You edited what I actually wrote so that you could create a strawman. And understandable, since you are wrong about almost everything you write about.
To which we saw this reply:
Yet, I have to agree with Swamidass on this because I remember returning to grad school in midlife where I had to grasp some of the great classics of computer automation theory and information theory, including Shannon’s 1948 famous paper about INFORMATION = ENTROPY. (I remember the ACM Society putting it into a special “anniversary edition” of classic papers which changed computer science forever.) I had to remember for the final exam the famous information equals entropy equation shown here:
http://image.wikifoundry.com/image/1/o5EIZSLdYnuJIz70XX4iKw100131
I’ve usually found that those who oppose evolution theory like to quote Shannon, so this situation is a turnabout for me (that is, to see someone try to use Shannon against evolutionary processes.)
Thus, William, I’m baffled by your position. It defies everything I learned about biology, entropy, and information theory. So, where did Shannon go wrong? What do you know about entropy that Shannon didn’t? Can you explain the error in his famous equation?
Yes they do—after billions of years. In the meantime, what prevents pockets of greater order and complexity from forming? Why wouldn’t solar energy provide billions of years of order in the earth’s biosphere? Help me to understand this.
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You do not seem to be aware that regulatory genes do the regulating. And regulatory genes, like all other genes, are subject to mutation repair mechanisms.
What publications make you think otherwise?
Actually, nylonase is the result of an insertion mutation. Per Dennis Venema:
nylonase arose as a mutation in another protein coding gene—an insertion of a single DNA letter. This single insertion of one letter created a “stop codon”—three DNA letters that tell the ribosome to stop adding amino acids to the protein chain of the translated protein—as well as simultaneously creating a new “start codon”—three DNA letters that tell the ribosome to start making a protein chain from that point in the mRNA code. The new start codon, however, was not aligned with the old gene’s codons—the new gene was shifted over by one DNA letter. Thus, the resulting protein was brand new, and completely unlike the previous one.
Actually, lactase persistence is present in about 30% of the human population due to 6 different mutations that have arisen in the past 30,000 years or so.
You don’t seem to understand the rudiments of population genetics. The mutations with negative effects are subject to negative selection in the population. The mutations with positive effects (of which there are fewer) are subject to positive selection.
Sure, just as dropping a pencil from your hand does not prove the theory of gravity. In the mathematical or formal logic sense, science cannot prove anything.
However, arranging populations into pylogenies yields predictions that are far more accurate than arranging them onto a (simpler) axis of similarity. When you compare scientific models, the one that yields more accurate predictions wins. So common ancestry is the best scientific explanation for the features we see in the biosphere.
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William, I’ve truly tried but I can’t make sense of this illustration. To me it suggests a total misunderstanding of how mutations contribute to evolutionary advantages and disadvantages. Among other problems, it fails to reflect how such mutations can benefit populations yet NOT benefit the individual.
As I understand it, you could probably stage an experiment where all of the males of a population went through a procedure that induces mutations. That experiment might even kill off many individuals immediately and produce “negative” mutations which cause fatal birth defects in the next generation or major losses in fertility. But the experiment also might produce a male in the next generation that has a decided advantage—and that advantage might caught him to have many more offspring. Thus, a hundred generations later, we might find that virtually the entire population carried an advantageous gene from that one experiment, even though all of the other males who experienced that mutation-inducing procedure had very negative results. And that is why your “logic” here makes no sense to me. It suggests that you don’t understand how natural selection can sometimes vastly “multiply” an advantageous gene even while basically ignoring and “discarding” a disadvantageous gene.
Again, unless you recognize that what is “good” for the population may not be good for the individual (as in sickle-cell genes), you are going to misuse illustrations like “genitals in the x-ray machine.”
I can think of several other flaws in your analogy, but I thought the one I described above might be the easiest to explain. (I’ve found that a typical one paragraph argument against evolution can often require a half dozen paragraphs to debunk it. Why? Because one usually has to provide a start-from-nothing tutorial on various aspects of evolution in order to help readers to spot the errors in evidence and logic in just one misinformed claim. I remember this well in Duane Gish’s infamous lecturers—from which we get the term “The Gish Gallup”. He use to overwhelm his opponents with a machine gun barrage of erroneous claims.)
I’ll look to those better qualified professionals–because I’m not one—to decide whether I’ve explained my thoughts properly.
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I’d like to see your citation for that because I’ve always heard that the nylonase in flavobacteria came from a frame-shift mutation.
