An open reply to Mark Kennedy

Ok, there is a human brain compared to a chimpanzee's and there is abundant research out there comparing the two in detail.

A. Afarensis with a cranial capacity of ~430cc lived about 3.5 mya.
A. Africanus with a cranial capacity of ~480cc lived 3.3-2.5 mya.
P. aethiopicus with a cranial capacity of 410cc lived about 2.5 mya.
P. boisei with a cranial capacity of 490-530cc lived between 2.3-1.2 mya.
OH 5 'Zinj" with a cranial capacity of 530cc lived 1.8 mya.
KNM ER 406 with a cranial capacity of 510cc lived 1.7 million years ago.

To get right to the point, every one of our ancestors before Turkana Boy had a chimpanzee size brain. Between 2 mya and 1.5 mya the cranial capacity had to at least double which requires the overhaul of genes like HARf that allowed only 2 substitution in over 300 million years, then suddenly there are 18.

I'm not incredulous, I think the chimpanzee ancestors are getting a free ride as hominids. What is more important is that the genes involved in human brain development do not respond well to mutations. Would you like to see a list of beneficial vs. deleterious effects from mutations in human brain related genes?

Give me one good reason that I should trust anything you say?

Trust me when I tell you these debates only prove to me how desperate evolutionists are to attack creationists.

Went through something a lot like that with this whole creation/evolution drama the ivory tower academicians are performing for us. No matter how many times they chant their mantras and make their fallacious, rhetorical speeches to their minions, I still go to the primary sources.

Ok, there is a human brain compared to a chimpanzee's and there is abundant research out there comparing the two in detail.

A. Afarensis with a cranial capacity of ~430cc lived about 3.5 mya.
A. Africanus with a cranial capacity of ~480cc lived 3.3-2.5 mya.
P. aethiopicus with a cranial capacity of 410cc lived about 2.5 mya.
P. boisei with a cranial capacity of 490-530cc lived between 2.3-1.2 mya.
OH 5 'Zinj" with a cranial capacity of 530cc lived 1.8 mya.
KNM ER 406 with a cranial capacity of 510cc lived 1.7 million years ago.

To get right to the point, every one of our ancestors before Turkana Boy had a chimpanzee size brain. Between 2 mya and 1.5 mya the cranial capacity had to at least double which requires the overhaul of genes like HARf that allowed only 2 substitution in over 300 million years, then suddenly there are 18.

I'm not incredulous, I think the chimpanzee ancestors are getting a free ride as hominids. What is more important is that the genes involved in human brain development do not respond well to mutations. Would you like to see a list of beneficial vs. deleterious effects from mutations in human brain related genes?

Incredible....

You simply REFUSE to learn a thing.

Let me explain it AGAIN - what is this, the 25th time over the last 5 years? Maybe one of your YEC pals can comprehend this and explain it to you - maybe you will listen to one of your own.

First of all, got it the first time.

Most importantly, there is a fundamental difference between in indel of on base pair and a million base pairs and you know it.

The pedantic chant is really nothing more then an attempt to get around the fact that the 5 million indels amount to ~90 million base pairs.

~32 Mb of human-specific sequence and ~35 Mb of chimpanzee-specific sequence, contained in 5 million events in each species.

45% of events cover only 1 base pair (bp)
96% are <20 bp and
98.6% are <80 bp)

Now for the part this little mantra of yours does not address, the largest few contain most of the sequence (with the 70,000 indels larger than 80 bp comprising 73% of the affected base pairs)

(Nature, 1 September 2005)

What you seem unwilling or unable to accept is that if these twisted homology arguments are such weighty proof for common ancestry then the inverse logic applies.

Now let me explain to you for the upteen millionth time, when it was 99% the same we are talking about 30 million base pairs, give or take. When the number jumps up to 125 million you are talking about a giant leap in divergence and I really don't care how you rationalize it in you own mind.

