Is Creationism a Fairy Tale?

[lasthero]

Well we all get to choose our own fairy tales dont we. If you choose the fairy tale which says "350 million years ago, fish climbed onto a river bank and in less than 200 million years, they filled the land with thousands of 4 legged creatures, many of which changed to bipedal. Oh and they grew in that time to become many dinosaurs that became extinct after a 150 million year reign. This gave mammals a real chance to finally get evolved and within 65 million years we had modern man who can look at the stars and say "Who am I, what is my purpose". Now THAT is a fairy tale hard to believe.

Fairy tales don't leave evidence. Evolution has.

 

[JWGU]

Let me make it easy for you. Explain how an offsdpring can get a trait from parents who do not have the gene for the trait.

A mutation. See? I only needed two words. Of course, in reality the situation you just described is not the only way for a trait to be present in a child when it was not present in either parent, but there is absolutely no reason why this could not happen. If someone has misled you into thinking it is not possible, that's unfortunate.

I don't feel like quoting most of the rest of your post, so let me just summarize the answers to your points quickly.
* I don't remember whether you've ever called evolution religion, but as you noted at the top of the post--this isn't a private conversation between individuals
* I found that Gould and Mayr are responsible for the theory of punctuated equilibria. Maybe this was much more shocking to people who were born long before it was proposed, but this idea seems to fall out quite naturally from genetic mechanisms. I'm still not sure what you expected me to find.
* You say we have found no "intermediate" fossils. Intermediate between what?
* You say there is no DNA linking land animals to sea life. That is both trivially false (all vertebrates share quite a lot of machinery) and false in the case to which you actually intended it to apply (whale evolution).
* I was indicating in the parentheses what I imagined your responses would be.
* Explain to me how I am saying that I am smarter than God by pointing out there are dumb things about whales, when I do not think the whales were designed in the first place.

Time is not the friend of evolution. It cannot change proven biological facts.

No.

I don't demand to see anything. I expect biological evidence for what is said. Is that unreasonable.

It's not, which is why I've given it to you. But since you have ignored the evidence, I might as well just be unreasonable at this point.

Speciation is not a mechanism for an A to become a B. While some are unable to mate both remain the same species. The salamanders remain salamanders and if they can't find a mate, they become exinct salamanders.

I don't think we can ever come to a common point understanding if we can't agree on facts that have already been observed. Speciation is one of those facts. You've been provided with several examples and haven't given a good explanation for why ANY of them are not speciation.

 

[Split Rock]

Science (real science) is great, I love it. If it wasn't for science I wouldn't have 10 stents and a triple bypass to my coronary arteries keeping me alive today. If it wasn't for science, I wouldn't have been brought back to life twice on the operating table. If it wasn't for science I wouldn't have this wonderful computer with which I can communicate to people all around the globe. If it wasn't for science we wouldn't appreciate the universe as much as we do today. But I must emphasise this is REAL science I'm speaking of. Quantum physics is just amazing too, it's opening doors to some astounding possibilities. So yes, I love science.

As long as the science doesn't conflict with your religious dogma.

Well we all get to choose our own fairy tales dont we. If you choose the fairy tale which says "350 million years ago, fish climbed onto a river bank and in less than 200 million years, they filled the land with thousands of 4 legged creatures, many of which changed to bipedal. Oh and they grew in that time to become many dinosaurs that became extinct after a 150 million year reign. This gave mammals a real chance to finally get evolved and within 65 million years we had modern man who can look at the stars and say "Who am I, what is my purpose". Now THAT is a fairy tale hard to believe.

Harder to believe than a talking snake, a mud man, a rib woman, and a tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Hardly.

 

[nuttypiglet]

Okay--great! That's really good for me to hear. So I guess my next question would be, do you have any questions about the various mechanisms for change in DNA over time? This is regardless of common descent, and stuff we can easily verify in a lab--chemistry, physics, and even information theory, all "real science" I think you'd agree (or math). I can't guarantee I can answer them, but there are lots of biologists on this subforum and they love to help spread knowledge, especially for people who are really enthusiastic about science.

I have looked at mutations in DNA, several times. From what I understand, over 90% (probably more like 99%) of mutations result in the death of the offspring or gives a problem which seriously hinders its existence. I can understand this because with DNA mutating randomly, anything can happen and it would be far more likely to produce something not desirable.
I'm not speaking of genes passed on by parents with regards to inherited eye colour etc, obviously. So with 1% being a fairly conservative estimate, it does beg the question, are millions of years enough time?

