leroy
Well-Known Member
I don’t remember the context of the conversation, can you remind me what claim I made that requires justification?
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The strange case of John Sanford, creationist
- Thread starter tas8831
- Start date
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Sure - you had claimed that no beneficial mutations had been fixed in the last 30 years (in humans, I think it was). I asked how you could demonstrate this. You wrote "Direct observation."
I asked what you meant, and to be specific.
Observe WHAT? And what sort of 'direct observation' would negate the fixation of a beneficial mutation?
That is, what would you look for, and how?
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Dude?
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Re: Leroy's claims:
That is an interesting yet 100% unjustified series of assertions leading to a unsupported conclusion.
You could have avoided this by addressing the questions/statements I made to you a year ago and reproduced above. I have emphasized things for clarity when needed.
As an aside - when you wrote:
If you are referring to phenotypic differences, then you will need to make a list of them, and explain how you decided these were relevant. Then you will to show how many beneficial mutations were required to produce those differences from an ancestral species AND, most importantly, HOW you know this.
Mere assertions will not do. Put up or shut up. And if you shut up, please do not ever make these arguments again, for it will demonstrate certain things about you that will not be very nice.
And if you put up, it will need to be supported with evidence, not just assertions of paraphrases of YECs that also had no evidence....
And he never did...
That is an interesting yet 100% unjustified series of assertions leading to a unsupported conclusion.
You could have avoided this by addressing the questions/statements I made to you a year ago and reproduced above. I have emphasized things for clarity when needed.
Here is why I am very confident that such a large number of beneficial mutations is NOT needed to produce the relatively minor phenotypic changes we see between extant chimps and humans as derived from a common ancestor:
1. These arguments seem to imply that any particular trait is brand new and thus must be accounted for by some large number of mutations. This exposes the multi-level ignorance of those making them.
Look at the generic mammal body type - what specific trait does a human have that, say, a lemur or a dog does not? All human traits are essentially variations on a theme, not brand new. Developmental tweaks are all that is actually needed, not some suite of new beneficial mutations to get, say, the human shoulder joint from an ancestral primate shoulder joint.
There is the case of familial achondroplasia (dwarfism) - a single point mutation causes alterations in limb proportion (to include all muscle/nerve/soft tissue/etc. changes), joints, facial features, etc. All from a single point mutation. I am not saying that this is beneficial or adaptive, I am merely explaining that some huge number of mutations is NOT needed to produce relatively large-scale phenotypic changes. THIS is what your Haldane's dilemma-spewing creationist sources can't or won't understand or mention - usually because THEY don't know this, or because they don't want their target audience to know about it.
2. These arguments imply that some huge number of beneficial mutations MUST HAVE BEEN required for this transition to take place. Given that we know that single point mutations can affect multiple body systems and overall morphology, other than a desire for it to be so, what do these Haldane's dilemma types present that actually supports their position?
I've read ReMine's book - he offers nothing in that regard. I've read more recent treatments of it - more of the same.
I mentioned that a creationist once claimed that just to get the changes in the pelvis for bipedal locomotion a million mutations would have been required. Do you think he provided a million 'changes' that had to have been made? Nope. He could not provide A SINGLE example, but as is is the way of the creationist, he merely insisted that he was correct.
My argument against such claims are 1. that there is no argument (see the Ewen's quote); 2. that the arguments are based on ignorance of developmental biology; 3. that they are premised on the argument from awe (big numbers).
Let's see you EVIDENCE, not your opinions or assertions, that, even if we use YOUR numbers, 1,000 beneficial mutations over 5 million years is just not enough to produce these un-named differences.1. These arguments seem to imply that any particular trait is brand new and thus must be accounted for by some large number of mutations. This exposes the multi-level ignorance of those making them.
Look at the generic mammal body type - what specific trait does a human have that, say, a lemur or a dog does not? All human traits are essentially variations on a theme, not brand new. Developmental tweaks are all that is actually needed, not some suite of new beneficial mutations to get, say, the human shoulder joint from an ancestral primate shoulder joint.
There is the case of familial achondroplasia (dwarfism) - a single point mutation causes alterations in limb proportion (to include all muscle/nerve/soft tissue/etc. changes), joints, facial features, etc. All from a single point mutation. I am not saying that this is beneficial or adaptive, I am merely explaining that some huge number of mutations is NOT needed to produce relatively large-scale phenotypic changes. THIS is what your Haldane's dilemma-spewing creationist sources can't or won't understand or mention - usually because THEY don't know this, or because they don't want their target audience to know about it.
2. These arguments imply that some huge number of beneficial mutations MUST HAVE BEEN required for this transition to take place. Given that we know that single point mutations can affect multiple body systems and overall morphology, other than a desire for it to be so, what do these Haldane's dilemma types present that actually supports their position?
I've read ReMine's book - he offers nothing in that regard. I've read more recent treatments of it - more of the same.
I mentioned that a creationist once claimed that just to get the changes in the pelvis for bipedal locomotion a million mutations would have been required. Do you think he provided a million 'changes' that had to have been made? Nope. He could not provide A SINGLE example, but as is is the way of the creationist, he merely insisted that he was correct.
My argument against such claims are 1. that there is no argument (see the Ewen's quote); 2. that the arguments are based on ignorance of developmental biology; 3. that they are premised on the argument from awe (big numbers).
