Posted on 11/10/2009 10:54:53 AM PST by decimon
Which state are you in?
Your screed is one admirably long diversion from the point at hand. I have three questions for you? 1. Do you, as a self-proclaimed fully paid up card carrying "creationaist" believe in genetic mutation and natural selection as the explanation of the differentiation of the species or do you not?
A: It is part of the explanation. Obviously mutations are happening, and obviously they have an impact on speciation. How much is a somewhat open question. My expectation/prediction is that ongoing scientific investigation will show that natural selection plays only a minor role, and that most species differentiation is based on the outworking of pre-programmed genetic adaptation algorithms (epigenetics, Wood's Altruistic Genetic Elements hypothesis and so forth), designed into the genome of each living kind to cope with a dynamic environment.
2. Is this a position agreed upon by other self-proclaimed "creationists?"
Sure. I'm speaking here of published scientists and informed creationists, not the average-Joe-on-the street. Just as I see many average-Joe evolutionists say silly things about evolution, and it would be unfair to take their words as an accurate reflection of evolutionism.
3. When you state creationists believe in a dynamic living world that we expect... to be more dynamic than evolutionists expect what are you trying to say? Are you saying:
a. That rapid changes in the morphology of living beings cannot be explained by genetic mutations, even though we can compare the genes of the rapidly evolving morpheme and demonstrate quite conclusively that the morphological changes can be related to genetic changes.
b. Or that environment is irrelevant to the determination of which forms are more likely to survive and which are less likely to survive?
c. That "evolutionists" deny that morphological changes happen at the rate that they are observed to happen by "more careful" scientists, i.e. that sloppy and biased "evolutionists" deny the existence of altered morphologies that are observed, recorded and documented by "more careful" "creationist" scientists.
There are a couple things wrapped up in my comment about the expectation for rapid change in the creation model vs. evolutionary models.
First, evolutionary models require a low rate of mutations because it is plainly evident that most mutations are harmful. A high rate of mutations leads to 'error catastrophe' - the swamping of natural selection by the continual accrual of harmful mutations faster than natural selection can weed them out.
The Cornell university geneticist John Sanford has documented how overwhelmingly bad the case now is on this count in the book Genetic Entropy. It turns out that each average human germ cell has hundreds of harmful mutations compared to their parents, whereas a rate of even one such mutation per generation would be a solid proof against evolution. We are degenerating rapidly, because even if any given person has an occasional beneficial mutation they are also carrying hundreds of new harmful mutations right along with it.
A second issue is the pace of change observed in the biological realm. The Genesis account speaks of 'ravens' and 'doves' as 'kinds' if you read it plainly. Today they are diversified into about 500 species between them. Other evidence points to similar diversification within a timeframe of a few thousand years. This is much faster than in evolutionary models. Thus we expect to find evidence for organisms to have, or have had (if the process has played itself out as we surmise) the ability to rapidly change at the phyletic and perhaps at the genomic level via transpositional changes due to pre-designed genetic algorithms triggered by environmental stimuli.
4. Do you hold with many of your fellow creationists that radiometric dating is flawed and unscientific? In other words, do you disbelieve that the decay rate / half-life, etc. of C14, etc. is a random variable not subject to repeatable observation by different scientists ind different places using different methods of detection?
I don't know any creationist that believes radioisotope decay is a 'random variable.' (As an incidental aside, I would assert that *all* historical interpretations of data are 'unscientific' - that is, not directly testable by repeated experiment. "Water boils at 100 degrees C at 1 atmosphere" is a testable scientific hypothesis; "Bob boiled water last Tuesday" is not. It is a historical claim that will not be proved by dragging Bob into a lab at a later date and testing water boiling with him. A different intellectual toolkit than 'science' is required to evaluate such claims.)
Regarding radioisotope data, we do believe we now hold the stronger and more parsimonious explanation of the full range of data. Keep in mind that the passage of time is only one factor in explaining a particular distribution of parent/daughter isotopes in any given sample. Old-earth scientists regularly cite an array of other factors themselves in explaining radioisotope profiles. Scientists (not 'creationists') have measured alterations (up to 10^14 rate change) in the decay rate of some isotopes under exotic conditions and this has been published in secular literature. It is unclear how relevant these particular exotic conditions are to earth history, but they do establish the basic potential for variation, contrary the presumptive dogma that undergirded radiometric datings' reputation.
