Questioning The Evolutionary Process

The rate of mutations is actually extremely high; in mammals, one nucleotide substitution per 3.6 billion base pairs. With something on the order of 5 billion base pairs in the entire nuclear genome, that's nearly two mutations with every replication.That's just point substitutions; that doesn't include deletions or duplications.

Could be. I'm drawing from Table 4.2, "Average rates of synonymous substitution in various organisms and genomes", on page 97 of Page and Holmes' "Molecular Evolution: A Phylogenetic Approach" (2000, Blackwell Science.)It lists a figure of 3.5x10^-9 substitutions per site per year under "mammalian nuclear DNA."So I guess I was wrong in several different ways. Nonetheless, that's quite a few mutations.

I'd like to add Carl Sagan's words:"Sure, they laughed at Einstein. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."Being ridiculed has nothing to do with being right. Sometimes the people who are being ridiculed actually are wrong and just haven't gotten the message, yet.Incidentally - the ID guys have plenty of their own little names for those who accept the scientific consensus of evolution. More, in fact. So why doesn't that convince you that "Darwinism" is more right?

Fitness is a measure of increase in gene frequency. Therefore it's a dimensionless ratio of the frequency of a specific allele as represented among all a population's alleles at that given locus. Another way to look at it is that "fitness" measures the phenomenon where individuals who are adapted to their environment are successful, live longer, and reproduce more than other individuals who are not so adapted. Well, wait now. You can measure length in numbers, too; does that make it not an empirical, scientific phenomenon?Molarity would be another measurement that comes in numbers; are you saying that measuring the amount of substance present in a solution is not a scientific endeavor? That can't be true, since we observe that populations experience natural selection of their individuals. We observe that populations increase so as to exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, and that therefore not all organisms survive long enough to reproduce; furthermore we observe in every instance that this differential survival is not random but intrinsically related to that organism's physical adaptations to environment. Organisms contain genes - they are the physical expressions of their genes. Thus, natural selection selects on individuals, which has an effect on the genetics of the entire population.

No more than "size of population" is a mathematical abstraction. Fitness is merely another way to say "differential reproduction", it's just a way to describe what is obvious from observation - some individuals have physical advantages over their peers that result in greater reproductive success.It's not any more an abstraction than molarity is an abstraction. Fitness has never been defined as you define it. Your understanding of evolution, if we can even call it "understanding" when you don't understand it at all, isn't archaic or supplanted; it's idiosyncratic. If you cannot accept the use of measurement science, then I'm forced to wonder exactly what science you do accept, since I can't think of a single field where things are not measured, somehow.Weight is an abstraction to you? Molarity? Frequency? All these things are measurements. Are you truly saying that a valid science cannot measure anything? That's a truly ridiculous objection. How can you expect things to be empirical if scientists aren't allowed to take measurements? No, it's the observation. I've made the same observations with my own eyes. How can it not be real if it's happening right in front of me? In front of you? We've defined it as true, so there's no reason for your lack of certainty. We've defined "fitness" to represent the tendency of the progeny of better-adapted individuals to come to dominate a population. Thus, to be fit is to be prolific, for how else can an individual's offspring come to dominate a population except by outnumbering everybody else? And we see that many human populations are being reduced as a result of scare resources, as they are outcompeted by other humans for them.Or are you saying that no human being ever dies from starvation these days? I assure you that's not the case. So, who dies? The observation is that it isn't determined at random, like in a life lottery; the observation is that better-adapted individuals feed themselves while less-adapted individuals do not, and expire.That's natural selection. You've just proven it. That's absolutely false. Elmer, I assure you - there's absolutely nothing contentious about the fact that the phenotype of organisms is determined by genotype. If not how can you explain Mendel's observations, or any of the other truly countless experiments in genetics? The horse/cart model is not applicable here. Genes determine the traits of organisms (as proven by Mendel et al.) The traits of organisms determine which individuals are most successful in reproduction. The differential success of reproducing individuals determines what genes constitute the next generation of organisms.It's not the horse/cart model. It's the "life-cycle" model. Surely you've heard that term, "life-cycle"? What did you think it was referring to if not the cyclical nature of life?

