Chatter from thread about evolution

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Chatter from thread about evolution

 Pulled Jacob's comment from the thread for evolution links to here.

 Sorry for the thread scramble, the below thread is a mish mosh of posts from our thread for evolution links.  Please post only specific examples of evolution in this thread as a reference.

 

Religion Kills !!!

Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

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Every time a theist proposes

Every time a theist proposes the invalidity of evolution, they immediately follow it up by proving they don't know evolution at all. This mutantshark guy is especially dimwitted, attempting to disprove evolution through his ignorance in a thread that has already permanently refuted everything he has said or will ever say on the subject, and refuted it in the first post.

A classic example of the sheer stupidity that theists exemplify.

Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.


BobSpence
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Quote:Do you think god is an

Quote:

Do you think god is an old concept and Atheism is a new concept? No Atheism was there even during the very early history. I used to think that Atheism is a modern concept and god is an old concept then once I read about an incident that happened during the time of the Islamic prophet, that says - when the people who did not believe in God (the Atheist) mocked at the prophet, asking him how can your god bring back the dead people for a judgement when not even a trace of them remain (after they die and are buried). Then a verse of the Koran was revealed that says - "Nay, We are able to put together in perfect order (even) the very tips of his fingers.". For the people of that era its just means god can bring back every thing even finger tips. But with our current knowledge of finger print recognition, we know that each individual in the world has a unique finger print and bring back some one with such accuracy is not trivial. That addresses even the atheists of this age. 

You described this paragraph as

Quote:

Not myth, but a verifiable fact. But my point was to tell you that atheism did not emerge due to modern day scientific discoveries. It was there even when knowledge of science was still a distant future.

1. God or Allah or the claim of his being able to perfectly recreate a long dead person are not remotely "verifiable facts".

2. I have never disputed that atheism has always been around.

If you are pointing to the reference to perfect recreation of even the tips of the fingers as a surprising anticipation of scientific discoveries, that must be a joke. It did not take modern science to notice that the patterns on the finger-tips varied significantly from person to person, just eyes. They aren't even necessarily referring to the finger-prints in particular anyway - it can easily be read as a metaphor for 'complete', ie "all the way to the extremities of the body".

So you do not have a 'verifiable fact' that the book anticipated the modern forensic practice of fingerprint analysis.

Quote:

Quote:

If you assume there is a creator the massive weight of evidence, from examining his 'works', is that he is either incompetent, uncaring, or positively malevolent.

You are only analyzing one small part of the evidence that you have. The other larger part of the evidence will prove that he is competent, caring and benevolent.

No, I am looking at the vast bulk of the evidence:

1. Natural disasters;

2. Disease organisms, created by Him if he existed;

3. The massive number of children who die well before they are in a position to think about 'faith', including pre-natally. Estimated to be around 50 billion over history.

4. Cancer, and other afflictions specifically due to defects in His 'design';

5. Miracle cures - demonstrating that he could 'cure' all of those nasty diseases, but only chooses to do it when it will work as a publicity stunt. And other special effects, whose only purpose, if any, is to recruit more slaves to his side;

6. Not intervening to clarify the meaning of the Bible, and stop people using it to justify horrible pogroms, witch-burning, and other religiously inspired evils;

7. Mass starvation of innocent people;

8. Parasites, such as worms which live in the water in Africa whose life-cycle involves burrowing into the eyes of children and making them blind;

None of those involve fault on the part of the people affected, they are His fault, as the supreme power, and they are just the highlights...

Now, where is your evidence for his "love" and benevolence???

Of course, none of those are logical problems once you throw out the nonsense that is the concept of 'God'.

What is damn close to 'verifiable fact' from the evidence of your own posts, is that you, mutantshark, are a deeply, deeply deluded.

 

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

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Unanswered questions

BobSpence1 wrote:

The other point I would add is that if you put identical DNA into a very different cell, say from a different species, you will NOT get an identical result, since the specific effects of a given sequence of DNA are going to be highly dependent on all the other components of the cell, many of which the organism also inherits from its parents, in addition to the nuclear DNA.
For a start, you would ideally need the mitochondrial DNA to be identical as well.

DNA contains the exact information for the embryo to multiply, change into different kinds of tissues and finally form various organs of the animal with precise detail. How ever its still not known how all the information is coded. When we consider cloning, there will be differences of the effect of mitocondria (major effect) and mutations(in some cases). But if you achieve monozygotic cloning with no mutational effect it will be exactly the same.
BobSpence1 wrote:

Put it another way, beyond an initial stage, there are no purely neutral useless 'organs'. There is some evidence that even our appendix contributes in small but still mildly useful way to our functioning, which is why it is still there. I don't have mine, having come done with potentially life-threatening appendicitis in my early 20's. Of course the appendix did have a major use in some ancestral species, which is why it is there.

By neutral organ formations, I dont imply cancerous growth, but some thing like a new organ.
I really want to run a simulation to show you the actual effect. A mathematical iteration matching the following constraints:
1. "The majority of mutations in a multi-cellular organism's genome are neutral and do not harm the organism[1]" means at any point of time, probability of a new generation animal developing a neutral organ is much higher than that developing a useful organ.
2. "Occasional mutations are unfavorable. As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is". Implies natural selection eliminates unfavorable ones.
3. "rarely a mutation will be favorable." An organ developing into a fully functional one will depend on how many favorable mutations it will get.
4. The chances of an organism surviving depends on natural selection
We can argue on this after running this - not very complex mathematical simulation model (how the simulation model should be can be discussed in future posts. You can suggest your view). Is this OK?
BobSpence1 wrote:

A random sequence of harmless mutations are extremely unlikely to produce any functional structure.
Applying continuing random changes just produces a mess.
They would almost as likely cancel out the result of any earlier mutations.

But according to evolutionists, organs developed due to random mutations over many generations. If you say it will only result in a mess then you are disproving theory of evolution
BobSpence1 wrote:

They would as likely just cause a slight change in some hormone, skin color, hair length or color, body size, etc, etc, as anything that would be describable as an 'organ', useless or not. A series of small random changes will just tend to lead to a continuing reshuffling of the characteristics of the species, which is what we see. That is the ultimate source of evolutionary change. Eventually, there wil be a small but non-zero chance that one of these versions will find an ecological niche which its particular set of attributes is better suited to.

This is just an assumption.
BobSpence1 wrote:

An individual cluttered by a bunch of genuinely useless organs will typically be less successful than one not so encumbered.

You are comparing the chances of survival between an animal with no neutral organs and one with only functional organs. Consider the case when all have multiple neutral organs (there is no golden reference)
BobSpence1 wrote:

No it doesn't.
You are just describing how we define a quantity of energy, not what it IS.

I defined the concept of energy not one quantity of energy. Quantitative definition of energy is different its some thing like this "One joule of energy is the energy required to move an electric charge of one coulomb through a potential difference of one volt" Where as Energy is defined as work done in unit time.
BobSpence1 wrote:

BTW, I qualified with a University Degree (with Honors) in Electrical Engineering ( Electronics and Communications), and it continues to sadden me how many of my fellow engineers get attracted to creationism or other crazy ideas, often religious.

Looks like we have the same educational background "University Degree (with Honors) in Electrical Engineering" Smiling
BobSpence1 wrote:

Mathematics is an essentia tool of science, but an understanding based on empirical observations, analysed with mathematics, is what constitutes Science. Mathematics (and the even more fundamental tool, namely Logic) leads, of itself, to no explicit truths about Reality,
Physics does not address the complexity of living organisms - it describes the mechanics of atomic structure and chemical bonding, and so on, but it is totally impractical to attempt to describe a living organism in terms of chemistry, let alone atomic theory or quantum mechanics. Whole new concepts need to be introduced, which are independent of the specifics of the 'nuts and bolts' of a specific life process. Complexity theory, information theory, non-linear systems, are the minimum you need to consider, and these are independent of issues of what makes up matter and energy, etc.

I believe that physics and mathematics converges at some point far below the level where current researches are taking place. And if we start deriving right from there (which may be long process) we can cover every thing including particle physics, chemistry, newtonian physics and even biological sciences. And in that case you wont have any difference between all these sciences. Whole universe and every thing in it are part of a complex mathematical equation and are balanced through mathematical equations. The only problem in studying that is that you will need to use all the processing power in the universe to uncover it and still fall short.
BobSpence1 wrote:

Evolved organisms can 'solve' problems by a pure 'trial-and-error' process that would be difficult by conscious reasoning. This has lead to the development of 'genetic algorithms' to harness this process. The natural application of the Darwinian Algorithm - random mutation followed by non-random selection - slow, but we cn speed it up considerably with modern computers. (I am also deeply experienced in computers and software development).

This is not such a difficult thing to simulate except for the fact that the simulation is going to be a mathematical one. Mutations can be simulated as random points on an XY plain with multiple successive iterations to create the effect of multiple generations. Constraint of Natural selection can be introduced by successively removing the ones that get >X% of harmful mutations.
"I am also deeply experienced in computers and software development" - I'm also experienced in computer science and software development Smiling (CPU design, OS internals and system software to be precise).
BobSpence1 wrote:

Curious to identify the 'blind spots' that lead you off the track...

Me too Smiling


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 Mutantshark your stupid

 Mutantshark your stupid burns so. Please learn what evolutionary biologists actually say instead of putting your words in their mouths. Thanks.

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mutantshark wrote:BobSpence1

mutantshark wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

The other point I would add is that if you put identical DNA into a very different cell, say from a different species, you will NOT get an identical result, since the specific effects of a given sequence of DNA are going to be highly dependent on all the other components of the cell, many of which the organism also inherits from its parents, in addition to the nuclear DNA.
For a start, you would ideally need the mitochondrial DNA to be identical as well.

DNA contains the exact information for the embryo to multiply, change into different kinds of tissues and finally form various organs of the animal with precise detail. How ever its still not known how all the information is coded. When we consider cloning, there will be differences of the effect of mitocondria (major effect) and mutations(in some cases). But if you achieve monozygotic cloning with no mutational effect it will be exactly the same.

The DNA of the fertilized cell contains only a part of the information required to quide the maturation of the organism. The rest is in the other structural and chemical components of the cell, and some is in the environment it evolved in.

