Annoying creationists

[Unnamed]

Whoa, Nelly! Is that possible?

Well, YOU tell ME.

You have an old version of Evj that doesn't let you set the mutations per base. Can you grab the latest code and make your changes again, then run with the parameters I specified? We're now on version 2.38.

2.21 here, my bad.

There I go...

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

That about sums it up. So why are you evolutionarians so annoyed? Annoyed? Hardly. It's more that it's staggering how arrogant you are with your call to 'evolutionists' to do the maths when you're basically saying that they have! You're the one who has done bugger all.

Isn’t that something, I’m getting it both ways. I can say that the theory of evolution has no mathematical basis and then take an evolutionarian written mathematical model of random point mutations and natural selection and say that it proves that macroevolution is mathematically impossible. It almost sounds inconsistent until you think about for a little while. I don’t think it is arrogant to tell evolutionarian to prove the math for their own theory. You are the ones who claim have science on your side.

So what is the relativistic effect in the theory of evolution that will fix the mathematics that ev reveals for random point mutations and natural selection?

Way to go Mr Does-Not-Get-The-Point.

You using ev to disprove evolution is the equivalent of using Quake to disprove Einsteinian physics.

Do you get that Quake is an entirely insufficient representation of real world physics or not?

Do you get that ev is an entirely insufficient representation of real world evolution or not?

I have no idea what Quake is.

If you think other forms of mutations will rescue your theory, your task is simple. Modify ev with these other mutation mechanisms and show us how a gene evolves de novo.

# of generations to accomplish de novo evolution of a gene by random point mutations and natural selection > time available

That does not answer the question.

Sure it does, that’s the whole point of this accounting problem. Ev reveals how slow random point mutations and natural selection is, much to slow to evolve a gene de novo, even with the artificially idealistic selection mechanism used by Dr Schneider.

Would you be willing to run a set of experiments with your variant of Evj? If so, use these parameters:

population 32 / binding sites 8 / weight width 9 / site width 10 / 1 mutation per 512 bases

Then vary the genome size from 1024 by factors of 2 and record the number of generations to perfect creature. I've run this model up to a genome size of 128K.

These are my results so far (genome size, mutations, run 1, run 2, run 3):
1024, 2, 190, 197, 206
2048, 4, 219, 210, 262
4096, 8, 256, 256, 268
8192, 16, 322, 357, 332
16384, 32, 394, 375, 366
32768, 32, 474, 474, 430
65536, 32, (running)

Why don’t you post the full code for your ”sum of the strength of the mistakes” calculation, so we can all participate in this arithmetic. It sure looks like you are ignoring the mistakes in the nonbinding site region of the genome.

What kind of precise selection process that occur in nature would evolve a gene de novo? You must have drunk more than a few beers after celebrating that issue of agreement with hammegk in order to come up with this idea.

Sure ev shows that information can evolve in a genome. It just takes more time than the history of the earth to get a gene de novo.

Your argument is subtly "evolving" (or maybe you're just adding a little more argument and subtly moving the goalpost a tad).

Take a look at my initial posts on the Evolutionisdead forum. The only thing that I have added since then is a target measure for macroevolution that can be tested (that is de novo evolution of a gene).

Until very recently you were content to argue that ev was flawed because it could not evolve a gene fast enough. Now you seem to be suggesting that even if the selection mechanism were modify to make ev work fast enough, this wouldn't satisfy you, because your new position is that the gene must evolve without anything more than completely random selection.

I have never argued the ev was flawed because a binding site did not evolve quickly enough. The flaw is in the theory of evolution. The problem for evolution by random point mutation and natural selection is that it is a profoundly slow process for large genomes. The selection mechanism Dr Schneider has used is already very rapid (at least for short genomes).

Please explain why a a genome cannot have a selective advantage to an organism at a relatively simple stage of its evolution, which is substantially different from the selective advantage present at some relatively later and more complex point.

I’m not quite sure what you are asking here. I don’t think natural selection has changed with time. What natural selection does is give organisms with particular characteristics for a given environment a reproductive advantage and those without those characteristics are selected against. This is related to my argument about the de novo evolution of a gene. Until you have sufficient number of bases to code for a protein that is beneficial to the organism, you have no selective benefit. Without the selective benefit, you have only random mutations without selection to explain the evolution of a gene de novo.