I'm going to type my fingers off if I try to cover the whole subject of radioisotope dating, so let me just refer readers to one selection of articles on this subject. I encourage everyone to read both sides of the issue with an open mind.
This is nonsense on two counts. First, we can trace phylotype to genotype with increasing accuracy with each passing year so that we know that species characteristics are determined by the genetics. Second, we can look at the variations and divergences in succeeding generations of a species and trace those variations and divergences to genetic mutations and not just different expressions of the same DNA.
That natural selection plays only a minor role is the really surprising part of your claim. I did not know that there was anyone that did not believe that the ability of a species to survive was related to its fitness for the environment in which it lives.
Dolphins do well in the tropics, but not the arctic where walruses and orca seem to do just fine. Polar bears don't wander through Rock Creek Park in DC for the simple reason that they cannot survive.
Mountain goats do wonderfully in places where I would not survive a day. If I try to swim with crocodiles, I will be dead, and I only survive because my brain is smart enough not to try to do it.
The whole notion that natural selection does not matter is just plain silly.
Which state are you in. I’ve been thinking about a change of scenery. Maybe I can get a contract at a nuclear power plant near you?
You really expect anyone to read answersingenesis with an open mind? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
OK, you have a closed mind. I understand.
You've misunderstood me. Natural selection was a creationist idea (cf. Edward Blythe), and I regard its operation as tautological (that is, true by definition).
What is relevant though, is what power does natural selection have to drive change, even if mutational 'raw material' is available to fuel that change? I long believed its power was substantial, but my belief in the power of natural selection to drive actual genomic change has evaporated to virtually nothing in recent years.
Natural selection can prevent the most obviously lethal and defective mutations from spreading through a genome, but it turns out it can do practically nothing to prevent the accumulation of large numbers of near-neutral harmful mutations. And even when a beneficial mutation does occur the odds of it being fixed are quite low. The standard rule of thumb in population genetics is Y=2X, where Y is the % increase in offspring and X is the chance for the mutation involved to spread through the species rather than dying out. (This is for sexually reproducing populations.)
For example, let's say a mutation gave total immunity to a disease that kills 1% of a given population. All other things being equal, it would have a 2% chance of becoming 'standard' throughout the population eventually. The other 98% of the time it would die out by dumb luck even though it is beneficial. So the same mutation has to occur dozens of times to have a reasonable chance at being adopted, and this for a fairly remarkable beneficial mutation, as mutations go.
In the meantime, though, the 'mutational garbage' of near-neutral mutations just keeps piling up. With around 3 billion base pairs, a point mutation rate of c. 1 in 100 million (thus c. 30 point mutations/offspring), and hundreds more mutations from various transpositional changes, the human genome is in a state of inevitable deterioration. Natural selection is only able to fight a rear-guard action, and a feeble one at that.
The reason you and GGG are such easy targets is that you make a few simple logical mistakes. Primary among them is assuming as true what you need to prove. More pathological is assuming as true what you then claim to be false. So far I have never met any but creationist/IDers who fell into this logical trap.
The other principal fallacy in your arguments are that you assume that you can argue that which can only be demonstrated by empirical evidence, i.e. data. For all the criticism of the reliability of the data of others, at some point, you have to produce some of your own, and subject it to the same critical scientific public that everything else gets scrutinized by.
In the present case, you cannot argue that natural selection is a tautology, because it is not. Where I to see polar bears and black bears commingling in Rock Creek Park I would have to call the hypothesis into question. That it is obviously true is different from that it is true by definition. The sky is blue, but it is not blue by definition, but because of a physical principle called Rayleigh scattering.
No one has claimed that natural selection is the causative mechanism of change. It is not. Genetic variability and mutation is the driver of causative factor. Natural selection just determines which among the genetically altered lines of offspring will survive.
And as for your example, it is trivially irrelevant. Imagine instead a much more relevant example of a disease that kills of 80% of the population, randomly and with no genetic predisposition, but that a genetic mutation in 1% of the population subastantially reduces the mortality of the disease. The probability of a genetic line surviving even a few generations without that gene arithmetically approaches zero with extreme rapidity. In fact, the gene for lack of resistance would be viewed as a genetic defect.
