What’s your problem?

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

Okay, this will make it much simpler.

A entire population doesn't mutate simultaneously, or exactly the same, correct?

See, since each organism in a population has the ability to mutate a completely different gene---and so one for each of the offspring produced.

If this continues, there'd be no characteristics similar enough to say that one organism is the same type as another---each organism would be it's own seperate species.

This is exciting. You are actually almost seeing how speciation happens. Just replace what you are thinking of as an organism with population. If a population of organisms is split up and isolated from each other the mutations will eventually add up so that the two populations become separate species. The mutations and subsequent spreading of those mutations within each population happens very slowly. Only by isolating one population fron another can you prevent the mutations from spreading throughout the population (effectively evolving the entire population together). Does this make sense to you?

But in order for evolution to work, we must assume that over time, each individual didn't mutate it's own separate genes, pass them, have thier offspring mutate thier own seperate genes, continuing the process until there is no semblance at all between the offspring, to even call it a population.

This is what happens. It just happens so infrequently and slowly that the mutations (if good) spread throughout the entire population. In this way the entire population evolves together. Again, if you take the individual organisms in your mind and replace them with populations then you are going to really start to understand clearly.

That's what I mean. Evolution assumes that some pattern was kept---which is ridiculous to assume, when we are talking about randomly mutating genes.

no pattern necessary. The only thing that needs to happen is that the good mutations reproduce and spread throughout the populations better than the bad ones. Which is easy to see.

 

[Jet Black]

Wha? A species is an organism from a population, you cant have a species of only one organism. Without reproduction there is no evolution, and no chance of speciation.

For some reason you seem to still be describing mutation as if it works a bit like X-Men.

no no, I think the point he is making is more like the idea that, my children will have my mutation and theirs, their children will inherit all of ours and so on, until eventually the children have inherited so many mutations that my great great.... grandchildren won't be able to breed with yours. The point is though, that not all of the mutations will actually survive, most will get wiped out.

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

no no, I think the point he is making is more like the idea that, my children will have my mutation and theirs, their children will inherit all of ours and so on, until eventually the children have inherited so many mutations that my great great.... grandchildren won't be able to breed with yours. The point is though, that not all of the mutations will actually survive, most will get wiped out.

That’s what I’m getting from him too. Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t he have the right idea? If he slowed the mutation rates down in his head and replaced individuals with populations then he’d be on the right track would he not?

 

[shinbits]

you have to remember that because of sexual reproduction, the genes are being mixed all the time. so while I have mutations, and my children will have their own, all these mutations must survive in the gene pool. It might be that my mutation dies out in two generations time

"It might be that my mutations dies out....."

This is where we must assume a lot. The original poster wanted to know what's my problem with evolution. Well......it's this. All the "maybe" and "might be" or "could've", "possibly", or "probably", when in reality, no one really knows---but people just assume these mutations happened, to point where they've evolved to something else.

If anyone just takes time to think about all the possible variables, hinderances, and "maybes" in the process of evolution for a species, it's just to rediculous to assume this happened for for every organism on the face of the earth.


So.....what's my prob with evolution? That nearly every single solitary aspect of evolution is made up of assumptions. Much of the evidence to support it is theoretical, and you are asked to just believe that all the right circumstances just so happened in order to result in evolution.

 

[shinbits]

no no, I think the point he is making is more like the idea that, my children will have my mutation and theirs, their children will inherit all of ours and so on, until eventually the children have inherited so many mutations that my great great.... grandchildren won't be able to breed with yours. The point is though, that not all of the mutations will actually survive, most will get wiped out.

I'm not saying that every offpsring will have thier own mutations.......I'm saying, that if mutations happen randomly, why don't all offspring have thier own random mutations? If it's random, what would stop it?

With evolution, you'd just have to assume and believe that it just didn't happen that way, in order to make evolution work.

 

[shinbits]

This is exciting. You are actually almost seeing how speciation happens. Just replace what you are thinking of as an organism with population.

