Responding to Justa's Comments On Evolution

[The Cadet]

@Justatruthseeker

For some reason, the threads we are discussing these points in keep on getting closed, due to reasons not related to this particular discussion. So let's try to keep this one clean, friendly, and apologetics-free, shall we?

Continuing from http://www.christianforums.com/thre...evolution-theory.7899160/page-4#post-68360186

No you showed me dozens of papers that shows it happens by transcription - rewriting what "already existed" within the genome into new dominant and recessive traits. Nothing new was created - only what already existed was written into a new format

This is simply not true. This paper deals with the evolution of, you guessed it, novel genes. It's not something that previously existed in any meaningful way. This paper specifically discusses pathways of enzyme evolution through gene duplication and divergence; if you want to classify that as "rewriting what already existed within the genome", then literally any change to the genome can be seen as "rewriting", and your complain is completely meaningless to the theory of evolution. It also references this paper, which is a discussion of the evolution of a novel pesticide degradation pathway via, you guessed it, gene duplication and mutation.

Again, I really feel the need to stress this. If we allow for gene duplication, random mutation, and gene deletion, then at a fundamental level, there is no change to the genome this could not account for. In nature, that's not always quite how it works (we don't get to duplicate and change at will, and there are other issues like horizontal gene transfer and frame shift mutations), but one way or another, you are simply wrong, and you're ignoring essentially all the progress made in genetics since 1970.

This ties back into another thing where I think we're talking past each other. If I have the string "CATG", is changing that string into "CATGGCAT" an increase in information?

what occurs naturally when breed mates with breed producing new breeds. As we observe in actual reproduction where Asian mates with African and produces an Afro-Asian. All done by the recombination of genes and new dominant and recessive traits.

And yet, the traits have to get there somehow.

The appearance in the record is sudden. Just as a correct interpretation of the fossil record shows you.

The appearance of distinction in the fossil record comes from both the relative rarity of fossilization and from the concept of punctuated equilibria. It is not because two breeds spontaneously crossbreed into one. That doesn't even make sense - why would that lead to a sudden emergence of such traits? Why would every member of one "breed" suddenly decide to crossbreed with some noteworthy other breed?

And yet you can't show me where the Chameleon or hundreds of other creatures are mutating on a continuous basis to change it's color. You are ignoring a natural function, the same trait in the moth - a trait that already exists written into a new format. Black to white - white to black - it is just dominant and recessive traits.

The Chameleon's color change is in no way relevant to the discussion of the peppered moth. They are fundamentally different issues. The chameleon's skin color change is a result of specialized pigmentation cells that can be contracted or expanded to show various colors. This has nothing to do with the point mutation that led to melanism in the peppered moth. And by the way? This was not a recessive or dominant trait in the past. This was a novel trait within the peppered moth population. It was sourced back to a single point mutation. Melanism occurs fairly often (much like albinism) and can spread through the population, but it was not something usually present within the peppered moth genome before this mutation. That's the whole point of that article in Nature I keep linking to.

We agree - Adam lived no more than a few thousands of years ago, you agree the fossil record shows this

I'm not talking about Adam. I'm talking about Confucius.

No, seriously, this is important to realize. Confucius is almost certainly your direct ancestor, almost certainly my direct ancestor, and almost certainly the direct ancestor of almost every single human alive today. Going just a little further back, to the egyptian kings, and it is even more likely that they are the direct ancestor of every human alive today. Geneology is an interesting field, and while I will admit that I have no expertise therein, it is widely concluded that the most recent human common ancestor is very recent. This does not mean that the most recent human common ancestor was the only human alive!

so why do you resist the logical conclusion? Or goes back to a point where he did not exist before?

Fun fact: last generation, the most recent common ancestor was not necessarily the same person. As certain lineages die out, and others spread, the MRCA slips further and further forward into the recorded past. Within a few thousand years, it's entirely reasonable to assume that Charlemagne will be the direct ancestor of every human alive today. Within a few more thousand, you or I will almost certainly either be the direct ancestor of every human alive today, or our lineages will have died out. This is how geneology works, and while it is counterintuitive, I will freely admit, the models backing it up have quite a bit of predictive power.

Maybe you would be willing to concede that birds that interbreed and produce fertile offspring are not separate species?

