What’s your problem?

[Jet Black]

That's because we can observe that that's how the sun appears to rise now. But we have no observations now on which to assume that life came out of the sea and developed legs.

you weren't talking about that though, you were talking about mutations occuring, them being passed on to following generations and the environment changing. If you are going to respond to me, please respond to what I said rather than shifting the goalposts.

Aren't mutations infrequent? Because if what you say is the case, then mutations are not infrequent, but happens each and everytime an offspring is made.

Yes, but they are mostly only small mutations.

This being the case, I can go back to my earlier point of there being far too many different types of genes in the gene pool that would be passed on, and differention offspring to the point that they are too different to even be called a population.

then sadly it appears you weren't paying attention when I explained this to you before. Remmber that the breeding population and hence the number of alleles that can make up the offspring in the population is finite. Populations tend to be fairly stable, and this limits the amount of morphological and genetic diversity that can exist in that breeding population at any one time. Lets say we have a village of 100 people. one person has a mutation that causes purple hair, and another that causes green hair and another that causes blue, and another that causes pink hair. your complaint is basically that, if these mutations keep building up, that eventually you will have a hundred different colours of hair. The problem with that is all those alleles have to be passed on. so purple haired people would breed with green haired people and so on. Statistically it would be very unlikely for so many varieties of a particular allele to exist within such a small population, because every now and again, some genes would get wiped out. For example, say a purple haired woman gets together with a brown haired man. Tyey have 2 children. Quite possibly (with the same odds of flipping two heads) both children will have brown hair, so purple hairdness disappears. since she was the only person with purple hair in the population, it's gone. So as you can see, a population will not be able to support the massive variety you are claiming would be a problem for evolution.

It's hard to believe in evolution.

not if you understand the facts.

 

[shinbits]

you weren't talking about that though, you were talking about mutations occuring, them being passed on to following generations and the environment changing. If you are going to respond to me, please respond to what I said rather than shifting the goalposts.

I'm sorry. I tend to debate on different crevo threads at the same time, and sometimes mix the topics by accident. I meant to say, that there is no way to know that mutations even happened back then. We must only assume. Using the apearance of the sun as an example, well, we can observe it now, and make an assumption that it's always apeared that way. However, there is no observation we can make today, on which to assume that some special "beneficial" mutations even happened.

Yes, but they are mostly only small mutations.

Even so, mutations are NOT infrequent; they are very frequent, just very small.

Why didn't someone correct Imperial Agnostic about this? I'm going to go back to my ealier points.

then sadly it appears you weren't paying attention when I explained this to you before. Remmber that the breeding population and hence the number of alleles that can make up the offspring in the population is finite.

How can it be finite, when new alleles are passed on every generation?

 

[Jet Black]

I'm sorry. I tend to debate on different crevo threads at the same time, and sometimes mix the topics by accident. I meant to say, that there is no way to know that mutations even happened back then. We must only assume. Using the apearance of the sun as an example, well, we can observe it now, and make an assumption that it's always apeared that way. However, there is no observation we can make today, on which to assume that some special "beneficial" mutations even happened.

again, a slight shifting of goalpoasts and talking about beneficial mutations, but not too big this time Well just like the sun, we know that mutations happen, we know that some are beneficial and we know that some are detrimental. We can observe this now. I am only using the same logic as you reagrding the sun. Have you some special reason as to why things we observe happening in nature now should not have happened in the past?

Even so, mutations are NOT infrequent; they are very frequent, just very small.

Why didn't someone correct Imperial Agnostic about this? I'm going to go back to my ealier points.

this frequency business is a rather fuzzy area. each human has about 120 novel mutations spread throughout their entire genome. the majority of these will be neutral. some will be detrimental and some will be beneficial. not every human will have detrimental or beneficial mutations, and only a minority of even those would become embedded in the population in significant numbers such that reproductive success became particularly relevant.

