The Origin of Novelty

What we have is a novel function produced by a new mutation. This is an increase in genetic diversity within the population. Your model is contradicted by the facts and is therefore falsified. Humans and chimps do share a common ancestor as shown by the facts.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

OK, here are three examples for you, all pertaining to high altitude adaptations.

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Indigenous highlanders living in the Andean Altiplano in South America, in the Tibetan Plateau in Asia, and at the highest elevations of the Ethiopian Highlands in east Africa have evolved three distinctly different biological adaptations for surviving in the oxygen-thin air found at high altitude. ...

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The Andeans adapted to the thin air by developing an ability to carry more oxygen in each red blood cell. ...

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Tibetans compensate for low oxygen content much differently. They increase their oxygen intake by taking more breaths per minute than people who live at sea level. ...

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So what adaptation have the Ethiopian highlanders' bodies evolved to survive at high altitude? "Right now we have no clue how they do it..."

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Moar...

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National Geographic - 404

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So, not only have I supplied you with an example of a random beneficial mutation, but it is one that occurred three times, in three different ways, in three different parts of the world.Don't try and hand-wave this one away.

That is, of course, a lie.Those are actually my standard comebacks when someone tells a lie or talks gibberish, respectively. Since I have already done so, your request that I should "start" doing so is implicitly a lie.I suggested that you should try to get to grips with the example already given of pocket mice. Try to get you head around that until either (a) you become intelligent enough to understand it (b) you die of old age.If (a) ever happens, we can move on to the more advanced stuff. When you find it necessary to lie in order to go on arguing at all, it is your defeat that I find myself accepting.

The mutations leading to dark fur in pocket mice.

Hi, Mindspawn. The fact that evolution is a longer and more complicated process isn't really relevant here. What's relevant is the proportion of that process that is explained by known, demonstrated mechanisms, and the proportion that is explained by "subjective, unproven, faith-based" mechanisms.I'll try to approach this from another angle. Let's eliminate Abiogenesis altogether (ToE doesn't technically need it anyway). Let's say that both of our hypotheses have to incorporate a "subjective, unproven, faith-based" Intelligent Design mechanism to explain Origins. Since ToE is not obligatorily linked with Abiogenesis, it is fully compatible with this.So, our hypotheses would look like this:

1. Mine: One life form was created, and all others evolved from it.
2. Yours: Many life forms were created, and all others evolved from them.

My hypothesis is more parsimonious, because we both have the same "subjective, unproven, faith-based" Intelligent Design mechanism, but mine makes much less extensive use of it to explain the evidence.----- Actually, you're both right and wrong here. Bats are actually more efficient flyers than birds, by some metrics, and you've got the mechanism reversed: birds tend to have higher wing loading, which means they are proportionally heavier for their wing area. But, this might support your claim that bats can better bear the extra weight of a placenta.But, it's not universal:

• Swifts, swallows and nightjars have wing loading values comparable to bats', and can match them in maneuverability and efficiency; so, wing-loading isn't limiting for birds.
• Birds frequently migrate long distances, whereas few bats do; so efficiency and exhaustion aren't the limiting factor for birds.
• And, finally, many birds can lift weights several times larger than their eggs with no apparently difficulty (think of an eagle carrying a trout), so weight-bearing capacity also isn't limiting in birds.

So, it isn't clear that flight performance is particularly closely linked to reproductive mode. The only link seems to be that bats take characteristics wholesale from "mammal-like" baramins, and birds take characteristics wholesale from "bird-like" baramins.----- Please read the paper again: this is not what it says. It compares genes that are commonly found in animals. Some of these are lacking in fruit flies and nematode worms. Also, the sequences of specific genes tended to be closer in corals and humans than in corals and flies/worms. This doesn't say anything, except that some animals' gene sequences differ from one another more than others do.----- You seem determined to deny yourself ways to distinguish our two theories based on the evidence. That is, you are good at coming up with reasons for why we don't see evidence that seems like a perfectly reasonable prediction of Intelligent Design.I already showed you two examples of vehicle parts that are used on multiple different types of vehicle: the machine gun and the Merlin engine. And here are some RC model hobbyists discussing how to use model-airplane ducted-fan engines in underwater vehicles.I don't see any reason why this would be uncommon in biological designs.

