The Origin of Novelty

Outsider from where? As the data shows, the dark allele is strongly selected against, and this lava field is out in the middle of nowhere with no other black lava fields around it. The dark allele had to come from the light mice, and the lack of sequence variation demonstrates that the allele arose recently. They already tested that hypothesis in the paper. It is false. The dark phenotype is related to the mutated genotype. Then why were they unable to find populations of dark mice in the light brown desert? Don't forget that the dark allele is dominant so all you need is one copy to be dark. If that allele were present at all in those populations it would be seen, but it isn't. It is absent. The only bias is your refusal to even consider that a mutation causes changes in fur color.

Now would you REALLY reject your evolution hypothesis if some organisms were found to have features of unknown origin? You would not, you would retain faith in your beliefs and hope that some transitionary fossils would back up evolution one day.I love bats, they are truly unique, and have no known common ancestor with any other mammal. Where is the wing transition in the fossil record of mammals?The unique shoulder blade common ancestor? Why do mega-bats neural pathways resemble primates but microbats neural pathways do not? Does this mean the mega-bat has a common ancestor with a primate, yet the micro-bat does not? If they both evolved separately, where are their transitional fossils. The fossil evidence points towards a fully intact bat with no transitional forms. Evolution makes up fictional half-bats with no evidence for such a creature.Evolution is fiction based on a well written book by Darwin , who observed layers of proliferation (different taxonomic classes dominating different eras) and observed microevolution, and unfortunately related the two observations in a well written very logical manner. Just because his logical book became popular and is taught as fact does not make the theory of evolution empirically superior. You seem to have ignored my point that the debate will be solved by actual observations of true mutation rates, and comparing actual mutations with the two theories. ie with enough neutral studies one of the theories can become falsifiable. In the meantime us creationists have to endure evolutionary imagination when it comes to mythical transitional forms, making your theory temporarily unfalsifable. Its easy to make up a new tree every time genome sequencing proves an old tree false, and its pretty amusing to us creationists to see the evolutionist scramble to be the first to reclassify a n organism when genome sequencing shows the old tree to be false. Amusing, but sad for science.

Another poster has offered potential falsifications. It is dishonest on your part to discount them.Evolution predicts that we should see a nested hierarchy. Gross violations of that nested hierarchy in multiple species would falsify the theory. Period. It would seem to me that instead of discounting these falsifications that you would be actively looking for them and holding us accountable. If they are unique then what about all of the features that they share with other mammals? Where are the fossils with a mixture of derived mammal and bird features? Evolution is not based on Darwin's book. It is based on the evidence, the nested hierarchy being one of them. What is mythical about these transitional forms?http://www.theistic-evolution.com/transitional.html

I'm considering all options in a logical fashion, all you have to do is prove that there was only light terrain in a vast region for thousands of years before the dark basalt arrived. Without your proof of this, its possible that there was interbreeding between populations, making your mutation assumption null and void.The most observed mechanism (interbreeding) should always be favored over the less observed phenomenon (positive mutation). To conclude beneficial mutation is PROVEN from the mice example is illogical, other mechanisms are commonly observed.

So what logic have you presented that prevents mutations from causing the change in fur color? The other light colored rocks in the region date back to 10's of millions of years while the black lava dates to less than 2 million years. Interbreeding between which populations? How does this explain the difference in sequence variation between the light colored and dark allele? The interbreeding mechanisms was ruled out by the evidence. Mutations are also observed, and the other mechanisms were ruled out.

Oh yeah? What about the great transition from reptile to mammal? All you have is something 100% mole-like, and neither that ancient mole, nor modern moles look like they are evolved from reptiles. Give me more examples. I would love to see examples of common descent.

Your requirement that the creator HAS TO have mixed organisms across every created grouping of organisms is a strawman argument. Since when does a designer HAVE to design a space rocket to also be a submarine. A balloon to also travel on roads? Sometimes they mix it up (amphibian car) but sometimes they do not mix between groupings. Another illogical argument. I never said they do not share any features. They are mammals with wings with no known transitionary fossils. They are unique. LOL! We have so many varieties of skull shapes today. So some ancient ugly dude is now called a half-ape? So the theory of evolution is based on an extinct race or an ugly dude that looks a little different, being EVOLVED FROM AN APE-THING? Those skulls are either apes or humans. Some races today have prominent eyebrow ridges, the idea that they are less-evolved is nonsense. Where is the list of dating techniques used to date those fossils in ascending order of both dates AND features? I would assume the consecutive dates matching the progression of features is essential to the argument, without this the argument of progression means nothing if a more recently dated fossil has the more so-called ape-like features.