It would be impossible to reconstruct the whole organism if all you had was the DNA extracted from the nucleus. There is nowhere near enough information there.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

Put it another way, beyond an initial stage, there are no purely neutral useless 'organs'. There is some evidence that even our appendix contributes in small but still mildly useful way to our functioning, which is why it is still there. I don't have mine, having come done with potentially life-threatening appendicitis in my early 20's. Of course the appendix did have a major use in some ancestral species, which is why it is there.

By neutral organ formations, I dont imply cancerous growth, but some thing like a new organ.
I really want to run a simulation to show you the actual effect. A mathematical iteration matching the following constraints:
1. "The majority of mutations in a multi-cellular organism's genome are neutral and do not harm the organism[1]" means at any point of time, probability of a new generation animal developing a neutral organ is much higher than that developing a useful organ.
2. "Occasional mutations are unfavorable. As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is". Implies natural selection eliminates unfavorable ones.
3. "rarely a mutation will be favorable." An organ developing into a fully functional one will depend on how many favorable mutations it will get.
4. The chances of an organism surviving depends on natural selection
We can argue on this after running this - not very complex mathematical simulation model (how the simulation model should be can be discussed in future posts. You can suggest your view). Is this OK?

No.  I realize you do not mena to imply 'cancerous growth', but a 'useless organ' is pretty much equivalent to that, or perhaps a benign tumor.

Without any function, there is no direction for the random process of mutation to go, so a series of random mutations is vastly more likely to generate a formless lump of cells than anything we could recognize as an 'organ'.

And a creature with a bunch of useless organs is going to be at least slightly less fit for reproduction than one not so encumbered, at each generation.

IOW, a useless organ is not a neutral mutation. It consumes resources for no purpose. It IS equivalent to a cancerous growth, which IS the normal effect of a mutation sufficient to cause some sort of growth of tissue, a necessary part of the formation of a new organ.

A major problem with cancer is the same as would apply to a 'useless' organ. If it grows large enough, it can seriously interfere with the proper functioning of the body, and has no positive contribute to compensate.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

A random sequence of harmless mutations are extremely unlikely to produce any functional structure.
Applying continuing random changes just produces a mess.
They would almost as likely cancel out the result of any earlier mutations.

But according to evolutionists, organs developed due to random mutations over many generations. If you say it will only result in a mess then you are disproving theory of evolution

No, they develop step-by-step by random mutation plus natural selection at each step (ie each generation. Without the inevitable process of 'selection', ie differential reproductive success, random mutation would indeed lead to a mess.

Again, a critter with useless organs is likely to be less successful than one not so burdened. Even if it is only slightly less successful, that is all it takes for such useless mutations to not propagate.

You are not describing Darwinian evolution, just random change.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

They would as likely just cause a slight change in some hormone, skin color, hair length or color, body size, etc, etc, as anything that would be describable as an 'organ', useless or not. A series of small random changes will just tend to lead to a continuing reshuffling of the characteristics of the species, which is what we see. That is the ultimate source of evolutionary change. Eventually, there wil be a small but non-zero chance that one of these versions will find an ecological niche which its particular set of attributes is better suited to.

This is just an assumption.

No, it is the mechanism of evolution.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

An individual cluttered by a bunch of genuinely useless organs will typically be less successful than one not so encumbered.

You are comparing the chances of survival between an animal with no neutral organs and one with only functional organs. Consider the case when all have multiple neutral organs (there is no golden reference)

The 'golden reference' is efficiency - less useless organs means a more efficient organism, therefore likely to be a more successful one at reproducing.

An extra, useless organ IS an unlikely and harmful mutation. To be 'neutral' it would have to have some functionality to offset the resources it required - space, blood supply, etc. A useless organ is the same as a benign tumor.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

No it doesn't.
You are just describing how we define a quantity of energy, not what it IS.

I defined the concept of energy not one quantity of energy. Quantitative definition of energy is different its some thing like this "One joule of energy is the energy required to move an electric charge of one coulomb through a potential difference of one volt" Where as Energy is defined as work done in unit time.

Energy:

Quote:

3 Physics the property of matter and radiation that is manifest as a capacity to perform work (such as causing motion or the interaction of molecules) : a collision in which no energy is transferred.

• a degree or level of this capacity possessed by something or required by a process.

You have still just described how we quantify energy, not what it is.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

BTW, I qualified with a University Degree (with Honors) in Electrical Engineering ( Electronics and Communications), and it continues to sadden me how many of my fellow engineers get attracted to creationism or other crazy ideas, often religious.

Looks like we have the same educational background "University Degree (with Honors) in Electrical Engineering" Smiling
BobSpence1 wrote:

Mathematics is an essentia tool of science, but an understanding based on empirical observations, analysed with mathematics, is what constitutes Science. Mathematics (and the even more fundamental tool, namely Logic) leads, of itself, to no explicit truths about Reality,
Physics does not address the complexity of living organisms - it describes the mechanics of atomic structure and chemical bonding, and so on, but it is totally impractical to attempt to describe a living organism in terms of chemistry, let alone atomic theory or quantum mechanics. Whole new concepts need to be introduced, which are independent of the specifics of the 'nuts and bolts' of a specific life process. Complexity theory, information theory, non-linear systems, are the minimum you need to consider, and these are independent of issues of what makes up matter and energy, etc.

I believe that physics and mathematics converges at some point far below the level where current researches are taking place. And if we start deriving right from there (which may be long process) we can cover every thing including particle physics, chemistry, newtonian physics and even biological sciences. And in that case you wont have any difference between all these sciences. Whole universe and every thing in it are part of a complex mathematical equation and are balanced through mathematical equations. The only problem in studying that is that you will need to use all the processing power in the universe to uncover it and still fall short.

Now that is 'just [a series of] assumption[s]'.

The universe is not mathematics.

Mathematics is an idealized abstract description of the workings of the Universe as we perceive them.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

Evolved organisms can 'solve' problems by a pure 'trial-and-error' process that would be difficult by conscious reasoning. This has lead to the development of 'genetic algorithms' to harness this process. The natural application of the Darwinian Algorithm - random mutation followed by non-random selection - slow, but we cn speed it up considerably with modern computers. (I am also deeply experienced in computers and software development).

This is not such a difficult thing to simulate except for the fact that the simulation is going to be a mathematical one. Mutations can be simulated as random points on an XY plain with multiple successive iterations to create the effect of multiple generations. Constraint of Natural selection can be introduced by successively removing the ones that get >X% of harmful mutations.

Genetic algorithms do NOT proceed by "removing those that get  > X% of harmful mutations". That is totally misunderstanding the whole thing, the same kind of misunderstanding you show of natural evolution itself.

It selects those which best and most efficiently perform, or come closest to performing, the target task. That is the criterion, the measure. We don't even try to identify and classify the 'mutations'. It is overall success of the algorithm, just as the measure in natural selection is overall reproductive success, not a count of useful or harmfull mutations.

'Mathematical' does not constrain anything. A series of copies of the algorithm are generated with random code variations, and run, and their outputs compared using some 'scoring' rules giving appropriate weight to how close they get to the target. The top performers are used as the starting point for generating the next set of trials.

You seem to have a somewhat distorted or peculiar view of what natural selection is and how it works. It is simply competition between variants, based on which variant survives to contribute the greatest proportion to the next generation, which requires not just survival, but mating success and numbers and viablilty of the resulting offspring. In genetic algorithms, the selection is based on different tests, and reproduction is not involved.

But it is still the basic algorithm of random small variations followed by selection of those best matching a standard of some kind, then using those selected as the starting point for the next round.

Quote:

"I am also deeply experienced in computers and software development" - I'm also experienced in computer science and software development Smiling (CPU design, OS internals and system software to be precise).
BobSpence1 wrote:

Curious to identify the 'blind spots' that lead you off the track...

Me too Smiling

Well it seems you have more work to do getting up to speed on evolution, for a start.

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology


Brian37
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mutantshark wrote:BobSpence1

mutantshark wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

The other point I would add is that if you put identical DNA into a very different cell, say from a different species, you will NOT get an identical result, since the specific effects of a given sequence of DNA are going to be highly dependent on all the other components of the cell, many of which the organism also inherits from its parents, in addition to the nuclear DNA.
For a start, you would ideally need the mitochondrial DNA to be identical as well.

DNA contains the exact information for the embryo to multiply, change into different kinds of tissues and finally form various organs of the animal with precise detail. How ever its still not known how all the information is coded. When we consider cloning, there will be differences of the effect of mitocondria (major effect) and mutations(in some cases). But if you achieve monozygotic cloning with no mutational effect it will be exactly the same.
BobSpence1 wrote:

Put it another way, beyond an initial stage, there are no purely neutral useless 'organs'. There is some evidence that even our appendix contributes in small but still mildly useful way to our functioning, which is why it is still there. I don't have mine, having come done with potentially life-threatening appendicitis in my early 20's. Of course the appendix did have a major use in some ancestral species, which is why it is there.

By neutral organ formations, I dont imply cancerous growth, but some thing like a new organ.
I really want to run a simulation to show you the actual effect. A mathematical iteration matching the following constraints:
1. "The majority of mutations in a multi-cellular organism's genome are neutral and do not harm the organism[1]" means at any point of time, probability of a new generation animal developing a neutral organ is much higher than that developing a useful organ.
2. "Occasional mutations are unfavorable. As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is". Implies natural selection eliminates unfavorable ones.
3. "rarely a mutation will be favorable." An organ developing into a fully functional one will depend on how many favorable mutations it will get.
4. The chances of an organism surviving depends on natural selection
We can argue on this after running this - not very complex mathematical simulation model (how the simulation model should be can be discussed in future posts. You can suggest your view). Is this OK?
BobSpence1 wrote:

A random sequence of harmless mutations are extremely unlikely to produce any functional structure.
Applying continuing random changes just produces a mess.
They would almost as likely cancel out the result of any earlier mutations.

But according to evolutionists, organs developed due to random mutations over many generations. If you say it will only result in a mess then you are disproving theory of evolution
BobSpence1 wrote:

They would as likely just cause a slight change in some hormone, skin color, hair length or color, body size, etc, etc, as anything that would be describable as an 'organ', useless or not. A series of small random changes will just tend to lead to a continuing reshuffling of the characteristics of the species, which is what we see. That is the ultimate source of evolutionary change. Eventually, there wil be a small but non-zero chance that one of these versions will find an ecological niche which its particular set of attributes is better suited to.

