Evidence of Evolution that was presented but never addressed

[Guy Threepwood]

In a particularly long thread enormous amounts of excellent evidence demonstrating the case for evolution was presented by me an many others. As usual, they were never either rebutted or taken into account in any fashion. So I thought to compile them in a single thread that belongs to me, and encourage others to do so also. Repeating the same refuted arguments 500 times in a 200 page thread is a useful tactic to drown the refutations. So here is good way to counter that,

1)Transitional Sea to Land Fossils and trends in Evolution

The theory of evolution predicts that descent with modification with natural selection will create species that will show biological similarities with their ancestral lineage while slowly diverging as time progresses into newer types of body structure. The theory of evolution predicts that when we look at two very different seeming types (land animals and fish), there will be ancient animals who lived in the past who would share characteristics of both fish and land animals and we would see a chronological sequence where we would see certain types of fossil fish appear that are more and more land animal like until the first fossils of land amphibians crop up.

Thus the theory of evolution predicts a pattern, a pattern that has no reason to exist otherwise. Here is the pattern

1) The ancient earth will have no land animals but only fish in the sea. This is indeed what we see before 400 million years.
2) There will eventually be groups of fish that will have some similarities with land animals. This is observed in the fossil record with lungfish (fish with lungs) and other lobe-finned fish (fish with four fleshy limb like fin lobes) cropping up from 400 million years. No land animals are found yet.
3) Some groups of lobe finned fish are seen to adapt to shallow waters and begin to sport primitive limb bones in their fins
Example Eusthenopteron. 385 million years ago, after generic lungfish are seen and before any animals are seen.
Palaeos Vertebrates Sarcopterygii: Osteolepiformes: Eusthenopteron

With the typical bone structure in the limbs that will become characteristic of all later land animals

4) By 375 million years, fish-amphibian transition animals like Tiktaalik are being found showing further development of limbs, heads and other features that make them more and more similar to land vertebrates.
Tiktaalik fossils reveal how fish evolved into four-legged land animals

"Its extraordinary blend of gills, scales, fins and lungs, combined with a movable neck, sturdy ribcage and crocodile-like head, placed Tiktaalik half way between fish and the earliest four-legged land animals.In work published on Monday, researchers describe fossils of the back half of Tiktaalik for the first time. The report shows that the animal had a large, robust pelvic girdle, a prominent hip joint, and long hind fins. The powerful fins could have propelled the beast in the water, but also helped it walk on riverbeds, or scramble around on mudflats."

5) Finally we have Acanthostega and Icthyostega that are discovered after 370 million years that, as I discussed, have many of the features that show them to be clearly amphibious.
Ictheyostega, a 370 million year old fish-amphibian transitional species that had fish like traits (tail fins, gills, fish like snout and teeth) and land animal like traits (four legs with feet and fingers, shoulders and necks and hips and lungs) . Found in the horizon between the arising of lungfish ancestors (lobe finned fish, 420 million years) and later modern amphibians (320 million years) . Just accident or evolution?

Full CT-scanned image of the animal based on fossils (over 200 individuals found)

Full details of anatomy
Ichthyostega

How it moved on land, hauling its body like seals
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-shift-shore-extinct-tetrapod-ichthyostega.html

6)Its only after this, from 360 million years, that land vertebrate fossils begin to enter the fossil record. An example is an ancient land walking amphibious animal Perderpes from 350 million years who show striking similarity with earlier Acanthostega and yet has more well developed legs and shoulders that are now capable of supporting its full weight on land.

7) Thus from 400-350 million years, the fossil record show a chronological sequence where -at one end we have only primitive fishes and no vertebrate animals whatsoever on land, and the other end we have the first land walking amphibians. And in between we have a whole sequence of fish-amphibian animals whose bodies begin by looking like the ancient fishes but take on characteristics of the primitive amphibians over time, until at the end we have the first land walking amphibians! This is exactly as predicted by the theory of evolution, where descent through modification and natural selection is expected to generate just this kind of a pattern as the animals slowly evolve from fully marine fishes to land-walking amphibians through 50 million years of evolution over successive generations.