Perhaps someone has the tested mathematics on this? How many mutations occur on average in a specie, and how many are actually beneficial?
Every time I ask such questions, I just receive a lot of jargon about bacteria and how they often mutate. They are obviously different. If we are like bacteria, we would be unrecognisable as humans by now.

 

[Loudmouth]

Well we all get to choose our own fairy tales dont we.

We choose the facts, not fairy tales. We leave the fairy tales to the creationists.

 

[JWGU]

I have looked at mutations in DNA, several times. From what I understand, over 90% (probably more like 99%) of mutations result in the death of the offspring or gives a problem which seriously hinders its existence.

I just have time to address this right now, but actually most mutations in humans (who are the ones you want to talk about, it seems?) take place in noncoding sequences of DNA, so most mutations do not really do much of anything. There are a variety of mechanisms for this but the end result is that creatures with lots of noncoding DNA usually have a higher mutation rate than organisms that do not.

 

[essentialsaltes]

I have looked at mutations in DNA, several times. From what I understand, over 90% (probably more like 99%) of mutations result in the death of the offspring or gives a problem which seriously hinders its existence.

This is not true. Due to the error rates in copying DNA, every human being on earth has some 100-200 mutations. And yet we're all alive. Most mutations are roughly neutral.

If we are like bacteria, we would be unrecognisable as humans by now.

First you wonder if there's enough time for evolution, and now you're saying evolution works too fast? Maybe the timespan is just right!

 

[Loudmouth]

I have looked at mutations in DNA, several times. From what I understand, over 90% (probably more like 99%) of mutations result in the death of the offspring or gives a problem which seriously hinders its existence.

Every human is born with about 50 mutations.

"Through extensive validation, we identified 49 and 35 germline de novo mutations (DNMs) in two trio offspring, . . ."
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v43/n7/full/ng.862.html

For 50 mutations and a 99% lethality rate, as you claim, this would mean that each zygote has a 0.01^50 of making it, which is a very, very, very tiny number. Obviously, you are wrong. It doesn't take billions of fertilizations for human embryos to get past your completely ridiculous 99% deleterious mutation rate.

This is what I mean about us using facts. We have them. We actually look at them. You ignore them, and then make up stories such as your 90-99% of mutations being lethal fairy tale.

I can understand this because with DNA mutating randomly, anything can happen and it would be far more likely to produce something not desirable.
I'm not speaking of genes passed on by parents with regards to inherited eye colour etc, obviously. So with 1% being a fairly conservative estimate, it does beg the question, are millions of years enough time?

Now that we have your completely ignorant statements about the rate of deleterious mutations out of the way, let's look at the math.

At 50 mutations per generation, per person and a generation time of 25 years in a constant population of just 100,000 over a 5 million year period that puts us at 1 trillion mutations in the human population over the last 5 million years, the time since the proposed common ancestor with chimps. So the math shows that with a relatively small constant population of 100,000 there would have been 1 trillion mutations in that time. How many differences are there between us and chimps?

"Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a largely complete catalogue of the genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements."
Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome : Article : Nature

If we assume that half of those mutations occurred in each of the lineages that puts it at 20 million mutations that had to occur in our lineage to produce the differences we see between humans and chimps. Just 20 million. There were about 1 trillion that did occur. That means that out of the 1 trillion mutations that occurred in the human lineage, just 0.002% of the mutations that did occur had to make it to the present, and many of those are neutral mutations.

We have done the math. It comes out just fine.

 

[nuttypiglet]

Every human is born with about 50 mutations.

"Through extensive validation, we identified 49 and 35 germline de novo mutations (DNMs) in two trio offspring, . . ."
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v43/n7/full/ng.862.html

For 50 mutations and a 99% lethality rate, as you claim, this would mean that each zygote has a 0.01^50 of making it, which is a very, very, very tiny number. Obviously, you are wrong. It doesn't take billions of fertilizations for human embryos to get past your completely ridiculous 99% deleterious mutation rate.

This is what I mean about us using facts. We have them. We actually look at them. You ignore them, and then make up stories such as your 90-99% of mutations being lethal fairy tale.



Now that we have your completely ignorant statements about the rate of deleterious mutations out of the way, let's look at the math.

