Says someone who thinks that Sanford does research. Newhope, one piece of trivial knowledge: if it is not published in a relevant peer-reviewed scientific journal, it is not research. It is just an opinion. "Genetic entropy" has never been published in any peer-reviewed biological scientific journal. It is Sanford's personal opinion. He is wrong as "genetic entropy" does not exist. That's the opinion of more than 99.9% of all Biologists.
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Creationist - What about Evolution you disagree with?
- Thread starter Big_TJ
- Start date
newhope101
Active Member
Sandford puts forward a hypothesis/theory just like evolutionary researchers do. Sandford has published many scientific papers, owns 25 patents and used to be an evolutionist, and his research is excellent and he is very well credentialed. Sandford uses evolutionary research also to support his premise. He hasn't made up his own.
So again all I have here is your opinion with no more that hot air as back up. This is as much as I expected. If you wish to defend your TOE faith get over yourselves and provide research.
I can also produce drosophila research for over 600 generations that did not fix 1 allele for 'accelerated development".
"We conclude that, at least for life history characters such as development time, unconditionally advantageous alleles rarely arise, are associated with small net fitness gains or cannot fix because selection coefficients change over time".
Genome-wide analysis of a long-term evolution experiment with Drosophila : Nature : Nature Publishing Group
600 generations is equivalent to 12,000 human years. These researchers were very hopefull they could get this allele to fix in the population. It didn't. They say perhaps not enough time was a possible reason. This also supports Sandfords claim that......
"it would take 300 generations to make a genetic trait fixed in a population. [Note: 300 generations is a conservative number. The average number found in nature is larger than 300".
Examples of immunity are not going to turn a chimpy creature into a human. That's pretty much all you've got. There was alot of hope riding on this drosophila research that did not eventuate.
So instead of giving your multiple opinions and poly woffle, how about some research as requested to refute Sanford.
Below is part of the review to get you started.
H. NDET assumes that the billions of years (a.k.a. "deep time") that the earth has been in existence is plenty of time for random mutation and natural selection to give rise to the diversity of life found today. [In my personal experience, I have found that even the mention of "deep time" is enough to dispel any doubts a Darwinist has in his heart about NDET!] However, even assuming that the above problems (A.-G.) don't exist, the time needed to make only one beneficial nucleotide mutation dominant in a population is *far* too long for even the "deep time" provided. Sanford cites J.B.S. Haldane, another Darwinian geneticist, who calculated that (again, ignoring problems A.-G. above) it would take 300 generations to make a genetic trait fixed in a population. [Note: 300 generations is a conservative number. The average number found in nature is larger than 300.] So, for example, it would take several billion years for a chimp-like ancestor to evolve into a human (again, assuming only beneficial mutations). This famous problem for neo-Darwinism has historically been known as "Haldane's Dilemma".
I. NDET assumes that DNA is a linear code, and that one change in a sequence won't affect other functions in the phenotype. However, recent discoveries have shown that most DNA sequences are "poly-constrained". That is, DNA sequences can have meanings on several different levels. For example, imagine a coded message that has a valid meaning when read forward, another valid meaning when read backwards, another every 5 letters, and yet another when placed on top of another few messages (making it 3D). This is how most DNA functions, just more complex! Any change in the code could cause an incoherent message, and thus, one good mutation one way might also cause several bad mutations in other ways.
J. Irreducible Complexity. [There has been much debate on this topic, but I agree with Sanford (and Behe for that matter) that direct *and indirect* Darwinian pathways are extremely unlikely (and might as well be impossible). See Behe's Afterword in the 10th anniversary edition of Darwin's Black Box.]
Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome
So now it is your and others turn to provide RESEARCH to the contrary.
KROK....So don't give your opinion 'genetic entrophy does not exist'. That is your valueless opinion worth absolutely nothing and much less that Sanfords research. How about some research to back your claim. Do you not understand what substatiation through research means? Perhaps not. You are an evolutionist after all. But that is what is requested. You can either provide it or you cannot. Simple!
Can any of you provide research in refute of Sanford or not?
Your researchers continue to refute each other. Surely you can find some research more robust than simple immunity or changes in beak size or colouring etc. Surely you have some research that refutes Sandford. I am not concerned, if you do, because refutes are going on all the time anyway in your own circle, eg birds. A refute is not the last word. However I am interested to see what research you have to produce.
If by Sunday evening all I have here are opinions and every sort of aside rather than research to counter Sandfords claims, then I will understand that you are unable to do so and the points for this one goes to creationists.
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Dirty Penguin
Master Of Ceremony
..........:sw:..........
