The End of Evolution By Means of Natural Selection

No it doesn't. I've never denied that this is the case. What I have said is that when you get mutations you STOP GETTING THE PROCESSES OF VARIATION FROM ISOLATION, SELECTION, DRIFT with the concomitant REDUCTION OF ALLELES THAT MAKES NEW VARIETIES AND SPECIES.ADDITION DOES NOT MAKE NEW SPECIES, THE SELECTION PROCESSES MAKE NEW SPECIES.With addition, with mutations, assuming they do anything functional or useful at all, you would only get a bunch of new traits scattered throughout the population that blur the character of that population, which means destroying a species you already had if it occurs at that point, you do NOT get the making of a new variety, let alone a species. For that to happen you need the reduction processes. Put all the mutations into it you like, you are NOT getting speciation that way.In fact, think through what mutations actually do. You get ONE per individual, right? As many have said, a single isolated allele doesn't stand much of a chance in a large population. It's not going to do anything for the species at all, just displace another allele that was probably functioning just fine with many others like itself in the overall population. So then what, you're waiting around for one of the new mutations to get selected? How often does that happen? You are talking as if the incidence of mutations is some great number that should offset the reduction processes but in actual fact you all don't even think they do much when you get down to it. And even you all have to admit most of them are either deleterious or simply unfunctional. Are you getting all ends of your story together here ever?Furthermore, when you DO get a mutation, it changes only the function of the gene it sits on. If it's a gene for color you get a new color. If it's a gene for beak or nose size you get a bigger or smaller beak or nose. Where are you ever going to get the mutations you need for macroevolution? You need a new GENE, not just an allele, for the difference between a feather and a scale. You need a new GENE, in fact probably many new genes, not just an allele, for the difference between a finger and a claw. Do mutations do this? So far all you've said is that they are the source of alleles. It is NOT a matter of outpacing. See above. I'll happily defend my obstinance forever, thank you very much.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.

I've never denied evolution on the level of microevolution. That is all that has gone on in the past and it's going on today as well.

But the point that I was making is that your ridiculous fantasies about genetics do not rule out macroevolution either. The way that you are being wrong about genetics does not actually rule out the inescapable fact that you are so desperate to deny.

"Right"? No. Pathetically, stupidly, laughably wrong.Please, please, please just go and learn something about genetics.Did this never occur to you? You wish to lecture us on a subject which you have never studied. And you must be aware of this. You must know that you have never studied genetics, you're not actually insane. You're not delusional. Therefore, you know that you have never studied genetics.

Excuse me but I got that information in THIS discussion, either this thread or the other one. If it's wrong then you contribute your information to it.I'm also aware of the study that found 70 from parents. So you could be a nice guy and help me resolve the disparate information.Hm?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Both the Flood scenario and the argument about reduced genetic diversity rule out macroevolution.

The reason you didn't spell it out is because that isn't what you had in mind. The phrase you used was "built-in alleles," and you used it because you had no idea where these alleles were. You never even used words like "duplicate genes" or "chromosomes," let alone "ploidy." The words WK actually used were "totally unsupported mechanisms." He characterized the likelihood of someone like yourself proposing a reasonable scenario as "wildly improbable." "Destroying genetic material" is only what you think mutations do, it's not what they actually do. The reality is that mutations modify DNA and selection then operates on the resulting phenotype. Deleterious changes are selected against, beneficial changes are selected for, and relatively neutral changes are governed only by random chance.There have been at most around 2000 generations of cats since the flood (I'm referring to the entire cat family). If cats, like humans, experince around 100 mutations per generation, and if cats, like humans, have around 3 billion nucleotides pairs in their DNA, then that's a total of 200,000 mutation-caused differences between the original cats from the ark and today's cats. If we assume point muations, then 200,000 mutations could only affect about .006% (that's 6 out of every 100,000 nucleotides) of the cat genome. That is far too tiny a percentage to destroy any significant amounts of genetic material, or even any at all, and especially not entire genes. My numbers were approximations, but they can't be too far off, so correct values would not produce the orders of magnitude larger values that you need. Well, why don't we ask him? Hey, WK, are there any examples of chromosomes in the midst of losing their genes one by one, genes that sequencing reveals have copies on other chromosomes?The question is rhetorical because it's not a realistic possibility. We know that no animal we've sequenced so far has had any duplicate chromosomes within the last 10,000 years at the very least, because mutation rates are far, far too slow to have destroyed the evidence that they'd been duplicates.Another problem is that mutations come in many forms, but the most common are point mutations where a nucleotide is added, deleted or changed to one of the other 3 nucleotides. Given that deletion is no more likely than addition, how would duplicate genes ever disappear in just 4000 years? If genes averaged 1000 nucleotides each and if every mutation was a deletion, and if these mutations conentrated themselves on just a few genes, then in 4000 years you could delete 4 genes (I'm way oversimplifying the math, but the number of genes would be small and you get the idea). Except that there's no uniformitarian assumption. Everything we think we know about biology comes from scientific study, not assumptions, and all the evidence tells us that things worked in the past pretty much the same way they work today. Except that "getting Faith'd" means that careful explanations that were ignored or not understood were traded for copious amounts of nonsense, while "getting Percy'd" means accurate information about the current understanding of science was provided. Clearly those "getting Faith'd" are getting the short end of the stick.--Percy

Whereas the facts about genetics make macroevolution inevitable.What's your point?

