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Author Topic:   If evolution is true, where did flying creatures come from?
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(8)
Message 106 of 225 (757538)
05-10-2015 4:18 AM
Reply to: Message 104 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2015 1:53 AM


Re: Evolution of What3ever
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.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 104 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 1:53 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 107 by NoNukes, posted 05-10-2015 10:20 AM Dr Adequate has not replied
 Message 114 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 4:20 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 107 of 225 (757545)
05-10-2015 10:20 AM
Reply to: Message 106 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2015 4:18 AM


Re: Evolution of What3ever
Perhaps the inherited disease angle has a work around since Faith is willing to allow diseases to come from mutations. It is only the beneficial kind changing mutations, like gills or wings, that are apparently impossible. Except for bacteria I suppose.
I think a big problem for Faith is that the sheer existence of all of those breeds is an in your face obvious demonstration that speciation does not end possibilities for diversity. Every single one of the dogs is of the same species by any and every reasonable definition. Many of those dogs have dominant variations that wolves have never had. Those things must be new traits.
And yes, the argument applies equally well to cats and human beings for that matter.

Je Suis Charlie
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 106 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 4:18 AM Dr Adequate has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 122 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 8:17 PM NoNukes has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 108 of 225 (757551)
05-10-2015 2:08 PM
Reply to: Message 104 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2015 1:53 AM


How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
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?"
I am very sorry to find out that you don't understand my argument after all this time. The most basic error people make is to confuse phenotypic diversity with genetic diversity. You can have an enormous number of subspecies out of an original population that had high genetic diversity, but each subspecies, and the more so as they come to "breed true," will have its own peculiar collection of genes/alleles that support its own collection of traits. This is necessarily a much smaller gene pool than the original or that of all the subspecies combined. A breed that is truly "purebred" will have fixed loci for all its main traits; that is, it will be homozygous for those traits. Alleles for the traits it doesn't possess will have been left behind as it developed, and other breeds may have some of those as fixed loci forming their own entirely different collection of traits. So one breed will have fixed loci for short hair and not a single allele for long hair will lurk in any members of that breed; while another breed will have fixed loci for long hair without any alleles for short hair, and etc.
It is in each subspecies that the reduction in genetic diversity occurs, not in the overall Species itself (although over time it's true there too but that's another level of the argument). Dogs in particular have an enormous genetic diversity if you are referring to the entire population; but each subspecies is confined to the genes/alleles for its own traits. This is maintained only by reproductive isolation by one means or another, enforced by human owners if the ability to interbreed with other subspecies is still present.
As for the pair of wolves on the ark, we don't know what they were like. They may not have been much like those you show, just because there HAS been so much branching off into new species / races /breeds since then, and that does reduce genetic diversity for each separate group, and that would include the original wolves themselves since they too would become a smaller population with a new collection of traits brought about by their new decreased genetic diversity. (Not to get too complicated but I'm sure there were dogs apart from wolves on the ark too)
However, they might have looked just like today's wolves even with their much greater genetic diversity. One thing I found particularly interesting in a creationist book was the idea that Adam and Eve must have looked extremely average, probably had medium range skin color for instance despite carrying the genetic capacity for every skin color seen today and probably more. It's reproductive isolation of subpopulations that brings out all the variety.
Yes, the idea is that there was much more genetic diversity in a single individual in Noah's day too, less than in Adam's but still a great deal. What that would mean is more heterozygosity in the genome as a whole. As I understand it, the human genome now has about 7% heterozygosity, but in Noah's day it would have been a higher percentage, and in Adam's day much higher still. The range of traits possible from just a single pair would have been staggeringly broad.
Some traits are governed by many genes in combination. I don't know for sure the number for skin color in humans, but I think at least four, possibly originally many more (I think junk DNA is the record of all the genes that have died over the millennia which could have included genes affecting skin color), and if all those were heterozygous in the six reproducing people on the ark, especially if they had completely different alleles at each gene locus, it's not hard to see, as the people spread out and formed reproductively isolated populations, how you could get every shade of skin color that we see today just from those six. Separate populations won't have all those possibilities due to the phenomenon I'm talking about, the reduction of genetic diversity that leaves each group with only the alleles for its own traits, so you need mixing of the separated groups to recover the range of genetic possibilities.
So. The point of all this is that wherever there is evolution, meaning the splitting off into separate reproductively isolated populations, subspecies or races, or breeds etc., genetic diversity is of necessity reduced for that new population, and since these populations are where evolution is occurring, if further splits continue to occur eventually they run out of the ability to keep evolving for lack of genetic diversity. They may have arrived at a strikingly new phenotypic appearance, of course, but that's only possible by having only the alleles FOR that striking appearance. The original population may still possess all the alleles for combinations producing hundreds of other traits, but it's in the subpopulations and subspecies that you are seeing evolution, where new gene frequencies are forming new phenotypes.
It is because phenotypic variation depends on genetic reduction that the addition of mutations would only be an interference with the processes that lead to the formation of new subspecies, varieties, breeds, races and etc.
That's a short and very simplified sketch of my argument. There's lots more that could be said and has been said on other threads.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 104 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 1:53 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 109 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 2:11 PM Faith has replied
 Message 113 by NoNukes, posted 05-10-2015 4:20 PM Faith has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 109 of 225 (757552)
05-10-2015 2:11 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Faith
05-10-2015 2:08 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
I am very sorry to find out that you don't understand my argument after all this time. The most basic error people make is to confuse phenotypic diversity with genetic diversity.
But I obviously don't, which is why I keep using dominant traits as examples, as in all six of the cat breeds I instanced and in my previous post.
Would you like to try again?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 108 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 2:08 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 110 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 2:19 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 110 of 225 (757553)
05-10-2015 2:19 PM
Reply to: Message 109 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2015 2:11 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
When you talk about all the diversity evidenced in such a huge array of dog breeds you show that you do NOT understand my argument. And no, I will not try again. Get the argument first and demonstrate that you get it.
All your speculations about the wolves on the ark is ridiculous. I don't know what you can be thinking, supposing that diseases we see today were active then and that every gene had to have been expressed? What on earth are you talking about? Get the overview of my argument first. Your objections are ludicrous.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 2:11 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 112 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 2:44 PM Faith has replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 111 of 225 (757554)
05-10-2015 2:37 PM


