Evolutionary debate

[SkyWriting]

Then you've gone from the scientific definition to your own...

Yup. That's the nature of this discussion.
But don't lie about a "scientific definition" unless your going to produce one that is in conflict with the one I proposed.

Mutations are destroyed by gene repair processes. Inheritance variation has no enemies.

 

[Nathan Poe]

Yup. That's the nature of this discussion.

The nature of this discussion is you play the shell game with definitions until you find the one that suits you, and the rest of us just play along?

Pass

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Well, I say it does. Because delaying the doomed from certain death is not a good enough argument for a "beneficial mutation."

So you don't think that escaping from certain death so that you can live to reproduce is beneficial? If that is not beneficial what the heck is?

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Yup. That's the nature of this discussion.
But don't lie about a "scientific definition" unless your going to produce one that is in conflict with the one I proposed.

Mutations are destroyed by gene repair processes. Inheritance variation has no enemies.

Inheritance variation? How do you think "inheritance variation" arises if not through mutations? Where do you think genetic diversity comes from?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Well, I say it does. Because delaying the doomed from certain death is not a good enough argument for a "beneficial mutation."

Sure it is. That's all that's required for natural selection to work its magic: 'delaying the doomed from certain death' is exactly how a mutation would become the norm. By ensuring the survival of the host, the host has a greater chance of reproducing. Thus, the mutation has a greater chance of being spread into the next generation.
You can rail against 'beneficial mutations' as you define them, but we'll stick to the actual, scientific definition, thanks.

Yup. That's the nature of this discussion.

Don't be silly. We couldn't give two hoots about what you define as a beneficial mutation. If you reject evolution because you define it in an absurd way, that's your business. Don't come here and complain that evolution makes no sense, when you define your terms to be nonsensical.

When we say there are beneficial mutations, evolution occurs, etc, we mean something by that. It's pointless to try and refute that, when you have your own, personal definitions that disagree with the standard, scientific ones. I could disagree with the concept of the Trinity by defining 'Trinity' to mean 'married bachelor'.

But don't lie about a "scientific definition" unless your going to produce one that is in conflict with the one I proposed.

I just did. A beneficial mutation, according to actual scientists, is one which improves the host's chances of survival and reproduction. According to you, a beneficial mutation must already be in over 50% of the population.

Mutations are destroyed by gene repair processes.

Source?

Inheritance variation has no enemies.

Source?

 

[sandwiches]

Well, I say it does. Because delaying the doomed from certain death is not a good enough argument for a "beneficial mutation."

By delaying death, you give that individual a greater chance to pass on its genes; thus, a beneficial mutation.

 

[SkyWriting]

...
I think this statement tells us all we need to know about your knowledge of genetics...

Such a lazy cop-out. I always get a kick out of these phony "Us" and "We" comments.

But your prerequisites as to my credentials were missing on this topic. You should have been more clear.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Such a lazy cop-out. I always get a kick out of these phony "Us" and "We" comments.

But your prerequisites as to my credentials were missing on this topic. You should have been more clear.

You demonstrated a complete lack of understanding as to why we call those types of mutations 'beneficial', instead preferring your own, arbitrarily restrictive definition. Credentials or not, that you come up with such nonsense demonstrates your lack of understanding on the topic at hand.

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Such a lazy cop-out. I always get a kick out of these phony "Us" and "We" comments.

But your prerequisites as to my credentials were missing on this topic. You should have been more clear.

This is the statement in question originally posted by SkyWriting

Natural Variation in DNA is not due to mutation.

Natural variation in DNA is due to mutation as anyone who has studied the subject knows. I suppose I could have said this statement shows that you know virtually nothing about DNA and genetic variation or that the statement makes it obvious that you completely misunderstand a subject you are trying to discuss. It is astonishing to me that someone who proports to discuss genetics and evolution could make such a statement. It is such a rudimentary error that it shows those of us who know even the fundamentals of genetics that you don't.

Added in edit: Unless you have studied the subject and do know that natural variation in DNA is due to mutation and are using deliberate distortion to try to make your argument. I thought ignorance was a more charitable interpretation than duplicity.

 

[SkyWriting]

You demonstrated a complete lack of understanding as to why we call those types of mutations 'beneficial', instead preferring your own, arbitrarily restrictive definition. Credentials or not, that you come up with such nonsense demonstrates your lack of understanding on the topic at hand.

Not at all. I am simply limiting the discussion to "clearly beneficial" or "Highly Beneficial" or "Obviously Beneficial" or even "Beneficial" mutations.

Perhaps a list that would be a counter to this one.
Or this one: genetic disorders

As there is no such thing, you are both getting mad and attempting to discredit the idea before it reaches the discussion phase. This is because while there are mutations that kill, mame, disable, allow disease, are disease, and generally screw up an organism royally until the day it dies, there are no such positive counterparts.

The bulk of the evidence weighs heavily that there are no beneficial mutations except for ones effect diseased organisms and prolong their misery.

So I understand why you're trying to avoid the discussion. It's normal & expected.

