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Author Topic:   Potential falsifications of the theory of evolution
Larni
Member (Idle past 163 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 91 of 968 (589432)
11-02-2010 1:38 PM
Reply to: Message 89 by Wounded King
11-02-2010 12:31 PM


Re: Research track record
That's a fair point.
I guess I was mostly trying to point out that being publish isn't all that, mostly.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 89 by Wounded King, posted 11-02-2010 12:31 PM Wounded King has not replied

AlphaOmegakid
Member (Idle past 2875 days)
Posts: 564
From: The city of God
Joined: 06-25-2008


Message 92 of 968 (589433)
11-02-2010 1:40 PM
Reply to: Message 85 by Larni
11-02-2010 10:47 AM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
Just to echo what Crash and nwr have stated.
Mendel's Accountant is not an accurate model of reality.
GIGO at work here, I think.
Echos are empty vibrations. Why don't you support your claim that MA doesn't not model reality.
When you read as many substandard peices of research as I have to you understand that a lot of what gets published is awful research (sometimes I feel like I'm reading about a strange land where error bars are an extinct species!).
I'm sorry you are forced to read awful research. Us creos have been reading the circles for years.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 85 by Larni, posted 11-02-2010 10:47 AM Larni has not replied

Larni
Member (Idle past 163 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 93 of 968 (589434)
11-02-2010 1:41 PM
Reply to: Message 90 by AlphaOmegakid
11-02-2010 1:25 PM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
Rabbits are going extinct are they?
I thought they bred like....
I'm sorry you are forced to read awful research. Us creos have been reading the circles for years.
Circular logic, you mean!
Boom! Boom!
Edited by Larni, : Basil Brush allusion
Edited by Larni, : No reason given.

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AlphaOmegakid
Member (Idle past 2875 days)
Posts: 564
From: The city of God
Joined: 06-25-2008


Message 94 of 968 (589435)
11-02-2010 1:45 PM
Reply to: Message 83 by crashfrog
11-02-2010 10:12 AM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
Quite the contrary - all available evidence in population genetics supports the common descent of organisms.
No one is trying to falsify "the common descent of organisms".

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by crashfrog, posted 11-02-2010 10:12 AM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 95 by Wounded King, posted 11-02-2010 1:58 PM AlphaOmegakid has not replied
 Message 98 by crashfrog, posted 11-02-2010 4:09 PM AlphaOmegakid has replied
 Message 102 by Larni, posted 11-03-2010 5:16 AM AlphaOmegakid has not replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 95 of 968 (589437)
11-02-2010 1:58 PM
Reply to: Message 94 by AlphaOmegakid
11-02-2010 1:45 PM


Commmon descent
No one is trying to falsify "the common descent of organisms".
Of course they are. You may not be, Sanford and Behe may not be (although in Sanford's case there is good reason to be believe this isn't true), but plenty of creationists are, including many of those under the ID big tent and some on this site.
If you are just using your own unique interpretation of common descent of course that is another matter.
TTFN,
WK
Edited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2476 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 96 of 968 (589438)
11-02-2010 2:33 PM
Reply to: Message 90 by AlphaOmegakid
11-02-2010 1:25 PM


Generations, not time!
AlphaOmegakid writes:
Well if the simulation says rabbits are going extinct, and rabbits are indeed going extinct then I would say it is a pretty good model.
If rabbits are going extinct due to genetic entropy, why aren't fruit flies and mosquitoes?
Sanford puts the age of the earth at somewhere between 5,000 and 100,000 years.
The creatures I mentioned can manage 125,000 generations in 5,000 years. (E. Coli would have about 10,000,000 generations in the same period).
So, for sexually reproducing organisms like fruit flies, rabbits and elephants, about how many generations does Sanford think it would take before the species would inevitably become extinct due to genetic entropy?

This message is a reply to:
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Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


(1)
Message 97 of 968 (589440)
11-02-2010 4:02 PM
Reply to: Message 90 by AlphaOmegakid
11-02-2010 1:25 PM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
Interesting claim, please support this with some evidence. I know of no such claim.
You should check out this thread over at theologyweb. They did the calculations using Sanford's program. The program claims that populations should die out due to genetic entropy within 300 to 800 generations. With a 6 month generation time for species such as rabbits this equates to 150 to 400 years. ALL RABBITS SHOULD BE DEAD ACCORDING TO SANFORD. Obviously, rabbits are doing quite well. Therefore, Sanford's program is not a good model of reality.
Well, your claim is false. There are extinct species of rabbits. And there are some extremely close to extinction right now. Do you recognize reality, or is it something you just believe in?
According to Sanford's program, there should be no rabbits PERIOD. The same for insect species with a generation times that are even shorter than rabbits.
Well if the simulation says rabbits are going extinct, and rabbits are indeed going extinct then I would say it is a pretty good model. Again, what is this reality you keep referring to?
Not on the way to extinction. Extinct. Within 300 years. All of them. This is what Sanford's program predicts, and it does not carry over to reality.
The other thing you seem to ignore is that Sanford's program was only peer reviewed in a computer journal. The biological claims made by the program were never peer reviewed by biologists.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 90 by AlphaOmegakid, posted 11-02-2010 1:25 PM AlphaOmegakid has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 99 by dwise1, posted 11-02-2010 4:41 PM Taq has replied

crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1466 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 98 of 968 (589441)
11-02-2010 4:09 PM
Reply to: Message 94 by AlphaOmegakid
11-02-2010 1:45 PM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
No one is trying to falsify "the common descent of organisms".
I don't understand this response.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by AlphaOmegakid, posted 11-02-2010 1:45 PM AlphaOmegakid has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 106 by AlphaOmegakid, posted 11-03-2010 9:59 AM crashfrog has replied

dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 99 of 968 (589445)
11-02-2010 4:41 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by Taq
11-02-2010 4:02 PM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
I've been trying to research on "genetic entropy" and have so far found that it's apparently a term coined by Sanford. On Wikipedia, it only appears in two articles, one on Sanford himself (including that he's a YEC who testified in court, "during which he denied the principle of common descent" (John C. Sanford - Wikipedia), and the other article being on Mutational meltdown and which includes Sanford's book in the "Further reading" list (which suggests that Sanford's thesis is based at least in part on mutational meltdown):
quote:
Mutational meltdown refers to the process by which a small population accumulates deleterious mutations, which leads to loss of fitness and decline of the population size, which may lead to further accumulation of deleterious mutations due to inbreeding depression. A population experiencing mutational meltdown is trapped in a downward spiral and will go extinct if the phenomenon lasts for some time. Usually, the deleterious mutations would simply be selected away, but during mutational meltdown, the number of individuals thus suffering an early death is too large relative to overall population size so that mortality exceeds the birth rate.
I found the program on SourceForge, but there is no source code available -- the Windows versions are only executables and even the "Linux source" is nothing but an executable, HTML files, and a JavaScript file. This makes verification of his code impossible.
Discussion on one site pointed out that his program is limited to small populations no greater than 1000 individuals. The reason offered for this limit is that the program is so memory-intensive that that's the largest population that a computer could handle, something which is also mentioned in the PDF from the ICC which alphaomegakid linked us to.
Being limited to simulating only small populations means that the program is biased towards populations that will experience extinction due to mutational meltdown. Thus, at most the program would serve as verification of mutational meltdown of small populations, but it cannot say anything at all about normal-sized or large populations which by virtue of their population size are not subject to mutational meltdown.
Edited by dwise1, : concluding phrase

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 Message 97 by Taq, posted 11-02-2010 4:02 PM Taq has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 100 by Taq, posted 11-02-2010 5:30 PM dwise1 has not replied
 Message 101 by Taq, posted 11-02-2010 5:37 PM dwise1 has not replied
 Message 103 by Wounded King, posted 11-03-2010 6:10 AM dwise1 has replied

Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 100 of 968 (589458)
11-02-2010 5:30 PM
Reply to: Message 99 by dwise1
11-02-2010 4:41 PM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
I've been trying to research on "genetic entropy" and have so far found that it's apparently a term coined by Sanford.
The closest concept used in biology is "Muller's Ratchet" where slightly deleterious mutations become fixed in asexual populations. In sexual populations recombination does away with this effect.
Further research on Muller's Ratchet suggests that there is a limit to the number of deleterious mutations that can slip past selection.
quote:
A decrease in nucleotide substitution rates over time suggests that selection may be limiting the effects of Muller's ratchet by removing individuals with the highest mutational loads and decreasing the rate at which new mutations become fixed. This countering effect of selection could slow the overall rate of endosymbiont extinction.
Mutational meltdown in primary endosymbionts: selection limits Muller's ratchet - PubMed
IOW, there is a threshold below which the population does not go due to stronger selection.
So even in the worst case scenario (asexual reproduction) it is found that mutational meltdown (i.e. Muller's Ratchet) does not result in extinction. That is, unless, AlphaOmega can tell us why reality is forced to conform to a computer program (instead of the other way around).