How can it be finite, when new alleles are passed on every generation?

because each individual can carry a maximum of 2 alleles of a gene, so a breeding population of 100 can only have a maximum of 200 different versions of that gene at any one time, and even then that could only occur for one generation, in the following generation there would be somewhere between 100 and 200 alleles left, because statistically, not all of those alleles would make it.

 

[shinbits]

Well just like the sun, we know that mutations happen, we know that some are beneficial and we know that some are detrimental. We can observe this now.

The rising of the sun, we know, is a cyclical event. We also know that it has always been cyclical ever since man's first written studies of the sun. Mutations however, are completely random. Since they are random, we cannot know when, or more importantly, if, it even happened. That's why we cannot use this example of the sun to help explain away the assumptions that have to be made with mutations.

because each individual can carry a maximum of 2 alleles of a gene, so a breeding population of 100 can only have a maximum of 200 different versions of that gene at any one time, and even then that could only occur for one generation, in the following generation there would be somewhere between 100 and 200 alleles left, because statistically, not all of those alleles would make it.

Okay. Now, keeping in mind that there are only 2 alleles of a gene, tell me; are genes lost over time because of this? Do some genes disapear simply because there's no room for them?

 

[Jet Black]

The rising of the sun, we know, is a cyclical event. We also know that it has always been cyclical ever since man's first written studies of the sun. Mutations however, are completely random. Since they are random, we cannot know when, or more importantly, if, it even happened. That's why we cannot use this example of the sun to help explain away the assumptions that have to be made with mutations.

that fact that it is a cyclical process is irrelevant, and we certainly don't have records that it ever happened before man was around, and even for a very long time when man was around.

It seems like you are just hung up on the fact that mutation is a random process. ok, I'll buy that and I'll just swap to other random processes instead. Nuclear fusion is the result of a random process as the hydrogen nuclei occasionally manage to tunnel through the energy barrier caused by their electromagnetic repulsion into the region where the strong force takes over, allowing them to fuse together with a release of energy. The rate of this is very low indeed, so much so, that per kg, the sun releases less heat than the human body. What reason do we have to suspect that in the past, nuclear fusion did not happen? none at all. And so it is the same for mutation. As I pointed out before, it does happen all the time, about 120 times per human, and more often in bacteria (per base) than even that. The reasons these mutations happen are because of normal natural processes, no more special than nuclear fusion or gravity, netiher of which I expect you will deny happened in the past.

Okay. Now, keeping in mind that there are only 2 alleles of a gene, tell me; are genes lost over time because of this? Do some genes disapear simply because there's no room for them?

you are switching between genes and alleles here. The point I was making here was that you aren't going to get such massive differentiation in a breeding population at any one time, because there simply isn't room for it in the gene pool of that population. do you see that? alleles will come and go, whole genes will come and go, even from time to time, whole chromosomes will come and go, but fundamentally there is a limit to the amount of variability in a breeding population at any one time, that negates your problem of a breeding population diversifying internally so much that it cannot be called a population.

 

[h2whoa]

Actually, it's not true that there are only 2 alleles of a gene in any diploid genome. This is only the case for single-copy genes. Some genes are present in higher copy numbers than this in which case there can be a different allele number.

 

[Jet Black]

Actually, it's not true that there are only 2 alleles of a gene in any diploid genome. This is only the case for single-copy genes. Some genes are present in higher copy numbers than this in which case there can be a different allele number.

I should have been more specific and put "at one locus". The main reason I didn't was because I am not really referring to the gene in the sense of it as a stretch of DNA that codes for a particular protein (of which there may be many copies distributed around the chromosome), but a stretch of DNA somewhere on a chromosome at a particular place. My justification for using it in this term is partially because I was reading the Selfish Gene a few days ago, and if Dawkins did it, then so can I, and secondly because the limited amount of variation also applies to the control region and other regions of non coding DNA, since they also are critical to the discussion of evolution and available variety within the gene pool. Even taking the multiple copies of some protein coding sections into account, the potential variety in a breeding population is still limited and finite of course.

