What’s your problem?

shinbits said:

Remember, according to evolution, humans have been evolving as the weaker genes died out as far back as when they were apes. If this allegedly has been happening up until the time humans were apes, then there is no reason at all why there are still weak, slow, fat, skinny or short humans; according to evolution, those genes should've died out long ago, when humans were allegedly some other form. But as we all know, there are millions of people with each of these "weaker" genes.

Can you all at least agree that I at least have valid reasons for not believing in evolution?

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Did you read the rest of her post, or just the part you quoted?

shinbits said:

Okay.


Okay. But then, doesn't this make it even more difficult, and make it take even longer for evolution to happen? That's even less feasable then the the theory that there's a minute mutation with each passing generation. If it turns out, as you say, that this isn't even the case, but rather, mutations are very infrequent---that makes evolution that much harder to swallow.

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When it is said that a mutation is rare, one needs to look at the context. A human cell contains some 60,000 genes, each of which is composed of hundreds, even thousands, of base nucleotides. It is estimated there are about 6 billion base nucleotides in a human cell. A change to just one of these 6 billion nucleotides counts as a mutation.

The estimated average number of mutations in a new human cell is 120. And insertion or deletion or duplication may affect more than one base nucleotide, but most affect less than 5. It is rare to have the duplication of a whole gene.

So in terms of the % of the genome affected, mutations are rare indeed. Like 100-200 people out of all the 6 billion on the face of the planet. Hardly noticeable at all.

Yet, the extent of the genome is such that there will probably be some mutations in every cell, including the germ line cells which transmit evolutionary changes.

As would any "beneficial" mutation. Right?

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But a beneficial mutation would not cause early death. If the host of a beneficial mutation died before reproducing, it would be due to a factor other than the mutation.

Wouldn't even the "detrimental" mutations it may have get passed along as well? If so, that would just hinder evolution. That's a sort of "catch 22" of evolution, which makes it hard to believe.

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Yes, but it is not as much of a "catch 22" as you might think. Every organism will have a mix of neutral, beneficial, and detrimental traits. This gives it an overall fitness level. Natural selection acts on the overall fitness level, not each trait individually.

Below is an excerpt from a formal debate I had with mark kennedy. It shows mathematically how natural selection impacts various groups in a population when a beneficial mutation and two detrimental mutations are randomly spread through the population over a number of generations.


Finally, let's look at one last hurdle. What if the number of harmful traits outnumbers the beneficial traits? Won't the harmful traits "gang up" on the beneficial traits rendering the beneficial trait useless to the species? Well, let's see.

Let us assume a population with one beneficial and two harmful genes in its gene pool. We will designate the beneficial gene (b), the less harmful gene (h) and the more harmful gene (d) (for "deleterious"). We will also assume the possibility of individuals who have none of these genes. Let's call them (n) for "normal" From this we can derive eight types of individuals:

No gene subject to selection: nnn
One gene subject to selection: bnn nhn nnd
Two genes subject to selection: bhn bnd nhd
All three genes subject to selection: bhd

Next we need to assign a selection factor to each of these groups.
nnn will have the neutral factor of 1
bnn = positive selection factor of 1.15
nhn=negative selection factor of 0.9
ndn=negative selection factor of 0.7

From these we can calculate the selection factor when two or three genes subject to selection pressure are present.

bhn = 1.15 x 0.9=1.04 (positive)
bnd=1.15 x 0.7=0.81 (negative)
nhd = 0.9 x 0.7=0.63 (negative)
bhd = 1.15 x 0.9 x 0.7 = 0.73 (negative)

Finally, let's begin with a population in which each of these possibilities is equally represented, i.e. each forms 12.5% of the population. The chart below shows the results (arranged in order of increaing negativity) of these selection pressures.

bnn (1.15) F2 16.5 F3 21.0 F4 25.8 F5 30.8 F6 35.7 F7 40.4
bhn (1.04) F2 15.0 F3 17.2 F4 19.1 F5 20.6 F6 21.6 F7 22.1
nnn (1) F2 14.4 F3 15.9 F4 17.0 F5 17.6 F6 17.7 F7 17.4
nhn (0.9) F2 12.9 F3 12.8 F4 12.3 F5 11.5 F6 10.4 F7 9.2
bnd (0.81) F2 11.6 F3 10.4 F4 9.0 F5 7.6 F6 6.2 F7 4.9
bhd (0.73) F2 10.5 F3 8.5 F4 6.6 F5 5.0 F6 3.7 F7 2.7
ndn (0.7) F2 10.1 F3 7.8 F4 5.8 F5 4.2 F6 3.0 F7 2.1
nhd (0.63) F2 9.1 F3 6.3 F4 4.2 F5 2.7 F6 1.7 F7 1.1

At F7 the total representation of all five groups experiencing negative selection is only 20% instead of the 62.5% they were in the P generation. Meanwhile the two groups benefitting from positive selection pressure now represent over 60% of the population up from the original 25%.