Okay. But remember, an entire population doesn't mutate at the same rate---and if mutations are random, then the each organism has the likelyhood of having thier own random mutations---but like Jet Black said, some mutations may die out in in a few generations.......which means, we have to assume---again---that the "right" mutations aren't dying, and the organisms with the those "beneficial" mutations actually get to reproduce before dying.


There's just to much to assume, and just blindly believe.

 

[shinbits]

A good example of this is Mitochondrial Eve. When Mitochondrial eve was around, there were lots of other women too. The thing about Mt Eve however is she is the only woman who has had an unbroken line of daughters, grand daughters, great grand daughters and so on to the modern day. Now all the mutations that Mt Eve had in her mitochondria will have been preserved, but all the mutations that all those other women who were around with her at the time have been eradicated.

You've said that some mutations die out. Why wouldn't hers?

This is what I believe is wrong with believing evolution.

 

[shinbits]

That’s what I’m getting from him too. Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t he have the right idea? If he slowed the mutation rates down in his head and replaced individuals with populations then he’d be on the right track would he not?

A population is made up of individuals, is it not? So to see how evolution would affect a population, we must look at how it affects the individuals, right?

And you said I've got the correct idea about how happens with individuals.......so then if what I've said about each offspring having thier own random and different mutations is correct, then here's the basic question: why isn't each individual organism so different, that we can't really group them as a population of any certain type of animal?

That's my prob with evolution.

 

[gluadys]

Here's where it gets hazy. In theory, the next step, is that somewhere down the lineage, whether it's the very next generation or not, that another mutation will occur, and the prior mutation will be passed on in as well as the more recent one. Correct?

Correct.

The question now, is on the last part mentioned---How can two or more different organisms, resulting from the same ancestry, randomly mutate the same mutations?

They don't need to.

Say the first mutation (let's call it M1) occurs in your great-great-grandfather and the second mutation (M2)occurs in your father. You inherit both. At the same time some of your cousins inherit only the one.

Meanwhile, back in your great-great-grandfather's generation, a different mutation (M3) occurred in the great-great-grandmother of your wife, and another (M4) in her mother. She inherits both, while some of her cousins inherit only M3.


Now it is possible that you will pass both the mutations in your line to at least one of your children and that your wife will also pass both the mutations in her line to the same child.

So you could have a child who carries all four mutations by inheritance without a new identical random mutation happening.

By this time, just within your and your wife's families, you could have all the following combinations:
those who carry none of these mutations, those who carry only one of the mutations, those who carry 2 or 3 or all four of them.

And over the generations, these will continue to spread in the same way through the population. And, of course, mutations occurring first in different families will continue to enter your family through matings between members of your family and those of other families.

See, I'm NOT talking about mutations that cause simple variation, in keeping with the same species---I'm talking about mutations that start to cause an entire population to become a different one.

They are actually the same kind of mutation. All of the variations above will cause simple variation of the sort that distinguishes one individual from another. But that will only continue as long as there are some individuals who do have the mutant gene and some that do not.

Occasionally, however, one of these genes becomes fixed. That is, it spreads to every member in the population. There is nobody in the population now who does not have the mutated gene. The old normal gene has disappeared. So now all members of every new generation inherit the mutated gene, because there is no old normal gene left to be passed on.

Relative to this gene, now, there is a permanent change in the genome of the species.

Now if that happens again to another gene, and then another, and then another--well, it will take a long time, but eventually you will have a species so different from its ancestor that it is a new species.

Some things will speed up this process. If the mutated gene confers a benefit, it will spread to the point of fixation more rapidly. If the population is small, a mutate gene can spread through the population to the point of fixation more rapidly. A founder's event will concentrate a small sample of the overall variation of a species into a new, small population which may then rapidly evolve into a new species.

How do those mutations happen uniformly if they're random? The individuals would have to randomly mutate similar genes, and that would take unheard of luck.

Do u understand me now?

