Stupid Christian Article on Evolution

[randman]

You left out gene flow and recombination, but why must we overcome decreasing variation? Nobody but creationists think that evolutionary theory predicts always leading to greater variation at all times.

Think about this.

No one said evolution which can mean a ton of things has to always increase genetic variation.

So setting that up as the standard to whether evolution must overcome decreasing genetic variation is false.

Genetic variation is critical to whether an organism can continue to evolve.

Think about it for awhile.

When those concepts are clear, we can talk further.

 

[randman]

And as far as an organism with a 'super genome' goes, as Ed Brayton says,

Quote:

"no one has ever found an organism that has all of the genes needed for later developments (feathers, wings, lungs, flagella, etc); that is, no organism actually has a fully complete genome front-loaded with all the goodies to be used later. If front loading was true, then the prokaryotes - the earliest existing life form on Earth - should have all of those genes. They don't, of course."

Typical....."has found"? Ok, no one has found any common ancestor period for all practical purposes.

Does that mean they don't exist?

Use logic and data consistently. Evos are always twisting their standards.

But hey, who says the LCA of plants and animals did not have all the types of genes available to them and more than are available to today?

What would you say if molecular analysis suggests they did?

 

[randman]

Wow, right down to all the "Neo-Darwinism is really another name for the Synthetic Model" and "Junk DNA is a misnomer, therefore evolution is wrong" nonsense.

I knew randman cited this page before, but I had no idea what a clearinghouse for his ID/Creationist claims it was. Hmm...wonder what they think of Davision.

It's not a clearinghouse for ideas. I bring up these ideas to talk about them. You guys fail to grasp an essential basic of science. Science is not about belief and faith.

It's about looking at the data to see what it does and does not say.

I consider front loading to be based on fact than NeoDarwinism but I do not necessarily believe in it. I think it is useful to look at the various models and understand them. Most evos do not and so are often woefully ignorant of certain data and analysis.

 

[randman]

You're still lying about Grasse I see.

Uh huh? This is a public forum, right? Maybe you should not accuse someone falsely of lying. It's one thing to think someone is lying on a questionable issue and be wrong.

But there is no question what Pierre Grasse said and meant here.

Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. Biologists must be encouraged to think about the weaknesses and extrapolations that theoreticians put forward or lay down as established truths. The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but not always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs.

Elsewhere Pierre Grasse confirms much like a man like Davison does that he believes "evolution" meaning common descent is true, though I am not so sure.

This is why I picked the term NeoDarwinism rather than "evolution." Evolution as something easily understood and unfolding before us, the Modern Sythesis, was seen by Pierre Grasse as a myth and that unconscious and conscious deceit is used to promote it.

I agree with him wholeheartedly.

 

[randman]

By those lights, that suggests that simple replication should be a major source of genetic variability. No need to worry about mutation rates then.

Yep. But that might be problematic for an atheist worldview.

 

[A'isha]

Tell me, randman. Do you think that molecular analysis and the underpinnings (and use) of things like the molecular clock are part of "NeoDarwinism"?

EDIT:And thank you for using the quote function.

 

[randman]

The consensus is: the effect of genetic drift is more important in smaller population:

And the consensus is speciation occurs via smaller populations becoming isolated from the parent group.

Put those 2 together and we can have a conversation.

 

[randman]

Tell me, randman. Do you think that molecular analysis and the underpinnings (and use) of things like the molecular clock are part of "NeoDarwinism"?

EDIT:And thank you for using the quote function.

I think it's quite possible you have no idea what those terms mean and so are likely to be confused when a paper discusses selectionism over neutralism or mutationism thinking they are equating molecular study as a whole with neutralism or mutationism.

So it would be fruitless to answer you unless and until you define what you believe so you do not just try to move the goal-posts with nonsense.

 

[A'isha]

Yep. But that might be problematic for an atheist worldview.

Why?

 

[ehcks]

And the consensus is speciation occurs via smaller populations becoming isolated from the parent group.

Put those 2 together and we can have a conversation.

Sympatric speciation refers to the formation of two or more descendant species from a single ancestral species all occupying the same geographic location.

In sympatric speciation, species diverge while inhabiting the same place.


Hate breaking my own self-promises...

 

[A'isha]

I think it's quite possible you have no idea what those terms mean and so are likely to be confused when a paper discusses selectionism over neutralism or mutationism thinking they are equating molecular study as a whole with neutralism or mutationism.