I have already stated in the past that my expertise on the subject is lacking, and there is no scientific consensus one way or another. I do in fact lean towards them not being separate species. But as I have also stated several times, the classification of species is a Victorian one, one with some significant problems given what we now know about biology. It's the typical problem of trying to point out where in the rainbow "blue" ends and "violet" begins, and needing to draw a solid box around it.

Maybe when you stop trying to uphold incorrect classifications,

There's a reason we talk about clades, rather than orders, genuses, or classes for the most part in modern taxonomy. The old taxonomy is largely being phased out, on account of the problems it has. It's still useful as a modeling tool, but it has numerous serious problems that must be recognized when it is applied. This does not automatically make any classification made incorrect.

Then again, I'm not sure how well you understand cladistics.

Until then your ignoring the facts and the world around you just tells me you care little about the actual science, and your unwillingness to admit to mistakes...

It is at this point that it is perhaps relevant to point out that you have never published your hypothesis in the peer-reviewed literature, that everything we know about genetics (and numerous papers I have cited) undermine one of the more crucial points of it, that your hypothesis falls prey to the same issue of mutations propagating through populations that mine does, and that the list of biologists who accept your hypothesis of an inverted tree of life is similar to the list of genealogists who accept a literal Adam and Eve.

When I make mistakes, I cop to them (for example, my example with CAT->CAGT; I did not make it explicit enough that there was no expansion of the available alphabet going on, and I have said on numerous occasions that I retract this example in favor of more well-formed ones). But I see numerous very significant misunderstandings of, among other things, pigmentation, genealogy, gene duplications, cladistics, and information theory. So I'd appreciate it if you addressed the counterarguments.

 

[whois]

unfortunately, none of the papers you cited provide any empirical evidence for the theories proposed
here is what maynard smith had to say about the situation in 1993:
www.researchgate.net/publication/15314671_The_major_evolutionary_transitions

 

[Justatruthseeker]

@Justatruthseeker

For some reason, the threads we are discussing these points in keep on getting closed, due to reasons not related to this particular discussion. So let's try to keep this one clean, friendly, and apologetics-free, shall we?

And they are closed every time because the evolutionists purposefully get them closed so they don't have to attempt to respond to the science. It isn't the creationists that are doing it and we both know it. So if there is a problem, I suggest you take that up with your fellow evolutionists who do so because they don't like where the threads are going.

Continuing from http://www.christianforums.com/thre...evolution-theory.7899160/page-4#post-68360186

It is all true - you know it as well as I do. You are simply now in a state of denial.

This is simply not true. This paper deals with the evolution of, you guessed it, novel genes. It's not something that previously existed in any meaningful way. This paper specifically discusses pathways of enzyme evolution through gene duplication and divergence; if you want to classify that as "rewriting what already existed within the genome", then literally any change to the genome can be seen as "rewriting", and your complain is completely meaningless to the theory of evolution. It also references this paper, which is a discussion of the evolution of a novel pesticide degradation pathway via, you guessed it, gene duplication and mutation.

First let's link to the entire article, instead of just a couple sentences of it shall we?

http://www.bath.ac.uk/bio-sci/hejmadi/BB30055/gene evol nrg1204.pdf

"Sources of new genes

Exon shuffling.
Two or more exons from different genes can be brought together ectopically, or the same exon can be duplicated, to create a new exon–intron structure."

Followed by a list of all the processes known.

So once again we find we are simply taking what already existed and writing it in a new format. The only thing that isn't true is your claim what I said isn't true. When you haven't ever read more of the paper than the summary on the link you provided, because you didn't have a clue as to how those genes were duplicated. The very last one showing your futility in trying to claim 98% of the genome is non-coding DNA.

Every single one of those processes listed takes what already exists and transcribes it into new dominant and recessive traits. Nothing new was ever created - just a rearrangement or duplication of what already existed.

Every other comment you had is also based upon your false belief that new genes arise from nothing. I'll repeat it again because you never bothered to read a single paper of any of those presented except the two paragraph summary - so you thought they actually supported your claims. Until we get down to the real data and find it's merely pre-existing genes written into new formats - new dominant and recessive traits.

