The End of Evolution By Means of Natural Selection

If that is really the case in your example then you don't have anything remotely approaching speciation, no new variety, no real change, which is another subject from the one I am pursuing. My argument is about the changes that isolation produces in new populations.And I suggested a list of alleles that could potentially be taken from your hypothetical parent population in a migration of a daughter population that would bring about such change. I also suggested that it IS possible for the daughter population to take 100% of the individuals in the parent population that possess a particular allele, thus robbing the parent population of that allele completely. I wouldn't expect the sort of study that would reveal this to have been performed. As long as mutation serves the theory of evolution and there's no way to tell a mutation from a built-in allele, and as long as evolution theory leads the investigator to concentrate on the appearance of new traits as proof of evolution, focus on locating and identifying the particular allele for the particular new trait as a mutation, and continue to think in additive terms, there is no reason they would ever discover reduced genetic diversity. I would think you'd have to be looking for it. I'll take a look at it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'll try to keep this short. I am chiefly commenting on the "If you add mutations at that point ..." part.If you add new mutations that generate the alleles that were eliminated, then indeed that would lose the new species if those alleles were not heavily selected against. However, the new mutations can be for different genes, and provide additional variation that is consistent with continuing to be part of the new species.

Hi Faith,You have repeated this many times. Thousands of known genetic diseases in human beings? Do you have a book or something that lists all these thousands? Can you list 100? Or even 50? Can you give us a credible reference?thanks,

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What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty PythonYou can't build a Time Machine without Weird Optics -- S. Valley

I'm sorry, I was quoting something I thought I read somewhere, and I had seen lists but didn't check the number, and since nobody questioned it I didn't question it. Now that you've questioned it I googled it and found many versions of the list of genetic diseases and it doesn't approach even a thousand. Very sorry about that.List of genetic disorders - WikipediaBut even that many compared to the number of known positive benefits of mutation in humans is staggering.

Many have said something along these lines but it appears to be theoretical and unproven for starters -- the idea, I mean, that mutations would have to be consistent with the character of the species, or perhaps I'm just not sure what you mean by that.Second, if the new alleles produce expressed or visible traits they ARE going to change the species, which does lose or blur the established species character -- a species isn't just a particular trait or traits, it's a whole assemblage of traits so to speak.And third, in reality, where you'd want this to happen is with certain endangered species and isn't it understood that it just doesn't happen at any rate that could rescue them from the endangered category?And fourth, what if it did happen that you got these species-compatible changes without the down side? Seems to me the best that you could expect is MAYBE another speciation event somewhere down the road which would reduce the genetic diversity again and then maybe another round of new mutations of the sort you describe, and another speciation event and so on, and it would be just a series of starts and stops with no progress in any direction expected by the ToE. All the evolutionists who write on how it works (Dawkins, Coyne, various online articles and sites such as the UC Berkeley site, and for that matter people here, Percy in particular) describe an open-ended process of variation building on variation and do not allow for any regresses of reduced genetic diversity at all. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Hi Faith, Your scenario does not have anything remotely approaching speciation, no new variety, no real change. Can't you see that your isolated population is just a sub-set of the parent population? It has almost all the same genetic makeup of the parent population. Isolation alone is not going to create a new species (populations that cannot or will not interbreed). The only thing that will make a new species is enough new genetic differences building up in both populations to interfere with them interbreeding. Reshuffling the genetic mix in the new population will not be a genetic barrier because they are still the same genes (alleles) that were there when the population was one. Your scenario does not introduce the change necessary for speciation. This may be possible, but the probability that this would happen with many (a lot of) genes is very low. Since the population could interbreed just fine before those alleles were removed, can you explain how this would suddenly create a barrier to interbreeding?The probability that the removal of any specific allele would interfere with interbreeding is very low. It takes a long time for two populations to become so genetically diverse that they can no longer interbreed and can be considered separate species. It certainly is seldom, if ever, caused by differences in just a few genes.thanks.

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What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty PythonYou can't build a Time Machine without Weird Optics -- S. Valley

It's a population with new gene frequencies because of the isolation itself. I don't see why YOU don't see THAT. Drift can bring about speciation, migration can, selection can and so on.Percy's example was of something else, something static, whereas I've been trying to show how the change in gene frequencies can bring out a new variety. This certainly happens with dog breeding, although I haven't yet gone back to try to sort through and respond to all those disagreeing posts I got in answer to my question. Percy's example created an artificial situation in which the makeup of the two populations is so similar that you aren't getting a new variety. But that's not the kind of example I've been giving. Do you disagree with the Wikipedia description I linked a couple of times already of speciation as the result of the isolation of a smaller part of a population?Change in gene frequencies is often given as a definition of evolution. You DO get this change when you isolate a portion of a population, the more restricted the size the more dramatic the change. Selection also isolates and produces the same effect in its own way. The strange thing to my mind is that this isn't accepted by so many of you here. A simple mismatch of the genetic diversities in two populations after many rounds of migration and isolation would accomplish the same thing. If one population has many fixed loci where another has a variety of alleles you won't get interbreeding. I believe it does, in spades. As I'm trying to explain over and over. I've never said this happens "suddenly" except in the drastic cases of severe bottleneck. In the usual migration scenario it would happen over time. The new population would have to inbreed for a while to develop its own mix of alleles and their traits before incompatibility would result and it still might not (except in a bottlenecked population it more probably would). I wouldn't expect reproductive incompatibility until a certain level of genetic depletion has been reached in one of the populations. So a series of such migrations, each from the last established population, makes a good example for my purposes. I never claimed that it would though. I was answering Percy's example which misrepresented my argument. I'm glad to see you agree with what I wrote above.ABE: P.S. I think my model could be tested in a laboratory setting, which I describe in Message 405Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This is the post you said hadn't been addressed. OK, I'll concede this point. In other words the chemical coding system can produce disease, deleterious effects, no apparent effect, or something viable, just in the nature of random chemical changes. OK.Then the only question is whether or to what extent this actually occurs in reality.