As you have already conceded, ev is very fast for short genomes, so there would be no barrier to a quick evolution without selection to some very simple selective advantage, followed by more environmentally channeled selection speeding the evolutionary process toward a more complex advantage.

If you turn off selection in ev, the binding sites that have evolved revert to random sequences.

That modification that Unnamed appears to be changing much more than the threshold.

He explained what he did:

What I did was, for each mistake, to add the distance between the valuation and threshold, and use the result as the sorting order. This is a finer measure than the raw number of mistakes, but it still goes to zero when mistakes = 0, so it converges to the same place.

What is the “valuation”. What is the distance between the valuation and threshold. Unnamed needs to post all the changes he has made in the code. Let’s all have fun with this calculation.

I just got this result:
65536, 32 mutations/generation (should be 128), 827 generations to perfect creature.

Whoa, Nelly! Is that possible?

Why with these rates of information acquisition you can evolve a human genome in about 15 minutes.

 

[Unnamed]

Why don’t you post the full code for your ”sum of the strength of the mistakes” calculation, so we can all participate in this arithmetic. It sure looks like you are ignoring the mistakes in the nonbinding site region of the genome.

What is the “valuation”. What is the distance between the valuation and threshold. Unnamed needs to post all the changes he has made in the code. Let’s all have fun with this calculation.

These are all my changes in "Simulator.java". I removed lines marked with "-" and added lines marked with "+".

--- evjava 4/Simulator.java     2006-06-26 14:03:38.000000000 -0400
+++ evjava 3/Simulator.java     2007-01-08 17:55:29.000000000 -0500
@@ -415,7 +415,7 @@
     for (int p = 0; p <= bug.length/2 - 1; ++p) {
       int c = bug.length - p - 1;
 
-      if (bug[p].mistakes == bug[c].mistakes) {
+      if (bug[p].sortValue == bug[c].sortValue) {
         switch (tie) {                      // Two creatures have tie scores:
           case Param.TIE_BOTH:                //   Both survive.
             break;
@@ -548,7 +548,7 @@
                                   // Following are valid only if scored:
   private int valuation[];        //   Valuation of each position.
   private int spuriousHits = 0;   //   Number of spurious bindings obtained.
-  private int sortValue;          //   Value used to sort creatures.
+  public int sortValue;          //   Value used to sort creatures.
   
   // This constructor is used to create creatures at the beginning
   // of a run. Each creature's chromosome is random.
@@ -710,19 +710,25 @@
         gene    = param.getInt(Param.spuriousGene),
         nongene = param.getInt(Param.spuriousNongene);
     
-    mistakes = spuriousHits = 0;
+    float sv;
+    sv = mistakes = spuriousHits = 0;
     for (int p = 0; p <= chromosome.length - width; ++p) {
       if ((valuation[p] = siteValuation(p, width)) >= threshold) {
         if (!siteInd[p]) {
           if (p < availablePos) mistakes += gene; else mistakes += nongene;
+          sv += Math.abs(valuation[p] - threshold);
           ++spuriousHits;
         }
       } else {
-        if (siteInd[p]) mistakes += missed;
+        if (siteInd[p]) {
+          mistakes += missed;
+          sv += Math.abs(valuation[p] - threshold);
+        }
       }
     }
 
-    sortValue = mistakes;               // We will sort on the mistake
+    sortValue = (int)(Math.min(sv, Integer.MAX_VALUE));
+    //sortValue = mistakes;               // We will sort on the mistake
                                         // count, unless randomized.
   }

Results so far with version 2.37:

1024, 231, 260, 186
2048, 264, 257, 266
4096, 263, 263, 253
8192, 273, 347, 333
16384, 345, (running)

Why with these rates of information acquisition you can evolve a human genome in about 15 minutes.

I know! Ain't that cool ?

