Natural Limitation to Evolutionary Processes (2/14/05)

Oh for pete's sake, FOLLOW THE ARGUMENT!!! I've answered this a dozen times already. I said ****TRULY**** BENEFICIAL. There is no way a mutation that protects against one disease while causing another is TRULY beneficial.

There are NO examples ANYONE has produced yet of a TRULY beneficial mutation, one that produces health and vigor.

my father who had severe red-green color blindness (he distinguished the red signal light from the green one by degree of brightness and position above or below on the pole).

Dr.Jones* in Message 154 writes:Good, bad and neutral are in relation to if the mutation helps or hurts the organism to reproduce. I have a condition called keratoconus, which has a genetic component. My corneas become deformed and don't focus light correctly and in the long run without cornea transplants I'd be blind. Keratoconus does not strike until late puberty and has a slow progression therefore it would not be a hinderance to reproduction. This is an example of a neutral mutation.

Faith in Message 155 writes:Thank you. This clearly demonstrates that the mutation is actually harmful to the organism, person, in this case you, although it is called neutral for the merely technical reason that it does not interfere with reproduction. It's the same situation as in the case of diabetes, which causes all kinds of misery and ultimately kills people, though it doesn't interfere with reproduction and so escapes the selection processes that would weed it out.This is a very odd trend if you think about it. It would seem to lead to a proliferation of genetic diseases in the population to such an extent that over a few millennia there couldn't be a healthy species left on earth.{Edit: Which is pretty much what biblical creationism says. Except that we assume that this is not the normal way genetics works. We assume PRIOR greater health, and gradual deterioration over time, due to the accumulating effects of the Fall from generation to generation. Only uniformitarianism supposes that such disease processes are normal, but logically this should have led to nothing but sickness and weakness in all species by now, and mass extinctions despite reproductive ability, if it really is a normal process of evolution}.