8) Your "Jehova created everything directly when he wanted to" can neither predict such a pattern or explain why its rational to expect such a pattern. He could have created land animals with fully developed features along with all the fishes directly 450 million years ago. All the fishes, all the reptiles, all the amphibians, all the birds could have been created at the same time, fully modern . He could have created them billions of years ago instead of waiting around for 4 billion years since the formation of earth and populating the earth with nothing but bacteria, amoeba and plankton for the first 3.5 billion years of life.

In your theory there is no reason to expect
i) Simple unicellular prokaryotic life to predate complex multicellular life by a billion years (in evolution this is expected)
ii) Eukaryotic cells to arise after prokaryotic cells by a billion years (in evolution this is expected)
iii) Simplest types of animals like jellyfish and sponge to predate complex animals by 100 million years (in evolution you expect this)
iv) Early forms of invertebrate and vertebrate life look very primitive and less well developed than later types in the Cambrian era (in evolution you expect this)
v) Fish fossils to show distinct stages of sequential development of modern features over a 100 million year period like from jawless varieties to jaws, from bony plates to scales, from no internal skeleton to internal skeleton (the flexible vertebra), from early lobe like fins to more aerodynamic ray like fins. (evolution predicts this)
vi) For vertebrate animals to appear on land much much after the emergence of fish and the earliest of them showing a clear sequence of intermediate forms between certain fish and the first amphibians.(evolution predicts this)
vii) For amphibians to arise first, then reptiles, then mammals, then dinosaurs and then birds with clear sequence of forms intermediate between each of these group just at the time point of emergence.(evolution predicts this)



It appears Jehovah went into an enormous amount of trouble trying to time and finetune his designed animals so that it looks like they arose by evolution. It seems his only goals were to make evolution appear to be correct rather than good design of perfected animals! Thousands and thousands of very different animals filled the same ecological niche over the eons again and again before becoming extinct and replaced by new forms living almost the exact same way. What is this? A perfect omnipotent, omniscient designer can't decide what he wants and changing each and every animal type every 2-3 million years or so for the last 600 million years? Building and rebuilding species, moving the continents and oceans around again and again, building and eroding mountains again and again and again eon after eon of pointless mindless transformations and re-transformations. This is design?? Wow!! He is psychotic or something? You belittle God by hanging onto such a regressive view of creation.

An young earth view is even more ridiculous. Not only does this go against all geological, physical and astronomical evidence, it assumes the absurdity of believing all animals ancient and modern (ammonites to T-rex to pterosaurs to lions to rabbits to eagles to icthysaurs to otters to...) living side by side! It cannot explain why 90% of sedimentary rocks that also happen to be consistently dated to be the oldest has not a single animal fossil, and then suddenly the last 10% have animals, but not in random assemblages but in graded order of more primitive and alien looking to more advanced and modern looking, with distinct blocks of similar species in various layers. It cannot explain the pattern above whatsoever if all species were living together. And where are the drowned humans in the Cambrian, Ordovician or Triassic rocks? Can humans swim better than ammonites or icthyosaurs? This is just a taste of the absurd. There are many many more.


More will follow.

proof positive that all modern cars accidentally morphed into themselves from primordial unicycles

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Natural selection needs to have existing features to work on.How did those existing features get there in the first place? Natural selection does not create anything. As the saying goes selection can explain the survival of the fittest but it does not explain the arrival of the fittest. This is even supported by nonreligious biologists. They say that it is not natural selection that can create complex genomic networks that are needed to build these features but other nonadaptive forces.

Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics
There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non-adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics

Evidence shows that it is not selection, that is creating the complexity of life but nonadaptive forces such as (developmental bias); how the environment directly shapes organisms’ traits (plasticity); how organisms modify environments (niche construction); and how organisms transmit more than genes across generations (extra-genetic inheritance).
Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

It is easy to make up a speculative explanation based on the reasoning of natural selection sifting and sorting to build complex features and creatures. But there is always a lot of explanation left out. It's easy to take 1/2 a dozen steps and say look how easy it is to make life, through adaptations. Life is not just the limbs we see or the skin and bones. It is also the cells of that skin, the different layers of that skin which all have different makeups that need to work together and be created at the same time. There are systems within systems right down to the nerves and signals that go to the brain and the millions of neurons. Then this goes even further into the proteins that build all the components of those features. Then this goes even further down to the cellular level further again into the micro level. But this is never explained how all this can be created by mostly nonbeneficial random mutations and blind selection.