RitalinO.D.
Well-Known Member
I showed you proof that contradicts Sanfords belief of a young earth. How could you, being a self proclaimed Old Earth Creationist, put stock in someone with beliefs that contradict your own? Seems to me you are grasping at straws.
tumbleweed41
Resident Liberal Hippie
Are you able to provide genetic research that backs up Sanfords claims?
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
Well, no. Sandford has (had) a hypothesis. It was falsified. End of story.
Darwin had a hypothesis. It was sustained by decades of research confirming the hypothesis.
So rather than being the same, it's more like the opposite.
Skwim
Veteran Member
The only relevant work I've been able to uncover is his book GENETIC ENTROPY AND THE MYSTERY OF THE GENOME. Not caring to read it, I sought out reviews of it, and came upon quite a few, two of which I've posted here.newhope101 said:
This one is a customer review appearing on Amazon.com
"This unfortunate rather meandering missive proceeds from an unspoken and unmentioned premise linked to the concept of 'entropy'. This concept originally arose from a restatement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, misinterpreted by creationists as debunking evolution. The original statement was that in a closed or isolated system,Heat energy may not move from a cold body to a warm one (Clausius)--hence Thermo (heat) dynamics (movement). This was restated to state that in any closed or isolated system, the amount of entropy will increase until equilibrium is reached. This was again restated to say that in any system, the amount of entropy will increase until equilibrium is reached.
Sanford clearly proceeds from this latter assumption; there are problems with this approach, however. First, it proceeds from an assumption that the last statement of the Second Law is correct [it is not]; second, it proceeds from an assumption that the human genome is a closed system in which entropy(also referred to as disorder) will continually increase [this is also false-the genome is NOT a closed system]. Third there is a presumption that mechanisms within DNA and RNA do not allow for error correction, and that any errors are permanent [this is also false]. Fourth, the assumption is also made that an equilibrium point could not be reached before massive degredation of the genome, something unsupported by any evidence or documentation. Fifth, Sanford ignores the logical implications of proceeding from unproven or incorrect assumptions: the argument is so flawed from a logical and scientific perspective it become pointless.
While this work is superficially cloaked in scientific rhetoric and significant-appearing facts and documentation, it is so fundamentally flawed that the conclusions presented are worthless.Religious dogma cannot be remade into science. When you consider that Young-Earth creationism has been mathematically disproven, Noah's flood has been mathematically disproven, and geocenterism also mathematically disproven (in 1592, no less, this is another of the creationist myths that also has yet to be proven, and will not be, by Sanford or anyone else."
Author: pontecanis
source
And here is a more in depth criticism of the book by SCOTT BUCHANAN (Ph.D. chemical engineering.) from Letters to Creationists. I've reprinted the introductory lines (it begins about 1/5 of the way down the page, following a critique of Michael Behe's book Edge of Evolution) so that those interested can better find the entire article (quite lengthy). I've also included one of the topics (#3) from the linked page.Sanford clearly proceeds from this latter assumption; there are problems with this approach, however. First, it proceeds from an assumption that the last statement of the Second Law is correct [it is not]; second, it proceeds from an assumption that the human genome is a closed system in which entropy(also referred to as disorder) will continually increase [this is also false-the genome is NOT a closed system]. Third there is a presumption that mechanisms within DNA and RNA do not allow for error correction, and that any errors are permanent [this is also false]. Fourth, the assumption is also made that an equilibrium point could not be reached before massive degredation of the genome, something unsupported by any evidence or documentation. Fifth, Sanford ignores the logical implications of proceeding from unproven or incorrect assumptions: the argument is so flawed from a logical and scientific perspective it become pointless.
While this work is superficially cloaked in scientific rhetoric and significant-appearing facts and documentation, it is so fundamentally flawed that the conclusions presented are worthless.Religious dogma cannot be remade into science. When you consider that Young-Earth creationism has been mathematically disproven, Noah's flood has been mathematically disproven, and geocenterism also mathematically disproven (in 1592, no less, this is another of the creationist myths that also has yet to be proven, and will not be, by Sanford or anyone else."
Author: pontecanis
source
JOHN SANFORDS GENETIC ENTROPY AND THE MYSTERY OF THE GENOME
The errors in Genetic Entropy [24] are so pervasive that it might take a whole new book to fully expose them [93]. Ill break it down to the topics listed below:
(1) Kimuras Distribution of Mutations
(2) Evidence for Beneficial Mutations
(3) Gene Duplication
(4) Natural Selection: What Sanford Claims
(5) Natural Selection: What Studies Show
(6) Evidence for Genomic Deterioration
(7) Synergistic Epistasis and Other Theoretical Considerations
(8) Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of John Sanford
These topics deal with the two broad areas of random mutations and natural selection. These are the twin pillars of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which Sanford refers to as the Primary Axiom.
