deleterious mutations, and the metabolic costs of maintaining systems to reduce the mutation rate, such as DNA repair enzymes.[5]
One new allele per individual at birth? Or half an allele? I can't work with .6

This message is a reply to:
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 Message 50 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 9:11 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 48 of 87 (554899)
04-10-2010 7:37 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by Admin
04-10-2010 7:07 PM


Re: RAZD and Ring Species -- wow what a miscommunication
OK, I'll move it back to the other thread.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 49 of 87 (554916)
04-10-2010 9:03 PM
Reply to: Message 47 by Blue Jay
04-10-2010 7:34 PM


Re: The men who witnessed evolution
Unfortunately, Bluejay, with the last few posts here and over on the other thread I've been getting more and more "stubborn" that mutations can't be a good thing, and although I see your point in this post -- yes, you made your case -- I refuse to accept it because a good thing for bacteria is not a good thing for higher living things, in which it has been made only too clear to me that mutations are NEVER beneficial.
Faith writes:
Just because you see a series of codons in the place where an allele should be does NOT mean it's a functioning allele. It may simply be gobbledygook, and it MAY simply have knocked out a functioning allele that was sensitive to the antibiotic, thus providing the resistance. This is NOT proof of mutations making viable alleles!
Here is a link to the first abstract again (Hallet and Maxwell 1991).
Let me review what they did:
Acquired a colony of bacteria with known genotype for the gyrA gene. This bacterium is known to be susceptible to to the antibacterial quinolone.
Induced random misrepair mutations in the gyrA gene.
Applied quinolone to the colony.
Discovered that some of the bacteria were not killed by the quinolone.
Sequenced the gyrA gene of some of the bacteria that survived the quinolone.
Discovered that one resistant bacterium had a gyrA genotype that was different from the original colony’s genotype (where the original genotype’s 317th nucleotide was an A, the resistant genotype’s 317th nucleotide was a G)
ONE resistant bacterium was studied? But there were other resistant bacteria? But you don't know for sure if they also had this G where normally there was an A? But do you even know for sure about that A for the whole original genotype? Unless you sequenced the whole colony you don't.
In any case I am now going to reject this example even though you proved your point, because I see where mutations are merely assumed by evolutionists in the preponderance of cases where there is no need for any mutations at all to explain the phenotype, and I see this more strongly because of what you've written than I did before.
And bacteria are a completely different creature from the higher animals. For one thing they don't even have junk DNA, they have a "packed" genome, which fits my creationist expectations in surprising if depressing ways. Evolutionists of course don't see it this way but I see this as the "healthy" state which is no longer the state of the rest of creation that have genomes full of dead genes as Jerry Coyne calls them. The fact that a packed non-junk genome is even possible tells me that that's the way it was for the original creation before the Fall. Bacteria were apparently less subject to the Fall if at all so they've got their original genetic package still pretty much intact. In fact, they are agents of the Fall really, they kill off the rest of us or would have if it weren't for modern medicine, which we wouldn't have if it hadn't been for Christ, which evolutionists are doing their best to misunderstand and ultimately destroy.
Yes, you proved your point but you also so thoroughly confirmed for me the nonexistence of useful mutations for the rest of creation, I have to assume that bacteria simply have a superior system for protecting themselves that is long since lost to us. They must have some kind of chemical process that can recreate useful alleles in a way that seems out of the blue, not mutations but alleles that are part of their repertoire chemically speaking such that rare ones can appear under special conditions. For the rest of creation you get disease causing mutations and junk where the lowly bacterium gets new ways of killing us and making us sick.
Their huge numbers are probably a big part of their adaptability and the retention of their packed genome. Found an article online a while back that had concluded something like this.
Not accepting any comparisons with bacteria. Consider the whole evolutionist attempt to reduce all health and unhealth to neutrality sick in the head.
Discovered that the protein produced by the mutant allele was also different from the original protein of the colony.
Isolated the gyrase protein that was produced by the mutant gyrA allele
Tested the function of this protein under varying levels of quinolone.
Discovered that the mutant protein could tolerate 10 times more quinolone than the original protein, and still function properly.
They saw a beneficial new phenotype, and demonstrated that it correlated with a change in a nucleotide, a change to the protein made by the mutant gene, and an improvement in function over the wild-type protein. They demonstrated that an undirected mutation, a mistake---a disease process, as you like to call it---can produce a product that outperforms what you would call a "normal allele.
In this case, the mutation involved was changing an A to a G. This can be classified as a point mutation, also called a substitution, and, more specifically, as a transition. In other cases---this one, for example*--- it has been shown that changing an A into a G can cause a loss of functionality or some other deleterious effect.
*I think this one is free for the public to access. Scroll down to the Results section, Molecular Genetics Analysis subsection, and you’ll see that 3 of 5 mitochondrial myopathy patients had adenine-to-guanine (A-to-G) mutations that caused the disease.
This is what I mean when I say that mechanism and phenotype are different: the same mechanism of mutation can result in either deleterious, neutral or beneficial phenotypes in different cases. There is no diseased process involved: it is just a process of change, and disease is only one of several possible outcomes.
In evolution's sick world I guess, but in the real world there is a big difference.
Thanks for the example and I see that a useful allele was created from the point of view of the bacterium. But again, since the vast majority of mutations are not useful, and since you haven't a single one in human beings despite many opportunities to find one if it ever occurred, I'm still going to refuse to accept this.
And now I'm not even going to accept mutations AS IF they can produce alleles. I don't believe it and don't see the point any more.
So if we're going to discuss my claim that the processes that lead to and include speciation also involve decreased genetic diversity we're going to do it without that assumption.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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 Message 47 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 7:34 PM Blue Jay has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 52 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 10:38 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 51 of 87 (554932)
04-10-2010 10:36 PM
Reply to: Message 50 by Blue Jay
04-10-2010 9:11 PM


