The End of Evolution By Means of Natural Selection

I think I finally figured out the problem here.You think I don't WANT the parent and daughter population to be the same species. How odd. But I EXPECT them to be the same species. I don't believe "speciation" creates a new species (and really, I don't think evolutionists do either no matter what they say) -- it's just a term for the point at which a daughter population can no longer interbreed with others of the same species. Good for them. Just what I would expect. Hip hip hooray, they're all the same species. As if I ever thought anything different. And you can even make a widdle diagram to show what I believe. Well, you are ignoring all the shuffling that changes things and brings about new varieties and eventually DOES interfere with interbreeding even without new alleles, but hey, same species, congratulations, just what I expected.I would interject at this point something you said in your previous Message 598: Don't need mutations to get new breeds and races, thank you. Now the only problem is whether or not "speciation" is in reality anything other than just another breed or race or variety that simply happens not to be able to interbreed with other family members, and which also has such a depleted genetic complement it can no longer evolve in any direction. It's just a nicely formed new variety demonstrating the creative wisdom of the Creator. I don't expect "speciation" to produce a new species. I expect it to have all the same genetic makeup as the species it came from, only shuffled in such new combinations that it is a new variety of that species and may not be able to interbreed with the rest of its kin. Sounds familiar. I get those bald denials all the time too and have to repeat my claim too. I can sympathize.Meanwhile, you haven't demonstrated my scenario is impossible, it's only impossible if I were trying to prove something evolutionists believe, that speciation gets you a new species, but I'm not trying to prove that and apparently you have proved that I'm right. You don't get what evolutionists believe you get by the processes of evolution, what you get is something that brings evolution to an end. You get nothing but variations on the same species, some pretty dramatic ones though, that mere shuffling of the genes and alleles can do, rearranging combinations, alleles increasing or decreasing by drift or selection and so on. New varieties galore, new bird song, new plumage, new coloration, new markings, bigger or smaller appendages, whatever, all within the possibilities of the built in variability. Groovy. Yes, a couple of different species there it appears. There ARE different species on the planet. I don't expect to get one from another and I'm trying to show that the processes of evolution assumed to bring that about don't. And apparently you've nicely shown that they don't. Gotta have mutations. Evolution can't fly without mutations. But really, even WITH mutations it can't fly either. The same processes that bring out new varieties by reduction of alleles will do the same to all the mutations you want to put in the place of the alleles already present. Slash and burn all the way to new breeds and races and varieties of all sorts made up now of the alleles from the mutations instead of the first set of alleles, as if you needed a new set but anyway. No new species. Exactly right. Yup, a couple of different species there, no doubt about it. Good thing too, since I'm claiming you can't. Funny it took so long to figure out what you're trying to prove. Turns out you're just saying my model disagrees with evolution. Funny thing there since that's what it's supposed to do. Geepers, you don't say. I never ever once not once ever ever ever said they don't assume mutations. Funny thing there. Meanwhile they also say a lot of things that I can use to support my own argument, Percy. You all are SO funny. Your idea of a person's not "understanding" something is that they disagree with you.Can't get new species from my model?That's because it's impossible to get new species from evolution ever, period.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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You think I don't WANT the parent and daughter population to be the same species. How odd. But I EXPECT them to be the same species. I don't believe "speciation" creates a new species (and really, I don't think evolutionists do either no matter what they say) -- it's just a term for the point at which a daughter population can no longer interbreed with others of the same species.

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Speciation is - by definition - the formation of new species. What you are saying here is that you don't believe that new species have ever formed and neither does anybody else.Which is nuts because even many YECs accept that new species form and I've even seen the argument that YEC views demand that new species must have formed (and very quickly, too).

