Because I don’t know how far back something goes means I can’t know what that something is? Get rational.
So you have no excuse for continually getting it wrong.
The means of change is better understood, and the math has shown that in fact is does “compute” . . . for the last forty years.
Yes, there is, and it has been explained to you repeatedly. You just reject it.
Wow, what a claim. One genetic copying mistake, one chemical letter change can make relatively large changes in an entire body part. Wow. What do you mean by “relatively large?” What evidence do you have for that?
Yet we know that a single mutation can result in immense change.
In botany class we looked at some simple mutations. I recall one where a rough and roughly round stem changed to a three-sided smooth stem – one mutation that resulted in a systemic change in the plant. I recall another where a species with a single stem/stalk instead had multiple stems with branches – from just one mutation. Then there was one that had basal leaves only, but with just one simple mutation there were leaves that ran a quarter of the way up the stem. All three of these were massive changes in the morphology resulting in one single mutation.
Then there are ones I’ve seen in my own flower bed: My favorite is the one that turned a plant with a round stalk with blossoms up one side into one with a four-sided stalk with flowers up each side, but I also saw one that had leaves/fronds fanning out in one direction change to having leaves/fronds fanning out in all directions.
In terms of animals, these are on par with a doubling of the number of bones in a limb, the appearance of a new muscle type, or a two-chambered heart becoming four-chambered – they are large morphological changes resulting from single mutations.
When a small step can result in large changes in morphology, yes you can. The idea of a chasm triggered a memory from botany, when we were briefly looking at trees: there was a tree on campus that was six meters tall where its ancestors had been only two meters tall – a tripling of height that again resulted from one single mutation.
Also consider crickets: If a population lived alongside your chasm, only a few mutations would be needed to allow them to jump it. No single small change would get them across, but an accumulation of small changes could.
Yes, it can – and it can introduce entirely new parts. I’m thinking of a plant that launches its seeds by a spring mechanism; it’s ancestors depended on just dropping their seeds, but a single “chemical letter change” altered a protein in a way that made it function like a V-spring. That weakened the structure at the base of the flower, but resulted in the plant’s seeds being scattered farther, which improved the spread of its offspring.
I provided other examples just above.
Mutations in two genes were responsible for the evolution of a new bone and more limb-like structure in the front fin of zebrafish.
No, you do not know.
It may be necessary, but you do not know it. in fact, I have yet to see any sort of rationale that suggests that big changes can happen.
wishful thinking.
But that is the whole point. ToE does not claim large steps (and neither did your analogy)
There is no logical way nature can just “invent” a four chambered heart, or a fully functional limb/ Bat echo location? Just an accidental mutation?
(Oh dear, we are back at incredulity. Never mind)
And you can show that all land limbed creatures descended from a fish that live in deep water.
That should be interesting reading.
(Not to mention being a few billion years too late)
Richard
Yes, we do, because it has been observed. One of our lab sessions in biology followed the process that figured out the mutation for one of those plant changes.
There’s no need for a rationale for something that has been observed.
I didn’t use an analogy, I gave examples of drastic morphological changes resulting from single mutations. The morphological changes is the level you’re having trouble with, but there is no trouble when single mutations can change the entire form of an organism.
No, we’re back at you refusing to look at how things work. A one-chambered heart is a simple change that could result from just a few mutations; a two-chambered heart could result from a single mutation, and a four-chambered heart from another single mutation: the two- and four-chamber changes are the sort of thing that can happen from just copying a DNA section, something I’d have to refer to others to know how common such duplication is.
If you refuse to do the math, you have no business pronouncing on periods of time – especially when the math suggests that things aren’t evolving as rapidly as they could be (now there’s an opening for a divine hand!).
Since no one is claiming such a thing, no. Obviously, insects didn’t descend from fish.
If we are talking about vertebrate tetrapods, the intermediate fossils appear in the Devonian which is before we see more developed land adapted tetrapods.
True. The ‘size’ of a phenotypic change is not proportional to the ‘magnitude’ of changes in sequences. To gain an extra finger the genome doesn’t acquire a whole new set of genes coding for bones, skin, tendons, nerves and blood vessels & etc. of the new digit. It can acquire a mutation that alters where a finger developmental pathway can be ‘implemented’ during development. There’s been a lot of work in these questions that come under the area currently called ‘evo-devo’.
This is a brief paper that can help introduce the concept. While it is focused on the education of evo-devo concepts, it covers many of the core concepts and has references to relatively modern sources in the field. It’s a fascinating subject.
Every intermediate creates two new ‘unexplained transitions’.
I think the important content in terms of this forum is in Table 1.
So you haven’t done the calculation.
You don’t even seem to know what you are calculating, how to calculate it, or what the inputs would be. It’s just your gut feeling of what the result would be.
Which leads to this: Mathematical claims without calculations can be dismissed without calculations.
Claim dismissed.
Why would anyone assume that cells in different organisms are produced one at a time? Are the bacteria forming a queue with each bacterium being prevented from dividing until after the previous one divides?
I said I would endeavour to make meaningful points, so here are two calculations.
