A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

Of course it is, but you assume the one evolved from the other, False. I have the evidence, so I am making a supported conclusion.

Well, actually you are not. You are merely stating that the one evolved from the other by means of mutations, you are not showing any evidence for this statement at all.

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First, orthologous ERV's establish common ancestry. We observe both in the lab and in the wild that ERV's are produced by retroviruses that insert randomly into genomes. Therefore, finding the same ERV at the same base in two genomes is evidence that the insertion happened once in a common ancestor.

I can't read that article,* sorry, I can barely tolerate looking at your charts. But to determine if this does in fact show a common ancestor I'd have to see examples, because a single species that has varied into many other species or subspecies WILL have a common ancestor and you'd need to differentiate between this situation and the situation of two entirely different species where perhaps the same retroviruses occur. My guess would be the former is the example you are talking about, which is the usual case of evos wrongly calling ordinary microevolutionary variation "evolution" and the latter doesn't happen, but you need to show me if my guess is right or wrong.

Second, the pattern of mutations is consistent with observations of mutations happening in real time. When we look at the mutations that humans are born with we see that transitions are more common than transversions, and CpG mutations happen at the highest rates. The observed pattern of mutations is also consistent with the differences between different humans. More to the point, we see the same exact pattern when comparing the human and chimp genome

I can't follow you so if you want to get this across to me you'll need some other way to do it. However, it sounds **** what you are saying is that mutations are not random but predictable and coherent, which flies in the face of everything I've ever read about mutations. This is truly revolutionary information if it's true, but I suspect there's something wrong in this description that I can't detect.

Perhaps it's that you are assuming any kind of difference between genomes, or similarities too, is due to a mutation without any evidence whatever that it was formed by a mutation. In other words perhaps you are mistaking normally occurring variations for mutations. Which would be expected since the ToE has you assuming that all normal alleles were originally mutations.

*ABE: BY THE WAY I'VE COPIED THE ARTICLE INTO WORD WHERE I CAN MAKE THE BACKGROUND BLACK.

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So on my Word copy of the article with the black background I've read down to the point where it is asserted that changes in human beings that show a difference from a common ancestor are mutations. This is an assumption based on the ToE. There is no reason whatever to assume these are mutations. On my model they are most likely merely built-in variations, normal alleles that vary from generation to generation to make the differences we see in human beings down those generations. For instance take skin color. A dark skinned parent and a light skinned parent may have children of a whole variety of skin colors from light to dark without any mutations whatever, just the normal sexual combination of the DNA for the dark and light skin.

And each subsequent generation will combine the offspring's DNA with another person's light or dark DNA to produce their own variety of skin colors in their own offspring. Two light skinned individuals will probably produce light skinned offspring but since there is a dark skinned ancestor of one of the parents a darker shade could show up, and if both parents have a dark skinned ancestor then the same darkness of skin as the ancestor's could show up. This is normal variation based on normal built in genetic differences. down the generations say you've got a variety of dark skins. Still a light skinned offspring could show up in such a genetic llne. I don't see how this is taken into account in that article.

The article is assuming exactly what we object to, that mutations are the reason for the variations in the genome. They are not.

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... which is nothing but an isolated population within a population that undergoes exactly the same processes as a geographically isolated population. The way any population microevolves based on reproductive isolation. Times 60 million years and yeah you got it. Rat to whale.

There's no need to have mentioned it at all then, it's nothing but a form of microevolution which won't evolve into anything but a variation on the species.

And since I'm arguing from the same materials you are and haven't mentioned my "book" you are being dsngenuous to a phraudulent degree in this debate. I llke to remind people that you are one of them religionist kind so they'll know where the deficiencies come from.

What you are actually doing is implying that I'm arguing about evolution based on my religion, which I am not. Schyster.

Despite your denials we can still show hard evidence and, more importantly, a preponderance of evidences scanning many disciplines.

Just more empty declarations as I already said. You listed your "evidences" already and they aren't evidence, they're just the usual assumptions, nothing but hot air.

You've got ... what?

Evidence that you've got only hot air for starters. And reasoning that demonstrates the nonsense of your claims.

Are you going to help Dredge out? Prove god?

I'm acknowledging where dredge and I seem to have a similar argument about evolution. We are not talking about God. Wake up. Pay attention.

