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Junior Member (Idle past 3719 days) Posts: 13 From: mississippi Joined: |
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Author | Topic: If evolution is true, where did flying creatures come from? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Nonukes, my point was that we should at least think about what the other group has to say, and look at the evidence with an open mind, before calling them wrong. Why do you assume that this hasn't happened? At least when I call creationists wrong, this is indeed the terminus of extensive research into the evidence and of an unnecessarily long and painful study of what creationists think. Now I get to call them wrong.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
"Likely true"? Well - if it's down to probability, what is the probability of an eye evolving 40 times by convergence? Shall I be generous and say the chances of eye evolution are 1 in 2? That would then be 1 in 3 X 340. If I say that that's only the third dumbest thing I've seen all week, that's only because you have some very talented competition.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Now if you could just say what is "dumb" about it. Did you mean the typo-error? I pressed "2" instead of "3". You mean 3 instead of 2.
Is it dumb that when flipping a coin, the chances of getting heads are 1 in 2. So then to achieve a heads 100 times in a row, would be 1 in 2 multiplied by 2, onwe hundred times. No, what's dumb is the assumption that what you're talking about is the equivalent of 100 heads in a row. Let's think about your simplified model of evolution. You assume getting vision is a lottery with a 1 in 2 chance of winning, heads they see, tails they don't. We'll let that pass for now. But you also tacitly assume that the winners were the only ones to enter the lottery! That's the only context in which your math makes sense. If there are also an equal number of losers who didn't get vision, whose coin came down tails, then there is nothing particularly remarkable about the result; on the contrary, it's what you'd expect. Well, there are plenty of groups that don't have eyes. These would be the losers in your hypothetical vision lottery.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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High nonsense, there is no reason for a turtle and yet a tortoise to be so close in appearance, except by design. Ooh, I know! What if they're related! (It just came to me in a flash.)
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Real genetics is more interesting than genetics you made up.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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As I recall, Dr. A gave the example of the American Curl cat, a cat with cute curled ears that WERE the result of a mutation. This is hardly the typical situation I'm talking about. And I don't recall other examples but there may have been some, again exceptions when I'm talking about the rule. I gave several examples. You have given none. So which is the rule, and which is the exception?
The American Curl was also developed by entirely different principles from those normally used in breeding programs. The normal method was the simple selection of traits toward developing a breed with those traits, but it eventually became apparent that the phenomenon I'm talking about here made that method undesirable when pursued through too many generations, because the fact IS that developing and maintaining a breed that way necessitates reduction in genetic diversity, and that eventually starts producing genetic diseases in your breed. Nobody in their right mind would try to get an American Curl breed that way. They selected healthy animals that didn't have the trait to breed with the one that did, and then selected those with the curl trait from the offspring. They continued to mate those with the trait with healthy animals without it to avoid the problems caused by reduced genetic diversity, selecting those with the trait to continue the same process until they had many cats with the trait. I don't think they ever produced an actual breed with the trait, that is, a type of cat recognizable by other traits than the curled ear alone, but instead have many types of cats with that trait. It's a completely different process. Standard breeds are now often bred with others to build up their health in the same way, sacrificing some of the breed's characteristics. You seem to have forgotten why we're talking about artificial selection at all. Surely it is for the light it sheds on natural selection. Now natural selection, when it favors a new phenotype, favors the genes that make that phenotype adaptive. It doesn't also try to standardize fur color and tail length and disposition and all the other things that breeders fuss about. It does not (metaphorically) try to produce a type which is uniform in every respect, and it could not try to do that at the cost of reducing the actual fitness of the population. So, yes, there are differences between the way that people bred the American Curl and how they bred the Siamese. But these differences are all such as to make the production of the American Curl a better model for natural selection than the production of the Siamese. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
You seem to have forgotten why we're talking about artificial selection at all. Surely it is for the light it sheds on natural selection. Well, that was Darwin's interest though it's not particularly mine. I'm interested in the fact that the processes are similar ... So no, but yes.