If you want I can pm the whole post to you. It goes more in depth into the math behind those results.

And I know you'll say that only beneficial mutations get passed along. But then I ask you, what keeps detrimental mutations from getting passed along with beneficial ones?

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It is a combination of natural selection and independant assortation of characters. The latter was discovered by Gregor Mendel.

How much highschool genetics do you remember? You know about having 2 sets of chromosomes, right? Half from mum and half from dad.

And you remember that before an egg or sperm is created, you have to get the double set of chromosomes reduced to a single set. That is why each of your children gets only half of your chromosomes, and gets the other half from their mother.

Furthermore, when a mutation occurs, it only occurs on one of your two homologous chromosomes i.e. either on the one your inherited from your mother or the one you inherited from your father, not both.

Since each of your children will get only one of these chromosomes, each has only a 50% chance of inheriting the one with the mutation. And unless the beneficial and harmful mutation occur on the same chromosome, there is only a 1 in 4 chance that a child will inherit both of them. There is also a 1 in 4 chance that a child will inherit neither of them.

In short, reproduction splits up the mutations so that they are seldom inherited as a set. And this means each of your children will have a different fitness profile and a different opportunity for reproductive success.


btw, this again is why you have to look at population and not just individuals. Reproduction is the mechanism for spreading the mutations through the population--but not as fixed sets. And natural selection means that each of the various sets enjoys a different rate of reproductive success that does weed out harmful mutations while distributing beneficial ones more widely in the population.

AnEmpiricalAgnostic said:

This is where selection pressures come in. Humans aren’t prey any more. If we were in the jungle trying to survive you’d better believe that the weak, slow, fat ones would die before the strong, agile, and healthy ones. We are also pack animals. There is safety in numbers to help protect the less fit.

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If there is safety in numbers, and the pack numbers help protect the weaker members, then there'd be no reason for the organisms with weaker genes to not pass on thier genes, and have the weaker genes die out as a result. Follow me?

This makes the theory that weaker genes die out very weak, since with pack animals, this is almost a non-issue, because there is safety in numbers, to help protect the less fit.

shinbits said:

Also, what if different types of beneficial mutations occur? What if a certain generation inherits multiple types of beneficial mutations? If mutations are random, there is no reason as to why this can't occur, and why it can't happen in the next generation. So even if mutations are infrequent, if a number of different benifical mutations are passed on, after a number of generations, there'd be so many genes in the gene pool, that there'd be no way for an a population to evolve into the same type of creature, so that it can even be called a population.

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First remember that reproduction does more than pass mutations to the next generation in a vertical lineage. It also spreads the mutations horizontally to other families. So what is going to happen is that more and more individuals in each generation are going to inherit several of the mutations via different grandparents. Since these are all beneficial mutations, they will continue to spread until all of them are found in every individual in the whole population. So in fact, natural selection will make the whole population more alike, not less alike.

This is an important point to remember.

Mutations make for more variety; natural selection makes for less variety. That is why it is called selection.

shinbits said:

If there is safety in numbers, and the pack numbers help protect the weaker members, then there'd be no reason for the organisms with weaker genes to not pass on thier genes, and have the weaker genes die out as a result. Follow me?

This makes the theory that weaker genes die out very weak, since with pack animals, this is almost a non-issue, because there is safety in numbers, to help protect the less fit.

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Weren't you the one saying that if evolution were true there shouldn't be any weaker humans because those genes should have been eliminated?

TheInstant said:

Weren't you the one saying that if evolution were true there shouldn't be any weaker humans because those genes should have been eliminated?

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I'm showing that both explinations that were given to support evolution were illogical. So which ever explination is the one evolution really claims, remains illogical.

TexasSky said:

Excuse me, but what are you rambling on about? Are you saying that Lucy was NOT discovered in 1974? Or are you saying that Lucy was not a shock to the world?

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Neither. Lucy was discoverd in 1974 and was a shock to the world--but not for the reason you gave.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do74lu.html

"On November 30, 1974, Johanson and another member of the expedition discovered small bones from one individual -- it was a hominid, but looked different from any they were familiar with. Everyone at the site joined in the search for more of this specimen and collected hundreds of pieces. The pieces did appear to be from the same individual, and made up 40 percent of a skeleton. The pelvis showed it had been a female, and the team named her Lucy after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."

