Alright, here we go. These are attempts at concise rebuttals to Widow's arguments. I realize some of this has been discussed already, but for the sake of completion, I’ll respond to all of it.
Widowmakers wrote:Well Neoteny. I broke up your post into parts that way people could better follow my response.
Neoteny wrote:
1)….Anyhow, I have already discussed thermodynamics sufficiently and your probability hypothesis is too painful for me to want to explain, though I suppose I could if anyone actually wants me to.
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I must have missed it but I do not remember seeing you write anything on thermodynamics or probability. But in brief I still don't understand the argument.
Could you please explain how the issues below are NOT in violation of the laws of thermodynamics?.
Beginning with the “Big Bang” and the self-formation and expansion of space and matter, the evolutionist scenario declares that every structure, system, and relationship—down to every atom, molecule, and beyond—is the result of a loosely-defined, spontaneous self-assembly process of increasing organization and complexity, and a direct contradiction (i.e., theorized violation) of the second law.
The big bang does not necessarily postulate self-formation, and I wouldn’t call the increasing organization processes loosely-defined, but I suppose that’s a matter of taste. The second law you are referring to is that entropy in a system increases. As was said earlier, the earth is not a closed system. It would be naïve to suggest that the accumulated complexity established here on earth is comparable to the massive amounts of entropy from the sun and other stars. Our complexity is effectively countered by entropy elsewhere in the system, and there is no evidence that the entropy of the universe as a whole is decreasing.
Widowmakers wrote:This hypothesis is applied with the greatest fervor to the evolutionists’ speculations concerning biological life and its origin. The story goes that—again, in violation of the second law—within the midst of a certain population of spontaneously self-assembled molecules, a particularly vast and complex (but random) act of self-assembly took place, producing the first self-replicating molecule.
Continuing to ignore the second law, this molecular phenomenon is said to have undergone multiple further random increases in complexity and organization, producing a unique combination of highly specialized and suitably matched molecular “community members” which formed what we now know as the incredibly efficient, organized self-sustaining complex of integrated machinery called the cell.
Not random. Natural selection.
Widowmakers wrote:Now, onto your probability argument. Why is it too painful? And what do you mean by that? I have already posted some of the issues in the TL:DR post. Could you please show me numbers and evidence that supports a favorable condition that these complex things (Protein, DNA, enzymes, etc) would arise and the probability is NOT inconceivably small?
Probability
Now we are going to look at what are the chances that chemicals could have actually combined by chance to form complex structures and the building blocks of life.
"Now we know that the cell itself is far more complex than we had imagined. It includes thousands of functioning enzymes, each one of them a complex machine itself. Furthermore, each enzyme comes into being in response to a gene, a strand of DNA. The information content of the gene in its complexity must be as great as that of the enzyme it controls.
"A medium protein might include about 300 amino acids. The DNA gene controlling this would have about 1,000 nucleotides in its chain. Since there are four kinds of nucleotides in a DNA chain, one consisting of 1,000 links could exist in 4^1000 different forms.
"Using a little algebra (logarithms) we can see that 4^1000 is equivalent to 10^600. Ten multiplied by itself 600 times gives the figure 1 followed by 600 zeros! This number is completely beyond our comprehension." (7)
Source (7) Frank Salisbury, "Doubts about the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution," in American Biology Teacher, September 1971, p. 336-338.
If the proper code out of 4x10^1000 possibilities was not instantly produced, —then that first creature could not live! It could not make its enzymes and fulfill all its body functions! It could not perform cell division! It could not produce offspring! Everything had to be in place all at once—instantly!
Assembling the parts - GOLEY'S MACHINE
A communications engineer tried to figure out the odds for bringing a non-living organism with few parts (only 1500) up to the point of being able to reproduce itself.
"Suppose we wanted to build a machine capable of reaching into bins for all of its parts, and capable of assembling from those parts a second machine just like itself."(6)
Source (6) Marcel J.E. Goley, "Reflections of a Communications Engineer," in Analytical Chemistry, June 1961, p. 23.
Likening a living organism to a machine that merely reached out and selected parts needed to make a duplicate of itself, Goley tried to figure the odds for 1500 needed items—requiring 1500 right choices in a row.
