Is the Human Brain a Null Hypothesis for Darwinian Evolution?

[Hoghead1]

Recapitulation is one of Darwin's old tricks, it doesn't stand up to close scrutiny:

The so-called gill slits of a human embryo have nothing to do with gills, and the human embryo does not pass through a fish stage or any other evolutionary stage. The development of the human embryo reveals steady progress toward a fully functional human body. Never in the course of development does a human embryo absorb oxygen from water as fish do with gills. (The human embryo is fully supplied with oxygen through the umbilical cord.) In fact, these “gill slits” are not even slits. Something Fishy About Gill Slits!​

Amazing how many of these arguments are just begging the question of proof. Creationists have had answers to these arguments for years.



Interesting, lets see what you have here:

Here we provide an overview of the data supporting the view that DUF1220 copy number (dosage) increase is a major contributor to the increase in neuron number, brain size, and cognitive ability that has occurred specifically in the anthropoid sub-order (monkeys, apes, humans) of primates, including the evolutionarily rapid and extreme expansion of the human brain.​

These comparisons are informative, what it underscores is differences:

DUF1220 copy number markedly increasing in monkeys, further in apes, and most extremely in humans where the greatest number of copies (∼272 haploid copies) is found
​

If I have seen one of these comparisons I've seen a dozen, the actual evolution of the divergence is assumed, not demonstrated.

This study surveyed essentially all human genes (e.g., approximately 24,000) and identified 1,004 that showed lineage-specific copy number changes among humans and the 4 great ape species. Of 140 genes identified that showed human lineage-specific (HLS) gain or loss in copy number, the most extreme change was found to be due to sequences encoding DUF1220, a protein domain of unknown function​

A protein domain of unknown function has 1,004 human specific changes and the apes have 4. You want to pass that off as some kind of proof of gene duplication? It's not, these are differences, pure and simple.

Only two bases (out of 118) are changed between chimpanzee and chicken, indicating that the region was present and functional in our ancestor at least 310 million years (Myr) ago. No orthologue of HAR1 was detected in the frog (Xenopus tropicalis), any of the available fish genomes (zebrafish, Takifugu and Tetraodon), or in any invertebrate lineage, indicating that it originated no more than about 400Myr ago (An RNA gene expressed during cortical development evolved rapidly in human)​

More differences, I'll just add DUF1220 if it turns out they actually have anything to do with brain related functions. They have found these protein products included neural genes but there isn't anything substantive demonstrating adaptive mechanism.

a gene that lacks DUF1220 sequences and, when mutated, has been implicated in microcephaly. (Wikipedia)
​

The Wikipedia offers a couple of citations for this:

Bond J, Woods CG (2006). "Cytoskeletal genes regulating brain size". Curr. Opin. Cell Biol. 18 (1): 95–101

Dumas L, Kim YH, Karimpour-Fard A, Cox M, Hopkins J, Pollack JR, Sikela JM (2007) "Gene copy number variation spanning 60 million years of human and primate evolution". Genome Res. 17 (9): 1266–77.
​

Thanks LM, I'll do the background reading and get back to you.

Have a nice day
Mark

​

Then, why are the "gill slits" there, in the first place?

 

[mark kennedy]

Then, why are the "gill slits" there, in the first place?

Those are not gills, they never were, they never will be.

 

[Hoghead1]

Those are not gills, they never were, they never will be.

That does not answer my question. Why is that structure in the first place and why does it so strongly resemble gills?

 

[mark kennedy]

That does not answer my question. Why is that structure in the first place and why does it so strongly resemble gills?

The oxygen and everything else the embryo needs comes through the umbilical cord. What you are calling gills are actually ear holes at an early stage of development. The argument is absurd.

 

[Hoghead1]

The oxygen and everything else the embryo needs comes through the umbilical cord. What you are calling gills are actually ear holes at an early stage of development. The argument is absurd.

Your explanation is also absurd. Why do developing ear holes look like gills?

 

[mark kennedy]

Your explanation is also absurd. Why do developing ear holes look like gills?

They don't look like gills, they never work like gills, they become ears later in development. Recapitulation never stands up to close scrutiny. Those are not gills, they never process anything and they ultimately become ears. Study a little real embryology and start making sense.

 

[Hoghead1]

They don't look like gills, they never work like gills, they become ears later in development. Recapitulation never stands up to close scrutiny. Those are not gills, they never process anything and they ultimately become ears. Study a little real embryology and start making sense.