But go ahead - throw in some more papers you have never read that link to just a summary - and I will gladly find the entire paper for you and show you where in each and every one what existed was simply written into a new dominant or recessive trait.

As for your moths, you apparently also didn't read that article.

"The locations of the genes for the traits pointed to a narrow region on chromosome 17, where the scientists say that a single gene variant is probably responsible for the peppered moth's melanism, although they don't yet know exactly which one it is."

Probably, maybe - although we don't actually know which genes is responsible - and therefore if one was honest - how it is done. Except probable a single gene variant - can we say once again - transcription - rewriting what already existed into a new dominant or recessive trait.


And then they are hitchhiking as he puts it because he's too scared to say Horizontal Gene Transfer and all that would imply.

""It's not just the one mutation that has been swept through the population, it's that whole chunk of chromosome that has hitch-hiked," says Saccheri."

Too scared to put the truth out there on the table for all to see, instead trying to cover up the fact they don't know anything yet, it's all probably and maybes - and not even the gene - or it's true cause identified yet. That it's all just conjecture and wishful dreams in that attempt to get their names in the books.

You got nothing but what I already told you - the transcription of WHAT ALREADY EXISTED.

And no matter which paper you care to link to that is only a paragraph - I will gladly look up the entire paper and show you in each and every case it is from what already existed written into a new dominant or recessive trait. Nothing more, nothing less.

And now you know why the evolutionists will always purposefully get the threads closed when the science starts speaking against you.

 

[whois]

And now you know why the evolutionists will always purposefully get the threads closed when the science starts speaking against you.

the last thread was most likely closed because we just can't have scientists such as koonin running amok, slapping darwin in the face.

 

[The Cadet]

And they are closed every time because the evolutionists purposefully get them closed so they don't have to attempt to respond to the science. It isn't the creationists that are doing it and we both know it. So if there is a problem, I suggest you take that up with your fellow evolutionists who do so because they don't like where the threads are going.

I did not name names or make accusations. I humbly request you do the same.

First let's link to the entire article, instead of just a couple sentences of it shall we?

http://www.bath.ac.uk/bio-sci/hejmadi/BB30055/gene evol nrg1204.pdf

Thank you. I could not find the fulltext of the article, although admittedly I didn't look very hard. But this doesn't help your case.

"Sources of new genes

Exon shuffling.
Two or more exons from different genes can be brought together ectopically, or the same exon can be duplicated, to create a new exon–intron structure."

Followed by a list of all the processes known.

Let's look at the entire article, instead of just a couple sentences of it, shall we? Like, you know, the table immediately below the statement you quoted. There's exon shuffling, and transposons, and horizontal gene transfer, and all the typical things you like to bring up... But also mentioned on the list (the second item):

"Gene Duplication: classic model of duplication with divergence". There's also retroposition, where a sequence is duplicated and inserted elsewhere in the genome. Your list of known processes does indeed include exon shuffling. I do not deny that that plays a substantial role in evolution. But it also clearly and definitively states that many gene duplicates have probably evolved new functions. But according to you, this doesn't happen. Or am I misinterpreting your position?

Every single one of those processes listed takes what already exists and transcribes it into new dominant and recessive traits. Nothing new was ever created - just a rearrangement or duplication of what already existed.

...But with rearrangement, mutation, and duplication of "01", you can get to "0110101110110" or "0101000001101100011001010110000101110011011001010010000001001100011001010110000101110010011011100010000001010111011010000110000101110100001000000100100101101110011001100110111101110010011011010110000101110100011010010110111101101110001000000100100101110011" or to "the contents of Skyrim.exe". This is the crucial thing you seem to be missing, and which I keep trying to help you understand. If you take a list of characters and duplicate it, you have now doubled your information content. If you are then allowed to change literally every letter in the second list of characters, you could very easily come up with completely novel information.

Let me put this simply. In order for the first organisms to have the genetic material to account for every possible gene that gene duplication followed by point mutation could create, it would have to have literally infinite genetic material. But here's the thing - the same is true of each of its ancestors, as any of their progeny's genomes could hypothetically produce any string of "CAGT" through duplication and point mutation.

I'm just sort of wondering what is missing here. You seem to accept that genes are duplicated. Do you reject that point mutations exist? I'd like to think that you don't reject point mutations, but if that's the problem, it would explain a whole lot.