Many different parts would be needed, and Goley assumed they would all be laying around near that manufacturing machine! Because many different parts would be needed, the machine would have to select from among dozens of different pieces near it.
But Goley assumes that its mechanical arm will have only a 50-50 chance of error in reaching out and grabbing the right piece! Such a ratio (1500 50-50 choices) is preposterous (it ought to be one chance in a hundred million for EACH of the correct 1500 selections from among 1500 items), but Goley then figures the odds based on such a one-in-two success rate of reaches.
But even with such a high success rate, Goley discovered that there was only one chance in 10^450 that the machine could succeed in reproducing itself! That is 1 followed by 450 zeros!
If you are unacquainted with large numbers, 10^450 is inconceivably large.
Let me explain it so you can understand the immensity of such large numbers: According to the experts, there are only 10^80 particles in the entire universe! If every particle in the universe were a machine trying to do this, and each machine was making decisions at a billionth of a second, there could still be only 10^107 attempts made in the entire universe in all time!
10^450 is immensely larger than 10^107, so it could never possibly be done.
1500 choices all made correctly, yet once the units were gathered in, each would then have to be put in the right positions and properly connected with one another—but that fact was not mentioned in Goley's calculation. (7)
Source (7) http://www.evolution-facts.org/Ev-V2/2evlch10a.htm
I've reposted your probability argument above.
Nobody (except creationists) thinks that DNA or polypeptides spontaneously popped into existence. Your argument is painful because natural selection eliminates the problem of probability. It is painful because this has been known for hundreds of years.
There is no machine to start with. Using Goley’s analogy, the parts are all floating around, bumping into each other. They bind and dissociate until stable complexes are formed. These complexes may remain together or they may come apart eventually. This is all based on probability, but is no more improbable than what can be achieved in a lab. The only thing that needs to happen is some sort of heredity. This is where the probability of occurrence plummets. However, no matter how improbable it is, it only has to happen once. And the probability is much smaller than randomly assembling parts because natural selection has been whittling away unsuccessful derivations. Once heredity is achieved, natural selection goes on its merry way.
Widowmakers wrote:TOO MANY PARTS
Just the number of nucleotides alone in DNA would be too many for Goley's machine calculations. There are not 1500 parts to work out the probabilities on—there are multiplied thousands of factors, of which the nucleotides constitute one factor.
(1)There are 5,375 nucleotides in the DNA of an extremely small bacterial virus (theta-x-174).
(2)There are about 3 million nucleotides in a single cell bacteria.
(3)There are more than 16,000 nucleotides in a human mitochondria) DNA molecule.
(4) There are approximately 3 billion nucleotides in the DNA of a mammalian cell.
(People and most animals are mammals.)
Wrong.
But I’ll assume this is like your environmental mutations error. Most animals are invertebrates.
Widowmakers wrote:Technically, a "nucleotide" is a complex chemical structure composed of a (nucleic acid) purine or pyrimidine, one sugar (usually ribose or deoxyribose), and a phosphoric group. Each one of those thousands of nucleotides within each DNA are all aligned sequentially in a very specific order (Imagine 3 billion complicated chemical links, each of which has to be in a precisely correct sequence)……
……..And even if the task could be successfully completed, when it was done, that organism would still not be alive! Putting stuff together in the right combination does not produce life……..
……..And even if it could produce life—all the various parts would have to be instantly assembled at once in order for that organism to continue to live beyond a split second! It would have to instantly be able to breath, think, move about, make necessary decisions, eat, digest, and reproduce itself, and more and more beside……...
………And once made, it would have to have an ongoing source of living food continually available as soon as it evolved into life. When the evolutionist's organism emerged from rock, water, and a stroke of lightning hitting it on the head,—it would have to have its living food source made just as rapidly. (7)
"Based on probability factors . . any viable DNA strand having over 84 nucleotides cannot be the result of haphazard mutations. At that stage, the probabilities are 1 in 4.80 x 10^60. Such a number, if written out, would read: 4,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Corrected.