Hi Faith, thanks for the reply. Really? How many positive benefits of mutations are there that you are comparing against?I am not sure how many genes there are in humans (somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 estimated from the human genome project, I think). When you add in all the alleles for each gene it must be a pretty big number. Compared to how many known genetic diseases?So you think that almost all mutations cause genetic diseases, but most of us (Humans) do not have any noticeable genetic diseases and geneticists (the people who actually study and know something about genetics) estimate that, on average, every human has between 60 and 100 mutated alleles. These are alleles that are not found in either of our parents. Can you produce any evidence or research that refutes these findings? What is staggering is the 20,000 to 30,000 genes, times all the alleles for each, that are functioning in the human population without causing genetic diseases, compared to the few mutations that cause genetic diseases without being lethal. Every one of those functioning alleles is the result of a mutation.

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What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty PythonYou can't build a Time Machine without Weird Optics -- S. Valley

Hi Faith, I DO SEE THAT, but I disagree! The change in gene frequency does not cause speciation. THEY ARE THE SAME GENES THAT WERE ALWAYS THE IN THE ORIGINAL POPULATION ACCORDING TO YOUR SCENARIO. They are just a sub-set of the original population's genes. They are still the same species. Once again, the change in gene frequency does not cause a new species!In your dog breeding examples the breeders have only isolated a few genes for the traits that they are breeding for. The rest of the genes in their variety are still dog genes. For example you have the Doberman specific genes and the rest of the genome is dog genes.For the record, the simplest definition of evolution is the change in allele frequency in a population from generation to generation. That is evolution. The differences from generation to generation are partly caused by mutations of alleles. Speciation is also part of evolution that happens when two populations have accumulated enough genetic changes.For the life of me, I do not know why I am continuing to respond to you. And I don't understand why you are participating here at EvC. Are you proposing a new scientific hypothesis of genetics and you want our input before you publish and win the Nobel prize? Or do you just like to argue even if you do not understand the basics of the subject? Are you trying to learn something about a subject that obviously interests you? Are you trying to actually convince us that you are right? What do you want?

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What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty PythonYou can't build a Time Machine without Weird Optics -- S. Valley

About three I think, all cases I believe where a basically deleterious mutation confers an inadvertent positive effect as in the sickle-cell-malaria-protection tradeoff. If known positive benefits outstripped the known genetically produced diseases by at least 100 times then I'd agree that you have an argument for viable mutations. As it is all you have is the inference from bacteria that they must occur and a few rather odd examples from the diploid world (Wounded King's "beautiful buttocks" sheep example) and the raw assumption that you impose as if it were fact on the appearance of any new trait to simply assert that they do and have occurred. Why would researchers be trying to prove my point for me? Anyway, given what IS known, that there is a long list of genetically caused diseases and NO known benefits for sure, the observed mutations are most likely to be either deleterious in some unknown way or nonfunctional, which is not a good thing either, because they displace a functioning allele when they appear. It's an educated guess.This was already discussed to death on the other thread, and here too for that matter. So far so good. According only to the theory, not actual evidence.And again, this has already been discussed.And again, I'm accepting mutations for the purpose of discussion anyway.Edited by Faith, : Keep forgetting about the Preview buttonEdited by Faith, : No reason given.