So when someone says hey it's easy to create something through natural selection they only look at one level and that is why it's a fallacy because they can never explain how it happens at all levels. They can only speculate about this. But the biggest hurdle is that through all these levels this blind and random process has, to produce the exact piece of the puzzle at the right time and in the right place each and every time to make it happen. Becuase this same process also allows many, more non-beneficial mutations that will cause those exact pieces to not work properly that it is hard to believe that it can create such complex and finely tuned features. That is why many scientists cannot explain how this can happen altogether. They will take one experiment or example and turn that into an entire theory.

It seems to leave the building of precise and delicate complex networks to a blind and random process that introduces situations that continually undermine those precise and delicate structures seems hard to believe and doesn't make sense. Then to say that the process of selection will neatly sort it all out does not make sense and leaves a lot of unanswered questions and does not fit what is being seen. Life follows preset paths where it seems to be able to adjust and tap into preexisting genetic material either within itself or through other cohabitating life forms including microorganism and the environment. It is all connected. There are other mechanisms as mentioned in the papers I linked which shows life has much more ability to adapt and change than through adaptations.

The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity
The goal here is to dispel a number of myths regarding the evolution of organismal complexity (Table 1). Given that life originated from inorganic matter, it is clear that there has been an increase in phenotypic complexity over the past 3.5 billion years, although long-term stasis has been the predominant pattern in most lineages. What is in question is whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.
The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

Good points, whichever side of the debate one is on, anyone who thinks evolution is simple, is missing something

As the saying goes selection can explain the survival of the fittest but it does not explain the arrival of the fittest

Yes, the natural selection of a significantly superior design goes entirely without saying, for any animal or product, how significantly superior designs arise by pure chance- is the tricky part.

Another common fallacy is to assume that survival of the fittest denotes survival of the fitter. Purely random mutations would overwhelmingly create deleterious changes, a range of inferior designs to be selected from. The fittest may still be selected, but it is not fitter than the preceding generation.

In a word, entropy- deterioration, decline, collapse,, that's what invariably happens when you leave chance to work on it's own without specific goals.

 

[james bond]

Are you sure you understand the term asexually? Asexual reproduction happens when offspring arise from a single parent, and inherit the genes of that parent only. This can happen in many ways, from division (as in bacteria), to budding and vegetative propagation, to parthenogenesis (done by some lizards). There are many videos of bacteria dividing, and is something most biology students, let alone trained scientists, have observed routinely for the past few centuries. I have seen it many times myself, and it is an extremely well studied and documented process. Your questioning it makes no sense when any microbiologist could take you into their lab and show it to you in real time.

Here's a video of bacteria dividing for your viewing pleasure:

And here is a video explaining the process, and what actually happens inside the bacteria

And before you ask, yes, the mechanisms it shows have been directly observed under the microscope.

First, I'm getting tired of your farking stupid innuendos, so I'm going to call it a day. It's tiring enough that atheists do not listen to YEC when they created science and no matter the evidence, so if you want to continue believing in evolutionary fairy tales then don't let me stop you. Atheist scientists just leech off the creation scientists when they get stuck. I would call that evolution of the gaps ha ha. It's probably better that we end it here amicably.

Yes, that's what I was looking for -- binary fission. I didn't watch your whole video, but we know that binary fission is a form of asexual reproduction. Asexual reproduction "theoretically" results in two identical cells. If bacteria did that, then we would be able to control it easily. However, with bacteria it doesn't end up this way. Its DNA has a high mutation rate. I'm sure this is why bacteria is the poster child for evolutionists. The problem with bacteria and its high mutation rate is it ends up having resistance to antibiotics quickly, as you know. This is because its reproduction acts like a complex organism and is able to exchange genetic material so it ends up with a combination of traits like that of having two parents. Atheist scientists will never be able to do this outside of the cell. All they can do is modify the cell to produce the mutation that they think they want. I can't say all mutations are negative yet, but almost all are. Atheist scientists do not believe in doing this. The atheist scientists think mutations can be positive and will strive to help us live longer, feed the world or whatever else fairy tales they can come up with. I mean what else is evolution but mutation?