Do you consider Kimura's neutral theory to be part of NeoDarwinism, yes or no?

Do you consider the use of the molecular clock to be part of NeoDarwinism, yes or no?

So it would be fruitless to answer you unless and until you define what you believe so you do not just try to move the goal-posts with nonsense.

What I believe is irrelevant. I'm simply trying to get you to state what you believe.

 

[randman]

Do you consider Kimura's neutral theory to be part of NeoDarwinism, yes or no?

No, obviously not, and it's not his theory. I am the one that cited the paper he is referring to where they refer to NeoDarwinism as "Darwinism." Kimura failed to recognize the paper is a challenge to ND in an effort to claim Neodarwinians that rejected neutralism, way back in the 60s, were wrong.

Kimura seems to think the fact they cite a paper in the 60s, that evos generally accepted it when the opposite is the case. The paper redefines neutrality to be as strict and asserts neutralism was correct all along.

Kimura apparently did not read the paper or didn't understand it.

 

[A'isha]

No, obviously not, and it's not his theory.

What? Are you saying that Motoo Kimura's neutral theory of molecular evolution as proposed in this 1968 paper isn't really his theory? Whose is it, then?

I am the one that cited the paper he is referring to where they refer to NeoDarwinism as "Darwinism."

As I quoted to you in the other thread, the paper does indeed use NeoDarwinism, and not "Darwinism". It refers to Darwinian selection, but only as the thing that selectionists (aka the NeoDarwinists of the paper) think is the primary mechanism of evolution.

Kimura failed to recognize the paper is a challenge to ND in an effort to claim Neodarwinians that rejected neutralism, way back in the 60s, were wrong.

It'd have been rather difficult for Kimura to write (or even given his opinions on) the 2005 paper you cited contrasting Kimura's neutral theory and the separate theory of mutationism to selectionism (aka NeoDarwinism). Kimura passed away in 1994.

Masatoshi Nei wrote that paper.

Kimura seems to think the fact they cite a paper in the 60s, that evos generally accepted it when the opposite is the case. The paper redefines neutrality to be as strict and asserts neutralism was correct all along.

As I said, Kimura wrote the paper from the 60's. And Nei cited a whole lot of other papers than just Kimura's to support his idea.

Kimura apparently did not read the paper or didn't understand it.

You are aware that Kimura's theory of neutralism came first, right? And that there's been a decades-long scientific discussion of neutralism vs. selectionism (aka NeoDarwinism), with the genomic evidence piling up over the decades in favor of neutralism over selectionalism? And that, in fact, is what the 2005 paper you cited is all about?

EDIT:And you never answered my other question: do you consider the molecular clock and its uses as part of NeoDarwinism? Yes or no?

 

[aggle-rithm]

Think about this.

No one said evolution which can mean a ton of things

Nature doesn't know or care about semantic arguments. It just does its thing.

The goal of science is to determine what that thing is. So far, it's done a pretty good job without relying on any verbal tricks in an attempt to accommodate preconceived notions.

 

[Simon39759]

And the consensus is speciation occurs via smaller populations becoming isolated from the parent group.

Put those 2 together and we can have a conversation.

Actually, no, we probably can't.
We'd first need to bring you up to speed about the theory and for that you'd need to listen and try to learn rather than try some silly semantic game of gotcha.

For example:
Speciation occurs via smaller populations becoming isolated from the parent group.

-> Not only. Reproductive isolation is the main source of speciation. Not the only one. Also, it says nothing about the size of the two populations. [/b]

-> More importantly, please note that the effect of genetic drift being more important in smaller populations does only mean that.
At the same time, we have constant mutations which is a mechanism that permanently introduce more diversity. So, if you have read the very next sentence from the one you quoted (I don't want to imagine your abrupt snipping being anything else than an innocent accident) or the article you asked me to find for you you would have realized that this genetic drift can be overcome in population above a certain size (N_e).
So, even the smaller isolated population, if it still is above a certain size, will have no problem from genetic drift.

And that's just my post, since then, quixotecoyote has come up with more recent information showing that even such lower limit might be overstated...


Anyway, there you go...

 

[quixotecoyote]

Think about this.

No one said evolution which can mean a ton of things has to always increase genetic variation.

So setting that up as the standard to whether evolution must overcome decreasing genetic variation is false.

Genetic variation is critical to whether an organism can continue to evolve.

Think about it for awhile.

When those concepts are clear, we can talk further.