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

// This constructor is used to create creatures at the beginning
// of a run. Each creature's chromosome is random.
@@ -710,19 +710,25 @@

gene = param.getInt(Param.spuriousGene),
nongene = param.getInt(Param.spuriousNongene);

- mistakes = spuriousHits = 0;
+ float sv;
+ sv = mistakes = spuriousHits = 0;
for (int p = 0; p <= chromosome.length - width; ++p) {
if ((valuation[p] = siteValuation(p, width)) >= threshold) {
if (!siteInd[p]) {
if (p < availablePos) mistakes += gene; else mistakes += nongene;
+ sv += Math.abs(valuation[p] - threshold);
++spuriousHits;
}
} else {
- if (siteInd[p]) mistakes += missed;
+ if (siteInd[p]) {
+ mistakes += missed;
+ sv += Math.abs(valuation[p] - threshold);
+ }
}
}

- sortValue = mistakes; // We will sort on the mistake
+ sortValue = (int)(Math.min(sv, Integer.MAX_VALUE));
+ //sortValue = mistakes; // We will sort on the mistake
// count, unless randomized.
}

Unnamed, what you are doing here is ignoring errors in the non-binding site region. Your variable sv appears to be a measure of the accuracy of the match of the weight matrix to a particular position. As soon as you have any improvement in the match in the binding site region, errors are ignored in the non-binding site region.

You are ignoring harmful mutations.

 

[hammegk]

Please, if I am at some point too technical, confusing or vague, state which point that is, so that I may elucidate. Barcoding is nothing very difficult, but failure to communicate what I mean may have resulted, as English is not my first language.

Thanks for you comments. You are doing fine with English.

... Tragopogon mirus and Tragopogon miscellus ...

I took a look online, and after following several citations felt like Alice after she went down the rabbit hole.

I can see how proponents of Modern Evolutionary Theory could feel the results bolster their position. Other arguments could be made from opponents, with the literature full of loose ends waiting to be tugged sfaics.

So you are looking for an example of speciation in which the resulting taxa is not only a new species, genus, or tribe but a new family or even new order?

Perhaps we could agree on something more along the lines of a new, clearly different, phenotype substantiating genotype changes?

Couldn't the geologic timespans nature seems to require to provide change be much compressed by conscious human selection and technology?

Again, thanks for your responses.

 

[cyborg]

I have no idea what Quake is.

Ah, that just shows how uneducated you are.

Quake is the quintessential example of when the first person perspective game took on a new level of graphical representation. The engine in question has evolved to encompass a wide variety of physical rules in the universes it can create. It is in short a system for creating a universe. It is not important per se, the important thing here is that you understand that it is a computer model of a world much like ev is a computer model of our world, except it models a rather different aspect of it.

The point is that the Quake engine, for all the sophistication it has attained during its revisions since it first appeared ten years ago, falls quite short of providing an accurate physical representation of our universe.

And hence if I were to take the Quake engine, say this represents physics and then use it to show that relativity is nonsensical because it doesn't occur in Quake and then say I have therefore disproved relativity I would be in a considerable degree of error. Would you not concur?

You are doing the same thing with ev. You cannot possibly say that you have disproved evolution with ev when the program is quite clearly as inadequate at modelling the real and complicated aspects of evolution as the Quake engine fails to capture the real and complicated aspects of physics.

You are beating the goddamn living daylights out of a giant strawman.

If you think other forms of mutations will rescue your theory, your task is simple. Modify ev with these other mutation mechanisms and show us how a gene evolves de novo.

No. You do not get it. This is YOUR task. You want to disprove evolution mathematically then YOU should be the one trying to improve the model.

You really are damn lazy though aren't you? Much easier to just run a program, post some numbers and shout loudly about how nobody is going to listen to you because of their bias against your god or love of evolution or some such nonsense.

Sure it does,

No it does not.

that’s the whole point of this accounting problem. Ev reveals how slow random point mutations and natural selection is, much to slow to evolve a gene de novo, even with the artificially idealistic selection mechanism used by Dr Schneider.

Irrelevant. I require that you define what a macroevolutionary event is in ev. You cannot say such events do not occur if you cannot define what that event is. It is entirely inadequate to simply say the process is too slow with realistic values. YOU MUST DEFINE WHAT THE EVENT IS TO SHOW THAT IT CANNOT OCCUR.

Jeez, what part of that can you not comprehend?

Can you or can you not identify a macroevolutionary event - realistic values be damned?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I just received my complimentary copy of:

Martin A. Nowak, 2006, Evolutionary Dynamics: Exploring the Equations of Life, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Apropos and highly recommended.

~~ Paul

 

[Unnamed]

if ((valuation[p] = siteValuation(p, width)) >= threshold) {
  if (!siteInd[p]) {
    if (p < availablePos) mistakes += gene; else mistakes += nongene;
      sv += Math.abs(valuation[p] - threshold);
      ++spuriousHits;
    }
  }
}

Translating...

if the site p is a match,
  but the site p is not a binding site, then
    add the strength of this error to sv

Unnamed, what you are doing here is ignoring errors in the non-binding site region.