Okay, I understand, you're saying that you don't believe new species are ever created, but you go on: When two populations can no longer interbreed with one another then they are different species, but I understand the distinction you're trying to make. Speciation means that two populations gradually over time become genetically distinct, but you believe that two populations can become incapable of interbreeding while remaining genetically compatible.You are correct that this can happen. For example, there's a species of fly that is classified as two species because one variety mates in the early morning while the other variety mates in the early evening. Were members of the two varieties to ever meet they could interbreed, but given their different mating habits this probably doesn't happen very often. The evolutionary expectation is that these two varieties will become more and more genetically distinct until they become two different species in both behaviors and genes.But examples like this are rare. Genetic studies reveal that the vast majority of species are genetically distinct from one another. Closely related species that are still fairly similar genetically can still interbreed with varying degrees of success, while more distantly related species cannot interbreed at all. What we find in nature is a continuum of increasing genetic difference with increasing distance of relatedness, and it comes with an increasing inability to interbreed. Species boundaries are not firm boundaries for closely related species, but they become more and more firm with increasing genetic differences.As I've said several times in this thread, what you're proposing is not impossible, but the bottom line is that examples in nature of the kind of speciation that you claim happens are rather uncommon. They're exceptional enough to deserve mention as oddities.In the cat family some cat species can interbreed at least a little and some cannot interbreed at all, but in general they all have genetic differences. This means that there are differences in which genes they possess. Not all cat species have the same genes. Mutations are how new genes can be created. Mutations can also remove or deactivate genes.So if your position is that mutations cannot produce new genes and chromosomes and so evolution can only rearrange alleles to produce different looking and behaving populations that are genetically compatible, then your proposal does not explain where, for example, all the different cat species came from after the flood. The need for the original kinds saved on the ark to expand into a variety of different species of the same kind is why creationists invoke speciation, but those different species are different genetically. If your position is that changing the underlying genes is impossible, then your scenario explains only the few uncommon cases. The very common cases like the cat family remain unexplained in your scenario.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Minor clarification in last paragraph.

Nice long post saying nothing Faith. What Percy is saying is that you cannot get this "shuffling that changes things" to "interfere with interbreeding" no matter much how you shuffle them.It doesn't matter what you call it, and what technical term you slaughter in the process, it still comes down to the same thing: any shuffling of existing alleles was fertile originally, and without change to the genes you cannot make them infertile.The fact that you don't want to call this mutation and speciation just means that you are using exactly the same things in your model, calling it something else, and then pretending that the terms do not happen.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : endEdited by RAZD, : ibid

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In the terms you set up in your diagram, yes. That's my expectation too only I expect it to happen with the reduction of alleles as new types emerge. The "boundary" that occurs, that is the substance of my argument, is simply the fact that you run out of genetic diversity after either a drastic reduction or a series of reductions of population and therefore alleles, as new phenotypes come to characterize new subpopulations with isolation, time, inbreeding, selection and drift. AND it doesn't matter if there are also mutations in the mix.When you get a mutation, Percy, don't you expect it to replace an allele? So in your example with the A-1 thru 4 and B-1 thru 4 down to Z-1 thru 4 if you get mutations to that population aren't you going to get A-5 and B-5 down to Z-5, new alleles for each gene, and aren't all those just as genetically compatible as the original batch? If they're an allele of a gene for fur color all they can do is give a new color, it's all perfectly compatible with the genetic picture already there.Of course mutations DO change things around more than that and destroy genes and make differences between populations that way too, but isn't what I just said the basic idea about how they replace alleles?So when you do have mutations you've only got a new batch of alleles to replace the first batch. And then the same processes, isolation, time, inbreeding, selection and drift all work on those exactly the same way as on the original alleles. And in that case they are also subjected to reduced genetic diversity in the process of producing new variieties until at some logical putative future point they run out of genetic diversity and evolution just comes to a stop.So add mutations there too. All that's going to happen is a repeat of the same scenario down to genetic depletion again. You cannot get a new species that way. You don't seem to be saying anything relevant to my argument. That IS where they came from. They simply started with so much more genetic diversity it's taken millennia for it to get even near to running out. We are now in the days where it can run out for various species. I don't "invoke" speciation at all, I'm merely making a concession to evolutionist terminology HOPEFULLY for the sake of communication because I know it describes a real event although I don't believe it's what evolutionists think it is.And the word "expand" is misleading. Varieties expand, phenotypes expand, populations expand, but the underlying genetic complement is shrinking. It's an original genetic abundance splitting and running itself out in many directions over millennia. That's how new varieties are created, by new combinations of alleles in new frequencies brought about by reduction of numbers and diversity. NOW the genetic picture is getting to be rather different because we ARE getting to the end of the original genetic abundance. Mutations DO cause destructive effects and change things in ways I suppose they didn't used to. They've become subject to deleterious mutations in the last millennium or so, that's all.My position is NOT that "changing the underlying genes is impossible," it apparently happens and I don't dispute it.My position is and has been from the first that the processes that select, that split, that isolate, that reduce numbers and therefore reduce genetic diversity, including drift and selection, that are responsible for bringing about new varieties of each species, all tend logically in the same direction -- to complete genetic depletion beyond which further change is impossible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

As opposed to the several scientists that have already been by to tell you that, Faith? Can you even consider the possibility that Percy might know more about genetics and evolution than you do?