 

[shinbits]

that fact that it is a cyclical process is irrelevant, and we certainly don't have records that it ever happened before man was around, and even for a very long time when man was around.

Wait.....so the fact that the rising of the sun is cyclical is irrelevant as proof that it's always happened........but completely random and "infrequent" mutations are evidence that that, has always happened?

And you really don't see anything with wrong with this?

It seems like you are just hung up on the fact that mutation is a random process. ok, I'll buy that and I'll just swap to other random processes instead. Nuclear fusion is the result of a random process as the hydrogen nuclei occasionally manage to tunnel through the energy barrier caused by their electromagnetic repulsion into the region where the strong force takes over, allowing them to fuse together with a release of energy. The rate of this is very low indeed, so much so, that per kg, the sun releases less heat than the human body. What reason do we have to suspect that in the past, nuclear fusion did not happen?

Nuclear fusion doesn't produce complex and intricate organisms, which become even more complex and more intricate as evolution random mutations does. That's the big difference. This, on top of a long stream of other assumptions such as enough mutations happening to change a populations into a different species---a huge assumption based on very little evidence that evolutionists admit is extremely rare.

alleles will come and go, whole genes will come and go, even from time to time, whole chromosomes will come and go

Then another assumption would be that the changes in genes, alleles and chromosomes which allegedly contributed to a populations evolution remained. If they come and go, there is no solid foundation on which evolution stands. Only assumptions.

Do u see now?

 

[Jet Black]

Wait.....so the fact that the rising of the sun is cyclical is irrelevant as proof that it's always happened........but completely random and "infrequent" mutations are evidence that that, has always happened?

And you really don't see anything with wrong with this?

no. alright, I will give you a number instead. Mutations occur on average at 2.1 x 10-8 mutations per base pair per generation. That means that every human will have on average about 120 mutations in their genes. every single generation. That is about as regular as the sun coming up. It's also a heck of a lot higher than the probabilty of two nuclei fusing in the sun.

Nuclear fusion doesn't produce complex and intricate organisms, which become even more complex and more intricate as evolution random mutations does. That's the big difference. This, on top of a long stream of other assumptions such as enough mutations happening to change a populations into a different species---a huge assumption based on very little evidence that evolutionists admit is extremely rare.

you are shifting the goalposts again, watch it, because I will keep catching you.

Remember that fundamentally your have been suggesting that it is an assumption that mutations occurred in the past, that is what we are talking about here, because mutations are probabilistic. Well probability also applies to fusion in the sun, so you are presenting a double standard if you are saying that it is just an assumption that mutations occured in the past, but it is ok to say that hydrogen nuclei fused in the past. Do you see? The discussion was not on the effects of the mutations, but the very question of whether they happened or not.

Then another assumption would be that the changes in genes, alleles and chromosomes which allegedly contributed to a populations evolution remained. If they come and go, there is no solid foundation on which evolution stands.

unfortunately you are now starting to ignore the effects of differential reproductive success as a function of the presence of alleles. That is why your argument is so weak. Your argument is effectively a strawman if you are trying to argue against evolution here, because the basis of your argument ignores a large part of the evolutionary process. You keep claiming that you have problems for evolution, but at the core of it, the only problem remains your misconception of the matter. I'm a bit suprised by the fact that I have to keep repeating myself on several issues that I have discussed with you before concerning really fundamental issues such as differential reproductive success. am I going a bit fast for you or something?

 

[shinbits]

you are shifting the goalposts again, watch it, because I will keep catching you.

What are you talking about? I'm directly responding to YOUR post. Didn't YOU bring up that example of nuclear fusion? All I did was respond to it.

You're starting to say things that are blatantly false.

 

[Jet Black]

What are you talking about? I'm directly responding to YOUR post. Didn't YOU bring up that example of nuclear fusion? All I did was respond to it.

