Molecular Population Genetics and Diversity through Mutation

No commentary needed. And... And...

1) Possible responses:Sheer numbers. There are a lot more loci that can vary without affect the species than are required to maintain whatever few traits distinguish species from their ancestors. So the probability is high that any particular loci will be unaffected by a random mutation. Plus the mutation rate is low anyway.2) Species, unlike breeds, are not composed of homogeneous collections of critters. It turns out that not all black people look alike, have inherited the trait to pass on sickle cell anemia, lack persistent lactase intoleracne, not all Chinese people are identical, not all have creased eyelids, the same lactase intolerance, or the same enzyme balance.As PaulK has expressed it, if a certain level of phenotypic variability exists in the parent group, and that group is a species, why is there some limit on how much variation we can add to a daughter species once speciation has ended.3) The record already includes cited examples of variations among new species, and of variation in a single race of folks increasing over time. Your denials do not deal with the evidence and in fact your own proposition is contrary to the evidence and deserves little to no respect.4) Say what?Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Exactly so. In short, Faith gives herself the right to speculate on the past based on her Biblical beliefs while denying others the right to evaluate even direct evidence from the past.In this particular case, Faith has once again pushed an argument that she all but admitted she could not defend in a previous discussion. The last time she put forward the idea about genes dying off in the Flood I asked her how other people dying might affect Noah and his family's gametes and she admitted that her idea made no sense. Perhaps I will dig that up again.It is pretty clear from her last couple of posts that Faith equates winning the debate with simply not ever being personally convinced that she is wrong.ABE:Here is that old admission Message 535 in response to Message 103Apparently no idea is too stupid not to have again.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

duplicate, but not my fault. I am getting 503 errors when I post.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

I don't think it is defensible and I suspect that you cannot defend it. But it would be easy to prove me wrong. Just answer the question I asked you before:How does a bunch of folks passing away affect the gametes residing in other folks sitting in a boat? Why is that idea anything short of utterly ridiculous? Perhaps you owe Genomicus that explanation rather than me, but you are responding here.At least when you are blaming stuff on the Fall, we can see where you are coming from, but here it appears that you think the genome some kind of spiritual connection linking members of a population instead of being simply particular genetic material that resides in an individual.No, the idea is not defensible. It's just that you like the idea so much that you keep bringing it up. I was prepared to chalk your repetition up to your bad memory, but if you are now going to insist that you 'discovered' it to be defensible when you really cannot defend it, well that ain't honest.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Loci dying out because they cannot find a mate? Do you understand that everyone has their own loci and that what you are talking about makes no sense? Mutations might cause loci to disappear, but not some allelle pining away for a missing opportunity to become hereozygous.Of course there would be even more chances for 'incompatible combinations with more alleles available, which causes the whole 'Flood caused it' thing to fall apart. And if the answer is of course mutations, that answer is very curious. Because those mutations do not seem to have prevented the formation of races, nor does recombination appear to have resulted in non infer fertile races.I think this proposition of yours created more problems than it addresses. PaulK has pointed out one them, but overall I doubt that there is any science based reason to believe any of this.

I believe this kind of reasoning to be flawed. Even if this was the natural and undeniable conclusion of either your beliefs or your 'theory', it is useless in a debate other than as a target to verify some prediction made on that basis. Junk DNA is not something predicted from your theory, it is instead something you've incorporated.I totally agree that a YEC, particularly one without any particular knowledge of genetics might come up with a similar theory, and then be unable to reject the idea because of lack of awareness of what contrary evidence exists. But isn't that a useless excercise? How does the fact that you can make up a story about something evidence?

Uh, Faith, please... You said it was evidence in the Great Debate thread. You did acknowledge that Genomicus would not accept it as evidence. If you agree that it is merely your hypothesis or proposal, then we agree, but that does not change the fact that called it evidence.