This is just an assumption.
BobSpence1 wrote:

An individual cluttered by a bunch of genuinely useless organs will typically be less successful than one not so encumbered.

You are comparing the chances of survival between an animal with no neutral organs and one with only functional organs. Consider the case when all have multiple neutral organs (there is no golden reference)
BobSpence1 wrote:

No it doesn't.
You are just describing how we define a quantity of energy, not what it IS.

I defined the concept of energy not one quantity of energy. Quantitative definition of energy is different its some thing like this "One joule of energy is the energy required to move an electric charge of one coulomb through a potential difference of one volt" Where as Energy is defined as work done in unit time.
BobSpence1 wrote:

BTW, I qualified with a University Degree (with Honors) in Electrical Engineering ( Electronics and Communications), and it continues to sadden me how many of my fellow engineers get attracted to creationism or other crazy ideas, often religious.

Looks like we have the same educational background "University Degree (with Honors) in Electrical Engineering" Smiling
BobSpence1 wrote:

Mathematics is an essentia tool of science, but an understanding based on empirical observations, analysed with mathematics, is what constitutes Science. Mathematics (and the even more fundamental tool, namely Logic) leads, of itself, to no explicit truths about Reality,
Physics does not address the complexity of living organisms - it describes the mechanics of atomic structure and chemical bonding, and so on, but it is totally impractical to attempt to describe a living organism in terms of chemistry, let alone atomic theory or quantum mechanics. Whole new concepts need to be introduced, which are independent of the specifics of the 'nuts and bolts' of a specific life process. Complexity theory, information theory, non-linear systems, are the minimum you need to consider, and these are independent of issues of what makes up matter and energy, etc.

I believe that physics and mathematics converges at some point far below the level where current researches are taking place. And if we start deriving right from there (which may be long process) we can cover every thing including particle physics, chemistry, newtonian physics and even biological sciences. And in that case you wont have any difference between all these sciences. Whole universe and every thing in it are part of a complex mathematical equation and are balanced through mathematical equations. The only problem in studying that is that you will need to use all the processing power in the universe to uncover it and still fall short.
BobSpence1 wrote:

Evolved organisms can 'solve' problems by a pure 'trial-and-error' process that would be difficult by conscious reasoning. This has lead to the development of 'genetic algorithms' to harness this process. The natural application of the Darwinian Algorithm - random mutation followed by non-random selection - slow, but we cn speed it up considerably with modern computers. (I am also deeply experienced in computers and software development).

This is not such a difficult thing to simulate except for the fact that the simulation is going to be a mathematical one. Mutations can be simulated as random points on an XY plain with multiple successive iterations to create the effect of multiple generations. Constraint of Natural selection can be introduced by successively removing the ones that get >X% of harmful mutations.
"I am also deeply experienced in computers and software development" - I'm also experienced in computer science and software development Smiling (CPU design, OS internals and system software to be precise).
BobSpence1 wrote:

Curious to identify the 'blind spots' that lead you off the track...

Me too Smiling

To show you how stupid this argument is, let me ask you this?

WOULD you buy the same argument you are peddling if someone else was using it to sell Allah or Vishnu or Thor?

NO you would not. So all this amounts to is YOU being a Johny come lately trying to catch up to modern science  to prop up your myth.

EVOLUTION is not a math problem. It is a STUDY of environment and genetics  over long periods of time. Evolution will never defend comic book claims because it is a study of life, not a study of wishful thinking.

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So let me ask about your

So let me ask about your idea of there being latent organs just waiting for conditions to change so that they can burst out to meet new needs.

OK, so why has nobody ever noticed them before?  Seriously, uncounted thousands of surgeries are performed every day in nations around the world, all with different agendas.  No doctor has ever written a paper about those little bit of tissue that don't actually do anything.

If they exist, then they must have existed long before evolution existed on a theoretical basis right?

How about butchers?  If they are present in humans, then why not in animals as well?  Butchers would not know or care about what they don't do but they would be interested in whether they are good to eat or not.  We have been slaughtering animals for thousands of years.  Surely people would have noticed them by now?

Really, the fact is that new organs don't evolve like you think they do.  The basic layout evolved in the Cambrian and what came of that is so complete that only minor changes in shape have happened since then.

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Since you also claim to be

Since you also claim to be an engineer, I must ask what you think is up with the vagus nerve.

It is one of the cranial nerves, meaning that it comes directly out of your brain separate from the spinal column.  One branch of it controls the facial muscles in your lower jaw.  In fish, it is a fairly straight forward deal.  It passes through the gills on the way to the jaw.

However, it is also one of the first nerves to develop early in embryology, before there is any real morphological distinction between different types of critter.  So the routing is basically set and cannot be changed by evolution.

Once we get into land animals, it gets complicated because the pass through the gill is replaced by a pass through the pulmonary blood vessels.  This means that it comes out of your brain, runs down your neck through your chest and back up your neck to get to your jaw.

If the whole god did it thing is true, then why pick such an inelegant routing?  If each creature is a separate kind of critter, then why not just route that nerve in a sound manner in the first place?

As an engineer, would you not be ashamed to run a control line half way across a project for no good purpose?

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mutantshark.Your obsession

mutantshark.

 

Your obsession with reducing the process to a count of beneficial vs harmfull mutations is totally misunderstanding evolution.

It is the net effect of all the genetic variations which matters. It is not possible to even accurately assign a value to the 'benefit' or 'harm' of any specific mutation, there is just so much interaction in the complex system that is a living organism and its environment, all of which affects the impact of any genetic change. 

This failure to understand evolution was most clearly demonstrated in how you thought of 'genetic algorithms', in suggesting they would work by assessing the proportion of "harmful mutations'. That is just so wrong. Why you would think in such terms in such a context, rather than the blindingly obvious procedure of assessing how well it performed in the intended task, just stuns me. If you use an algorithm to find a strategy to maximize investment returns in business, a typical application, you assess the best ones by measuring the yield they produce in practice, not by looking at the code they generate. What is your problem??

You seem to think at a level of detail while missing the 'bigger picture', which would be consistent with your success at Math, and thinking of Physics as being closely related, and the 'ultimate theory of everything' being at an ultimate level of detail 'below' what we know now. 

I acknowledge the importance of understanding the underlying components and structure of reality, but see that it is at least as, if not more, important to grasp general principles which apply to all interactions, regardless of whether the interactions are between electrons or stars. Things like complexity theory, chaos theory, information theory, the mix of randomness and deterministic mechanisms that govern reality, the emergence of complex structures and systems from simpler ones, the whole being more than the sum of its parts, and so on. These things do not depend on the results of Physics, and Mathematics is just the indispensible tool for studying such things, but not the ultimate source of any new ideas that come out of it. The evolutionary algorithm, of the effect of random changes being repeatedly winnowed down by a non-random process of selection, is a great example of such principles.

Multiple changes will often have a different net effect from what a simple accounting process might predict, even if we could do it.

A change in one generation which has no apparent effect can prepare the ground for a subsequent mutation which would not 'work' without the earlier one.

Or a 'neutral' or 'harmful' change may be a benefit in a different environment, like longer fur will be a disadvantage, except to those individuals who move into a colder environment, maybe move up to higher altitudes or latitudes.

Are you really so convinced you have found a flaw in "evolution", that you are unable to acknowledge the possibility you have got it wrong?? 

 

 

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cj wrote:Kapkao

cj wrote:

Kapkao wrote:

Everyone posts total nonsense at some point in time or another. Not everyone deserves to be mocked, insulted, satired, or caricatured for it. Eye-wink

 

Of course they do, even me. 

Or you. 

And if I was that lame, I'd expect to be mocked, insulted, satirized or caricatured for it.  I'll try to remember your sensitivity, but don't count on it.

I don't have the patience to deal with someone who is deliberately and obviously ignorant.  Get over it.

 

Read my other post on the subject before you post such ignorant... ahem.

Sticking out tongue

 

“A meritocratic society is one in which inequalities of wealth and social position solely reflect the unequal distribution of merit or skills amongst human beings, or are based upon factors beyond human control, for example luck or chance. Such a society is socially just because individuals are judged not by their gender, the colour of their skin or their religion, but according to their talents and willingness to work, or on what Martin Luther King called 'the content of their character'. By extension, social equality is unjust because it treats unequal individuals equally.” "Political Ideologies" by Andrew Heywood (2003)


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BobSpence1 wrote:No. I

BobSpence1 wrote:

No. I realize you do not mena to imply 'cancerous growth', but a 'useless organ' is pretty much equivalent to that, or perhaps a benign tumor.
Without any function, there is no direction for the random process of mutation to go, so a series of random mutations is vastly more likely to generate a formless lump of cells than anything we could recognize as an 'organ'.
And a creature with a bunch of useless organs is going to be at least slightly less fit for reproduction than one not so encumbered, at each generation.
IOW, a useless organ is not a neutral mutation. It consumes resources for no purpose. It IS equivalent to a cancerous growth, which IS the normal effect of a mutation sufficient to cause some sort of growth of tissue, a necessary part of the formation of a new organ.
A major problem with cancer is the same as would apply to a 'useless' organ. If it grows large enough, it can seriously interfere with the proper functioning of the body, and has no positive contribute to compensate.


BobSpence1 wrote:

No, they develop step-by-step by random mutation plus natural selection at each step (ie each generation. Without the inevitable process of 'selection', ie differential reproductive success, random mutation would indeed lead to a mess.
Again, a critter with useless organs is likely to be less successful than one not so burdened. Even if it is only slightly less successful, that is all it takes for such useless mutations to not propagate.
You are not describing Darwinian evolution, just random change.

If you dont agree to my simulation logic then tell me one that you think is right (based on Theory of evolution) so that we can simulate the development of a multicellular organism. The initial creature should be multicellular with 'no organs', developing organs gradually through mutations. Less fit versions die out based on number of unfavorable mutations it acquires and ones with more favorable mutations reproducing more as you want. We can also eliminate some percentage of ones with high number of neutral mutations.


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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

 

Really, the fact is that new organs don't evolve like you think they do.  The basic layout evolved in the Cambrian and what came of that is so complete that only minor changes in shape have happened since then.