Re: Loose Ends
As I just explained, when one says "deleterious mutation," one is not saying that the process that produced the mutation is inherently deleterious: one is saying that the phenotype that results from the mutation is deleterious to the organism.
But you aren't getting it. I don't care what "one is saying" -- it's CLEARLY the case that the mutations are a pathology in themselves, not normal occurrences but something twisted and pathological that happened to the genetic code over the millennia.
You are classifying mutations by their phenotype, and not by their mechanism. A more mechanistic classification is provided in that article under the heading By effect on structure. There is a disconnect between this classification and the phenotypic classification: any one of the mutation types listed under By effect on structure could feasibly produce deleterious, neutral or beneficial phenotypes.
No, I was merely insisting on the normal nomenclature which you were denying. But there is NO SUCH THING as a mutation that could produce anything but deleterious and neutral, meaning really I think, dead, alleles so it's all academic anyway.
Faith writes:
But apart from that, whatever happens in bacteria is a pretty sorry example for answering the glaring fact that there are thousands of known disease-causing mutations in human beings, which has been my example here. There is NO reason you can’t produce a normal allele from a mutation in human beings unless they don’t do what you think they do. Sorry, that’s what you need, not bacteria.
It is completely unfair to shrink the goal after I’ve taken my shot. It’s like changing where the bullseye is after I’ve thrown all my darts!
I know, terrible thing to do to you and it gets worse if you read the next post. I'm sorry, this is the first time I've ever done this, but I have to do it. I got a new view of all this in the midst of your work. I'll send you some cookies if it would make you feel better.
Nevertheless, there is a good reason why I can’t produce a normal allele from a mutation in human beings: think about the process that was needed to identify beneficial mutations in that bacterium.
Would you suggest we apply a lethal substance to an entire population of humans to see which, if any, are resistant to that lethal substance, and then sequence the relevant genes of the survivors to determine if the resistance is due to a mutation?
Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would I. So, we rely on people to volunteer for genetics studies in humans. Most people who volunteer are people who know they have a problem, and hope that the research will uncover the cause of the problem.
Furthermore, what if there were a beneficial mutation in your genome? Would you even notice it? Think of something about yourself that you are better at than anybody else you know. Did you ever not catch a cold when everyone else in your family caught it? Are you more attractive than other people in your family? Does everybody in your family except you need glasses? Do you have more natural talent for basketball than your sister or mother? Etc.
But if you could count 70 unexpected differences between children and parents, as in that study, all mutations of course, that is, you can actually pinpoint them in the genome, then you could check out if any of them act like normal alleles. Some methods should include prior knowledge about what in the human genome does what so not require anything invasive.
I'm more and more convinced of my own position as this thread proceeds.
Did it ever occur to you to wonder whether or not these sorts of things were due to beneficial mutations? Of course not: nobody ever considers that. And, those who do consider it rarely (if ever) feel the desire to go get their genomes sequenced to find out. So, naturally, our sample is skewed towards deleterious mutations, because there is more motivation to work with deleterious mutations.
Yes, you're very convinced. No, I've always thought in terms of Mendelian principles: it's always been there and just gets shuffled around from generation to generation, producing all our differences from one another according to various rules, so we all get whatever we get simply from the luck of the draw as it were, from the available gene pool. Even beneficial mutations are no help in this scenario, in fact they're simply unneeded -- there's plenty of material for inheritance to work on. Put that together with the evidence of thousands of BAD mutations and you have normal process on the one hand, disease process on the other.
By the way, why do I have to provide an example from humans, anyway? I thought we were talking about cheetahs and elephant seals.
-----
Because it's for humans that we have such an impressive catalog of genetic diseases that can be traced directly to mutations. So that's where we should have evidence of a normal allele if such a thing ever occurs. Thousands really. At least ten times the number of disease mutations. A hundred times if evolution could ever really happen. A thousand times.
Chocolate chip?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 50 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 9:11 PM Blue Jay has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 54 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 10:41 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 53 of 87 (554935)
04-10-2010 10:40 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Blue Jay
04-10-2010 10:38 PM