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What separates the human and chimp genomes is a different design altogether, using a lot of similar genetic information because of the similarities between the designs, llke the similarities between two car designs perhaps. There is no ACTUAL relation between the two, they just have similar design elements. Yet again, absolute nonsense. You really must learn something about genetics as well as about evolution or else you will continue to post nonsense.

Your lectures are tiresome since they are nothing but bluff.

As has already been covered and presented to you so many times, many amino acids in a protein can be substituted with other amino acids without any effect on the functionality of that protein.

Yes I know, it's how you get so many "neutral" mutations. I've discussed this many times before, whenever it's relevant, which it wasn't up to this point in this discussion.

An example of an active site on a protein (given by Thwaites and Awbrey in their two-model class) showed about half its loci to accept any amino acid -- that says nothing of the purely structural parts of that protein in which most loci should accept any amino acid.

And why do you feel the need to get so specific about such a common event? Just trying to sound erudite?

While similar design requirements could result in similar results, there is no reason to expect similar features which have nothing to do with the design to be so strikingly similar. Take a specific protein from a wide variety of species (ie, the same protein in different species) and compare them with each other. What do we expect? According to your "similar design" idea, we should expect the important parts of the proteins (the parts that do the actual work of that protein) to be similar. That is reasonable, since those parts are what make that protein that protein. As for the rest of the amino acids, your idea offers no reason whatsoever to find similarities in which amino acid sequences show up. According to the evolutionary idea of similarities due to descent from common ancestors, we would expect to find similarities not only in the important parts (for the same reason as your idea would) but also in the amino acids that make up the rest of the protein, namely the unimportant parts. And while we would expect mutations over time to result in differences arising in the unimportant part, we would also expect to find more differences in species that are more remotely related (ie, had diverged from their common ancestor longer ago) and few differences between more closely related species. So what do we find? We find the pattern of differences that are predicted by the common-descent model of evolution and absolutely no support for your "similar designs" idea. The only way that your idea would work would be if your Creator were a Trickster God (eg, Loki) who deliberately planted the patterns of differences that would support common descent and no other explanation.

I frankly have no idea what you are talking about and don't recall this topic ever coming up before. God doesn't work with mutations in my model, He created DNA to be a permanent system of creating interesting variations from generation to generation, and mutations are nothing but mistakes that are proliferating because of the Fall. Since there IS coherence in chemistry they sometimes produce something beneficial though apparently very seldom, but I don't see how any of this furthers the ToE at all. Common descent isn't needed to explain any of this.

Another problem with your idea is that it fails to explain the inheritance of retro-virus DNA insertions with the exact same sequences in the exact same locations in the genomes of related species (eg, human and chimp) that are found in all species that diverged after the insertion of that viral sequence but not in the related species that had diverged before that insertion. They serve no functional purpose, so there is no design-based reason for them to have been copied so identically in multiple species. Again, your "similar design" idea completely fails to explain them whereas common descent explains them quite easily.

It sounds reasonable but name some species that share them. How do you know when they appeared? Even though they occur in species that you assume share a common ancestor you can't know that for sure. I agree that it fits the model as you have so far explained it but there are no doubt other explanations.

I can't deal with all your hot air right now, but a few comments:

No I am not trying to prove God here. I had some doubts about evolution before I became a believer. I can see how someone could argue against it without believing in any particular religion. In my case, yes, it was Christian Creationism that really got me into it. But I think evolution is wrong whether it contradicts Christianity or not. You make false assumptions about my motivations and therefore you don't bother about the arguments involved. No, my arguments are NOT "religiously motived." Evolution is a *** and the scientific arguments will eventually show it. Atheists can appreciate them too.

Time can't accomplish something that is in principle impossible. Mutations are going to make changes all over the genome, they aren't going to produce anything coherent enough to form a new species.

You are a Schyster as well as a Pisces.

Hello Caffeinated:
Yes I know chimp to human is not the way it happened, but since this is hypothetical and the differences between those two are smallish compared to others I figured we could do it this way. But if not, then pick some other duo.

And I know the differences are enormous but I thought maybe we could pick a mutation here and there to illustrate what has to happen to get from one species to another. Perhaps that is impossible too. But I keep thinking that mutations are such a random thing, even getting one that a new species could build from is impossible anyway. You'd have to pick a track from one possible mutation to another to another among thousands of useless mutations. So I suppose it's impossible. Too bad.

