TOE and the Reasons for Doubt

Ah bless you. I could have discovered that myself with a little more looking.What an amazing difference that last sentence makes.Edited by Briterican, : No reason given.

How many undergraduate or graduate level textbooks on Biological topics have you read, Kaichos Man? If you wish to peddle the absurd idea that the commonalities found between species speak to common design please do begin a thread on the topic. But it's off topic here. *sigh* You continue to not get it, don't you? How many times do we have to say this, your example does not resemble anything like real evolution as such the calculations you've presented are nonsense. You need to stop prattling on about your strawman and actually address what evolutionary theory actually says.Any particular mutation is, of course, unlikely, but evolution does not require a particular mutation to occur (that's the real key point) and, in any case, evolution happens in populations across many, many generations so unlikely events occur with high probability.

Your actual point was much more extreme: "Kimura showed that the vast majority of natural selection is negative in nature; absolutely useless for molecule-to-man evolution."This also answers the question you posed: I don't know what you think you said, but anyone else would conclude that you're saying Kimura questioned natural selection's ability to produce adaptation, and that's about as gross a distortion as you can get.--Percy

Hi Kaichos - thanks for taking up the challenge - and a fair attempt. Yes, the ToE would agree with you here. The Toe predicts that species living in an environment and at equilibrium in that environment (i.e. not dying out) will have characteristics best suited to that environment.So the next question is what is it phenotypically that makes the individual suited to that environment?In my example we have dark skinned Africans and blonde Scandinavians. You have identified melanin pigment as being important to the Africans (correct) but then say the following: Why would you doubt this? On what grounds? Surely not because... This is classic Creationist closed-mind thinking. You look around at the planet as you see it today and project your thoughts only on what is now....not what was. We wear clothes now, have sun blockers, medical treatments for skin cancers etc.....yet a million years ago any African albino would die very quickly...are you aware that dark skinned Africans can produce snow white albino's every once in a while? Even today those individuals rarely make it to adulthood unless in one of the more technically advanced African countries whose medical and social welfare can offset the dangers of the intense African sun on such helpless skin?So a million years ago these albinos...which are more common than you think stood no chance of making adulthood...and adulthood and the ability to breed is the only thing that counts in the grand scheme of things evolution-wise. All this demonstrates, I'm afraid, is that you don't know enough about the underlying science facts before venturing your opinion on evolution...terrible mistake and exactly what I was saying to Coyote earlier in this thread when I said Creationists are arrogant in dismissing evolutionary theory on insufficient subject knowledge!Look up vitamin D production on Google, link it to skin colour and you'll have an answer to that question you posed.Next...see if you can now predict what the ToE itself predicts if dark-skinned Africans moved out of Africa a million years or so ago to cooler, darker climates. What do you think the theory predicts....and why?

There was a large thread that I started, that had probably been done before, specifically about quote mines by creationists.quote mines, If you don't know, are the quotes you are using that make it appear as if a scientist does not support the views one would normally expect of a scientist (namely, evolution and the scientific method).I think a gross distortion of Darwin's view, for starters, would be his doubting of the very same theory of evolution he is so famous for.If a quote is used to further that view, it is a distortion.

first, read the following: Now, If you understand that I was pointing out in rather plain English, that your distortion of Kimura's work was unfounded, and that you therefore did not understand the work - then it becomes quite obvious that my statement was not retarded at all.so yes, I understand how retarded it sounded - and the answer is "not at all".

Oh noes! It's all lies! Surely there is no way out of this for evolutionists?Wait..wait...what is this? He says more? Wow, if that doesn't totally change the tone of the quote mine.surely you can do better, if you're just going to throw quote mines?You could have tried this one:

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"I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science."

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or

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To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. - Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1st Ed., p. 186.

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How damning these quote mines appear. How blasted must my opinions be!And yet you do not understand why they are not.

This is exactly what I was taught in a Human Races class in graduate school.The only addition I would make is that the northernmost peoples do not rely on the sun for vitamin D because they would freeze to death before they would get any appreciable benefit; the sun is too weak during the summer and nonexistent during the winter. There is no selection pressure for lighter skin in those areas, and the fish oils are the primary source of vitamin D.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Hi, Kaichos Man. Y'all too, dude! ----- The Theory of Evolution doesn't include any positive selection. What appears to be "positive selection" is the result of negative selection working stronger on somebody else than on you. Increases in fitness result from mutations that allow greater ability to avoid the negative selection pressures.It's all defined in terms of the negative result (failure or death), so it's always negative selection.----- Envision natural selection like the Grim Reaper, lurking over your head and trying to kill you at every turn. "Striking" is when he finally gets you. But, he's been trying (i.e. he's been "enabled") since the moment you were conceived.----- But, it's always "in play." That was my point: it's always working on every organism. The "striking" analogy was just referring to the failure of an organism to stay ahead of it.----- It is.Have you heard of "antennipedia"? This hints at the limb ancestry that Mr Jack was talking about.Or four-winged fruit flies? Have you heard of those? This hints at the wing ancestry of fly halteres.In this case, it's easy to see that a fruit fly's ancestors used to be like any other insect (i.e. having four wings), then developed a mutant gene that caused its hind wings to become halteres. If you knock out the mutant gene with another mutant, the fly's wings develop like typical insect wings.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

