natural selection is wrong

Dear Syamsu,You seem to have totally given up addressing the questions I have asked you, fair enough. What on earth does this mean. How much more direct can I be than pointing out the many failings in understanding you have shown and asking that you either support your claims or accept that you are mistaken. If you addressed any of the questions I had raised about your understanding of science then you would be a lot more credible. Only understandable to you sadly, at least in the ways you have conveyed it so far. Not peculiar, just evolutionary. If you continue to study a populations genetics over many generations then you will be able to see which genes are maintained, which particular individuals contribute is not the issue in evolutionary terms.Are you saying that normally 100% of a population reproduces, i.e. contributes to the next generation genetically? Or do you mean that everything that is alive is a product of reproduction? How the mutants fare in reproduction? Wouldn't that be natural selection? Oh, I forgot, you aren't going to compare them to the other members of the population in terms of reproduction. You are going to see if the mutant can produce viable fertile offspring and then claim that that information alone tells you all you need to know about evolution, how silly of me.Please show how your approach could actually work, you still haven't done this and I think it would be a pretty fundamental requirement for convincing people that your idea has any value whatsoever.TTFN,WK

The many failings of understanding are all in your imagination, just due to you interpreting my writing in terms of your own particular framework of differential reproductive success for explaining things.The filter provides meaningful information whether they reproduce or not, not just when they reproduce.Right, how mutants fare, would not be differential reproductive success of variants, it would be a variant, perhaps a specific function of the variant, which contributes to reproduction in a particular way, what would be of interest. If it so happens that other variants are encroaching on it, then that would be noted as just another environmental factor. I've explained this to you numerous times how it works, that you fail to understand it is simply because you are stuck in your own framework of thought. And what the scientific merit from this framework of thought is seems unclear. The variant swept to fixatiaton. So what. The photosynthesis variant algae had a greater reproductive succes then it's non photosynthesis ancestor. The ratio was 1000/1. So what, so what, so what. Whenever is there any meaningful information produced, like how the photosynthesis trait relates to the environment in terms of reproduction?regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

You do actually know what evolution is don't you? You seem to think it is somehow principally concerned with photsynthesis. Your misunderstanding of important scientific issues is nothing to do with evolution, it is to do with understanding basic things about the science you claim supports your position.If you think any of your examples showed how your theories worked you are wrong, all they served to show was that your methodology does not provide any mechanism to study evolution until you begin comparing the data from different sub-populations, at which point you are simply doing what approaches based around population genetics do.How photosynthesis works has already been explained, how do you propose that your method would have revealed anything about photosynthesis? It is a completely different question and is correctly studied using a different set of tools.TTFN,WK

WK, Not even that, this would involve comparisons "that don't happen in nature". NS happens to individuals, not populations, remember.Mark

That is simply an error in thought, or an error in definition. As by Li's theorem, what is described is growth rates. To think to have explained the origin of say photosynthesis by assuming it's existence, and then having it spread through the population, is empty of reason. (not to mention that it doesn't really spread through a population, but it spreads through the environment, and spreads to new environments other then it's ancestor was in we might suspect). The mutation recombination causes it's existence, it is then "tested" by the environment in terms of reproduction.Of course Darwinists would not think that something as radical a difference as photosynthesis could be arrived at in one mutation, and probably it can't. But why Darwinists think that it can't be arrived at in one radical step is not because of knowledge of the nature of DNA language, the nature of mutation and recombination, but because any radical one step difference would show the method of comparison to be as ridiculous as comparing different species.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Just to refresh your memory. How can you sub-divide a population of 1 individual?It is also specifically stated that Li's theorem can only apply to genes and not to phenotypes.This is yet anothe wholesale misrepresentation of the content of the paper. Rubbish, the source of the variation is irrelevant in terms of NS as long as it is heritable.Things do spread through the population, but over several generations through greater reproductive success, not as if by some sort of infectious transmission, a ridiculous strawman.TTFN,WK

