Should we teach both evolution and religion in school?

Kleinman’s verbal jabs are a tactic. Along with the evasion and the misdirection. At some level he knows his arguments are no good - that’s why he’s so reluctant to spell them out.

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The mathematical jabs are even more effective. They keep hitting home.

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That’s the misdirection. And no, it doesn’t work that well.

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Of course, if you think that evolution works differently than the way I've published, feel free to post your mathematical explanation. Explain to us how the Kishony and Lenski experiment works. You won't because you can't.

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Or because I don’t disagree with you on those experiments. Which is in fact the case. Those papers don’t help you on the claims I take issue with. As I said, it’s just misdirection.

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And you should stop indoctrinating naive school children with your mathematically irrational nonsense.

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If you really thought you could show that it was mathematically irrational you would be right there laying out your arguments instead of being evasive about them and trying to change the subject to your papers.

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Read this paper which shows how the multiplication rule of probabilities applies to DNA evolution.

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And it doesn’t help your argument very much. To raise an obvious point, do the constraints on improving enzymatic function apply to the same extent to mutations that produce the anatomical changes you focus on with regard to the evolution of birds? Or was there a greater range of available trajectories?They certainly don’t apply to the neutral changes which dominate the DNA differences between humans and chimpanzees.

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This paper shows why it takes 3e9 replications for each evolutionary step.

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And that is obviously incorrect. Since multiple genes can be evolving in parallel there will be more than one possible step, even aside from the possibility of more options for an individual gene.You cannot say that a model of evolution in one gene accurately captures the evolution of the whole genome. Even if the same conditions applied to every gene - and obviously you do not show even that much.Understanding is more than doing calculations - it is necessary to understand how they relate to the world they attempt to model. And that is where your arguments fail.

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It's correct if the mutation rate is e-9

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AND there is only one beneficial mutation across the whole genome.
Which is not exactly plausible,

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And you need to explain why hiv can't evolve in parallel when subject to three selection pressures targeting only two genes.

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I don’t because my point was that an organism isn’t restricted to following a single trajectory - the next beneficial mutation doesn’t have to be related to the last one. Don’t forget that multiply-resistant bacteria are common although the resistances are not part of a single trajectory.However, I can explain - and I already have explained to you in the past - that while hard selection works poorly in parallel, soft selection does. The problem for HIV is that the negative selection is so strong that the additional pressure leads to extinction. But in the case of soft selection or drift, where the population is not decreasing, that issue does not exist.

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You either have not followed or understood my discussion with Taq on the "Do you really understand the mathematics of evolution" topic. If you have 2 possible beneficial mutations, the number of replications required is still over a billion replications.

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Actually if you do the calculation 2 possible mutations nearly doubles the probability, and so nearly halves the number of replications required. And everyone with basic probability theory knows that’s what you expect when the probabilities are low.But what if there are 10 or 100 or 1000 ? Given that mammals have tens of thousands of genes the idea that there are only one or two possible beneficial mutations under every set of possible conditions doesn’t seem very plausible and certainly demands more support than a study looking at a single gene adapting to a single function.

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Are there many beneficial mutations for the next and ensuing evolutionary steps for that selection pressure? The answer is no!

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You are assuming a single selection pressure and a single solution. That may well be the case in antibiotic resistance but generally? Of course not. And citing a paper on the evolution of antibiotic resistance is not at all helpful In that respect. I’m so sorry you failed to learn from our previous interactions.

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Another point you are failing to understand is that all lineages on their own particular evolutionary trajectories must accumulate their own particular beneficial mutations. And when those mutations occur at a frequency of e-9, that's going to require about a billion replications for every variant on each evolutionary step no matter which evolutionary trajectory they are on.

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That is an assumption that I consider highly questionable. As you yourself pointed out the evolution of birds from pre-dinosaurian reptiles included quite a number of anatomical changes. The idea that they had to appear in a neat sequence - each one completing before the next could start is certainly questionable. Stephen Jay Gould described archaeopteryx as a good example of a transitional because that was clearly not what was happening.

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Do you think that the intensity of selection is "hard" in the Kishony and Lenski experiments?

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Hard versus soft selection is qualitative not quantitive. In hard selection the population is declining under selection pressure and mutation is required to raise the fitness or the population will go extinct. In soft selection the population is not declining but the mutants have an advantage which causes them to do better. Soft selection carries no risk of extinction at all.

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So if the number of possible beneficial mutations is X and the probability of one of those beneficial mutations occurring is 0.6, then if there are 2*X possible beneficial mutations then that probability goes to 1.2?

