"Best" evidence for evolution.

double postEdited by RAZD, : .

I'm very aware that mutations must be heritable to contribute to new phenotypes.changes to whole members like a foot couldn't possibly be sudden. The trial and error that must happen is going to make tiny changes over huge swaths of time, and my point is that these tiny changes can't contribute anything beneficial to the creature that could lead to a new kind of body part that would be useful. A human foot is not going to benefit a chimp.The WEASEL program and others like it assume open-ended genetic variability so that changes can just go on and on and on and on, but they can't. The example I give all the time is how we get purebred domestic animals because the genetics has to be the same in the wild too although random. As you isolate animals for their chosen characteristics you eliminate alleles for other characteristics until you finally have fixed loci for whatever pure breed you've chosen. This is the old fashioned method of breeding which is now considered to be bad for the animals' health but the genetics is the point here.In the wild you get the isolation of some limited number of members of a population which means you have new gene frequencies,including many fewer of some alleles if the population is small. The more such population splits occur the more genetic variability is reduced in the new populations until finally you can get a situation similar to a pure breed from domestic selection. Selection is what brings about the reduction in genetic diversity because it forms smaller populations that develop new phenotypes by breeding their new gene frequencies among themselves.This is how we get all the variety within species in the wild or in breeding: isolation of a smaller number of individuals.You will never get anything BUT variation on the species by this normal means.To get evolution beyond a species would mean getting something breand new from a genome, which reallyh is impossible but I play with the idea since it's the only way it COULD happen although it can't. So you have to get mutations upon mutations to make any changes at all, most mutations making no changes, some making deleterious changes and maybe a very very few causing a change that survives. It's all hypothetical and in reality it can't happen. The best you ever get is maybe an interesting anomaly like the cats' curled ears, but you'll never get changes that could make a new species. As I imagine it and keep seaying you can get changes all over the genome, and yes I'm talking about heritable changes, but they aren't going to do the creature any good, many of them could be like the changes that put the fruit fly body parts in the wrong positions. I don't know how to describe this any better.

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changes to whole members like a foot couldn't possibly be sudden. The trial and error that must happen is going to make tiny changes over huge swaths of time, and my point is that these tiny changes can't contribute anything beneficial to the creature that could lead to a new kind of body part that would be useful. A human foot is not going to benefit a chimp.

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This is just assumption. Of course a human foot is adapted to a human lifestyle, not a chimp’s. But the gradual change in foot structure relates to a change in lifestyle - indeed, the two are interlinked.

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The WEASEL program and others like it assume open-ended genetic variability so that changes can just go on and on and on and on, but they can't. The example I give all the time is how we get purebred domestic animals because the genetics has to be the same in the wild too although random. As you isolate animals for their chosen characteristics you eliminate alleles for other characteristics until you finally have fixed loci for whatever pure breed you've chosen. This is the old fashioned method of breeding which is now considered to be bad for the animals' health but the genetics is the point her

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Being wrong about genetics seems to be the point. A persistent error that resists correction. It all comes down to rates. Artificial selection, operating faster than natural selection - and maintained in the case of purebreds - will naturally outpace mutation. Natural selection, averaged over long periods of time need not - and by the evidence does not. At least in the case of the surviving lineages. This is why genetic variation has not disappeared.

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To get evolution beyond a species would mean getting something breand new from a genome, which reallyh is impossible but I play with the idea since it's the only way it COULD happen although it can't.

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Funny how something that actually happens is labelled impossible.

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So you have to get mutations upon mutations to make any changes at all, most mutations making no changes, some making deleterious changes and maybe a very very few causing a change that survives

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It is inevitable that mutations will happen and some will make changes that you notice (and more will make changes that you do not) and inevitable that natural selection will favour the beneficial changes and disfavour the detrimental. This is all fact.

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The best you ever get is maybe an interesting anomaly like the cats' curled ears, but you'll never get changes that could make a new species.

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And why not? You offer no reason to think so, nor any real explanation of the evidence that indicates that it has happened.For someone who claims to have thought it through you have very little argument, and show no sign of even having tried to get the information you would need to think it through.

Conferring a benefit is not required. Not being too harmful is required.

Plus modern humans have only been around for a couple hundred thousand years so just a blink out of the likely four billion years there has been life on the Earth. In addition we have modified the variation trends in environmental conditions to the extent we are reducing the variability in the selection process.