At 50 mutations per generation, per person and a generation time of 25 years in a constant population of just 100,000 over a 5 million year period that puts us at 1 trillion mutations in the human population over the last 5 million years, the time since the proposed common ancestor with chimps. So the math shows that with a relatively small constant population of 100,000 there would have been 1 trillion mutations in that time. How many differences are there between us and chimps?

"Through comparison with the human genome, we have generated a largely complete catalogue of the genetic differences that have accumulated since the human and chimpanzee species diverged from our common ancestor, constituting approximately thirty-five million single-nucleotide changes, five million insertion/deletion events, and various chromosomal rearrangements."
Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome : Article : Nature

If we assume that half of those mutations occurred in each of the lineages that puts it at 20 million mutations that had to occur in our lineage to produce the differences we see between humans and chimps. Just 20 million. There were about 1 trillion that did occur. That means that out of the 1 trillion mutations that occurred in the human lineage, just 0.002% of the mutations that did occur had to make it to the present, and many of those are neutral mutations.

We have done the math. It comes out just fine.

With so many mutations going on, what are we observing? What is mutating now in humans?

 

[nuttypiglet]

I just have time to address this right now, but actually most mutations in humans (who are the ones you want to talk about, it seems?) take place in noncoding sequences of DNA, so most mutations do not really do much of anything. There are a variety of mechanisms for this but the end result is that creatures with lots of noncoding DNA usually have a higher mutation rate than organisms that do not.

So if lots of mutations are occurring in non-coding genes, they this is not evolution. Is it?

 

[Split Rock]

I have looked at mutations in DNA, several times. From what I understand, over 90% (probably more like 99%) of mutations result in the death of the offspring or gives a problem which seriously hinders its existence. I can understand this because with DNA mutating randomly, anything can happen and it would be far more likely to produce something not desirable.

So, I guess you are probably dead.

This is what happens when you get your information on genetics from "Creation Ministry" websites. Of course, you don't actually care that they lie to you... do you? Most creationists here don't.

 

[lasthero]

With so many mutations going on, what are we observing? What is mutating now in humans?

What do you think a mutation is?

 

[EternalDragon]

We choose the facts, not fairy tales. We leave the fairy tales to the creationists.

I don't think you should be calling numerous eyewitness historical accounts "fairy tales" when what you believe (Evolution/frog to a prince) has never been observed and is based on just similarities. That is more in line with a fairy tale than creationism.

Better to call what Christians have faith in as believing in eyewitness accounts of the supernatural or something like that.

 

[Split Rock]

So if lots of mutations are occurring in non-coding genes, they this is not evolution. Is it?

Non-coding sequences... not genes.

Can you tell us why you posted this?

I have looked at mutations in DNA, several times. From what I understand, over 90% (probably more like 99%) of mutations result in the death of the offspring or gives a problem which seriously hinders its existence.​

 

[lasthero]

(Evolution/frog to a prince)

Please stop beating strawmen.

has never been observed and is based on just similarities

It's been observed and it's not just based on similarities. I regret to inform you that repeating something that's wrong over and over again doesn't make it any less wrong.

Better to call what Christians have faith in as believing in eyewitness accounts of the supernatural

Because eyewitness accounts of the supernatural are so consistent.

 

[Split Rock]

I don't think you should be calling numerous eyewitness historical accounts "fairy tales" when what you believe (Evolution/frog to a prince) has never been observed and is based on just similarities. That is more in line with a fairy tale than creationism.

How many fairy tales have talking snakes in them? Does the theory of evolution include talking snakes? A man made from dirt? A "Tree of the knowledge of good and evil?" If I read you GEN1-2, and you didn't know where it was from, would you think it was a literal historical account?

Better to call what Christians have faith in as believing in eyewitness accounts of the supernatural or something like that.

Personally, I don't call creationism a fairy tale, unless a creationist calls evolution a fariy tale (which is quite often here). Other than that, I agree with you.

 

[AV1611VET]

Personally, I don't call creationism a fairy tale, unless a creationist calls evolution a fariy tale (which is quite often here).

QV my OP.

That's why I included the peanut butter video, to stipulate it doesn't count.

 

[JWGU]

So if lots of mutations are occurring in non-coding genes, they this is not evolution. Is it?