First, the number of organisms you have said have ever existed (“Thee ae literally millions if not billions of creatures who have lived and died without leaving some sign of their existence”) divided by your estimate of how long life has existed (“3.'5 billion years”):
nb orgs / 3.5by = n/3.5 ~ 1 organism per year
One organism per year doesn’t seem unreasonable even with your ridiculous assumption that life reproduces serially rather than in parallel.
Though that’s using your vast underestimate of the number of organisms that has lived, so it’s GIGO.
Here are some sensible numbers:
Total number of living cells on earth: ~10^30.
Minimum time for an E. coli bacterium to mature and divide: 20 minutes.
So given optimal conditions, one bacterium could produce as many cells as there are currently on earth in (1/3)*log2(10^30) = 33.22 hours, or less than 2 days.
Obviously there will never be optimal conditions, but equally obviously 3.5by is a lot longer than 2 days.
So producing the number of organisms we have today is not a problem.
3.5 billion is, coincidentally, roughly the size of the human (haploid) genome, so producing the human genome from a genome consisting of a single nucleotide would require on average one mutation per year, even if all mutations are single bit insertions or duplications rather than multi-bit or even whole genome ones. Also coincidentally, one mutation per year is in the same ballpark as both the human and the E. coli mutation rates. So generating a suitably-sized genome isn’t a problem either.[1]
Unless @RichardG produces an actual calculation that shows what the problem is, rather than doing the forum equivalent of waving his arms about and sputtering incoherently, nothing needs answering.
Based on the post I’m replying to, a response that includes an implicit assumption that there is only one organism lineage is not unexpected. ↩︎
Like the ones I read all the time (and occasionally write) for why a species should be moved to a different genus than it was placed in before?
Or are you meaning logical complexity? In which case, given that I have taken a course in formal logic and set theory and, for a test question in it, written a proof by contradiction (given some basic mathematical operations) that the set of all prime numbers is infinite (took up most of the blank page), I think that I can handle those as well. I could probably actually find it, since I think that I saved that test.
The problem with the arguments being rebutted is that they either have no supporting evidence or calculations or contain logical fallacies or both, not that they’re too complex.
One example is that changes to the ANTP gene can cause creatures to have extra legs, or extra antennae, or legs where their antennae would normally be.
Forgivve me, but I was not addressing you personally, or even critcising your responses.
Now heres the thing. There is too much demand and concern for specifics. Everyone is obsessed with the finer details and catching out any “mistakes”. There is no interest in why or what i am getting at, because I must be going off on one of my trios of fantasy! IOW There is no respect or real attention. The answers are perfuntary oor derisery or Teaching me something!
Everyone is so full of their own imporstnace and knowledge that they just dismiss others as ignorant, but, because they do not listen of understand that just enforces that belief!
I come at thigns from a different perspective and that perspective is dismissed as “wrong”.
And any attempt at criticism is considered an insult (But insuting me is fair game!)
I have never met such a grou of stuck uo and aloof people in all my life.
Richard
Productive discussion, particularly involving text correspondence, is fostered by understanding and communication of the overall topic and scope, including one’s working conceptions at the start, and also by willingness to clarify details one introduces.
Forgive me again, but, conceptualisation seems to be a four letter word or perhaps not in the dictionary. Instead it is specific examples and specific answers. Generalisation would also seem to be against the rules.
For example:
I have been trying to define the scope of evolutionary change. That is both general and conceptual. All I get is "small steps"I then claim that you can’t do everything in small steps and get
Give me an example!
Why? Is that concept so alien or impossible to understand?
but, if i use an analogy such as
No matter how small steps you approach a chasm you will eventually have to confront it
I get
Give me an example!
Which of the billion or so stages of change from single cell to human do you want me to cite?
Is it really such a difficult concept?
Instead I get “taught” how a fin could become a leg> Brilliant
There is an example of a lungfish.
There is a fish whoe fins have similar structure to a limb
There are mud skippers>
But where are all these components in one creature?
Complexity as in combining more than one feature together to make the whole.
I get individual examples but never the whole thing in one go. It is just asumed that because you can make X, Y or Z that it wil make a viable word (creature)
Sorry that was probalby an attempt at levity or irony
Be it fethers, sternum, honeycomb bones, metabolism for birds, or al the componennts that make up an amphibian. Never are they addressed in one go. And it doesn’t seem to matter.
Richard
I remember an article in Discover magazine showing the results of such manipulation with frogs resulting in extra hind legs, extra hind and front legs, and one with legs growing out of its head – grotesque yet fascinating in the implications.
It’s the equivalent of those single mutations in plants that doubled or quadrupled the number of leaves.
You talk about science yet refuse to use scientific reasoning; you make mathematical claims without doing the math – of course your statements will be "dismissed as ‘wrong’.
And you have given no philosophical or other rational reasons to think that non-scientific arguments can support your scientific statements.
The primary statement is sheer projection, and what you’re projecting is seen in the parenthetical addition: you’re taking analysis and conclusions as insults. My first college biology professor saw us doing that in classroom discussions and had one thing to say to us: “Grow up”.
Being scientifically rigorous in scientific matters is the opposite of being “stuck up”, it is being humble enough to submit to a set of strictures.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.