Creationists’ Scientific Method
Creationists’ Scientific Method:
1. Select a conclusion which you hope is true.
2. Find one piece of evidence that possibly might fit.
3. Ignore all other evidence.
4. That’s it.
Thanks to the Sensuous Curmudgeon
Look, Drool, Believe | The Sensuous Curmudgeon

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.
Belief gets in the way of learning--Robert A. Heinlein
How can I possibly put a new idea into your heads, if I do not first remove your delusions?--Robert A. Heinlein
It's not what we don't know that hurts, it's what we know that ain't so--Will Rogers
If I am entitled to something, someone else is obliged to pay--Jerry Pournelle
If a religion's teachings are true, then it should have nothing to fear from science...--dwise1
"Multiculturalism" demands that the US be tolerant of everything except its own past, culture, traditions, and identity.

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 112 of 225 (757555)
05-10-2015 2:44 PM
Reply to: Message 110 by Faith
05-10-2015 2:19 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
When you talk about all the diversity evidenced in such a huge array of dog breeds you show that you do NOT understand my argument. And no, I will not try again.
When you refuse to talk about the diversity evidenced in such a huge array of dog breeds you show that you do not understand genetics. Try again.
All your speculations about the wolves on the ark is ridiculous. I don't know what you can be thinking, supposing that diseases we see today were active then and that every gene had to have been expressed?
No, Faith. Just the dominant alleles of those genes. 'Cos that's what dominant means. Have you noticed how I keep talking about autosomal dominant traits? And how your argument apparently relies on ignoring them?
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 110 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 2:19 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 115 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 4:22 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


(2)
Message 113 of 225 (757556)
05-10-2015 4:20 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Faith
05-10-2015 2:08 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
Your rant about not being understood is predictable, but in this case it is clear that you don't get it.
It is in each subspecies that the reduction in genetic diversity occurs, not in the overall Species itself
Two points.
1. When mutation adds diversity, nothing prevents a sub species from accepting that diversity. In the wild, there is no one to kick out a new puppy from the population just because his eye spots are in the wrong place or his ears twist too much.
2. You've entirely missed the point. All of those breeds dogs are a single species that can interbreed an mix together. The only thing preventing those dogs from forming a bunch of diverse mutts is human beings playing 'wet blanket' and spoiling the fun.
A collie and poodle are not sub species. They are the same species and sub species. Every dog on that chart Dr Adequate provides is of the same subspecies Canis lupus familiaris. So your argument is factually incorrect. Breeds are formed by artificial man made accumulations of traits that would never form in nature.
Yes, human beings can take a bunch of dogs and produce a collection of homogeneous, non diverse poodles. So what? That is not what happens in nature.
The question becomes are dogs more diverse than a couple of wolves? Feel free to talk about seven pair of wolves if necessary, but the answer is clearly, yes dogs are more varied than their ancestor species and are a clear counter example to your argument. As are cats and human beings.

