Enough Time for Evolution?

[Alceste]

I understand what you are saying.

A neutral change sticks around to "cooperate" with another change, that is beneficial, but, can be another neutral change I suppose and together they are selected. The first thought I had was, then it isn't neutral, is it?
A change that hangs around "waiting" for when it is needed seems to me to be very much more beneficial than neutral.

Well it's not really waiting for anything. It might never turn into anything.

 

[Agnostic75]

Message to Sherma: Consider the following:

What if some aliens helped evolution develop much faster than it would have developed on its own?

Yeah, if they believe in the concepts of Theism and at least what I consider TRUE Christianity in regards to how they live their lives, everything else is basically, in comparison at least, similar to debating how many angels can dance on a pin relatively speaking in terms of Theology, though still not completely because there are still some interpretation issues involved that could reflect how to read what Jesus said.

But you have been discussing science in this thread, no theology. If aliens brought life to earth, that is what they did regardless of what they believe about God. You must know that some naturalists believe that aliens brought life to earth. That would still leave them with the problem of explaining where the aliens came from, but nevertheless, some naturalists believe that aliens brought life to earth.

Lots of experts disagree with Dr. Newman, and you would not be able to win public debates with any of them. You are well aware that a man can be right, but still be unable to provide reasonable arguments that support his position. For many years, experts who were hired by cigarette companies won debates about the health risks of smoking cigarettes. That is because that had enough money to hire experts to debate for them. Eventually, those experts lost the debates, but for many years, they won the debates. There is little doubt that you do not understand Ken Miller's article on the flagellum, intelligent design, and irreducible complexity at The Flagellum Unspun well enough to adequately refute it.

Please reply to what I said.

 

[Shermana]

Why should I respond to something that's about the issue of authority that's unrelated to the specifics of the subject matter?

I already told you, if it's not a substantiated critique of the critique, and if it's a generalized argument about the Creation vs Evolution debate, I'll let you just waste your time.

Especially if you're not willing to publicly debate the references on Creation.com and other websites.

 

[Agnostic75]

Edit: Deletion of duplicate post.

 

[Agnostic75]

Please debate the contents itself of the following peer reviewed paper, on whether the critique on Wilf and Ewens "There's plenty of Time for Evolution" has valid points or if it is misrepresenting them.

Please keep all responses on topic and focused on the contents itself of the peer-reviewed paper or you will be kindly reminded to stick to the subject, thank you. If you are only interested in attacking the source without addressing the actual contents of the paper, feel free to demonstrate that you don't want to discuss the paper on another thread.

Example, if you disagree with: (Page 5, top)

please explain your specific reasons.

Isn't it plausible that aliens helped developed life on earth?

Some experts disagree with Dr. Newman about incremental changes. Would you be able to win public debates against them? If not, then you are merely quoting experts who agree with you who you hope know what they are talking about.

But would you be willing to publicly debate the referenced biologists at Creation.com?

No, because I am not an expert in biology. I usually agree with large consensuses of experts.

You are obviously hoping that skeptic laymen at this forum will not be able to adequately refute your experts, but I can post things from the Internet that you cannot adequately explain.

If aliens helped life to evolve on earth, that takes care of your argument about there not being enough time for evolution to develop naturalistically.

 

[Agnostic75]

Message to Shermana: If theistic evolution is true, that easily takes care of what you said in the opening post. You can argue against naturalistic evolution if you wish, but unless you can reasonably disprove theistic evolution, you have lost the debate since God is not limited by time.

What you are essentially arguing about is naturalism, not evolution since God is not limited by time, and since it is plausible that aliens brought life to earth, which in fact is what some naturalists believe.

 

[Agnostic75]

Message to Shermana: The vast majority of people in the world do not know very much about biology, and are not able to have informed opinions about evolution. Many of them choose to accept the opinions of the vast majority of experts. Do you have any problems with that? Have you ever appealed to a large consensus of experts? Many Christians have done that on many occasions. For example, many Christians appeal to authority, and to the majority, regarding the historical Jesus issue. They make a big issue out of the fact that the majority of skeptic scholars accept the historical Jesus theory. Well, I can make a big issue out of the fact that the majority of Christian experts accept common descent.

If laymen should not appeal to authority, and to the majority, who should they appeal to? Sure, sometimes the majority is wrong, but they have also been right a good deal of the time.

Regarding the global flood theory, the vast majority of skeptic and Christian experts reject it. Since most people do not know a lot about geology, many of then accept the opinions of the vast majority of experts about the global flood theory. What is wrong with that?

 

[Shermana]

Message to Shermana: If theistic evolution is true, that easily takes care of what you said in the opening post. You can argue against naturalistic evolution if you wish, but unless you can reasonably disprove theistic evolution, you have lost the debate since God is not limited by time.

What you are essentially arguing about is naturalism, not evolution since God is not limited by time, and since it is plausible that aliens brought life to earth, which in fact is what some naturalists believe.