What I want is a hypothetical mutation or series of mutations that do more than just change the protein for a trait built into the genome of a given species. I mean, the genome for, say, a dog, makes dog stuff, it doesn't make anything else. A mutation or mutations that could turn a dog into a different species would have to change the dog genome in some way, otherwise mutations would just vary the dog stuff and it would still be a dog. If that doesn't make sense I'm not sure how to make it clearer.

Yes I don't think mutations account for any similarities or differences between any two creatures no matter how closely or distantly related. Perhaps a mutation or two could be shown to be in the picture, but otherwise it's all the result of ordinary sexual recombination of ordinary built-in genetic stuff, built in from the Creation. But since this model isn't the evo model I'm asking for how the evo model could generate the mutations it supposes would have to occur in order to get from one species to another.

Maybe I'm not addressing your question. Oh well.

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Check the asterisk: I copied the article into Word where I could put it against a black background so I can read it.

The x-axis is the rate of each type of mutation according to a comparison of human genomes. The y-axis is the observed rate of these mutations that are observed in new births, the de novo rate. Notice that the two perfectly correlate with each other. The observed rate of transition, transversion, and CpG mutations in humans strongly correlates with the differences seen between humans. That's the evidence. The differences between humans looks exactly **** the new random mutations we see happening in **** births right now.

Well, I don't think those are mutations, you see, I think they are normally occurring variations based on the sexual recombination of built-in alleles. But this is all interesting because of the fact that evos do interpret everything in terms of mutations and I don't.

Those are combinations of alleles that differ by mutations. You need to brush up on your Mendelian genetics. You claim that you have a model, yet you don't even understand the basics of genetics.

Actually, rather than that I don't understand what you consider to be the basics of genetics, it's that I reject the whole idea that you consider to be those basics, that mutations are the cause of any of this. Mendel had no notion of mutations, he was just showing how combinations of genetic stuff from different parents, which I assume he assumed were built in, produced predictable results.

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They sequenced the genomes of the father, mother, and child to measure the de novo mutation rate. Those are mutations. You can hold the parent's DNA up to the child's DNA and see where the mutations happened. How can you say that these are not mutations when we can observe them happening in real time?

Well, but aren't you just talking about observed differences, and how do you know those differences are the result of mutations rather than the result of sexual recombination producing/selecting a new set of alleles?

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Well, I don't think those are mutations, you see. Why not ? It’s explicitly about changes to the DNA sequence.

But wouldn't the substitution of one allele for another show the same kinds of differences?

I think they are normally occurring variations based on the sexual recombination of built-in alleles. You don’t actually know what the graphs are showing, do you ? They are showing the frequency of particular changes in the gene sequences. Eg “A <> G” represents the replacement of adenine with guanine or vice versa.

Yes, I'm more or less winging it, so I expect to have a better understanding if the discussion progresses, but those differences in the placement of chemicals must also be the case when one allele replaces another. If there were no differences in that sequence there would be no differences in the proteins the sequence makes and no difference in the traits the protein brings about.

Besides, this presentation of supposed mutations is just too organized for how mutations are normally described as random. Why should they occur in such a regular looking pattern at all if they really are random mistakes in replication? As I said before, this is revolutionary information, isn't it? It simply does not fit the definitions we usually encounter.

So in fact the pattern more reasonably reflects built in variation than mutations.

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What happens in the DNA when say a brown-eyed Bb father and a brown-eyed Bb mother produce children? The Mendelian formula is one BB, two Bb and one bb, right? How is this expressed in the DNA?

Is the parents' B on one strand and b on the other?

I'm sure there must be a different sequence of the four chemicals for a B versus a b, right?

Could we ignore the mutations issue until I get how the Bs and bs show up in the DNA?

No, no, no, no. If your allele is the same as your father's allele that's recombination. If your allele is the same as your mother's allele that's recombination.

But I've got an allele from each parent don't I? Two alleles, one from each. If I've got a b from my father and a b from my mother are these going to be identical sequences of DNA? (if they are how are they going to reflect the complementary pairs of chemicals?)

What if I've got a b from my father and a B from my mother? What will the DNA look llke?

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I just want to know how the B and the b show up in the DNA.