Every other comment you had is also based upon your false belief that new genes arise from nothing.

But duplication+mutation is most certainly not nothing! I have no idea where that came from at all!

But go ahead - throw in some more papers you have never read that link to just a summary - and I will gladly find the entire paper for you and show you where in each and every one what existed was simply written into a new dominant or recessive trait.

Combined mechanisms. New genes can be created by the mechanisms discussed above, either individually or in combination, as in the case of jingwei, which was the first young gene to be described (BOX 1,2). The origin of jingwei has highlighted the creative roles of several molecular processes acting in combination: exon shuffling, retroposition and gene duplication. In jingwei, all of these molecular mechanisms were identified by sequence and functional comparison, taking advantage of the similarity between jingwei and its parental genes.

This is not the only young gene system that has been directly observed. Other examples are the sphinx gene 23,24 and the Sdic gene 22, which are both present in the single Drosophila species Drosophila melanogaster, and so are younger than the divergence time between D. melanogaster and its sibling species, no more than 3 million years ago. Like jingwei, sphinx was also created by retroposition, in this case from the ATP synthase F gene, which recruited nearby intron and exon sequences to form a standard chimeric structure. sphinx also evolved rapidly (FIG. 1). Besides exon shuffling and retroposition, a mobile element (S element) participated in the creation of a new splice site and coding region of the sphinx gene. Further examples of new genes in Drosophila and other organisms can be found in TABLE 2

Kimura extended the classical model in an effort to describe how gene duplicates could acquire new functions and ultimately be preserved in a lineage. In this model, after gene duplication, PURIFYING SELECTION against deleterious mutations is relaxed on one or both copies of the gene; this is attributable to the extra sheltering of recessive mutations when there are extra copies of a locus. Consequently, mutations that would normally be eliminated by selection could accumulate at one or both loci. In most cases, the fixation of null alleles results in the loss of one copy; however, under certain conditions, such as environmental change, some of the mutant alleles that encode a new function could become beneficial and therefore be preserved by natural selection.

On page 6 there is a table of new genes with known age. Before you accuse me of not reading the paper, please read it yourself and examine the conclusions it reaches. Thank you again for finding the fulltext for me - it's considerably more damning.

As for your moths, you apparently also didn't read that article.

"The locations of the genes for the traits pointed to a narrow region on chromosome 17, where the scientists say that a single gene variant is probably responsible for the peppered moth's melanism, although they don't yet know exactly which one it is."

Probably, maybe - although we don't actually know which genes is responsible - and therefore if one was honest - how it is done. Except probable a single gene variant - can we say once again - transcription - rewriting what already existed into a new dominant or recessive trait.

You are mistaking the careful language of scientific discourse for a complete lack of knowledge. The narrow range involved makes it extremely likely that the culprit is a point mutation.

And then they are hitchhiking as he puts it because he's too scared to say Horizontal Gene Transfer and all that would imply.

Why would one even suspect horizontal gene transfer in this case? I'll be honest, I don't know enough about the case to say one way or another. What I can do is send him an email about it. What I can say is that this:

Too scared to put the truth out there on the table for all to see, instead trying to cover up the fact they don't know anything yet, it's all probably and maybes - and not even the gene - or it's true cause identified yet. That it's all just conjecture and wishful dreams in that attempt to get their names in the books.

Is nothing but baseless slander and absolutely not useful to this discussion.

Also, no comments on genealogy?

 

[whois]

...But with rearrangement, mutation, and duplication of "01", you can get to "0110101110110" or "0101000001101100011001010110000101110011011001010010000001001100011001010110000101110010011011100010000001010111011010000110000101110100001000000100100101101110011001100110111101110010011011010110000101110100011010010110111101101110001000000100100101110011" or to "the contents of Skyrim.exe". This is the crucial thing you seem to be missing, and which I keep trying to help you understand. If you take a list of characters and duplicate it, you have now doubled your information content. If you are then allowed to change literally every letter in the second list of characters, you could very easily come up with completely novel information.

nice analogy, but i believe justas complaint is "where did the original one and zero come from".
additionally gene expression is by a fixed number of base pairs, if i'm not mistaken, 3.
mixing these up by transposons can result in different genes, but it still doesn't introduce any new information.
in order to do that, using your analogy above, you would need to add another number, in this case it would be 2, to get 0,1,2.

like maynard stated, there is no empirical evidence of this increase nor is there any theory that would explain how it would occur.
this is probably the primary reason science has concluded life most likely arose from a pool of organisms instead of just one.
i can see no other alternative to why science would conclude such a thing.