No I'm not, unless I was doing it by mistake.

Your variable sv appears to be a measure of the accuracy of the match of the weight matrix to a particular position. As soon as you have any improvement in the match in the binding site region, errors are ignored in the non-binding site region.

I don't ignore any error that was previously counted as a "mistake".

You are ignoring harmful mutations.

The updated procedure generates a perfect individual, showing that I am indeed penalizing errors. If I didn't, how could I get a perfect individual at the end? I am still using the same criterion (mistakes == 0).

Updated values:
1024, 231, 260, 186
2048, 264, 257, 266
4096, 263, 263, 253
8192, 273, 347, 333
16384, 345, 304, 315
32768, 440, 422, 474
65536, 432, 443
132072, 584

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Unnamed, what you are doing here is ignoring errors in the non-binding site region. Your variable sv appears to be a measure of the accuracy of the match of the weight matrix to a particular position. As soon as you have any improvement in the match in the binding site region, errors are ignored in the non-binding site region.

You are ignoring harmful mutations.

No, I don't think so. sv accumulates the absolute difference between every position's valuation and the threshold.

A variation would be to use the absolute difference for binding sites, but a fixed number for non-binding sites. The idea would be that spurious bindings are equally harmful regardless of the strength of the binding.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Updated values:
1024, 231, 260, 186
2048, 264, 257, 266
4096, 263, 263, 253
8192, 273, 347, 333
16384, 345, 304, 315
32768, 440, 422, 474
65536, 432, 443
132072, 584

This is frightening.

Assuming you have no bugs, this shows us that the particular selection criterion used by Ev is critical to the speed of evolution, and that we certainly cannot draw any sweeping conclusions about the real world.

~~ Paul

 

[joobz]

This is frightening.

Assuming you have no bugs, this shows us that the particular selection criterion used by Ev is critical to the speed of evolution, and that we certainly cannot draw any sweeping conclusions about the real world.

~~ Paul

Wow, who would have thought that computer simulations would have inherent assumptions that may not apply to the real world.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Unnamed, just checking that you are using these parameters:

population 32
binding sites 8
weight width 9
site width 10
1 mutation per 512 bases


~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Wow, who would have thought that computer simulations would have inherent assumptions that may not apply to the real world.

I don't know, but those people should be disabused of the notion now, for sure.

~~ Paul

 

[kleinman]

Annoying Creationists

I have no idea what Quake is.

Ah, that just shows how uneducated you are.

Cyborg, I have never said I was educated in everything. I’m only claiming I know something about ev and what this computation is saying about random point mutations and natural selection.

If you think other forms of mutations will rescue your theory, your task is simple. Modify ev with these other mutation mechanisms and show us how a gene evolves de novo.

No. You do not get it. This is YOUR task. You want to disprove evolution mathematically then YOU should be the one trying to improve the model.

I’m content to say that the theory of evolution is without a mathematical basis and that ev shows that random point mutations and natural selection is so profoundly slow that nothing can evolve by this mechanism. You can stomp your foot and say it is my task, but it is your theory to prove. I doubt any evolutionarians who have knowledge of mathematics will try to include other mechanisms of mutations because all these mechanisms will still face the same 4^G effect of the increasing search space as the genome length is increased. That is the mathematical hurdle that the theory of evolution can not overcome. In addition, there is no selection process for a partially completed gene.

Sure it does,

No it does not.

Does to, does to.

that’s the whole point of this accounting problem. Ev reveals how slow random point mutations and natural selection is, much to slow to evolve a gene de novo, even with the artificially idealistic selection mechanism used by Dr Schneider.

Irrelevant. I require that you define what a macroevolutionary event is in ev. You cannot say such events do not occur if you cannot define what that event is. It is entirely inadequate to simply say the process is too slow with realistic values. YOU MUST DEFINE WHAT THE EVENT IS TO SHOW THAT IT CANNOT OCCUR.

Jeez, what part of that can you not comprehend?

Can you or can you not identify a macroevolutionary event - realistic values be damned?

When an evolutionarian retracts their belief in the theory of evolution. That is a macroevolutionary event. Annoying an evolutionarian, that’s a microevolutionary event.