(3) Gene Duplication
Sanford repeatedly asserts that mutations, by which he seems to mean simple point substitutions or single point insertion/deletion events, do not increase net information. That is generally true for point substitutions or indels, but irrelevant. By increase net information I assume Sanford means increase size of the functional genome or increase the number of distinct genes. This obviously will not be accomplished by just substituting one amino acid for another at a given point.
However, there is a whole other class of mutations which are common and which do increase genomic size. These are duplications and insertions of genetic material, ranging from small chunks of DNA to complete genes and to duplication of entire genomes. As usual with major mutations, most of these duplication/insertion events will be deleterious to the organism, but a small fraction will be beneficial, and some will be effectively neutral. In my letter of July [STAN 4] I cited three studies showing beneficial gene duplications [9, 40, 41]. Gene duplication followed by further, normal mutations provides a clear path to increasing genomic complexity. Creationists are unable to demonstrate that this path is not viable. This rebuts their claim that natural causes are inadequate to account for the increase in genomic complexity in the evolution of vertebrates from simpler organisms.
In some cases the duplicated genes are different from the parent gene, so some variation is introduced right away [9,90,91]. I am not aware of a study which has followed the genetic path of an organism through gene duplication and a subsequent major refunctionalization, but I would not expect that to be readily observable. Evolution is a very slow process by human standards. Beneficial gene duplication is rare, and the modification of a gene to serve a new function is rare, so the odds of observing both these events for a single gene in the span of a human lifetime, in an organism that happens to be under observation, are low indeed. However, in the wild, with trillions of organisms and hundreds of millions of years, the odds lengthen for successful gene duplication with neofunctionalization. The review by Long et al. [90] cited above notes a number of inferred examples of neofunctionalization of duplicated genes, but many of these transformations spanned millions of years.
Another window into the rarity of fixed mutations which increase complexity comes from examination of changes in physical forms (phenotypes) in the fossil record [44]:
Production of man from a primitive jawless fish in half a billion years is a remarkable example of progressive evolution, but we should not forget that degeneration and extinction are much more common in evolution. Haldane (1958) calls attention to the fact that probably for every case of progressive evolution in the sense of descendants being more complex in structure and behavior than their ancestors, there have been ten of regressive evolution. The main reason that evolution as a whole appears to be progressive is simply because a species that acquired a new capacity was more likely to give rise to various descendant species than one which lost some capacities.
This balance between genetic advance and decay does not imply the absence of complexity-increasing mutations, but does suggest that they are so rare that we should not expect see them occur under human observation.
Sanford tries to dismiss gene duplication with ridicule, not logic. He makes up some examples of nonsense duplications of letters and words that are not germane to genomes. He does not seem to understand that the genome is like a recipe, not a descriptive essay. Repeating a sentence in an essay may not add any information, but duplicating an instruction in a cake recipe will give a different cake. Thus, changing a recipe segment from Add 1 cup flour to Add 1cup flour; Add 1 cup flour can materially affect the product. A further mutation to one of the duplicate instructions could give Add 1 cup flour; Add 1 cup pudding, which clearly contains more information that the original Add 1 cup flour. Of course, we would not expect these recipe permutations to survive and be recorded and shared unless the new cakes had some attractive characteristic. This would be natural selection in action.
source
The rest of the article is equally incisive, and really trashes Sanford's book. One comes away from the article knowing that Sanford is no less duplicitous in promoting creationism than Ken Ham, Kent Hovind, and their compatriots.The errors in Genetic Entropy [24] are so pervasive that it might take a whole new book to fully expose them [93]. Ill break it down to the topics listed below:
(1) Kimuras Distribution of Mutations
(2) Evidence for Beneficial Mutations
(3) Gene Duplication
(4) Natural Selection: What Sanford Claims
(5) Natural Selection: What Studies Show
(6) Evidence for Genomic Deterioration
(7) Synergistic Epistasis and Other Theoretical Considerations
(8) Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of John Sanford
These topics deal with the two broad areas of random mutations and natural selection. These are the twin pillars of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which Sanford refers to as the Primary Axiom.
(3) Gene Duplication
Sanford repeatedly asserts that mutations, by which he seems to mean simple point substitutions or single point insertion/deletion events, do not increase net information. That is generally true for point substitutions or indels, but irrelevant. By increase net information I assume Sanford means increase size of the functional genome or increase the number of distinct genes. This obviously will not be accomplished by just substituting one amino acid for another at a given point.