Je Suis Charlie
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 108 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 2:08 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 117 by Tanypteryx, posted 05-10-2015 6:33 PM NoNukes has not replied
 Message 119 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 7:02 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 114 of 225 (757557)
05-10-2015 4:20 PM
Reply to: Message 106 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2015 4:18 AM


You do have to follow the argument
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.
If these are normal traits, and not mutation-generated disease--producing alleles, they were most likely governed by quite a few different gene loci, that no longer exist in the wolf or dog genome, having joined the junk DNA cemetery since the ark.
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.
Again, the existence of many genes governing even only one particular trait, which would have been present in the genome then but not now, in their many possible combinations would exert unpredictable modifying influence over each other and some would even prevent the expression of a dominant gene. Disease-producing alleles didn't exist then either, the Fall not yet having exerted its destructive powers in the form of the proliferation of deleterious mutations we see today. That took hundreds of years of microevolution.
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.
Except that genetic diseases would not have been present in the genomes on the ark, very likely none at all let alone the autosomal dominant kind, because they are the result of mutations since then, expressions of the Fall as they've accumulated down the millennia. The most unfortunate thing is that they accumulate in the most actively evolving lineages, the most highly refined or purebred breeds of dogs for instance. They would not have existed in a pair selected out of the healthy stock before the Flood that even between the two of them contained enough genetic diversity to produce all the dogs we have today. (Of course the Flood was a drastic bottleneck for all living things and an enormous amount of genetic diversity WAS lost -- which I believe is represented by the majority of the huge percentage of junk DNA in just about every creature's genome -- still leaving enough to repopulate the earth with all the variety we see today). You really do need to understand my argument if you want to avoid such silly errors as imputing today's genetic situation to the creatures in the time of Noah.
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).
Utterly ridiculous. Those diseases didn't yet exist, the genome before the Flood was slightly compromised by the Fall but hardly enough to have been reflected in the phenotypes of the creatures on the ark. The general health of all living things before the Flood was enviable by comparison with the current state of things, in fact by our standards it would have been superhealth. The longevity of human beings alone attests to this. Disease processes began to operate at the Fall but we know that if people were still living hundreds of years the diseases had hardly made a dent in the overall health of all creatures. All that began to take its sad toll beginning with the mass loss of genetic diversity in the Flood plus the Flood's destruction of the fertility that had fed all those creatures with a variety of health-giving plants that also no longer exist.
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?
Zero chance of anything you are saying being true, since you haven't bothered to understand the argument I'm making.
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.
None of which existed in their time, being the result of mutations since then, plus the fact that most traits were governed by MANY genes that exerted modifying influence on each other and along with all the other provisions for health gave Noah and his family the ability to live hundreds of years even after the Flood, and the same superhealth would have been the case for all the animals on the ark. WE are suffering from four millennia of genetic deterioration since the Flood that was utterly unknown to them.
You resally do need to try to understand my argument.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 106 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 4:18 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 128 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 9:21 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 115 of 225 (757558)
05-10-2015 4:22 PM
Reply to: Message 112 by Dr Adequate
05-10-2015 2:44 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
When you refuse to talk about the diversity evidenced in such a huge array of dog breeds you show that you do not understand genetics. Try again.
I did talk about it. Obviously you didn't bother to read my post.
No, Faith. Just the dominant alleles of those genes. 'Cos that's what dominant means. Have you noticed how I keep talking about autosomal dominant traits? And how your argument apparently relies on ignoring them?
Yes and I just answered that. You have to consider the interaction of many genes as modifying the expression of any one, genes that existed then but not now, and you also need to understand my argument, which explains why they didn't suffer from genetic diseases as we now do.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 112 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 2:44 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by NoNukes, posted 05-10-2015 4:38 PM Faith has replied
 Message 118 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 6:39 PM Faith has replied

  
NoNukes
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 116 of 225 (757559)
05-10-2015 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Faith
05-10-2015 4:22 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
You have to consider the interaction of many genes as modifying the expression of any one, genes that existed then but not now
Your argument requires this type of interaction as a substitute for having genes formed by mutation. What evidence do you have that your assumption is even true? Why should we entertain an argument with an assumption that you cannot verify and that has been shown to be incorrect for at least some cases? That is, in some case we know that the alleles for a trait do not exist in the parent population.
And further, how does your idea rule out the operation of other mechanisms such as those proposed by evolution? Isn't it simply denial that those other mechanisms exist?