Re: The men who witnessed evolution
No, you got it wrong, but it's probably time to end it anyway now that you've resorted to the typical dissing of creationist thinking.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 52 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 10:38 PM Blue Jay has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 55 of 87 (554937)
04-10-2010 10:43 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by Blue Jay
04-10-2010 10:41 PM


Re: Loose Ends
With or without nuts?
And send your address via Messaging.

This message is a reply to:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 57 of 87 (554940)
04-10-2010 10:51 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Blue Jay
04-10-2010 10:38 PM


worldview clash
I’m glad: now it is patently obvious to everybody that your intention is not to understand reality, but to rationalize your own silly beliefs at any cost. That bacteria can be benefited by mutation is proof positive of the principles behind the Theory of Evolution, but it is somehow also proof positive that nothing else can be benefited by mutation.
I'm convinced you're convinced. It would help a great deal if you could say the same about me.
I wish I could have convinced you to listen to reason, but, instead, I’ll have to be content knowing that it was me who finally got you to reveal to the world your obvious idiocy.
I could say the same thing back to you, Bluejay, which would fly in my favorite venues while you can get away with your view here and I couldn't -- the only real difference.
Look, I realize how depressing it is to be faced with unequivocal evidence that the worldview you have held and defined yourself by all your life is actually inferior to some other worldview.
That is simply not the case with me -- or I dare say with any Christian who believes as I do and has spent some time thinking about it. I didn't become a Christian until late in life and a creationist even later. I believed in evolution and read a fair amount in it up until then.
I’m facing it myself, and it hurts like nothing I’ve ever experienced before: my family are all very disappointed in me (I’m scared of even going near my grandfather anymore), I don’t fit in with any of the communities I associate with anymore, I live in perpetual fear of my next ecclesiastical interview, and I have utterly failed to convince myself that I am not deeply saddened by the prospect of disappearing into oblivion after I die, which I now regard as a very real possibility.
That is a very sad story, Bluejay. Apparently your conversion to evolution, and also atheism (?) is pretty recent? In a way I did go through that conversion myself as a teenager but I wasn't a strong Christian at the time, and my parents never went to church, so it was easy for me to lose the little I had. Science was just about worshiped when I was in high school, Sputnik and all you know. And the scientist types all sounded so sophisticated and they seemed to know what they were talking about. I had a teacher in an "accelerated" geometry class who pretty much said since we were all geniuses (or we wouldn't have been in his class) he could cut the math part down to a few minutes at the beginning of class and then he'd spend the rest of the time convincing us we shouldn't believe in God any more. He spent hours ridiculing religion much as people here do. 1957.
I did have a sense of loss, briefly, a pang of grief over losing God. God is to be loved. I didn't think about eternity but that's certainly something to think about.
I remained an atheist and evolutionist for the next thirty years, sometimes a fairly aggressive one.
I wish I could convince YOU that you've bought a lie.
It sucks, but I have never been good at deluding myself. You do not seem to have this problem.
Well, I think you are deluding yourself with evolution, with evidence that isn't really evidence. It's all an amazing complex of smoke and mirrors.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 52 by Blue Jay, posted 04-10-2010 10:38 PM Blue Jay has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 58 of 87 (554942)
04-10-2010 10:52 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by anglagard
04-10-2010 10:49 PM


Re: Faith is Absolute
Anglagard does jnot belong on this thread. Please remove his post.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 56 by anglagard, posted 04-10-2010 10:49 PM anglagard has replied

Replies to this message:
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