 

[essentialsaltes]

mixing these up by transposons can result in different genes, but it still doesn't introduce any new information.

If we are using a definition of information that is similar to that in information theory, then the appearance of 'different genes' is equivalent to 'new information'.

in order to do that, using your analogy above, you would need to add another number, in this case it would be 2, to get 0,1,2.

No, no, no. With just zeros and ones, you can say anything. The information is not in the zero, or in the one. The information is in the pattern of zeros and ones. When the pattern changes, new information is created.

 

[The Cadet]

nice analogy, but i believe justas complaint is "where did the original one and zero come from".

Which is rather irrelevant for evolution, and is covered by abiogenesis. It's not necessarily a subject I have any expertise on, nor one which I feel has been solved to any meaningful degree.

additionally gene expression is by a fixed number of base pairs, if i'm not mistaken, 3.
mixing these up by transposons can result in different genes, but it still doesn't introduce any new information.
in order to do that, using your analogy above, you would need to add another number, in this case it would be 2, to get 0,1,2.

Not really. A codon consists of three base pairs, this is correct. And if you change their order, or shift the frame, you can get different genes. But if you don't want to consider that "new information", gene duplication is absolutely a thing that happens.
You don't need a different base pair from the ones you already have.

"01" -> "01010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101010101" is a bunch of duplication events. It is also an increase in information. Because when we mutate that, we can get "01110010011001010111000001101100011010010110001101100001", which is a very different code from "01".

I challenged previously that if anyone can demonstrate that "01" has the same information content as "01110010011001010111000001101100011010010110001101100001", and they can provide me the theorem, then I will write the program, and we can split the profits something like 90/10 or 99/1 (with me getting the small end), as you have crafted a program that can compress literally any data file to two bits of data, which would be one of the most incredible discoveries in all of computer science. Of course, I use "incredible" in the sense of "impossible to believe", because it's actually impossible to do. As in: "I'm pretty sure someone who didn't flunk his math classes could mathematically prove that this is impossible".

So, to take this analogy back to its roots, with the help of this handy-dandy graphic:

(Yes, I'm aware of the shift from RNA to DNA, however, it's not a relevant distinction for this argument.)

"ACG CUU UAG" -> "ACG CUU UAG ACG CUU UAG" is a direct duplication of three codons, including the termination codon. It codes for Threonin+Leucin, and will produce that protein twice. It is also an increase in information. Because when we mutate that, we can get "ACG CUU GAG ACG CUU UAG", which, going from our basis, is a completely novel string. Now instead of Threonin+Leucin twice, we instead have Threonin+Leucin+Glutamate+Threonin+Leucin. Or we could mutate it into "ACG CUU UAG ACG CGG UAG", which codes for Threonin+Leucin, and also for Arginine+Leucin (for example, if the Threonin+Leucin protein was highly conserved). Either way, it's a novel protein not present in the original substrate.

And again, same challenge. If you can show that "ACG CUU UAG ACG CUU UAG" has the same information content as "ACG CUU UAG", then it's very trivial to generalize from an alphabet of 4 to an alphabet of 2, as you can simply do this:
00 = A
01 = U
10 = G
11 = C
And instead of going from "ACG CUU UAG" to "ACG CUU UAG ACG CUU UAG", you're going from "001110 110101 010010" to "001110 110101 010010 001110 110101 010010".

...Seriously, guys. Gene duplication leads to an increase in information. If it didn't, I wouldn't need a 1TB hard drive, and I wouldn't be complaining about how small my 256GB SSD is. We don't need to somehow add the Z/Q base pair in order to increase information.

like maynard stated, there is no empirical evidence of this increase nor is there any theory that would explain how it would occur.

Gene duplication and point mutations. Both extremely well-documented. Here's just one example. Here's quite a few. Not sure which Maynard you are referring to; did he die before 1970 (when Ohno published his famous paper on gene duplication)? If not, he's decades behind the times.

