Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham

There's no mention of Jerusalem, Jericho, the Nile, the Dead Sea or the Red Sea before the Flood, but it's a valid question why the Tigris and Euphrates still exist since they were mentioned as flowing out from Eden. I would suppose the two that exist now aren't the same ones but named after them. Or the stratigraphy of the region might be a clue I suppose.

Looks to me like your chart of trilobites demonstrates what I said, or maybe you agree with me and don't consider the ones in the higher strata to have evolved any more from those in lower strata than those that share the same strata would have from each other. In which case you agree with me that they are all simply varieties possible within the trilobite genome and could just as well have all lived at the same time.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What do you mean by a "new species?" Assuming a population that starts out with pretty high genetic variability, I figure a new variety or breed or race could form fairly rapidly just by some relatively small number of individuals becoming reproductively isolated from that population, geographically for instance. A few hundred individuals could become a new variety in a couple hundred or so years. You are going to get a lot of new phenotypes in the new population when first isolated, within the first five or ten generations, because of the new gene frequencies, and that ought to be a clue how fast it can happen. Then if that population continues to inbreed and there is no gene flow with other populations, it would take more generations to establish it as a recognizable new variety. I'm guessing a couple hundred years. But based on what? And what is meant by "new species?" I think evolutionists are hampered by their idea that it takes mutations to bring about genetic change. No, all it takes is some number of generations of sexual recombination within the existing gene pool of a population over time, and not a terribly long time either. I'm just talking about what it takes to get a new variety/race/breed. It's the same as how you get a new breed in domestic breeding although that should normally be faster because you start with fewer individuals and protect them from breeding with unwanted types. In the wild it shouldn't take very long either if you start with a relatively small group of individuals, as long as there is complete reproductive isolation. It's the same genetics. I haven't? Actually I've thought about it a lot.; But what evolutionists think doesn't influence me much because I know they are hampered by their assumptions, especially about mutation, and aren't really thinking along these lines. In reality it doesn't take a long time for recognizable change to occur under the right circumstances, meaning reproductive isolation of a relatively small founding group. But you don't need mutation, and even if you have it and it does what you say it does it isn't going to speed up this process. It just naturally plays out by the change in gene frequencies brought about by the formation of a daughter population in reproductive isolation. That's all it takes. That's all you are doing in principle in breeding programs anyway.And besides, of course, the idea that mutations add any information is a fantasy, an article of faith. All mutations do is destroy the normal functioning DNA. No wonder the evolutionists estimate such long time periods. Mutation takes so long. And what good does that do? More than one gene for the same trait should do it. According to one creationist book, "there are at least four genes for skin color in the human gene pool: A, a, B, b." from combinations of which they figure all shades of skin are possible, AABB being the darkest, and aabb being the lightest. {What is Creation Science, Morris and Parker I have no idea why you are going on about all this. What ignorant statement have I made? I disagree with evolutionist thinking on this, I don't think it makes sense, I don't believe mutations have anything constructive to do with how variations develop. I hardly ever parrot creationists. "Within a Kind" means it can never vary genetically beyond the boundary of the Kind, a built in genetic limit. That's what I meant. Is that what you thought I meant? It's simply another way of describing microevolution, means therefore that macroevolution is genetically impossible. You still agree with it? As far as I know nothing I've been saying has anything whatever to do with that chart or anything else you've said. My reference is population genetics and my own often-argued position on these things.

I call it ordinary microevolution, there's nothing "super" about it.

The speed only seems "super" because of the weird expectations promoted by evolutionism that it has to take a long time. All it takes is the reproductive isolation of a smallish number of individuals over enough generations to combine all the alleles in the population. Because of the change in gene frequency caused by the new allele mix in the new smaller population you'll start getting new individual phenotypes within a few generations. Getting a completely new variety or breed that characterizes the whole population should just take however long it takes to mix all the alleles. Certainly no thousands of years. Maybe a couple hundred, maybe less. No. Just the usual change from generation to generation through sexual recombination, nothing extraordinary at all.I'm not arguing anything I haven't argued here a hundred times before.