If you have an accountant who gets your books wrong by 100 million dollars someone is going to jail but when it's genetics it's ok to be off by that much.

An indel is a one-time event.

Yea, got it the first time.

Regardless of the size of the event. Some indels can be 10s of thousands of bases in length, but it is inserted or deleted all at once.

They do not occur as frequently as point mutations, so they are usually not included in the general mutation rates provided in textbooks, for example.

However, in the paper that you have used as a reference for this for years, indel rates were added to the mix to provide an OVERALL mutation rate.

This rate, correctly, considered indels to be one time events.

But Mark Kennedy, supply clerk, non-geneticist, non-biologist, didn't like that.

I have worked in factories running a wide variety machines from embroidary to multi-million dollar CNC lathes. I have operated equipment from hand jacks to bull dozers. Currently I am a Fueler (92F) for the Army where I am the NCOIC of the fueling operations for this base. I have also been an 88M (transportation spec. 'truck driver') and I was an 88N in Iraq which is more like a dispatcher except I did it at the Division and Core level. I don't really know what you mean by 'supply clerk' but the jobs I have had in factories, warehouses and Army supply points involve spread sheets and PDAs. What that has to this grade school level banter is a mystery to me.

Now getting back to the mutation rate, if I can't you to be honest about the difference between '99% the same in our DNA' and '95% the same' why would I bother with mutation rates?

You don't seem to understand, you have thrown whatever persuasive capitol you had with me away with these fallacious, pedantic arguments long ago. I have not taken these debates seriously for years, for that reason.

No sir.

Mark Kennedy INSISTS that ALL nucleotides within an indel mst be added to the mix.

I insist that they be counted as part of the overall divergence, period.

Which is where his usual employment of the 5% difference comes in

For you see, the 5% refers to an accounting of ALL nucleotides, a raw nucleotide difference. Instead of counting indels as 1 (a one-time mutational event), it incorporates the total number of bases in the indel.

But the 5% difference is not a mutation rate issue, it is merely a counting issue.

Say you and a friend are standing side by side. I hand you a bucket with 10 balls in it. I hand your friend two buckets with 5 balls in each. You both have 10 balls, but your friend has 2 bucketxs, while you have 1.

According to your 'logic', we would have to conclude that your friend has twice as many balls as you.

Nonsense, you want me to accept that a bucket with one ball is that same as a bucket with thousands of balls.

Beyond this, maybe you have heard that steven Pinker has his genome sequenced and it was compared to Craig Venter's. Pinker and Venter differ by more than a million bases.

Your take on mutation rates tells us that it is thus impossible for them both to belong to the same species.

Wrong, my take on the mutation rate is that it is impossible to discuss them on here. When someone says that Chimpanzees and Humans are 99% the same in their DNA they are either mistaken or telling a lie.

This difference corresponds to 3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% difference resulting from nucleotide substitutions; this confirms and extends several recent studies (Nature 2005)

I explained that if one is comparing the entire content of the genome, then the similarity is not 99%, but if you are comparing the sequence identity of coding genes, then the similarity is in the 99% range.

Give me one good reason that I should trust anything you say?

Along the lineage leading to modern humans we infer the gain of 689 genes and the loss of 86 genes since the split from chimpanzees, including changes likely driven by adaptive natural selection. Our results imply that humans and chimpanzees differ by at least 6% (1,418 of 22,000 genes) in their complement of genes, which stands in stark contrast to the oft-cited 1.5% difference between orthologous nucleotide sequences. This genomic “revolving door” of gene gain and loss represents a large number of genetic differences separating humans from our closest relatives.

The Evolution of Mammalian Gene Families. PLoS ONE. December 20, 2006

Trust me when I tell you these debates only prove to me how desperate evolutionists are to attack creationists.

I don't know what you think you are accomplishing with this childish antics but you will never get the chance to talk to real creationists.