Take it easy--we're doing this the slow way, top-up way, not the "gotcha" way I am not trying to justify evolution at this stage, at all. I'm doing it this way because each of the sentences in your first post were legitimate questions that have been asked by biologists before so I wanted to illustrate that you guys are not the only ones asking these questions, and show you how they can be answered. I want this to be a dialogue where everything is fully explored before we go on to the next stage. In other words--let's talk mutations, DNA and genetics now. Let's not jump into evolution yet unless we really understand the mechanism. I mean, think about it--if I tell you something can happen, you ask how, and I tell you "oh, some mechanism you don't understand and I can't explain," of course you're going to conclude that it might as well be magic. That's completely reasonable, if you're a bottom-up approach type person (I know I am, and I suspect you are too).

So, let's finish talking about your post first. Maybe we'll touch on the structure of DNA, the structure of the chromosomes, how gene transfer happens, etc. At the very least, I figure we'll cover some really cool stuff--I find microbiology really cool.

Anyway. That aside, sentence 2:

I can understand this because with DNA mutating randomly, anything can happen and it would be far more likely to produce something not desirable.

See, this is exactly the sort of thing we can clear up here! It is actually surprisingly subtle how tricky statements in genetics can be.

First off... does DNA mutate randomly? You actually hypothesized it does, which is interesting--right off the bat it's a statement I might jump on if I were skeptical about the process. It's almost a philosophical question in some ways. If it didn't mutate randomly, just "chaotically," what would it mean for genetics? I've talked to a few people about this and the consensus answer is: it basically doesn't matter whether mutations are really random or not. But clearly "true randomness" and "completely predictable" are a gradient. And surely something this important to the evolutionary process has to operate within very tight bounds. Surely someone has done the math that will let us know what the constraints are?

It turns out that to answer this question effectively we need to understand the different ways DNA can mutate. Note--I am not saying evolve, nor that they do not evolve. I am only saying that they mutate

Let's start with some of the assumptions of present models for DNA mutation:
* All living organisms in the domain of interest use DNA for replication.

It so happens that we have yet to find a living organism that does not primarily store its genetic material for replication as DNA. I am not speculating about a cause for that here. As far as I know, common ancestry doesn't speculate a cause for that either. That's just a basic assumption of the theory. If it makes things easier for now, assume a creator did it

* All living organisms in the domain of interest have at least some form of DNA repair.

Again, it so happens that we have yet to find a living organism that does not have some form of explicit "DNA repair"--going back to the Wikipedia definition, "a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome." In fact, it turns out that even RNA viruses generally have a mechanism that works pretty much the same way. Again, let's not, for the time being, try to explain this--even if you think you have a really good one, let's hold off! It's enough to say that it's an assumption of our theory.

Now let's talk about another thing before we begin in earnest. It's one thing to say that all organisms have some mechanism for replicating based on DNA, and some mechanism for error correction. But the specifics of these mechanisms can vary significantly in complexity and the added complexity can be really, really confusing when you are starting from scratch. I totally get what you are saying about not being interested in bacteria (prokaryotes), so obviously you'd prefer to start with eukaryotes. But prokaryotes are a way easier to understand and still get all the same concepts across: think of prokaryotic genetics as training wheels for eukaryotic genetics. If you want to press on with eukaryotes anyway, we can do that, but it's just going to be tough.

Provisionally, I will start us off talking about prokaryotes, so apologies if that is enough to get you to disregard this post--but I promise you, I'm not doing it to mislead

One final note of warning. Often in biological texts you will see statements that seem to be making claims that an organism, or a protein, is itself "thinking." An example is above, where the claim is made that a cell "identifies and corrects" genetic damage. This sounds like intelligent behavior, doesn't it? It evokes images of someone sorting a deck of cards, or scanning two copies of a textbook looking for inconsistencies--not just intelligent activity, but downright academic. I just want to clear this up--all such descriptions, at the cell level, are just a way to anthropomorphize chemical reactions to make us feel like we are in familiar territory. The microbiological world seems like an alien landscape a lot of the time. Water doesn't act like water. Electric charges are powerful things. Putting something on top of something else--something that we have to work not to do in the macrobiological world--can be nearly impossible. So when we talk about processes that work like this, please understand that we have not even once seen even a hint of intelligence at the cell level. I hate speaking in terms of certainties so maybe some other microbiologists can tell me if I am wrong, but I do not think even one process at the cell level has been discovered that is not modelable as a chemical reaction, augmented (in rare cases, like photosynthesis) with quantum electrodynamics. "Real science," as you put it.

