how do you know these traits didn’t show up in the first generation? even so, there is no reason plasticity couldn’t kick into gear after the first generation. But if you look it up, their leg length IS chalked up to plasticity. Google. it.
CA111: Scientists reject evolution? and Wikipedia cite B.A. Robinson (1995) “Public beliefs about evolution and creation.”
The Robinson citation link from Wikipedia to this website is broken, but I think he was citing this Newsweek article by Martz and McDaniel: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publia.htm
A little clicking around turns up another source that says the 1987 Newsweek article wasn’t describing a survey, it was a count that he has some quibbles with, and that it would be better and most accurate to say "In 2009, a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that “[n]early all scientists (97%) say humans and other living things have evolved over time.” : How Many Creationists in Science? | National Center for Science Education
To my knowledge, the best YEC model ever was John Baumgardner who made a computer model to prove how it was possible to get the continents moving thousands of miles in a year. A nice summary is written up here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH430.html
A summary of the summary:
- This best YEC model would release at least 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Joules from the plate tectonics moving, enough to boil off all of the oceans. To make matters even worse, his model has the mantle extremely hot before the flood so it is viscous enough to travel so fast so quickly. That heat needs to magically disappear too.
- Baumgardner’s own modeling shows that during the Flood, currents would be faster over continents than over ocean basins (Baumgardner and Barnette 1994), so sediments should, on the whole, be removed from continents and deposited in ocean basins. Yet sediments on the ocean basin average 0.6 km thick, while on continents (including continental shelves), they average 2.6 km thick (Poldervaart 1955)
- Yeah I won’t go on. The continents moved quite slowly and we know exactly how fast they’ve moved for millions of years
Also to stay on point, this was linked in another thread recently but many examples of speciation occurring many times even before our eyes:
This is kind of important in discussing these lizards. Can we really pretend that generation after generation the lizards kept up this phenotypic plasticity trick without any genetic changes?
Also, let’s look at some other similar examples also from another thread:
Some examples given (see specific post for links):
- Guppies in Trinidad: rapid evolution and experiments involving “transplantation” of populations between habitats
- Anole lizards in the Caribbean: one famous lab at Harvard is led by author of a very recent book on evolution and convergence
- Stickleback fish in lakes and rivers all over the continent
- Corn and teosinte1 (my own blog, from 10 years ago, great story)
- Darwin’s finches (Peter and Rosemary Grant, two titans of evolutionary biology; the book about them won the Pulitzer almost 25 years ago)
- Cichlid fishes in African rift lakes
- Nearly instantaneous speciation in plants
- Various populations on the “sky islands” of Southeastern Arizona
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FYI - Just to clarify for any future references to continental moves in the Australia discussion:
My Australia exemplar works fine even if we are mad enough to accept Australia moving out to sea very quickly. A ridiculous continental move can still be a “given”, and the YEC scenario behind is still left without any sensible application.
It is not the speed of Australia’s movement that leads to a YEC FAIl, it is the idea that marsupials could monopolize the continent in a post Flood scenario, when placental equivalents of marsupial animals (which came to dominate the rest of the world) are certainly able to arrive at the shore of Australia just as quickly as Marsupials.
Sorry, I thought that was known. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this story.
Sure there is. If the phenotype is triggered by the new environment, then the first generation to be born on the new island should exhibit that phenotype. If it isn’t triggered by the environment, what causes it to kick in later?
Chalked up by whom? Not by the authors of either of the original papers on the subject.
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Appealing to majority opinion does not make something true, nor does appeal to authority, looking what we did in Germany with that one in the last century.
Whilst your link to Dennis was interesting indeed, the one Tom wanted to know about is
http://biologos.org/blogs/dennis-venema-letters-to-the-duchess/biological-information-and-intelligent-design-evolving-new-information, quite a bit down the line from the beginning of a lengthy explanation and not helpfull to the subject.
What might be more useful to Tom is to understand how we depend on the principle of mutation adding information to our own genome on a daily basis.
But we don’t depend on it, Marvin.
you do. If you could not generate new information on a daily basis you would be dead.
The question is if actually new information exists, as from a causality point of view if logic holds all possible information is held in the cause as nothing apart from what logic allows can can be generated from that cause. Now information that is new to us has by definition already existed at the origin of time. It just needs time to a time dependent mind to perceive the information.
The example to show how random mutation can generate useful de novo information by building a novel protein that you did not have when you started life is an obvious example and the protein can be perfected in weeks fore a sequence of a couple of hundred amino acids. One would expect that the time constant for more complex changes are much longer, particularly if you look at the generation times involved.
Mutations overall have a vastly more beneficial effect on our existence than a deleterious effect as the latter just gets deleted.
actually there is genomic plasticity as well. The genome is highly dynamic and changeable on the fly and in response to environmental threats and cues. They’ve even figured out now that specific mutations can be triggered by epigenetic alterations. Somehow the organism is an interactive entity that can alter its genes (base code) and gene expression in order to protect itself. The theory of evolution never said or admitted such a thing.
What has been called “evolution” over the decades is nothing more than individual organisms changing their molecules independently in order to fit better within their niches. Some of these molecular alterations can be passed down to offspring. Basically Lamarck was correct and Darwin was wrong.
When it comes to responding to contentions that the earth is flat, the lunar landing was faked, vaccines cause autism, essential oils cure cancer, aliens landed at Roswell, and evolution is a vast atheist conspiracy, I am perfectly comfortable appealing to authority every time. I have no need or desire to meticulously research every wrong thing a minority believes, just in case they are right. Others can do as they see fit.
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Welcome, @supersport!
This is a fascinating question, not least because it puts the whole question in terms that your typical biologist would never dream of. So, do you mind if we clarify a bit of groundwork first before diving right in to trying to answer your question? I’d hate to discover later that I was trying to provide you with the wrong kind of example!
Mainly, what counts as a new structure? What new structures do humans have but chimps do not, if any? What novel parts separate us from the rest of the primates? Or from all other mammals?
Surely there must be new structures involved in all the different kinds of mammals we have. I’m just hoping you can point to a few so we have something to work off of. Of course if there aren’t any, then we could go back in the lineage further and talk about more fundamental structures, ribs and eyes and so on. But we shouldn’t have to go that far, unless you want to maintain that all mammals “micro-evolved” from a single mammal kind.
So: what sorts of “new” body parts fit your definition?
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Is sweetness a new structure? The various red grapefruits came about rather suddenly either as a result of nature or radiation.
I’ll throw out another example (although I know it’s been a subject of controversy in the last decade or so) - the “Panda’s thumb”. Giant Pandas and Red Pandas are genetically more distant than one would expect based on their similar unusual lifestyles for members of class Ursidae. But both exhibit the “extra thumb” (a modified wrist bone) that is extremely useful for the gripping and grasping required by their diets.
A quick layman’s summary can be found here:
https://www.nature.com/news/how-the-panda-s-thumb-evolved-twice-1.21300
And here is a link to a recent PNAS article:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5293045/
Pick two animals that differ by a “new anatomical structure”. Compare their genomes. Among the differences between their genomes are the mutations responsible for the new anatomical structure. It’s that simple.
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But mutation is not the only way we generate new information, Marvin! We have recombination and sexual reproduction to shuffle the genetic deck.
We’d probably do quite well without mutation in our individual lives. We’d be missing the somatic hypermutation that helps to fine-tune the antibody and T cell-receptor responses, but we’d still have recombination to generate the new information (the mechanisms mediating both are intertwined). The vast majority of cancer would disappear.
Again, you, like Tom, are completely failing to acknowledge the primary substrate of Darwinian evolution: ALREADY EXISTING genetic variation. The new mutations are just a drop in a bathtub full of variation. Inbreeding drains the tub, and increasing the mutation rate won’t help a population that lacks existing genetic variation.
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Utterly false. It’s telling that you don’t quote any naturalists claiming that.
I did. Your claim is false. You’re 0-for-2.[quote=“supersport, post:50, topic:36626”]
The genome is highly dynamic and changeable on the fly and in response to environmental threats and cues.[/quote]
Evidence, not ex cathedra pronouncements, please. And evidence doesn’t mean what someone says about the evidence.
Evidence, please, and the identities of “they,” too. Why are all of your claims so vague, Tom?
I’m a geneticist, and I have no idea what you mean by “base code.”
We know about gene expression.
And you haven’t presented any evidence for directed mutation. I’m pretty sure that you never will.
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And I would say that the changes were most likely minor alleles already present in the population that changed their frequencies dramatically, not new mutations.
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Ultimately, those minor alleles came about through mutations.
I didn’t ask for a gene that controls anything. Your theory says mutations built machinery and anatomy. A gene has some 1000 base pairs. You are not even addressing the challenge by putting forth a mutation. Instead you are assuming that a gene somehow evolved piecemeal and suggesting that since it controls something then that means the same as adding the hardware to begin with. It doesn’t. I want a mutation. Peer reviewed paper outlining a new structure generated by a change in the genetic code. Just as the theory says.
well done, you found the thing I was eluding to. Antibodies are indeed vital denovo information for our individual lives and if you dismiss your immune system you won’t have a happy time here, so the risk of cancer is well worth it.