[quote=“Eddie, post:11, topic:4327”]
I cannot remember what thread it was posted on. I have read thousands of columns here, over several years. I am no better at using the search engines than you are. You can find it as quickly as I can, possibly even more quickly. I am unwilling to invest the time.[/quote]
Hello Eddie,
I did and cannot find it.
Yet despite your relentless bragging about how much you’ve read, you clearly understand very little of evolutionary biology.
Perhaps you are mistaken. As for you not stating the truth, were you stating the truth in the other thread in which you wrote that you were breaking off discussion with me?
Why would you make such an accusation and refuse to support it? Doesn’t that make you a man lacking intellectual integrity by the standard by which you want to judge others?
I haven’t found any evidence to support your claim. Unlike you, I’ve looked.
[quote]Do you uphold that thesis? Then provide the evidence. Who first articulated it (Joao) doesn’t matter at all, according to you. Tell me about the artiodactyl and the whale. I’m all ears.
[/quote]How about answering my questions first? Why are you so resistant to separating evolutionary mechanisms to understand them better?
As a mental experiment, it is easy to imagine a gene pool of some living thing (let’s suppose CLAMS!), where there are 10 different kinds of shell color … and there has been for 1 million years … and for all those millions of years, the dominant clam color has swung back and forth, in response to sea bottom changes… without a single new color appearing in the gene pool.
As a DIFFERENT mental experiement, perhaps we could call it the OPPOSITE experiment, imagine a lagoon where an isolated species of crocodile has lived for 1 million years. It looks just like it did 1 million years ago. But for whatever reason, the genetic system in this species throws off a huge number of variations every generation… but the variations deal with biochemistry and physiology - - none of which produces any observable surviving changes in the appearance of the crocodiles.
For starters, if you had 10% of the understanding of evolutionary theory you pretend you have, you’d clearly know that you would have to stipulate the size of the initial population and the polymorphism of the population.
Secondly, real scientists are doing real, empirical work on the subject, unlike your buddies at UD and DI, who just talk.
A good intro is provided right here:
and here:
As for specifics, we can discuss:
Physicochemical Evolution and Molecular Adaptation of the Cetacean Osmoregulation-related Gene UT-A2 and Implications for Functional Studies
Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 8795 (2015)
doi:10.1038/srep08795
Comparative genomics reveals conservation of filaggrin and loss of caspase-14 in dolphins
Experimental Dermatology, 2015, 24, 365–369
DOI: 10.1111/exd.12681
Convergent evolution of marine mammals is associated with distinct substitutions in common genes
Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 16550 (2015)
doi:10.1038/srep16550
And let’s not forget your rant:
How much of your insincere attempt to debate here is based on familiarity with the latest relevant evidence?
Surely I must be misunderstanding this discussion …
Did you just suggest that evolution from Artiodactyl to Whale could take place WITHOUT mutations? Is this part of that older “madness” about evolution just being a change in allele ratios?
Unless there is already a WHALE in that gene pool somewhere … we are NEVER going to get a whale without mutations …
If I’m misunderstanding the “Index of Facetiousness” or the “Barometric Hyperbole of Sarcasm” in this particular discussion, just let me know … and I’ll take a nap.
George
[Image below focuses on EAR STRUCTURES for various whale phenotypes… fairly interesting …]
Eddie, YOU are confused and you know it. That’s why your posts are about people, not ideas. That’s why you put words into the mouths of others instead of engaging in substantive discussion.
That’s why you don’t support your claims about what other people have written here.
He doesn’t claim that evolution would continue forever if new mutations stopped. And he certainly doesn’t claim that the transition from artiodactyl to whale would have taken place at nearly the nearly the same rate and with the same results had there been no new mutations after about 50 million years ago. (That’s about the time of Pakicetus attocki)
[quote=“Eddie, post:23, topic:4327”]
I’m not going to let Benkirk play teacher with his questions to the class. If he thinks I have made an erroneous statement, he can provide the statement and provide a correction. I’m not his student and won’t answer his quizzes.[/quote]
You won’t discuss anything of substance, Eddie! I think that we are all aware of that.
I don’t think that showing you dodge and bob and weave, when faced with a simple question that goes to the heart of the sophistry you promote here, is a waste of time. You are very, very predictable.
Are you really so deluded that you think that I think that you would ever intend to address such simple questions?
[quote]He could use that time to read Shapiro and Denton and Wagner and broaden his intellectual horizons. That is what I’m recommending that he do.
[/quote]I’ve read Shapiro and Denton. They are tedious.
Why don’t you explain the “logic” that you used to convert my questions about the relationship between mutation and natural selection into a straw man claim about whale evolution?
Why? I don’t see any logic or more importantly, understanding of evolution underlying that leap that the first part somehow necessitates the second. Kindly explain instead of baldly asserting.
[quote=“Eddie, post:28, topic:4327”]
To answer Benkirk’s insulting question, it’s of course obvious that if “evolution” is defined as “change in allele frequency in a population,” then “evolution” can occur even without any new mutations; e.g., “selection” can and sometimes does alter the allele frequency.[/quote]
Hallelujah!
And invoking your favorite word, would such evolution be completely Darwinian? How rapid (relatively) would it be in the generation following the abolition of mutation?
(Again, your scare quotes are unnecessary and look silly.)
Of course not, because one animal never changes into another. Evolution only occurs with populations.
Many people who deny evolution share a gross misunderstanding and describe evolution as happening to single animals so that they can simply view it as impossible. Many people who promote evolution denial describe evolution as occurring to single animals. From my perspective, they do so to promote misunderstanding and deceive the man on the street.
So, Eddie, are you a man on the street, a deceiver, or something in between?
Isn’t the mission of BioLogos to help correct such gross misrepresentations of biology?
[quote] I wanted Benkirk to commit himself on the point whether major transitions of that sort could occur without any new mutations
[/quote]“Major transitions of that sort” is far too vague to be useful, but I’m pretty sure you’re smart enough to know that.
I know! Let’s look at real, relevant evidence!
Let’s look at a real figure: Figure 1.
Simple question for you that illustrates the population-genetic incoherence of your ill-conceived gotcha: do the inactivation events (X in a circle) represent:
mutations, or
fixation of a previously-rare null allele in a population because the selective environment changed?
Kindly keep in mind that inactive or null alleles are virtually always recessive, and population genetics–that mathy stuff that your ID/DI colleagues love to ignore–tells us why deleterious alleles can’t be eliminated from a sufficiently large population even when they are (homozygous) lethal. I’m saying they are far less deleterious than lethal alleles.
Do you see now why I demanded that you stipulate the population size before I addressed YOUR question?
Evolution is a change in allele frequency in a population. I’ve heard that definition from scientists, e.g. Brian Hare at Duke. (And no, that is not all he knows about the subject!)