Johanson and his colleague Tim White compared Leakey's finds at Laetoli with theirs from Afar, and felt that they were very similar, probably representing a stage between apes and humans. They categorized them both as Australopithecus afarensis. Leakey disagreed, but both of their finds broke a long-standing assumption: that humans developed big brains before walking upright. After 1974, scientists realized that this wasn't necessarily true, and that brain size overlaps between types of hominids, even as modern people's brains vary in size without relation to intelligence. This meant they had to look again at why hominids started walking upright. It had been thought that the big-brained creatures started using tools, and to free up their hands, they had to walk upright. But Lucy walked on two feet, and even had "modern" hands, yet showed no evidence of using tools.

And I do not lie. Nor do I call the ideas of others that find preposterious to believe lies.

The fact that you resort to rude personal attacks and name callings speaks of your overall nature. If you object to the statements I make then produce facts to back up your objection NOT rude name calling.

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The news article has it exactly right. Notice that it correctly refers to Lucy as Australopithecus, not human or even Homo.

So if you were taught, as you claim, that Lucy was human, you were badly taught. Lucy has always been presented as Australopithecine, not human.

The article is also correct in saying that the shock was that Lucy walked upright even though she was not human. Until then it had been assumed that walking upright was a late development that occurred in humans who already had big brains and tool-making capacity.

I also don't see how commenting that you were apparently given bad information by your teachers is calling you names. The fault is not in you if you were the victim. Nor, necessarily in them. For all I know, your teachers were also victims of poor science teaching.

I did not call you a liar. In fact, I am assuming that you are telling the truth about what you were taught. But it is also true then that you were taught what was not true and not held to be true at the time you were taught it. Assuming that your teachers were not liars either, that makes them incredibly mistaken in their teaching.

shinbits said:

I'm showing that both explinations that were given to support evolution were illogical. So which ever explination is the one evolution really claims, remains illogical.

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Oh, okay then (you might want to change that to "trying" to show).

If there is safety in numbers, and the pack numbers help protect the weaker members, then there'd be no reason for the organisms with weaker genes to not pass on thier genes, and have the weaker genes die out as a result. Follow me?

This makes the theory that weaker genes die out very weak, since with pack animals, this is almost a non-issue, because there is safety in numbers, to help protect the less fit.

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If the organisms with "weaker" genes are able to survive long enough to reproduce, then these genes will be passed on. Remember that evolution is about reproductive success, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with which organisms are "stronger" in the physical sense.

AnEmpiricalAgnostic said:

Let’s start with what you are calling “weaker genes”. With the exception of short, the other attributes (weak, slow, fat, and skinny) aren’t necessarily even genetic. Our modern lifestyle creates these conditions. A weak and fat person would be a lot different if they had to survive in the wild (if they survive at all).

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You have a good point here.

I often watch shows of tribal people and thier lifestyle. Some live in places like South America, and some in Africa. In both cases, the men there were about the same size, which was lean and pretty muscular.

I agree with you on this.

Another thing I think is tripping you up is that the way we live in our modern society. The way you and I live isn’t anywhere near how things have been in the past. In the wild selection pressures are harsh and real. In our modern society people with handicaps (genetic or otherwise) can lead fruitful lives. In the wild they would be selected out of the gene pool. When was the last time you saw a gimpy impala?

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Another good point.

TheInstant said:

If the organisms with "weaker" genes are able to survive long enough to reproduce, then these genes will be passed on. Remember that evolution is about reproductive success, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with which organisms are "stronger" in the physical sense.

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Okay. One thing that's a bit confusing, is this distinction between genes that cause "reproductive success" and genes that result in an organism being "stronger". People are saying that they're not the same.

So.....what's the difference?

Loudmouth said:

Don't know. If a gene is recessive and beneficial, then individuals with two copies of the gene will be selected for. Over time, this will fix the gene in the population.

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You have it right Loudmouth. I have seen this confusion before. Apparently some creationists confuse "dominant" and "recessive" with "more fit" and "less fit".

But "dominant" and "recessive" actually refer to gene expression, not to genetic fitness.

Not every pair of homologous genes even show a dominant/recessive relationship. Some are co-dominant such that both are partially expressed. A red carnation/white carnation hybrid may be pink because neither colour is dominant. But a green/yellow pea hybrid is yellow because the gene for yellow colour is dominant. Green shows up only when the offspring has two copies of the recessive gene.

But this is independent of fitness. Either one of the genes can be more beneficial. If it is the dominant one, it will spread through the population more rapidly; if it is the recessive gene, it will spread more slowly, but it will still be selected for and will still spread until the dominant gene is eliminated.