You study some embryology. You have yet to answer my question. Why do developing ear holes have to look like gills?

 

[mark kennedy]

That's all you got? Let me know when you are ready to take the subject matter seriously.

 

[Hoghead1]

That's all you got? Let me know when you are ready to take the subject matter seriously.

Let me know when you are ready to answer my question.

 

[Loudmouth]

Those are not gills, they never were, they never will be.

The structures that develop into gills in fish are what develop into the larynx and ears in humans. There is absolutely no reason why separate creation would require both sets of features to develop from the same pharyngeal pouches, but it makes a ton of sense for evolution given the evolutionary history of terrestrial tetrapods.

 

[Loudmouth]

If I have seen one of these comparisons I've seen a dozen, the actual evolution of the divergence is assumed, not demonstrated.

Prove it. Show that they assumed it and that the evolutionary history of these lineages is not supported by evidence.

I have shown you multiple lines of evidence demonstrating shared ancestry between humans and other species, yet you run away from the evidence. How can you claim they are making assumptions when you ignore the evidence?

A protein domain of unknown function has 1,004 human specific changes and the apes have 4. You want to pass that off as some kind of proof of gene duplication? It's not, these are differences, pure and simple.

I have already given you the ERV evidence demonstrating that humans evolved from a common ancestor shared with other primates. We conclude that these sequence differences are due to evolution because of evidence. It isn't an assumption.

Only two bases (out of 118) are changed between chimpanzee and chicken, indicating that the region was present and functional in our ancestor at least 310 million years (Myr) ago. No orthologue of HAR1 was detected in the frog (Xenopus tropicalis), any of the available fish genomes (zebrafish, Takifugu and Tetraodon), or in any invertebrate lineage, indicating that it originated no more than about 400Myr ago (An RNA gene expressed during cortical development evolved rapidly in human)

More differences, I'll just add DUF1220 if it turns out they actually have anything to do with brain related functions. They have found these protein products included neural genes but there isn't anything substantive demonstrating adaptive mechanism.

Why do you think humans and chimps are different? Isn't it due to the sequence differences between their genomes? Yes or no? You really need to answer this question.

a gene that lacks DUF1220 sequences and, when mutated, has been implicated in microcephaly. (Wikipedia)

And?

 

[Hoghead1]

The structures that develop into gills in fish are what develop into the larynx and ears in humans. There is absolutely no reason why separate creation would require both sets of features to develop from the same pharyngeal pouches, but it makes a ton of sense for evolution given the evolutionary history of terrestrial tetrapods.

Good point! That's exactly what I am thinking.

 

[mark kennedy]

Prove it. Show that they assumed it and that the evolutionary history of these lineages is not supported by evidence.

Well for starters:

Using conservative calculations of the proportion of the genome subject to purifying selection, we estimate that the genomic deleterious mutation rate (U) is at least 3. This high rate is difficult to reconcile with multiplicative fitness effects of individual mutations and suggests that synergistic epistasis among harmful mutations may be common. (Estimate of the Mutation Rate per Nucleotide in Humans. Genetics, Vol. 156, 297-304, September 2000)​

That's at 1.33%, what happens when the divergence jumps to 4%:

Calculations are based on a generation length of 20 years and average autosomal sequence divergence of 1.33% (Table 1)​

There are only two conclusions possible, either strong purifying selection for such a high mutation rate or it never happened. The second alternative is never considered thus the requisite mutations are assumed, never proven.

I have shown you multiple lines of evidence demonstrating shared ancestry between humans and other species, yet you run away from the evidence. How can you claim they are making assumptions when you ignore the evidence?

Invariably you point to some obscure semantic correction only to bury the evidence in this kind of pedantic rationalization. I'm not the one avoiding the actual evidence and like every evolutionist I have encountered you want to ignore the indels.

I have already given you the ERV evidence demonstrating that humans evolved from a common ancestor shared with other primates. We conclude that these sequence differences are due to evolution because of evidence. It isn't an assumption.

Except you are assuming the ERVs are the result of highly deleterious germline invasions resulting in 8% of the human genome overall. That flies in the face of the fact that ERVs are so different between species that are assumed to have common ancestry.

