Evolution Requires Reduction in Genetic Diversity

So you are claiming that, in the diagram below, the 14 species that evolved from the common ancestor collectively exhibit less genetic diversity than the common ancestor?

I suggest that in the finch chart I posted, the 14 species that developed from the common ancestor species collectively have far more genetic diversity than the common ancestor. That's why there are 14 species!Now take that chart and extrapolate back a few hundred million years. From a common ancestor you have all the chordates that we know, both fossil and living--I haven't looked it up, but there are probably hundreds of thousands of species.I see no way you can claim that there is no increase in genetic diversity in that situation without ignoring massive amounts of real world evidence.(And don't try to cram all of that into 6,500 years. That battle was lost years ago.)

In a previous post I presented you with an example of a mutation that is beneficial, which you have ignored.In the example I posted, three different groups around the world each adapted to high altitudes through a mutation, but each employed a different mutation.There is no question that these mutations are beneficial to the groups involved.Care to address this?

The two predictions are :

Faith: Prediction from this guess is that we'll be seeing lots more genetic diseases in the near future.

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AZPaul3: Except this has been going on for many hundreds of generations now and we have yet to see this accumulation of deleterious "sleeper" mutations. If your speculation is correct we should have seen this quite some time ago. Given the large number of mutations involved I wouldn't think there should be any humans left after all that time.

From what I've been reading, I can infer that Faith sees the time span involved as ca. 6,500 years ago--or more accurately just since the Flood at about 4,350 years ago. Further, I can infer that the whole idea behind "lots more genetic diseases" is related to the concept of "The Fall."AZ disagrees, based first on the evidence for an old earth, and secondly on the constant elimination, rather than accumulation, of deleterious mutations from the gene pool.If I may add my two cents worth:The old earth evidence is overwhelming, and the only folks who dispute it are those blinded by old religious myths. The science has long since been settled: the earth is billions of years old, not thousands.But the second point is more amusing--the belief in "The Fall" and the rapid degeneration of the human species due, presumably to "original sin." This seems to be coloring all of Faith's arguments in this thread.I find that the concept of "original sin" is not just contrary to the scientific evidence (there is no rapid increase in genetic diseases), but to be the most abhorrent concept every dreamed up in the fevered minds of shamans and other ne'er-do-wells throughout history.Ayn Rand had a few words to say about this, and she said it far better than I ever could:

The name of this monstrous absurdity is Original Sin.

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A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an insolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold, as man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality. To hold man’s nature as his sin is a mockery of nature. To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. To destroy morality, nature, justice and reason by means of a single concept is a feat of evil hardly to be matched. Yet that is the root of your code.

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Do not hide behind the cowardly evasion that man is born with free will, but with a tendency to evil. A free will saddled with a tendency is like a game with loaded dice. It forces man to struggle through the effort of playing, to bear responsibility and pay for the game, but the decision is weighted in favor of a tendency that he had no power to escape. If the tendency is of his choice, he cannot possess it at birth; if it is not of his choice, his will is not free.

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What is the nature of the guilt that your teachers call his Original Sin? What are the evils man acquired when he fell from a state they consider perfection? Their myth declares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledgehe acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evilhe became a moral being. He was sentenced to earn his bread by his laborhe became a productive being. He was sentenced to experience desirehe acquired the capacity of sexual enjoyment. The evils for which they damn him are reason, morality, creativeness, joyall the cardinal values of his existence. It is not his vices that their myth of man’s fall is designed to explain and condemn, it is not his errors that they hold as his guilt, but the essence of his nature as man. Whatever he wasthat robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without lovehe was not man.

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Man’s fall, according to your teachers, was that he gained the virtues required to live. These virtues, by their standard, are his Sin. His evil, they charge, is that he’s man. His guilt, they charge, is that he lives.

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—Ayn Rand Lexicon

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Any religion that pushes both a young earth and a belief in original sin is both willfully and deceitfully ignoring all the evidence to the contrary, and inherently evil.

Eh?(No.)But I had a hot button pushed. Let's see what kind of a response we get.

Put it on my tab.Seriously I'm awaiting a response to that post. It took me a while to compose it.I'm really not expecting anything other than dogma in reply though.

Welcome. I'm not sure of some of what you posted though. I have to disagree with the 99.8%. Another source notes: The dates for the Israeli Neanderthals seem to be significantly less than the 700,000 years you claimed. The oldest I can find is about 500,000 years (Tabun), with several others less than half that. Most are closer to 50,000 years old."Cain" is a religious myth, with no necessary relationship to either scientific data or modern humans.Following this your post degenerates into vague religious-based claims and other nonsense that don't seem appropriate for the Science Forum here.Your name seems familiar. Have we seen you here before?

It does when you believe in a mythical Fall from a mythical perfect state some 6,000 years ago.

In this you are clearly wrong. What are called the "classical" racial traits are very clearly linked to the local environments. This has been known for decades.The traits that don't link to the environment are those such as fingerprint patterns and blood types.

Do you get some enjoyment out of making up patently incorrect comments out of thin air?In fact, the environment--and survival of the barely adequate--does weed out unproductive (i.e., unfavorable) mutations. This has been know to all but creationists such as yourself for decades or centuries.The classic racial traits are pretty much all environmentally linked in one way or the other. Skin color, nasal form, body shape, high altitude adaptations (three different ones in three different parts of the world), and a number of other traits can all be traced directly to the local environments.This is fact, no matter how you try to spin it or obfuscate it.And your "nobody would survive" is just achingly wrong. When people migrated out of Africa, over a period of tens of thousands of years, there was enough mutation and selection pressure that those folks who resulted were all pretty well adapted to the environment in their new homes. Siberians had cold weather adaptations, those in the Andes and Himalayas had high altitude adaptations, those in the Mediterranean had tanning to accommodate the summer/winter climate there, while those farther north had lighter skin colors in reaction to weaker sunlight.You really should learn something about science before you offer your (incorrect) opinions. You do your cause no good by being consistently wrong.

In the case of skin color, the general rule is the farther north a group lives the lighter the skin color. The reason is to permit more vitamin D to be made (it is made from UV light striking the skin).This only works when baring more skin to the sun results more vitamin D. In the case of the Inuit and other far-northern peoples, those folks aren't big on sun bathing--they'd freeze before they picked up any appreciable amounts of vitamin D. They get their vitamin from their diet.Because of this, their skin color does not associate with their latitude. There is no selection pressure for lighter skin.

And Wiki lists three living or recently-living trees older than the purported date of the flood, ca. 4,350 years ago.List of oldest trees - WikipediaDoesn't this suggest, rather than that those trees survived being underwater for most of a year, that there was no such flood during their lifetimes?[Can you say, "Yes!" boys and girls? (I knew you could!)]

These are the kind of arguments you might expect when belief dominates evidence.That's why, with hard core creationists, it is a waste of time explaining evidence, scientific method, theory and all the rest. It is water off the duck's back. It just has no effect. RADZ has explained a number of things in great detail, all of which did no good, except hopefully helped educate some lurkers.Hard core creationists, on the other hand, will ignore, obfuscate, twist, misrepresent and otherwise abuse the evidence so that it conforms to their beliefs, and then claim that they are doing science. "We use the same facts, just different interpretations" and "Its just a theory" are two of the nonsense phrases we sometimes hear.What a waste of my time, that could have been spent on more productive things, like dusting my dental floss collection.

There you go, using evidence again.You know that's not going to work. Surely you've learned that by now!