Didn't I already tell you that this is about naturalism? I don't "lose" if I can't disprove Theistic naturalism. See, like I said, humans can already manipulate DNA to turn one thing into something completely different however they want though its in the early stages. There's nothing say God can't do it that way. What I can do, is try to argue that the evidence suggests that this is not the way He did it, whether He CAN do it or not. So that's moot.

Here's the thing, if Theistic Evolution is true, to gggrrrrreeeeeat!! I win either way because the point of this is to suggest that the naturalism option is simply unfeasible. However, I don't believe the evidence remotely indicates this is the case.

If "Aliens" are responsible, that's still basically the same thing as saying "gods". It's really Semantics.

 

[Sculelos]

Message to Shermana: The vast majority of people in the world do not know very much about biology, and are not able to have informed opinions about evolution. Many of them choose to accept the opinions of the vast majority of experts. Do you have any problems with that? Have you ever appealed to a large consensus of experts? Many Christians have done that on many occasions. For example, many Christians appeal to authority, and to the majority, regarding the historical Jesus issue. They make a big issue out of the fact that the majority of skeptic scholars accept the historical Jesus theory. Well, I can make a big issue out of the fact that the majority of Christian experts accept common descent.

If laymen should not appeal to authority, and to the majority, who should they appeal to? Sure, sometimes the majority is wrong, but they have also been right a good deal of the time.

Regarding the global flood theory, the vast majority of skeptic and Christian experts reject it. Since most people do not know a lot about geology, many of then accept the opinions of the vast majority of experts about the global flood theory. What is wrong with that?

I know a lot about Geology and I know that some things like boats and bones and houses and petrified animals were seen on Mars (and tons of petrified faces), either there was a Universal flood or there was advanced life on Mars sometime in the distant past.

Study the Curiosity high definition pictures from Nasa, I'm not making this stuff up.

 

[Falvlun]

It is interesting that the posts with actual studies regarding the dispersion of beneficial mutations were soundly ignored.

 

[Sculelos]

It is interesting that the posts with actual studies regarding the dispersion of beneficial mutations were soundly ignored.

What do you think we missed?

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

I think the issue with explaining evolution to people is explaining it in parts. Like looking at how people are responding to Mutations...you also have to factor the impact of natural selection.

In my view there are no real "beneficial" mutations, just mutations occur, some are neutral some are destructive...a neutral one becomes "beneficial" in light to the enivornmental pressures on the organism

 

[outhouse]

It is interesting that the posts with actual studies regarding the dispersion of beneficial mutations were soundly ignored.

Closed minds that will not accept credible valid scientific findings to me is rather dishonest, shame on those that remain willfully ignorant.

You have more patients then me brother.

 

[Agnostic75]

Message to Shermana: Lots of experts disagree with Dr. Newman. He might be right, but you would not be able to win public Internet debates against experts who disagree with him. In addition, you also would not be able to win a debate against Dr. Newman about his theories about evolution.

It is no help to you to show that there are some disagreements between some naturalists about evolution since if one side is wrong, that does nothing to reasonably prove that the other side is wrong.

The vast majority of non-Christians in the world already believe in various gods. If the majority of scientists one day said that naturalism is probably false, most skeptics would still not become Christians.

Many if not most people who reject Christianity do so for reasons that do not have anything to do with science, some examples being historical, philosophical, or moral reasons.

The vast majority of people in the world know very little about biology, and are not able to have informed opinions about it.

 

[Shermana]

It is interesting that the posts with actual studies regarding the dispersion of beneficial mutations were soundly ignored.

Like what? I may have missed them. I posted several studies about mutations, none were discussed. Link please.

 

[Shermana]

I googled "beneficial and deleterious mutations" and this was the very first hit:

The abstract to "A Ruby in the Rubbish"

1. I'm sure you aren't the only person who has thought of this objection. I'm sure that this has been rigorously studied by the experts. And, seeing as the theory has not been overturned, apparently they were satisfied. Why do you think that you know better?

2. In the absence of any solid evidence that your hypothesis has merit, your argument appears to be simply one from incredulity: "I can't believe that such a thing could happen, therefore, such a thing couldn't happen."

Is this what you're talking about? I'll read tomorrow and get back to you if I see anything that actually substantiates an application to larger and more complex life forms than bacteria.

 

[secret2]

What I can do, is try to argue that the evidence suggests that this is not the way He did it, whether He CAN do it or not...

I don't know what "he did it" means, but mutation, selection and hence evolution have all been observed under lab/breeding/wild environment. If you are still dishonest enough to say stuff like "but those are micro-evolution", then go back and answer the question that has been asked like a dozen time: what stops mutations from taking place when the boundary is hit, and what is that boundary?

 

[Shermana]

If i"m not mistaken, your article is simply about how Sexual populations will outlive asexual ones, and then it goes on to say that the model itself is based on an infinite population which renders the idea of a high ratio of beneficial mutations to a ratio far beyond what can be reasonably expected. Unless I missed something or I'm reading it wrong and someone would like to point out where it demonstrates what Favlun thinks it is saying here, it is not at all defending the idea that Beneficial mutations are in such high frequency as is necessary to sustain a Naturalistic model.

