Please, no replies in this thread. Please post your responses over at the Are mutations truly random or are they guided? thread. Please be aware that Bolder-dash has been suspended until April 1. --Admin
Here is your answer Taq...apparently the school principal is still taking sides:
You are confusing phenotype plasticity with evolution. They are not the same thing. Evolution does not occur to one individual during it's lifetime. Evolution occurs at the level of the population over generations.
Actually it only occurs through individuals. Individuals get the mutation (according to you) and they either pass it on or they don't. You are confusing the issue by trying to count a population as a thing. A population is an idea.
Several peer reviewed scientific articles have been cited by myself and others. Perhaps you should comment on those.
I did several times. Go back and read my posts instead of looking for ways to try to show you know something more than I. A study looking at bacteria does nothing to meet the criteria of creating a new form. What is the new form you are trying to demonstrate? If you believe that all information obtained from looking at a bacteria can apply to all of the living world, then I guess you think it would take 200,000 generations of an animal species to develop something as simple as a resistance to an illness. if it takes long for that, how long is it going to take to develop a system of sweat glands. or motor neurons in the brain that have thicker coatings of myelin in some regions and thinner regions in others, so that all incoming electronic messages are received at precisely the right time so as not to confuse the brain perceptions? Do you want to go by what bacteria tells us, or do you now wish to drop the evidence provided by bacterial study now-because we have studied billions and billions of generations of bacteria, and the rate of change is slow, not just slow, very slow. No, not just very slow-nonexistent.
No one is claiming that evolution is guided by random mutations.
Of course you don't claim this when its inconvenient to claim this-you throw it out and take it away when it suits your argument. Hiding from the need to explain things through random mutations doesn't make the problem disappear-you can't close your eyes and ignore it like hide and go seek.
You are confusing phenotype plasticity with evolution. They are not the same thing.
No, I am not confusing anything. I am saying if we want to go simply by what we can observe, this is all we observe-adaptations, adaptations, and more adaptations. We never observe new starting points for evolution.
If evolution were a process existing in all populations, why is it so hard to find evidences of these populations-split by their mutated and unmutated brothers, yet still possessing all the same features other than ONE new adaptive advantage that is creating new information?
As for the argument "they are still bacteria", it's nothing more than a ploy on your part to lessen the impact of evidence that shoots holes in your argument. The common ancestor of humans and chimps was an ape, and humans and chimps are still apes, so I would guess that you have no problem with humans and chimps sharing a common ancestor, right? Humans and bears are both mammals, as was their common ancestor. Just mammals turning into mammals. No problem, right? Humans and fish are both vertebrates, as was their common ancestor. Just vertebrates turning into vertebrates. You have no problem with this, right? Humans and amoebas are both euakaryotes, as was their common ancestor. Just eukaryotes turning into eukaryotes. Surely you have no problem with this, right?
This is just pure gibberish. The point of the discussion is to provide evidence that random mutations are causing life forms to be created. Those life forms can be entirely new creatures, or they can simply be entirely new features, like a gill or a horn. if horns formed from nothing, other than a small random mutation-why can't we see new examples of things similar to horns forming. Aren't there supposed to be millions of these things happening all the time. EITHER ADDRESS THIS QUESTION, OR YOU ARE SIMPLY AVOIDING THE ISSUE ENTIRELY, OR INTENTIONALLY OBFUSCATING.
I don't care how small or minor you want to call the initial process leading to new features, it still has to be big enough to cause some kind of advantage. It can't be microscopic, that won't provide reproductive success. And even if it was microscopic, in successive generation-if it is ever going to lead anywhere, it has to eventually be more than microscopic. So if evolutionary changes are ongoing forever, where are the changes that stared 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago, and are now in the second phase of their evolution? Are they starting to appear yet? Are there some individuals blessed with these new features, while others aren't? features? New features? Where are they? Dwarphism? is that how new features start? Whats the new feature?
How in the world can you have a theory that claims this accounts for everything, and then say you can not show even one?
We know that these mutations are random because of observations such as those in the Luria-Delbruck fluctuation experiment and the Lederbergs' plate replica experiment as I discussed above (and you ignored).
No, you know that some drug resistance mutations COULD possibly be random. You don't get to make wild assumptions based on one partial bit of knowledge, and call it a conclusion. Most of these mutations are deleterious anyway, and disappear rapidly when the pressure is gone. That certainly isn't going to form anything new.
That is bad science and bad logic.
Edited by Admin, : Add moderator request at top, fix last quote box.
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