Moreover, creation scientists are for asexual reproduction and sexual reproduction in order to work with organisms, plants and animals. Through these methods, they want to improve peoples' lives. Atheist scientists will not improve our lives, but end up making it worse despite their intentions. I would suspect their intentions are to make money and other self-serving purposes.

Have a good life and not a mutated one.

 

[james bond]

None of that refutes evolution whatsoever, it just shows that Darwin was wrong about details of how the process worked. Which makes sense.

It completely destroys evolution because Darwin was wrong about almost everything. Can I help if your faith in evolution makes you refuse to see the truth ha ha?

 

[james bond]

Referencing Stove! Really?

In "The Intellectual Capacity of Women" Stove stated his belief that "the intellectual capacity of women is on the whole inferior to that of men", and in "Racial and Other Antagonisms," he claimed that racism is not a form of prejudice, but rather, "common sense." You still behind him?

Quote mining my friend (who criticized me for quote mining with Lovejoy haha)?

 

[sayak83]

proof positive that all modern cars accidentally morphed into themselves from primordial unicycles

As soon as you find those animal and plant manufacturing plants and factories where teams of competing and fallible designers use animal design blueprints from the previous generation of animal makers and tinkers with them to create the next generation of animals and plants.....

But of course, human design is a form of evolution, called cultural evolution.
Cultural Evolution
And we know that it is design because:-
1) Cars do not reproduce but are made. The factories are there, the design process and the blueprints, all are visible. The design process itself is evolutionary as old ideas get copied by the next generation of designers, who add modifications to these ideas which then compete for dominance in the free market.

2)Animals and plants on the other hand are certainly not made. They reproduce...descent with modification. There is NO evidence that it was ever any other way...no designer...no factories...no blueprints...nothing. The descent with modification process is evolutionary as old genes get copied with slight modifications via reproductive processes and get expressed as the phenotype of the descendants that then compete for success in the survival game.

Both are different kinds of evolution. Different but related of course.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

As soon as you find those animal and plant manufacturing plants and factories where teams of competing and fallible designers use animal design blueprints from the previous generation of animal makers and tinkers with them to create the next generation of animals and plants.....

But of course, human design is a form of evolution, called cultural evolution.
Cultural Evolution
And we know that it is design because:-
1) Cars do not reproduce but are made. The factories are there, the design process and the blueprints, all are visible. The design process itself is evolutionary as old ideas get copied by the next generation of designers, who add modifications to these ideas which then compete for dominance in the free market.

2)Animals and plants on the other hand are certainly not made. They reproduce...descent with modification. There is NO evidence that it was ever any other way...no designer...no factories...no blueprints...nothing. The descent with modification process is evolutionary as old genes get copied with slight modifications via reproductive processes and get expressed as the phenotype of the descendants that then compete for success in the survival game.

Both are different kinds of evolution. Different but related of course.

superior designs out compete inferior ones and so are selected for their superior performance. This selection leads to that design surviving to be reproduced and multiplied in future generations and hence increase their dominance as a percentage of the entire set.

Am I talking about cars or species? I don't know either


yes the history of cars and the theory of evolution are different, and that's the point- not only does the identical algorithm above apply to each, they both leave practically identical fingerprints in the record- layers of rock or layers of cars piled up in a junk yard; (where we find no factories or blueprints or designers either)

shared and nested designs, which diverge, with gaps, sudden changes, some dead ends and a few regressions- but a general trend towards bigger and better- even the same glaring lack of intermediates between those fundamental design improvements that suddenly appear independently at the same time across the spectrum. Even redundant vestigial features such as tail fins and hood ornaments!

This is no slam dunk argument for ID- it simply demonstrates that these patterns in the record say nothing in and of themselves about observed changes being unguided, accidental, naturalistic. No matter how strongly this may be insinuated.If there is evidence for this, we'd have to look elsewhere.