Widowmakers wrote:"Mathematicians agree that any requisite number beyond 10^60 has, statistically, a zero probability of occurrence (and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!). Any species known to us, including the smallest single-cell bacteria, have enormously larger numbers of nucleotides than 100 or 1000. In fact, single cell bacteria display about 3,000,000 nucleotides, aligned in a very specific sequence. This means, that there is no mathematical probability whatever for any known species to have been the product of a random occurrence—random mutations (to use the evolutionist's favorite expression)."(8)
Source(8) I. L. Cohen, Darwin was Wrong (1984), p. 205.
Another thing we all must remember is that this process is completely random.
-Evolution does not know when or if it has put together a 98% correct chemical structure. Plus it is not intelligent so I cannot look into each structure and try to "figure out" the best workable combination.
-It cannot chose which chemicals react and which do not.
-It has no bias and no direction. So outcome cannot be determined by desire for life or more complex structures.
-In nature, chemicals and molecules desire to bond and reach a state of equilibrium (lower order steady state). Not only is the probability of proteins and DNA forming by chance statistically impossible, it ignores the fact that chemicals in DNA, proteins, etc would rather form less complex systems naturally.
Continuing from my argument above, we now have some structure that can replicate itself. It probably isn’t large yet since there aren’t any accessory proteins to maintain it. This indicates the flaw in your argument: the molecules don’t have to be thousands of nucleotides long. It doesn’t even have to be nucleotides. A small hereditary molecule gradually evolved into some sort of cellular organism. In order to do this, it would need to grow along the way. We’ll reason it this way. Perhaps my hereditary polypeptide is an enzyme that degrades all other polypeptides. It continues to reproduce (perhaps through the nuclear attractions between particles, as an example. Hydrogen bonding and the like) and make more enzymes that keeps degrading other polypeptides. If two enzymes happen to join into one slightly larger enzyme, you can now degrade enzymes at two times the rate (This might contribute to its success as it has access to more amino acids to reproduce) Eventually, you will have a lot of those double-enzymes laying around (sound like natural selection?). If one of the enzyme degrading segments makes a copying error, that part of the enzyme may not work as well (reduced reproductive success) or it may do something completely different, like bind dissociating agents so that its lifetime is longer. Do you understand how this works yet? The chance processes are there, but they are much higher than what your probability argument asserts they are.
Widowmakers wrote:Neoteny wrote:2) On to the genetics, my favorite:
The fat cat ate the wee bat.
The fat rat ate the wee bat.
Oopzors… where did that information come from?
“The fat ate the wee rat,” is also a complete sentence. It is only illogical because we associate fat with an inactive object. It is still conveying applicable information. Maybe in a world of sentences, shorter sentences that make sense would win out. So your “fat ate the wee rat” would be successful and multiply and pass on its genes to the next generation. Thus, your mutation types argument is thus useless.
First let's look at information. Information is only good if there is a system to decode it. For instance I can randomly draw lines in the sand with a stick or make shapes on a piece of paper but it has no meaning to anyone else unless there is a frame of reference to understand it or decode it.
Since evolution requires that information randomly came into being, it also requires that information randomly was understandable by the very random pieces that made it up. And since information is not dependent on the medium in which it is written (The message: I like pizza has just as much meaning if it is written on paper, typed on a computer, sewn into a shirt, printed in binary, molded in clay…..) evolution must come up with where the methods of understanding the information evolved from.
Let's look at it another way. If DNA randomly formed, for it to be useful it would have, at the same time needed to randomly form in a manner in which it understood itself and could use those instructions (that randomly formed) to duplicate itself. Basically DNA had to randomly form into an information system and then decoder of the language at the same time.
Information is a message that conveys meaning, such as a book of instructions.…
Information is not matter.Here is an example of a scientific study that declare information coems from intelligence.
Scientists with the SETI institute are using huge radio telescopes to search for messages from intelligent beings out in space. (The letters "SETI" mean Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence.) They correctly state that intelligent messages are created only by intelligent beings. The first step in their search is to separate between static and message. So far all they have found is static, but if they find a message from space, they will have shown that there are intelligent beings out there somewhere. If exceptions existed, and intelligent messages could be sent out without any intelligence involved, their whole search would be meaningless.
Can someone please give an example or explanation as to how information/intelligent messages/decodable data can randomly happen without intelligence when it is clearly stated, by SETI, that intelligence is required.
