Another IDology challenge -- complete with complaints of harsh treatments ...

Even if mutations galore increased the genetic diversity enormously in a population or gene/allele pool, even to the point that every trait is changed for every individual and every gene has so many alleles you can't identify them, what you'd have is a motley crew of individuals that differ wildly from one another in all those traits, some large, some small, some with purple fur, some with scales instead of fur, and every possible combination. Clearly it doesn't ever happen. But if it did some particular number of individuals would have to be selected in order to get a new breed or species, that is, for evolution of the population as a whole to occur. Which would have to happen to get a new species.

And selection eliminates. If you get an isolated new population of all these individuals with all their new characteristics that population will eventually blend those characteristics together until a particular phenotype emerges and it's got a look of its own: a new breed or species. That's what selection does. It will eventually blend tog3ether whatever proportions of traits are in the new set of individuals, their new collection of gene/allele frequencies, and eliminate others from the population. (Of course if mutations really did occur at such a rate as I describe it above you could never ever get a population with its own peculiar characteristics, never a breed let alone a pure breed, which already defeats the whole idea but anyway...) Unless you want to say that getting only a population made up of mutts is evolution, because that's all you'll ever get; you'll never get the specialized new phenotypes ordinarily recognized as a new species or breed, you know a whole population with the same characteristics, a whole population of trilobites that look alike, a whole population of raccoons with identical markings, a whole breed of greyhounds or chihuahuas or Great Danes, a whole population of little green men with antennae on their heads.

Not only is there no "rate of evolution," there is no evolution as defined by the ToE.

abe: What you call speciation could never happen, which is a population with its own overall characteristics that clearly differentiate it from its parent population. (Of course it would have sufficiently diminished genetic diversity to make further evolution impossible, but anyway....

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I rarely use the concept of selection as in natural selection, I think selection is what brings about new subspecies/breeds but that it's usually random. Faith O lution 101.

And there's your favorite Pelycodus again, you do love that creature. And of course I have to answer the way I always do that they were merely buried in the Flood, so that I object to the idea that different sizes at different levels argues for evolution when it's just where they happened to end up. We get Great Danes at the same time we get chichuahuas from the same dog gene pool after all, various sizes are options in the genome of any creature that can be selected and isolated at any time in the present. And besides it may only be the creature at different ages too.

So there's the word from Faith O lution for today.

Oh. but yes that is interesting about koinophilia.

ABE Oh and one more thing. Of course selection itself doesn't blend characteristics, what I meant was that the new population of selected individuals with their many different characteristics would over time in reproductive isolation blend together into a phenotype that becomes characteristic of the population, as a new breed or subspecies. The selection merely isolates a particular collection of characteristics.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I guess if you're going to make a mistake it's nice to make the particular mistake Darwin made, but I think you are missing MY point. I don't mean that different alleles for a particular trait get blended together, I mean that all the traits in the new gene pool blend together in new combinations. You're only going to get, say, mottled gray fur after all the alleles for fur are reproductively mixed over whatever number of generations it takes, depending on what ends up being the dominant element (highest frequency), and each trait will get sorted according to the same principle, but in combination with each other they will produce a different overall look to the new population than the parent population had.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes of course. I've made the point myself many times that the wildebeests of Africa are quite homogeneous in their huge numbers, the only clear variation being a separated/isolated herd called the "blue wildebeests." These are also homogenous as a herd, but this herd is characterized by smaller size, different shaped antlers and a bluish tinge to the hide, a result of the combination of some portion of the larger population's becoming reproductively isolated. The isolation would have lasted long enough to bring out this new set of characteristics from the new set of gene frequencies collectively possessed by the founding individuals.

It was in response to anticipating the usual refrain about how I ignore mutations that I described this motley population, postulating the maximum number of mutational differences possible in a large population, and how that would make for a motley crew of differences among individuals. But I'm quite aware that in reality this doesn't happen, populations acquire a homogeneous appearance over time. I don't even think enough mutations happen to affect my usual argument, I merely wanted to make the point that even at the maximum possible I could think of they wouldn't change my argument.

Yes I know the ToE assumes a purposeful selection, I think that's very rare, that's all.

You don't need to keep arguing with me you know, we're only going to go around in the usual circles, I just like to interject my point of view from time to time so it's on the record. You have my permission to go back to arguing with AZ, his point of view is much more congenial to yours.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Communication is SO difficult. All I meant by "purposeful" was that it has a definite cause rather than being random, while I'm always arguing that the selection that brings about most population changes, subspecies, breeds or whatever, is random.

I tried to read through that material but it's beyond me. Too much irrelevant detail. Which wildebeest is the large herd, in the millions I think? I thought the blue herd was the smaller herd. I get that the blue type is considered to be the parent population. I'm not going to try to read all that again to find out more than that, so please inform me of whatever point you think is important.

And of course it's all irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. I couldn't care less what the evolutionary history is supposed to be since I consider all that to be false, dictated by the theory but utterly out of tune with reality. It only takes a very short time for a new population to become isolated from the main population and develop its own characteristics -- a hundred years could be overkill but give it a hundred, it certainly doesn't need more than that. The millions of years the ToE assigns to such things is all theory, no known history, no known fact, and all wrong based on normal times to develop a new subspecies/breed or whatever.

All I meant by "purposeful" was NONRANDOM.

Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Not that you've ever proved.