 

[sayak83]

superior designs out compete inferior ones and so are selected for their superior performance. This selection leads to that design surviving to be reproduced and multiplied in future generations and hence increase their dominance as a percentage of the entire set.

Am I talking about cars or species? I don't know either


yes the history of cars and the theory of evolution are different, and that's the point- not only does the identical algorithm above apply to each, they both leave practically identical fingerprints in the record- layers of rock or layers of cars piled up in a junk yard; (where we find no factories or blueprints or designers either)

shared and nested designs, which diverge, with gaps, sudden changes, some dead ends and a few regressions- but a general trend towards bigger and better- even the same glaring lack of intermediates between those fundamental design improvements that suddenly appear independently at the same time across the spectrum. Even redundant vestigial features such as tail fins and hood ornaments!

This is no slam dunk argument for ID- it simply demonstrates that these patterns in the record say nothing in and of themselves about observed changes being unguided, accidental, naturalistic. No matter how strongly this may be insinuated.If there is evidence for this, we'd have to look elsewhere.

The inherent and observable capacities of living entities (that that reproduce in such a fashion that descent with modification is true) is enough to explain their evolution through time.
The observable methods of car replication:- through car making factories where designs from previous generation of cars are copied and modified to by humans to create the next set is enough to explain the technological evolution of car through time.

To shoe-horn evolution through external design into animal and plant history you need to find me evidence for those animal and plant making factories, evidence of successive generations of designers actually copying previous designs of animals and plants and improving on them by creating the next generation in these factories. Do you have any?

This would be as silly as trying to shoe-horn evolution through reproductive descent into cars by presuming that somehow cars secretly reproduce themselves despite all evidence to the contrary.

So yes, the evidence is not merely remnants of older generations of animals or cars, but also the evidence before our eyes of how animals actually leave behind progenies and how cars actually leave behind successors.

 

[SkepticThinker]

He SkepticThinker, has Stranger Things 2 started yet? I saw an ad last week, but it did not say when it was going to start again. Hate these teasers.

I saw a teaser too, but it didn't say when it comes out. There's talk that it's supposed to come out on Halloween. I wish they'd put more content in the teasers but I guess that's why they call them teasers, eh?

Check this out:
Stranger Things Season 2: Release Dates, Cast, Trailers and Everything You Need To Know


The third video down the page says it comes on out Halloween.

 

[Sapiens]

Quote mining my friend (who criticized me for quote mining with Lovejoy haha)?

Are you claiming that I have both quoted him out of context and misrepresented his views? That is what quote mining is, and I have not misrepresented his views.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The inherent and observable capacities of living entities (that that reproduce in such a fashion that descent with modification is true) is enough to explain their evolution through time.

subjective opinion, like the even more popular one, that said the observable capacities of apples (which fall in such a fashion that descent with gravity is true) is enough to explain all physical reality.

It's a superficial observation that works well enough on one scale, but completely self defeats at the other.

To shoe-horn evolution through external design into animal and plant history you need to find me evidence for those animal and plant making factories, evidence of successive generations of designers actually copying previous designs of animals and plants and improving on them by creating the next generation in these factories. Do you have any?

As I said, it doesn't prove ID, or was even intended to support that animals were made in factories by different designers

it just proves that all these patterns in the record, so often used to support Darwinism, apply at least as well to intelligently designed objects. Was there any other line of evidence you felt was specifically supportive of Darwinism?

But by your rationale, if I can't demonstrate how a magician managed to pick my card out of the deck, I must assume blind chance until then. And his odds of 1 in 52 are far far far greater than those for a purely random mutation creating a significantly superior design- in a car or biological organism- the latter is way more sensitive to being rendered utterly dysfunctional by corruptions in the plans

This would be as silly as trying to shoe-horn evolution through reproductive descent into cars by presuming that somehow cars secretly reproduce themselves despite all evidence to the contrary.

hmmm I dunno- seems silly at first, but just for fun..

let's say we were aliens prospecting Earth as a virgin planet in the distant future. We find an old junkyard exposed by our rayguns, are utterly unfamiliar with all the technology of our old automobiles, the implications of ID were a little undesirable for us, and we preferred to support a naturalistic explanation