Sorry I've failed to convince you. I think my examples are pretty good myself.However, please contemplate the diagram I posted. I did ask you if you disagree with it. Although, being evolutionists, they must assume mutations in the mix, the diagram shows only the isolation of a small portion of a population as the cause of speciation. You SEEM to be arguing with what other evolutionists say about these things.Here's the diagram again: File:Speciation modes.svg - WikipediaAnd here's the article it came from, where the emphasis is completely on the effects of isolation in the production of new species: Speciation - WikipediaDescription of allopatric speciation from that site: I think the mere difference in gene/allele frequencies (this IS the definition of evolution after all and it includes no other factor in its definition of how a new variety or species is produced), after a few generations of inbreeding, is enough to account for the biggest part of the differences, but selection and drift are no doubt part of the picture as they say. They aren't mentioning mutations at this point as an explanation for the differences though. And your point is? OK. Allele frequency, gene frequency. I've hardly been ignoring this definition. That's a sort of evolution, when you get a scattering of new traits within a population because of changing frequencies, but it's not the sort of evolution that could ever lead to a new species which the ToE insists upon. For that kind of evolution you have to develop separate populations of new varieties or species, and a few here have agreed with this even if you haven't. And it's in THIS scenario that the genetic depletion has to occur that eventually prevents further variation. Two? Why two? To convince someone, anyone, that I'm right -- well, not ANYONE, someone who can show he/she really gets the argument. Somebody ideally who does have the scientific knowledge I don't have (yes, I believe enough in this theory to say that despite all the claims here that it's in conflict with science.) The odds are not good of course but at least I get the exercise of seeing where I have some details wrong so I can correct them, as well as seeing how many ways what I'm saying can be misunderstood and try to correct for that as well.And of course, like any creationist, I want to see the ToE proven to be false. And I fell in love with this argument which I think has enough testability and provability and accord with various biological facts to give it a better chance than other good creationist arguments that rely more on sheer logic.And if evolution did come tumbling down as a result of this argument I wouldn't be averse to receiving a Nobel prize or at least some money.Why does any creationist come here and why should my own efforts be regarded as any different?You are actually quite a bit further from what I'm trying to say than others here are, so I don't understand why you keep arguing with me either. 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.

Yes, Faith, that's the point. Your view of evolution denies mutations and so requires that speciation happen in daughter populations that are genetically indistinguishable from any member of the parent population, since the daughter population has a strict subset of parent population alleles, just like all members of the parent population. Since on average each individual in a population receives one new allele through mutation, a daughter population having alleles unique to itself is pretty much guaranteed from day one. Yes, we know that when you're unaware of the evidence that you assume you're right. Hundreds of genetic studies of populations at varying levels of detail have been done so far, and none have even remotely hinted at the process you're proposing. One can't prove a negative, and so somewhere out there might be hiding the parent/daughter populations that support your view and we just haven't found them yet, but so far nothing.If speciation actually occurred only through loss of alleles then the evidence for this would be copiously obvious in the genetic data we already have in hand. For example, we'd find that short-lived species had many fewer alleles than long-lived species, since short-lived species will have gone through a series of many more speciation events than a long-lived one. We observe new mutations all the time. Bacterial studies in effect study mutations in real time. In more complex and longer-lived sexual species we can analyze the genomes of parents and offspring, and as the studies Bluejay mentioned reveal, each individual has on average around a hundred mutations that were possessed by neither parent, which averages to around one new allele per individual. Modern biology bemoans the demise of the naturalist. At one time biology was dominated by herds of roaming naturalists who dominated the landscape in their efforts to understand life, but while not extinct they have been largely replaced by biologists who take a genetic approach, yet despite the modern emphasis on genetics no hint of anything resembling your ideas has ever been revealed. Further, one would think that if your ideas had any merit that creationists like Michael Behe (professor of biology at Lehigh and author of Darwin's Black Box) would be advocates of ideas at least somewhat like yours, but they're not.--Percy

You've said this a number of times before, and the reason why positive mutations are so hard to detect has also been described a number of times before. If you're going to keep repeating this then at least in the interests of completeness, if nothing else, you might mention the explanation, or at least include a sideways acknowledgement that the explanation has been provided.--Percy

No, Faith, I was describing your scenario back to you. Let's go through a simple example.Assume a population with genes A through Z. Further assume that each gene has 4 alleles, 1 through 4. This means that we can give alleles names like B2 and X3.Now a daughter population breaks off. We can give this daughter population all the characteristics described in your scenario. First, it has only a subset of the parent populations genes. Let's say it has only the last two alleles of each gene. This means the parent population has alleles A1-A4, B1-B4, and so forth, while the daughter population has alleles A3-A4, B3-B4, and so forth.Let us further assume that when the daughter population breaks off that it takes with it all occurrences of some alleles, leaving the parent population bereft of these alleles. Let's say that that the daughter population takes with it all the alleles X3-X4, Y3-Y4 and Z3-Z4. So now for the X, Y and Z genes the parent population has only X1-X2, Y1-Y2 and Z1-Z2 alleles.Here's a complete list of all the alleles for each population:Parent population: A1-A4, B1-B4,..., X1-X2, Y1-Y2, Z1-Z2Daughter population: A3-A4, B3-B4,...Z3-Z4So your problem reduces to choosing a set of alleles from the daughter population for an individual such that it could never have been a member of the original parent population. This can't be done. Go ahead, play with allele combinations and convince yourself. It can't be done. If all the daughter population can do is play with a subset of the alleles from the original parent population, then it can never be anything other than a member of the same species as the original parent population.You can make this as dynamic as you like. Let us say that both parent and daughter populations fall on hard times and both decline in numbers until there is just a single individual in each, one a male and one a female. This is the most dramatic allele reduction you could imagine, since for each gene in each population there can be at most two alleles. But each individual only has alleles that existed in the original parent population. Individuals with precisely the same allele combinations as our two lone surviving individuals could easily have arisen in the original parent population and would have been recognized as members of that species. So obviously these two surviving individuals cannot be anything other than members of the same species as the original parent population.--Percy