However, there is a whole other class of mutations which are common and which do increase genomic size. These are duplications and insertions of genetic material, ranging from small chunks of DNA to complete genes and to duplication of entire genomes. As usual with major mutations, most of these duplication/insertion events will be deleterious to the organism, but a small fraction will be beneficial, and some will be effectively neutral. In my letter of July [STAN 4] I cited three studies showing beneficial gene duplications [9, 40, 41]. Gene duplication followed by further, normal mutations provides a clear path to increasing genomic complexity. Creationists are unable to demonstrate that this path is not viable. This rebuts their claim that natural causes are inadequate to account for the increase in genomic complexity in the evolution of vertebrates from simpler organisms.
In some cases the duplicated genes are different from the parent gene, so some variation is introduced right away [9,90,91]. I am not aware of a study which has followed the genetic path of an organism through gene duplication and a subsequent major refunctionalization, but I would not expect that to be readily observable. Evolution is a very slow process by human standards. Beneficial gene duplication is rare, and the modification of a gene to serve a new function is rare, so the odds of observing both these events for a single gene in the span of a human lifetime, in an organism that happens to be under observation, are low indeed. However, in the wild, with trillions of organisms and hundreds of millions of years, the odds lengthen for successful gene duplication with neofunctionalization. The review by Long et al. [90] cited above notes a number of inferred examples of neofunctionalization of duplicated genes, but many of these transformations spanned millions of years.
Another window into the rarity of fixed mutations which increase complexity comes from examination of changes in physical forms (phenotypes) in the fossil record [44]:
Production of man from a primitive jawless fish in half a billion years is a remarkable example of progressive evolution, but we should not forget that degeneration and extinction are much more common in evolution. Haldane (1958) calls attention to the fact that probably for every case of progressive evolution in the sense of descendants being more complex in structure and behavior than their ancestors, there have been ten of regressive evolution. The main reason that evolution as a whole appears to be progressive is simply because a species that acquired a new capacity was more likely to give rise to various descendant species than one which lost some capacities.
This balance between genetic advance and decay does not imply the absence of complexity-increasing mutations, but does suggest that they are so rare that we should not expect see them occur under human observation.
Sanford tries to dismiss gene duplication with ridicule, not logic. He makes up some examples of nonsense duplications of letters and words that are not germane to genomes. He does not seem to understand that the genome is like a recipe, not a descriptive essay. Repeating a sentence in an essay may not add any information, but duplicating an instruction in a cake recipe will give a different cake. Thus, changing a recipe segment from Add 1 cup flour to Add 1cup flour; Add 1 cup flour can materially affect the product. A further mutation to one of the duplicate instructions could give Add 1 cup flour; Add 1 cup pudding, which clearly contains more information that the original Add 1 cup flour. Of course, we would not expect these recipe permutations to survive and be recorded and shared unless the new cakes had some attractive characteristic. This would be natural selection in action.
source
Alceste
Vagabond
I expect her "cause" is simply to reinforce her faith by giving the appearance of exposing it to meaningful scrutiny. I don't think she's trying to convince anyone but herself.
RitalinO.D.
Well-Known Member
This ^
Skwim
Veteran Member
Absolutely, because she knows none of us are anywhere near agreeing with anything she says.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
I don't think she's trying to convince anyone either, but if her purpose here is to simply appear to be entering the lion's den and preaching the good news, that makes the whole thing that much more delusional.
If she were doing a good job of it or even at least behaving honestly and sincerely then it would be genuine, even if not fruitful. But if what you're saying is true, then it's total psychological delusion.
Alceste
Vagabond
Yep. A necessary condition of the true believer. I've seen it elsewhere - Christians intentionally setting themselves up to be "persecuted" to reassure themselves they are "true" Christians. There's something in the Bible that makes them think it's a good sign when everybody is annoyed with them.
The Neo Nerd
Well-Known Member
I honestly have to give her credit.
She has stuck around the evolution threads for WAY longer than any other creationist i've seen.
It is a credit to her as a person that she has stubbornly stuck to her beliefs despite the batterings to her beliefs that she has received.
Most anti-evolutionists when confronted with the masses of evidence against their arguments will stop posting, but newhope keeps going.
It's at best willful ignorance but i can appreciate the stubborness and strength of conviction that she is showing.