If you argue that the basic layout evolved during cambrian with only minor changes later, then you get too short a time for the development of many organs. More number of iterations (number or years) for an organ to develop is only going to help your argument. Smiling


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To test evolutionary theory,

To test evolutionary theory, you would randomly vary the genes in a group of organisms, based on the latest ideas of gene sorting and mutation rates, and model the reproductive success of the group. Since there is no clear way to predict the likely contribution of a specific gene variant until you see how the breeding success of the group is affected, your idea of assessing the genes themselves is pointless and unworkable.

What you could do is run a genetic algorithm with the target being maximum reproductive success. The test of the viability of natural selection would then be to change the rules for successful reproduction, simulating a significant change in the environment, and see how effectively the model organisms adapt.

What has been done, which is more realistic and practical, is run a program which randomly varies settings in a model which affect the appearance of some drawn object in a sufficiently complex way to roughly match the relationship between genes and physical characteristics in nature. At each generation, the user selects which variants best match some target, and we observe how quickly and effectively it converges on the target.

In either case, after achieving some measure of change, you can then look at the 'genes', and see how they have changed. You can prove nothing about the viability of evolution by natural by trying to anticipate the effect of individual changes in the DNA. Other more sophisticated simulations have continued to support evolutionary theory in general, sometimes to refine the details.

There has also been at least one now-famous evolution test based on exposing bacterial colonies to different selection pressure, such as replacing some of their normal nutrients with ones they don't normally metabolise, and seeing if they can evolve the capability to utilize them, given long enough. Which they did.

It would be hard to do the equivalent in higher organisms, since the generation time is much longer.

Your hypothesis has another problem, I just realized - it would require continuing increase in the number of genes, which doesn't happen within species. We actually have shorter genomes than many 'lower' organisms, which is a further problem for your simplistic idea.

The 'less useful' will eventually get dropped, crowded out, even without any other mechanism. Each 'new' neutral gene must replace a harmful or beneficial one. I the first case it represents a positive mutation, therefore will be selected for, so reducing the number of 'harmfuls'. In the second case, it will reduce the fitness, therefor is a negative change, therefore will be selected against, thereby reducing the number of neutrals.

 

 

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mutantshark wrote:

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:
Really, the fact is that new organs don't evolve like you think they do.  The basic layout evolved in the Cambrian and what came of that is so complete that only minor changes in shape have happened since then.

If you argue that the basic layout evolved during cambrian with only minor changes later, then you get too short a time for the development of many organs. More number of iterations (number or years) for an organ to develop is only going to help your argument. Smiling


 

So now you assert that the most experimental 54 million years in the evolutionary record are not enough to lay down the basic structures.


 

wikipedia wrote:
The Cambrian Period marked a profound change in life on Earth; prior to the Cambrian era, life was on the whole small and simple. Complex organisms gradually became more common in the millions of years immediately preceding the Cambrian, but it was not until this period that mineralised – hence readily fossilised – organisms became common.[8] This diversification of lifeforms was relatively rapid, and is termed the Cambrian explosion. This vast increase in diverse forms of life produced the first representatives of many modern phyla, representing the evolutionary stems of modern groups of species.


 

Basically, that is pretty much what happened.


 

Also, please do not pull quote me in the future. Address whole points and not individual sentences where you think you are as clever as a weasel.

 

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BobSpence1 wrote:If you are

BobSpence1 wrote:

If you are pointing to the reference to perfect recreation of even the tips of the fingers as a surprising anticipation of scientific discoveries, that must be a joke. It did not take modern science to notice that the patterns on the finger-tips varied significantly from person to person, just eyes. They aren't even necessarily referring to the finger-prints in particular anyway - it can easily be read as a metaphor for 'complete', ie "all the way to the extremities of the body".

So you do not have a 'verifiable fact' that the book anticipated the modern forensic practice of fingerprint analysis.

"It did not take modern science to notice that the patterns on the finger-tips varied significantly from person to person, just eyes." The uniqueness of finger prints is discovered in recent history (18th century) . palm prints were used to identify people using the ridges (caused by folding and friction), but not the ones in the tip of finger. If you argue that its a metaphor, then tip of your hair should make more sense as extremities of the body.

Any way if it is the anticipation of modern scientific discoveries is my point, then I can fill a whole page with that for eg. the verse "Have We not made the earth as a bed, and the mountains as pegs? And He has set firm mountains in the earth so that it would not shake with you" is clearly a modern scientific discovery (Plate tectonics) and cannot be seen to any one with "just eyes".

BobSpence1 wrote:

No, I am looking at the vast bulk of the evidence:

1. Natural disasters;

2. Disease organisms, created by Him if he existed;

3. The massive number of children who die well before they are in a position to think about 'faith', including pre-natally. Estimated to be around 50 billion over history.

...............

 

But there is less decease and more health, less death and more life.. You are again looking at a small bad side of it compared to more on the bright side. Then the very idea of life in this world is "as a test", you are rewarded or not based on how good you are, in the world hereafter. Secondly I dont believe in "miracles of cure" and so on. Every thing about god is hidden and understandable only through logic you have to study the logic and check for yourself if it can be truth or falsehood.


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mutantshark wrote:Answers in

mutantshark wrote:

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

 

Really, the fact is that new organs don't evolve like you think they do.  The basic layout evolved in the Cambrian and what came of that is so complete that only minor changes in shape have happened since then.

If you argue that the basic layout evolved during cambrian with only minor changes later, then you get too short a time for the development of many organs. More number of iterations (number or years) for an organ to develop is only going to help your argument. Smiling

The 'many organs' evolved by replicating and modifying the basic ones that had initially evolved. Or parts of them.

That is a very common sequence, at every level, down to individual genes. A simple mutation at the level of the DNA can cause a whole extra copy of an organ or part of it. Then it is free to change progressively to serve some new function.

Much, much more likely to happen than evolving a new one from nothing. Which would require a long sequence of generation by generation change to get anywhere. It wold be hard for a rudimentary structure to add anything to the viability of a relatively advanced organism, so there would be little or no selection pressure to drive its development, so it soon disappear in favour of a mutation that simply modified or augmented an existing structure.

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mutantshark wrote:BobSpence1

mutantshark wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

If you are pointing to the reference to perfect recreation of even the tips of the fingers as a surprising anticipation of scientific discoveries, that must be a joke. It did not take modern science to notice that the patterns on the finger-tips varied significantly from person to person, just eyes. They aren't even necessarily referring to the finger-prints in particular anyway - it can easily be read as a metaphor for 'complete', ie "all the way to the extremities of the body".

So you do not have a 'verifiable fact' that the book anticipated the modern forensic practice of fingerprint analysis.

"It did not take modern science to notice that the patterns on the finger-tips varied significantly from person to person, just eyes." The uniqueness of finger prints is discovered in recent history (18th century) . palm prints were used to identify people using the ridges (caused by folding and friction), but not the ones in the tip of finger. If you argue that its a metaphor, then tip of your hair should make more sense as extremities of the body.

The quote does not require the idea of being truly unique in the way we used them for ID in recent times - DNA has largely replaced fingerprints where it is available.

It merely requires it to be significantly different, in the same way that faces are, for that quote to make perfect sense in the context.

Quote:

Any way if it is the anticipation of modern scientific discoveries is my point, then I can fill a whole page with that for eg. the verse "Have We not made the earth as a bed, and the mountains as pegs? And He has set firm mountains in the earth so that it would not shake with you" is clearly a modern scientific discovery (Plate tectonics) and cannot be seen to any one with "just eyes".

You are quoting from an Islamic account, which I have heard before, and it is a totally inaccurate description of how mountains fit into the structure of the crust. Mountains are just thicker parts of the crust, and the underlying shape is a gentle downward bulge to match the extra weight above. Nothing remotely like 'pegs' - and the guy on another forum pushing something like this argument showed some drawings, or linked to them, which showed  the idea they had in mind. Needless to say the drawings bore no resemblance to what we know by various geological techiques.

Also, mountainous areas can often be the source of earthquakes, as a fews ago in China. This is because they frequently arise at the boundaries where two techtonic plates meet, and the resultant stress as the crust is pushed and folded into mountains often results in earthquakes.

So that reference simply proves that the writers not only lacked 'advanced knowledge', they were actually quite wrong.

So for things that eyes were adequate for, they made some statements consistent with modern ideas, but not anything clearly beyond what you might conclude from basic observation.

But when it comes to something beyond what one can observe readily, the internal structure of the earth's crust, they got it completely wrong. Big surprise!

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

No, I am looking at the vast bulk of the evidence:

1. Natural disasters;

2. Disease organisms, created by Him if he existed;

3. The massive number of children who die well before they are in a position to think about 'faith', including pre-natally. Estimated to be around 50 billion over history.

...............

 

But there is less decease and more health, less death and more life.. You are again looking at a small bad side of it compared to more on the bright side. Then the very idea of life in this world is "as a test", you are rewarded or not based on how good you are, in the world hereafter. Secondly I dont believe in "miracles of cure" and so on. Every thing about god is hidden and understandable only through logic you have to study the logic and check for yourself if it can be truth or falsehood.

There is leas disease in countries that have benefited from the application of modern science modern science in medicine and the design of water purification and distribution systems, as well as sewage removal and treatment. That is man's work, not God's, so he cannot take the credit. He could have more clearly explained the germ theory of disease, vaccination, how to make and use antibiotics, if he were serious. Or just not filled the world with so many harmful organisms.

There are fewer deaths through man's violent actions, per capita, now that God belief has declined overall, then back when the Abrahamic religions had more control.

But, in total, there are more deaths from natural disasters, which are clearly God's responsibility if he existed, now than there used to be. What positives would you point to that you would clearly attribute to 'God'?

God is not a logical concept. A 'loving' one is even less logically justifiable. You cannot prove God through logic, especially if he is hidden. You need objective evidence that a God exists, which is impossible, since a 'God ' could manipulate the 'evidence', and even our interpretation of it, in any way he wanted to suit his unknowable ends.

The fact that to many people nowadays, the world is MORE understandable without the assumption that there is a God, is all we need to dismiss it.

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mutantshark wrote:If you

mutantshark wrote:

If you dont agree to my simulation logic then tell me one that you think is right (based on Theory of evolution) so that we can simulate the development of a multicellular organism. The initial creature should be multicellular with 'no organs', developing organs gradually through mutations. Less fit versions die out based on number of unfavorable mutations it acquires and ones with more favorable mutations reproducing more as you want. We can also eliminate some percentage of ones with high number of neutral mutations.