Well, that’s fascinating, William DJ. Firstly, are you a scientist, and secondly, who asked you to volunteer for testicular radiation? As for the rest of your post, you don’t seem to present any evidence to support your opinions, apparently in the expectation that your authority alone will carry the argument. That’s no way to carry out a discussion on the internet. Your comments “You seem unable to learn…”, “You are wrong”, etc., mean nothing. If you have a contrary opinion to someone, you have to say what it is and then justify it, which I must say you haven’t yet. You seem to insist that beneficial alterations to DNA are only possible via gene shuffling, while any direct mutation, such as by cosmic radiation, must be deleterious, and is invariably “corrected”. I dispute this. Some mutations are not corrected, as you admit, and some lead to degenerative diseases. Others, in my opinion, lead to increased reproductive capacity in the organism, and are thus preferentially preserved. You do not explain why this is wrong, preferring merely to assert some kind of authority (a degree in Thermodynamics) as sufficient. I’m afraid it isn’t.
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Your assessment of his post is harsh but, admittedly, quite accurate. But I want to give William the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is collecting his citations and will be posting them soon. He is making a lot of very bold claims which totally defy well-established science, so I can only assume that he is carefully preparing a detailed defense. I for one am looking forward to it. This has been an interesting thread.
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I would say there are two things almost anyone could say about the statements that I am quoting here in this posting:
- I don’t think you have enough information to make such a determination.
and
- It doesn’t really matter what you are calling it. You are playing fast and loose with semantics.
You admit there is evolution… BioLogos supporters believe God has His role in this Evolution. Presumably you do too.
So I’m not sure the point you think is so valuable to make - - amounts to anything.
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Oh, dear; I hope I wasn’t too harsh. I was trying to be helpful. I have on a few occasions been able to listen to “experts” who have been brought in to support one case or another, and have always been impressed by their humility. They never say that that know something (or that their opponents don’t know something) without explaining how they know it, (or where their opponents have gone wrong). They achieve eminence not by their innate authority, but by the strength of their support. Either they have seen or done something similar many times themselves, and speak from personal experience, or they have such an extensive knowledge of the literature that they can vicariously bring in other experts to help. After listening to real experts, one’s immediate reaction is not, “Gosh, what an expert” but “How obvious! Surely anybody could have seen that”. Which, of course, they could have, but didn’t.
However, I’d like people discussing different DNA here to give some opinions on what is meant by “improved” or “deteriorated” DNA, or how we know whether a mutation, or a gene shuffle, has produced “better” or “worse” DNA. Words like “beneficial”, “advantageous”, “disfunctioning” and “negative” all seem to me to be value judgements which cannot apply to a strand of DNA. A gene which causes an adverse reproductive effect on the organism which possesses it, but then “suffers” a mutation which disables its replication, may result in the greater reproductive success of the organism. So a “negative” change turns out to be “beneficial” after all!
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Oh, I think you were very helpful! And a little bit of harshness was a good thing when it happened in my life. I used to be an adamant anti-evolution Young Earth Creationist. (This was over a half-century ago) If not for some well placed harshness, I might have continued to repeat the bad arguments I had learned from my spiritual heroes much longer than I did.
I suppose it differs with the individual but I really needed some firm rebukes in those days. It got my attention.
Perhaps I should have used the word “direct” instead of “harsh”. In any case, Hugh, I thought your comments were helpful. I know that I appreciate directness. Otherwise, I might continue to repeat my mistakes.
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What a very generous comment. Thank you very much.
No doubt about it … the people who talk about “devolution” being different from “evolution” are almost always non-scientists.
If a snake is a reptile… a reptile without 4 legs… is that devolution?
Is a Whale a water-living Hippopotamus that has De-Volved into a legless water creature?
It’s impossible to make judgments like this … but because evolution usually tracks from the simple to the more complex, amateurs think “increased complexity” is a requirement of evolution - - even if you could define what “complexity” means.
There are some very small creatures that seem to have more than 2 genders… they are not just males or females… there are also other undefined states of existence. I would suggest that this is pretty complex reproductive strategy.
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I’ve been living in one of those for a long time.
And then there’s also West Virginia.
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In response to my request for evidentiary support of the claim, “hundreds of thousands of mutations occur in every cell every day,”
That lecture has no evidence to support your claim, William, but I suspect that you know that.
It’s easy to measure mutations. How about some actual evidence?
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Don’t get sucked into a useless semantic gambit.
It doesn’t matter whether genetic molecules do or don’t suffer damage and are repaired. That is irrelevant to the important issues.
All evolutionary science is based on the idea that perfect replication of chromosomes would yield virtually no mutations.
Some populations have survived because they have cells with less perfect powers of genetic replication… otherwise, the population (never changing) might have been wiped out by environmental factors that their original genetics were not capable of handling.