Not repeating myself. I already discussed why no real evolutionary theory proponent suggests that variation has to permanently be increasing. After you think about that to a point of clarity, we can talk further.

Typical....."has found"? Ok, no one has found any common ancestor period for all practical purposes.

Does that mean they don't exist?

Use logic and data consistently. Evos are always twisting their standards.

But hey, who says the LCA of plants and animals did not have all the types of genes available to them and more than are available to today?

What would you say if molecular analysis suggests they did?

Sorry, not playing. You've got a theory with a hole big enough to drive a truck through. You say the earliest organism had all the genes for everything, and when we look at the earliest organisms we find, they've got nothing close. You don't get to squirm out of the findings contradicting your creationist theory by pointing out that every possible piece of evidence for real evolutionary theory hasn't been found yet.

 

[Kotatsu]

I didn't say the number of letters decreased. I said the number of times they appear did, and that's demonstrably true. That's a decrease in genetic variability.

Oh, for the Empress' sake. I haven't looked through all of this thread, as I have my hands full with just the "Evolution: the facts" thread and reading through the laughable morass of selective ignorance, nonsense and open lies that constitute Davison's papers, but if by your statement -- here and there -- that the genetic variation by necessity decreases in an isolated subgroup you are actually saying that if you isolate a small portion of a population, this isolate will consist of fewer individuals than the mother population did before the isolation event, then you are entirely correct. If we take 100 animals and isolate five of them, then it will remain a fact that 5 < 100, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with the long-term decrease in genetic variation that you seem to believe is such a hard blow to evolutionary theory.

Your entire platform has become slightly clearer by reading Davison's "Evolution as a self-limiting process", but unfortunately lighting a match in Chthulu-land does not make that land any saner.

It's like if I bought things in business for $100 and sold them for $5 and insisted I was making a profit over and over again by showing I made or could make $5 gross on the sale.

But this is not an analogy for the theory of evolution. If you have $100 invested in a company and take out $5 to invest in another company, then both of these could both increase and decrease in value, or even remain at the same value for a longer period of time. This analogy is also not very thought-through, but at least it shares some resemblance with what evolutionary theory predicts.

Swiftlet species

This links to an article called "HIGH GENETIC VARIABILITY DESPITE HIGH-AMPLITUDE POPULATION CYCLES IN LEMMINGS"; if you have a new link to the one about swiftlets, please post it as I would be very interested in it.

 

[quixotecoyote]

Oh, for the Empress' sake. I haven't looked through all of this thread, as I have my hands full with just the "Evolution: the facts" thread and reading through the laughable morass of selective ignorance, nonsense and open lies that constitute Davison's papers, but if by your statement -- here and there -- that the genetic variation by necessity decreases in an isolated subgroup you are actually saying that if you isolate a small portion of a population, this isolate will consist of fewer individuals than the mother population did before the isolation event, then you are entirely correct. If we take 100 animals and isolate five of them, then it will remain a fact that 5 < 100, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with the long-term decrease in genetic variation that you seem to believe is such a hard blow to evolutionary theory.

Your entire platform has become slightly clearer by reading Davison's "Evolution as a self-limiting process", but unfortunately lighting a match in Chthulu-land does not make that land any saner.



But this is not an analogy for the theory of evolution. If you have $100 invested in a company and take out $5 to invest in another company, then both of these could both increase and decrease in value, or even remain at the same value for a longer period of time. This analogy is also not very thought-through, but at least it shares some resemblance with what evolutionary theory predicts.



This links to an article called "HIGH GENETIC VARIABILITY DESPITE HIGH-AMPLITUDE POPULATION CYCLES IN LEMMINGS"; if you have a new link to the one about swiftlets, please post it as I would be very interested in it.

Sorry, looks like I double linked that article. Here's the swiftlet one:http://darwin.biology.utah.edu/PubsHTML/PDF-Files/45.pdf

 

[Kotatsu]

Sorry, looks like I double linked that article. Here's the swiftlet one:

Hey, I know those people!

Thank you!

 

[Mister Agenda]

I think it's quite possible you have no idea what those terms mean and so are likely to be confused when a paper discusses selectionism over neutralism or mutationism thinking they are equating molecular study as a whole with neutralism or mutationism.

So it would be fruitless to answer you unless and until you define what you believe so you do not just try to move the goal-posts with nonsense.

ANTPogo has worked like a horse to meet your unending demands, and you return the courtesy with a persistent stream of contempt.