 

[The Cadet]

If we are using a definition of information that is similar to that in information theory,

We are using that definition in this thread, at least to my knowledge. If anyone wants to use a different definition, please use a different word, as "information" has a clear definition in mathematics and science, and using it to describe something else is confusing, unnecessary, and very likely to lead to equivocation fallacies.

 

[whois]

regardless of what anyone says, you can only get 64 possible combinations from 3 sets of 4 possibilities.
you can't "just add" more bit positions, doing so represents the start of the next gene, and it too can be only one of the previous 64 mentioned.
another thing, you can't add just one position, you need to add 6, every addition MUST be a group of six bits, and each one will be one of the original 64 possible.

maynard states in his paper that this "increase" was probably due to how information is stored and retrieved, NOT by the addition of "new" information.

it's quite apparent that genes do not "evolve" in the darwinian sense, but be added already formed, there can't be a "half gene".

how this all came about is anyones guess, even science hasn't got a plausible scenario, regardless of what you might think otherwise.

 

[essentialsaltes]

regardless of what anyone says, you can only get 64 possible combinations from 3 sets of 4 possibilities.

Regardless of what anyone says, you can only get 26 possible letters from 26 possible letters.

The important thing is that different patterns of those letters generate new information.

Different patterns of nucleotides produce new information.

With 0s and 1s, or As Gs Ts and Cs, with As through Zs.... with any of these systems you can encode anything. New patterns produce new information. And this happens all the time.

 

[whois]

Regardless of what anyone says, you can only get 26 possible letters from 26 possible letters.

The important thing is that different patterns of those letters generate new information.

Different patterns of nucleotides produce new information.

With 0s and 1s, or As Gs Ts and Cs, with As through Zs.... with any of these systems you can encode anything. New patterns produce new information. And this happens all the time.

you apparently know nothing bytes and bits and how these are organized in computer systems.
there are only 64 possible combinations from a 3 place base pair, period.
you will never get half of a combination, these must ALWAYS be added in discreet sets and each set WILL be one of the original 64.
with a 3 base pair gene, you will never store any more than 64 combinations unless you add another 3 pair combination.
it's this addition that produces new information, and this is what has no theory nor empirical proof according to smith.
this is also the probable reason (i can think of 2) science has concluded that life arose from a pool of organisms.
the other probability is that there is indeed a unique origin to each lifeform.
either way, science does not believe life arose from a single source.

 

[The Cadet]

regardless of what anyone says, you can only get 64 possible combinations from 3 sets of 4 possibilities.

I'll do you one better: there are only 22 amino acids. Human only use 21 of them. Forget 64, that would just be madness - so much variance!

Now, as for your statement, it is true. There are a limited number of possible amino acids that any given codon can code for. However, the crucial things in our bodies are not the individual amino acids. The crucial things are the protein strings that are formed out of that, and those can get pretty long. For example, the Titin protein is at minimum around 27,000 amino acids long. Now consider that you have 22 possible amino acids, and you start to see how huge the number of possible combinations gets.

you can't "just add" more bit positions, doing so represents the start of the next gene, and it too can be only one of the previous 64 mentioned.

You're talking about a codon. A codon is a sequence of three base pairs that codes for a specific amino acid. A gene is made up of a series of codons that splices those amino acids into a protein. As a result, a gene can be as long as it needs to be. You can "just add" more bit positions (codons), because there's not really much of a practical limit on how long a protein can be (as said, the largest is between 27,000 and 33,000 amino acids long). This is very basic genetics; this is not a mistake you should be making.

maynard states in his paper that this "increase" was probably due to how information is stored and retrieved, NOT by the addition of "new" information.

Like I said previously, I don't know who Maynard is or what his research was; if you're going to cite research, please actually cite it. Either with a link, or some unique identifier I can use to Google it (name of article, name of author, and journal published would probably suffice). In any case, Maynard is almost certainly wrong.

it's quite apparent that genes do not "evolve" in the darwinian sense, but be added already formed, there can't be a "half gene".

