Actually, it is you who keeps going in circles. I’m trying to help you stop that:
We have significant bodies of YEC’s who accept speciation (in fact, hyper-speciation) of the animals that were released from the Ark.
If you can’t even agree with them, you are the least of our discussion troubles. With those YEC groups, we can discuss how any kind of speciation may or may not lead to dramatic changes.
But if you reject even the possibility of speciation - - there’s really nothing for you and I to discuss.
When mutations are passed to offspring and confer a selective advantage to them, the genome of the population changes. This is an evolutionary mechanism.
Recombination is a form of mutation that results in DNA changes that can be passed to offspring and selected for by environmental factors. In other words, it is an evolutionary mechanism. Sure, call it a built-in-mechanism if you want–in which case you are saying that evolutionary mechanisms are built-in. And I would agree.
When are you going to start to respect the definitions of the discipline? Evolution is any change in the genetic profile of a population.
So when you say that “mutations happen all the time” so it doesn’t “prove evolution” - - you are telling the world you have no comprehension of what you are discussing.
Let me help you with this:
You can say “evolution of a population’s gene pool does not prove Speciation”. <<< There!
Now you have something to discuss and dispute.
Otherwise, you are saying things like:
“The Trinity stands for three. Since Jesus is only 2 syllables, it proves there is no trinity.”
Now doesn’t that sound rather preposterous? That’s what you sound like when you say “mutations happen all the time … so there’s no evolution.”
In this interesting discussion of 243 posts yet, I missed the scientific fact that every cell (also E-Coli) is protected against mutations by mutation repair systems. Many people think that DNA is a stable molecule that can keep the nucleotide code for the construction, maintenance and replication of an organism unchanged for a long time, just like a DVD or memory stick can for the digital code of a computer program. The opposite is the case. DNA is a very large molecule and therefore very unstable. Every day, in every cell (including the germ cells), thousands of damages occur in the DNA. Fortunately, these damages are continually repaired or eliminated by extensive mutation protection and –repair mechanisms, the discovery of which the 2015 Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded. The award letter from the Swedish Academy of Sciences: http://bit.ly/1LhCGGC gives an excellent overview of the basic scientific facts about the instability of the DNA and the extent and complexity of the mutation protection and repair.
Living nature (also E-Coli) continuously adapts to changing circumstances by the mechanism of recombination of alleles and selection, and gene regulation. Not by mutations (= changes of the DNA that are antagonized by the mutation repair systems in every cell). Mutations are the cause of cancer and hereditary diseases, which are a severe selective disadvantage. No one will put her/his genitals under an X-ray machine to receive a mild dose in order to bless her/his offspring with improved DNA. This empirical fact disproves the theory that the accumulation of irreparable, advantageous, hereditary mutations, can act as an ‘innovation motor’ to expand the DNA of organisms with new and improved functionalities. According to the playing rules of empirical science, this theory must be rejected.
How than did the DNA of bacteria and humans arise? Empirical scientists have no testable theory (notice: scientific theories must be falsifiable and therefore be testable). Their answer must be: " We don’t know, yet". Such an answer is completely normal and acceptable in every branch of science, and is the motor of scientific research.
Of course, any one may believe that a mechanism that produces severe selective disadvantage can function as an ‘innovation motor’ for the DNA. But such a belief is an irrational belief.
But of course. There is no such thing as mutations. DNA never changes. And if it does, it immediately kills the creature in which the mutation appears.
And because of the existence of a genetic repair system, there is no way that Horses, Elephants, Giraffes and Whales emerged from the sedimentary layers of rock long after the death of the dinosaurs.
God invented them and just made it look like they evolved… and he made it look like dinosaurs died out long before large mammals ever appeared. Why? Because God is God.
Yes, most evolution occurs as natural selection acts on existing alleles.
It is impossible to develop a single probability distribution function for mutations for all species and all circumstances. However, research has shown that a significant portion of mutations are neutral, and a small portion are beneficial. Within a population, natural selection acts as a filter to eliminate harmful mutations and favor beneficial ones. Natural selection, like mutations, acts stochastically.
This has been mentioned to you many times in multiple, very long threads.
Must’ve missed the references I cited previously about antibiotic resistance here. Check out the three links, numbered ‘1,2,3’, near the bottom of that post.