But they do benefit those engaging in bi-pedal upright gait, as the intermediates I presented show you the transitions from a chimp like foot to a more human like foot: increasing foot pad area in the rear foot bones (bones get longer), shorter phalanges as gripping becomes less important than flat walking feet, and less curvatur to the metatarsals for the same reason.Remember that evolution is a response mechanism, and moving from a jungle tree-climbing ecology to a ground walking ecology will cause changes to the feet and the locomotion behavior. Chimps evolved to knuckle walk while hominids evolved to bi-pedalism (the evidence shows that a likely common ancestor did neither, being more like monkeys in locomotion). Except what you are neglecting is that the genome of a species changes with every generation, because that is how evolution works. Like what Faith?

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EvC Forum: Dogs will be Dogs will be ???

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So what would you like this to become?

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Would a horse be enough? Would you dispute that a horse is clearly not a dog?

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How much change is necessary, and ... more importantly ... how do you quantify it?Enjoy

Of course I'm not "neglecting" that, it's what happens with standard microevolutionary variation within a species which is what I'm always talkinga bout. You get a new set of gene frequencides with every new population split and that is a CHANGE IN THE GENOME for pete's sake. You'll never get anything BUT variations within the species through these normal processes. That was my whole point.I think your picture of the foot is bogus somehow.

I have no doubt that her "model" (purposefully in scare quotes, because actual models need to be built and tested, like scientific theories, and not just some BS made up ad hoc on the spot) is full of inconsistencies and contradictions. And I have no doubt that she does not understand any of it herself.There's also a mentality that I've seen typical of creationists which is disjointed and heavily compartmentalized. We normals see science as representing a unified whole wherein each part depends on all other parts such that we expect a certain consistency in reality and we see contradictions as a serious problem that requires investigation and resolution (primarily by correcting our misunderstanding of how things work). For that matter, we find it important to learn how things work and all our conclusions must be in accord with how things work.In contrast, creationists seem to view science as a collection of disassociated unrelated factoids from which they can cherry-pick whatever they want, even different ones on different occasions, very much how they approach their own theologies. They do not expect consistency nor are they bothered by inconsistencies; it's for apologetics to explain away that kind of stuff. Nor are they the least bit concerned by contradictions.Another important aspect of the creationist mindset is that it's disjointed and compartmentalized. Part of that comes from right-wing authoritarian psychology which is heavily compartmentalized. I think that part of the disjointedness, especially regarding science, comes from science being taught the wrong way as a collection of unrelated facts to be memorized.When I started discussing "creation science" online in 1986, I was taken aback by how hostile creationists became whenever I would take their claims seriously and try to discuss those claims with them. After a while I finally realized why that was: they didn't understand their own claims, so therefore they were incapable of discussing them and the hostile displays were intended to kill the conversation. What was happening was that these creationists were just repeating the typical creationist claims that they had read, heard, or been taught in church. Then, not knowing any better, they would sally forth to do battle with all their "latest scientific evidences that will blow those evolutionists away." To quote ex-creationist Scott Rauch (from my cre/ev quotes page, originally from a once extensive late-80's discussion forum):

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"I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed."

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Back around 1990 the owner of a local mall's creationist fossil shop ran a few amateur-night creation/evolution debates in which anyone with something to present could get up and present it. That's when I learned that creationists also know nothing about "creation science". They had never heard of the "Two Model Approach", the foundation of "creation science", nor had they ever heard of the leading creationists like the ICR's Drs. Henry Morris and Duane Gish. All they knew were the claims. Even when an online creationist would repeat a claim verbatim and I would identify the creationist source for that claim, that creationist would deny ever having heard of the guy (which I do not doubt).At one of these events, a young creationist got up and announced that he had recent scientific evidence that will "blow you evolutionists away." It was Setterfield's "speed of light slowing down" claim that had been presented and soundly refuted over a decade previously. Immediately, half the audience (BTW, I had gotten a mailing list and got the word out about these events resulting in an audience roughly divided equally between creationists and normals; otherwise it would have been the typical almost completely creationist crowd found in most debates) broke into both uncontrollable laughter and shouting over the noise trying to explain everything that was wrong with that claim. It was the creationist who was blown away as he learned what crap his claim was. Whether he learned something from that experience, I don't know. Netflix in the USA has a fairly complete collection of Monty Python programs, movies, live performances, and documentaries, including their two German episodes (Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus). I came to understand a few things:

• In Applied Cryptography, Bruce Schneier offered an example secure-enough password, MLivA, based on the phrase, "Mein Luftkissenfahrzeug ist voller Aale." ("My hovercraft is full of eels." -- German offers far greater opportunity for mixed case)
• YouTube has a number of videos called "Confuse a Cat" (eg, jumping over an invisible obstacle, placing Saran Wrap across a doorway). Then I saw that sketch ([voice=military_command]Confuse aaaa ...{wait for it, wait for it} ... CAT![/voice]).
• Every time I drive by Larchwood Drive, the street sign catches my eye. I had never even heard of a larch before.
• My ex-wife is Mexican. I have known her as "The Spanish Inquisition" even before the divorce, but originally for a different reason.