I was just referring to Li's theorem in reference to the fact that it doesn't explain origins, which it doesn't. You have no case again for arguing that I misunderstood, as all your other allegations I misunderstand are also highly dubious and contestable.But thanks for showing people that natural selection doesn't apply to a single individual, which means the theory is basicly inapplicable except for extremely time consuming research of the whole population, which produces mostly meaningless data of changes in variation frequencies that you don't know the working of.I see that you failed to address my point, that comparison would be shown to be ridiculous if the differences are sufficiently great. I read somewhere that they simply don't call it natural selection if the difference is too great. A purely subjective exercise.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Dear Syamsu, If that was supposed to be your point it was particularly innarticulately made. Presumably where you were trying to make that point was where you were saying... Most of which is totally unfounded assertion about why Darwinists think something, which you subsequently allow is probably true, but naturally Darwinists only think it because of their prejudicial approach to evolution. Can you show that evolutionary biologists are unaware of Genetics? I think you will have a hard time.A quite radical one-step difference is quite acceptable, this is yet another ridiculous strawman of your own devising. Whether such mutations actually occur is another question, but if they do they are perfectly amenable to analysis by the methods used to study natural selection. How does the existence of a radical mutation make comparison of reproductive success any less meaningful, provided the variants are still within the same population? Speciation is a pretty specific process, what you are describing is not like speciation and is clearly not analogous to how speciation can occur. New species cannot arise from a single discontinuous mutation in one organism, provided you define a species as a reproductively isolated population.Give us an example of such a great difference, photosynthesis clearly isn;t one, it is easy to think about a population with photosynthesisng and non-photsynthesising variants, in fact we have used this example on discussions on another thread. The only level of difference which gets in the way of these methods is if the differences are such that there is no longer one population with sub populations but two seperate populations, such as when gene flow between the sub populations is cut off for some reason. Most people already knew that natural selection wasn't a phenomenon you could see happening to individuals, it doesn't make the theory inapplicable to what it is intended to do which is indeed to study the populations genetics which can be time consuming, hard to analyse and produce a lot of irrelevant data. The point is that that is how all of science operates, it is time consuming, generates a lot of data irrelevant to your final conclusions and which has to be analysed to find the relevant information and the information is normally only relevant to answer a highly specific question. I'm sorry that you don't like the way science is done, but when you come up with something better I'm sure we will all be glad to hear about it.If your misunderstandings are so contestable why don't you contest them with evidence of your understanding rather than simply with moaning and wailing about how I am casting aspersions on you. Show us it isn't true or stop whingeing about it, ideally you could show us it isn't true and stop whingeing about it but either alone would be acceptable.TTFN,WK

Well you can apply it yes, but traditionally Darwinists don't, because it looks ridiculous, which is why mutationists / saltationists became to known separately from Darwinists. I fail to see why sexual reproduction would make it coherent to compare apples with oranges, to compare reproductionrates of very distinct variants. What would be the difference in reproductionrates if apples and oranges were sexually reproduced or asexually reproduced, in a similar environment?Also Darwinists do apply natural selection to different species, if the species are sufficiently similar, and if they are in the same niche, or some such criteria.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

So you think apples and oranges are two sub-populations with gene flow between them? Apples and oranges are not distinct variants of a species, they are distinct species.You can compare them to highlight differences in various aspects of their biology and which may suggest that one is more suited to particular environmental conditions than the other, their is an entire field of comparative biology, but you can't treat them as one population and expect to see evolution.You could look at competition between species occupying the same niche as a form of natural selection but it is certainly not commonly talked about in this way and it will reveal nothing about evolution occurring in either of the species. The appropriate way to study this would be with population dynamics rather than population genetics.What you seem to be showing now is that rather than not being appropriate for studying evolution a simplified approach to natural selection, i.e. population dynamics rather than genetics, can also be applied to competition between species. This is the case, unforunately it is not the case that population dynamics can be used to study evolution, unless you do it in such a way that it is efectively population genetics.This in a nutshell is what your whole argument has always been. You want to replace population genetics with population dynamics but fail to realise that this removes the ability to say anything meaningful in evolutionary terms, except that an entire population has become extinct.TTFN,WKP.S. We have now gone round full circle. I was countering your ludicrous apples and oranges argument with comparative biology in my first few replies to you the first time I encountered your views, or perhaps it was elephants and ants, I forget exactly which.

