I may give evolution a shot.

[Risen Tree]

Some of you may have seen this thread in the Creation Science/Theistic Evolution thread, and now I would like to open up the discussion to anyone who wishes to enlighten me on this subject. For those of you who don't know what this is all about, I am currently a YEC but am considering rejecting this belief in favor of evolution. I received some hearty replies on the thread linked above and would now like to hear some feedback from any person knowledgeable about the subject. As I mentioned in that thread, I know very little about the subject of evolution, so I will make mistakes from time to time. You have been warned.

Here are my questions related to the scientific plausibility of evolution:

1. Mutations. Whether evolution occurs revolves around this issue. If mutations occur fast enough, often enough, and in the right places, then evolution works. End of story. But if a species experiences one helpful mutation every 5 million years, then evolution doesn't have enough time to occur. Not to mention the fact that the mutation has to be a helpful one; otherwise it won't do the species any good. Furthermore, the helpful mutation has to occur in one of the reproductive cells; even a helpful mutation that occurs elsewhere in the body will not be passed on. What evidence suggests that evolution overcame these barriers?
2. Natural selection patterns. The way I see it (and I'll confess, I could be dead wrong about this), if it occurs, macroevolution does not necessarily follow a straight path of ascention; it could take a temporary declining path, such as the curve f(x) = x^3 - x^2, which has a short period of downslope.* If this is the only way for a certain species or subspecies to evolve from another, then would not natural selection eliminate the temporary downswing needed for a permanent upswing later?
3. Ecology. This is one of the reasons I've been a YEC up to this point. Take two species that are dependent upon each other for survival but evolved millions of years apart. How did the early species survive? And if the answer is by virtue of another species, what if the first species is a plant that evolved millions of years before an animal that it is dependent upon?

Thanks for the input.

* proof: df(x)/dx = 3x^2 - 2x, which is negative while x is between 0 and 2/3

 

[TrueCreation]

Some of you may have seen this thread in the Creation Science/Theistic Evolution thread, and now I would like to open up the discussion to anyone who wishes to enlighten me on this subject. For those of you who don't know what this is all about, I am currently a YEC but am considering rejecting this belief in favor of evolution. I received some hearty replies on the thread linked above and would now like to hear some feedback from any person knowledgeable about the subject. As I mentioned in that thread, I know very little about the subject of evolution, so I will make mistakes from time to time.

--Consider the transition to the agnostic in this arena. That is how I see it. I was a acclaimed YEC not too long ago and am one no longer. However, I am also not an old earther either. I am currently convinced that there is potential for YEC to make headaway if we can get our scientific methodology straight and uncover the right data which can potentially show the feasibility of a young earth (or at least younger earth and some sort of 'global flood'). You have asserted that you 'know very little about the subject of evolution' so IMHO making the transition to the old earth evolutionist is a rather credulous move, even if you could get 1000 posts of substantial information in this thread I would think the same. That is my personal opinion and I merely stress that you consider your options with intensive care.

--If you are going to jump into the bio aspect of things, for all I know you might make the transition to OEC quicker than I could expect, but I wouldn't know--my knowledge of the bio subjects as it relates to evolutionary theory is simplistic. On the other hand, I know some geology and I personally believe that there is great potential for advancement in the geology of a not so uniformitarian past. I suggest reading these posts for more of my philosophical thoughts on this if you are interested:

http://www.christianforums.com/t73969
post 20, 28

You have been warned.

Here are my questions related to the scientific plausibility of evolution:

1. Mutations. Whether evolution occurs revolves around this issue. If mutations occur fast enough, often enough, and in the right places, then evolution works. End of story. But if a species experiences one helpful mutation every 5 million years, then evolution doesn't have enough time to occur. Not to mention the fact that the mutation has to be a helpful one; otherwise it won't do the species any good. Furthermore, the helpful mutation has to occur in one of the reproductive cells; even a helpful mutation that occurs elsewhere in the body will not be passed on. What evidence suggests that evolution overcame these barriers?

--Also consider the possibility that evolution might not have any barriers and if allowed to evolve over the course of millions of years drastic changes could very well occur. But that the earth simply isn't that old and so we have only been evolving since. Not saying that it is young, but what if. I say this so that you avoid the falliceous logic of; no-barrier to evolution, therefore that evolution has occured over several billions of years is correct. A similar logic can be traced to your (2) and (3) comments.