No you didn't.If you would like to pretend that some post on this thread gave you this crazy idea, then I should like to see you actually cite the post that inspired that delusion. I enjoy a good laugh.

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Both the Flood scenario and the argument about reduced genetic diversity rule out macroevolution.

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Since your argument assumes that speciation happens - and I've no reason to believe that your Flood scenario doesn't assume it as well - that is pretty obviously untrue. Speciation IS macroevolution by the scientific definition which is the only viable definition we have.

Hi Percy, I just caught a bit of your post and want to give a bit of an answer before I have to leave again.You are right that I hadn't brought up polyploidy until recently here but I really wasn't sure if it contributed alleles or enough alleles to make an argument out of it beyond just saying that I'd considered it before.And if you want evidence that I'd considered it before, here's just one post -- Message 25 -- from four years ago that shows it was on my mind then too, and there are other posts where it came up back then too that I found through searching for "polyploidy" in all forums under the name Faith:EvC Forum: Search

You don't know enough about genetics to know whether you can twist and distort it in order to make a pathetic bogus argument. I'm sure that you would if you could, but in fact while the grown-ups are discussing polyploidy you don't even know what error you need to commit in order to be wrong. Because you have never studied genetics and you have no idea what we're talking about.

Actually Iblis ... Two of the chromosomes in horses are fused to make a single chromosome in donkeys. It is possible to match up the two parts to the one for reproduction - that is how you get mules.Similar between Chimps and Humans - we have a fused pair that they (and other apes) have as individual chromosomes.The genes on the chronomosomes are still comparable when you line them up.Chimpanzee genome project - Wikipedia
Chromosome fusionEnjoy.

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Hi Wounded Knee, Of course, for they can always claim that it was a deleterious or disease mutation that caused the breakup of the super-pac ark animals.Enjoy.

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Hi Faith,I'll attempt to explain once again, but it would be much easier to explain things to you if you could admit to yourself that you don't really understand these things very well yet. For example, in this message you say that genes are preserved: Then a little later in Message 530 in answer to my question about where all the extra genes of polyploid chromosomes went since most life has no polyploid chromosomes, you say the opposite, that genes are lost: So genes aren't lost in your scenario, unless of course you need to get rid of the polyploid chromosomes that you made up, in which case then of course genes are lost in your scenario.Your misinterpretation of that passage in Wikipedia as meaning that mutations weren't a factor in speciation is another example of your lack of understanding.Your misinterpretation of people in this thread as saying that mutations do not change "the character of a species" is yet another example of your lack of understanding.Now, before you get up on your high horse again just accept for now that maybe you don't know everything you need to know yet and listen this time for once, because that's the only way you'll ever learn anything.So we have parent and daughter populations. The original parent population had 26 genes A through Z and four alleles per gene 1 through 4. The daughter population has over time lost some alleles and only has two alleles per gene 3 through 4. Here are the chromosomes for Organism P from the parent population and organism D from the daughter population (I'm refining the example slightly): Organism D does not have a single allele that an organism from the parent population couldn't have. It doesn't have any allele combinations that an organism from the parent population couldn't have. That's what it means to be genetically the same species.Now, if you don't believe me then go ahead and play with the alleles in the chromosome for organism D and try to come up with allele combinations that could not occur in the parent population. It's not possible, because the daughter only has alleles that the parent population already has. If a parent sperm or egg combined with a daughter sperm or egg then the combination would be viable. Parent and daughter populations are mutually interfertile and still the same species.Now let's change the example a little. Let's say that time goes by and the parent population loses all alleles 3 through 4 and now only has alleles 1 through 2. Now the parent and daughter populations have not a single allele in common. The parent population only has alleles 1 through 2, and the daughter population only has alleles 3 through 4. There is not a single allele in the parent population that the daughter population has, and conversely there is not a single allele in the daughter population that the parent population has. What would happen if you brought together sperm and egg from the two populations, say just for example these two: Would they be viable? Of course, because two organisms from the original parent population could easily have had these allele combinations and would have been able to mate. So two organisms from different populations but with only genes and alleles that the original parent population had will also be able to mate.Now I claimed that you were looking at things at the phenotype level, while you maintain that you *are* looking at things genetically, but you really aren't. Here's the relevant portion of your reply: We can clearly see that you are claiming that new phenotypes emerge through allele reduction that are sufficiently significant to cause speciation, and you're ignoring the plainly true fact that genetically both populations must still be genetically compatible because both parent and daughter populations have all the genes of the original parent population, and they only have alleles from the original parent population.You're also forgetting about selection. The polyploid genes that you claim are there but not expressed and that emerge from their polyploid hiding place through some unknown process will only be selected for if they are beneficial. This is the same problem you claim mutations have, but there is an unending supply of mutations since reproduction is never perfect, and every copying error is another mutation. The supply of polyploid genes is necessarily limited.But even worse for your scenario is that what you claim is the most common method of speciation, this polyploid storage of extra alleles, has no evidence in the genome of any species so far as the evidence we have in our possession at this time.--Percy