Living organisms will adapt to their environments via whatever mechanisms are available. With respect to genetics, point mutations are one of those mechanisms, as are deletions, inversions, duplications, transpositions, recombination and horizontal transfer. And to be clear, all those mechanisms cited produce mutations.
Congratulations! By the rules of your test, there’s no such thing as evolution.
There are circumstances under which I would classify cats and dogs the same. There are circumstances under which I would classify hummingbirds and elephants the same. There are circumstances under which I would classify every single living thing, from archaea and tardigrades to us, as the same. But that’s okay, because there’s no evolution! We can’t prove it in a lab by Nonlin’s rules, so we’ll just have to conclude that there’s no such thing and we’re all the same.
Pass me that banana, would you? I’m feeling a mite cannibalistically peckish!
Mutation repair systems are important, but are not 100% efficient – inevitably, DNA changes will take place. Please, please, please read @Argon’s post and references. Although I don’t expect them to change your mind, at least you will have a more informed picture of the role of mutations in evolution.
Indeed, some mutations produce disadvantages and if the disadvantage is strong enough, the change will be removed from the gene pool. However, due to the predominantly random nature of mutations, some will occasionally lead to advantage, rather than disadvantage. This is rational.
Your definition is too narrow. The immune response is an example of built in adaptability mechanism - if not the same, then very similar to the one in Lenski’s lab. The “particular task” is adaptability. Furthermore, you assume but will never know randomness (see blog), and you also assume without proof that a “new function” is a random event.
People have known for ever and used the changing nature of organisms over generations but have not extrapolated to “evolution” until Darwin. Why? Because no one has ever observed said “evolution”. Is Lenski’s E.coli evolution? No. Still E.coli. Is citrate metabolism “evolved”, “new function”? Let’s see: E.coli is already capable of utilizing several compounds as carbon sources with glucose preferred so citrate is perhaps not such a stretch. Can Lenski get E.coli to digest fat or protein? And what happens when the “citrate population” is mixed with the regular E.coli and fed glucose? Will the citrate metabolism conserve after a number of generations? Will it take over the regular E.coli?
The population changes all the time. With or without “evolution”. What is an “evolutionary mechanism” when no one has ever observed “evolution”? The “species” and “speciation” discussion is closed. Look back if you want - I am not repeating.
Clearly your definition of evolution differs from the scientific definition. You have been shown examples of new traits developing in populations due to mutations (evolution) and you have been shown examples of speciation (also evolution). What IS your definition of evolution, and what would you need to see as evidence?
And while I’m asking stuff, I’ll throw a few more in there… You’ve talked quite a bit about what you DON’T believe, what DO you believe about the origin of life as we now see it on the planet? YEC? OEC? ID? Other? Do you believe in God?
The last evidence entered in this discussion was my link to an article that cited several observations of actual speciation both in the wild and in the lab. My conclusion is that you implicitly concede this strong observational evidence of evolutionary speciation as discussed in that article, since you consider the issue not worthy of further argument.
I think he was talking about the thread being locked. That’s what happens when people repeat the same things over and over without actually interacting or moving forward.
Appreciate all that you do! I am a bit confused, though, as clearly the thread was open when he made his statement. As it was when I made my subsequent statement.
The human immune response is quite different from the evolution of aerobic metabolism of citrate in E. Coli. An immune response within a human individual to a particular pathogen occurs in a single generation (by definition) and is not transmitted to the next generation. By contrast, the series of mutations (neutral mutations, then an enabling mutation, then refining mutations) in Lenski’s E. Coli occurred over literally thousands of generations, and all of them were transmitted from one generation to the next.
You would agree that common ancestry is evolution
and that Lenski’s E coli demonstrate evolution.
If Lenski’s E coli can’t be used as evidence that supports the theory of common descent, to this layman, this is like saying evolution can’t be used as evidence to support the theory of evolution. Just a thought.
I get what you are saying, it’s just critical to understand that scientists are very confined in their explanation of experimental results. Great care is taken to avoid excessive extrapolation. Interpretation of evidence is very specific to exactly what a single experiment shows. It may be a small part of a bigger picture, but jumping from a very specific observed event (citrate utilization) to an over-arching theme (common descent) I would expect to be heavily criticized, and quite rightly.