Unnamed, what you are doing here is ignoring errors in the non-binding site region.

No I'm not, unless I was doing it by mistake.

I think if you keep track of the value of valuation[p] in the following equation,
sv += Math.abs(valuation[p] - threshold);
you will see that this number will be much larger in the binding site region due to the good match of the weight matrix. In the non-binding site region this value will remain small. You are effectively giving a higher weight to good mutations in the binding site region than to harmful mutations in the non-binding site region. You can achieve the same effect if you set the value for the variable gene=1 and nongene=0 and still sort on the variable “mistakes”.

Your variable sv appears to be a measure of the accuracy of the match of the weight matrix to a particular position. As soon as you have any improvement in the match in the binding site region, errors are ignored in the non-binding site region.

I don't ignore any error that was previously counted as a "mistake".

But you are weighting errors which is effectively ignoring harmful mutations in the non-binding site region.

You are ignoring harmful mutations.

The updated procedure generates a perfect individual, showing that I am indeed penalizing errors. If I didn't, how could I get a perfect individual at the end? I am still using the same criterion (mistakes == 0).

You are still selecting for good and harmful mutations in the binding site region. Here is a simple computational experiment you can do. Set the values for gene=1 and nongene=0 and sort on mistakes rather than sv. Then compare the number of generation for convergence for you series that you have run with sv. I believe you will obtain almost the same number of generations for convergence for the two approaches. The gene=0, nongene=1 case should converge a little more quickly because that approach completely ignores mistakes in the non-binding site region. Your approach with sv does not completely ignore errors in the non-binding site region which is why you get a slight increase in generations for convergence as you increase the genome length but effectively, you are ignoring harmful mutations in the non-binding site region.

This is not necessarily an unrealistic approach to the selection process. Months ago I proposed that instead of starting with a random genome, start with a real genome and then define your selection process such that if there is a fatal mutation in the non-binding site region that this creature be selected out no matter what is happening in the binding site region.

Unnamed, what you are doing here is ignoring errors in the non-binding site region. Your variable sv appears to be a measure of the accuracy of the match of the weight matrix to a particular position. As soon as you have any improvement in the match in the binding site region, errors are ignored in the non-binding site region.

You are ignoring harmful mutations.

No, I don't think so. sv accumulates the absolute difference between every[/vi] position's valuation and the threshold.

A variation would be to use the absolute difference for binding sites, but a fixed number for non-binding sites. The idea would be that spurious bindings are equally harmful regardless of the strength of the binding.

What is the value for valuation[p] for a match in the binding site region versus a mismatch in the non-binding site region? If valuation[p] in the binding site region is much greater than valuation[p] in the non-binding site region, you have reduced the weight of errors in the non-binding site region. This is equivalent to ignoring harmful mutations in the non-binding site region. And as we all know, most mutations are harmful.

Sorry about that Paul, nice try.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

What is the value for valuation[p] for a match in the binding site region versus a mismatch in the non-binding site region? If valuation[p] in the binding site region is much greater than valuation[p] in the non-binding site region, you have reduced the weight of errors in the non-binding site region. This is equivalent to ignoring harmful mutations in the non-binding site region. And as we all know, most mutations are harmful.

What do you mean by "binding site region"? There are binding sites and then there are all the other positions on the chromosome.

What matters is the absolute difference between the valuation and the threshold. Unnamed is doing this:

for binding sites:
bound successfully: nothing
not bound: increase sv by absolute difference

for all other sites:
bound spuriously: increase sv by absolute difference
not bound: nothing

After a few generations, there are no spurious bindings. This is true with the current selection algorithm, too. So what matters is how far away from the threshold the binding site valuations are. The further they are, the worse for the creature.

Now suppose a mutation causes a spurious binding all of a sudden. At the beginning of the simulation, its absolute difference will be smaller than those of the binding sites (the threshold tends to be high), and so the harmful mutation counts against the creature less than an unbound binding site. Later on in the simulation, as the binding site valuations are approaching the threshold, the harmful mutation counts against the creature about the same as an unbound binding site.

We could test this by increasing sv by a fixed amount for spurious bindings. A good value would be, say, threshold/2.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Unnamed, could you run the 32K case and tell me the number of births and deaths?

~~ Paul

 

[PixyMisa]

The previous statements are clear that Dr Schneider believes that ev simulates the real world.