Do you understand now why this scenario is unnecessary? The same mutation may show up in another individual randomly, and that would speed up the distribution of the mutation through the population since it would now have two starting points. But even if a mutation occurs only once, it can become a fixture in the species genome.

 

[gluadys]

To whoever said it is just "bad American schools" are you telling me that you don't remember the huge fuss that was made in 1974 when Lucy was discovered? Seems she was "better developed" and "older" than they were teaching that man was. They had to rush to adjust their time lines and text books.

That was me. I do remember the fuss over Lucy's discovery. I can honestly say that I never heard a report that referred to her as human. She was always presented as an Australopithecus, an ancestor to humans, but not human herself. And she was the oldest Australopithecene discovered, not the oldest human discovered.

So, sorry to repeat myself, but if you were taught that Lucy was human, you received bad teaching.

The reason for the fuss was not that Lucy was the oldest human, but that she was an early Australopithecine who was fully bipedal. It showed that walking upright was one of the earliest developments in human ancestry rather than one that developed more gradually at a later date, as had been presumed.

Btw, what decade was it that you were in high school again? If you were in high school when Lucy was discovered and were still being taught that Piltdown Man was genuine as you claimed earlier, your schooling was unbelievably bad. It should not take 20 years to update the textbooks on such a major point.

 

[gluadys]

First, we have to believe that the initial mutations that resulted in macro-evolution even happened.

Generally speaking, no one mutation will be enough for speciation (aka macro-evolution) to occur. There has to be an accumulation of many mutations before there is enough difference to be a different species.

A rare exception to this is the nylon bug which is the product of a single mutation in a bacterium.

Second, we have to believe that the offspring carrying those mutations didn't die from dieses, predators, natural disasters or simple accident.

No, we don't have to believe that. But if this does occur, then the mutation will have to occur in a different individual. Who knows how many mutations never participated in evolution because the sole carrier died before reproducing?

Third---and this is what is tricky---we have to assume that each individual organism didn't have some other mutation that would begin a seperate evolutionary process; that enough of them remained similar enough to even be called a population.

You can have a great deal of variability in a species without it breaking up into separate species. Every member of the species can carry a mutation unique to that organism, and the species is still a single population.

How is this possible? Say the mutation unique to each individual makes a difference of 0.001% from the species norm. The individual is still 99.999% like the rest of the species. It takes an accumulation of many mutations to create enough difference to make a new species. But while we are waiting for that accumulation to occur in one family, its unique gene is spreading into other families and the unique genes of other families are spreading into this family. So it is not one family in the species that changes, but the whole species at once.

Okay, let's say this happens. How do u know it's offspring won't develop thier own separte genes that help it survive in some different way?

They will. That is one way of getting an accumulation of mutations.

 

[gluadys]

no no, I think the point he is making is more like the idea that, my children will have my mutation and theirs, their children will inherit all of ours and so on, until eventually the children have inherited so many mutations that my great great.... grandchildren won't be able to breed with yours. The point is though, that not all of the mutations will actually survive, most will get wiped out.

Furthermore, your descendants and Edx's descendants would have to be isolated from each other so that there was no gene flow between them in the intervening generations such that the mutations occurring in each family get shared with the other family.

As long as there is gene flow between the families (even if there are no direct matings) the mutations occurring in family A get shared with those in family B, and they still end up similar enough to each other to be in the same species.

 

[gluadys]

I'm not saying that every offpsring will have thier own mutations.......I'm saying, that if mutations happen randomly, why don't all offspring have thier own random mutations? If it's random, what would stop it?

They do. And that is one of the mechanisms that makes evolution work. The other is natural selection. Or selection of some kind.

 

[gluadys]

You've said that some mutations die out. Why wouldn't hers?

Hers didn't because in every generation since, she has had descendants.

But hers certainly could have. After all none of her sisters or cousins or neighbours succeeded in having an unbroken line of descendants. Mt. Eve was not special in any way that differentiated her from other females of her generation. Hers could have died off too. They just didn't.