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I see. You think that 0.6 is a low probability, when in reality it is quite high. I can’t see any other reason you could so misread my entirely correct statement.In the case where there are two possibilities , both of probability p the overall probability can more easily calculated as 2p -p^2 ( which you can show by simple algebra) Naturally when p is low the p^2 term will not significantly affect the probability. Even if p is as high as 0.1 the probability of getting both will be 0.19 which is not too far off. When p is as low as 10^-9, naturally the p^2 term is so low that it can be considered negligible. Though you will note that in deference to accuracy I stated that the probability will only nearly double. Which, of course is true. If you think otherwise do the calculation.

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Of course, thousands of possible beneficial mutations exist to a given selection pressure. But they only exist in your mind. You obviously didn't understand the link to the Weinreich paper about "Darwinian Evolution Can Follow. Only Very Few Mutational Paths to Fitter Proteins" which means you don't know where Weinreich makes a mathematical error in his paper.

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I said nothing about a single selection pressure. But I will point out that while there may be only one response to an antibiotic there are multiple ways to avoid others like predation. Camouflage, mimicking a noxious creature, speed or manoeuvrability, natural weapons, behavioural changes... Not all will be open to every species but to imagine that only one is available in every case strains the imagination. And then again, how many ways are there of achieving these adaptions? There is no guarantee that they will neatly map to variations in protein structure.

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The only thing that I've learned from our previous interactions is that you don't understand introductory probability theory.

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In other words you learned nothing. How sad.

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I get the "transitional" argument made by believers in the fossil record story. The problem with that story is that you can say nothing about the genetics based on gross anatomy.

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I think some inferences may be made, but they are few. However the fossils are there and they do tend to appear in the right times and places, and that really does require an explanation, along with all the other evidence explained by evolution. Complaining about evidence we can’t have does nothing to negate the importance of the evidence we do have.

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DNA evolution must be measured on the molecular level because that's where these events happen. And the most common erroneous argument made on this subject is that a series of microevolutionary changes add up to a macroevolutionary change. Microevolutionary changes are not linked by the addition rule. Mutations are random events so the joint probability of these events are linked by the multiplication rule. You won't understand this because you don't understand the theorems and axioms of probability theory

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Your argument seems incoherent. Why do microevolutionary changes not add up to macroevolution ? I’m not decided on the issue but rambling about probability is hardly sufficient.

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You won't understand this because you don't understand the theorems and axioms of probability theory. You demonstrated that above when you applied the addition rule to complementary events.

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Except that I didn’t. I said that the correct calculation gave a result that was \[b\]nearly[\b] double. Which is true. If you disagree, do the calculation for a probability of 10^-9 yourself. You’ll see that I am right.

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Really???? So the Lenski experiment has hard selection since variants in his populations go extinct and selection in the Kishony experiment is soft because none of his populations go extinct?

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No. Extinction is not an inevitable consequence of hard selection, HIV can often survive that hard selection imposed by one drug, even though the selection is hard. Hard selection is characterised by a declining population, which may or may not reach extinction.

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The reason you can't quantify selection is that you don't understand how it works. Combine that with the fact that you don't understand introductory probability theory means you have a lot of homework to do if you want to understand the physics and mathematics of evolution.

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On the contrary, the gross errors are on your part. Such as insisting that all DNA evolution must be adaptive or that neutral drift must wait for 10^9 replications to get a single mutation. If you lack even the basic understanding to get those points right you can’t hope to do the correct quantitative calculations.

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Microevolutionary changes don't add up to make a macroevolutionary change, they are linked by the multiplication rule because microevolutionary changes are joint random events.

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I’ll note that Kleinman made a similar argument earlier. Kleinman’s idea that I didn’t understand basic probability theory was another of his blunders - failing to recognise the correct answer.Yet, when I proved that I did understand basic probability theory rather than going on to elaborate he failed to reply.As written, however Kleinman’s claim is vague - as usual for him - although the argument appears to be far from the slam dunk he needs to back up his claim of a blunder.

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It's a fact, Jack

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I have yet to see any reason to think so.

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DNA evolutionary changes are random events and if you understand introductory probability theory, joint random events don't add, you have to multiply their probabilities.

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And if you understand probability theory you’ll know that there is far more to it. The correct calculation is probably completely impractical, involving far too many unknowns.

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If you are one of those who argue that microevolutionary changes add up to a macroevolutionary change, you don't understand introductory probability theory. Or at least you don't understand how to apply these principles to DNA evolution.

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I would state, rather, that the application is far from obvious, and it is far from obvious that it would support your assertion.

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Go over to the "Do you really understand the mathematics of evolution?" thread as I walk you through the simple probability mathematics of DNA evolution

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We’ll see. But I’m expecting you to blunder yet again.