Really? Given the requirement for evidence as support of argument in the science forum, I would think that evidence is of high importance. In short then, not only in junk dna not evidence for your position, but neither are the fossil record or the geological column evidence for the flood. Instead those things just fit your narrative regarding say, the grand canyon, said feature having zero mention in the Bible.Is this really what you meant to convey? I think some of these things would be a surprise to regular participants.

Not so fast, Ms. Faith. As you have acknowledged, those things are evidence in the fairly useless sense that the are 'generally compatible' with the narrative you push.But not in the sense in which we all mean evidence. And not in the sense in which you know I meant when you asked who called them evidence, and when you insisted that I was making too much of that word. The sense in which they are facts, which if proven true, separate your proposition from the other propositions on the table. You aren't explaining anything. What you are doing is completing the confirmation that you don't have any real evidence. Again, that some fact "supports the Bible" is an extremely low standard. That is particularly true when we are discussing propositions that you have made up after finding out the facts. Again, as you have already acknowledged, and as you point out here, evidence as you use the term means only 'generally compatible". The Bible says the flood killed lots of things, and there are fossils of lots of dead things. However once we get into the details we find that the structure, order, etc of the fossils reflects exactly what evolution predicts, and does not reflect the flood.Similarly, your description of junk DNA does not either 1) separate your propositions from evolution. Both are equally compatible or 2) explain the detailed make up of junk DNA. In fact, you have to be told the nature of DNA before you make up the next element to your narrative to explain it. Why after such an exercise would it be amazing that your story matches the facts. You made it up after the fact.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Why are you defensive? I quoted your remarks without any comment. One way to get something different is to have an imperfect copy of either the B or the b. That would be a mutation.But of course you knew that given that the issue here is your denial of the role of mutations. So what was the point of your question?

I think we all understand that you don't believe mutation is part of evolution. But the above quoted statement is not confirmation that the theory of evolution is in agreement with your proposal. Yes you can get changes in the population of phenotypes from generation to generation just by selection pressures and without any new variation. But that is not the same thing as claiming that no other factor is part of evolution.I know you won't take the advice, but your presentation would likely be much stronger if you simply denied that the theory of evolution was correct than if you continue on the road of denying that the theory of evolution actually encompasses those things we can read in any biology text book. Your 'mutation destroys the species or the breed' is not cutting it.Consider this, if a new dominate allele appeared that caused humans possessing it to become immune to HIV, or left handed, or to have creases in the back of their neck, would that mutation make a person non-Caucasian? If not, then how would such mutations ruin the breed/race if they occurred after the race formed? If so, then would this not be an example of a race becoming more diverse after formation? Can you really not make up your own similar examples?As has been illustrated to you many times by direct quotes from origin of species, and also with quotes from modern sources, common descent requires much more than than your own proposal allows. The theory of evolution is that the source of variation includes mutations. Darwin is quoted as saying that without the source of variation, evolution would cease exactly as you have argued.Beyond that, at this point between this thread and the Great Debate thread, examples of mutations fueling variation has been demonstrated with direct evidence. You of course are free to deny it. But your denials have zero basis.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

This explanation is total crap. You get dog breeds by supplying intense selective pressure, namely by not allowing dogs who don't have most or all of the desired traits to remain in the gene pool. The point you have yet to address is that such selective pressures are extremely artificial and generally do not exist in nature. For example, the dark moths appear to have only minor differences from the white moths, and if we remove the predators, we would expect to see white moths increase in percentage.It is also the case that dog breeders, in general do not simply start with a couple of animals with a trait and breed them together and then simply continue to breed their offspring. That they, of necessity bring in other animals during the breeding process in their attempt to eliminate recessive traits. What breeders accomplish simply does not happen naturally. And you have yet to successfully argue that it does. Could you? The evidence for this is what? Assuming that this statement is true, we would have to note that such things while acting the same as built-in alleles, would be an additional of variation, and diversity. So mathematically, and for the point of this debate, the result would not be the same.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.