MACROevolution vs MICROevolution - what is it?

There are about a third of a million separate species of beetle, all presumably descended from a common ancestor.It is clear to all but creationists that there is more overall diversity among those third of a million species than there was in the original ancestor. Mutations and selection caused this.Your argument fails for this and many other reasons.

The original beetle probably had no junk DNA for starters and many genes for every trait. That would very likely be quite enough to account for that many different species without any mutations at all.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Only a subset of creationists believe things like that.Scientists (you know, those folks who go where the evidence leads) have concluded otherwise.

That is false. Selection acts on new mutations which produce new phenotypes. That is how you get change over time. Every identifiable species, race, variety, or breed has variation where no two are identical.

We already went through this with humans, and you had to admit that human genetic diversity could not be produced through this mechanism.

quote:

---

Not in any way that contributes to the formation of new species, races, varieties, breeds, etc., which requires some form of selection which requires losing genetic diversity. And if it did keep doing what you claim, you would never have any identifiable species, races, varieties or breeds.

---

Of course evolution requires both mutation and selection. The idea expressed here is that if they both operate one must run away, but that is obviously false. Not only is there a feedback effect that helps prevent it, observation shows us it is false.

Please show your calculations.Oh, you don't have any? It's just an uniformed fantasy?Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Not that I recall. Perhaps you could be more specific?

The logic of the argument has been clear all along.

And when you do you must lose the genetic material for other phenotypes, because that's what selection does. The addition of mutations doesn't do anything in itself but change an allele here and there in the greater population. It has to be selected to form a new species, and selection requires the loss of the phenotype the mutation displaces. Except that you do have a population-wide recognizable group identity, which is called a species or breed etc. The small differences could be selected, say by a small group of individuals being separated from the parent population, reproductively isolated and developing a new species. Sure that could happen. But the way the new species is developed is through selection. If such a selection, even a random selection, doesn't occur, you will continue to have the essential stasis of the parent population, with scattered phenotypic differences, or drift here and there and so on. But wherever you are getting a group identity of new phenotypes you are losing the other phenotypes. This pattern always has to occur, even in drift which is also a form of selection.

You claimed that there could only be 2 alleles for any human gene. We showed you genes that have thousands of alleles (e.g. HLA genes) which can only be the product of mutation.

Adding new genetic material is what mutation does. The mutation has to be there in order to be selected for. Yes, the selection of new mutations which increased genetic diversity. It is just like adding more fuel to the gas tank of a car so that it keeps going down the road. Just as you lose gas from a gas tank as you go down the road, but that tank is replenished by adding gas to the gas tank. This is how you are able to travel farther than one tank will allow.

Doesn't affect what I said about beetles.And the additional alleles do not improve the immune system at all, they simply scatter its protections among individuals, making it more like Russian Roulette than a functionoing immune system. The genes of the immune system are all co-dominant which would ensure that all individuals had the same protections if it remained intact, but mutations destroy that intactness and scatter its protections.The concession had to do with whether that many different mutations could have occurred since Creation given the current rate of mutations. They couldn't have. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Adding gas doesn't destroy what the engine is doing, but adding mutations would destroy existing species.

quote:

---

And when you do you must lose the genetic material for other phenotypes, because that's what selection does. The addition of mutations doesn't do anything in itself but change an allele here and there in the greater population. It has to be selected to form a new species, and selection requires the loss of the phenotype the mutation displaces.

---

There is a lot you are missing here which is why you are so badly wrong.So let me repeat the basic point again. Mutation maintains diversity.To go further, diversity is not some unchanging array of alleles - new alleles cone and go all the time. Yes, all of them will eventually either disappear or take over the population (the latter would include variants produced by further mutation). But that does not mean that there is any overall long-term decline in diversity.It's like the fuel tank in a car. It's not the same petrol all the time - you have to keep putting more in - but if you do it frequently enough the tank will never get empty, even though all the original petrol is gone.