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Try reading the rest of the line that you snipped off.
"It's a fact, Jack. DNA evolutionary changes are random events and if you understand introductory probability theory, joint random events don't add, you have to multiply their probabilities." And if you understood introductory probability theory, you would see the reason to think so.

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No, you wouldn’t. Not if you understood introductory probability theory. The fact that you are looking at events in hindsight does make a difference. You cannot just consider what did happen, you have to be prepared to consider other events that might have happened and did not.

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Not when it comes to understanding DNA evolution. The only variables necessary to compute the probability of a particular mutation occurring are the mutation rate and the number of replications of that variant. What other unknowns are swirling around in your imagination?

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Aside from the fact that finding the particular mutations in question and identifying the number of replications available are not trivial problems? You have to identify other beneficial mutations that could have occurred and did not. You have to identify which alternate sequences of the same mutations would work, And you have to take into account those populations - of all species - which did not get the beneficial mutations.It’s easy to get low probabilities from sequences of events. By making the sequence long enough you can get arbitrarily low probabilities. If you are defining the sequence in advance that is not a problem, but if you are looking at the sequence in hindsight it is usually a far more difficult problem. Consider the lottery. The probability that a particular person will win is low - if you can predict the winner, that would be impressive. But in hindsight - in the absence of other information that makes the win significant - the relevant probability would be the probability that someone wins the lottery, which is far higher. If you try extending that to sequences of wins in hindsight, the relevant probability becomes the probability of getting at least that many winners. If you multiply the probabilities of the particular winners winning or even the probability of the exact sequence of wins versus nobody winning you can get low probabilities but they aren’t worth anything.

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Do you think that mutations are not random events? This is really a simple binomial probability problem, does the mutation occur or does the mutation not occur.

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Because you are looking in hindsight the problem is more complex. You should know that.

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Really? Blunder again? I've put down the math for you line by line. Where's the blunder? Are you going to argue that mutations are not random events? Because if you do, that's your first obvious blunder very early in this discussion.

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It seems so. You’ve made the elementary error of failing to consider the differences between an a priori calculation and one made in hindsight.Edited by PaulK, : Tidy up

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That is not what I am doing

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If you are going to predict that macroevolution cannot happen the calculation will work out much the same except you have to work out future conditions instead of past conditions.

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In fact, I published the governing equations for the Kishony experiment before Kishony ran his experiment

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Even if that is true, it is hardly the same issue. A very simple and very special case that can’t be generalised to all evolution.

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And when you say something like this makes me think that you do not understand introductory probability theory

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Which is more evidence that you don’t. You won’t get a useful number just by multiplying probabilities.

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You are confusing two concepts. Those two concepts are the governing mathematical laws of a physical process and the physical properties of the real world.

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Not at all. You can derive equations but without the numbers you can’t apply them.

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In the same way, I can't predict the number of possible beneficial mutations will exist for a particular evolutionary process, but I can predict the number of replications necessary for there to be a reasonable probability of a lineage to take any evolution trajectory to improved fitness for any number possible beneficial mutations

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Maybe you can do that for a particular trajectory - where the trajectory is defined by the sequence of beneficial mutations. But you still have to know how many trajectories are possible and how many populations fail to successfully follow any trajectory.Simply multiplying probabilities is not nearly enough.

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The only difference between DNA evolution and a coin-tossing problem is your frequency of success. Your probability of calling the correct toss of a coin in a single toss is 0.5. Your probability of getting a beneficial mutation in a single replication is the (beneficial) mutation rate. You really aren't as good at this math as you think you are.

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The beneficial mutation rate will be variable, depending on conditions. For instance the mutations in the Kishony experiment are beneficial because of the presence of the antibiotic. So good luck working it out.It’s looking as if this is just a rephrasing of your assertion that it will take too many replications. But writing the same argument in different terminology really does nothing to help you.

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You are looking at this problem with blindsight. Why do you think the Kishony experiment works the same way no matter which drug is used?

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Because antibiotic resistance typically requires a very narrow set of mutations and resistance to the higher doses tends to require a sequence of such mutations. And because the drug is fatal to non-resistant bacteria. The conditions do matter.

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Then when you factor in that you must multiply the individual probabilities of success to compute the joint probability of multiple beneficial mutations occurring, it becomes clear why you need large number of random trials (replications) for each evolutionary transitional step.

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Which still requires knowing the numbers. You can come up with equations but conclusions are going to require numbers.

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The same math applies to all examples of DNA evolution. If you have a real, measurable, and repeatable example of DNA evolution that doesn't follow this mathematical pattern, show it. You won't. The Lenski experiment obeys this math, hiv obeys this math, weeds and cancers obey this math, human DNA evolution obeys this math.