Catch you on the rebound Prof and BTW, drop me a PM next time you start a call out thread with my name on it.

This graph clearly shows an overlap in cranium size from one species to the next.

Fun with Hominin Cranial Capacity Datasets (and Excel), Part 2 - The Panda's Thumb

Also, it is obvious that brain development genes can accrue mutations as is clearly shown by the 18 mutations in the HARf gene. You claim that these mutations can not occur, and yet there they are.

Surely if you want to see how much brain size can increased in this time you should look at the larger cranial capacities rather than just the smallest. For example you have
OH 24, "Twiggy", It is about 1.85 million years old and has a brain size of about 590 cc.

This is older than your habilis KNM ER 406 and with a larger brain.
KNM-ER 1805, 1.85 million years old with a cranial capacity of 600 cc.

Again, older than the habilis you quote and with a larger brain
KNM-ER 1470, 1.9 million years but has a cranial capacity of 750 cc
Older still yet its brain is almost one and a half times larger than the habilis you quote.

From the period you quote we also have
KNM-ER 3733, Homo erectus or Homo ergaster 1.7 million years old with a cranial capacity of 850 cc.

Yet we clearly don't have the same brains our therapsid ancestors had, why should a gene that had to be conserved in therapsids continue to be conserved all through its evolution? Why shouldn't there come a time as brains evolve that that gene that needed to be conserved in ancient brains no longer have to be conserved as the structure develops?

Isn't it possible that once our brains started to grow and the larger size was maintained a selective pressure for intelligence, that many of the genes that functioned perfectly in the development of a small australopithcine brain were no longer optimal in a habilis and ergaster brain? Sounds like the kind of circumstances where older forms of genes may no longer be conserved and new variants prove better.

I don't see the relevance of a comparison of beneficial vs. deleterious effects of mutations, for one thing I doubt doctors would often search for genetic reasons why young Jimmy if cleverer than his parents while they will search for reasons if his brain does not function properly. In a highly tuned system there will always be more ways things can go wrong than it can be improved, it does not mean improvements cannot be made. And however many way there are for mutations to be detrimental, they will be selected against, while any beneficial mutations will be selected for.

Clearly, you did not, as I predict (without yet having read the rest of this post) that you will yet again employ an erroneous argument premised on your inability to grasp the facts.

Yes, I do know it - I know that smaller indels occur more often. And all indels occur less often than point mutations. And because indels, regardless of size, orrur less often, you have provided yet another reason why they should not be lumped into the overall mutation rate.

I'm trying to get around nothing.

You seem to be writing somethnig with no clear purpose, for your above statement is irrelevant to your claim about small indels.
If 5 million indels involve 90 million BP of bases, you tell us all how many of them were 'smaller' and how many nucleotides were in them, and thenhow many nucleotides were in the larger ones.

And more importantly, explain to us all why, as you claim to understand that the number of nucleotides in an indel is irrelevant to their actual rate of occurrance, you continue to insisxt that all nucleotides in indels be lumped into the overall mutation rate.

If you actually understand this - as you claim to - then there is no possible rationale fo ryou to continue to insist that the overall myutation rate encompass indels.

Now wait a minute - you wrote before that it is 90 million BPs in 5 million events, now you are saying it is ~64 million bps in 10 million events. If you cannot even keep your arguments consistent within one post, why should anyone trust you on anything else?

You keep making my argument for me and you are too Dunning-Krugerized to realize it.
ONE indel of 80 bps (or more) counts as a SINGLE MUTATION EVENT.

ONE.

Not 80.

Yet you STILL insist, even after laying it our clearly that it should not be, that all 80 nucleotides in an indel of 80 nucleotides shouild count individually in mutation rate calculations!

Do you not?

Yes, you do employ inverse logis, which is to say upside down.

Did YOU not just 'explain' that 90 (or is it 64?) MILLION base pairs worth of nucleotide divergense can be explained by only 5 (or is it 10?) million events?

