My subject is what happens when you have isolation of a smaller population and natural or random selection, because that's where the new varieties come about, and ultimately speciation as well.
You mention speciation as a possibility again, but in the very recent past you denied that speciation was a possibility, saying that you only used the term as a concession to evolutionists and that speciation wasn't really what evolutionists think it is.
Answered this above in
Message 671
In my Message 640 I explained why I think speciation is impossible in your scenario, but you didn't respond. It would be very helpful if we could get an answer about whether you think your scenario can produce genetically distinct species, meaning species that are genetically incompatible.
Yes, also explained above, in
Message 679.
Faith writes:
Taq writes:
Faith writes:
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?
I am not "eager" to get rid of them. What I am is eager to explain reality, and in reality old alleles are replaced by new ones.
Again, it's funny how you assert such a thing as if it were fact with such a lack of evidence, only evidence for mutations making disease or making changes that don't do anything helpful. Except in bacteria of course. I guess.
When you speak of the lack of evidence for beneficial mutations you should really be saying that you're going to continue to ignore the evidence for beneficial mutations.
I see a lack of evidence a very glaring lack of evidence, just arguments from theory and arguments from bacteria and otherwise the ACTUAL evidence is all of nothing happening or diseases happening.
In another of my messages that you didn't reply to, Message 421, I explain why beneficial mutations are inevitable. Briefly, it points out that unless all genes already have optimal alleles, random change will inevitably create new alleles that are more optimal than existing ones.
Seems to me that probability is so enormously against anything at all that functions "optimally" being randomly produced by a mistake in the replication of thousands of nucleotides, that to say it's "inevitable" shows a really extreme level of unwarranted optimism.
A more fundamental argument for beneficial mutations is that every allele in every gene in all life everywhere throughout time began as a mutation. The genes of all existing life consist of billions and billions of mutations that proved beneficial.
Amazing how you'll recite this mantra, which is nothing but an assumption made necessary by evolutionary theory without a shred of empirical evidence for it, and expect it to be treated as if it were an actual empirical fact. Truly amazing.
I don't say "can only be" I say that the evidence you actually have shows this. Evidence. Evidence. The only evidence otherwise that you can ever point to is bacteria. There's something wrong with this picture.
Well I can see how from your perspective there's something very wrong with this picture of the real world, because it doesn't support anything you say.
You even think your mere assumption is the "real world" and my objecting that there's no real empirical evidence is the mistake. Truly Wonderland stuff here Percy.
Why don't we break the picture down for you and you can tell us what is wrong with it.
Because of the complex interplay of many systems in complex organisms, beneficial mutations must of necessity occur in tiny indetectable steps. Beneficial mutations that are easily detectable are necessarily rare. Do you have a problem with this?
Except that it's an exercise in pure Reason?
Because of relatively long generation times, studying the effects of sequences of mutations over a meaningfully large enough number of generations in complex organisms isn't really possible. Do you have a problem with this?
Yeah, I really do think if they were real you wouldn't have to depend on such excuses. But of course if you would treat it all as hypothetical instead of insisting on it as Fact there wouldn't be so much objection.
Considering only point mutations (single nucleotide substitutions), mutations in bacteria do the same thing as in all other organisms, potentially changing what the protein produced by the gene does. Do you have a problem with this?
No, I assume a change in the DNA will change what the protein produced does.
Unless you have problems with some of these basic concepts, then simple logic leads to the conclusion that just as a mutation in a bacteria can end up producing a protein that is better than the proteins produced by the existing alleles, so can a mutation in any other organism end up producing a protein that is better than the proteins produced by their existing alleles.
Except that probability is enormously against it and you haven't one shred of evidence for it. Logic is not enough here. Way too much opportunity for intellectual fraud.
While the generation times in complex organisms are too long to observe the complete process in an experiment of any reasonable length, the general principles are the same as in bacteria, and what we see in genomes and what parts of the process we are able to observe in complex organisms is precisely what we would expect to see if mutations are the source of variation.
Uh huh, well, I guess you've got yourselves convinced. But please don't try it on me.
What we never see: polyploid chromosomes in large populations hiding extra variation that isn't expressed.
Good thing I never suggested such a thing then.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
™ Version 4.2