An intelligent designer would design the same section in the same manner in all organisms that need that section. Its pretty obvious. Ever thought this so-called "transition" is a mole-like animal? Some moles have lower air-borne hearing ability than both reptiles and mammals, due to their survival being based on ground based hearing (ground vibrations). Thus they are not a transition, their hearing is unique, and designed for the ground. The middle ear is attached to the lower jaw to emphasize vibrations. Thus they have both the independent ossicles of the mammal and also the attachment of the large ossicle to the jawbone.To see this as a transition would deny the fact the hearing is worse than the reptile , there is no hearing progression occurring here at all, but this is a unique organism with unique abilities. Everything else about the anatomy of the so-called transitional Morganucodon is consistent with the behaviour and anatomy of moles, it can't be transitionary unless reptiles underwent a mole phase before evolving into mammals.

Then why do yeast and human cytochrome c differ by 60% at the sequence level while human cytochrome c can replace yeast cytochrome c and the yeast functions just fine.Why design functionally identical proteins that differ by 60%, and not only that, why do these differences exactly match the predictions made by evolution if they did not evolve?

But your choice of that date is not based on science but on your personal preferences. Well, yes. Which comes back to my question.Suppose you have a religion that says that people are no taller than six feet. You measure them with a yardstick. You are happy with measurements showing them to be anything up to six feet tall. When you measure them as being taller than that, you throw away the yardstick and curse it as useless.Now, could we have a little consistency here? If the yardstick is to be deemed worthless when it tells you that someone is six foot two, then why should you take it as reliable when it tells you that they're five foot nine? I hardly know what to say to you when you boast about how one day you will present a rational argument, except that you should get on with it. Uh ... but that is not what they show.You can either reject the methods of genetic analysis altogether, or you can admit that genomes show non-recent divergence from non-recent common ancestors. I don't know what that means, it's not written very clearly. But whatever it means, why does it not equally apply, and indeed with even more force, to claims that two species lie in the same "baramin"?

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An intelligent designer would design the same section in the same manner in all organisms that need that section. Its pretty obvious.

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And if it NEEDED to be the same then evolution would keep it the same. So, you need a different reason.

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Ever thought this so-called "transition" is a mole-like animal? Some moles have lower air-borne hearing ability than both reptiles and mammals, due to their survival being based on ground based hearing (ground vibrations). Thus they are not a transition, their hearing is unique, and designed for the ground. The middle ear is attached to the lower jaw to emphasize vibrations. Thus they have both the independent ossicles of the mammal and also the attachment of the large ossicle to the jawbone.

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Still pretty dodgy. For a start Morganucodon, one of the species involved seems to have been more like a modern shrew. Secondly we have fossils indicating different parts of the transition.

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To see this as a transition would deny the fact the hearing is worse than the reptile , there is no hearing progression occurring here at all, but this is a unique organism with unique abilities. Everything else about the anatomy of the so-called transitional Morganucodon is consistent with the behaviour and anatomy of moles, it can't be transitionary unless reptiles underwent a mole phase before evolving into mammals.

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"a unique organism with unique abilities" ? I suggest that you really need to read the sources rather than inventing excuses to dismiss the evidence all the time. You might have read this: And here's the link again:
Wikipedia's writeupAnd that's what we'd expect for a transitional feature - but not at all unique.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Then show us a bat that shares more characteristics with a bird than a whale. You have provided no evidence for major and consistent violations of this pattern, and even worse no explanation of why we should see this pattern if design is true. So humans are in the same baramin as other apes? So the hominid transitionals put humans and other apes in the same baramin?