I would like ot point out that it was above that you yet again have employed the same moronic argument that you have ever since you first trotted it our 5 or more years ago.

You seem unable to learn.

If your accountant makes 100 transactions of one dollar each, then later makes a single transaction of 100 dollars, according to creationist non-accountant Mark Kennedy's inverse logic, the accountant really made 200 transactions.

No, you didn't. You still don't. In fact, you JUST MADE YOUR SAME OLD ARGUMENT in which you insist that ALL nucleotides must be accounted for in the overall mutation rate!

One will note that you avoided addressing the fact that even though you claim to understand that indels are one time events, regardless of their size, that you still think all the nucleotides in them must be counted individually in mutation rates. Which is just plain stupid, frankly, for a person to think.

But since you are a fueler, lets say you pump out 1000 gallons in one day. 500 trucks get one gallon, 1 truck gets 500 gallons. How do you enter that in your logbook? According to your inverse logic, you should enter that you supplied 1 gallon of fuel to 1000 trucks, sincle most of the fuel you dispensed was dispensed 1 gallon at a time to individual trucks...

You are one to talk about honesty...
As I have written about a dozen times (which you either cannot understand or simply avoid reading to maintain your self-righteousness), it depends on what you are comparing and how you are comparing things.

If I have 1000 buckets, 999 with one white ball in each and 1 with 100 red balls, I still only have 1000 buckets.

No?

Now I DO have 1099 balls total, but I still only have 1000 buckets. You keep insisting that I must have 1099 buckets, and consider it 'dishonest' to point out that I only have 1000.

I understand that you wnet into this with preconceived conclusions and interpreted papers that you were truly out of your depth in even reading in the first place as supporting your position, and your massive ego and pride prevented you from acknowledging that you were and are wrong about this.

Remember your antics regarding "mutations" on this very board so many years ago? How you insisted that "mutations" were actually gross morphological anomalies - "monstrosities" as you quoted? And how you insisted that those of us with actual educational backgrounds in science explained that mutations were really alterations in DNA sequence, and you chided us fo rbeing uninformed? And how you eventually relaized that it was really YOU who were wrong and then took to actually copy and pasting online definitions of mutation as if it were US that did not know what they were?

Remeber that?

I do. I bet those posts are still in the archives.

And this is IRRELEVANT as to whether or not evolution occurred!
IT DOES NOT MATTER if we include them in the raw nucleotide divergence, since that does not tell us HOW that change accumulated.

Exactly!

And you know that if we use that type of accounting, ALL species (even individuals within species) are necessarily 'more different' genetically that the other methods indicate. As Pete wrote, it is all relative, which you can't seem to grasp.

IT IS!
It is still one bucket!
You claim to understnad this then you tuirn around and insist they are different!!!

Amazing!

You are like a broken record made of very dense lead.
If you compare the homologous genes, we ARE 99+% identical. If you compare raw nucleotide numbers/sequence, then we are 94-95% identical.

Because I know more about this than you? Because logic is on my side? Because I have presented documentation for this?

I have no reason to trust you.

You are impenetrable to reason or evidence.

Do you think those findings refer ONLY to chimps and humans? You are aware, are you not, that individual humans differ in their numvers and numbers of copies of genes?

But that is different, right?

Childish antics - you mean like claiming in opne part of a post to understand that all of the nucleotides in indels are one time events then later in the same post insisting that the nucleotides in indels muist be counted seperately?

I guess you forgot that when I tried to inform you of this thread in the Christians only forum, your minions whined about it to the mods and the piost was deleted. I guess you forgot that you ignored my posts in the original thread that you were active in.

That is what you do.

Now go puff yourself up in the accolades of your cheerleading fellow YECs who understand science less than you do.

Don't you worry about it though Prof, you will be long dead and face to face with the God you have denied by then.

How can you tell when a creationist has lost the argument? When they resort to thinly veiled threats like the above.