You took a small part of my statement and used it to pretend I was somehow in agreement with you. That's called quote mining.That your arithmatic is right doesn't mean your math is.Your math implies that mutation and natural selection is random. As a piece it is not. Your math also implies that anntenni appear fully formed. What are the odds that a mutation could oocur that make a cell able to register a stimuli that it prievious couldn't or even couldn't do as well. Rachet that up to an anntenna. Your math is out the window.Try an honest debate. If you're right about that god thing it'll be one less thing for Saint Peter to raise his eye brows about.

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It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.

Oh, thank goodness! Haldane's Dilemma has been solved!So far we've had only a succession of hopefuls suggesting a variety of solutions that have never stood up under scrutiny. The latest of these was, of course, Robert Williams, who suggested that the 1,667 mutation limit imposed by Haldane's Dilemma was sufficient for the evolution of man from a common ancestor with the ape 10 million years ago!But now we can consign all that rubbish to the bin, once and for all, because Izanaqi can show us how the equation was corrected and the dilemma solved!Izanaqi?

If a sentence can make a lot of difference, Briterican, look at the difference a whole paragraph can make!

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"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy." Charles Darwin

Here are the larger quotes, from just over 100 pages apart:

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From page 59: One striking aspect of these extinction/rebound episodes in life's history is the extraordinary rapidity with which they occur. The Cretaceous extinction about 65 million years ago, which took away the last of the dinosaurs, and perhaps as much as 90 percent of all the other forms of Cretaceous life, took place within the span of a million years. Now, a million years is certainly a long period of time by some standards, but it is an eyeblink in geologic history. Events occurring within less than a million years' time can create patterns of abrupt change in the fossil record: in many places around the world, fossils can be traced up into the highest layers of Cretaceous rocks when, all of a sudden, they just disappear. And the rocks immediately above preserve representatives of the initial repopulation, life's rebound after the collapse. The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history - not the artifact of a poor fossil record.

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From page 163: We have already argued that that the fossil record flatly fails to substantiate this expectation of finely graded change. So too, says Teggart, does the historical sequence of human events.

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Why can't creationists be honest about their quotes?Answer: the evidence contradicts their religious beliefs, so they have to lie about the evidence to make it appear to support their beliefs.Creation "science" as usual.Dishonest. And disgusting.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

You know, why is it that you are not doing the research and I am? I think that the person making the claim about a dilemma would have the integrity to find out if it has been solved. But sure, I'll do the footwork because I am not afraid of where it will lead me.This site addresses Haldane's Dilemma very nicely and shows why it isn't really a dilemma. I know you won't look at it or even if you do look at it, Kaichos Man, you won't consider what it says and will probably scoff at it while you read it.To paraphrase, the first solution is the one you mention, which is that 1667 substitutions in 10 million years are sufficient to explain the differences between the ancestors of humans and chimps to humans. And research seems to indicate that differences between related species are due to a few genetic differences which produce large effects. For instance, the article mentions that the one genetic difference found so far between humans and apes is the production of sialic acid which is responsible for, among other things, brain development. Sialic acid in humans is different than in all other mammals.Another argument that the dilemma doesn't exist is that while a beneficial mutation may raise the fitness of individual organisms in a population, the remaining members of the population will not have a large decrease in fitness. Thus beneficial mutations operate like soft selection. and Haldane's high cost of substitution can be rejected.The other thing is that when two beneficial mutations are moving towards fixation in a population, whenever any members without either of the mutations dies, the cost is exactly half what it would have been if each mutation had occurred separately. Basically, the organism without either mutation dies to "pay" the cost for two beneficial mutations, instead of one. So the idea that it takes twice as long for two beneficial mutations to occur is addressed and in fact the cost of substitution decreases further. The more beneficial substitutions that occur, the lower the cost of substitution will be.Anyway, there's more but I don't want to paraphrase the whole thing. Take a look at it if you want, but I think I have proven my point that Haldane's Dilemma is not a dilemma at all by addressing the high substitution cost.

I have to agree that I am beginning to see the lengths that creationists will go to protect their beliefs. If there is any case for atheism, I think the fact that creationists are willing to bear false witness in violation of the Bible shows how flimsy those rules are and how easily broken they are when it comes to protecting their beliefs.A quote mine making two quotes look like they are only separated by a sentence or two when in fact they are separated by over a hundred pages is dishonest at best.