We'd first be obliged to predict that obviously vast numbers of intermediates must somwhere exist, for they could obviously not make great leaps in one stride.
It would quickly become clear that these were missing, the distinct jumps would only become ever more well defined... so what now? there are a couple of creative options

1. create some artistic impressions of intermediates from a couple of parts and claim they are accurate reconstructions of the whole car
2. create hypothetical excuses for why the predicted evidence didn't show up
3. identify one particular transition that would appear really compelling if found, take some scattered parts, 'correct' their shape from being buried and distorted, and put them together to create the Ford Piltdown.
4. Dismiss the fact that the vast majority of people aren'lt buying it, becasue they are not auto-naturalists and are not qualified to have an opinion
5 denounce anyone with a different opinion as ignorant, insane, dishonest or wicked

I'm not sure, we might manage to eek out a 19% support as for Darwinsim in the US!

 

[Jose Fly]

The fittest may still be selected, but it is not fitter than the preceding generation.

In a word, entropy- deterioration, decline, collapse,, that's what invariably happens when you leave chance to work on it's own without specific goals.

Except for that pesky little thing called "reality".

Increased fitness of drug resistant HIV-1 protease as a resu... : AIDS

Acquisition of Aneuploidy Provides Increased Fitness during the Evolution of Antifungal Drug Resistance

 

[Jose Fly]

As I said, it doesn't prove ID, or was even intended to support that animals were made in factories by different designers

it just proves that all these patterns in the record, so often used to support Darwinism, apply at least as well to intelligently designed objects.

And you again demonstrate why ID creationism suffered such a quick death. Earlier I pointed out the fallacy behind your argument (same patterns = same mechanisms), you ignored it, and are now repeating it.

Just like most other creationists.

 

[sayak83]

subjective opinion, like the even more popular one, that said the observable capacities of apples (which fall in such a fashion that descent with gravity is true) is enough to explain all physical reality.
.....
it just proves that all these patterns in the record, so often used to support Darwinism, apply at least as well to intelligently designed objects. Was there any other line of evidence you felt was specifically supportive of Darwinism?

1) The fact that animals and plants propagate from one generation to another through reproduction through descent with modification and natural selection under our very eyes is evidence against analogy of cars which certainly and evidently and observably do not.

2) The fact that the logic of mutation followed by natural selection is regularly used in computer based design algorithms with such widespread popularity and efficacy is evidence that it is an effective and sufficient mode for adaptation.
Evolutionary Algorithms | InTechOpen

When we last discussed this, your only objection was your subjective experience of not being able to use it well. Which is...umm...irrelevant

3) Rate of beneficial mutations are quite high in populations as seen from the experiments directly

This was pointed out to you in multiple earlier posts (as I promised), but you never made an adequate response.

All evolutionary changes are based on differential fitness caused by single mutation events over successive generations. A single mutation event can be the alteration of a single letter in a gene (or a regulatory element of the gene) or a gene duplication or gene deletion event where an entire section of the DNA is pasted in twice (or not pasted in at all) due to a mistake in the replication process.


The rates of mutation in eukaryotes (us) is higher than that of bacteria.
For humans the rate of mutation is 100 mutations per genome per generation (see below)
For bacteria the rate of mutation is much less :- 0.001 mutations per genome per generation. (LINK)
The rate of beneficial mutations is 0.00001 mutations per genome per generation (LINK) .
Thus the percentage of total mutations that are beneficial is 1% of all mutations.

This value holds for eukaryotes as well (tests done with amoeba). It is also a fact the eukaryotes like us have a small effective size of the population anyway (than bacteria) and hence the chances of fixation are much higher.


The rate of mutation in humans is 1.2*10^(-8) per nucleotide per generation.
This has been experimentally demonstrated
Rate of de novo mutations, father’s age, and disease risk

A human genome has 3 billion base pairs or 6 billion nucleotides. Thus the number of new mutations that occur in every child is (6*10^9)*(1.2*10^-8)= 72 mutations.
Thus every human being is born with avg. of 72 mutations that did not exist in their parents.