It's called gene duplication and it's well understood. I don't know why you keep using "darwinian" as a term. It's not a scientific term, it does not describe any portion of the modern evolutionary synthesis and it's not particularly useful. I have no idea what "evolve in the darwinian sense" means. And I'll grant that when a new gene is added to the genome, it's typically already fully formed. It's a copy of a previously existing gene, or a transposon, and I think there are like one or two other mechanisms. It can then mutate into something different, which is how novel information is added (information was already added just through duplication, but it wasn't anything novel so to speak).

how this all came about is anyones guess, even science hasn't got a plausible scenario, regardless of what you might think otherwise.

1970. The landmark work on this was published in 1970. The idea that we don't know this stuff is nonsense. I've been citing articles that show that we know it in great detail throughout this entire thread! Justa just posted a fulltext link to a paper which is virtually a high-school level primer on how this stuff works. If I had to guess, I'd say it was intentionally written to explain this to people who aren't particularly well-versed in the subject of genetics. Give it a read, it might be enlightening. It really helped me visualize some of the concepts I was still a little unclear on.

We know much more than you think we do. I'm perfectly willing to look at this paper by Maynard if you think it relevant, but you really should at least try to read the rest of the thread before you state that we don't know something when it's already been explained upthread how we know it.

 

[The Cadet]

Probably, maybe - although we don't actually know which genes is responsible - and therefore if one was honest - how it is done. Except probable a single gene variant - can we say once again - transcription - rewriting what already existed into a new dominant or recessive trait.


And then they are hitchhiking as he puts it because he's too scared to say Horizontal Gene Transfer and all that would imply.

""It's not just the one mutation that has been swept through the population, it's that whole chunk of chromosome that has hitch-hiked," says Saccheri."

Too scared to put the truth out there on the table for all to see, instead trying to cover up the fact they don't know anything yet, it's all probably and maybes - and not even the gene - or it's true cause identified yet. That it's all just conjecture and wishful dreams in that attempt to get their names in the books.

My response at the time was:

Why would one even suspect horizontal gene transfer in this case? I'll be honest, I don't know enough about the case to say one way or another. What I can do is send him an email about it. What I can say is that this:

Is nothing but baseless slander and absolutely not useful to this discussion.

Well, now I have a better answer.

...In retrospect, I probably should have googled genetic hitchhiking before wasting the man's valuable time. However, in retrospect, you really should have googled genetic hitchhiking before accusing the man of scientific fraud (a hefty accusation which, I feel the need to point out, runs pretty close to the premises of several existing libel cases, such as that of Dr. Andrew Weaver, except that this is a forum rather than a newspaper or blog site).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_hitchhiking

 

[essentialsaltes]

you apparently know nothing bytes and bits and how these are organized in computer systems.

Is that so? Since you're an expert, maybe you can help me out then. I'm having computer troubles.

I have a hard drive that holds 1 TB of information. Currently there's a 750 GB video on it. I wanted to make an identical copy of it in the same folder, but the operating system said the drive didn't have enough room for that! But if making identical copies of things adds no information, why would that be true?

 

[Phenotype]

The Cadet is doing a fine job of explaining how genetic novelty can arise, hence mutation, which may be selected for, agency in the process of evolution by natural selection through subsequent ongoing adaptation to new environmental conditions through natural selection and/or sexual selection.

I want to say something else about creationism. The notion that life on planet Earth goes back only 6,000 years is a howler. It wouldn't make any difference if the majority of Americans did subscribe to it. That says everything about them and nothing about the account of life, which is now known, has been since the mid 18th century, since Charles Darwin.

So what's really going on, one has to ask? Arguing genetics to prop up creationism is a major distraction. Creationism is not about science at all. It is antagonistic to science, which is based in empiricism and falsifiability.

This is really not about taking the bible literally as stating the account of cosmic and biological origins and set boundaries within species.

Creationism is something else besides science. It parades itself as science through its popular promulgators. Creationism is apologetics.

No Adam and Eve, no Fall (exercising freedom and curiosity there, how naughty), no sin nature transferred to all their offspring (apparently through the male's sperm, though in Islam women get characterised as seductresses), what next?

The unthinkable consequence of evolution means that Calvary was completely pointless. Atonement is all bollocks. No sin nature, no Absolute God to have to get acceptable with. So there was no Christ Our Saviour. And there is no evidence from validated sources there was even a historical Jesus.