Just wanted to point out the specific nonsense of simply counting the number of mutations in each category. Even if you could confidently categorize any given mutation, to match " the Theory of evolution" you would rather need to assign a number, a measure, of its likely effect on reproduction, from some negative to some positive value, to match reality, not simply a "-1/0/+1".

Again, your ideas fail at every level.

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BobSpence1 wrote:mutantshark

BobSpence1 wrote:

mutantshark wrote:

If you dont agree to my simulation logic then tell me one that you think is right (based on Theory of evolution) so that we can simulate the development of a multicellular organism. The initial creature should be multicellular with 'no organs', developing organs gradually through mutations. Less fit versions die out based on number of unfavorable mutations it acquires and ones with more favorable mutations reproducing more as you want. We can also eliminate some percentage of ones with high number of neutral mutations.

Just wanted to point out the specific nonsense of simply counting the number of mutations in each category. Even if you could confidently categorize any given mutation, to match " the Theory of evolution" you would rather need to assign a number, a measure, of its likely effect on reproduction, from some negative to some positive value, to match reality, not simply a "-1/0/+1".

Again, your ideas fail at every level.

They fail so often I'm beginning to wonder if they're his ideas.

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A simple simulation would be

A simple simulation would be to define an array of, say, 10 attributes, each with a number from 0 to 10, indicating its 'strength' in a particular organism.

Have some simple algorithm, say multiply each one by some weighting factor, indicating its contribution toward the reproductive success of the organism, and sum the results. You could try with progressively more complex formula to reflect the more complex way individual attributes contribute in the real world.

Generate a random variable for each element of the array, maybe set with a threshhold below which it will not be applied, and simply add it - it may be positive or negative, and an offset can be applied to the original random number to reflect an assumed likelihood of beneficial or harmfull effect.

Add the new version of the array to a list, as representing the offspring of the first.

Repeat for each one .

If the weighted viablity assessment is below a given value, drop that one from the collection - it 'died' before it could reproduce.

Every time round, increment a counter for each array entity, and use this to decrease its viability index, to reflect aging, and so that the less healthy ones will 'die' earlier.

Might need to add another constraint, reducing the viability ratings as number grow, to reflect limited resources.

Run it for a while, see how the list of arrays grows. Change the viability formula, simulating a change in the environment, and see how it adapts.

To simulate growth of complexity, like new organs, would require a more complex simulation. You'd need a multi-dimensional array, perhaps you might need to be able to add or subtract sub-arrays occasionally, on certain combinations of randomised 'mutations'. Might be easier to define it as an object, or associative array, so each element had a string label, rather than just a numerical index.

Anyway, my thoughts so far. Not sure if I will have time in the near future to work on it, although the first version shouldn't be too difficult.

Could be fun to work on, progressively refine it, to make it more realistic. I could do it in Javascript, so you could run it as a web-App, in your browser.

 

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Neutral mutations will

Neutral mutations will progressively disappear.

They will start in one individual, and if we assume basic sexual reproduction, will be present in half his offspring, a quarter of the next generation, etc.

The only way it could avoid that happening would be if it gave some advantage to the descendants that inherited it, ie it would have to be positively beneficial, by imparting some improved chance of surviving to reproduce.

Hope that makes it clear, mutantshark, why our bodies are not littered with 'useless organs'.

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BobSpence1 wrote:Neutral

BobSpence1 wrote:

Neutral mutations will progressively disappear.

They will start in one individual, and if we assume basic sexual reproduction, will be present in half his offspring, a quarter of the next generation, etc.

The only way it could avoid that happening would be if it gave some advantage to the descendants that inherited it, ie it would have to be positively beneficial, by imparting some improved chance of surviving to reproduce.

Hope that makes it clear, mutantshark, why our bodies are not littered with 'useless organs'.

 

A quibble - neutral mutations persist in the population at some non-zero level.  As they are neutral.

And to make your simulation really close to reality, have the weighting for each mutation randomized in a random amount of time.  Our environment constantly changes, and so the value of a particular mutation fluctuates.

And let's define evolution - again -

A change in the frequency of an allele in a population over time.

It really doesn't matter what the heck mutation an individual has and whether or not it is positively or negatively weighted.  What matters is the frequency of that mutation in the total population of that particular reproductively isolated group of organisms.

Granted, you have to come up with some sort of algorithmic solution for an individual, but then - to approach reality - you will need to track an entire population.

 

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I would think that to

I would think that to persist, they would have to be common mutations which appear with sufficient frequency to never quite get diluted out by genetic mixing through reproduction. And of course, in a finite population, there is a maximum dilution...

And you're right, to be a more accurate simulation, you would have to start with a realistic population size, probably with a randomly shuffled set of 'genes'.

I doubt mutantshark will grasp these 'subtleties', I'm sure they are not mentioned on the kind of web-sites he appears to ge his information from...

 

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Bob, I understand what you are saying. For a large enough and well mixed population, that sounds reasonable. However, in widespread clades, regional variations do occur and sometimes those variations do not appear to have reproductive use.

 

The example that I have in mind would be the rattle snake clade. They are all over north america below about 45 deg north. Now the venom needs to be of sufficient strength to assure successful predation and provide a disincentive for larger animals to prey on the snakes themselves. Past that, I see no real function to the venom, at least as a matter relevant to reproduction.

 

Yet there are regional variations in the venom. In some areas, the venom is hepatotoxic, in others neurotoxic. Moving from one area to another, you even see a gradient as the one form loses dominance and the other one gains. Not being a herpetologist myself, I do not know what the thoughts are on that but it seems to me to be unlikely that that is anything other than a concentration of an otherwise neutral allele.

 

Another example would be the evolution of horses. The ancestor form from 50 MYA already had the basic body plan but it was the size of a small dog. Considering the size of the actual wild population in Asia which represents what was around before we began breeding them, it would not be difficult to calculate how much leg length changed over any give time span.

 

If we say 1.5 meters over that time span, that would be 0.3 meters in 10 million years. That is such a slight change over a period of say, a thousand years to show any clear relationship to reproductive success in general.

 

Again, I do not claim to have great insight on the matter but it seems reasonable that if there were regional variations in the ancestral population, then if one subpopulation develops a slightly longer leg, they would be better able to outrun predators and then that seemingly neutral mutation would spread across the population in general. Of course, this will all be lost on mutantshark.

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Yet there are regional variations in the venom. In some areas, the venom is hepatotoxic, in others neurotoxic. Moving from one area to another, you even see a gradient as the one form loses dominance and the other one gains. Not being a herpetologist myself, I do not know what the thoughts are on that but it seems to me to be unlikely that that is anything other than a concentration of an otherwise neutral allele.

You're assuming that there are no variations in prey populations across these regions. There almost certainly are. I would strongly wager that the variations in venom follow variations in prey availability and susceptibility to the different kinds of toxins. Perhaps one works better on mice or other rodents, and one works better on lizards or something else that rattle snakes eat. Regional variations on rodent/lizard prey ratios would then cause regional differences in selective pressures on the toxins.

It's similar to skin pigmentation variation in humans. In areas with greater exposure to the sun (not only latitude, but also altitude and other factors), the indigenous populations have darker skin to protect against UV. In areas with less sun, the skin is paler, to allow for more production of vitamin D. A 'seemingly' neutral and consistent regional variation ends up having an underlying selective pressure after all.

Quote:
Another example would be the evolution of horses. The ancestor form from 50 MYA already had the basic body plan but it was the size of a small dog. Considering the size of the actual wild population in Asia which represents what was around before we began breeding them, it would not be difficult to calculate how much leg length changed over any give time span.

 

If we say 1.5 meters over that time span, that would be 0.3 meters in 10 million years. That is such a slight change over a period of say, a thousand years to show any clear relationship to reproductive success in general.

AIGS, whenever you see a consistent direction in the evolution of a feature over a long period of time, you can be guaranteed that it provides some important advantage. Neutral variations are, by definition, randomly distributed, and would show a bell-shaped variation over long periods of time, not a directional variation. If leg length were neutral in horses, you would expect to see all sorts of variety in horse leg length (in the wild; obviously breeders can artificially select for shorter or longer legs). You'd have horses with little tiny legs, and horses with big long legs, and they would all do just fine in their environment. But obviously, that wasn't/isn't the case.

Quote:

Again, I do not claim to have great insight on the matter but it seems reasonable that if there were regional variations in the ancestral population, then if one subpopulation develops a slightly longer leg, they would be better able to outrun predators and then that seemingly neutral mutation would spread across the population in general. Of course, this will all be lost on mutantshark.

 

I wonder, is your point here to emphasize the 'seemingly', or the 'neutral', because it is clear to me that you are identifying a non-neutral variation: "they would be better able to outrun predators and then that seemingly neutral mutation would spread across the population in general"

Truly neutral variations are, by definition, purely randomly distributed. They fall under the category of Genetic Drift. It is a significant factor in evolution (I just think your examples weren't representative of it), but it doesn't explain directional, consistent variations.

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BobSpence1 wrote:Neutral

BobSpence1 wrote:

Neutral mutations will progressively disappear.

They will start in one individual, and if we assume basic sexual reproduction, will be present in half his offspring, a quarter of the next generation, etc.

The only way it could avoid that happening would be if it gave some advantage to the descendants that inherited it, ie it would have to be positively beneficial, by imparting some improved chance of surviving to reproduce.

Hope that makes it clear, mutantshark, why our bodies are not littered with 'useless organs'.

Javascript is going to be tough for me coz ive never used it before. As we need multiple successive iterations, the choice should be C/C++. Scripting languages are not very effective in dealing with compute intensive problems. And for the sake of people who want to see it rather than look at the code, there should be a visual front end. (a very basic one, with some thing like random circles indicating organisms and red, blue and green points representing mutations)

My interest is in simulating how organs developed in an initially organ-less organism (whole organisms would be a tough one to simulate). Create a simple simulation model, expose it to random mutations in which majority are neutral (would be >90% ?), some are harmful (~9.9% ?) and rarely a mutation is favorable  (~0.1 % ?). Individuals with harmful mutations and >X % neutral mutations are removed at every step. Ones with more number of favorable mutations reproduce more.

We can successively add other effects like change of environment etc at a later stage. Instead of making mutations harmful, neutral and favorable, we can also introduce a coefficient between -10 to +10 that indicates the value of the mutation (being harmful, neutral and favorable).

 


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I think a bit of background

I think a bit of background is required, so we can be sure we have a simulation that takes account of work already done.