What about the millions of new alleles created through mutation? If we go with 1 new allele per individual per generation in a population of 1 million that is 1 million new alleles per generation. Are you really suggesting that selection will remove more than 1 million alleles per generation, not to mention the off-hand mutation that creates new genes from previously non-functional DNA? Not to mention the new promoter sequences inserted by the occasional retrovirus or retrotransposon? And that brings us back to my rain analogy. You would argue that since rain requires a reduction in atmospheric water that the Earth should run out of rain in about a month. Your model explicitly ignores water evaporation creating more atmospheric water vapor for no other reason than "new water" would "blur the character of the atmosphere".Why doesn't it matter that there are new alleles being created faster than old alleles can be removed from a growing population? This is never expected of every mutation. If I have a mutation in a specific allele does everyone in the world with the unmutated allele suddenly disappear? No. The old alleles are passed on along side new alleles. Since our genome is 98% similar to that of chimps does that mean that our genome is 2% destroyed, or that the chimp genome is 2% destroyed? Or could it be that differences in DNA are responsible for the differences between species? Why won't you answer these questions? Why would it stop at a single iteration of "new alleles then selection"? Why wouldn't this process continue ad infinitum? Also, replacing old alleles with new alleles in generation after generation would lead to new species, would it not? That is exactly what we see in living species, is it not?Here is another analogy for you. Let's say that you are given 5 random cards out of the deck. You are told that a flush is the best hand you can get in the current experiment. You are allowed to draw one card at a time and discard one card at a time. Any card gets you closer to a flush is kept. Any drawn card that would worsen your hand is discarded. For a card that neither improves nor worsens your hand you flip a coin. Heads you switch it with another card, and tails you discard it. What would happen over time? Old cards would be replaced with new cards, would they not? The hand would change over time through changing the cards.Now lets say that you end up with a royal flush at some point, the best possible flush. There are very few, if any, changes that will improve your hand. Let's reproduce this hand. Get another deck and give it to someone else. Find the exact same cards that make up your hand. Shuffle the two decks. Now the environment changes. Now the best hand is four of a kind. Now there are two populations that can not exchange cards. Follow the same rules as above. What do you find? After each draw (i.e. mutation) the hands become less and less alike. Not only that, but since you are drawing from a different mutation pool you will get different mutations (i.e. different cards) at different times. You will also find that the first card you pair quickly becomes fixed in each population. Let's say you pair your jack first, but the other person pairs their king. From that point onward chances are only a king will better their hand, and only a king will better theirs. This is how populations diverge over time even if selection is nearly the same. Now just imagine if the two hands of cards were put under different selection, such as a full house vs. a low straight. They would look even less and less alike over time, would they not?Your model can not even handle this very simple example, and it certainly can not handle how genetics is observed to work. The observed human mutation rate is capable of producing the genetic differences seen between humans and chimps in a time span of 5-7 million years, the exact same time since common ancestry supported by the fossil record. The observed mutation rate is capable of producing the DNA differences we see between species, and it is those DNA differences that are responsible for the phenotypic differences between species. The DNA in every one of your cells is evidence of this. How can it be shrinking when millions of new alleles are created in every generation through mutation? How can you tell the difference between an original allele and an allele that has arisen through mutation? What tests do you use to determine this?

Still in denial, Faith. Only if you ignore mutations, changes to DNA that have been observed and are a fact of life, that refill and add genetic diversity. As noted they occur at ~0.6 mutations per individual organism.If we measure your rate of allele loss by the rate of speciation (as used by biologists), then the rate of new mutations >>> the rate of loss.You may indeed have some occurrences where your hypothetical conditions are met, especially as the fossil record is rife with extinctions, however that does not mean that your hypothesis always applies in all conditions. Claiming that it does, does not make it so. And yet, curiously, you are completely incapable of explaining how these new types never existed before with the same alleles in the population.Because you haven't done the math.Enjoy.

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Not about the elements that apply to my own argument, which is obvious from his last attempts to prove me wrong.And why is argument from authority so big around here? Can't cope with the argument itself?

You're just repeating the same old idea I've answered dozens of times by now, RAZD. Give it up.