If she had not been Mt. Eve, some other woman would be, and we would be shaped by her mutations instead.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Hers didn't because in every generation since, she has had descendants.

even strongly than that, this is mitochondrial DNA, in every generation she had daughters.
so that today, anywhere in the world, when you test any woman's mDNA for these sequences, they all contain "Eve's"

 

[AnEmpiricalAgnostic]

I honestly worded that previous post in earnest (I wasn’t trying to be a smarta$$). I am excited that a creationist is actually taking the time to ask some questions and listen and actually consider the responses. As long as you engage in honest discussion you will eventually come to a decent understanding of the Theory of Evolution. I don’t even care if you still disagree with it. I’d just be tickled pink if a creationist actually understood the Theory. With that said…

Okay. But remember, an entire population doesn't mutate at the same rate---and if mutations are random, then the each organism has the likelyhood of having thier own random mutations---but like Jet Black said, some mutations may die out in in a few generations.......which means, we have to assume---again---that the "right" mutations aren't dying, and the organisms with the those "beneficial" mutations actually get to reproduce before dying.

Remember, “beneficial” in respect to evolution means that the organism reproduces more. Detrimental mutations cause organisms to reproduce less. A detrimental mutation may be as subtle as a lower sperm count or as bad as Cystic fibrosis. The worse the mutation the quicker it gets erased from the population. The carriers simply die before reproducing. The final effect is that the “beneficial” mutations stick around and spread throughout the population while the detrimental ones die out.

 

[gluadys]

Hers didn't because in every generation since, she has had descendants.

even strongly than that, this is mitochondrial DNA, in every generation she had daughters.
so that today, anywhere in the world, when you test any woman's mDNA for these sequences, they all contain "Eve's"

Check. Thanks.

 

[Jet Black]

You've said that some mutations die out. Why wouldn't hers?

This is what I believe is wrong with believing evolution.

the problem is now, that you think that there is something wrong, whereas the thing that is wrong is your understanding.

MtEves mutations didn't die out, because statistically, somebody has to be the ancestor of all MtDNA, it it just happened to be her, and since it was her, all her mutations survived.

 

[shinbits]

Thank you all for answering my questions. This will be my last question on this thread. It's something I asked earlier, but I don't think anyone respond to specifically this:

That’s what I’m getting from him too. Correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t he have the right idea? If he slowed the mutation rates down in his head and replaced individuals with populations then he’d be on the right track would he not?

A population is made up of individuals, is it not? So to see how evolution would affect a population, we must look at how it affects the individuals, right?

And you said I've got the correct idea about how happens with individuals.......so then if what I've said about each offspring having thier own random and different mutations is correct, then here's the basic question: why isn't each individual organism so different, that we can't really group them as a population of any certain type of animal?

That's my prob with evolution.

 

[Jet Black]

"It might be that my mutations dies out....."

This is where we must assume a lot. The original poster wanted to know what's my problem with evolution. Well......it's this. All the "maybe" and "might be" or "could've", "possibly", or "probably", when in reality, no one really knows---but people just assume these mutations happened, to point where they've evolved to something else.

look, we are talking about a particular hypothetical scanario scenario here and you are quibbling over semantic points.

If anyone just takes time to think about all the possible variables, hinderances, and "maybes" in the process of evolution for a species, it's just to rediculous to assume this happened for for every organism on the face of the earth.

no it isn't. again, the problem lies in your understanding of it. How do you come to such conclusions about evolution when you obviously, and you should amit it, know so little.

So.....what's my prob with evolution? That nearly every single solitary aspect of evolution is made up of assumptions. Much of the evidence to support it is theoretical, and you are asked to just believe that all the right circumstances just so happened in order to result in evolution.

no, evolution is inevitable given variation and differential reproductive success. The reason I put the mights and maybes, is because I don't want to give you the impression that evolution is a definite track towards some end goal, there are possibilities in every generation, but most of those possibilities will be wiped out since they will be unable to compete with the other possibilities in the gene pool. you complain about the randomness of it, but it is not purely random. Evolution is what is known as a stochastic process.