Figure 2 shows that, under asexuality, even if a ben-
eficial mutation is doomed to extinction by the pro-
cesses just described, it may rise to a high copy number
before it is eliminated from the population. This occurs
because asexuality produces a high level of correlation
in the average of fitness of beneficial-mutation-bearing
individuals from one generation to the next. Thus, if a
beneficial mutation is initially associated with a relatively
fit genotype, it is likely that adults carrying the beneficial
mutation will continue to be relatively fit for a substantial
number of generations, even if their fitness eventually
erodes. It should be recognized, however, that the pat-
tern shown in Figure 2 might not appear in a relatively
small population. As the number of copies of a benefi-
cial mutation increases into the thousands, it can cause
an increase in the average fitness of a population that
contains, say, only ten or twenty thousand members.
This will cause a decrease in the relative fitness of in-
dividuals that carry the beneficial mutation. As a result,
in relatively small populations, beneficial mutations that
will eventually become extinct might not achieve the
sorts of copy numbers that are sometimes observed in
the extremely large (effectively infinite) populations
studies here.
One problem with the approach taken in this study is
that I have assumed an infinite population (N = 03). In
an infinite population a beneficial mutation that initially
arises in a single copy can never (in finite time) attain
a substantial frequency because its initial frequency is
infinitesimal. If the mutation becomes established, then
its numbers will continually grow, but the frequency of
the mutation will always be vanishingly small, except in
the limit as the time since the initial appearance of the
mutation becomes infinite. Another problem is that, un-
der a biologically reasonable mechanism of mutation,
one might expect the constant appearance of all pos-
sible beneficial mutations during each successive gen-
eration in an infinite population. The probability that a
given type of beneficial mutation will arise de nom may
be tiny for a given newborn individual, but so long as this
probability is finite, we can expect an infinite number of
new occurrences in an infinite population. This is con-
trary to my assumption that beneficial mutations are
rare.
Fortunately, these diffkulties with the N = a assump-
tion are more apparent than real. They tell us what we
already know, that infinite populations are biologically
unrealistic, and that they should only be used to approxi-
mate the case of very large populations. In a large (but
not infinite) population, established mutations will certainly achieve a substantial frequency in finite time. Fur-
thermore, we have data that strongly suggests that all
possible beneficial mutations will not necessarily arise at
one time even in very large microbial populations (e.g.,
PAQUIN and ADAMS 1983; LENSKI et al. 1991). The calcu-
lations made in this paper will be approximately correct
so long as the distribution of deleterious mutations is
similar to a Poisson distribution, and this requirement
can be fulfilled by a finite population, so long as it is
sufflciently large (HAIGH 1978). Thus, there is no real
problem with the N = ~0 assumption, as long as one
keeps in mind that the calculations are meant to be a
useful approximation for the case of very large (but fi-
nite) populations.
It may be worth pointing out that, while the popula-
tion is assumed to have an infinite number of members,
the fate of beneficial mutations (ie., establishment or
loss) is a random process. This may seem surprising to
some readers, as infinite populations are usually as-
sociated with deterministic processes. The reason for
the non-deterministic character of evolution in the
case of the models studied here is that the number of
copies of a beneficial mutation is finite at any given
(finite) time after the initial appearance of the
mutation.

 

[Shermana]

I don't know what "he did it" means, but mutation, selection and hence evolution have all been observed under lab/breeding/wild environment. If you are still dishonest enough to say stuff like "but those are micro-evolution", then go back and answer the question that has been asked like a dozen time: what stops mutations from taking place when the boundary is hit, and what is that boundary?

What's dishonest is associating what's been actually observed in a lab with the idea of large structural changes that could identify a dog and cat and bear as all from the same ancestor or that a bat could develop wings. My guess is you have no idea what's been actually observed. It's pretty much limited to minor variations of the species itself that in no way deviate from the base structure of the DNA.

If you are saying it's dishonest to call it Microevolution, that's dishonest. It's been brought up over and over again, and so far, no links have provided to the contrary, despite honest attempts like the link above which does not, as far as I can tell, in any way actually go against the idea, that you need a "Freaking obscenely expontential" number of beneficial mutations to accumulate.

Now if you'd like to further embarass yourself with demonstratable ignorance, feel free to repeat the same nonsense but eventually I'd like it if you actually discussed what's in the Review. I know very few people want to actually discuss the Review or even the concepts within it and want to jump to different subjects or the general Evolution vs Creationist concepts, but it's kinda sad after 52 pages we've only had less than a handful of people who respected the purpose of the OP and actually gave anything close to an attempt at rebutting the OP, and so far I have yet to see much that didn't involve misrepresenting what it said or taking full account of what it said, or staying on subject. A few have tried though, points for them!

 

[secret2]

What's dishonest is associating what's been actually observed in a lab with the idea of large structural changes that could identify a dog and cat and bear as all from the same ancestor or that a bat could develop wings. My guess is you have no idea what's been actually observed. It's pretty much limited to minor variations of the species itself that in no way deviate from the base structure of the DNA.

Thanks for affirming my guess.