... which over many generations, or especially over many separate selection or isolation events, reduces genetic diversity. But you remember how this is something you made up?
Yes, of course. However I would point out that you can't change one single trait without affecting many others by the normal methods of breeding by elimination ... [citation needed] The American Curl does demonstrate a completely different approach to breeding by which you add other traits to the trait you want to preserve. That way you'll never end up with an identifiable breed The American Curl is an identifiable breed. As are the the Scottish Fold, the American Wirehair, the LaPerm, the Selkirk Rex and the Munchkin, which (you seem to have forgotten) were the other examples of cat breeds I gave.
Hm Interesting thought, but I wonder. "Hey Herr Natur [well, the author of bloody tooth and claw can't be a lady] Herr Natur I say, Dr. A here. I thought you might be interested to know that we human beings have come up with an improvement on your Natural Selection methods. Not that we don't appreciate your fine work in directing the course of evolution, but we think it might be time to consider a nicer, kinder method. More, ah, politically correct you might say. You'll get your desired trait but without all the --- *yech* -- carnage. No more killing off the poor little white moths that happen to land on the blackened tree; no more killing off the sweet little white mice that through no fault of their own scamper onto the lava. No, we will work to build up their health instead of culling them so viciously to produce our desired aim. I suggest you might want to retrain your predator birds, perhaps redirect them to worms. Worms are quite tasty and they don't evolve anyway. Thank you for your careful consideration of the New Improved Kinder Natural Selection." I can attach no meaning to this.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Perhaps I didn't see your other examples because I don't remember them. And I'm using the term Breed in the usual sense of an animal that looks like all the others in the breed, not a variety of different breeds that all happen to have curled ears or long noses. If you are going to purloin the term for such cases then give me another one for the standard definition of a breed. As I pointed out to you --- almost exactly a year ago, as it happens --- the Cat Fanciers Association calls the American Curl a breed. The International Cat Association calls it a breed. How do you think I found all these examples in the first place? I looked at lists of cat breeds. If you wish to redefine the term "breed" to mean "a group of animals which has intentionally had as much genetic diversity bred out of it as possible" then: (1) That would be you purloining the term, since that is not what animal breeders mean by the term "breed". It's their term of art, you can't redefine it just for the sake of your argument. (2) Your idea of what a "breed" is would hardly be relevant to any question about what happens in nature, since natural selection does not and cannot try to produce anything like a "breed"-as-redefined-by-Faith.
ABE: The American Curl was developed by ADDING traits to the selected trait, which is why there is no such thing as an identifiable American Curl Breed in the usual sense of the term. The method of addition is NOT Selection and therefore can't be used as a model for Natural Selection. The trait that defines the American Curl has been selected for.
The usual method of breeding, which is essentially by subtraction of the unwanted traits ... In this case, the trait of not-having-curly-ears. The other traits weren't unwanted.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Well, it's not made up at all, it's the logical consequence of the Biblical Creation ... A: I am a butterfly. B: Prove it. A: Well, for starters, I have six legs. B: You made that up. A: It's not made up at all, it's the logical consequence of me being a butterfly.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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A Siamese looks like other Siamese and if it's True Bred, which is apparently a term that is meaningless if we're now calling something a breed that has only one trait to make it a breed, it doesn't have any of the the genetic wherewithal for long haired Persians. Similarly a truebred long hair Persian doesn't have the genes for Siamese. Similarly a truebred Pekinese doesn't have the genes for a Great Dane or a Black Lab or a Chihuahua etc etc etc. And a truebred American Curl doesn't have genes for not being an American Curl.
THESE are traditional breeds. And yet chihuahuas, to take just one example, are not in fact homogeneous. They come in different colors, different coat lengths, etc.
The inclusion of One Trait Wonders just destroys the English language and the possibility of communication. You are trying to change the definition of "breed" so that it means something other than what breeders mean by it, and you are complaining about "destroying the English language and the possibility of communication"?