The reduction takes place in a smaller population that is evolving, which is my usual example, not in the main population. A million is not a likely size for such a population, a few thousand at most and more likely hundreds. It doesn't matter what's going on in the larger population for purposes of my argument. The point is that when you get new varieties, which is only going on in the smaller population, this is occurring because of the reduction in numbers which has changed the gene frequencies, which is an overall reduction in genetic diversity. I'm saying these conditions are always present in a population that is evolving in isolation away from the main population. This can even be WITHIN the larger population as selection and drift can form a subpopulation even there. I believe I've made these conditions quite clear many many times by now.And my point about mutations is that in this kind of population that is actively evolving due to reduced genetic diversity it doesn't matter whether the alleles are old or newly created by mutations, the same processes that reduce them are working in exactly the same way. They'll either be left behind in the larger population or become part of the new and be subject to the same processes. They may come to dominate the new population's traits, even, yet the same reducing processes will have been acting to bring this about. Why should they make a difference? This is nonsense, that's why I ignored it the first time. Get what my argument is, first, and stop making up stuff. I'm not talking about a "growing population." I'm focused ONLY on populations that have split from larger populations, whether by migration or selection or whatnot, it doesn't matter, so that they are now isolated and inbreeding and subject over time to their own internal drift and selection which is working on their smaller genetic diversity as compared to the original population. This is going to happen to the alleles present in the population NO MATTER WHAT THEIR SOURCE. New traits will appear because of the reduced genetic diversity alone.And could I ask what's wrong with the "old alleles" in everybody's mind anyway? Why are you so eager to get rid of them? Especially when it is known that some large percentage of mutations that replace them are deleterious, and merely replace a formerly functioning allele with something that doesn't help the species at all. Oh wow, 95% then? This is how everybody talks about it here. Again, most of which are deleterious and do nothing for the species.But assuming some do, a huge unproven assumption but anyway, when they get taken to a smaller population with reduced diversity they are going to contribute to the establishment of a new variety from the new gene frequencies, all being juggled over time in new ways because of the isolation, inbreeding, drift and selection, all because there is a reduced genetic diversity overall. There should be some brand new traits if mutation really does do that, but it's all going to be possible only if alleles for the same traits are lost.And then after you get your new variety if you have new mutations added to that population, you'll just lose your new variety, or breed or race or species, rather counterproductive for the ToE. Because they are nonsensical questions and have nothing to do with my argument. I'm not talking about similarities, I'm talking about the dynamics of getting a new breed/variety/race or so-called "species." BECAUSE IT ALWAYS ENTAILS A REDUCTION IN GENETIC DIVERSITY. THAT'S WHAT SELECTION DOES, IT'S WHAT MIGRATION DOES, IT'S WHAT DRIFT DOES. Try coming up with an analogy that includes reduced genetic diversity for a change, in fact reduced genetic diversity that is the CAUSE of the phenotypic changes that create a new variety.There's no point in continuing with this post. You don't understand the first thing about my argument.

Argument from authority is not identical with argument from evidence, Faith. And the actual scientists have evidence for mutations and for expansion of genomes. You got nuthin'.

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"The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe." - Agobard of Lyons, ca. 830 AD

Can't even get to evidence or questions concerning evidence as long as nobody is even getting the argument. I keep repeating it hoping someone will just GET it, but while some here and there sort of get it, overall no, you all just keep flapping your gums to no purpose. You really felt it necessary to say argument from authority isn't the same as argument from evidence? Wasted a post with that one, for sure.

Hi Faith. You're just repeating the same old idea I've answered dozens of times by now, Faith. Give it up.Curiously this is not a relevant reply to the issue.You cannot make new species by removing alleles from a population, you do not get genetic incompatibility by removing alleles from a population.Mutations do not always result in new alleles or alleles much different from before. Look at the blood alleles again - 70 of them, with A and A' acting similar, B and B' acting similar, etc etc etc -- this is one type of result of mutations.To use Percy's patternoriginal population had A1, A2, A3, A4
new population has A2, A3, A4 (A1 lost to conform to your scenario)with mutation new population has A2, A3, A4, A4'
continue several generations and new population has A2, A2',A3, A3', A4, A4', A4''
with genetic drift removing half A2, A3',A4, A4''
keep going and you can get A2, A3',A4, A5repeat this whole sequence and you can get A3'*,A4*, A5, A6This is how organisms adapt to new ecologies.According to the process of evolution with mutation and natural selection. Possibly because this is what happens in the real world.Enjoy.

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although i am a creationist, i don't disagree with your reasoning. i have no problem with this adaptation to survive. i just don't understand how we get from fish to frog.

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[b][color=red]I am lost, I am found. I am lost to myself, found in the darkness beneath hell itselfOnly two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not so sure about the former. -Albert Einstein[/color=red][/b]