And BTW survival of the fittest does not mean what the so-called critics of what had become "social Darwinism" thinks it means. Fitness to an environment does not necessarily require a mano a mano fight to the death male lion to male lion to survive. Some species are social and survive because of the development of a culture of cooperation (e.g. baboons). Sometimes it is just the ability not to freeze to death (polar bears), or the ability to nest in places predators cannot get too (woodpeckers). A mountain goat is not a vicious predator. It survives in places I cannot and a lion cannot because of superior agility in steep rocky places, and the ability to live by eating the local fauna.
Try not to be too pretentious, because you are failing to grasp a good many basic principles and making some basic mistakes. How, for example, do you get 1% of a typical population to have a mutation that provides substantial protection to a disease? Think it through.
In order for evolution to be occuring (as opposed to just a shift in gene frequency), we have to start with 0% of the population having that mutation. Then 1 individual has to have it. Not 1%. One individual. For real-world populations there is all the difference in the world between 1 and 1%. 1% of a million is 10,000 individuals, and it takes a very long time for a single mutation in one individual to spread that far, even if it is one of the fortunate ones that is not lost through sexual recombination or just dumb luck (such as the mutants' 6 offspring all dying in a forest fire, disease resistance notwithstanding).
In population genetics, getting from 1% to population fixation is the easy part. It's getting to that first 1% that takes a long, long while.
And the example is not irrelevant since devastating pandemics have occurred throughout history.
I appreciate your confusion, so let me just make it clear for you: When we talk about 'evolution' in the controversial sense, we are talking about naturalistic development of all life from a common ancestor by purely natural processes without intelligent design.
Too many evolutionists try to claim that "evolution" = "change" and then implicitly or explicitly assert that therefore, any evidence of biological change is automatically proof of the entire goo-to-you theory. Even many Ph.D. evolutionary apologists think this way, and it is ludicrous. It is methodologically equivalent to saying your lawn is flat, therefore the earth is flat.
The creation model involves a perfect creation followed by a curse, which specifically included changes in the biological realm (i.e., thorns, carnivory). If you start from perfection and have a 'curse' (i.e., change), there is only one direction you can go: downhill. Whereas evolutionism requires the opposite trend, from no life to the present variety and systemic complexity of life.
Therefore the issue is not whether change has occured, but in what direction the change is going. Anyone familiar with evolutionary biology literature (the empirical studies, not the speculation), already knows what this means. Evolutionists desperately cling to their caricature of "change vs. stasis" because they know that once the evaluative paradigm shifts to "degenerative vs. innovative", all of evolutionary biology is swept from their grasp. No wonder they are desperate to censor creationist viewpoints and try to spread misinformation about what we believe every chance they get!
I repeat my original point: Where did the original 1% - or 20% with the beneficial mutation come from? How did they get to that point? And for that matter, what distinction are you making between the 20% that survive and the 1% in your prior post? You need to untangle your own scenario first, and stop begging the question by conveniently assuming the prior arrival of the mutation population. It is that growth to near-fixation that needs to be explained, not assumed.
Moreover, note that you are using an absolutely extreme case (100% lethality to the non-mutants, with 100% exposure of the population to the disease in your example) to argue for natural selection. I agree that it is in those most extreme cases in which natural selection plays a role. It is in the 99.9999% of real-world mutations that are not so dramatic (or are lethal rather than beneficial) that natural selection fades into irrelevance. You don't need to be a creationist to understand this. Just study standard population genetics.
You cannot start from this premise and conclude anything that you are trying to conclude, and so we are really done. Once you admit the extreme case, you have also admitted the much more gradual case for the simple reason of mathematics, that very small differences, when exponentiated, lead to astronomical differences. That violent things happen in two generations and nonviolent things in 20 or 30 or 50 is all part of the same continuum.
Stop begging the question by conveniently assuming the prior arrival of the mutation population.
That beneficial mutations happen is a fundamental observation. Beneficial mutations happen in viruses and bacteria all of the time. - they are not beneficial to humans, but they are beneficial to the virus or bacterium. Now, if you want to argue to the contrary, then we are done here. What is your explanation for the development of drug resistant diseases? Does god constantly bombard us with new diseases out of spite? Or does he hold his finger out and zap the little buggers causing them to change (whoops that mutation thing again)?
OMG! Hilarious.
The "safeguard" is the same as in any area of science: Continue to challenge and test your assumptions. Constantly incorporate new and independent data in doing so.
IOW, exactly what is being done in this study.
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