Je Suis Charlie
Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 4:22 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 120 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 7:16 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
Tanypteryx
Member
Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


(1)
Message 117 of 225 (757560)
05-10-2015 6:33 PM
Reply to: Message 113 by NoNukes
05-10-2015 4:20 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
NoNukes writes:
You've entirely missed the point. All of those breeds dogs are a single species that can interbreed an mix together. The only thing preventing those dogs from forming a bunch of diverse mutts is human beings playing 'wet blanket' and spoiling the fun.
I have to say this is one of the very best arguments I have read. I don't mean just the part I quoted, but the whole post.
You precisely and succinctly eviscerated Faith's argument and demonstrate what she clearly does not understand about genetics and biology and evolution.
The question becomes are dogs more diverse than a couple of wolves? Feel free to talk about seven pair of wolves if necessary, but the answer is clearly, yes dogs are more varied than their ancestor species and are a clear counter example to your argument. As are cats and human beings.
Perfect!

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python
One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie
If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by NoNukes, posted 05-10-2015 4:20 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(1)
Message 118 of 225 (757561)
05-10-2015 6:39 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Faith
05-10-2015 4:22 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
Well, you now seem to be reduced to saying that by adding in ad hoc suppositions of things that we haven't observed, we can (just barely) imagine that evolution might have happened how you want it to have happened.
This is rather weaker than your original claim that by studying the known facts we can prove that it happened how you want it to have happened ... in the same way that saying that we can imagine the existence of dragons is a weaker claim than that you own several of them as pets.
Now, I am sure that with enough ad hoc hypotheses you could square your original hypothesis with reality --- because this is in fact true of any hypothesis. I think of this as the principle of Smacco's Rozar: to any hypothesis, no matter how contrary to the evidence, auxiliary hypotheses can be added to render it unfalsifiable.
But that would still leave as vastly preferable the theory that evolution did work the same way that it does, observably, work, since this theory requires no such desperate expedients to protect it from reality.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 4:22 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by Faith, posted 05-10-2015 7:34 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 119 of 225 (757562)
05-10-2015 7:02 PM
Reply to: Message 113 by NoNukes
05-10-2015 4:20 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
It is in each subspecies that the reduction in genetic diversity occurs, not in the overall Species itself
Two points.
1. When mutation adds diversity, nothing prevents a sub species from accepting that diversity. In the wild, there is no one to kick out a new puppy from the population just because his eye spots are in the wrong place or his ears twist too much.
I'm trying to make the point that evolution, understood as the production of new breeds or species or varieties or races etc., requires reduction in genetic diversity. This is easily exampled by breeding where the aim is to eliminate unwanted traits which also eliminates their alleles. Certainly by the time you have a purebred animal you've eliminated every competing allele for every one of its identifying traits. This is what I mean by reducing genetic diversity. You don't get a new breed or race or variety UNLESS this occurs.
But mutation is an additive process, not subtractive like selection which eliminates traits and their alleles. It may add a trait but at least it adds an allele. Additive processes work against the development of a new subspecies. These include the reintroduction of formerly isolated populations, the establishment of a hybrid zone, anything that increases gene flow, and it includes mutation. These all work against the evolutionary processes I'm trying to keep in focus. So sure, nothing is going to stop the addition of diversity from any source, but then the processes of evolution are retarded and perhaps even completely stopped when that happens.
But evolution entails the reduction of genetic diversity, not addition or increase.
2. You've entirely missed the point. All of those breeds dogs are a single species that can interbreed an mix together. The only thing preventing those dogs from forming a bunch of diverse mutts is human beings playing 'wet blanket' and spoiling the fun.
I didn't miss it, I acknowledged it. Reproductive isolation is necessary to forming a breed or subspecies. How this is brought about is a secondary issue. In the wild it's often brought about by migration and geographic isolation; ability to interbreed with former populations may still be present even though the new population has developed completely new characteristics of its own.
A collie and poodle are not sub species. They are the same species and sub species.
Of course they are subspecies. Dog breeds are subspecies of the Species Dog.
Every dog on that chart Dr Adequate provides is of the same subspecies Canis lupus familiaris.
Let's not get into semantic confusions over labeling. I'm talking about dogs as a Species (and you will find plenty of online sources using the same term for them). If you want to cut the lines at some other point, fine, as long as we know what we're talking about. If you want to call canis lupus familiaris a subspecies of the Species wolf, then breeds of canis lupus familiaris are sub-subspecies. Do we really need to get that specific in order to discuss these things?
So your argument is factually incorrect. Breeds are formed by artificial man made accumulations of traits that would never form in nature.
This is irrelevant to my argument since it's the process of selection I'm trying to talk about and both in the wild and in breeding programs that is the method.
Yes, human beings can take a bunch of dogs and produce a collection of homogeneous, non diverse poodles. So what? That is not what happens in nature.
Go argue with Darwin. I would guess, however, that nature most often creates new subspecies by simple geographic isolation rather than by active selection of traits. Geographic isolation of a small number of individuals will produce a recognizably different population in some number of generations of inbreeding. It will have a different collection of traits than the population it migrated away from, simply because of its different gene frequencies, more of some alleles, fewer of others, and likely the complete absence of some. With this new mix a completely new subspecies will eventually emerge. Mutation is not needed at any point in the processes that bring about new subspecies or breeds, and would be an interference in any case.
The question becomes are dogs more diverse than a couple of wolves? Feel free to talk about seven pair of wolves if necessary, but the answer is clearly, yes dogs are more varied than their ancestor species and are a clear counter example to your argument. As are cats and human beings.
I'm not sure the pair on the ark were all that clearly wolves or even clearly a particular kind of dog or that the pair were even all that similar to each other. But together they were able with their greater genetic diversity, their many genes per trait, their absence of genetic diseases, to produce all dogs.
But I didn't start my argument from that point, you know, Dr. A introduced it. It's part of my argument, of course, but I wanted the focus to be on the processes of evolution, the selection and reproductive isolation that lead to new phenotypes by reducing genetic diversity.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 113 by NoNukes, posted 05-10-2015 4:20 PM NoNukes has not replied