 

[Nathan Poe]

Not at all. I am simply limiting the discussion to "clearly beneficial" or "Highly Beneficial" or "Obviously Beneficial" or even "Beneficial" mutations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_disorders

As there is no such thing.

Well there we go -- it's the "No beneficial mutations" PRATT.

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Beneficial_Mutations

 

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Not at all. I am simply limiting the discussion to "clearly beneficial" or "Highly Beneficial" or "Obviously Beneficial" or even "Beneficial" mutations.

Perhaps a list that would be a counter to this one.
Or this one: genetic disorders

As there is no such thing, you are both getting mad and attempting to discredit the idea before it reaches the discussion phase. This is because while there are mutations that kill, mame, disable, allow disease, are disease, and generally screw up an organism royally until the day it dies, there are no such positive counterparts.

The bulk of the evidence weighs heavily that there are no beneficial mutations except for ones effect diseased organisms and prolong their misery.

So I understand why you're trying to avoid the discussion. It's normal & expected.

First, since you have claimed that natural variation in DNA is not due to mutations, tell us what it is due to. In your myth the human race started with at most 4 alleles of each gene a few thousand years ago (maybe only 2, was Eve a sort of clone of Adam since she was made from his rib?) Now there are literally thousands of polymorphisms in the human genome. One example from one of my fields of research is a polymorphism (Ala111Thr) in the SLC24A5 gene that encodes the NCKX5 protein that is a sodium calcium exchange pump on pigment granules called melanosomes that are responsible for human skin, hair and eye color. This mutation is nearly fixed in European populations and is part of what leads to lighter skin color. There are dozens of known polymorphisms in the MC1R receptor that controls the type of melanin produced by cells. Since there are more non synomous than synonomous mutations in the MC1R gene is clear that some of these mutations have been under positive selection pressure.

See R. Sturm Molecular genetics of human pigmentation, Human Molecular Genetics 2009, 18 R9-R17 for a recent review of pigment genetics.​

There are thousands of polymorphisms in the human genome both in coding and regulatory regions. Where did the come from?

 

[SkyWriting]

Natural variation in DNA is due to mutation as anyone who has studied the subject knows <snip>... It is such a rudimentary error that it shows those of us who know even the fundamentals of genetics that you don't.

Added in edit: Unless you have studied the subject and do know that natural variation in DNA is due to mutation and are using deliberate distortion to try to make your argument. I thought ignorance was a more charitable interpretation than duplicity.

I must apologize and withdraw my challenge.

Polymorphisms (genetic variation) associated with disease are termed mutations.
Natural DNA variation is termed a "genetic polymorphism."
There is no language for "positive genetic mutations" likely because no clear examples exist.

There can be no "Positive Mutations" by definition.
So to ask for such is not a fair request.

I could change the challenge to ask for "Positive DNA Variants" but since variation is a positive aspect itself, that would serve no purpose.

 

[sfs]

Not at all. I am simply limiting the discussion to "clearly beneficial" or "Highly Beneficial" or "Obviously Beneficial" or even "Beneficial" mutations.

No, you're not. You're trying to ignore examples of actual beneficial mutations, and you're doing a bad job of it. As several people have pointed out, "beneficial mutation" already has a definition (it's a mutation that makes more likely that the carrier will survive and reproduce), and under that definition, beneficial mutations are easy to find.

Even under your bizarre definition, however, it's trivial to show that beneficial mutations occur. Expose a colony of clonal bacteria -- lacking any genetic variation at all -- to any of several antibiotics, and a protective mutation will appear sooner or later and take over the entire population. This is a really simple experiment, and is often done in a biology lab courses.

This isn't a matter of opinion: your claim about beneficial mutations is wrong. It does not reflect reality. Why do you insist on holding to it?

As there is no such thing, you are both getting mad and attempting to discredit the idea before it reaches the discussion phase. This is because while there are mutations that kill, mame, disable, allow disease, are disease, and generally screw up an organism royally until the day it dies, there are no such positive counterparts.

The bulk of the evidence weighs heavily that there are no beneficial mutations except for ones effect diseased organisms and prolong their misery.

The only problem with your claims is that they are wrong. The mutation for lactase persistence in humans, for example (which is what makes Europeans lactose tolerant as adults) is clearly beneficial, was clearly a new mutation, spread to more than 50% of the population it occurred in, and has nothing to do with prolonging the life of diseased organisms. All it does is permit adults to digest milk, which became a very good thing in cultures that raised cattle.

So I understand why you're trying to avoid the discussion. It's normal & expected.

There's nothing to discuss. Your facts are wrong. Until you start looking at the real world, and not some fictional world that someone made up, you're never going to be able to start a discussion about science.

 

[SkyWriting]

Yes. DNA can never be proven. Evolutionists are obsessed with it because they always say ''chimps share 97% DNA with modern man'' etc. That's great, however you would then need to prove DNA is real...

The existence of DNA is rarely in dispute. There is a large problem however, of people assuming that because the chemical combinations that result in the growth of a chimp are similar to those that result in a human, that the two must have both been the same species at one time.

The common aspects of the two do not require a joined biology. 75% of our DNA matches with worms for example.