I can say the same of your theory, it says nothing about evolution, since the variation is already there. Of course the trick is that you have simply defined evolution as changes in population frequencies, in stead of modification with reproduction. Otherwise we have the same set of data, where I have separate datasets for each variant, where you take all the data together.But compare away, compare same in changed environment, compare same in separate and dissimilar environment, etc. go ahead. There is no need to be prejudicially focused on variants in changed environment. There is actually no logical constraint on the theory to compare plants in Europe with plants in Australia, to calculate the differential reproductive success.The coherency of comparison in the original Darwinist theory, was that these differences in reproductive rates correspond to actual encroachment, where one variant becomes extinct in competition. But in theory sameness is a reason for increased competition, and variation a reason for decreased competition, because variation makes it more likely that the variant is using a different resource then the other variant. It was simply based on a prejudicially contrived scenario where one variant would encroach on another until extinction, as by Malthus.Again, you have mutation which is tested in terms of fitness to reproduce by the environment. Then you already have evolution, at least by one definition of the word. You have no case to uselessly repeat that you can't use the individual theory for evolution.I know we have come full circle again, but you are engaging in wishful thinking if you suppose you have refuted anything. I'm just showing you that the individual view facillitates meaningful reasoning about organisms more, then the population variation comparitive view.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Dear Syamsu,Mutation alone is not evolution. You cannot therefore have evolution in an individual. Even looking at 2 successive parent-offspring individuals and their individual numbers of viable offspring, rather tha reproductive success since you can't know how successful it is without comparison, in which the filial generation individual has a mutation shows you nothing about evolution. You can't see anything about evolution utnil you look at the context and a large part of that context is the other members of the population and their comparative reproductive success. Presumably another of your own idiosyncratic definitions, unless you'ld care to furnish me with a reference. Except that you have never shown any way it could be used. the fact that you are measuring the same thing means nothing since you give up on the data at a point before you can reach any conclusions meaningful to evolution. The data you would be collecting could be useful, your view of them is not. Well I haven't noticed you showing that at any point. You have said it often but you have never showed it even once. I have pointed out to you that A) in terms of evolution looking at the individual is not only not more useful but is in fact lunacy, and B) No area of biology focus on single instances, they use observations of many instances to allow useful generalisations to be made. Textbooks may not therefore draw attention to instances of variation, but only beacause it has been taken into account in the methodology used to produce the data initially.If you knew there was a hitherto unknown population of organisms and managed to capture 1 are you seriously telling me that you believe you would learn as much about that population from 1 individual as you would from a sample of 100? The individual could be a totally non-representative mutant after all.I'm not saying that you would learn 100 times as much from 100 individuals but at least you would have several confirmations of things you had observed in the first instance to allow you to make some reasonable generalisations about the population. As long as you controlled all the other variables then no, there is no reason why you couldn't do this as an experiment. It wouldn't make sense to do it in an uncontrolled environment because you wouldn't know what other factors were affecting reprodcutive success. If you understood experimental design then you would understand the concept.TTFN,WK

It's the other way around, you are the one who talks as though individuals are evolving, by saying the variant spreads through the population, and saying things like the individuals in the population have become more adapted, and things like that. Mutation, recombination is clearly separate in the individual view, which is not so clear when you start with variation being already present, in stead of starting with mutation.I'm referring to the definition of evolution as modification with descent, which is the most common definition of evolution still, eventhough people would like to change that meaning to get them out of a formulation mess.... What if we just called it variationfrequency changes? That would certainly put a damper on the pretense for the theory to have explained origin of species. A pretense which is simply false, as everyone knows, because you also need mutation for that.I've shown it in the previous post by showing that you can easily get from the individual view to comparison of same, to comparison of same in separate environments, to comparison of variants in differing environments etc. and why not, let's also include differential reproductive success of variants in a changed environment. Natural selection just one of many possible permutations of an individual theory.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Dear Syamsu,You seem now to be retreating and retreating making wilder and wilder accusations both about me "saying things like the individuals in the population have become more adapted" and about evolution in general, changing desccent with modification to modification with descent doesn't help your case, descent has to be followed over more than 1 generation if you are hoping to show evolution. You seem to be saying that any mutation which produces a viable offspring is evolution, I will admit this is an arguable position, unfortuantely it doesn't help your own argument as population genetics will reflect this mutation when a new genotype appears in the sampled population.An individual from a later generation may be better adapted to its environment than its ancestors, what is controversial about that? If you think I said that adaption of one individual within its lifetime was evolution I think you will need to provide a chapter and verse reference for quite such an outrageous lie about what I said. The point is that your 'individual theory' doesn't explain anything, it is simply looking whether one specific organism reproduces or not, you don't even seem interested in how many offspring it has in case it leads to invidious comparisons. Why not simplify your theory further to demonstrate how being able to count to 1 is all that is needed to study evolution, provided you are prepared to do it an awful lot and do an awful lot of analysis afterwards, but that is all secondary, counting to 1 is all that evolution really boils down to.You have yet to show any use for your 'individual theory' which isn't simply the most rudimentary form of population dynamics. If there is a problem with Natural selection as a way of studying the evolution of photsynthesis then how would your theory obviate the problem, I'm interested in how the evolution of chloroplasts is going to be done just by counting to 1.TTFN,WK

It's not an outrageous lie, the literal meaning in standard theory indicate individuals are evolving, it is just not the intended meaning. I doubt you would let me get away with using deceptive literal meaning like that.The individual approach would avoid the problem of incoherency of natural selection theory, when for instance a photosynthesis mutant might go into a completely separate environment then it's ancestor, by it's mutation. Incoherency to the point of variants sharing an environment, to the point of the variants competing, to the point of the environment being similar to each variant, to the point of the change being gradual, to the point of variation pre-existing an envrionmental change rather then a mutation applying to a pre-existing environment.As before, Darwin's theory was prejudicially conceived as a Malthusian replacement theory, the "best" reproduce, survival of the fittest / death of the less fit.The use of the individual theory is mainly to describe the reproductioncycle of organisms, which is the mainstay of biology already. Evolution would be, mutation, reproductioncycle, mutation, reproductioncycle, mutation, reproductioncycle.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu