Challenge: Can mutations build new structures?

we’re all still waiting for that definition of evolution.

The criteria of your challenge seems to be rather fluid. So the new structure has to look completely different from anything ever observed before or it doesn’t count? No matter if the structure has a different point of origin? It almost seems as though you have your mind made up already despite multiple answers to your challenge…

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you can’t present anything anyway. I gave you an example earlier about the water fleas generating a new defensive spine…but it was via epigenetics. That would qualify if it was via mutation.

I followed the link, but there is nothing on that page about Daphnia, water fleas, or spines. Maybe you could track down the original article and post it.

here’s a picture of the original article…not sure why the link now skips the part about the water fleas.

https://www.coursehero.com/file/p1360c/approved-by-the-Food-and-Drug-Administration-for-use-against-myelodysplastic/

My turn to ask for an original article to support this. There is not sufficient information there to discuss.

perhaps that is what you looking for

There are some cool pictures! But nothing on the epigenetic origin of the defenses.

@supersport,

Typical “big talk” coming from someone who doesn’t even know the fundamentals.

The study of evolution is very much a process of elimination. Some day we will be able to read DNA like an auto mechanic manual… but we are not yet there.

There’s no point in discussing any structural change that occurred before the dinosaurs became extinct… because there is no sure fire way to use the process of elimination with someone who explains everything by Creationism.

However, once we are above the K-T boundary, it is easy to make deductions that can only be resolved using evolutionary theory.

Animals with horns and antlers appear in the stratihraphy “out of nowhere”. The flood theory does not explain this… but evolutionary does.

Asking for the exact genes responsible is foolish if we do not yet have that level of knowledge.

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@supersport

“Evolution is any change in a population’s gene pool…which includes changes in allele ratios.”

Devolution is not supported by this brief definition.

@supersport,

This is a kind of logic that seeks to exploit our current phase of ignorance … rather than to analyze what we do know.

Let’s talk about these water fleas that can produce defensive structures when epigenetic factors become present.

Okay…
A. let’s suppose I found a variety of water fleas that does not produce such structures…even when surrounded by predators.

B. And using genetic tests I can point to the exact genetic difference which makes it possible for one kind of water flea to respond epigenetically… while another kind is incapable.

How would this discovery ever change any of your YEC positions?!

[quote=“supersport, post:100, topic:36626”]
Dawkins says the eye formed over millions of years in thousands of steps.[/quote]
Yes, but more importantly, the evidence says that.

False. You’re still stuck on the false ladder metaphor.

False again:

[quote]therefore all eye parts are new.
[/quote]False. For example, many of the crystallins, the clear proteins in the lens, are anything but new. They are repurposed enzymes. Examples:
http://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/0092-8674(89)90956-2.pdf

You really pack in the false claims densely, Tom! What are you afraid of?

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At this point, it is just semantics. The reason we have different alleles is due to mutations. I really don’t see why it matters if these beneficial mutations occurred prior to them being needed or after.[quote=“benkirk, post:83, topic:36626”]
Can you claim with a straight face that we US scientists have done a good job of educating the public about evolution?
[/quote]

There are tons of great books and textbooks out there that do a wonderful job of explaining evolution. You can lead a horse to water . . .[quote=“benkirk, post:83, topic:36626”]
But what you seem to be missing is that underlying that misconception is a bigger misconception that populations are static, then we have a mutation, and only then is there evolution.
[/quote]

That seems to be the misconception you are helping to fuel by ruling out mutations that created new alleles in the past during times of stasis.[quote=“benkirk, post:83, topic:36626”]
And what I’m pointing out is that the vast majority of raw material for selection is, as Darwin observed, already present, no mutations required.
[/quote]

The problem is that mutations are what produced that variation to begin with.[quote=“benkirk, post:83, topic:36626”]
Do you think that Tom agrees with your view?
[/quote]

Tom doesn’t need to agree with me. The truth doesn’t need agreement.

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That known naturalistic explanation is evolution.

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Primates, including humans, have all of the same structures, so why do you reject common ancestry between species of primates?[quote=“supersport, post:100, topic:36626”]
Yet you have no mutations to make any of these eye parts come into existence.
[/quote]

The mutations are among the differences we see between the genomes of species, those without those structures and those with those structures.

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@T_aquaticus

I’ve never understood Ben’s fixation on the terminology regarding “mutations”.

His viewpoint is very context based. Your point is certainly clear enough. If the allele wasn’t present with the first DNA… then at some point it took a “mutation” to create that allele… in fact, if we go back far enough, we are talking about mutations just to have any number of the alleles … if the life form doesn’t have hair, we need to at least have a gene appear for hair (and by “appear”, naturally, I mean some modification of an existing gene that didn’t produce hair).

Every single time Ben and I have attempted to discuss these issues, it turned into a flipping conflagration!. So I don’t discuss it with him anymore. Perhaps you can get further along with him than I was ever able to.

Here’s another (more recent) reference for 99%:

The citation link is here: An Elaboration of AAAS Scientists’ Views | Pew Research Center

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Thanks.
[filler to make software happy]

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Also thanks for the reference. It is quite interesting to look at in areas other than evolution also. Looks like scientists and the general public are pretty much agreed on the space station at least.

I do think that the exchange between @benkirk2 and @T_aquaticus was getting semantic (even tedious?) but Ben makes an important point about standing variation. Due IMO to a normal cognitive bias that plagues us mere mortals, we tend to think of evolution needing a particular mutation “just in time,” so when we look backward at an evolutionary trajectory, we (again IMO) naturally tend to assume that the mutations happened at or near the moment they were “needed.” This reasoning explains, for example, about 90% of Michael Behe’s errors.

My view is that we exacerbate the effects of this natural bias by using the term ‘mutation’ to describe when discussing evolutionary change. The word itself means only ‘change’ but it has become strongly associated with ‘deviation from the norm’ and (largely through efforts to mislead) with ‘damage’ or disease. I believe this makes us naturally think that when a particular genetic variant became fixed in a lineage, that what happened was a lucky “beneficial mutation” occurred just when “an organism needed it.” This is a constellation of errors.

Darwin, at least partly because he knew nothing of “mutation” and barely anything solid about genetics, built his case on variation. He rightly ignored the reasons for variation (which we now call “mutation”) because those reasons didn’t matter for his case. I suspect that people who follow Darwin’s lead will find it easier to understand evolution. This, IMO, is also relevant to the excellent thread about barriers to understanding evolution.

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