Interesting bit of history that was completely new to me was how Monty Python found its way onto US TV (I think it was in "Monty Python Conquers America"). After every TV network and station had turned them down, Bob Wilson, advertising executive and operator of a public television station (in Texas, as I seem to recall), liked it and decided to put it on late at night. It became very popular and spread to other PBS stations and the rest is history. Bob Wilson also produced three sons, all of them actors, the better known ones being Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson.

Instead of reminiscing about utterly irrelevant things, how about addressing some part of the actual argument here?

That use of "conferring a benefit" confuses the matter.If a trait already exists, isn't that because it somehow benefits the organism? If a mutation results in zero physical change (very common), then doesn't it automatically confer the same benefit as before the mutation?If a mutation reduces the benefit of that trait, then it will be selected against.But if a mutation results in a physical change, regardless of how little, that works better, regardless of how little better, then that would be selected for, become more prevalent in the population, and serve as the starting point for the next change that works better, regardless of how little better, and so on.

I wasn't talking to you. Yet.Odd how readily you accuse others of your own transgressions.BTW, I was indeed addressing very relevant things, namely my observations of typical creationist mentality which you repeatedly display. RAZD predicted that your position will be found full of inconsistencies and contradictions and I pointed out that that is in the nature of the beast.Edited by dwise1, : BTW

I only have about 20 minutes before I need to leave for class (Cyber Security and Warfare), after which I'll need to get home to get ready to assist in tonight's dance classes (Country Two Step and West Coast Swing). So this will be rushed. You are trying to change the subject! Here is what I said in Message 401, to which you are replying: Are you talking physical mutations or genetic? That is and has been the question. The question that you keep avoiding for who the hell knows what reason! And now you have avoided it yet again!The mutations we are talking about are genetic. They may or may not also result in physical change. And only certain genetic mutations can be inherited.Plus you still have not answered the questions I raised in Message 385, question which you must answer. Finally! Why did you have to keep that so secret for so long?Also, why do all your descriptions of what must happen all point to your believing in sudden change? You now state that you don't hold to sudden change, but your other writings require sudden change (eg, everything having to come together all at the same time). That is an inconsistency. Which is contrary to the single-step selection nature of trial-and-error.Rather, what you are now describing is cumulative selection which you pronounce as not existing! The accumulation of tiny changes over huge swaths of time, one little selection per generation.Does this mean that now suddenly you accept cumulative selection? Or are you just being inconsistent and self-contradicting yet again? Why not? The original form was beneficial, wasn't it? Tiny changes that make it work better would increase its benefit regardless of how little. Even if the tiny change didn't make any difference, that form would still be just as beneficial as before. That's the basic criterion: just as beneficial as before or more so.Go through it with something even easier to visualize, the evolution of the vertebrate eye. Refer to a later edition of On the Origin of Species in the chapter on the evolution of complex organs. After the all too frequent creationist misquote, Darwin went through a few paragraphs of examples in which the organ of sight is beneficial to its possessor at each and every stage -- in later editions that expanded to a few pages of examples. Richard Dawkins repeats that exercise in The Blind Watchmaker. Yes it will, but not as well as a chimp foot would. But something that is more like a human foot would be of more benefit for an ape who is moving out of the forest into the savanna where bipedalism is more important. If we had the knowledge and technology (which we are nowhere close to possessing), we could construct any genome. The imaginary limits you place on genetic change are just that, imaginary.There are two processes at work: one reduces genetic variation while the other increases it. They work at different rates, with the increase of variation being the slower. When you speed up selection artificially as in breeding of livestock, then you will hit a limit when you exhaust the currently existing variability. Even after that, variation will continually increase, except that you as a breeder will interfere with that and continually select against variation.But in nature, variation is allowed to continue to increase while it is the environment that selects against what doesn't work. That limit that you had artificially and arbitrarily imposed does not exist in nature. That is how you are deceiving yourself. I have to hit the road now. I will be back. And you still have questions to answer. Please stop avoiding them.

You left out brand new genes in some offspring.Caused by _________(You fill in the blank)

{Double} Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

And if a mutation results in a tiny phenotypical change with no effect on fitness, it can spread through the population..