As I read on in your post, however, I see that you aren't understanding it at all. But at least I think I get a better idea of what the problem may be. Paradigm clash I'd say. You guys think in terms of transitional forms, I don't because I don't share the evolutionist model. Your model expects gradations, mine doesn't. Mine expects variations, not gradations. The bones in the archaeological digs could have all sorts of different forms from those either on the ark or in the fossil record just depending on how the groups dispersed after the Flood. Larger, smaller, heavier, lighter, taller, shorter, any variation is possible depending on what mix of alleles was involved. Well, yes, there should be evidence of varieties of all the animals that were on the ark, but not gradations, not transitionals, but varieties. What you get depends on the combination of the alleles present in any given reproducing population.The alleles for human skin color for instance should produce the whole range of skin colors. You've got six reproducing individuals on the ark, each with four genes. Say one has AABb, another has AaBB, another has AaBb, the fourth has aaBb, the fifth AAbb, the sixth AaBb. I don't have the patience right now to try to calculate all this out and it wouldn't be something you'd find in the archaeological graves anyway. But this may illustrate the principle I have in mind. From the basic genetic variability you could get both very dark skinned and very light skinned individuals as well as everything in between, and depending on how they form groups and disperse from one another you will start getting whole populations with different skin color from the other populations. Not gradations, just different groups with different characteristics. No they shouldn't. As the animals dispersed from the ark and their population grew, you'd start getting different mixes of alleles in the groups that split off. Basic evolution: change in gene/allele frequency brought about by reproductive isolation of a daughter population. You theoretically could get a population of wiry fast dogs in one place and another population of large lazy dogs in another, and yet another population of good hunting dogs and another of small dogs as pets. But the point is the genetic variability of the pair on the ark is going to get distributed among their offspring in unpredictable ways based on how the groups split off from each other and disperse geographically. You are not going to get gradations or transitions, you are going to get a range of varieties.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Then you aren't looking at the places I'm describing where it DOES go that fast: wherever you have a small daughter population breaking off the parent population and becoming reproductively isolated. That's the test case. And it seems to me that would be the most common situation that would occur after the Flood as the animals dispersed, all kinds of splits in population going off in different directions. Yes there are plenty of other situations where it doesn't happen so fast, such as where you have extremely large stable herds for instance, but this is how I'm sure it must have happened right off the ark, which is the context here after all. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

No, as I already said. Not necessarily. The question about the archaeological digs can't be thought of in terms of transitions because there's no way to know what line of variation found its way from the ark to that site. But if you are talking about a specific line of variation, at first it does seem that you should have a population of cats on its way to becoming lions, but as I think about it I'm not so sure you would be able to identify that trend for quite some time. Bcause first, within a few generations you'd be getting individuals with new phenotypes as compared to the originals but also different from each other in the new population. Think about it, the new allele frequencies are first going to bring about new characteristics in individual cats, and the combinations are not going to be predictable so you'll be getting a bunch of different types, the population should look pretty motley for a while. Maybe some will look odd enough that they don't find mates and get eliminated from the gene pool and so on and so forth. In any case it's going to take a while as the population inbreeds, some number of generations, I don't know how to calculate it, before the population as a whole starts to get homogenized into a lion type. So even here I'm not sure you could say you are getting a clear transitional type on the way to the lion.. No, as I say above I think the actual situation would be the development of many different traits in individuals before the population as a whole develops into a lion type. Not what I think though. Actually, if what I've said above is true, there is this other option that in the first few generations you should get a lot of different kinds of cats from the random mix of the new allele frequencies, sort of the way you do with your typical alley-cat house cats except I think the differences could have been quite large right off the ark, different body types and sizes perhaps as well as coloring and other characteristics. Then if the population remains reproductively isolated, eventually over many generations I'd expect it to get homogenized into the lion type.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I've answered this hundreds of times on different threads and I'm almost afraid even to sketch out an answer here because it always means I get drawn into the debate about it whether I want to or not. I've started many threads on the subject in the past: Evolution Requires a Reduction in Genetic Diversity was one, Natural Limit to Evolution or something like that was one a long time ago, and then I've argued it within other threads too. I should have been keeping track I guess.I think the processes that bring about evolution or the development of varieties or races, etc., require the reduction of genetic diversity because alleles for traits other than those of the identifiable variety or race have to be eliminated from the gene pool. For a trait to "breed true" requires homozygosity for that trait, that is, NO other alleles than those that determine that trait. What this means is that as any particular variety develops the GENETIC ability to keep on varying becomes less and less, which is the opposite of what the ToE requires. So you reach a point through evolution where evolution is simply no longer possible.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

There was an example somebody posted here some time ago about the -- spontaneous unintentional -- development of four completely different herds in a very short period of time from a larger domestic herd, and I don't even remember what animal it was, cattle, sheep, horses, what, don't remember and don't know what search terms to use to find it.Otherwise I always have to fall back on domestic breeding for my examples, which isn't quite what would happen in the wild, but certainly demonstrates that you can get striking new varieties or breeds in a few generations. Yes, perhaps I shouldn't sound so definite about it even though I am. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I've come to think of this as basically a lot of heterozygosity in the population, giving it many genetic options for developing new breeds or varieties. Or to put it another way, the opposite of the cheetah for instance, with its many fixed loci or homozygous genes, so that it has no ability to vary or evolve further at all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This question makes no sense. Cheetahs can't vary any further because they don't have the genetic ability to do so (barring the appearance of a useful mutation or three, which hasn't happened yet and isn't likely to). Lions are not in such bad shape genetically but how they might vary I have no idea. Why would they become "uber" anythings? That's not how variation works. As I said lions apparently still have genetic variability.