You're starting to say things that are blatantly false.

your reply was inappropariate given the context of the conversation. remember that conversation are longer than a single post. You were responding to my mention of nuclear fusion by complaining that (to paraphrase) nuclear fusions don't generate increasingly complex things like life. My mentioning of nuclear fusion had nothing to do with this, it was with reference to your issue on mutations being probabilitstic rather than cyclical, and that because they are probabilitistic we cannot count on them happening in the past. This was contained within the post you quoted there when I mentioned you were moving goalposts, look, I'll highlight it for you:

you are shifting the goalposts again, watch it, because I will keep catching you.

Remember that fundamentally your have been suggesting that it is an assumption that mutations occurred in the past, that is what we are talking about here, because mutations are probabilistic. Well probability also applies to fusion in the sun, so you are presenting a double standard if you are saying that it is just an assumption that mutations occured in the past, but it is ok to say that hydrogen nuclei fused in the past. Do you see? The discussion was not on the effects of the mutations, but the very question of whether they happened or not.

see? we werent' talking about mutations generating complexity, we were talking about whether or not they happened at all. so responding to my response in the way that you were constitutes shifting the goalposts, because you are changing the focus of the discussion to something that was not being discussed.

 

[shinbits]

see? we werent' talking about mutations generating complexity, we were talking about whether or not they happened at all. so responding to my response in the way that you were constitutes shifting the goalposts, because you are changing the focus of the discussion to something that was not being discussed.

I had mentioned many times that you must assume that random mutations happened in a fashion that resulted in a new species. I said this in many other words, but this has been my main point throughout. My response to your comment had to do with this same theme. I was making the point that a random, chaotic process is not a good example to support a belief that another random process results in the right type of mutations, under the right type of circumstances, (such as that they don't disapear over time, as you've already acknowledged it does.)

But I can see how you'd mistake that I was moving the goal post.

 

[Oliver]

I had mentioned many times that you must assume that random mutations happened in a fashion that resulted in a new species. I said this in many other words, but this has been my main point throughout. My response to your comment had to do with this same theme. I was making the point that a random, chaotic process is not a good example to support a belief that another random process results in the right type of mutations, under the right type of circumstances, (such as that they don't disapear over time, as you've already acknowledged it does.)

But I can see how you'd mistake that I was moving the goal post.

Actually, you had listed assumptions that you thought had to be made in post #218, and the first of those assumption is that mutations happened at all (you clearly doubted that mutations happened at all):

Okay. But this all goes back to the assumptions that have to be made.

It must first be assumed that mutations even happened. There is no way at all to know this, it can only be assumed.
Then it must be assumed that the mutations were passed on and remained in the gene pool.
Then it must be assumed that enough mutations happened over millions of years, to cause enough change in a population to become a new species.

 

[Jet Black]

I had mentioned many times that you must assume that random mutations happened in a fashion that resulted in a new species. I said this in many other words, but this has been my main point throughout.

that doesn't square with this:

It must first be assumed that mutations even happened. There is no way at all to know this, it can only be assumed.

Then it must be assumed that the mutations were passed on and remained in the gene pool.

Then it must be assumed that enough mutations happened over millions of years, to cause enough change in a population to become a new species.

I was addressing each of these individually. If you give me a list, then I will address a list. Are you saying that your list is wrong somehow?

 

[LittleNipper]

The mechanisms of evolution (mutation, selection, and speciation) are experimental evidence. They are observed mechanisms. They are not made up. These mechanisms produce specific patterns in biodiversity, namely a twin nested hierarchy. It is promoted as a theory based on empirical evidence, unlike creationism which is promoted as a "truth" devoid of empirical evidence.

If you contend that something other than mutation, selection, and speciation was acting in the past or the present then it is up to you to supply evidence for this mechanism. If you don't then it is you supplying the fantasies and made up stories.