Cheers,
-Chris Grose

 

[Data]

"But if a species experiences one helpful mutation every 5 million years"
It's not that bad

There are many new mutations in everyone. Mostly harmless really. The problem lies in trying to find out which mutations were beneficial, as how can you tell? Look at the massive range of phenotypes in humans alone, all from mutations.

As for your 3rd point, I suppose you'll need to give us an example.

 

[shenzhou]

One of the best ways to detect positive mutations is to look for the signature that natural selection leaves in the genome as it acts to fix beneficial mutations in the population, this process is referred to as positive selection. Natural selection for favourable mutations has been found in many genes in the human genome (1) including many brain/neural related genes and developmental genes. An interesting example is the lactase gene in people of northern European origin that allows milk to be digested properly in adulthood which is an allele of recent origin that has been naturally selected for (2) and g6pd a gene involved in malaria resistance (3). It is also ubiquitus in immune system genes (4) and fertilisation related genes (5). Natural selection has also been found to act on many different beneficial mutations in many species other than humans (6).

The evolution of co-dependant species is interesting but something that is inexplicable through evolution. For example it has been observed in the lab that a formerly independant amoeba can become dependant on a bacterium (7). There are also several different forms of symbiosis, for example some symbiotic bacteria can live perfectly well outside of their host other cannot survive outside the host suggesting it it possible to have different degrees of closeness and dependance in symbiosis.​

(1) Karl C. Diller, William A. Gilbert, and Thomas D. Kocher. Selective Sweeps in the Human Genome: A Starting Point for Identifying Genetic Differences Between Modern Humans and Chimpanzees. Mol. Biol. Evol. 19(12):2342–2345. 2002.​

(2) Am J Hum Genet. 2001 Jan;68(1):160-172. Epub 2000 Nov 28. Lactase haplotype diversity in the Old World. Hollox EJ, Poulter M, Zvarik M, Ferak V, Krause A, Jenkins T, Saha N, Kozlov AI, Swallow DM.
​

(3) Genetics. 2002 Dec;162(4):1849-61. Nucleotide variability at G6pd and the signature of malarial selection in humans. Saunders MA, Hammer MF, Nachman MW.​

(4) J Evol Biol. 2003 May;16(3):363-77. MHC studies in nonmodel vertebrates: what have we learned about natural selection in 15 years? Bernatchez L, Landry C.
​

(5) Nat Rev Genet. 2002 Feb;3(2):137-44. The rapid evolution of reproductive proteins. Swanson WJ, Vacquier VD.​

(6) Ford MJ. Applications of selective neutrality tests to molecular ecology. Mol Ecol. 2002 Aug;11(8):1245-62. Review.​

(7) J Cell Physiol 1976 Oct;89(2):337-44 Endosymbiosis in amoebae: recently established endosymbionts have become required cytoplasmic components. Jeon KW, Jeon MS

 

[Arikay]

Although others could probably give a better explination Ill give it a shot

Mutations.
"beneficial" mutations happen all the time, three examples that pop into my head are:

Sickle cell anemia, Both a good and a bad mutation, a good example of how the environment can make a mutation good or bad. On the good side, it protects from malaria.

Immunity to AIDS, a couple people have had this mutation I believe, and its currently being studied.

Nylon Eating bacteria, A mutation allowed the bacteria to be able to break down nylon, a man made product, that has only existed in the last 100 years.



Natural selection
it depends on what is going up the slope. If its adaption to the environment, then yes, natural selection always goes upslope. If its complexity, then its slope does not matter to evolution. Although over the course of history, complexity does seem to increase, its adaption to the environment that is the only important thing.
For example, there are some trylobytes that ended up living in very dark places in the sea. Natural selection eventually caused them to lose their eyes. Some might see this as a decrease in complexity, but it was really an increase in efficiency, as the eyes were doing nothing but wasting energy.


Ecology
You would need to give specific examples, however, remember, they may be dependant now, but that doesn't mean they were always dependant on each other in the past. Over time the dependance could have grown to where now, they can live without.

[snip]

 

[Data]

shenzhou, those are fairly drastic changes. What about small, slightly beneficial changes.

 

[LorentzHA]

Immunity to AIDS, a couple people have had this mutation I believe, and its currently being studied.

Excellent point Arikay. Yes, actually more than a couple immunities to HIV1. The group studying this is called, The Diamond Foundation. Likewise when the Bubonic plague hit Europe, there were some who cared for and tended to the sick who never developed the plague.

 

[pureone]

Immunity to Creutzfeld -Jakob disease.

