Does Neo-Darwinian evolution require change ?

Sounds like you're talking about people, who have about 3 billion base pairs. A mutation rate of 50 mutations per individual per generation is 1.66*10^-8. That's pretty small. Even after a million years of 25-year generations in a single lineage (which is 2 million mutations, not 2.5) that's only 0.07% of the entire genome. 99.93% of the genome is unchanged.There are various measures of the degree of similarity of the human and chimp genomes, but let's say they're 97% similar after the 7 million years that have passed since the lineages separated. That's less than the 99.53% we would obtain using your numbers for a single lineage for 7 million years of a just a million. The lower similarity of 97% for chimps and humans is because mutations are contributed by all individuals in a population, and they become combined and selected (for and against) in subsequent generations.I think the numbers you've used are acceptably ballpark and fairly consistent with observations.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Your characterization of 50 Mpipg as "very conservative" is incorrect. It's actually pretty close to what is actually measured. The human mutation rate is ~2.5x10^-8 mutations per base pair per generation, and with about 3 billion base pairs in the human genome that comes out to about 75. Your number of 50 is not "very conservative," but is rather right there in the ballpark. This human mutation rate of ~2.5x10^-8 is for *all* types of mutations, not just point mutations, and is right in the ballpark of the mutation rate for all eukaryotic cells. The precise rate is no doubt impossible to calculate precisely and is therefore open to revision, but you shouldn't put too much stock in figures that Sanford says he obtained from "personal correspondence." When someone has evidence that measurements of the eukaryote mutation rate are off by nearly half an order of magnitude then they'll publish a peer reviewed paper, not write a personal letter. It isn't like a mutation rate 6 to 10 times higher than currently thought could easily go unnoticed.Sanford's position is that the Earth is younger than 100,000 years, that there's no common descent, and that mutation rates are so high that genomes are deteriorating too rapidly to have evolved, but the evidence from the real world says otherwise. Why don't you find some evidence that the actual mutation rate is what Sanford claims, and once we have that in hand we can proceed from there?--Percy

The ~2.5x10^-8 value is for the human intergenerational mutation rate, not the rate for the division of individual human cells, here's the reference to the 2000 paper that finds a lower rate: I also expressed my opinion that the value was probably open to revision, and here's the reference that WK just provided to a 2010 paper: Relevant excerpt from the abstract: So we see two estimates from the technical literature that are not too far apart from one another. If you prefer other estimates then you need some references, and in your concluding paragraph about Sanford's figures you say: Good idea. Once we have mutation rate figures we agree on we can plug them in and see what happens.--PercyPS - If you click on the "Peek Mode" radio button before cut-n-pasting you'll get 10^-8 instead of 10-8 in the text you quote.

As rebuttal to what the evidence currently indicates to be true you're offering someone's opinion about what might someday be discovered to be true. What do you think about maybe basing your arguments upon what the evidence currently in hand indicates?--Percy