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Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 101 of 968 (589459)
11-02-2010 5:37 PM
Reply to: Message 99 by dwise1
11-02-2010 4:41 PM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
Being limited to simulating only small populations means that the program is biased towards populations that will experience extinction due to mutational meltdown. Thus, at most the program would serve as verification of mutational meltdown of small populations, but it cannot say anything at all about normal-sized or large populations which by virtue of their population size are not subject to mutational meltdown.
It is also worth mentioning that the program can only handle ~1700 beneficial mutations within the population. If more than that are produced in the simulation they are ignored.
quote:
At the end of the output file, MENDEL presented the error, "Favorable mutation count exceeds limit". It seems that MENDEL is unable to process favorable mutations over 1788 (the number of beneficial mutations in the final generation).
In the end, the population had a fitness of 0.2297 (and rising), with 3329 deleterious mutations and 1788 beneficial mutations.
Ansgar Seraph at theologyweb
so the program allows for over 3,000 deleterious mutations but limits the beneficial mutations to almost half that. It would seem that the program is set up for a predetermined outcome.

This message is a reply to:
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Larni
Member (Idle past 163 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 102 of 968 (589521)
11-03-2010 5:16 AM
Reply to: Message 94 by AlphaOmegakid
11-02-2010 1:45 PM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
So, Sandford has been knocked into touch.
Next!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by AlphaOmegakid, posted 11-02-2010 1:45 PM AlphaOmegakid has not replied

Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 103 of 968 (589523)
11-03-2010 6:10 AM
Reply to: Message 99 by dwise1
11-02-2010 4:41 PM


ID science or evangelical proselytising? False Dichotomy?
I found the program on SourceForge, but there is no source code available -- the Windows versions are only executables and even the "Linux source" is nothing but an executable, HTML files, and a JavaScript file. This makes verification of his code impossible.
I don't think that is true, in the linux download there is Fortran and C code that can be compiled in folders within the cgi-bin folder.
Interestingly the readme file for the source code is bookended by 2 quotes.
"But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens."
- Hebrews 7:24-26
"For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever."
-1 Peter 1:24-25
Way to show this isn't about religion guys!
Also, synergistic epistasis!
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 99 by dwise1, posted 11-02-2010 4:41 PM dwise1 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 105 by Percy, posted 11-03-2010 8:53 AM Wounded King has not replied
 Message 127 by dwise1, posted 11-03-2010 2:56 PM Wounded King has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 104 of 968 (589530)
11-03-2010 8:30 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by AlphaOmegakid
11-02-2010 9:01 AM


Re: Has any evidence been found yet?
AlphaOmegaKid writes:
As I said, the process has begun, and there is evidence. Dr. John Sanford has already published a few things on this subject, and more is coming. You can find his information here:
http://logosresearchassociates.org/...john-sanford/#more-136
His paper here claims falsification: http://logosresearchassociates.org/...Mendels-Accountant.pdf
This is not peer reviewed material, but Dr. Sanford has approximately 5 papers that will be peer reviewed and published in the science community by June of next year. Dr. Sanford is an extremely accomplished Biologist/ Genetisist and has a long track record of getting his papers published in the scientific community.
Dr. Sandford's work, when published and peer reviewed will not immediately falsify NDTOE. The claims will be made, but the process will take years, but I believe that the process has already begun, and population genetics will lead to the demise of NDTOE.
About the paper Mendel’s Accountant: A New Population Genetics Simulation Tool for Studying Mutation and Natural Selection, this is the concluding sentence of the abstract:
Sanford writes:
The primary reason is that most deleterious mutations are too subtle to be detected and eliminated by natural selection and therefore accumulate steadily generation after generation and inexorably degrade fitness.
Can you explain for us how "deleterious mutations too subtle to be detected" can have an impact? Once they've accumulated to the point where they can can have an impact they're no longer "too subtle to be detected." Natural selection will operate to deselect those in a population who have accumulated too many of these "deleterious mutations too subtle to be detected."
Many genetic simulation programs have been written demonstrating that evolutionary principles produce innovation. What is different about Sanford's program that leads you to think he has discovered something lacking that no one else has?
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by AlphaOmegakid, posted 11-02-2010 9:01 AM AlphaOmegakid has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 109 by AlphaOmegakid, posted 11-03-2010 11:27 AM Percy has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 105 of 968 (589531)
11-03-2010 8:53 AM
Reply to: Message 103 by Wounded King
11-03-2010 6:10 AM


Re: ID science or evangelical proselytising? False Dichotomy?
I downloaded it but don't have time to give it a detailed look right now, but my God, Fortran! I haven't used Fortran since I moved to Algol in 1973! But even though he's using a modern revision of Fortran, I wonder if it's in Fortran because it's based on something written long ago.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
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