 

[Cantuar]

1. Mutations. Whether evolution occurs revolves around this issue. If mutations occur fast enough, often enough, and in the right places, then evolution works. End of story. But if a species experiences one helpful mutation every 5 million years, then evolution doesn't have enough time to occur.

Mutation isn't particularly common, but it's certainly a lot more frequent than one every five million years! Remember that you have whole populations of individuals, and a beneficial mutation, even though it occurs in only one individual, will tend to become fixed in the population. Lucaspa has all sorts of equations to show how this happens.

2. Natural selection patterns. If this is the only way for a certain species or subspecies to evolve from another, then would not natural selection eliminate the temporary downswing needed for a permanent upswing later?

As far as natural selection is concerned, there aren't any downswings. Something isn't selected now, even though it's less able to survive, in case it has greater potential for doing well in the future. As Richard Dawkins said, you can't go downhill on Mount Improbable.

http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawkins/Work/Books/climb.htm

Natural selection can only work on what's already there, and what's already there might be somewhat less than optimal for present or future conditions, which is why many species have features which don't, at first glance, appear to make the greatest amount of sense.

3. Ecology. This is one of the reasons I've been a YEC up to this point. Take two species that are dependent upon each other for survival but evolved millions of years apart. How did the early species survive? And if the answer is by virtue of another species, what if the first species is a plant that evolved millions of years before an animal that it is dependent upon?

The early species wouldn't have been the same as the modern one that's in a symbiotic relationship. The way these sorts of situations are set up seems to be that two species find coexistence beneficial (but not imperative) compared to living alone. If they coexist for long enough and one of them mutates such that it's now no longer able to live without the other, it doesn't matter because they're coexisting. If the same thing eventually happens to the other, you then have a situation where both individuals would die if apart, but it doesn't matter because they aren't apart. In the meantime, they've become different species from their long-distant free-living ancestors.

This is one of the mechanisms that shows how useless an anti-evolution argument irreducible complexity is. The fact that something can't be taken apart bit by bit and survive is irrelevant to how it could have got there in the first place. There are all sorts of mechanisms, observed in the lab, of the evolutionary equivalent of scaffolding.

 

[lucaspa]

Some of you may have seen this thread in the Creation Science/Theistic Evolution thread, and now I would like to open up the discussion to anyone who wishes to enlighten me on this subject. For those of you who don't know what this is all about, I am currently a YEC but am considering rejecting this belief in favor of evolution.

YEC strictly speaking is not a belief. It is a scientific theory. You reject it based on the evidence. You accept evolution based on the evidence.

Here are my questions related to the scientific plausibility of evolution:

1. Mutations. Whether evolution occurs revolves around this issue. If mutations occur fast enough, often enough, and in the right places, then evolution works. End of story. But if a species experiences one helpful mutation every 5 million years, then evolution doesn't have enough time to occur. Not to mention the fact that the mutation has to be a helpful one; otherwise it won't do the species any good. Furthermore, the helpful mutation has to occur in one of the reproductive cells; even a helpful mutation that occurs elsewhere in the body will not be passed on. What evidence suggests that evolution overcame these barriers?

The mutation rate is from 1-5 mutations per individual. That is, you have at least one mutation in you. That mutation occurred in a sex cell in one or both of your parents so that you have it. The deleterious mutation rate is 2.6 deleterious mutations per thousand mutations. That's not a high rate. That means that 997.4 mutations out of a thousand mutations is either neutral or beneficial.

1. Natural selection patterns. The way I see it (and I'll confess, I could be dead wrong about this), if it occurs, macroevolution does not necessarily follow a straight path of ascention; it could take a temporary declining path, such as the curve f(x) = x^3 - x^2, which has a short period of downslope.* If this is the only way for a certain species or subspecies to evolve from another, then would not natural selection eliminate the temporary downswing needed for a permanent upswing later?

There is no "ascension" in evolution. In the Cambrian, 99% of all species were unicellular. Today 99% of all species are unicellular. So, there is no "declining" path because there is no "upward" path. Evolution is like a branching bush, not a ladder.

1. Ecology. This is one of the reasons I've been a YEC up to this point. Take two species that are dependent upon each other for survival but evolved millions of years apart. How did the early species survive? And if the answer is by virtue of another species, what if the first species is a plant that evolved millions of years before an animal that it is dependent upon?

This is a nice generalization but we need some specifics. Ecology is one of the strongest supports of evolution. We can see species adapting in ecologies today. So what species are you thinking of?

