Don't just handwave away my points by smearing me with "evolutionists are dogmatic" tar, I take you seriously and I hope you'll respect me enough to take me seriously too. I've brought forth data showing that in independent analyses of genetic intraspecific variance (not even interspecific divergence, for which even higher amounts of change would be expected) we have seen indels contribute far more than 4 times the nucleotides of single-base substitutions.
That sounds pretty reasonable, particularly given the paper you have quoted, cited and linked. I'm just starting to look at this one but there are some real head scratchers in this one. Let's look at the quote:
It was recently shown that indels are responsible for more than twice as many unmatched nucleotides as are base substitutions between samples of chimpanzee and human DNA. A larger sample has now been examined and the result is similar. The number of indels is
1/12th of the number of base substitutions and the average length of the indels is 36 nt, including indels up to 10 kb. The ratio (
Ru) of unpaired nucleotides attributable to indels to those attributable to substitutions is 3.0 for this 2 million-nt chimp DNA sample compared with human. There is similar evidence of a large value of
Ru for sea urchins from the polymorphism of a sample of
Strongylocentrotus purpuratus DNA (
Ru = 3-4). Other work indicates that similarly, per nucleotide affected, large differences are seen for indels in the DNA polymorphism of the plant
Arabidopsis thaliana (
Ru = 51). For the insect
Drosophila melanogaster a high value of
Ru (4.5) has been determined. For the nematode
Caenorhabditis elegans the polymorphism data are incomplete but high values of
Ru are likely. Comparison of two strains of
Escherichia coli O157:H7 shows a preponderance of indels. Because these six examples are from very distant systematic groups the implication is that in general, for alignments of closely related DNA, indels are responsible for many more unmatched nucleotides than are base substitutions. Human genetic evidence suggests that indels are a major source of gene defects, indicating that indels are a significant source of evolutionary change.
[/quote]
Notice that they are characterizing the indels as being a major source of gene defects. This is without a doubt the biggest obstacle for Darwinism, the deleterious effects are not only evident they are most of the effects expressed by mutations. You had a point you were trying to make:
When Ted Haggard screws up does that mean evangelical Christianity is bunk? No, it means Ted Haggard made a mistake.
I don't know anything about ole Ted Haggard but if he is a Darwinian it would be an expressed opinion, nothing more.
When Nature screws up does that mean evolution is bunk? No, it means Nature made a mistake.
Since there is no expanation available I'm inclined to think they just skewed the larger divergance. I honestly don't know why they would make a statement like when they knew better.
Your repeated ad hominems that if Nature was inaccurate in citing a figure it must have something to hide really do not prove anything substantive.
That's not really an ad hominem but it could be a non sequitor. I'm not trying to jump to conclusions but there are larger questions to be explored and something like that makes it hard to get past the neutral mutations. I don't actually care much about those as much as the ones in exons at specific loci. Something dramatic would have to happen in the actual genes and random mutations are not a viable explanation.
Pretty pictures, but as shown above, once we deal with the numbers the difficulties evaporate.
That's an unfortunate dismissal, the graph is actually an interesting puzzle. If you look closely the Y Chromosome is almost identical. There are a lot of things like that I am catching from time to time but keep getting off on these tangents.
Neutral mutations always go to fixation because only genetic drift acts on them.
I'm far from convinced that it is that cut and dried but there is the tendancy with neutral effects.
Genes which are beneficial when heterozygotic but deleterious when homozygotic (eg sickle-cell trait) or genes that code for altruistic characteristics experience conflicting selective pressures, hence they might be held in polymorphic equilibrium.
Actually my take is that they may well experience positive selection even though they are clearly genetic defects as opposed to adaptations. The sickle cell trait may well have been gone by now had it not been for malaria. I don't really want to dwell on that one, believe it or not I really am interested in adaptive evolution.
It is only a question of how long these neutral mutations take to go to fixation. And 5 million years is a plenty long time.
There are plenty of mutations and plenty of time but how many are fixed and how many are repaired? Time isn't working in favor of the theory of evolution here, the deleterious effects are a constant hinderance.
I have no idea what this means.
How much do you really know about Creationism? You do know that it's more doctrinal then emprical right? God's special creation happens 6-10 thousand years ago and evolution starts from there. Darwinians have a major problem with God as an explanation at this level.
My thing is there would have had to be a radical adaptive radiation following the emergance of the animals from Noah's Ark. I don't think I will ever buy into this single common ancestor model with the range set in modern thought. However, a dramatic series of adaptive and speciation events would have followed on a global level.
When is it ever going to occur to you guys, you have the ultimate arguement here. Hi Mr. Young Earth Creationist, you take the Bible literally right? I would like to agree with you since we share a common faith but you guys are just too radical for modern science. All those species descending from a few thousand animals coming out of the Ark in that time frame is simply off the charts of modern evolutionary biology.
That's when you ask them the basis for such a radical adaptive radiation. If you really think about it creationists are the most radical evolutionists around, they just don't know it. That could give them something to think about if you just went back to the Bible and considered what it is actually saying.
Just something to think about.
Grace and peace,
Mark
