Mutations generate variability, but almost all mutations are deleterious, not beneficial. At a generational change of 100 mutations with 99.9 % of them being deleterious, how long would it take for a species to become unfunctional?
There is an important difference between not beneficial and deleterious and you seem to be conflating these two things. You are correct that the vast majority of mutations are neutral or nearly neutral. You aren’t correct in conflating this number with mutations which are harmful.
Ace, You are right that I did somewhat conflate neutral and deleterious. Neutral however means that there is no effect or the effect is not detectable. Many “neutral” mutations will likely have a deleterious effect. However, given that beneficial mutations ought to be preferred, while deleterious mutations tend to be weeded out, we ought to see more beneficial mutations overall … yet, it seems we see more deleterious ones in spite of that. In addition, some apparently beneficial mutations are not an addition of a new sequence, but rather of an activation or deactivation. And often, if not usually, beneficial mutations have deleterious side effects. It would seem that the impact of deleterious mutations vastly outweighs the impact of beneficial mutations, within the timeframe of our experience.
There have been two large research projects on DNA. One has been done on mitochondrial DNA by Bryan Sykes of Cambridge University. Life on Earth started when the atmosphere still lacked oxygen. As result we are descending from anaerobe bacteria. When the atmosphere started to contain oxygen somehow a symbiosis started with mitochondrial DNA, that handles the oxygen for our cells. This DNA is passed by mothers to all their children, males and females alike.
An flamboyant Italian, whose name I can’t reproduce right now, did a similar research on the Y-chromosome, which is passed by fathers to their sons. Females have a XX-chromosome and males have a XY-chromosome.
The total result is that all males living now on Earth are descending from a single male, who lived 60 millennia ago, and all people living now on Earth are descending from a single woman who lived 150 millennia ago, and also from one of 33 different women, who lived some 25 millennia ago. These 33 women are also geographically identified. Six of these spots are in Europe and there is a strong equality with the spots I had selected in my research as possible spots where people could have survived the Flood.
For details read “The Seven Daughters of Eve” by Bryan Sykes.
The dates I estimated for that last four Floods are 15 ky BD, 60 ky BD, 150 ky BD and 240 ky BD.
The exact year of the last Flood can be determined from the Greenland Ice Cores: look for a sudden drop of the temperature of 10 to 20 degrees Celsius and a large quantity of volcanic dust in the year after this drop. The temperature should go back to the normal value in some 30 to 50 year.
I looked at it… read about half of it. It contains the same old cannards, that science fixes itself, this is how science is supposed to work, etc. When intermediates are drawn by media that look like transitionals, and then are later revised to look like rats or raccoons, it is easy to say “this is how science works”. When transitionals are later revised to say they have a common ancestor, and are not directly transitions, then it is easy to say “this is how science works”. But the false impressions remain, because they are not discouraged by the scientists, and because the scientists themselves are predisposed to the fancy pictures which later prove to be false. Yes, technically, they do not say that something exists which does not, but in the absence of evidence, they hypothesize mightily about the possibility to the extent that half the world believes their fancy false pictures, even when not drawn by the scientists, but inferred by the media, based on their impressions of the scientists tales.
If now these people such as the blogger marmot would vent the same fury against national geographic, Science magazine, or Nature, for their misportrayals … but they won’t, because they want to minimize these misperceptions and speculations. It appears that they rather like the misperceptions because of the publicity, and the sheer “awe” power that they want to attach to evolutionary speculations. By venting enough fury against the mild mannered creationists, they hope to divert attention from the speculative errors, like the pig’s tooth being speculated into a hominid, so that they can retain their superior attitude. For that reason, this blogger cannot simply point out his differences with Werner and Batten, but must needs do it in a visceral and emotional (unscientific) manner, because (I think) deep down, he could not conceive of a creationist having any kind of a valid argument whatsoever.
