John
Thank you for that answer, which is what I have been looking for. Leaving aside for the moment the issue of the nature of mutations, my next question is: am I correct in understanding this paragraph that the process of micro evolution proceeds through loss of genetic diversity and loss of biological features, but does not involve any gain of function or structure?
In general, yes. But even when there appears to be a beneficial effect in some cases, it is often directly correlated to the loss of a function, ie. disease resistance, or herbicide resistance, when a plant stops picking up a particular chemical which it previously absorbed.
John
This is extremely helpful. I think I am finally beginning to understand the logic and coherence behind these views. Correct me if Im wrong, but the idea that all mutations are harmful is also consistent with the fall. In other words, before the fall, at the time of creation, all creatures were perfectly made, including a very high degree of genetic diversity. After the fall, when death entered the world, diversity of the various kinds occurred through mutations, which involved loss of information. Sometimes those losses were not harmful, and natural selection allowed for the existence of various related species. Am I on the right track here?
Sy, in general, I think you’ve got an understanding of that aspect of the YEC perspective. Although, I rarely hear it correlated to “the fall”, but yes it would seem to be consistent. Even without the fall, there would be a potential for speciation or differentiation based purely on selection from a diversity of options, but possibly deleterious mutations are a result of the fall, and result in other types of differentiations. Part of the reasoning is that there is evidence for small changes, for deleterious mutations, for varietal differentiation, but not really for the types of changes in the magnitude required to change from bacteria to mammals… in other words, substantial large changes do not appear to have real evidence. Only conjecture, hypothesizing, lots of paper line drawings with missing links, etc.
Hi Sy_Garte,
You said, “Of course, I have made many flying dogs, also obedient cats, cute snakes and scary rabbits.”
Your response makes me remeber a story told about the expert in fruit flies, Hermann J. Muller. One day Muller came very furious to his laboratory because he had read a pamphlet in which its author mentioned that even though Muller had worker with 1,500 generations of mutant flies he had not been able to produce a bumblebee. Muller strongly complained that if he had wanted to produce a bumblebee he would have obtained it. I wonder why Muller never tried to get bumblebees from flies. That would have been such a proof of the macroevolution of species. Same case as what you expresses re laboratories everywhere demonstrating what cannot be done as easily as it seems.
Piopio
Transmutation is not evolution. Dennis Venema has posted several excellent series of posts here on the Biologos site, explaining what evolution is, and I highly recommend taking a look at these. Then we might be able to talk seriously.
Seriuosly. Seriously? Ok. What is it that you can really do in your lab. Or were you serious when you said that you can produce a flying dog. (I am sending a beneficial mutation to my “transmutation”, thus accepting your point).
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