A test for claimed knowledge of how macroevolution occurs

You keep SAYING you have evidence but that's all, just saying it. You simply call the many differences between genomes mutations, you don't prove it and you can't prove it. And the bizarre way you misinterpret the creationist idea of genomes unique to different creatures certainly suggests you wouldn't be able to recognize anything that contradicted your theory that all differences are due to mutations.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm sorry, that's just another assertion and of course all the "evidence" in those posts is in blinding white charts I can't begin to read. And you do say very strange things that convince me you couldn't see evidence against mutations anyway. Your thinking is locked into mutations so tightly you can't think any other way and I have no reason to believe anything you call "evidence."

I've asked for any evidence that can change the structure of a genome, but all mutations can do is change what's IN the genome, change one allele into another, but alleles determine traits that belong to the creature the genome belongs to. There is no way you are going to get a chimp genome to lengthen and straighten the legs, nd make feet out of those weird handlike "feet," shorten the arms and torso, straighten the spine, pull the head back onto the neck and remake the skull. You'll actually say "why not?" and all I can do is roll my eyes.All I see is assumptions that the differences between apes, such as chimps, and humans, are nothing but mutations. I see HUGE differences, which I spelled out earlier, between chimps and humans, but eve-ohs actually think the body structure is similar. I find that an outrageous error in thinking. I see just about NOTHING similar between chimps and humans except the stick figures you can make from them. And then Taq says the most bizarre things about how God would have had to use mutations or something like that and I know we're in Never-Never Land and nothing is ever going to make sense.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Uh huh.

See, this makes NO sense at all, NONE, ZIP. "Changes" from what? Each is UNIQUE, none has been CHANGED from another, each is a separate design. You do have a mental glitch that has your brain so hardwired to mutations you simply cannot think outside that box.AND WITH THAT BIZARRE PIECE OF CENSORSHIP BY PERCY I HAVE TO CONCLUDE THAT HE DOESN'T WANT TO SUSPEND ME DIRECTLY FOR SOME REASON SO HE'S DECIDED TO TAKE EVERY WORD IN THE DICTIONARY AWAY FROM ME ONE BY ONE UNTIL I CAN'T WRITE ANYTHING AT ALL. HE IS TRULY MAD.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

YOu guys have no appreciation for the enormous amount of variability that exists in the millions/billions of genes in one genome each with only two alleles. It's enough to make all the cats from the cat genome, all the dogs from the dog genome (even counting all the junk DNA as other variations on a cat or a dog that got killed by mutations), there is no need for any mutations and all they do is get in the way of understanding what is really going on. If you don't see how you can never get anything BUT a cat from the cat genome or a chimp from the chimp genome I don't know how to make you see it. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

NO idea what you are talking about.

I wasn't saying the [cat] genome can "more than handle the number of alleles," the point was that it originally had all the genetic stuff needed to make every kind of cat that exists now and ever existed. (most cat genomes now most likely have severely reduced genetic diversity BECAUSE so many species of cat have been made). So yes, every allele to make every possible cat is/was indeed in there from the beginning. And I count junk DNA as former alleles that contributed to the many kinds of cats, or dogs, or whatever though the variability in the genome without it is no doubt enough for everything that exists. Nothing additional "had to get into this limited genome somehow." I'm not saying genomes don't change but the way YOU think they change is not the way I think they change. I think they lose genetic diversity over time, and of course junk DNA in my model would be a record of lots of lost genetic diversity.ABE: So now I'm remembering that you think the more mutations the better, the more "alleles" there are floating around in a population the better. I don't think mutations contribute anything at all to a genemoe, I think they are superfluous at best. I believe the genetic system is broken the way all llfe is broken, with death and disease etc., and that mutations are a form of disease and also contribute to death of genetic variability. They may sometimes repeat a useful sequence or in the case of neutral mutations at least not change anything, but they are not necessary or useful.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I forget what a SNP is.Yes I don't think there's any need for anything new, at least not in the original genome, before death entered the world.My "definition of change" in the genome isn't so much "moving things around" as it is subtracting genetic diversity, and this is because of death. If death had not entered the world there would be no loss of genetic diversity and we would have a much larger range of interesting species/variations on every Kind.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes the Creation dictates how the genetic facts should play out, and it's possible to put together a very coherent model from it. Do you deny that death and disease are a huge part of our existence? Not sure why having an explanation for it should be more "gloomy" than the facts themselves.Anyway, there's no need for mutations in this model so they exist as mistakes or negative factors that can only be explained in terms of the death and disease in existence.So are you at the end of this discussion? Nothing more to say?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

But there is no need to discuss the religious basis of the theory, it should be possible to discuss the theory itself without all that. But right now I have to take a break anyway.

But you don't seem to get why I have a doubt about that. It's just a bald assertion that "a mutation is an alteration of the nucleotide sequence..." But a built in variant is also a different nucleotide sequence. You have to say more to prove it's a mutation and not just a built in variant or allele. How do you KNOW an "alteration" occurred? It sounds llke it's just assumed. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

...Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Of course it needs evidence, but it is a coherent model and stating that much is enough for me for now, whatever attempts anyone makes to undermine it.It's possible to describe it without any reference at all to its biblical origin, and therefore it should be possible to discuss it without that too. So here's another attempt to lay it out:

• Separate Kinds/Species are the original Creation. There is no Universal Common Ancestor, only a species-specific common ancestor from which all variations on that species descend.
• Each has its own genome that reproduces that Kind/Species and nothing else, with variations that show up in each generation.
• The cat genome makes only cats, all sorts of interesting cats, big cats, little cats, longhaired cats, shorthaired cats, different colors of cats, but all of them are unmistakably cats. Same with all other sexually reproducing animals.
• ALL the variations of cats are built into the cat genome, nothing further is needed to produce every cat variation that exists or ever existed.
• Mutations are mistakes that may or may not affect the phenotype, but they are not useful at all and sometimes produce disease.
• New "species" of any animal arise when a portion of the gene pool is reproductively isolated from the main population so that a new set of gene frequencies brings out sometimes dramatically new phenotypes through generations of breeding within the smaller population. Sometimes a more drastic form of "natural selection" may be the isolating factor, but simple geographic isolation is all it takes.
• The formation of a separate, usually smaller, population, whether geographically isolated or selected some other way, including genetic drift, involves the reduction of genetic diversity in that new population. Whenever this selecting-isolating situation occurs there will always be genetic reduction. You can see this in domestic breeding most clearly, and yes I think domestic breeding serves well to demonstrate this point. But it must be going on in each subsequent species of a ring species, and in the blue wildebeests that split off from the main herd, and in the Pod Mrcaru lizards, and in the Jutland cattle. Evolution can't happen unless there is such a genetic reduction because the new phenotype is built on a specific set of genetic variants and all other genetic variants have to be eliminated for it to emerge. That's how you get domestic breeds and it must also be how all wild subspecies emerge, how you get a new population of, say, raccoons, with distinctively different markings from a population they emigrated from.
• It should be possible to produce evidence for this latter point in a laboratory with small sexually reproducing animals.

And maybe there's more but that's a start to define my model.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I read the part you quoted. But actually, I was responding to the generalization in that recent post and not to the moth example as such. However, I think I did say earlier that the article wasn't convincing either. There is this tendency to talk as if something is a mutation with a great sense of certainty without giving any real evidence to demonstrate it.