Now consider that there are 7 billion people in the world.
So number new mutations arising at every nucleotide site in the human genome somewhere in the human population is (7*10^9)*(1.2*10^-8)= 84 new mutations per nucleotide site in the human population each generation.

The percentage of beneficial mutations is about 1% (several experimental studies. One example LINK). The percentage of harmful mutations is about 5% and the rest 94% is neutral.


Here is a nice homework problem.

Given that each person is born with 72 mutations on average of with 1% is good, 5% is bad and 94% is neutral, what is the probablity that a person is conceived with
a) At least one beneficial mutation and no harmful mutation?
b) A person is conceived with at least one harmful mutation and no beneficial mutation?




This number above is before considering differential selection. Differential selection is the process by which descendants with harmful mutations are removed from the population because either
a) Due to their harmful mutation they die too early to have offsprings themselves.
b) They have less offsprings than others because of their harmful mutations.


A stark example of differential selection is the fact that 66% of all human embroyos that are conceived are aborted spontaneously. (LINK). It is near certain that these embroyos have harmful gene variants that cause them to stop growing. Thus the percentage of people who are born at all is already a self-selected group from which a significant fraction (find out how much) of the descendants who had one or more harmful mutations have been eliminated already.

Here is a concrete example of beneficial mutations cropping up in human populations today.

News Feature: Genetic mutations you want

New beneficial Mutations, once they arise has a very high chance of getting fixed in populations

If a new mutation has a selective advantage of "s" then its chance of being fixed in the population (i.e. achieving complete dominance) is 2s. So a new mutant gene with a 1% selective advantage has a possibility of 2% of getting fixed.
However every mutation has a probability of occurrence "u" per gene per generation. So if the population size is N, then the probability of occurrence of a given mutation is 2uN (as every individual has two copies of the same gene). Hence, the mutation with a selective advantage of "s" has a chance of occurring 2uN times in the population in each generation. For large populations (humans, mice, bacteria etc.) this value is actually often greater than 1.

Let me show you how this is. In humans, the rate of mutations per DNA base pair per generation is 4*10^(-8) . LINK
Suppose specific mutation in a base pair is giving rise to the advantageous gene variant.
Then probability that each human possesses at least one copy of that gene is 0.25* 2*4*10^-8 = 2*10^(-8). (each letter can be altered 4 ways, only one way is being considered advantageous).
There are 7*10^9 people (7 billion) on this earth.
Therefore average number of this mutation arising every generation is = [7*10^(9)]*[2*10^(-8)] = 7*2*10=140


Now each of these 140 copies of the same advantageous mutation has the 2% chance of making it, i.e. becoming a dominant gene. Now the odds that at least one will succeed is = 1-[(0.98)^140] = 0.94...94%

Does not look so bad now does it?

So it is precisely in large populations, that an advantageous mutation has a greater chance of succeeding. In small populations, genetic drift effects may cause good mutations to get lost, but not in large ones.

Finally an experimental example where so many beneficial mutations are seen to arise that they compete with each other for dominance

When timing is everything

Its no longer about if beneficial mutations occur. It appears that so many occur so frequently that only a few really large beneficial mutations survive in the competition among each other.

4) Growth of Entropy does not mean loss of complexity, rather its the reverse.

Entropy in science has a specific meaning and does not tag on to our ideas of order and disorder very well. For example, this screen below:-

Has far lower entropy than this screen up next

So the 2nd law of thermodynamics is satisfied if screen 1 transforms into screen 2 by natural processes.

In general the rise of entropy entails the growth in complexity, form and function in contrast to what non-scientists mistakenly think. Once complexity attains a maxima, then and only then does complexity decreases with entropy. The curve is like this:- (click figure)
http://www.scottaaronson.com/complexity-lrg.jpg

For complete discussion see below:-
Shtetl-Optimized » Blog Archive » The First Law of Complexodynamics

This is written by an expert
Scott Aaronson

I'm David J. Bruton Centennial Professor of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to coming here, I taught for nine years in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. My research interests center around the capabilities and limits of quantum computers, and computational complexity theory more generally.