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I've been working on it via information on the sciences I cull from the internet and various posters here. You seem to have forgotten all the information supplied to you by posters here, which is why we're having to point it out to you for the second, or third, or fourth time.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Increases in genetic diversity are the opposite of the processes that produce species, such as natural selection, isolation of small populations etc. You forgot mutation.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Mutation is an additive process ... Yes.
It's the processes that subtract alleles / reduce genetic diversity that lead to new breeds, races, varieties or species. How could that possibly be true? --- By the way, you really should re-read the threads on this subject. If you search for the ones where I'm talking about cat breeds, that would be a good start. I may also copy-and-paste some of it.
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Is this just your way of denying my argument at this point, or do you really have no idea what my argument has been for over ten years now? Well, you've been low on detail. Talk us through an example. Here are two wolves (the same number that were on Noah's floating zoo).
Here are dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club:
There are of course more, but that's a start. Now, I am curious to know how you suppose we got from the first picture to the second, if all that took place was a reduction in diversity. Because I don't look at the bottom picture and say "damn, where has all the diversity gone?"
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Let us consider the two Noachian ur-wolves from which all dogs are descended. Between them, as we know from the Faith Theory of Evolution, they must have had all the genetic diversity of modern dogs. Indeed, they need to have exhibited more genetic diversity than there was room for in their loci: they need to have had five transferin alleles, for example, and five alleles in the E series, controlling the distribution of eumelanin, five in the A series, which also controls coat color, at least six alleles for the D4
dopamine receptor, and so on. Passing over that for the moment, let's think about what they would have been like phenotypically. If they carried examples of every modern allele between them, then they would actually have exhibited every autosomal dominant trait. For example, at least one of them must have been a ridgeback. Alas, not all autosomal dominant traits are this harmless. Between them the two ancestral wolves would have exhibited (among other traits) hairlessness, missing or abnormally shaped teeth, chondrodysplasia, hyperparathyroidism, three different ways to go blind (progressive retinal atrophy, ocular melanosis and hereditary cataract), at least four separate kidney diseases (cystinuria type IIa, cystinuria type IIb, nephritis, and polycystic kidney disease), anemia, progressive spinal atrophy, Alport syndrome, von Willebrand's disease, Ehlers Danlos syndrome, and an inherited tendency to kidney cancer and bone cancer. Now if the genetics of wolves as created In The Beginning was such that any two wolves picked 2,000 years later would exhibit this array of symptoms, then wolves would not in fact have lasted for 2,000 years. That can't be it. Instead it must be the case that Noah was the unluckiest guy in the world, who just happened to pick two really awful wolves. (He had similarly bad luck with cats, but that's another story). These wolves are, depending on how you look at it, either the unluckiest or the luckiest wolves in the world. On the one hand, they are obviously not going to have long happy lives. On the other hand, they must be descended from four wolves that shared those diseases between them, and all four lived long enough to breed. What are the odds? One thing is clear: the two most defective wolves of all time are not going to survive the 375 days of Noah's flood. We know this because they wouldn't survive five minutes on an inflatable lounger in the shallow end of a swimming pool. You might think Noah and his family might have held their paws and nursed them through, but bear in mind that Noah and his family between them were suffering from Marfan syndrome, Waardenburg syndrome, von Hippel Lindau syndrome, Peutz Jeghers syndrome, Ehlor's Danlos syndrome, von Willebrand disease, Huntington's disease, tuberous sclerosis, neurofibromatosis, retinoblastoma, myotonic dystrophy, hypercholestrolemia, polycystic kidney disease, familial adenomatous polyposis, hereditary spherocytosis, achondroplasia, acute intermittent porphyria, hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, hereditary hemorrhagic telengiactasia, osteopetrosis type II, hypokalemic periodic paralysis, and seven different types of brittle bone disease. So what with being blind, mad, dwarfish, crippled, and in excruciating pain, they probably had enough on their plates.
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