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 Message 126 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-10-2015 9:07 PM Faith has not replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 120 of 225 (757563)
05-10-2015 7:16 PM
Reply to: Message 116 by NoNukes
05-10-2015 4:38 PM


Re: How evolution requires reduction in genetic diversity
You have to consider the interaction of many genes as modifying the expression of any one, genes that existed then but not now
Your argument requires this type of interaction as a substitute for having genes formed by mutation.
Of course I think mutation as the source of new genetic material was invented as a substitute for the natural recognition that all the necessary genetic material is already built into the genome of each species. The evidence is that mutation couldn't possibly accomplish that but it's nevertheless assumed and affirmed because without it there is no theory of evolution.
Multiple genes per trait is a known phenomenon, nothing made up about it, and it's very likely there was a great deal more of that before the genome deteriorated into miles of junk DNA, and it's very reasonable to think that's where those extra genes went. Junk DNA is dead genes after all, the Flood would have killed genes along with living creatures, it all hangs together quite logically.
What evidence do you have that your assumption is even true?
It's just logical, it hangs together.
Why should we entertain an argument with an assumption that you cannot verify and that has been shown to be incorrect for at least some cases? That is, in some case we know that the alleles for a trait do not exist in the parent population.
Such a minuscule number it's hardly worth mentioning, NN. The number of known mutations that have done anything more useful than producing hundreds to thousands of diseases or killing off useful alleles at the very least, is teeny tiny, and even in those cases they usually involve an unattractive exchange: malaria protection for death by sickle cell etc. It's sheer blind faith that has you all clinging to mutations as the supposed engine of evolution.
And further, how does your idea rule out the operation of other mechanisms such as those proposed by evolution? Isn't it simply denial that those other mechanisms exist?
Such as? I get most of my ideas from evolutionist sources. I'm using principles of population genetics from evolutionist sources, I affirm Natural Selection as one of the processes of evolution, I affirm evolution itself, in the form of microevolution, etc. etc. etc. About all I deny is that mutations could do anything positive for genetics.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by NoNukes, posted 05-10-2015 4:38 PM NoNukes has not replied

  
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