One can even get a situation in which the heterozygous combination is the most fit. In this case, neither homozygous combo will be eliminated, but they will be reduced as a proportion of the population.

shinbits said:

If there is safety in numbers, and the pack numbers help protect the weaker members, then there'd be no reason for the organisms with weaker genes to not pass on thier genes, and have the weaker genes die out as a result. Follow me?

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Even where weaker members are protected, they will still likely have less reproductive success than stronger ones. For one thing, not every threat is something that can be protected against. A herd of buffalo may be able to protect the weak from marauding wolves, but it can't do much about a virus attack. A weaker cow may be able to reproduce, but only through three pregnancies, while a stronger one manages eight.


Second, characteristics like speed, weight, strength, resistance, etc. are not Yes/No traits where one either is or isn't fat or tall or whatever. They exist on a bell curve. So in every generation, there will be some who are weaker or shorter or slower than others.

In this situation, what happens under selective pressure is not that the bell curve disappears, but that its centre point moves toward the more advantageous characteristics. The average fitness of the population increases even though there are still less fit individuals in the species.

When the selection pressure is reduced, the average fitness may decrease again, because there is no longer a disadvantage in being shorter or fatter or having less than 20-20 vision.

AnEmpiricalAgnostic said:

It depends on the environment the population lives in. In an environment with disease carrying parasites a mutation that makes your immune system more resistant will allow you to survive and have more offspring that are also resistant. If you are an animal that must dominate other males in order to win the right to mate then “stronger” may actually mean stronger in a physical sense.

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Okay. I use the word "stronger" to mean more adept, or more capable......whether that means physically stronger, faster, or having a stronger immune system, "stronger", the way use it, covers all these bases.

- I'm still not satisfied with TexasSky's explanation for her original claim but I'm editing my comments out since they were based on old posts.

shinbits said:

If there is safety in numbers, and the pack numbers help protect the weaker members, then there'd be no reason for the organisms with weaker genes to not pass on thier genes, and have the weaker genes die out as a result. Follow me?

This makes the theory that weaker genes die out very weak, since with pack animals, this is almost a non-issue, because there is safety in numbers, to help protect the less fit.

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I disagree with EmpiricalAgnostic's point here. While there will be safety in numbers, you have to remember that there will still be selection occuring. Those that are less fit are by definition the ones that have less than the average offspring. so say the average surviving offspring over a lifetime for an individual is 1 (might seem low, but we are talking a stable population here) then the less fit will be those that have average numbers of offspring of 0.9, and the fitter those with the average numbers of 1.1. So where a gene finds itself more often in a 0.9 average, over time it will die out. just do the maths. Lets say it is a single gene that is responsible for that 0.1 difference (this is actually a pretty big number)

after the first generation, every individual A will be represented by 0.9 children. After the 2nd generation, 0.81 grandchildren, after the third, 0.729 grand children, and after 10 generations 0.31 great great great great great great great great grandchildren, and so on. Since it is a single gene that is doing this, that means that for every individual with the gene, after 10 generations there will only be 0.31 individuals. Of course you can't have 0.31 of a gene, but if you start with 100 individuals with the gene, then after 10 generations, you would only have ~31. Do the math for the 1.1 case and see what you get there.

Futhermore, within the pack, you do not just have competition from the outside, i.e. predators of food availability. You also have competition from the inside. The ability to breed is just as important a resource as the ability to get food and survive the rigors of the natural environment. So those individuals that are able to pick breeding partners that are better at surviving and getting food and so on will do better than those that just breed randomly within the population. So in packs, you often notice competition. Typically it is the males being chosen by the females, for the principal reason that females invest alot more resources in raising offspring than males do. So in prides of lions, you see the males battling over females, in Elephant seals, the same. In many birds you see a behaviour called lekking. There is other intraspecies competition such as battle for terrotory (since he who controls the larger territory can get more food for his offspring). So it is not the case that in pack animals there is less pressure, if anything, there are additional pressures. Some do some really whacky things, sadly I can't remember the names of the top of my head, but if you want some really interesting examples of sexual selection, I can find them out for you.

TexasSky said:

The possibility of errors in human DNA replication are very slim because of built-in mechanisms.

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if by rare, you think 120 mutations per human is rare, then fair enough.

When that built-in-correction fails you get a mutation.

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inapplicable to meiosis, which is the relevant point here.

Most mutations happen in DNA strands that have no overall affect on your well-being. When the mutation is in a protein-coding DNA strand you have a problem.

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not always. detrimental mutations are only something like 6 in 1000.