Hi, Mindspawn. If a feature has an "unknown origin," all it means is that there is no information available about its origin. I can't evaluate hypotheses based on information that I don't have access to, so you're right: a feature of "unknown origin" would have absolutely no effect on which hypothesis I accept.But, "unknown origins" and "inexplicable origins" aren't the same thing. If I were to find organisms with features of inexplicable origin, like a bat with avian lungs or a bird with a mammalian placenta, I would be very willing to entertain the notion that bats are not entirely a product of evolution. I would even freely admit that Intelligent Design is a possible explanation for these things.But, in the absence of this kind of evidence, I have no justification for incorporating Intelligent Design into my worldview. I will happily incorporate Intelligent Design into my worldview if the hypothesis can ever be shown to have any explanatory power. But, every prediction that it might make is not necessarily expected, so I can't test it, and it has no explanatory power.----- I ignored it because I didn't know what to do with it. Mutation rates are a bit far from the topic. I'm also not particularly clear on what predictions our respective hypotheses might make about mutation rates, anyway.Perhaps you could start a new thread about it: I don't think I'm the best candidate to discuss mutation rates, but I am willing to give it a try.

Hi, Mindspawn. Taq didn't argue that there have to be mixes across every grouping: that was your addition. So, this is a strawman. All we want is some examples of mixes.If you want to find evidence in support of a hypothesis, you look in places where that evidence seems most likely to occur. To me, bats seemed like an obvious case in which the Designer might mix parts. So, if I were an Intelligent Design proponent looking to confirm a prediction of my hypothesis, this would be one of the first places I would look. If I failed to observe mixing-and-matching in a case where it seems like mixing-and-matching would be an obvious design choice, I might lose a little faith in my hypothesis.----- Evolution is about diversification, not about advancement. So, "some races are less evolved" is another strawman that you should avoid trying to argue against in the future.

If you can demonstrate the above to be correct, then you'll have proven common descent to be a pipe dream. Why don't you back up this assertion?

You should really find out what the phrase "strawman argument" means before using it. Do any of them look like this? Splendid. Please do what no creationist has ever been able to do, and tell us definitively which is which. Thank you. Are you seriously going to maintain that they're all human? See my "Introduction To Geology" thread. Wrongly. Try assuming less stuff, you'll be amazed how much clearer your thinking becomes.

No. The "normal state" isn't amplified. They amplify all the known protein coding genes. From the paper, with my bolding:

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The next logical step was to survey the entire E. coli proteome for its latent ability to confer genuinely new phenotypes (rather than to recreate old ones).

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Here, we describe a comprehensive search for promiscuous proteins that can impart new phenotypes on E. coli. We provide experimental evidence that the overexpression of preexisting E. coli proteins can provide resistance to >80 antibiotics and toxins. Our results suggest that the evolution of novel traits is surprisingly likely, and that even the genomes of well-characterized bacteria harbor substantial reservoirs of latent resistance determinants.

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quote:

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Concluding Remarks.
We have used two tools from functional genomics (PM plates and the ASKA collection) to conduct a comprehensive search for E. coli proteins that can impart improved growth in the presence of toxic compounds. The resulting catalog provides a unique picture of a bacterium's latent evolutionary potential and emphasizes the high frequency at which novel traits can evolve. By cataloguing sources of phenotypic innovation, we have revealed the diversity of adaptive mechanisms that can be underpinned by overexpression mutations such as gene amplification. Our results suggest that the IAD model is a biochemically and evolutionarily feasibleand perhaps dominantmechanism for the birth of new genes under selection.