If you mean species as the product of "speciation," that occurs when interbreeding with the former population has been lost in a daughter population, right? But there is no other difference from other varieties, and that loss can be the result of genetic depletion so it's rather a distinction without a difference or however that goes.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But that is a lot of variability, especially for two individuals. And if a trait is governed by more than one gene each of which has four alleles, as human skin color is governed by four genes, then you have a great deal of variability in a mere two individuals. This was probably the case on the ark although by now there's no reason to expect that much genetic variability in any creature. There's no need for a fallback if two individuals have as much genetic variability at one gene locus as you postulate. Besides, junk DNA is really just dead or half-dead DNA, not of use for any constructive purpose. ? Which of course is a wild fantasy as all those dating estimates are.And of course the rate of mutations has nothing to do with genetic variation, being either useless or destructive.

It's clearer if you think about what happens in domestic breeding, where the main method of getting a breed is to eliminate unwanted traits, which means eliminating the genetic stuff for those traits, meaning the alleles for those other traits. In the wild the culling may not be so drastic. Or if you get a bottleneck as happened with the cheetah, it may. and of course it will be random unless there is a strong natural selection involved. Gene flow and genetic shuffling add nothing new to the gene pool, and mutations are usually useless or deleterious so the idea they contribute anything to genetic variability is basically a fantasy, certainly an unproven assumption. The whole idea of the introduction of new traits is a fantasy. If you do have gene flow it can be a healthy factor in a population by keeping up the genetic variability, and yes a species can have high genetic variability, but I'm trying to keep in focus how new variations develop from former populations and, especially if we're thinking of the situation right after the Flood, that would most likely be from the formation of many daughter populations in reproductive isolation from the parent population. In that case the change in gene frequencies will produce new phenotypes, and over many generations a characteristic phenotype for the whole population. It's really only after many population splits that you should start to see appreciable reduction in genetic variability, but that is the normal trend. This could be proved in the laboratory by allowing animals to breed and then taking out a few and isolating them to let them breed, and doing the same from each new daughter population. You should get a lot of phenotypic variation with less and less genetic variability in each new daughter population. Yes, but think about it. The only ways you get an increase in genetic diversity are really just the REintroduction of traits already in the larger gene pool, nothing new, and when the population is winnowed you lose whatever does not contribute to the "genetically similar population." The only possible new genetic material would have to come from mutations, and since it is usually understood to take a very long time to produce any kind of beneficial mutation that can be passed on in the population, it's as good as useless anyway. This is true, but the point is that this is the DIRECTION of variation. You may only see it at the drastic ends of the processes involved. But I think this trend is probably growing for many species. Not required to BE a species, but reduction of genetic diversity IS required for the formation of NEW varieties/"species." Homozygosity is the extreme but I mention it to illustrate the direction. As you said above, "Evolution itself is based on the introduction of new traits (heterozygous alleles) through mutation, gene flow, genetic shuffling and other factors to create new species." This is what the ToE requires. But in actual fact, the processes that most predictably bring about evolution or variation involve the reduction of genetic diversity. Or at least this is what happens with the processes that split populations and produce new varieties by reducing the number of individuals, which brings about new gene frequencies.Again, gene flow is the reintroduction of genetic material already in the larger gene pool back into a population. This will also change gene frequencies and bring about new variations. But is this really evolution and where does the population go from there? You can't keep adding back gene flow from former populations. You can get a new stable population of very large numbers that way, but it's not going to be a platform for further evolution. That comes about most visibly when you cut down the numbers of individuals and isolate them. And the trend in that case is to the REDUCTION of genetic variability. It brings formerly unexpressed alleles to expression and suppresses formerly more frequent alleles. Depends on how much genetic variability was already in the parent population. The reduction won't be apparent for some number of population splits if it was high, as lions aren't genetically impoverished as cheetahs are for instance. But after many population splits the trend should start to be noticeable: reduction of genetic diversity. Right. That's the point. Well, if what you want is actually evolution, which is change in traits, it DOES contradict the ToE. No, this is confusing the phenotype with the genotype. To get new phenotypes you reduce the GENETIC variability. It's not super evolution, it's simply microevolution. The creation of daughter populations of necessity is going to lead to reduction of genetic diversity especially over many such splits into further daughter populations, but each time that happens you'll get new variations or new phenotypes that come to expression because the competition from other traits that characterized the former populations has been suppressed or eliminated. Uh huh. So I keep hearing.