@WilliamDJ is investing all this effort in discussing Distinctions that do not produce a Difference!
[quote=“gbrooks9, post:56, topic:35086”]
Some populations have survived because they have cells with less perfect powers of genetic replication… otherwise, the population (never changing) might have been wiped out by environmental factors that their original genetics were not capable of handling. [/quote]
Hello George,
I’m sorry, but you’re just as confused as William, but in a different, far more common way.
As I’ve explained to you before, evolutionary mechanisms operate far more on existing variation than they do on new variation. William promotes a false dichotomy, while you have yet to grasp the teeny-tiny ratio of new variation to existing variation.
If you disagree, perhaps you could name some of those alleged populations that you so vaguely cited?
Then I’ll cite those that are endangered because their genetic polymorphism is low. They can’t be rescued by new mutations.
[quote]@WilliamDJ is investing all this effort in discussing Distinctions that do not produce a Difference!
[/quote]No, he’s discussing distinctions that simply aren’t true.
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The problem here is that you like to pick too many fights in any given post. I was restricting my discussion PURELY to genetic mutations… (not evolution of a population by means of changes in allele ratios).
I’ve already heard your speel on allele ratios. And that’s why I very carefully avoided making any references to something that you might interpret as that. And yet … you still manage to do it.
I wrote 3 paragraphs:
[1] It doesn’t matter whether genetic molecules do or don’t suffer damage and are repaired. That is irrelevant to the important issues.
^ No mention of alleles here. And presumably you don’t find anything unacceptable in that sentence.
[2] All evolutionary science is based on the idea that perfect replication of chromosomes would yield virtually no mutations.
^ I suppose you could argue this point … but I’m not trying to say mutations are more important than changes in allele ratios… I’m merely pointing out that if all the first single celled animals never experienced genetic mutations… there would still only be single celled life. Would you agree with that? Or do you really think we could get a whale out of a single celled life form by juggling the existing alleles of a single celled animal a billion years ago?
And finally, [3]:
Some populations have survived because they have cells with less perfect powers of genetic replication… otherwise, the population (never changing) might have been wiped out by environmental factors that their original genetics were not capable of handling.
^ Ben, do I really need to name a specific example of a life form that whose genes were too stable to adapt to their changing environment, Won’t Terror Birds do? They became extinct, and most scientists think it was because of the merger of the North and South continents, which allowed brand new predators from the north to compete with the Terror Birds of South America - - competing for declining food stocks, or directly predating on their chicks. Terror Birds left no successor population (that we know of). So… not enough changes (in alleles OR in mutations) to save the future of the entire population. Isn’t that a pretty clear example?
Ben, all you really had to think about was my last sentence: “@WilliamDJ is investing all this effort in discussing Distinctions that do not produce a Difference!” And you agreed with that.
George B.
Not at all. You are claiming that mutations matter more than existing polymorphisms (which aren’t changes at all), so “alleles OR in mutations” doesn’t cut it.
If you have any point at all, why isn’t anyone mutagenizing cheetahs to save them, instead of outbreeding them as much as possible?
Terror Birds are one of the few species that successfully invaded North America from the South after the isthmus of Panama formed, connecting the continents. For a short time anyway. For the most part it was North American animals invading South America, causing the extinction of many wonderful animals. This is an oversimplification, of course. It’s called the Great American Interchange and its effect on evolution was profound.
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Ben, are you being reasonable?
There is a context that we need to pay attention to, yes? Even you have to agree that in the case of the original single celled animals, there is almost certainly not enough variety in their genetic baggage that would allow anyone to make a whale without some additional mutations, right?
And as for the Terror Bird, we have a completely different situation… so that it would be foolish for me to say how much more mutation, and how much more re-apportionment of alleles would have saved the creature. The point I’m making about the Terror Bird example is that it is self-evident that it wasn’t able to respond to the environment quickly enough (by either means) to keep it’s population from being wiped out.
And finally there is your last thought about “mutagenizing cheetahs”. Does anyone know how to do that, Ben? … without the risk of creating horribly deformed Cheetahs that would be protested by naked PETA activists? Obviously they Would do it if they could.
Bottom line: you accused me of saying something incorrect about alleles. I did not. I was intentionally ignoring alleles for the sake of these very simple examples. Just go back to what I posted. You will see that I made no such egregious errors about alleles.
Even you have to agree about the following sentence, Ben: If the original single celled animals had genetic replication so perfectly in hand that there was never any further mutations, how would there have been any advances from single-celled life to fish, reptiles and mammals?