Why does information need a system to decode it? The mechanisms for information are already in place for lots of things. There is a rock formation in the western US called the Devil’s Postpile. It consists of rock broken into hexagonal shapes of various heights.
Here we have information: hexagonally shaped rocks. Many people have asserted that an intelligent being (the devil, in some cases) is needed to create these rocks. However, a little geological analysis into the chemical composition of the rocks indicates that the rock cleaves in a hexagonal manner. Its structure is just suited to being hexagonal. Information can exist without an intelligent system to decode it. If we weren’t around, those rocks would still be hexagonal. In this case, basic physics does all the work. Why can’t that apply to early hereditary molecules (which, by the way, don’t need to be DNA, RNA, or polypeptide)?
Widowmakers wrote:Now I have a couple issues with your reasoning about the mutations.
Here is the example:
original=The fat cat ate the wee bat.
mutation=The fat rat ate the wee bat.
You state that the mutated sentence is still information but it is just illogical. Well my question to you is what good is illogical information? If I was to write you a letter and I put this sentence down, would you be able to understand it? No you would not. Not only was the initial information lost, but the new information does not make sense.
Yes, if the selection pressure on the sentence is our logic, then illogic is a negative factor. But with DNA, there is no illogical sentence, so illogic doesn’t apply. See my discussion of this below.
Widowmakers wrote:Two ExamplesHere are some other examples. Take a cook book and a blueprint for a house.
Let's assume the cook book has 10 recipes and the blueprint is for a single story ranch home. Each one of these groups of information can be used to construct different things based on the "code" or instructions.
So let's take a look at what would happen if we changed a number or word in a cooking recipe. The amount of a particular ingredient could be changed, maybe the time that the food is cooked would be wrong. Has the recipe actually added any new useful information? No. All it has done is changed the initial information and replaced it with information that lowers the amount of value in the recipe.
Same thing with a house blueprint. If you randomly change the location or size of a board or wire, the house might not lose its function but it did lose information to properly be constructed.
If there were multiple copies of each of these cookbooks and blueprints and "mutations" happened to some of them, what would happen? Well first the mutations might not be enough to affect the outcome of the product based on the instructions. But eventually a cook book or blueprint would lose so much information by randomly changing letters and numbers, the data would not allow the cook or builder to make a proper meal or home. Those blue prints would then be thrown away (natural selection).
Natural selection (survival of the fittest, cooks choosing the best cook book and builders the best blue print) would eliminate the bad copies (harmful mutations) and the recipe/blueprint would be maintains with some level of information loss/change but still information to make a recipe that is useful.
This is how mutations and natural selection work in nature. Mutations happen upon a set of DNA and if the mutations are so bad the DNA produces organisms that cannot live into the environment, they will die and the copy will not be spread to the next generation.
But can these mutations actually add new information to the recipe to make an entirely new dish of food or add information to the blue prints to make a completely new house?
Mutations of the Two Examplesand Natural Selection of the MutationsLets take a very simple recipe (much less complex than anything we are talking about from a biological evolutionary perspective) Macaroni and Cheese.
Macaroni and Cheese1-Boil 5 cups of water
2-Add 2 cups of macaroni
3-Boil for 7 minutes
4-Strain water from macaroni
5-add ½ stick of butter
6-add ½ cup milk
7-add cheese
This is a very simple set of instructions for macaroni and cheese (7 steps)
If we add mutations to these instructions what happens?
-If we boil more water (10 cups) nothing really changes, we just boil more water and it takes longer.
-If we boil less that 5 cups of water the macaroni might not be able to boil long enough (water boils off) and the macaroni would be tough and not tender. If the rest of the steps followed properly then we would just have tough macaroni.
-What if we added to much or too little macaroni. The more we add, the less cheesy the mac would be compared to the original recipe. And the less mac we add, the cheesier the mac would be. Not really a big deal different some people may like more or less chesse anyway.
-What if we lose the information to strain the water. The recipe would no longer b macaroni and cheese but mac and cheese soup. Yuk.
-And for the last step. What if the recipe mutated and asked the cook to add cheepe. Well there is no such thing as cheepe. So nothing would be added. Now we get soupy hot wet macaroni with no cheese.