 

[Lonnie]

Can you name 3 good mutations? Please be specific!

Later

 

[TrueCreation]

YEC strictly speaking is not a belief. It is a scientific theory. You reject it based on the evidence. You accept evolution based on the evidence.

--I disagree, YECism can only be a belief, there is no 'scientific theory for creation'. YECism is merely the belief in a young earth which in all technicality does not need to be based on scientific evidence in order to be accepted or disregarded. I'm sure that there are an abundance of YEC's which base this belief on their interpretation of scripture alone. YECism can be formulated to have a supposedly scientific basis (disregarding the condition of that basis..) such as what AiG and other major YECist organizations attempt to do (heck, I think that even Hovind attempts to do this). But anyways, this does not really counter the point of this assertion, but nevertheless..

Cheers,
-Chris Grose

 

[Lonnie]

I would say God is sciantific, if he says he created, then he created. How he did this is rather unclear I would say. No mention of evolution any where, and none of making stuff out of no where. As Far we all know, we could all be wrong, and God might have made us another way.

But we do know that God said that he made us in Days, and that he blew into dust to make man, but he clearly stated that he created animals before he Got dust and blew into to make man (I may be off on lots of stuff, please correct me as I am sure I have errors)

later!

 

[armed2010]

Can you name 3 good mutations? Please be specific!

Later

1. http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20010713/04/

2 and 3 in a sec

 

[Lonnie]

"LONDON Several teams of scientists around the world have, for some time, been studying the possibility that a genetic mutation perpetuated by the organism responsible for bubonic plague, or the Black Death, in the Middle Ages "
Possiblity.

I do know of a good mutation. Or I would say it is rather Nutral its Red hair! Isnt that a mutation? It may not be good, but its not bad!

Later

 

[lucaspa]

Can you name 3 good mutations? Please be specific!

Later

Yes.
31. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Wolfgang Enard, Molly Przeworski, Simon E. Fisher, Cecilia S. L. Lai, Victor Wiebe, Takashi Kitano, Anthony P. Monaco, Svante Pääbo Nature 418, 869 - 872 (22 Aug 2002)

1. Birth of a unique enzyme from an alternative reading frame of the pre-existed, internally repetitious coding sequence", Ohno, S, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 81:2421-2425, 1984. Frame shift mutation yielded random formation of new protein, was active enzyme nylon linear oligomer hydrolase (degrades nylon) http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm

2. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/apolipoprotein.html New apo-lipoprotein mutation that adds antioxidant activity.
3. Sequence of favorable mutations in E. coli [url]http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/7/3807[/url]
4. [url]http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/346/20/1513[/url] Mutation giving extra dense bones

Would you like more? Got about 20-30 more if you'd like.

 

[Risen Tree]

YEC strictly speaking is not a belief. It is a scientific theory. You reject it based on the evidence. You accept evolution based on the evidence.

Heh.

The mutation rate is from 1-5 mutations per individual. That is, you have at least one mutation in you. That mutation occurred in a sex cell in one or both of your parents so that you have it. The deleterious mutation rate is 2.6 deleterious mutations per thousand mutations. That's not a high rate. That means that 997.4 mutations out of a thousand mutations is either neutral or beneficial.

Jeebers creepers! I had no clue it was that high! But fortunately, according to what you're saying, the odds against my having a harmful mutation are less than three sigma. Whew.

Do you have any sources to recommend in regards to mutation rates, how often they might occur in reproductive cells (which would then be passed on to offspring), and how rapidly they can spread into the gene pool?

There is no "ascension" in evolution. In the Cambrian, 99% of all species were unicellular. Today 99% of all species are unicellular. So, there is no "declining" path because there is no "upward" path. Evolution is like a branching bush, not a ladder.

I meant in regards to complexity and surviveability; i.e., does a portion of the evolutionary pathway have to take one step forward before taking two back?

This is a nice generalization but we need some specifics. Ecology is one of the strongest supports of evolution. We can see species adapting in ecologies today. So what species are you thinking of?

Honestly, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Let me do a google search for a few and I'll get back to you.

 

[lucaspa]

--I disagree, YECism can only be a belief, there is no 'scientific theory for creation'.

No, YEC is a scientific theory. It was proposed originally as a theory in the 1700s and worked at as a theory. The modern form is also proposed as a theory up until the time it gets falsified, when YECers then claim it is not a theory. Henry Morris has a book called Scientific Creationism. It is on my bookshelf.