It would be chemistry, actually. I don't know that any of us think you're stupid, but it's abundantly obvious that you have a number of severe misconceptions about science, most especially your bizarre idea that if you're measuring something, it's not scientific.Taking measurements about aspects of the world around us, and then drawing explanatory models that explain those measurements and can predict future measurements is precisely what science is. Your idea that proper science can't include numbers or arithmetic is, hands-down, the most ridiculous misconception about science I've heard in all the years I've been posting here.Are you stupid? I don't think you're stupid at all. Indeed I'd say you have to be pretty smart to be able to talk yourself into something as incredibly wrong as the idea that science can't use numbers or measurements.

Well, except when they stop being microbes and become parts of a multicellular organism:Slime Mould and the Transition to MulticellularitySpecies platonism - the idea that members of a species, despite their individual differences, share a fixed "essence" that cannot be altered - has been a discredited notion in biology for 200 years, NJ. When you can tell me why a dog is a dog, and not something else, you'll be on the way to refuting your own argument. The simple truth of the matter is that we can and do observe organisms crossing that species boundary on a regular basis.

The differences between species - or "kinds" if you prefer - is also "just variation." What does that mean?

That's not true. For instance, molar ratio is a dimensionless ratio, as well. Anything given in, say, "parts per million" or "percent by weight" is a dimensionless ratio, but there's nothing abstract about it. Well, I just did state it that way. What are you asking, exactly? When individuals have differential reproductive success as a result of heritable physical advantages (which we know now are genetic), that is evolution. No, it's not. It's the measurement of exactly how many molecules of a substance are in a solution.If you're counting the molecules, how can that be abstract? That's no more abstract than, say, seeing that there are ten apples in front of me. That's about as concrete a measurement as it gets. The individual and the individual's genes are the concrete objects involved. Are you saying that individuals exist? Your source? No, I'm not. You'll know when I want to insult you. Nonetheless I'm not especially impressed with your insistence on internet self-martyrdom. If you're going run off with hurt feelings at every mention of the fact that you are wrong, because you are misinformed about this subject, who on Earth do you expect to be left to talk to?Man up, Elmer. You haven't been insulted. You've simply been shown to be wrong. It happens; it even happens to me. (Quite often.) If being wrong hurts your little fee-fees, then I suggest you grow a thicker skin before you run headlong into reality and really. hurt yourself.Edited by Admin, : Fix italic dBCode.

Besides there not being either viruses or hosts in the situation the paper describes? I wonder if you even read the abstract. Mayr defined it as

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"... groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups."

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In other words, a "species" is a reproductive community. The ambiguity of species is consistent with the idea that all species are simply different clusters on a continuous range of variation in organisms, which is another way of saying "all organisms belong to the same kind", or "all organisms are descended by modification from a single common ancestor."If species were undeniably discreet, that would be evidence for the sort of species essentialism that you're suggesting. For as much as you say "dogs never beget cats" or whatever, the fact that it's somewhat ambiguous about what it means to be a cat or a dog is proof that we're not looking at separate, created "kinds," but rather organisms who share some characteristics and are divergent in other characteristics because they evolved separately from a single ancestor. The singular of "species" is "species", as we continually remind you. There's no such thing as "subspecie". Subspecies may or may not even exist; biologists may refer to some individual group as a "subspecies" when it appears that group is reproductively isolated from the main populations but has not diverged sufficiently either morphologically or genetically to be classified as a new species.In other words biologists call something a "subspecies" when they think that it's going to become a new species in the future, but hasn't yet.

The fact that morphological cladistics is proven essentially correct by phylogenetics in nearly every case is sufficient confirmation for the validity of using morphology to determine those kinds of relationships.The truth of the matter is that the morphology of organisms is determined by their genetics, obviously, so morphology is a reliable guide to the sort of genetic relationships you're talking about. You're thinking about it the wrong way, you see. It's not a matter of organisms with similar morphology being forced to share similar genetics.It's the other way around. Organisms with similar genetics share similar morphologies, they're forced to, because genetics determines morphology. Therefore morphology is a reliable guide to cladistics (although a colleague of my wife once remarked "DNA doesn't lie".)