Now. What could cause DNA, a molecule, to mutate? Here are the four mechanisms I know of, stolen blatantly from Wiki:

(1)spontaneous mutation - DNA is a molecule, made of chemicals--so naturally it is subject to the laws of chemistry. There are four major ways we see DNA break down, "spontaneously," at the chemical level. I hope you like chemistry, because molecular biology is full of it. There are four distinct processes listed for how this can happen, and my understanding is that these can occur at different rates, so please read these articles carefully for more information: tautomerism, depurination, deamination and slipped strand mispairing.
(2)error prone replication by-pass. I'll just quote the Wiki definition in full:

There is increasing evidence that the majority of spontaneously arising mutations are due to error prone replication (translesion synthesis) past a DNA damage in the template strand. As described in the article DNA damage (naturally occurring), naturally occurring DNA damages arise about 10,000 to 100,000 times per day per mammalian cell. In mice, the majority of mutations are caused by translesion synthesis.[22] Similarly, in yeast, Kunz et al.[23] found that more than 60% of the spontaneous single base pair substitutions and deletions were caused by translesion synthesis.

(3) Error induced during DNA repair. As you can probably tell from these numbers, mutations definitely happen at a quite sizable rate. This is where those DNA repairing processes come in. Now, they wouldn't be very good processes if they have a high error rate, but they do make mistakes sometimes. This is a place where the discussion benefits from talking about simpler protists, because they have a simple (and quite interesting) model for this. See homologous recombination in bacteria.

My own take on it, since I hate to just link to articles: in biology, we call catalysts that are also (generally) proteins "enzymes." Sometimes a group of these enzymes will be "linked" together, but not with covalent bonds--the exact form of the linking can be rather complex, see protein–protein interactions. Such complexes can have very different properties.

In the particular case of homologous recombination in e coli, a three-enzyme complex called RecBCD binds to one end of the DNA double helix. If you are wondering how it finds it--the way that proteins in the body work is an example of how cells can trigger precise, staged reactions without really being able to consciously control the reactions. While there may be signals (sometimes local) for more or less of a protein to be produced at any one time to be made, simple prokaryotic cells are flooded with proteins of all sorts of different types. So they "find it" by kind of just... floating around until they bump into something they bind with Biologists, correct me if I'm wrong! But wait--don't lots of chemicals bind with lots of other chemicals, even ones you don't want? Yep! It happens all the time. There are a ton of errors going on at all times in every one of your cells. That's life--literally.

Anyway--so it binds to one end of broken double-stranded DNA. The double helix is "unzipped" by two of the enzymes in the complex (RecB and RecD). The RecB is also attached(ish) to an enzyme called an AP endonuclease, which is a type of enzyme that cuts DNA that "looks" damaged in a particular way (in a rigorously chemical way). And this keeps going until a sequence called the Chi site is encountered.

I have to go to get some work done so I need to stop for now, but the discussion is quite technical so please ask questions if you have them! Giving up on a concept because it's hard to understand is never a good idea--not that I think you will give up, but it can be tough to look at that many technical words at once and not wonder whether someone is playing an elaborate joke on the public By putting your questions out in the open we can help make sure that you understand all the science so you can act in an informed manner.

 

[frogman2x]

Not only is that a strawman, it's not even a strawman for the right thing.

My strawman can beat your strawman.

 

[frogman2x]

What about you, frogman? Do you actually believe your own scientific arguments?

The are not my arguments. The come from PhD's in all disciplines of science.

>>Are you seriously concerned if one or all of your arguments are flat out wrong? <<

Of course I would be. If my sources are wrong, then I have to belivie in the fairy tale of evolution which I rejeted in highschool before I knew Evolution was not true.

What about you. are you seriously concened if one or all of your argumens are flat our wrong? Actually the whole premise of evolution is flat our wrong according to genetics.

Or do you see evolutionists as otherwise sane people who happen to believe in a crazy theory, whose game you have to play if you want to engage them?

They are sane and most are very intelligent. That is the hard part for me to understand. It is not a game for me. I engage them hoping they will see that most of what the ToE preaches is not biologically possible. Also there ae a lot of sitting on the fence still evaluating what each side says. They need to hear both sides.

I don't understand how anyone with a 3 diget IQ can believe in whale evolution. There is no way a dog-like animalcan lose it legs, take thousands of years to grow what is necessary to become aquatic and survive.

As soon as It loses it legs, if it can't jump into the water and swim, the only thing it will evolve into is lunch for the next predator that comes along.