"There is another way to be a Creationist. One might offer Creationism as a scientific theory: Life did not evolve over millions of years; rather all forms were created at one time by a particular Creator. Although pure versions of Creationism were no longer in vogue among scientists by the end of the eighteenth century, they had flourished earlier (in the writings of Thomas Bumet, William Whiston, and others). Moreover, variants of Creationism were supported by a number of eminent nineteenth-century scientists-William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and Louis Agassiz, for example. These Creationists trusted that their theories would accord with the Bible, interpreted in what they saw as a correct way. However, that fact does not affect the scientific status of those theories. Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobservable particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended. The great scientific Creationists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered problem-solving strategies for many of the questions addressed by evolutionary theory. They struggled hard to explain the observed distribution of fossils. Sedgwick, Buckland, and others practiced genuine science. They stuck their necks out and volunteered information about the catastrophes that they invoked to explain biological and geological findings. Because their theories offered definite proposals, those theories were refutable. Indeed, the theories actually achieved refutation. In 1831, in his presidential address to the Geological Society, Adam Sedgwick publicly announced that his own variant of Creationism had been refuted:" Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism pp125-126

 

[Lonnie]

A can you please put what you said into more understandable words? As I cant understand it. (sorry)

And uh, did the Black Plague change the DNA? So it could be passed down to later generations? And did the above mutation effect the DNA? Sorry I need to have very specific awnsers. So I can understand em. Lol, without being to complicated not so I can dissagree. But so I can understand what you said.

Later!

 

[lucaspa]

Do you have any sources to recommend in regards to mutation rates, how often they might occur in reproductive cells (which would then be passed on to offspring), and how rapidly they can spread into the gene pool?

All the mutations we are talking about occur in sperm or egg and thus are present in the offspring. We are not talking about mutations in somatic (non-sex) cells.

PD Keightley and A Caballero, Genomic mutation rates for lifetime reproductive output and lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 3823-3827, 1997

This is the study that documents the rate of deleterious mutations in the worm C. elegans. Because they are hermaphroditic, the authors were able to separate the worms and run parallel populations descended from a single individual. By maintaining independent sublines, the effect of selection could be minimized, and thus the deleterious mutations could be kept in the population. Lethal mutations are still lethal, but the experimental design allows accumulation of deleterious mutations (as well as neutral mutations) and then the effect on lifespan and production of viable offspring, both of which are measurements of fitness. The estimated deleterious mutation rate per haploid genome (the whole organism) was 0.0026, or 2.6 per thousand. This is about 100 fold *less* than previously found for Drosophila. All in all, deleterious mutation rates are very low, considering that total mutations are about 1 per genome (individual).

4. Cooper VS, Lenski RE. Punctuated evolution caused by selection of rare beneficial mutations. Science 1996 Jun 21;272(5269):1802-4
AB - "For more than two decades there has been intense debate over the hypothesis that most morphological evolution occurs during relatively brief episodes of rapid change that punctuate much longer periods of stasis. A clear and unambiguous case of punctuated evolution is presented for cell size in a population of Escherichia coli evolving for 3000 generations in a constant environment. The punctuation is caused by natural selection as rare, beneficial mutations sweep successively through the population. This experiment shows that the most elementary processes in population genetics can give rise to punctuated evolution dynamics."

Or run a PubMed search using "mutation, rate" as your search term.

I meant in regards to complexity and surviveability; i.e., does a portion of the evolutionary pathway have to take one step forward before taking two back?

As someone pointed out, there are no steps back. One of the oddities of natural selection is that it can only add information. Even when an organism supposedly loses a feature, like birds losing their reptile teeth, whales losing the hindlimbs, or cave-dwelling creatures losing their eyes, it always turns out to be increased complexity at the molecular level.

For instance, for birds, the teeth do form in the embryo and then they are resorbed again. That's an additional process -- resorption -- on top of the formation of the teeth.

J Diamond, Evolving backward. Discover 19: 64-71, Sept. 1998. Discusses loss of eyes in the blind mole rat. But is not indiscriminate loss of eye. Rather it is addition of info.

One of the things that seems so hard for people to grasp about evolution is that it is cumulative. That once you get a small change, you keep it. You don't go back and start from square one again. It's like taking a hike from NYC to San Fran. Each step is small, but since you don't backtrack, the distance is cumulative.

Honestly, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Let me do a google search for a few and I'll get back to you.

Yes, I'd like to know which species you think this happens to. I can already think of a couple of ways around the "problem" if there really are any, but I don't think there are.