Autodidact
Intentionally Blank
That's true. Creationists believe that their eternal salvation depends on believing creationism, and rejecting evolution. Their view is that if they still hold this position at the end of the debate, they have won.
newhope101
Active Member
Out of the lot of you, Skwim is the only one to lodge a decent refute and understands what a decent response might look like. Well done SWIM! The rest of you appear to be sorry excuses for defenders of the faith. Even I knew what the refutes are. Silly billies!!!!!
SKWIM....Good. Finally you found something.
What examples of beneficial mutations does this article refer to. The only ones I know of are related to immunity to disease and changes like colour. Your own researchers now propose that genetic drift, is a great part of evolution and this is unpredictable and unable to be demonstrated. Further more there is the drosophila research I quoted that could not fix an allele in the population. This also flys in the face of the refute posted.
　
Then there is the neutralist-selectionist debate, the founder effect debate, chaos theory. Then there is the fossil evidence that suggests species remained the same for millions of years while they were adapting to immunological responses that did not result in a change in morphology for . millions of years. Hence Sanford has evidence from within your own biased research re fossils.
You have many examples of declines in genetic variation for a start, and this is fobbed off by genetic bottlenecks. Hence I am remiss in understanding why the posted refute has any more substance to it than it claims against Sanford.
Common knowledge has been tossed into the garbage bin of delusionary evidence many times, where the opposers are found vindicated eg LUCA.:foot:
The dino to bird proponents likewise refute those researchers that propose otherwise. This is nothing new and is never the last word that will be said.
So now that we have come this far lets go back to an initial point I made long long ago, that was taken over by many ridiculous asides, led us all over the place to here..
　
There are some very well credentialed researchers that refute TOE. They have produced theoretical evidence that, not unlike your own research, is disputed by some. Many other evo researchers respect Sanfords work as highlighted in the previous link. Not all creationists are uneducated and ignorant of the biological sciences.
To state otherwise makes those posters ignorant liars. :yes:
SKWIM....Good. Finally you found something.
What examples of beneficial mutations does this article refer to. The only ones I know of are related to immunity to disease and changes like colour. Your own researchers now propose that genetic drift, is a great part of evolution and this is unpredictable and unable to be demonstrated. Further more there is the drosophila research I quoted that could not fix an allele in the population. This also flys in the face of the refute posted.
　
Then there is the neutralist-selectionist debate, the founder effect debate, chaos theory. Then there is the fossil evidence that suggests species remained the same for millions of years while they were adapting to immunological responses that did not result in a change in morphology for . millions of years. Hence Sanford has evidence from within your own biased research re fossils.
You have many examples of declines in genetic variation for a start, and this is fobbed off by genetic bottlenecks. Hence I am remiss in understanding why the posted refute has any more substance to it than it claims against Sanford.
Common knowledge has been tossed into the garbage bin of delusionary evidence many times, where the opposers are found vindicated eg LUCA.:foot:
The dino to bird proponents likewise refute those researchers that propose otherwise. This is nothing new and is never the last word that will be said.
So now that we have come this far lets go back to an initial point I made long long ago, that was taken over by many ridiculous asides, led us all over the place to here..
　
There are some very well credentialed researchers that refute TOE. They have produced theoretical evidence that, not unlike your own research, is disputed by some. Many other evo researchers respect Sanfords work as highlighted in the previous link. Not all creationists are uneducated and ignorant of the biological sciences.
To state otherwise makes those posters ignorant liars. :yes:
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
You've gotta be kidding.
By your logic, we should "give credit" to any nut job who merely "sticks to his/her beliefs" in the face of overwhelming reality.
It's like the Iraqi minister saying "There's no American troops here...we've repelled them" while US troops were in the background. Apparently to you, he should have been commended rather than laughed at for 1) being delusional, and 2) expecting no one to notice.
David M
Well-Known Member
Except that Sanfords genetic entropy model states that rabbits and mice should already be extinct due to genetic entropy. In fact mice should go extinct within a human lifetime.
Therefore Sanfords program cannot model observed reality and must be wrong.
Sanford's pathetic attempts to claim genetic entropy is refuted by its inabilty to model reality.
That he promotes this claim proves that he is dishonest.
The Neo Nerd
Well-Known Member
Great things have been done by those who have refused to bow down to the pressures of others.
Galileo springs immediately to mind.
I'm not saying shes right, actually i'll say right now that her behaviour indicates either exceptional willful ignorance or a POE who is willing to go to extraordinary lengths for a giggle.
Pegg
Jehovah our God is One
i disagree with the assumption that one creature will slowly change into an entirely different creature
EG:
the reason being that there is simply not enough time for this sort of evolution to have occured.