As you can see slight mutations into the recipe can provide a wide variety of dishes all based on the basic mac and cheese. Depending on whether or not the recipes was like or disliked by certain people would determine how long it was used. If a certain recipe was not like it would not be copied and eventually be lost. (Again this is natural selection).
But what we see here is that these mutations are not creating any new types of food. The basic ingredients do not change. Only the amount and the order can vary.
This illustration above works for a blue print too. But a blueprint is much more complex. Remember the blue print is not intelligent it is just the source of the information that the builder uses. As dimensions, specs and requirements mutate (change), the plans become less complete. Randomly changing data in a mac and cheese recipe might not produce horrible deadly food, but even a small change in a blue print for a house could cause the whole thing to collapse (wrong nails, smaller boards, and improper connections).
But let's assume the mutations do not destroy the house. The color of the paint, the type of carpet, location of the light switch, maybe the direction the doors swing and various other aspects might change. Again this is not a new type of home but a variety of homes built around the basic same set of instructions.
Do Natural selection and mutations allow for an increase in the number/type/style of recipes or homes?If we now look at the recipe for macaroni and cheese, what mutations could happen to form a different dish of food? Randomly adding or subtractive letters or numbers from this recipe MAY EVENTUALLY add a new, understandable item to the recipe but it will only be passed on by natural selection (i.e. the cook likes the recipe and keeps it for future use) if the recipe is good.
What if we randomly add 3 letters into the recipe? Or maybe numbers? A new step?
How long would it take to get spaghetti from macaroni and cheese?
-They both boil water-X
-They both use pasta-X
-Different pasta-
mutation required-they both strain the pasta-X
-One recipe calls for milk, butter, and cheese while the other uses tomato based sauce and meat-
mutation requiredWell one might look at that and say "only two little mutations" that is easy. But in real life these mutations would need to happen in full to be kept by the cook.
If macaroni and cheese mutated recipe called for, inoracam fo spuc 2 (inversion mutation for 2 cups of macaroni) the cook would not understand the recipe and the food would not be good. This mutated recipe would then be through away (natural selection deleting the unusable things) and the mutation would be gone.
If anyone can show me how you could:
-take a short story, small simple recipe or dog house plans.
-Randomly change numbers, text or words. (Added mutations)
-After each mutation, read the data and use it. If the outcome is desirable (the information still allows for the final product to function or be used), keep the mutated instructions; if not then throw it away. (Natural selection again)
-Increase the final information (remember, Information is a message that conveys meaning, so random letters are not information)
-Produce: novels, textbooks, and magazines that is understandable and cover a variety of topics; a large number of recipes for many dishes varying in style, type and ingredients and blue print for a mansion, condominium, skyscraper and shopping mall.
-The items listed above must be completely new and original. Since the theory of evolution states that there is no guide and no determined outcome, these new items should not be influenced by anything already created. (i.e. Don't show me how William Shakespeare's writings can be "randomly" generated. That type of random generation has a predetermined out come or desired design.
If anyone can do this, I will believe in evolution.And I am actually given you more to work with than evolution would. We already have a system of information. I am asking for evolution of a new original work within that system from random mutations.
However evolution claims, as I have stated before, the system originated at the same time the information for the system originated.
Heredity, heredity, heredity, heredity, heredity, heredity, heredity! I can’t say it enough. Heredity!
The problem with your house and macaroni and cheese argument is that there is no heritability involved. If you left a bit of macaroni after every meal and the next day it divided based on the recipe then you would have heritability. What would happen? Well, bad tasting recipes will be more successful because they would leave more offspring.
Natural selection doesn’t care about what our tastes are (unless it is acting on reproducing macaroni and cheese). The direction it leads evolution is toward reproductive success. When we stop eating it, that selection pressure will be removed, and others might take its place, or have a stronger effect, such as rotting, etc.
