I see cats breeding cats and dogs breeding dogs.
Exactly as evolution requires.
I see a lot of conditions and illness caused by disease and mutation.
Plus ca change. 'Twas ever thus. But, as I said, "we don't see
more birth defects and illnesses over time".
Show me one of these newly evolved creatures. Not talking species here but something new.
Given what I said in the post you're commenting to, what would you consider 'new' in this context, if not a new species?
We fully believe in species coming from the kinds diverging and losing DNA.
That's not what the evidence shows. Gene duplications are not uncommon and some species have evolved with multiples of the whole DNA of their parent species; it's called
polyploidy. Such developments provide ample genetic material for mutations to modify and generate new protein variants.
We are not talking about working parts changing shape either, but a creature with no working part, no DNA to create such a part, gaining a brand new a working part with DNA for it that it can pass on to its offspring.
That's not how evolution works; it modifies existing structures. In earlier times, it was not uncommon for species to duplicate whole body segments, but the advantages of that have been pretty thoroughly explored, e.g. arthropods (centipedes, etc).
You mentioned beaks earlier, how did an animal with a mouth gain a beak?
By modification of the development of what had been a snout. More precisely, by
modification of two of the chemical signalling pathways that determined embryonic development of the snout.
We constantly see new diseases and mutations. How much more common is Autism? allergies, ADHD? The first case of AIDS was in 1979.
Humans are a significantly atypical species; I recommend that you drop the anthropocentrism and consider life in general. However, with autism, informed opinion has it that what has increased is not the incidence, but the recognition and diagnosis. The increase in human allergies is probably due to lifestyle changes and/or novel pollutants - other animals are not, in general, suffering more allergies. AIDS is just the latest of a long history of such diseases crossing species boundaries.
When they say a 'new' disease, they mean new to science, i.e. one they didn't know about before. Mutated gene variants arise at random in populations. If they're significantly disadvantageous, they don't generally spread across the population.
Yup, looks like rare genetic diseases are more likely to be the father's 'fault'. So what?
Notice that both these articles are explicitly about
rare diseases. Why are they rare? because, contrary to your claim, we don't see
more birth defects and illnesses over time. If that was significantly true, no species would have survived to the present. We co-evolved with disease organisms; many live peacefully on and in us, until we do something to disturb them - you might find Ed Yong's book on the microbiome, '
I contain Multitudes', informative.
The more people have recessive genes for certain conditions the more it will spread, like cystic fibrosis or Sickle Cell Anaemia.
Sure, and these diseases have been around as long as mankind... but look around you - does everyone now have CF or SCA? No, because such disadvantageous genes reach an equilibrium in the population. If you learn some genetics, you can discover how this happens and calculate the expected incidences.
The average classroom today has far more children diagnosed with learning disorders or some disorder compared to the classroom in the 1970s. Knowing someone on the spectrum was uncommon back then, today who doesn't know at least one or two people on the spectrum? My son is on the spectrum, his two cousins are on the spectrum, two of my daughter's friends are on the spectrum. Her boyfriend has asthma, also way more common.
As before, don't confuse greater diagnosis with greater incidence.