Against this background, it was surprising to find that the chimpanzee genome has two active retroviral elements (PtERV1 and PtERV2) that are unlike any older elements in either genome; these must have been introduced by infection of the chimpanzee germ line. The smaller family (PtERV2) has only a few dozen copies, which nonetheless represent multiple (~5–8) invasions, because the sequence differences among reconstructed subfamilies are too great (~8%) to have arisen by mutation since divergence from human...PtERV1-like elements are present in the rhesus monkey, olive baboon and African great apes but not in human, orang-utan or gibbon, suggesting separate germline invasions in these species. (Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee Genome, Nature 2005)
​

With more than 100 members, CERV 1/PTERV1 is one of the most abundant families of endogenous retroviruses in the chimpanzee genome. (Genome Biol. 2006). They can be found in African great apes but not in humans. What is more the ERV virus is nearly extinct in the human genome with only a couple that actually work. The only thing that ERVs are proof of is the lengths evolutionists will go to to conflate and confuse the evidence.

For almost half a century it was believed that Chimpanzee and Human DNA was virtually identical. This is now known to be false. The Comparison of Human Chromosome 21 and Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 revealed that 83% of the 231 coding sequences, including functionally important genes, show differences at the amino acid sequence level. These included gross structural changes affecting gene products far more common than previously estimated (20.3% of the PTR22 proteins) (Nature, 27 May 2004).

Why do you think humans and chimps are different? Isn't it due to the sequence differences between their genomes? Yes or no? You really need to answer this question.

Why, so you can ask the question in circles? That's what we are talking about, the divergence is too great to be accounted for by mutations. A phenomenon that is well known to be characterized with the rise of disease and disorder especially when introduced to highly conserved genes like brain related functions.

You bottomed out quick this time.

Have a nice day
Mark

 

[mark kennedy]

Good point! That's exactly what I am thinking.

What you have missed completely is that those slits were never gills. The fetus gets oxygen from umbilical cord, the baby will not actually breath until birth and the fetus never breaths under water. Those slits are ear holes, like all Darwinian logic it's superficial and never stands up to close scrutiny. Recapitulation is laughable.

The structures that develop into gills in fish are what develop into the larynx and ears in humans. There is absolutely no reason why separate creation would require both sets of features to develop from the same pharyngeal pouches, but it makes a ton of sense for evolution given the evolutionary history of terrestrial tetrapods.

They are not gills:

The throat (or pharyngeal) grooves and pouches, falsely called “gill slits,” are not mistakes in human development. They develop into absolutely essential parts of human anatomy. The first pouches form the palatine tonsils that help fight disease. The middle ear canals come from the second pouches, and the parathyroid and thymus glands come from the third and fourth. The thymus prepares T cells, the immune cells destroyed by the AIDS virus, so you know how important the thymus is for human life. Without the parathyroids, we would be unable to regulate calcium balance and could not even survive. Another pouch, thought to be vestigial by evolutionists until just recently, becomes a gland that assists in calcium balance. Far from being useless evolutionary vestiges, then, these so-called “gill slits” (pharyngeal pouches) are quite essential for distinctively human development. 1.5 Embryonic Development​

Have a nice day
Mark

 

[Hoghead1]

What you have missed completely is that those slits were never gills. The fetus gets oxygen from umbilical cord, the baby will not actually breath until birth and the fetus never breaths under water. Those slits are ear holes, like all Darwinian logic it's superficial and never stands up to close scrutiny. Recapitulation is laughable.



They are not gills:

The throat (or pharyngeal) grooves and pouches, falsely called “gill slits,” are not mistakes in human development. They develop into absolutely essential parts of human anatomy. The first pouches form the palatine tonsils that help fight disease. The middle ear canals come from the second pouches, and the parathyroid and thymus glands come from the third and fourth. The thymus prepares T cells, the immune cells destroyed by the AIDS virus, so you know how important the thymus is for human life. Without the parathyroids, we would be unable to regulate calcium balance and could not even survive. Another pouch, thought to be vestigial by evolutionists until just recently, becomes a gland that assists in calcium balance. Far from being useless evolutionary vestiges, then, these so-called “gill slits” (pharyngeal pouches) are quite essential for distinctively human development. 1.5 Embryonic Development​

Have a nice day
Mark

I think you missed my question and also his response. The issue is why structures other than gills should develop from an initial structure very similar to gill slits. Yu have failed to answer this question. He has.