Another important thing you should realize: cheepe does not have a meaning, but agctag does. So does agctat. And aggtat. Every combination of nucleotides has a corresponding amino acid that will have an effect, positive or negative, on the “recipe.” There are no spelling or grammar errors at the nucleotide level, so your recipe and blueprint analogies fall through there. Why is it so hard to imagine this happening in DNA terms? I realize you’re trying to keep it simple, but is it so hard to talk about it the way it is really happening? Let me explain information on the DNA level, and you try to find fault in that.
atgagctatccatctgta
This is information. It is read in a series of codons (sets of three nucleotides).
atg agc tat cca tct tga
This gets translated into RNA
aug agc uau cca ucu uga
and then into amino acids (proteins).
Met-ser-tyr-pro-ser-stop (no amino acid)
Methionine is indicative of the start of the protein and uga is a “stop codon” that terminates the protein. Now, any mutation in the DNA will change the information, but will not make it nonsensical. For example changing tat to cat changes tyr to his. There is a change in the information, but it still makes sense, and will always. Lets add a c after the tat.
atg agc tat ccc atc ttg a
met-ser-tyr-pro-ile-leu-continues until stop codon.
Either of those mutations would be fatal to a sentence, and, in this case, the second one would probably be fatal to the polypeptide, but for a different reason (all the extra crap at the end will probably (but not always), at least in eukaryotes, be “junk.” The first might be successful, or it might not, but natural selection eliminates the unsuccessful mutations, so there results an increase in effectiveness. Quite a few mutations are deleterious, most are neutral (changing tat to tac still results in a tyr), but some are helpful, and they accumulate due to heredity.
Widowmakers wrote:Neoteny wrote:3) Your mutations are random argument confuses me. You don’t use randomness at all but instead bring up chemical resistance. Anyway, of course the resistance was in the population already. If it wasn’t, all the lice would die. Instead the mutation already happened. Mutations, like you said, are not guided by anything, including chemicals. Lice don’t say, “hey there’s this bad chemical, let me mutate.” It’s more like, “where did all my friends go?” The mutation occurred beforehand. Your argument doesn’t lead any credibility toward creationism or against evolution.
I agree that the lice do not say “hey there’s this bad chemical, let me mutate.” but then how are some resistant.
There are two ways of looking at it
1) They always had the resistance.
2) They mutated a resistance to the chemical before the chemical was around.
But if natural selection is used to preserve useful information, why would the lice have kept a mutated set of instructions to protect themselves from chemicals, if those chemicals did not exist yet? One could say that those instructions were passed along with other genes that were favorable and so the (at the time) useless resistance gene, eventually was useful.
So I agree with you, neither way can prove either evolution or creation.
Neutral mutations. They can be passed as long as they aren’t deleterious to the organism. Are you familiar with any toxicology? Organisms have various mechanisms for dealing with toxins. One of our most prominent ones is cytochrome P450. It acts on various molecules in different ways, but the short story is it tends to add to or change toxins so that they aren’t harmful, or can be easily passed. A mutation to the cytochrome might be help if a new pesticide is present, but might not work on DDT. Or vice versa. But if no pesticides are present, the cytochrome isn’t very active so mutations can happen to it and if it reduces or increases its successfulness, it won’t have an effect until the pesticides are present.
Widowmakers wrote:Neoteny wrote:4) You go on to bring up your information hypothesis again, which I’ve already touched on above. The key fault to your argument is that you are assuming that everything is happening by chance. You have mentioned it several times. That is not true. Mutations happen by “chance.” Evolution does not. If your book were subjected to natural selection, all your mutations that caused any loss of information would die and not reproduce. However, books that had mutations like my fat rat/wee bat mutations would be successful and propagate. These could lead to maintenance of information, or even (gasp) addition of information.
I already touched on this above
Neoteny wrote:5) “Environmental exposure does not cause mutations.”
I like this statement a lot. I don’t see your reasoning for putting it in and it doesn’t make any sense. I myself have caused mutations in yeast by altering environmental conditions. UV light is a known mutagen. Ethidium bromide is a known mutagen. Environmental exposure does cause mutations. What the hell are you talking about? Seriously?
All I have to say here is MY BAD. I know what I meant to say I just did not explain it clearly.
When I wrote that sentence, I was thinking over the previous paragraphs. Those explained how environmental conditions do not determine the type of mutation that occurs. For example a polar bear does not get a mutation for thick hair because it is cold or a giraffe a mutation for a long neck because food is high in a tree.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... 0_0/evo_32http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... tations_07This is straight from Berkley”s evolution page.