So which of these points, according to you, is subjective opinion.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

If you think pictures of specific species is evidence, you do not understand genetics at all. It is genetically impossible for the nose of land animal(pakicetus), which you conveniently left out. to become the blowhole of a sea creature. There is no way genetically for legs to become fins. Your whale "experts" are either lying or ignorant.

I do not mean to be rude, but your post makes extremely clear who does "not understand genetics at all." Oddly, the people who actually study and master the subject of genetics, do not agree with you. I'm sure you feel you don't need to do such studies in order to pronounce definitively on the subject, but I do wish you would reconsider.

Or perhaps, if you would be so kind, you could tell me just why you know so much more than the people who've actually done the work.

 

[McBell]

And you again demonstrate why ID creationism suffered such a quick death. Earlier I pointed out the fallacy behind your argument (same patterns = same mechanisms), you ignored it, and are now repeating it.

Just like most other creationists.

Creationists seem unable to learn from their mistakes.

Seems it is easier for them to throw a whole bunch of bull **** against the wall repeatedly until something sticks.

 

[james bond]

Are you claiming that I have both quoted him out of context and misrepresented his views? That is what quote mining is, and I have not misrepresented his views.

Sure because that's all you wrote. In what context did he say it? Also, you know he's agnostic which could be the reason behind these comments you mention.

In regards to Darwinism, he said it was unfalsifiable. More evidence that Darwin is wrong. I'm taking this out of this book review. Haven't read this book, but it's on my list now.

"Agnostic philosopher David Stove on the unfalsifiability of Darwinism

If you discovered tomorrow a new and most un-Darwinian-looking species of animals, in which every adult pair produced on average a hundred offspring, but the father always killed all of them very young, except one which was chosen by some random process, it would take an armor-plated neo-Darwinian no more than two minutes to “prove” that this reproductive strategy, despite its superficially inadvisability, is actually the optimum one for that species. And what is more impressive still, he will be able to do the same thing again later, if it turns out that the species had been misdescribed at first, and that in fact the father always lets three of his hundred offspring live. In neo-Darwinianism’s house there are many mansions: so many, indeed, that if a certain awkward fact will not fit into one mansion, there is sure to be another one into which it will fit to admiration."

Agnostic philosopher David Stove on the unfalsifiability of Darwinism | Uncommon Descent

 

[james bond]

I saw a teaser too, but it didn't say when it comes out. There's talk that it's supposed to come out on Halloween. I wish they'd put more content in the teasers but I guess that's why they call them teasers, eh?

Check this out:
Stranger Things Season 2: Release Dates, Cast, Trailers and Everything You Need To Know


The third video down the page says it comes on out Halloween.

Thanks, will read it when I get time and will let you know if something pops up.

 

[james bond]

And you again demonstrate why ID creationism suffered such a quick death. Earlier I pointed out the fallacy behind your argument (same patterns = same mechanisms), you ignored it, and are now repeating it.

Just like most other creationists.

How do same patterns = same mechanisms? Is this from Darwinism? We see that amoeba and bacteria end up different when both reproduce asexually. Also, evo scientists claimed junk DNA did not do anything. Yet, it was found out by creation scientists that it plays a crucial role in health such as preventing breast cancer and more. Evolutionists think something has already evolved so the mechanism isn't needed anymore which was shown to be wrong.

 

[Sapiens]

Sure because that's all you wrote. In what context did he say it? Also, you know he's agnostic which could be the reason behind these comments you mention.

In this case the context is irrelevant and it is not quote mining, as pointed out clearly in my previous post. If you feel otherwise, please feel free to make your case, else, please apologize for your lie.

In regards to Darwinism, he said it was unfalsifiable. More evidence that Darwin is wrong. I'm taking this out of this book review. Haven't read this book, but it's on my list now.

Stove is way off base. Falsification of Darwinism would be simple. Evidently Stove is unfamiliar with the literature, which no surprise. "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian" are reported to have been among responses given by the biologist J.B.S. Haldane when asked what evidence could destroy his confidence in the theory of evolution and the field of study.

Rabbits and the Precambrian are just placeholders for the more general case.