 

[Hoghead1]

Well for starters:

Using conservative calculations of the proportion of the genome subject to purifying selection, we estimate that the genomic deleterious mutation rate (U) is at least 3. This high rate is difficult to reconcile with multiplicative fitness effects of individual mutations and suggests that synergistic epistasis among harmful mutations may be common. (Estimate of the Mutation Rate per Nucleotide in Humans. Genetics, Vol. 156, 297-304, September 2000)​

That's at 1.33%, what happens when the divergence jumps to 4%:

Calculations are based on a generation length of 20 years and average autosomal sequence divergence of 1.33% (Table 1)​

There are only two conclusions possible, either strong purifying selection for such a high mutation rate or it never happened. The second alternative is never considered thus the requisite mutations are assumed, never proven.





Invariably you point to some obscure semantic correction only to bury the evidence in this kind of pedantic rationalization. I'm not the one avoiding the actual evidence and like every evolutionist I have encountered you want to ignore the indels.



Except you are assuming the ERVs are the result of highly deleterious germline invasions resulting in 8% of the human genome overall. That flies in the face of the fact that ERVs are so different between species that are assumed to have common ancestry.

Against this background, it was surprising to find that the chimpanzee genome has two active retroviral elements (PtERV1 and PtERV2) that are unlike any older elements in either genome; these must have been introduced by infection of the chimpanzee germ line. The smaller family (PtERV2) has only a few dozen copies, which nonetheless represent multiple (~5–8) invasions, because the sequence differences among reconstructed subfamilies are too great (~8%) to have arisen by mutation since divergence from human...PtERV1-like elements are present in the rhesus monkey, olive baboon and African great apes but not in human, orang-utan or gibbon, suggesting separate germline invasions in these species. (Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee Genome, Nature 2005)
​

With more than 100 members, CERV 1/PTERV1 is one of the most abundant families of endogenous retroviruses in the chimpanzee genome. (Genome Biol. 2006). They can be found in African great apes but not in humans. What is more the ERV virus is nearly extinct in the human genome with only a couple that actually work. The only thing that ERVs are proof of is the lengths evolutionists will go to to conflate and confuse the evidence.

For almost half a century it was believed that Chimpanzee and Human DNA was virtually identical. This is now known to be false. The Comparison of Human Chromosome 21 and Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 revealed that 83% of the 231 coding sequences, including functionally important genes, show differences at the amino acid sequence level. These included gross structural changes affecting gene products far more common than previously estimated (20.3% of the PTR22 proteins) (Nature, 27 May 2004).



Why, so you can ask the question in circles? That's what we are talking about, the divergence is too great to be accounted for by mutations. A phenomenon that is well known to be characterized with the rise of disease and disorder especially when introduced to highly conserved genes like brain related functions.

You bottomed out quick this time.

Have a nice day
Mark

I would appear that you, a lay person, know far more about it than all these highly educated scientists. I find that hard to believe.

 

[mark kennedy]

I think you missed my question and also his response. The issue is why structures other than gills should develop from an initial structure very similar to gill slits. Yu have failed to answer this question. He has.

Like I said, you like to ask questions in circles. Those are not gills, the palatine tonsils, middle ear canals, parathyroid and thymus glands and pharyngeal pouches have essential functions. They are not related to breathing in any way shape of form, nor are they some kind of evolutionary vestiges. The argument lacks substance which could account for the inevitable descent into fallacious logic to defend Darwinian rhetoric. That's your circular argument now on to the inevitable ad hominem fallacy.

I would appear that you, a lay person, know far more about it than all these highly educated scientists. I find that hard to believe.

I find it hard to believe that evolutionary apologists so often ignore the work of scientists who directly observe and describe the deleterious effects of mutations. I'm not contradicting anything in the scientific literature, I invariably quote, cite and often link to it as definitive evidence. To date, not one evolutionist has made a substantive argument explaining the indels. Instead they just ignore them:

On the basis of this analysis, we estimate that the human and chimpanzee genomes each contain 40–45 Mb of species-specific euchromatic sequence, and the indel differences between the genomes thus total ~90 Mb. This difference corresponds to ~3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% difference resulting from nucleotide substitutions. (Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee genome, Nature)
​

That's when I know you have nothing else, when all your pedantic arguments finally boil down into ad hominem retorts. I don't claim to know more, just continue to point out the obvious deleterious effects of such large scale mutations. It's not a formula for adaptive evolution, it's a formula for extinction.

Have a nice day
Mark

 

[Gene2memE]

To date, not one evolutionist has made a substantive argument explaining the indels. Instead they just ignore them,

Lets see.