Mutations can be beneficial, neutral, or harmful for the organism, but mutations do not "try" to supply what the organism "needs."
So this is what I should have said:
Environmental exposure does determine the direction of mutation and whether a particular mutation happens or not is unrelated to how useful that mutation would be.Again, I am sorry. I will update the error in my previous post.
Ah, that does make more sense. Yes, though Lamarckism is fun to think about, it is not a viable alternative to natural selection.
Widowmakers wrote:Neoteny wrote:6) Moving on, natural selection is not random. You are missing the point. Mutation is random. A bird eating a green beetle is not. You are wrong again in saying natural selection should be adding information. That is mutation’s job. Natural selection selects for or against a mutation.
Again I agree. Could you please show me where this was written so I can edit it?
It was never my intention to explain Natural selection this way. Thanks
Neoteny wrote:7) Mutation has never been beneficial? You silly person you. Once again, I have performed experiments to that nature. Take a bunch of E. coli that will not grow on ampicillin and expose them to UV light. Try to grow some colonies on ampicillin agar and voila, if you do it enough, you will grow colonies. I didn’t check any of your sources but they are clearly wrong. It’s really hilarious when people tell me that things that I’ve done are impossible. Also, for a current experiment I am working on, I have isolated several mutated yeast strains that grow brown on an iron medium. Some do grow slower but at least one does not show any signs of weakness and tends to act just like wild-type yeast. So even if the mutations aren’t beneficial, they are not always harmful. The slow growth issue is probably a completely separate mutation from the brown coloring. You are wrong again.
As far as your “each gene affects everything” statement goes, most genes have multiple effects, but they definitely don’t affect everything and not all genes have multiple effects.
I can see how you interpreted what I said that way. If you look through what I types you will see that I am referring to the overall state of the organism. When mutations occur the mutation may be beneficial in the short term but the overall aspect of the organism is compromised. As stated above, mutations cause a loss of original information. This is known as genetic load.
Look at sickle cell anemia. It is a mutation that affects the blood hemoglobin and as a result is more resistant to malaria. At first you could say that this is a benefit. But the overall genetic load of the human is higher. If sickle cell anemia is such a good mutation, do you want it? Of course not. Here are some of the side effects of this mutation: acute attacks of abdominal and joint pain, ulcers on the legs, defective red blood cells, and severe anemia -- often leading to death. Do those sound good?
Sickle cell anemia might help out with malaria but not with the overall organism.
Your error here is a matter of perspective. It doesn’t matter if the organism wants the mutation or not, if it increases its reproductive success over others who don’t have the gene, it will be successful. This is one of the keys to natural selection. Sickle cell anemia contributes to the overall organism by increasing the life-span of organisms that might be exposed to malaria. This is a benefit. It sucks for the person, but it is beneficial to his or her genes. If you get malaria and die at four years old, you don’t spread any genes. If you live a long, painful life, and have six kids, the genes will be passed on. Sickle cell is a beneficial mutation in an area with malaria. And if you stay in a place with malaria, the gene will be beneficial for the long term. If you leave, you probably won’t “evolve away” the gene because it is not reducing your reproductive success. It might not be helping you anymore, but it is not hurting you evolutionarily.
I have to say now that I'm not sure my information responses might not be laid out as fully as I'd like, but they will do for now. Of course, any issues you have with the argument will be discussed anyway, so we can work it out there. :] Thanks for tuning in, everyone, and I apologize for the obnoxiously long post.
Uh huh... well, they are terms created by people as a classification scheme. Evolution doesn't act to change one genus into another, it acts on an individual, more specifically on their genes. The genus Pan (chimps) did not turn into the genus Homo, Homo and Pan branched off from some species in the past that might be given the genus Homo, Pan, or even some other name. Additionally, multiple genuses between families or even orders are not easily definable as separate entities or even as reliable nomenclature. Anyhow, single species sometimes break out from their "genus" and start their own, but saying something like "However, is there proof that a genus changes into another genus," is, at best, misleading, and, at worst, really leads me to believe that you don't know what you are talking about.
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