Here are several links of relevance:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB340.html

http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16421

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110810085544.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tierra_(computer_simulation)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_biology

I still don't see how you could predetermine what mutations are likely to be harmful or beneficial or neutral. Even there it would have to be a scale of definitely harmful to definitely beneficial, not just three states.

The ultimate test is really applied to the whole genome, including any recent changes.

Simply expose it to genuinely random mutations. Period. 

If you want, try applying different functions for generating the actual mutations from the raw random number generator.

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Good points Natural. However, I now see that I was not sufficiently specific in where I was going.

 

What I am getting at is that I don't really buy the concept of a neutral mutation.

 

I chose horses as they have had the same basic body plan for a very long time. Now, if you assume that there was a smooth transition over tens of millions of years, then the differences from one generation to the next would seem to be a true neutral mutation and would confer no real survival advantage.

 

Thus I am inferring that there must have been a series of changes of sufficient magnitude to confer survival advantage which then propagated through the larger population. Perhaps a mutation that caused a form of giant which could better outrun a predator. If there is any amount of reproductive isolation at all, then that mutation would dominate until contact with the main line is reestablished. Then the advantage sweeps through the larger population.

 

Against that, if true neutral mutations do exist, I am going to throw in with the snake venom. According to australiazoo.com.au, the inland taipan has venom sufficient to drop three full grown elephants with a single strike. They eat rats.

 

If either your bell curve argument or BobSpence1's powers of two argument holds, then there is no reason for that to have ever evolved in the first place. On the other hand, if an allele can get copied randomly through a population, then it seems that the venom could become more toxic over thousands of generations absent any actual selection pressure.

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BobSpence1 wrote: You are

BobSpence1 wrote:

You are quoting from an Islamic account, which I have heard before, and it is a totally inaccurate description of how mountains fit into the structure of the crust. Mountains are just thicker parts of the crust, and the underlying shape is a gentle downward bulge to match the extra weight above. Nothing remotely like 'pegs' - and the guy on another forum pushing something like this argument showed some drawings, or linked to them, which showed  the idea they had in mind. Needless to say the drawings bore no resemblance to what we know by various geological techiques.

Matching the exact shape of peg is not the intend here but the utility of one. When it says surface of earth is like a bed, it actually means a layer that floats on some thing, and its effectively true. check this - http://www.platetectonics.com/book/page_4.asp. Not that it should look like a bed - usually flat and rectangular in shape.

The usage 'pegs' really implies the effect of pegs (attaching a less stable object to a firmer object to restrict the movement of the former). In this case the tectonic plates float on the free flowing upper mantle, mountains have deeper roots that go into the lower mantle(that's harder) and acts like pegs restricting the movement of crust. As you said, it doesn't look like a peg but acts like one. In many cases, when mountains form due to the collision of plates, one side of the plate goes into the lower mantle forcing a sharper wedge like part into the lower mantle again acting like a peg.

BobSpence1 wrote:

Also, mountainous areas can often be the source of earthquakes, as a fews ago in China. This is because they frequently arise at the boundaries where two techtonic plates meet, and the resultant stress as the crust is pushed and folded into mountains often results in earthquakes.

This is true but imagine if mountains weren't there. There would have been much heavier earthquakes, more often.

BobSpence1 wrote:

There is leas disease in countries that have benefited from the application of modern science modern science in medicine and the design of water purification and distribution systems, as well as sewage removal and treatment. That is man's work, not God's, so he cannot take the credit. He could have more clearly explained the germ theory of disease, vaccination, how to make and use antibiotics, if he were serious. Or just not filled the world with so many harmful organisms.

There are fewer deaths through man's violent actions, per capita, now that God belief has declined overall, then back when the Abrahamic religions had more control.

But, in total, there are more deaths from natural disasters, which are clearly God's responsibility if he existed, now than there used to be. What positives would you point to that you would clearly attribute to 'God'?

God is not a logical concept. A 'loving' one is even less logically justifiable. You cannot prove God through logic, especially if he is hidden. You need objective evidence that a God exists, which is impossible, since a 'God ' could manipulate the 'evidence', and even our interpretation of it, in any way he wanted to suit his unknowable ends.

The fact that to many people nowadays, the world is MORE understandable without the assumption that there is a God, is all we need to dismiss it.

God does not call this world the best place to be, He calls it a world for testing whos good and whos not. Having its share of happiness and worries. You will justify a loving God if you look at the brighter side of life. My friend recently visited Guinea, according to him the country is so poor that most of the population is deprived of even electricity and other basic stuff, but he found the people happier and more genuine than the people in developed countries. So, is it that the people are making world a bad place or God? Dont think about magical curing, publicity stunts and human Gods as part of religion, they are not, and if any religion claims that they are, then its a false religion.

 


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So do you specifically ignore the questions for which you do not have a good answer for?

 

Seriously, are you going to tell us why butchers have never noticed proto-organs and why doctor have never written a paper on the bits of tissue which have no function?

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Good points Natural. However, I now see that I was not sufficiently specific in where I was going.

 

What I am getting at is that I don't really buy the concept of a neutral mutation.

 

..............

 

 

This is an easy to read explanation from Dr. Lynn Fancher at the College of Dupage in IL.  Maybe not Ivy League, but the website looks to be pretty comprehensive.

http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fancher/genetics/Mutation.htm

Quote:

A.
most mutations are neutral; they either make no change in the expression of any gene, or the changes made do not affect the function of any gene product.
1.
A large percentage of DNA is not part of any gene, and has no known function. Changes in these portions of the DNA do not alter any gene and are thus silent.
2.
Because of the wobble concept, the exact identity of the third base of a codon often makes no difference, and if it does, the two amino acids coded for by the old the the new codon are often quite similar in nature, so a change in the DNA of a gene which affects one of these bases will often have no effect on the function of the gene product. This genearlly includes 1/4-1/5 of the bases in the gene. These would be silent or neutral mutations.
3.
Not all portions of a protein are equally important for the function of that protein. Even a mutation which changes an amino acid in the final gene product may not make a difference in the function of the protein, or may alter the precise nature of the function of the gene product without alter the usefulness of that product. These would be neutral mutations.

 

 

Seems to me, a lot of what every one is talking about is not a mutation, but rather a series of mutations.  Each tiny change in the DNA adds up to venom that appears to be overkill.  Literally.

I will bet that the extreme toxicity of the venom is beneficial - or it wouldn't be selected for in that population.

 

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So do you specifically ignore the questions for which you do not have a good answer for?

 Seriously, are you going to tell us why butchers have never noticed proto-organs and why doctor have never written a paper on the bits of tissue which have no function?



I did not ignore your question, rather I didnt understand the significance of your argument. I think you did not go through the actual argument here. (may be due to too many subtopics). Let me explain the original question once again.

Evolutionists says all organs originated and developed due to random mutations and subsequent effects of natural selection. Lets consider the development of 'eye'. According to evolutionists, the evolution of eye started with the appearance of a random patch of tissues on the skin that had photo-receptive ability. This tissue got connected to the image interpreting area of brain (maintaining scanning order of retina) due to another set of mutations. In the next set of mutations, that part of body developed some kind of a depression like a cavity, then mucus formed in it, lens formed, muscles to adjust the focal length.etc. all emerged due to random mutations. See this Dawkins movie on development of eye https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEKyqIJkuDQ

Mutations follow this (pointed out by Bob) "The majority of mutations in a multi-cellular organism's genome are neutral and do not harm the organism[1]. Occasional mutations are unfavorable, and rarely a mutation will be favorable. As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is."

If we study anatomy of any multicellular organism we can see that all its organs have some positive role and no organ is neutral (neither useful not harmful). But if the above theories were correct, then we should have seen more neutral organs than useful ones in any organism. Bob argued that too many neutral organs would cause the organism to lose agility and also waste vital resources and hence will not survive. But my question is, there can be many neutral organs that have no effect on natural selection. For example as eye developed with the appearance of a random patch of photo-receptors, why are there no random patchs of photo/heat/vibration- receptors on our limbs or back (that are not connected to brain). A random patch of photo-receptor (neutral) does not make the organism less successful in reproducing, nor will it consume vital resources. There can be so many neutral organs that are not too big and have no significant effect on natural selection. Why dont we see any thing like that?


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 Well, I remember that

 

Well, I remember that Deluded God posted a very long paper on the matter a couple of years ago. If memory serves, there are 64 possible codons. Thus, there are different codons that code for the same amino acid. If you look at it that way, then there must be true neutral mutations.

 

That again was not where I was going.

 

Rather, what I am trying to express is that mutations can be relatively minor and confer no survival advantage. Perhaps a change to a protein structure that does not affect the active site might be an example.

 

Yet given even a low level of reproductive isolation, a new allele can take hold in a sub group. The chiclid fish in lake Tanganyika would be an example. From one bay to the next, there is little variation but from a longer distance, the variation can be great. Fish from opposite ends of the lake are generally infertile with each other. However, even though a specific mutation may not affect reproductive success, they do add up and tend to become significant.

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mutantshark wrote:BobSpence1

mutantshark wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

You are quoting from an Islamic account, which I have heard before, and it is a totally inaccurate description of how mountains fit into the structure of the crust. Mountains are just thicker parts of the crust, and the underlying shape is a gentle downward bulge to match the extra weight above. Nothing remotely like 'pegs' - and the guy on another forum pushing something like this argument showed some drawings, or linked to them, which showed  the idea they had in mind. Needless to say the drawings bore no resemblance to what we know by various geological techiques.

Matching the exact shape of peg is not the intend here but the utility of one. When it says surface of earth is like a bed, it actually means a layer that floats on some thing, and its effectively true. check this - http://www.platetectonics.com/book/page_4.asp. Not that it should look like a bed - usually flat and rectangular in shape.

The usage 'pegs' really implies the effect of pegs (attaching a less stable object to a firmer object to restrict the movement of the former). In this case the tectonic plates float on the free flowing upper mantle, mountains have deeper roots that go into the lower mantle(that's harder) and acts like pegs restricting the movement of crust. As you said, it doesn't look like a peg but acts like one. In many cases, when mountains form due to the collision of plates, one side of the plate goes into the lower mantle forcing a sharper wedge like part into the lower mantle again acting like a peg.

You are 100% wrong.