I don't recall any instance where I've referred to you as "ignorant." Could you quote me using that word? I would consider myself challenged to display an appropriate understanding of the subject at hand. I'm puzzled why it is that you instead take that language as a cue to storm off in a huff. And have you ever stopped to wonder why that might be the case? Why you hold a position so contrary to the prevailing scientific consensus? It means "stop taking it personally when the rest of us engage you in argument and tell you that you're wrong." You're falling all over yourself to play the victim here, when the rest of us are guilty of nothing more than rebutting your arguments. I'll make you a deal. If you can keep the drama-queen whining to an absolute minimum and focus only on the arguments that are presented to you, instead of using feigned outrage as a front to avoid addressing arguments, I won't have any reason to make any evaluations of you as a person, except for positive ones.Deal? But of course it isn't, Elmer. There's nothing abstract about counting how many molecules are present. Huh, that's funny. You don't know any arithmetic, you don't know any chemistry (since you had to look up "molarity", one of the most basic chemical concepts), and you obviously don't know much about biology except what you were taught in middle school, most of which was surely wrong.I'm forced to wonder - what do you know, Elmer, that leads you to conclude that the vast majority consensus of biologists are completely and utterly wrong? Does it really make sense for you to maintain a greater level of expertise than the biological community when the simplest concepts in science are all new to you? It's not differential reproduction, it's the explanation for non-random differential reproduction.But maybe I just don't understand what you're asking. ...and? So what? Agree or not, we have abundant physical evidence that this is the case. But that's exactly what we're talking about - making measurements of particular concrete entities - entities like solutions, or individuals, or populations. That's the basis of science.How can making measurements be abstractions? There's not a single scientist in the world who shares your misconceptions about how science is done and interpreted, Elmer. You're not making any sense. How can anything be more concrete than what is being measured? Isn't measureability essentially the very essence of concreteness? Whose rules? No, you're the one saying that individuals do not exist, because how else could measurements about them be abstract? That's why I asked, Elmer. Maybe the history of the internet isn't your field, either, Elmer, but I assure you that the common use of the World Wide Web only dates back to the early 90's, so a definition from an internet dictionary does not establish that something has been defined "for hundreds of years."

Do what same thing? Band together with other individuals to form a multi-cellular colony with specialized cells doing unique functions?No, viruses can't do that, NJ. Did you even read the paper? Yes. When the two populations can no longer hybridize, they're recognized as separate species.Before that time, when they're separated by geography or behavioral barriers, and they don't seem to recognize each other as mates (but can be stimulated to create fertile hybrids), we generally recognize them as "subspecies", or sometimes "clans" or other such terms. For fuck's sake, NJ, it's "species". Dogs are a subspecies. Wolves are a species. One is a species. They're both in the same species.A species. Two or more species. Do you get it, yet? You sound like an idiot, I'm just saying. The singular of "species" is "species." "Specie" is a word from chemistry with an entirely different meaning.But, to address your point, you could have looked it up. Had you, you would have seen that the gray wolf is Canis lupus, and the dog is Canis lupus familiaris, indicating that, yes, domesticated dogs are a subspecies of wolves because they can produce fertile hybrids. Mules are sterile, and as such, they indicate that the horse (Equus caballus) and the donkey (Equus asinus) are two different species of the genus Equus. That's not true. The Biological Species Concept, which I have defined for you, represents the consensus view among biologists about what constitutes a species.The problem, of course, is that the BSC has limits to its utility; for instance, how do we determine the species boundaries of populations we know only from fossils? How do we determine species boundaries for populations that are not sexual? In these corner cases, we use different species concepts to represent the same idea that a species represents a local cluster of individuals on the continuum of variation. In the 200 years since Darwin invented evolution we've had some time to pin down clearer definitions of what "species" means in practice. I've given you the most common definition, and some ways of using that definition to identify species boundaries.On the other hand, creationists have never been able to define "kinds" in a way that could discern whether or not two organisms were members of the same "kind", and indeed, you can't even get two creationists to agree on any definition of the word whatsoever. I thought I explained this. Individuals who are members of the same reproductive community are in the same species. But as a reproductive boundary emerges between two sub-populations, we recognize one of them as a subspecies. A subspecies. Not a "subspecie."Do you see the difference? The missing "S". How many times do you have to be told that the singular of "species" is still "species"?A species. Some species. A subspecies. Some subspecies. Get it, yet? You look like you don't know the first thing about biology when you say "specie" or "subspecie."Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I guess you're right. It's so stupid that I didn't even see that he was doing it.

Elmer -In your view, what would represent an experiment that would test Lamark's hypothesis as you view it?