 

[sfs]

I must apologize and withdraw my challenge.

Polymorphisms (genetic variation) associated with disease are termed mutations.
Natural DNA variation is termed a "genetic polymorphism."
There is no language for "positive genetic mutations" likely because no clear examples exist.

There can be no "Positive Mutations" by definition.
So to ask for such is not a fair request.

I could change the challenge to ask for "Positive DNA Variants" but since variation is a positive aspect itself, that would serve no purpose.

I'm afraid you and your source are both pretty confused about the terminology here. "Polymorphism" means a genetic variant, sometimes with the restriction that it occur above some frequency in the population, sometimes without that restriction.(*) Whether a variant is termed a mutation or not has nothing to do with whether it's associated with disease (look, for example, at any of the many genome-wide association studies that have been performed in the last few years -- they may use "variant" or they may use "polymorphism", but they don't use "mutation"). A mutation is a change to DNA; all the mutations we're talking about here are germ-line mutations, that is, mutations that are passed down to descendants.

As soon as a mutation has occurred, what you have is a new genetic variant. If you're interested in the fact that it is a change compared to some previous state, you might keep referring to it as a mutation in later generations, but that's kind of sloppy terminology (even though I use it myself).

The term for "positive mutation" is "beneficial mutation", and the term for "positive DNA variant" is "beneficial allele". A beneficial mutation, by definition, produces a beneficial allele.

Each human acquires roughly 70 mutations when he or she is born, i.e. 70 new genetic variants, added to ~4 million inherited variants. If you compare new mutations with existing variants, the existing variants turn out to look exactly like a whole lot of new mutations that have accumulated and spread in the population over many hundreds of thousands of years -- the same distribution of types of mutations (transitions, transversions, CpGs, insertions and deletions), with the expected frequency spectrum. So the strong evidence is that existing variation really is nothing but the result of a whole lot of mutation. If someone wants to argue otherwise, they're going to have to present some evidence.

(*) The authors of the HapMap 3 paper, for example, just had a long-running debate about whether "polymorphism" should be restricted to variants above some frequency, should include all frequencies, or should be dropped entirely. In the end, we dropped the term except when defining SNPs and CNPs (single-nucleotide and copy-number polymorphisms, respectively).

 

[sfs]

The existence of DNA is rarely in dispute. There is a large problem however, of people assuming that because the chemical combinations that result in the growth of a chimp are similar to those that result in a human, that the two must have both been the same species at one time.

The common aspects of the two do not require a joined biology. 75% of our DNA matches with worms for example.

That's quite true. Just having a lot of DNA in common by itself is pretty weak evidence for common ancestry. What does provide strong evidence, however, are the patterns of similarities and differences. Things like broken, non-functional (but still recognizable) genes, that are broken in exactly the same places in humans and in our closest relatives, but not in any other species. Things like shared retroviral remnants in the genome, which are caused by viruses that copy themselves into our genomes; the same copies appear in exactly the same places in humans and our close relatives, but not in more distantly related species. In fact, by looking at older and older insertions, you can construct a clear family tree of species, showing which is most closely related to which.

These patterns have a clear explanation if common descent is true: we share a broken gene with other apes, for example, because we inherited the broken copy from a common ancestor. The patterns are very difficult to understand under any other model, which is probably why creationists never really attempt to explain them.

 

[Split Rock]

Not at all. I am simply limiting the discussion to "clearly beneficial" or "Highly Beneficial" or "Obviously Beneficial" or even "Beneficial" mutations.

Perhaps a list that would be a counter to this one.
Or this one: genetic disorders

As there is no such thing, you are both getting mad and attempting to discredit the idea before it reaches the discussion phase. This is because while there are mutations that kill, mame, disable, allow disease, are disease, and generally screw up an organism royally until the day it dies, there are no such positive counterparts.

The bulk of the evidence weighs heavily that there are no beneficial mutations except for ones effect diseased organisms and prolong their misery.

So I understand why you're trying to avoid the discussion. It's normal & expected.

Completely wrong. Here is a thread I started a while back clearly demonstrating a beneficial mutation leading to glyphosate resistance in goosegrass. It is now in the thread archive. http://www.christianforums.com/t3309652/

 

[Nathan Poe]

There can be no "Positive Mutations" by definition.

By your own definition -- which is why your own definition is worth exactly squat.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Not at all. I am simply limiting the discussion to "clearly beneficial" or "Highly Beneficial" or "Obviously Beneficial" or even "Beneficial" mutations.

Indeed, and it's not your place. You don't get to come here and decide what we believe. We made the claim, we define the terms. If you want to criticise our claim, then criticise our claim. Don't make up your own claim with your own terms and attribute it to us; that's called a strawman.

You say we get mad. Well of course we get mad. We get mad when self-righteous Creationists think they can win a debate by making up their own terms and defining themselves right.

You're welcome to debate whether or not there are beneficial mutations, but why should we debate your definition of a beneficial mutation? That's of no concern to us. Yea, there's no 'beneficial mutations' as you define the phrase, but, so what? We didn't claim that there were!