Yes, but it is equally clear that it is a limited model and is not adequate for - nor (thanks Paul) intended to be - a valid simulation of phyletic evolution.

That’s reassuring, because it is completely illogical to believe such a thing. So where do you believe genes came from?

If you are talking strictly about evolution, then all genes come from other genes.

If you are talking about abiogenesis, then I don't know; nobody does. Though there are some interesting hypotheses.

You might find that Dr Schneider doesn’t agree with your view. I am sure that I don’t.

As has now been explained to me - and to the forum in general - you have misrepresented what Dr Schneider's program claims to do. I noted that it could not properly model phyletic evolution; it was pointed out that it is not intended to model phyletic evolution, and Dr Schneider has made no claims that it can.

Unless you believe that genes are eternal, they had to come into being somehow.

Perfectly true. But that is not (directly) the subject of evolution, and certainly not the problem that Dr Schneider was studying.

Do you think genetic code is eternal?

No; I do not believe that anything is eternal.

Since ev is a mathematical model, you should be able to enumerate what you think is wrong about the model. Why don’t you tell us what is wrong with this simulation of random point mutations and natural selection?

I haven't studied it as closely as others here, so my answer is incomplete at best. But the thing that is obvious to me is the modeling of populations doesn't even resemble what happens in the real world. It is adequate for a proof that evolution is possible; it is not adequate for calculating rates of propagation of evolutionary changes or for modeling phyletic evolution.

Nor does Dr Schneider claim this.

What I am trying to explain here is that recombination and natural selection can give rapid phenotypic changes in a species.

Yes, this is true. Also irrelevant.

It is this rapid phenomena that Darwin inappropriately extrapolated to mutation and natural selection when he was interpreting the differences between finch beaks in isolated populations. Gould did the same when he postulated his concept of punctuated equilibrium. This concept is applicable to recombination and natural selection but not to mutation and natural selection.

The question can be settled by genetic study, but in the general case, it is not possible for recombination to account for observed speciation. And I'm not sure what your point is. Recombination does not produce new genes; we do observe new genes in speciation events, and we know how they got there: through mutation.

Don’t forget, I also co-opted the micro/macroevolution concept as well. There is so little else in the theory of evolution that is worth co-opting.

Micro- vs. macro-evolution is not part of the Theory of Evolution. The terms are used by some biologists to refer to arbitrary distinctions in quantifying evolutionary change. There is no qualitative difference between micro- and macro-evolution. They are caused by exactly the same processes.

Consider that phylum are simply a categorization scheme that can be defined any way you want. Since Gould hypothesis of punctuated equilibrium fits more logically with recombination and natural selection, it is less likely to find evidence of gradualism (on the macroevolutionary scale) by the mechanism of recombination and natural selection.

Recombination cannot result in phyletic evolution.

What about macroevolution=de novo evolution of a gene? Of course PixyMisa believes genes are eternal.

No. I merely point out that the expression "de novo evolution" is a contradiction in terms. You mean "de novo creation", or something similar.

Macroevolution=de novo creation of a gene.

(edited by me)

This does not happen. Nor is it required.

 

[PixyMisa]

To an illiterate dolt such as myself

La la la...

Need I say Mice is Mice?

And different species of mice are different species of mice.

 

[PixyMisa]

Perhaps we could agree on something more along the lines of a new, clearly different, phenotype substantiating genotype changes?

That's what he said. You are asking for changes not on the species level but on the level of family or order - two or three levels up the taxonomic tree.

Couldn't the geologic timespans nature seems to require to provide change be much compressed by conscious human selection and technology?

Not that much, no.

Remember, all dogs are one species, despite the substantial outward variations, and we've been breeding those for at least 10,000 years.

 

[hammegk]

And different species of mice are different species of mice.

If y'all find mice and dogs meet your criteria as a demonstration of anything other than the fact that Mendel was basically right, your choice.

Remember, all dogs are one species, despite the substantial outward variations, and we've been breeding those for at least 10,000 years.

Oops. I guess we agree, there. One species; check.

Nah, I think something in the lab a bit more malleable than mammals might be a place to start ... oh, iirc, you evolutionarians have been trying in the labs since the early 50's?

If you are talking strictly about evolution, then all genes come from other genes.

Even the first one?


PS. Don't you have a corrupt database somewhere that needs fixing?