The "observed mechanisms" are assumed and not seen in action to the degree of new specie fabrication. That means that the whole premise of evolution is made up. Do you look exactly like any of your relatives? NO! No one who ever lived looks exactly like anyone else who ever lived ------ that includes twins, etc.... Observed, unique qualities within a species does not equate drifting towards the establishment of another specie. GOD is unique. HIS CREATION exhibits that attribute of HIS character. Creationism is based on the principle of GOD unique character which is seen throughout nature, and has been distorted as the means through which all the different species came into being. This is the lie of evolution and the lie that is being shoved down every public school student's throat to the spiritual harm of our children.

 

[LittleNipper]

Ah, but you see the clever thing is monkeys can eventually beget human beings because cladistically we are monkeys, we share a common ancestor and we have everything that makes a monkey a monkey.

You still haven't grasped this simple point have you.

I find it amazing that this is seemingly beyond your intellect

Monkeys do not have a soul. I find it amazing that this seems beyond your comprehension. We do not share a common ancestor. You have not proven that point. This is conjecture to suit your naturalistic value judgments.... Simple points are for simple people-----I'm not a simple person or monkey.

 

[LittleNipper]

It sure would. It would sound the death knell of evolutionary theory.

From what you've been demonstrating, there is no theory of evolution, only a convenientient word to apply when GOD is excluded. Evolutionists really have not have a clue it seems very evident

 

[OdwinOddball]

The "observed mechanisms" are assumed and not seen in action to the degree of new specie fabrication. That means that the whole premise of evolution is made up. Do you look exactly like any of your relatives? NO! No one who ever lived looks exactly like anyone else who ever lived ------ that includes twins, etc.... Observed, unique qualities within a species does not equate drifting towards the establishment of another specie. GOD is unique. HIS CREATION exhibits that attribute of HIS character. Creationism is based on the principle of GOD unique character which is seen throughout nature, and has been distorted as the means through which all the different species came into being. This is the lie of evolution and the lie that is being shoved down every public school student's throat to the spiritual harm of our children.

Nip, why are you even here any more? You aren't refuting anyones points anymore. You are simply saying, no it isn't , thats a lie, and I'm right and you are wrong. You give no evidence, no reasons to believe. Honestly the above post isn't even sensical enough to follow, much less debate against.

At one time you were vehement, but at least you were coherent. Now, I don't know, you sound manic, stressed out, near some breaking point. Someone else suggested it, Empirical I think, but seriously. Take a break for a bit. Find some innner peace and then come back. It's spring, maybe a good time to take a weekend and go hiking, biking, travel, whatever outdoor leisure activity you enjoy.

Or you can stay here, and become more and more incoherent.

 

[shinbits]

that doesn't square with this:

If you look at the entire list of what you've quoted me as saying, the basic point they all lead to is all the assumptions you must make, which is exactly what I said in the first quote of me in your post.

I was addressing each of these individually. If you give me a list, then I will address a list. Are you saying that your list is wrong somehow?

No, but perhaps a misunderstanding was made, that's all.

 

[Jet Black]

If you look at the entire list of what you've quoted me as saying, the basic point they all lead to is all the assumptions you must make, which is exactly what I said in the first quote of me in your post.

No, but perhaps a misunderstanding was made, that's all.

well if your list isn't wrong, I was going over your points and showing you how they weren't really problems, one by one. The issue at the core of this, is that there is no real reason to assume that any of the three sets of assumptions you are highlighting there didn't happen in the past. They all happen in the present with no problems whatsoever, and unless you are proposing a dad-esque rewriting of the laws of physics at some point in the past, there is no reason to suggest that they would not have happened in the past. the mutations in DNA occur as a result of imperfection in the replicating system, sometimes say as a result of radiation, sometimes as a result of chemicals, or temperature or just the wrong molecules being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is nothing to suggest that this hasn't always been the case.

Mutations that occur in the germ line will inevitably get passed on to the next generation, and then stand a chance of becoming embedded in the population through simple breeding statistics and the effects of meiosis.

Finally, speciation is observed right here, right now in the present day. I gave examples of speciation in the ring species and in mosquitoes. there are many more too.