*Goes to google scholar, searches for 'Indels, Human, Evolution' between 2005 and 2016 and comes up with multiple papers*

*Posts samples:*

'Conservation of Y-linked genes during human evolution revealed by comparative sequencing in chimpanzee' Huges et al, 2005
'Human-specific insertions and deletions inferred from mammalian genome sequences' Chen, Chen, Li & Chuang, 2007
'Indels in the Evolution of the Human and Chimpanzee Genomes' Wetterbom, Cavelier & Bergström, 2008
'Genome and gene alterations by insertions and deletions in the evolution of human and chimpanzee chromosome 22' Volfovsky et al, 2009
'Insertion and Deletion Processes in Recent Human History' Sjödin, Bataillon & Schierup, 2010
'Characterization and potential functional significance of human-chimpanzee large INDEL variation' Polavarapu, Arora, Mittal & McDonald, 2011
'The origin, evolution, and functional impact of short insertion-deletion variants identified in 179 human genomes.' Montgomery et al, 2013
'Fine-scale signatures of molecular evolution reconcile models of indel-associated mutation'. Jovelin & Cutter, 2013
'The role of DNA insertions in phenotypic differentiation between humans and other primates' Hellen & Kern 2015

*Asks question*: Does this look like "evolutionists" ignoring indels and/or failing to make a substantive argument explaining them?

 

[Hoghead1]

Like I said, you like to ask questions in circles. Those are not gills, the palatine tonsils, middle ear canals, parathyroid and thymus glands and pharyngeal pouches have essential functions. They are not related to breathing in any way shape of form, nor are they some kind of evolutionary vestiges. The argument lacks substance which could account for the inevitable descent into fallacious logic to defend Darwinian rhetoric. That's your circular argument now on to the inevitable ad hominem fallacy.



I find it hard to believe that evolutionary apologists so often ignore the work of scientists who directly observe and describe the deleterious effects of mutations. I'm not contradicting anything in the scientific literature, I invariably quote, cite and often link to it as definitive evidence. To date, not one evolutionist has made a substantive argument explaining the indels. Instead they just ignore them:

On the basis of this analysis, we estimate that the human and chimpanzee genomes each contain 40–45 Mb of species-specific euchromatic sequence, and the indel differences between the genomes thus total ~90 Mb. This difference corresponds to ~3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% difference resulting from nucleotide substitutions. (Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee genome, Nature)
​

That's when I know you have nothing else, when all your pedantic arguments finally boil down into ad hominem retorts. I don't claim to know more, just continue to point out the obvious deleterious effects of such large scale mutations. It's not a formula for adaptive evolution, it's a formula for extinction.

Have a nice day
Mark

You think the scientists are all unaware of what you have to say? C'mon. I still say it is most arrogant for you or any lay person to think they know more than the scientists do and then sit in judgment upon them. You call this an ad hominem, I call it common sense.

 

[Hoghead1]

Like I said, you like to ask questions in circles. Those are not gills, the palatine tonsils, middle ear canals, parathyroid and thymus glands and pharyngeal pouches have essential functions. They are not related to breathing in any way shape of form, nor are they some kind of evolutionary vestiges. The argument lacks substance which could account for the inevitable descent into fallacious logic to defend Darwinian rhetoric. That's your circular argument now on to the inevitable ad hominem fallacy.



I find it hard to believe that evolutionary apologists so often ignore the work of scientists who directly observe and describe the deleterious effects of mutations. I'm not contradicting anything in the scientific literature, I invariably quote, cite and often link to it as definitive evidence. To date, not one evolutionist has made a substantive argument explaining the indels. Instead they just ignore them:

On the basis of this analysis, we estimate that the human and chimpanzee genomes each contain 40–45 Mb of species-specific euchromatic sequence, and the indel differences between the genomes thus total ~90 Mb. This difference corresponds to ~3% of both genomes and dwarfs the 1.23% difference resulting from nucleotide substitutions. (Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee genome, Nature)
​

That's when I know you have nothing else, when all your pedantic arguments finally boil down into ad hominem retorts. I don't claim to know more, just continue to point out the obvious deleterious effects of such large scale mutations. It's not a formula for adaptive evolution, it's a formula for extinction.

Have a nice day
Mark

It sure seems to me that your attack on scientists are inappropriate ad hominem attacks. Funny, how they keep ignoring all these things you point out as significant. Maybe you should instruct them? Also, you failed to answer my question about gills. Why should anything have a structure ever resembling gills if it is a process totally independent of the development of gills? Another member provided the appropriate answer.