The continental plates are carried on the slowly moving mantle until they typically collide with another continental plate floating on another mantle current. They will be drawn together at a region where two mantle currents converge and sink back deeper into the Earth. They are effectively convection currents, giant circulating loops of semi-molten rock, driven by the heat coming from deeper down.

At such direct collisions, there is typically folding up of the continental crust into mountain ranges. The most spectacular example currently is the collision of India into Southern Asia, which has, and still us forcing up the Himalayas and other connected ranges.

This collision and folding process creates earthquakes. The other case is where two plates are being carried in opposite directions past each other, which causes slip faults, as in California. There is some collision as well, which is what creates the many mountain chains along that coast, in contrast to the East coast of the US, where mountains as high and rugged as the Rockies and the High Sierras are notably absent. Note that earthquakes are also far less frequent and also smaller in magnitude there.

Anything 'pinning' the continental plates to the mantle on which they are floating wil, if anything, INCREASE the likelihood of earthquakes, because otherwise the plates could possible let the mantle slide underneath them rather than forcing the collision.

You could not be any more mistaken in your ideas there.

To repeat, that idea was just the uninformed imagination of people who no way to study the internal structure of the Earth. Proof they were not getting divine inspiration, or that God lies to us, tells us fairy stories, or doesn't exist.

Thank you for further proving to me that 'God' is a really screwed-up idea.

Quote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

Also, mountainous areas can often be the source of earthquakes, as a fews ago in China. This is because they frequently arise at the boundaries where two techtonic plates meet, and the resultant stress as the crust is pushed and folded into mountains often results in earthquakes.

This is true but imagine if mountains weren't there. There would have been much heavier earthquakes, more often.
 

No. See above.

Quote:

There is leas disease in countries that have benefited from the application of modern science modern science in medicine and the design of water purification and distribution systems, as well as sewage removal and treatment. That is man's work, not God's, so he cannot take the credit. He could have more clearly explained the germ theory of disease, vaccination, how to make and use antibiotics, if he were serious. Or just not filled the world with so many harmful organisms.

There are fewer deaths through man's violent actions, per capita, now that God belief has declined overall, then back when the Abrahamic religions had more control.

But, in total, there are more deaths from natural disasters, which are clearly God's responsibility if he existed, now than there used to be. What positives would you point to that you would clearly attribute to 'God'?

God is not a logical concept. A 'loving' one is even less logically justifiable. You cannot prove God through logic, especially if he is hidden. You need objective evidence that a God exists, which is impossible, since a 'God ' could manipulate the 'evidence', and even our interpretation of it, in any way he wanted to suit his unknowable ends.

The fact that to many people nowadays, the world is MORE understandable without the assumption that there is a God, is all we need to dismiss it.

Quote:

God does not call this world the best place to be, He calls it a world for testing whos good and whos not. Having its share of happiness and worries. You will justify a loving God if you look at the brighter side of life. My friend recently visited Guinea, according to him the country is so poor that most of the population is deprived of even electricity and other basic stuff, but he found the people happier and more genuine than the people in developed countries. So, is it that the people are making world a bad place or God? Dont think about magical curing, publicity stunts and human Gods as part of religion, they are not, and if any religion claims that they are, then its a false religion.

As long as people can 'get by', happiness is not related so much to general prosperity and access to modern conveniences, but to social interactions and connection with friends and family.

The problem with the US in particular is the consumer society, the inequality, the pursuit and deification of the pursuit of wealth, etc.

Less religious and better social organization and with lower wealth-disparity, such countries as in Northern Europe are also generally more happy than the US also.

Anyway, that in no way justifies killing people in those less prosperous but 'happy' countries in vast numbers by natural disasters.

That in no way that can be seen as a 'test'. It certainly is not a test for those killed. And to test the survivors by killing their friends and family is an abomination.

Making someone feel happy because they managed to escape death from diseases is a cruel deception. The one's who suffered the most actually mostly died, so they are not around to be 'unhappy'.

If this is the best you can do to support the totally unjustified claim that God is 'good', you might as well admit you cannot support it.

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mutantshark wrote:If we

mutantshark wrote:

If we study anatomy of any multicellular organism we can see that all its organs have some positive role and no organ is neutral (neither useful not harmful). But if the above theories were correct, then we should have seen more neutral organs than useful ones in any organism. Bob argued that too many neutral organs would cause the organism to lose agility and also waste vital resources and hence will not survive. But my question is, there can be many neutral organs that have no effect on natural selection. For example as eye developed with the appearance of a random patch of photo-receptors, why are there no random patchs of photo/heat/vibration- receptors on our limbs or back (that are not connected to brain). A random patch of photo-receptor (neutral) does not make the organism less successful in reproducing, nor will it consume vital resources. There can be so many neutral organs that are not too big and have no significant effect on natural selection. Why dont we see any thing like that?

They eye did not start as a patch of photo-receptors. It probably started as a one or two heat-sensitive nerve ends in a useful position on the head. That is all that would be required.

A full independent organ, not an accidental copy of an existing one, or part of one, would be extremely unlikely to arise from a single mutationnidi ie in one generation. 

Even if it did, unless it had some significant benefit to the individual in which this particular mutation occurred, it would only appear, on average, in half the offspring of that individual who survived to reproductive age. And then it would appear in a quarter of their offspring who survived to maturity. And so on.

The only way it could spread to the species would for it to have a significant survival and reproductive benefit, ie NOT NEUTRAL!!!

A mutation occurs in a single individual. It cannot spread to the whole species unless it enhances reproductive success significantly.

mutantshark, please switch on your other brain cell before replying.

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BobSpence1 wrote:They eye

BobSpence1 wrote:

They eye did not start as a patch of photo-receptors. It probably started as a one or two heat-sensitive nerve ends in a useful position on the head. That is all that would be required.


This is not my argument, its from the Dawkin's movie and other evolutionist websites.

BobSpence1 wrote:

A full independent organ, not an accidental copy of an existing one, or part of one, would be extremely unlikely to arise from a single mutationnidi ie in one generation.
Even if it did, unless it had some significant benefit to the individual in which this particular mutation occurred, it would only appear, on average, in half the offspring of that individual who survived to reproductive age. And then it would appear in a quarter of their offspring who survived to maturity. And so on.
The only way it could spread to the species would for it to have a significant survival and reproductive benefit, ie NOT NEUTRAL!!!

"As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is."

 

According to the above statement, only unfavorable ones are eliminated. We can also think of some of the large neutral organs causing some kind of disability getting eliminated, but there is no reason why a completely harmless (in size, resource usage etc) neutral organ would get eliminated.
As you said, traits developed through mutation often disappear gradually as they combine with more and more ones with no mutation. But this cannot be factored only for neutral mutations. Same can occur with favorable mutations also. Secondly not all favorable mutations vastly enhance reproductive success except for a slight enhancement in the chance of survival.
I did not assume mutation caused development of a full organ in one generation, rather im talking about development of organs through multiple mutations happening in many generations.

BobSpence1 wrote:

A mutation occurs in a single individual. It cannot spread to the whole species unless it enhances reproductive success significantly.


True, but then think about this - due to some mutation, a predator is able to achieve 5% more kill rate and if there is already a good supply of prey in that habitat, this mutation will not have much effect and will not get propagated.

BobSpence1 wrote:

mutantshark, please switch on your other brain cell before replying.


Smiling Bob, there are too many gaps in the theory of evolution of organs. If I have to believe it, then the only way is to do so with out questioning!

In the initial stage, I used to believe in theory of evolution as I used to beleive in similar scientific theories (we typically beleive in many scientific theories with out really studying them, may be because of the impression that its 'proven' and may be because you dont have any interest in them). At the second stage I started reading about it and assembling those pieces of information to see if it really works. The initial impression was good, but when I started going into the details like - begining of sexual reproduction, development of egg laying creatures, the evolution of mammals, development of breast feeding, why is lactation connected to hormones in the last stage of pregnancy, development of brain ( is a major major gap) and so on, I found that the theory of evolution doesnt really explain any thing. Why dont you think about these and see for yourself?


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mutantshark wrote:"As a

mutantshark wrote:

"As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is."

 

According to the above statement, only unfavorable ones are eliminated. We can also think of some of the large neutral organs causing some kind of disability getting eliminated, but there is no reason why a completely harmless (in size, resource usage etc) neutral organ would get eliminated.
As you said, traits developed through mutation often disappear gradually as they combine with more and more ones with no mutation. But this cannot be factored only for neutral mutations. Same can occur with favorable mutations also. Secondly not all favorable mutations vastly enhance reproductive success except for a slight enhancement in the chance of survival.
I did not assume mutation caused development of a full organ in one generation, rather im talking about development of organs through multiple mutations happening in many generations.

 

I only respond to part of your posts as they are usually so large, and I have little time.

Briefly, no organ is neutral.  N.O.N.E.

Reason - energy requirements.  All - ALL - organisms must live by the laws of thermodynamics.  They must - absolutely must - take in enough energy to run all of their organs with enough left over for reproduction.  Extra useless organs cost the organism energy.  Energy they could be spending on having more offspring.  And thereby increasing the chances of their genes making it to future generations.

That is all evolution is about.  More babies.  Useless organs reduce the chance of increasing your number of offspring, therefore, there is no such thing as a useless/neutral organ.  All such organs will cause a reduction of offspring.  Therefore, all such organs are negative mutations, not neutral.

 

 

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Again with the neutral

Again with the neutral organs. Why don't you try paying attention to what comes up and think about matters as you would direct the rest of us to do?


You have yet to answer my very basic questions. Why have butchers never noticed those bits? Why has no doctor ever written a paper on the bits that do nothing at all?


Seriously, the lamprey is among the most primitive forms of life currently existing and it has the same general pattern of organs as we do. Because the pattern was worked out billions of years ago and has not changed since. You need to address the fact that neutral organs simply do not exist.

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Once again mutant, tell me

Once again mutant, tell me how an individual neutral mutation can spread to a whole species. 

You said at the beginning that if evolutionary theory were true, creatures should be riddled with neutral mutations.

It is true that a lot of the differences between equivalent genes in different individuals have no specific advantage, so could be legitimately labelled 'neutral'.

There may well be a lot of neutral variations, but they are not copies of a specific neutral mutation. They reflect the truth you try to build your misconceived argument on, that most mutations are 'neutral'.