Mutations in human DNA are very rare, period. They are even MORE rare in the protein-coding-DNA that would result in a visible effect.

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I thought you said you knew about DNA. mutations in non coding sections also have effects. I have a mutation in a non coding region and it affects me.

To put it in perspective - there are around 100 million base pairs of protein-coding DNA. Mutations in protein-coding DNA only occur at a rate of between 1 and 4.

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so? Again, the non coding regulatory regions are very important. I though you would know this, because usually creationists get really excited by the fact that non-coding DNA is often also very important.

We see the results of this type of DNA mutation in many diseases. A defect in a single gene causes things like Huntingon's disease and cystic fibrosis. A problem caused by a combination of genes is called multifactorial. We think multifactorial genes may be connected to alzheimers and at least some cancers. When an entire chromosome is changed or replicated you get diseases like Downs syndrome.

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well you got something right.

Genetic disease is not necessarily "hereditary" disease either. So when you consider how rare it is to have real protein-code-mutations to begin with, you also need to factor in that when you do find them, they often are not part of the DNA code that is passed along to off-spring. They may be related to things like age, bad cell division to begin with, etc. So the prospect of passing along mutated genes is even more rare than that 1 - 4 chance in 100 Million.

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but your argument is wrong anyway, so these odds are a case of GIGO.

These mutations are definately downward. They are all life threatening, but most don't trigger their damage until later in life, well after the time most offspring have been produced.

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only the mutations you cited. There are also a number of known mutations that do not have a detrimental effect, such as the increase in cholesterol metabolism in an italian village, improved oxygen transport in a tibetan village, a german with extremely strong bones and so on.

Let's say we have some form of primate that has an amazing DNA code, and is able to mate with another primate that has an amazing DNA code. For some reason (environment, genetic mutation, surival of the fittest - pick a reason) that primate is different that the other primates around it in a "good" way. It "thinks better". It uses tools. It develops language. Somehow it managed to 'evolve up'. It has the most evolved neur0-net of any creature on earth.

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Your description there looks dangerously close to a strawman.

What are the statitsical odds that this mutation is going to be the dominate gene that is passed along? Even in a closed population, by random genetic drift and gene flow?

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who says it would be a single mutation?

Where is the evidence in modern man of random mutations producing positive results? We have over 4,000 genetic disorders identified. Where are the 4,000 positive mutations that would account for evolution to a better quality of life?

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it's alot easier to diagnose a detrimental condition than it is to find a beneficial one, because most people don't go to the doctors moaning that they are cleverer or more handsome than their contemporaries, or that they can breathe at higher altitudes or whatever. Plus beneficial is far more subjective than detrimental.

Does the whole evolution of man theory hinge on the idea that one group of primates developed such a strong neuro-net that they were able to reproduce at rates to populate the entire world in a positive method?

Man has done more than "adapt" to his environment in comparison to the average primate, and even in envorionmental time lines we show modern man as being healthier and more intelligent that prehistoric man.

So how does that fit in with modern evidence?
Where is the creature that has evolved "up" in the modern world? There are lateral evolutions which we can easily observe. There are clearly downward evolutions (just look at the AKC and the inbreeding of dogs resulting in damaged litters).

Where is the non-fossilized evidence of upward, positive mutation in whole populations?

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you seem to be stuck in "great chain of being fantasy land". Either that or you are just bad at describing what you are talking about.

[FONT=&quot]Sorry to repost this so late in the day, but my previous post was apparently "ad hominem" and so I have corrected it to address the posts, not the poster. I think it's an important point. The original post was somewhere approx post 144.

I really must point out my incredulity at the audacity apparent in the posts quoted below. These posts do nothing to answer the comprehensive discrediting that can be seen in Post 56.[/FONT]

TexasSky said:

Big Bang was presented as the "beginning of evolution". The process that began it all.

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.

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TexasSky said:

And no - it isn't just that my memory might be off.

It that was the case there wouldn't be whole books and page after page after page on the web of people objecting to the very things I listed.

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[FONT=&quot]Quite incredible!

Lots of Creationists get around the accusation of lying in their posts through the loophole that the factual flawed post suspected to be wilful misdirection could instead stem from geniune ignorance.

In post 56 it is made clear that "We were taught that Piltdown was real, and that Lucy was the oldest fossil of modern man" (cf post 54) must have been untrue. Piltdown Man was exposed as a hoax in 1953, Lucy was discovered in the 1970s.
[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]If anyone were to lie about this stuff that would surely be a disservice to God, would it not?

People can look at the thread "Lying for Jesus?" in the GA forum and they will see that most Christians do not hold the belief that lying is acceptable.[/FONT]