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PaperIt certainly confers a new advantageous function. What happened was, firstly, at least two potentiating mutations. Then there was a duplication that formed a new hybrid gene. At this point the selection advantage was there, but still relatively weak. Then further duplications added copies (amplification) which greatly improved the new function. So, there was advantageous duplication upon advantageous duplication upon advantageous duplication.Now, didn't you started off claiming that duplication was always disadvantageous? Here's a pdf of the paper that describes the Lenski Advantageous Duplications.And the other one I showed you, with the Advantageous Duplications adaptive to increased heatAnd just for good measure, The malarial parasite regularly adapts to our attacks on it by both duplications (plural) and point mutations.Were you trying to make me laugh with that last sentence?. The mtDNA haplogroups that we were discussing are a good example of what might be called a short term hierarchy (see chart below). It's a nested family tree of mutations within a species.If you want a longer term one, what about the Elephantidae? They have nice long generations like us, so I'm wondering if you want to try to fit them into your 6,500 yr (about 260 generations) biosphere as one "kind"? All hard science sans philosophie so far. How many people survive this flood? Amplification has been observed to add to fitness. You may not realise it, but you're defeating your own arguments against an evolutionary scenario. If humans are perfectly healthy with high copy numbers of AMY1, there is nothing to stop them having evolved by duplication from one original.I entirely agree that there would have been copy number variation and high copy numbers present in the population 6,500 years ago (and before).Did you know that there are some genes with hundreds of copies in some individuals, and copy number can vary by more than 100 between individuals? And, moving from CNV to SNPs, did you know that there are some genes with more than 1000 alleles at the same loci, and at least one that is known to have more than 2000? That's interesting when you consider that your original population could only have 4 between them. Surely you agree. You would want Adam and Eve to have the maximum variation possible, wouldn't you? If they're like twins, you're in real trouble with your model. They have to have artificial different ancestry, just like they have artificial navels, and the first trees created have artificial tree rings, etc.Scientific creationism can be fun!And you've inadvertantly supported my statement earlier in the thread. You claimed that humans and chimps couldn't have 120,000,000 differences on the genome on a time scale of 5 to 7 million years based on mutation rates. Apply the same general principles to your model.You have a bottleneck 6,500 years ago (260 generations), and another 4,500 years ago (180 generations). From that point, all modern Y-chromosomes are ~180 generations away from that of just one man (Noah). So, we could test your model against mutation rates estimated from pedigree studies. (These are within species, so we avoid your issues with common descent).As you want figures, you can have lots of them. Example of a Y-chromosome pedigree studyA human phylogeny with some time estimates for Noah/Adam which uses the same mutation rate estimate concluded in the pedigree study above.So, if you read and understand those papers, you can see that we have a reasonable falsification of your 6,500 year old biosphere. It's stating the obvious. Here you can do the same as with the Y-chromosome above. Pedigree studies won't give us the real time of mitochondrial Eve for a variety of reasons, but they can give an indication of the most recent time possible. For example, this paper makes a <15,000 year old mitochondrial Eve seem extremely unlikely, and a 6,500 year old Eve essentially impossible. You haven't presented any "information". You've just made a mistake. You don't understand haplogroups or the maps, do you? African DNA is not any "older" than anyone else's. What you do find in Africa is slightly more general genetic diversity than elsewhere, both in terms of SNPs and CNVs. That's because there hasn't been a bottleneck there for a very long time, whereas everywhere else there has been at least one "founder effect" bottleneck. However, none of these founder effect groups seem to have been particularly small, so that even in America and Australia, where more than one founder effect has happened en route from Africa, people have retained most of human variation.Read the Y-chromosome phylogentic tree paper I linked to further up. The African haplogroups that get left out of "how we moved round the world" maps. Those maps mark the subgroups of L3-M and L3-N at the bottom right. Nearly all out of Africa people are L3 Africans in either the M or N subdivisions.

Not this again. Please... If you don't want to discuss mutations then you aren't interested in discussing the theory of evolution. New variation is a central part of the theory, and mutations are the important source of variation. Herr Ober, zhalen bitte!

Your requirement that a creator has to follow a nested hierarchy is unsupported and contradicted by everything we know about designers. Since when does a designer HAVE to make his designs fall into an objective nested hierarchy? So you searched the entire fossil record and determined that there were no transitional fossils? When did this occur? And now you are avoiding the evidence. No living human has features like those found in transitional hominids. None. Those fossils are transitional.When you avoid the evidence like this it only invalidates your argument.

As best as I can tell from doing a few internet searches, it seems to be the case that the fossil record is pretty sparse when it comes to the evolution of bats. Mindspawn has freely admitted his joy in not having to face such evidence. It's not that he has any contrary evidence, or that he can identify any reason why there ought to be more fossil evidence. He just does not have to spin and deny.