So they reflect the underlying 'background' mutation rate, which will just lead to continuing randomising of the DNA sequence. If the randomising gets too serious, it will mostly lead to dysfunction, and be selected out.

To produce a new but neutral organ would require many generations, which would require something very different from this continuing random reshuffling, which is what leads to the many individual neutral variations you are referring to.

 

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Quote:This is true but

Quote:
This is true but imagine if mountains weren't there. There would have been much heavier earthquakes, more often.

Rofl. Looks like chemistry and biology aren't the only things mutantshark is ignorant of. This expands the demonstrated ignorance of science to ALL fields.
The two sentences have 0 basis in science or reality. If there were no mountains, then that'd be because there was no plate tectonics to form them. The Earth would be more like Mars if such were true.
And earthquakes would be so rare as to be unheard of to any organism that could exist there (we wouldn't be amongst them).

Only home or religious education could get things so horribly wrong.

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Vastet wrote:Quote:This is

Vastet wrote:
Quote:
This is true but imagine if mountains weren't there. There would have been much heavier earthquakes, more often.
Rofl. Looks like chemistry and biology aren't the only things mutantshark is ignorant of. This expands the demonstrated ignorance of science to ALL fields. The two sentences have 0 basis in science or reality. If there were no mountains, then that'd be because there was no plate tectonics to form them. The Earth would be more like Mars if such were true. And earthquakes would be so rare as to be unheard of to any organism that could exist there (we wouldn't be amongst them). Only home or religious education could get things so horribly wrong.

The most appropriate word he uses in that quote is 'imagine'. 'Cause it only works in his (uninformed) imagination....

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mutantshark wrote:BobSpence1

mutantshark wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

They eye did not start as a patch of photo-receptors. It probably started as a one or two heat-sensitive nerve ends in a useful position on the head. That is all that would be required.


This is not my argument, its from the Dawkin's movie and other evolutionist websites.

I've seen the video that you're talking about. I don't recall Dawkins claiming that this is how they believe the eye 'did' form naturally, but rather one way an eye 'could have' formed naturally.

 

mutantshark wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

A full independent organ, not an accidental copy of an existing one, or part of one, would be extremely unlikely to arise from a single mutationnidi ie in one generation.
Even if it did, unless it had some significant benefit to the individual in which this particular mutation occurred, it would only appear, on average, in half the offspring of that individual who survived to reproductive age. And then it would appear in a quarter of their offspring who survived to maturity. And so on.
The only way it could spread to the species would for it to have a significant survival and reproductive benefit, ie NOT NEUTRAL!!!

"As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is."

Wrong.

You're (as well as the vast majority of creationists) missing most of the salient point of 'natural selection'.

Slipping on a banana peel and breaking your neck eliminates you from the gene pool. So does getting hit by lightning. The rate at which humans die is due to circumstance. The rate at which traits are passed from 1 generation to another are due to circumstance.

As such, there is no such thing as a 'typical' stream of events from the first organisms to present day, so to conjecture about what will 'typically' occur is about as intelligent as talking about what the typical newspaper should say.

mutantshark wrote:

According to the above statement, only unfavorable ones are eliminated.

That's not what happens in 'natural selection'.

 

 

mutantshark wrote:

We can also think of some of the large neutral organs causing some kind of disability getting eliminated, but there is no reason why a completely harmless (in size, resource usage etc) neutral organ would get eliminated.

Patently false.

You're building on a foundation of false premises.

 


mutantshark wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

A mutation occurs in a single individual. It cannot spread to the whole species unless it enhances reproductive success significantly.


True, but then think about this - due to some mutation, a predator is able to achieve 5% more kill rate and if there is already a good supply of prey in that habitat, this mutation will not have much effect and will not get propagated.

Patently false. It absolutely can get propagated.

mutantshark wrote:
...there are too many gaps in the theory of evolution of organs.

This has zero to do with whether it's true or not, which is why it's a fallacy to conclude that something is not true because you don't know if it's true.

That's simply shifting the burden away from yourself and onto 'evolution' or scientists to provide the evidence for evolution. It's funny the double standard of how theists require 'evidence' when it suits them, but special plead when it undermines their hope that there is a supernatural sky daddy that'll take them away to a permanent vacation in the sky once they die.

The 'gaps' here are in your basic understanding of 'natural selection'. It's not 'intelligent selection'.

Get out of 'supernatural' mode in your thinking.

It's incredible and painfully obvious how obtuse you make yourselves in order to avoid admitting to yourselves that the evidence for evolution is not only completely compatible with the theory, but keeps adding evidence and bolstering the probablity the further we investigate.

Have you ever seen a brick among the rocks and pebbles along a shoreline that has been completely transformed from being rectangular to being almost egg shaped due to being tumbled by waves against the rocks and pebbles? If you want to make yourself as stupid as Ray Ray Comfort and Kirk 'Crocoduck' Cameron then you would demand that there would need to be 'transitional' bricks going from rectangular to egg shaped in order to logically conclude that the egg shaped brick along the shoreline evolved that way 'naturally'.

If you want to argue against evolution, write to Francis Collins and get him back on the 'Intelligent Design Track', because he's no longer on it after contemplating the 'evidence'.

 

 

 

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 I would like to update the

 I would like to update the first post with even more specific examples of evolution.

Please continue to post them.  Mods feel free to move any offtopic conversation anywhere else.  This thread is only to post links or specific proofs of evolution.

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 Mutantshark,It's funny

 Mutantshark,

It's funny that you talk about gaps in the theory of evolution but you can only find them in your strawman version. Are there any in the real one?

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Neutral mutations - again

If, across all individuals in a group, an average of more than two neutral mutations occur, then the number of such mutations may indeed grow.

 

But these will not be specifically related, so will not produce any species-wide characteristics that could be part of evolution.

 

It is still true that it would require that in at least one individual, the net effect of all the mutations it has inherited have a significant positive effect on survival to reproduce, for that set of mutations to have a chance of spreading, and so become a part of evolution.

 

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jcgadfly

jcgadfly wrote:

 Mutantshark,

It's funny that you talk about gaps in the theory of evolution but you can only find them in your strawman version. Are there any in the real one?

Theory of evolution is total nonsense. I dont understand how people believe it so blindly!

Why dont you study the issue of absence of neutral organs and explain it based on established scientific facts?


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mutantshark wrote:jcgadfly

mutantshark wrote:

jcgadfly wrote:

 Mutantshark,

It's funny that you talk about gaps in the theory of evolution but you can only find them in your strawman version. Are there any in the real one?

Theory of evolution is total nonsense. I dont understand how people believe it so blindly!

Why dont you study the issue of absence of neutral organs and explain it based on established scientific facts?

If this was a problem in evolutionary biology I would study it. Unfortunately, it is only a problem with your strawman version of it and you haven't written your text yet.

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Answers in Gene Simmons

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Again with the neutral organs. Why don't you try paying attention to what comes up and think about matters as you would direct the rest of us to do?


You have yet to answer my very basic questions. Why have butchers never noticed those bits? Why has no doctor ever written a paper on the bits that do nothing at all?


Again, you havent read my posts properly. I said "there are no neutral organs" and my argument is that, for Theory of evolution to be true there should have been too many neutral organs in our body.

Answers in Gene Simmons wrote:

Seriously, the lamprey is among the most primitive forms of life currently existing and it has the same general pattern of organs as we do. Because the pattern was worked out billions of years ago and has not changed since. You need to address the fact that neutral organs simply do not exist.

"the pattern was worked out billions of years ago and hasnt changed since"  - Why wouldnt it change? Has evolution stopped after that?


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mutantshark wrote:"the

mutantshark wrote:

"the pattern was worked out billions of years ago and hasnt changed since"  - Why wouldnt it change? Has evolution stopped after that?

 

It hasn't changed because it works.  If it (any pattern or adaptation) didn't work, it would change or die out.

Haven't you read my earlier posts?  The theory of evolution:

A change in the frequency of an allele (gene) in a population of organisms over time.

Just what is so problematic about this?

You might try reading Mistakes were made but not by be.  A fascinating book written by a couple of psychologists about how we all self justify.  You might be able to figure out why you are having difficulties with comprehending peer reviewed and tested science.

Neutral organs and energy:

All organisms must adhere to the laws of thermodynamics.  Neutral organs cost the organism energy.  Energy that could be used to reproduce instead.  Therefore, there are no neutral organs because there is no spare energy for them.  You did say you were an engineer and had studied physics.  Why do you seem to believe the various laws of energy consumption and conservation don't apply to biological systems?

And before we get onto to TOE violates the 2nd Law, recall that the sun and the molten core of the earth add energy to our ecological systems.  And therefore, the ecological systems are not closed.  But that does not mean that somehow we are all perpetual motion machines that have vast quantities of energy to waste on useless organs.

 

PS - I too, have an engineering degree.  My elective science was Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.  Doesn't make me an expert, but it means I have had some formal training.  And a big chunk of ecology is figuring out the tropic (energy) levels in any subsystem.  I have continued to read in evolution and ecology because I enjoy the subject.

 

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redneF wrote:I've seen the

redneF wrote:

I've seen the video that you're talking about. I don't recall Dawkins claiming that this is how they believe the eye 'did' form naturally, but rather one way an eye 'could have' formed naturally.

That means evolutionists have no idea how an eye really evolved but feels some thing 'could have' happened and due to that an eye evolved? Isnt this blind and baseless belief?

Quote:

"As a result of natural selection, unfavorable mutations will typically be eliminated from a population while favorable and neutral changes accumulate. The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is."

redneF wrote:

Wrong.

You're (as well as the vast majority of creationists) missing most of the salient point of 'natural selection'.

"The rate of elimination or accumulation depends on how unfavorable or favorable the mutation is." The elimination process described here is natural selection and they claim it eliminates only the unfavorable ones.

redneF wrote:

mutantshark wrote:

According to the above statement, only unfavorable ones are eliminated.

That's not what happens in 'natural selection'.

So, tell me how a patch of photo- receptors on a leg can cause natural selection to eliminate that organism?

redneF wrote:

This has zero to do with whether it's true or not, which is why it's a fallacy to conclude that something is not true because you don't know if it's true.If you want to argue against evolution, write to Francis Collins and get him back on the 'Intelligent Design Track', because he's no longer on it after contemplating the 'evidence'.

"something is not true because you don't know if it's true" I call Theory of evolution a fallacy because its illogical and not because I dont know if its true.