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Given that you’ve offloaded all the work into getting the probabilities it might be the same (although there are issues like co-option and preadaption and recombination to consider). However, your argument will rely on the numbers and you don’t have those.

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The problem for you is that we now are getting the numbers and the numbers are fitting the model that I've presented, not your model.

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The problem is that the numbers you are getting are very likely not applicable to most of the evolution we’re interested in. We can’t expect pressures like antibiotics to be ubiquitous drivers of evolution.

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Sure, lots of variants fail to successfully follow an evolutionary trajectory, that's called extinction. But any lineage that doesn't go extinct, the joint probability of each mutational evolutionary step will be calculated by multiplying the individual probabilities. Otherwise, you are simply getting divergence of the population.

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Diverging populations is fundamental to evolution. But that isn’t the issue. Some lineages are going to do better than expected. And in fact those we see will be those that did. There’s a selection effect there, and that even applies if you’re calculating the average replications required.

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You still don't get it, the mutation rate is a minor factor in the DNA evolutionary process.

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The rate at which beneficial mutations appear is the one you want and that will be quite variable since the number of available beneficial mutations also varies.

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The multiplication rule is the dominant factor. hiv has a mutation rate of about e-5 yet it still can't evolve efficiently to just 3 selection pressures targeting only two genetic loci. The reason is that three instances of the multiplication rule is being applied to the virus at each evolutionary step. Each additional selection pressure on a replicator imposes another instance of the multiplication rule on each evolutionary step.

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That’s only true of hard selection. Reality is more complex. There will be cases where the baseline population is adequately fit and a mutation gives an advantage. That sort of selection works perfectly well in parallel.

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I'm telling you how many (not too many) replications it takes for a mutational step on an evolutionary trajectory. And we have the numbers for example, with humans

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You’re telling me your guess. But you haven’t got real numbers for, say, the evolution of birds.

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There have been about 110 billion people that have ever lived. 98% of those people have lived in the last 10,000 years. What kind of adaptive evolutionary trajectory could have been followed by humans in the last 10,000 years? And what kind of adaptive evolutionary trajectory could have been followed for those 1.2 billion that ever lived before that time? You can get some evolutionary divergence but you don't have the population sizes necessary to do any type of evolutionary adaptation.

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Ten thousand years isn’t a lot of time in evolutionary terms. And large interbreeding populations aren’t an ideal situation for evolutionary change. But there are some interesting adaptions around and I wonder how you account for those. White skin and adult lactose tolerance are two notable examples.

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And the coding and regulatory genes to make limbs require any kind of mutation you can imagine?

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We certainly have a few intermediates for that transition. But of course there is no reason to believe that was the only evolutionary trajectory available - or that it is true that all mutations need to be equally targeted.

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We have plenty of information on population sizes of different replicators that are alive today.

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And what numbers do you have for the number of possible beneficial mutations ?

His objection is probably that Intelligent Design isn’t explicitly Young Earth.However, there are plenty of reasons why Intelligent Design does not belong in schools. Even if it were a fringe position in science it wouldn’t belong there.But it’s worse than that. Intelligent Design covers everything from Young Earth Creationism to Behe’s idea that God occasionally makes genetic adjustments (and he hopes to find an example one day). Which do you teach in science classes? And why?

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macroevolution is a fairy tale

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You say that, but there is strong evidence that says that it happened - and there are Young Earth Creationists who argue that it did happen - and even quicker than scientists would say.

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there is zero evidence that the eye evolved after selective competition in nature, as evolutionists claim.

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There may be little direct evidence of how it happened, but that isn’t a block. When we have a known mechanism and the evidence is consistent with it we don’t suddenly jump off and assume that something else did it.

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the human eye is irreducibly complex regardless of the stories evolutionists like to tell themselves.

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Even if that were true (and it isn’t) irreducible complexity is not a bar to evolution.

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we are objectively created by God.

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In your opinion. Which is subjective,

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we continue to neglect our special brand of consciousness. we are different than other species. we are completely self aware and capable of philosophical limitlessness of quandary.

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Of course it is impossible to read the minds of other species, yet we do have evidence of self-awareness. Also, we cannot know the mental capacities of the extinct hominids.

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human eyes can appear as nebulas in microcosm, and yet you parade your truth, but in your heart, you know Christ is Lord. He's the only god that died for you and your pitiful existence, and the only god who ever could.

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If that were true - and it isn’t- it would be an even stronger reason for rejecting Creationism.

Kleinman is very likely a troll.In Message 228 he wrote: This is total nonsense. Either he is telling idiotic lies or he has no understanding of the mathematics.Either way he is not worth listening to.

Oh, look Kleinman is spouting nonsense again.