Coyote,Ok, ok, I won't try to hand wave this away. But perhaps I will just let you read the article? Wait wait wait, Coyote , we have a problem. The article itself says they don't even know the reason, and furthermore they state they were surprised to see this happening in 3 different ways. That is not my hand waving, that is my mind, which has been lucky enough to get a random mutation for thinking, utilizing this lucky mutation. Well, I am sure you have other equally impressive lucky mutations.Since you don't have the same mutation as me, let me continue to explain part of my challenge to you, and your inability to tackle it:In order to show "random mutations" as the driver of all things useful, your side needs to be able to show these things happening sporadically, randomly, and often enough to produce a full working system. You are not only able to show them happening randomly, you also can't get the sporadically part or often part as well. You side is losing on all three counts.You have to be able to show some kind of random mutation that could lead to a more complex system, and it has to happen not only to organisms that NEED this mutation, but it also has to happen to organisms that DON'T need it as well. You see how that meets the random, sporadically and often criteria? Because its not guided, it's, it's mm, how do I say to someone who doesn't have my lucky mutation..I know Willy Nilly!But still there is hope, Taq believes that because pocket mice needed dark fur, and they happen to have dark fur, that this is all the evidence evolution needs to explain the entire complexities of life. The fact that practically every other animal on the planet has dark fur, including mice, shouldn't really keep him from believing what he wants to believe. Edited by Bolder-dash, : No reason given.

We have three different mutations for high-altitude adaptation. Scientists don't know how ONE of those mutations works? Big deal! Scientists are surprised by this finding? Big deal! That doesn't make them go away. (Sorry.)Whether these adaptations are from "different founding populations" or "the passage of time" is not relevant. In either of these cases they are the result of "random genetic mutations" and that is the only thing that is important!That scientists don't know a specific mechanism for one mutation does not negate the fact that there are three different mutations that provide high-altitude adaptations in three different groups of humans. That is the fact that you have to deal with. That scientists don't know each and every detail of ONE of these adaptations does not make all three go away, no matter how much you wish it would. But, unfortunately, that is the argument you have made above--and that kind of argument would result in a failing grade in any science class I've ever been in. (That really is the core of your argument!) There are three groups of people, each living in a high-altitude environment. There is no close relationship among those groups (living in East Africa, Asia, and South America), nor is it likely that they share a recent common ancestor. In any case, a recent common ancestor wouldn't make a bit of difference because each group has come up with a different way to live in a high altitude environment. That these adaptations are different shows randomness. That these groups survive, and indeed thrive, shows that they possess a "full working system." Your comments above are shown to be incorrect. It is very likely--I would say absolutely--that these same adaptations also occurred randomly among low-altitude groups, but in those locations there would have been no selection pressure in favor of those adaptations, and they might easily have been lost from those groups. Or they might still be there in a few individuals as part of the range of variation.In either event this makes no difference to the main point: I have shown an adaptation that is random and beneficial, and that adaptation happened not once but three times, and it happened differently in each case. These are the facts that you have to deal with.The fact that scientists don't know every detail of ONE of these is not relevant.The only way these groups could not be more complex than previously is if each group lost some function when they gained the high-altitude adaptation. Did they lose the ability to live in low altitudes? There is no evidence for that.Unless you can show that there was a loss to offset the obvious gains, you must conclude that each of these groups become more complex than it had been prior to the high-altitude adaptation. Also, taken cumulatively, the human race as a whole became more complex with these adaptations than before they occurred. Deal with Taq on the mice.You need to deal with me on the high-altitude adaptations.So far your attempts to deny, obfuscate, and double-talk away the evidence have failed.

Or show us a whale that looks more like a human than it does a shark?

Let's see, different populations of people in different locals throughout the world ALL managed to somehow develop a body plan which maximizes their ability to live in low oxygen environments, and the challenge for me is to explain how this is LESS likely from an intelligent, teleological framework, then from a random, lucky mutation one?Gee, that's a tough challenge alright coyote.Now about those "random beneficial mutations" that crop up all over the animal kingdom for no apparent reason-what were you saying? Exactly what made you think these adaptations were random. Are you relying on the fact that, "well, it could have been!"?

I spent a lot of time on that post.Your response to it was garbage.If you're not going to be serious in your responses you deserve all the short snarks you get.And until you can address the issues, that's all you'll get from me in the future.And that's more than you deserve.