They didn't know about evolution, genetics, molecular biology, paleontology, geology etc. etc. when the agglomeration of writings now called 'the bible' was gathered together. If Paul had have had access to modern education, very likely he would have been an enlightened bloke too.

Transcend the dark ages. Think critically. Get yourself educated. Creationism is desperate apologetics looking more and more ludicrous with every passing day. Noah's ark. It beggars belief that people in a developed country really believe this ancient mythology, which today is tripe.

Creationism is deployed to prop up the whole sorry Christian/bible edifice.

 

[bhsmte]

subscribing for the; LOL's

 

[Oncedeceived]

The Cadet is doing a fine job of explaining how genetic novelty can arise, hence mutation, which may be selected for, agency in the process of evolution by natural selection through subsequent ongoing adaptation to new environmental conditions through natural selection and/or sexual selection.

I want to say something else about creationism. The notion that life on planet Earth goes back only 6,000 years is a howler. It wouldn't make any difference if the majority of Americans did subscribe to it. That says everything about them and nothing about the account of life, which is now known, has been since the mid 18th century, since Charles Darwin.

So what's really going on, one has to ask? Arguing genetics to prop up creationism is a major distraction. Creationism is not about science at all. It is antagonistic to science, which is based in empiricism and falsifiability.

This is really not about taking the bible literally as stating the account of cosmic and biological origins and set boundaries within species.

Creationism is something else besides science. It parades itself as science through its popular promulgators. Creationism is apologetics.

No Adam and Eve, no Fall (exercising freedom and curiosity there, how naughty), no sin nature transferred to all their offspring (apparently through the male's sperm, though in Islam women get characterised as seductresses), what next?

The unthinkable consequence of evolution means that Calvary was completely pointless. Atonement is all bollocks. No sin nature, no Absolute God to have to get acceptable with. So there was no Christ Our Saviour. And there is no evidence from validated sources there was even a historical Jesus.

They didn't know about evolution, genetics, molecular biology, paleontology, geology etc. etc. when the agglomeration of writings now called 'the bible' was gathered together. If Paul had have had access to modern education, very likely he would have been an enlightened bloke too.

Transcend the dark ages. Think critically. Get yourself educated. Creationism is desperate apologetics looking more and more ludicrous with every passing day. Noah's ark. It beggars belief that people in a developed country really believe this ancient mythology, which today is tripe.

Creationism is deployed to prop up the whole sorry Christian/bible edifice.

Simple assertions, anti-religion bias and a lack of understanding about creation and creationists. Creationists are basically those who believe that God created the universe and everything in it. You might be surprised that there are creationists that hold PhD's in biology and other fields of science like biochemistry, Astrophysics and physics, mathematics and many others.

 

[essentialsaltes]

You might be surprised that there are creationists that hold PhD's in biology and other fields of science like biochemistry

Out of curiosity, can you name 5 YEC with PhD's in biology and/or biochemistry?

 

[Phenotype]

Indeed, Oncedeceived, who exactly are these individuals?

You may freely concur with the orthodox teaching that all non christians are in fact under the sway of, and are deceived by Satan the Father of Lies. Hence you are personally responsible for that endorsement and your tenacious propounding of that credo here and wherever you find the opportunity. You have everything invested in this, more so with every passing day. The God delusion. You carry a heavy onus.

It is not me arrogating that creationism is the account of origin of this, and by extension, any universe, and that it accounts for biogenesis and subsequent speciation on this stupefyingly beautiful planet, where entropy takes such an interesting path within the inevitable heat death fate of the universe.

It is you who are aligning yourself with odious creationism. Hence you are bent on preying on the vulnerable, who know no better, as they are profoundly uneducated, don't read and study, don't edify their intellect and empower themselves, and can't apply critical thinking. You want to nip all that in the bud and get them converted, saved from nothing. Sin is negative [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]. It's all about taboos, sex and curtailing self determinism, autonomy.

How mean spirited. Get a life. Get an education. Report me, go on, you know you want to. Let's find out just how easy it is to get banned on christian forums, oncedeceived.

All that 'bless and do not curse' scripture dictum was imposed on my text, by some algorithm filter, I can only presume. That is puerile and ridiculous. Atheist and free thinking forums don't apply such nonsense.