As an aside - when you wrote:
And we know roughly* how different are humans from chimps, and from that we can infer the differences between humans and the common ancestor.
what did you mean? Are you referring to nucleotide differences? If yes, then you still cannot seem to understand the difference between ALL nucleotide differences and beneficial ones, and this renders all of your claims on this issue moot.
If you are referring to phenotypic differences, then you will need to make a list of them, and explain how you decided these were relevant. Then you will to show how many beneficial mutations were required to produce those differences from an ancestral species AND, most importantly, HOW you know this.
Mere assertions will not do. Put up or shut up. And if you shut up, please do not ever make these arguments again, for it will demonstrate certain things about you that will not be very nice.
And if you put up, it will need to be supported with evidence, not just assertions of paraphrases of YECs that also had no evidence....
And he never did...
tas8831
Well-Known Member
And he never did...
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Rather a confident assertion coming from someone that cannot provide even a single, reality-based example for how many mutations would be 'needed' according to creation claims.
leroy
Well-Known Member
I did supported my claim but you ignore it.
1 the difference between humans and chimps is suppose to be 2% this means that for every 100 “leters” there would be 2 letters that are different
2 if the genome is 3,000,000,000 base pairs long
3 2% of 3,000,000,000 is 60,000,000
4 I order to arrive at the 2% difference humans and chimps need 30,000,000 Mutations each
What’s so controversial about this?
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
You messed up. You are not using consistent figures. The 2% difference is in our non-coding DNA. Non-coding DNA is a much smaller part of the genome.
But just for fun let's apply some numbers to your example. There are on the order of 100 mutations per birth. And let's say there were only one million individuals in each population as an average. It was probably much higher, but I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt here.. And each generation is going to average about 20 years. Lastly the split occurred about 7 million years ago. According to latest figures. We take 100*1,000,000*7,000,000/20 and that gives us a total of 35 trillion mutations over that time period. Only 1 mutation out of 580 million has to become part of the genome. That does not seem to be unreasonable to me.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
@leroy, the actual number of mutations is probably much higher. The non-coding DNA mutates much faster than the coding DNA does. That is because mutations in non-coding DNA are almost always benign. You should have concentrated on the coding DNA, but even then the numbers of needed mutations are there.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Sure - you had claimed that no beneficial mutations had been fixed in the last 30 years (in humans, I think it was). I asked how you could demonstrate this. You wrote "Direct observation."
I asked what you meant, and to be specific.
Observe WHAT? And what sort of 'direct observation' would negate the fixation of a beneficial mutation?
That is, what would you look for, and how?
tas8831
Well-Known Member
The fact that you are incapable of understanding the actual question?
Any dolt can multiply numbers, but I am not asking you to multiply numbers. Is it really this hard to support your own claims?
Let me provide some context (these quotes are all from this thread, so I will not link to each one) - I have bolded or colored certain words or phrases for emphasis:
Leroy:"5 million years is not enough time"
tas: "for what???"
Leroy: "not
enough time For 30M beneficial mutations (or something close to 30M) To have occurred, become selected and fixed in the population.
.....
tas:
"As a ReMine devotee, you must know that his calculations based on Haldane's model set the limit at 1667 FBEs in 10 million years. Not 30 million in 5 million years. The original argument that YOU made was that even ReMine's farcical 500,000 such mutations were 'not enough'.
Your claims then morphed to this absurd 30 MILLION FBEs, and not enough time.
But the thing that none of you bothered to even try to address is WHY you think it is not enough or not enough time.
THAT all hinges entirely on how many such mutations would have been required AND what traits the ancestor had in the first place. And you have certainly not even tried to address that.
If it really only took 125 beneficial mutations to allow for obligate bipedalism, and another 500 for other gross morphological alterations (which are generally minor given the common traits among primates), that leaves several hundred to those many creationists focus on, our cognitive abilities.
Also - your pal ReMine allowed for several thousand fixed phenotype-altering neutral mutations as well. Didn't you know that?"
....
Leroy: "Just think about it in the last 30 years (since the genome project started) not a single mutation has been observed to become fixed in the human population, and you are supposed to average 6.6 per year"
Tas: "Really?
I was unaware that someone has been keeping track.
But you must know of such a person or more likely, large team of people, busily sampling all 140 million people born a year for the last 30 years to see if they possess a new fixed mutation. Maybe they work for the ICR or DI or something. Regardless, I'm betting you will readily provide the documentation supporting your claims."
.....
Tas: "STILL waiting for evidence re:
1. All mutations needing to be beneficial
2. Transposons magically spreading through a population faster than any other mutational event - in 1 generation!
3. the number of beneficial mutations required to get a human trait from a human ancestor's trait
4. the number of traits that must be accounted for via fixed beneficial mutations
5. what those traits are
6. how were any of the above determined
7. no new mutations in the human population in 30 years"
You have not even TRIED to address any of those questions that are directly related to YOUR claims.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Ok to my knowledge I am not aware of any example of a mutation that become fixed in the human population in the last 30 years.
If my knowledge is wrong please feel free to correct me.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Not knowing if something happened or not is not evidence either way. Tell us, especially when one understands that the science of genetics when it comes to observations of single genes is still in its infancy how are we to know if a mutation has become fixed or not?
It is always easy to make a pointless claim. To deny evolution you would need to show that it is impossible for new genes to become enfixed in the genome. On the other hand there are some genes that can be tracked down to their source, effectively refuting a claim that new genes becoming fixed is impossible. In other words, we still have massive evidence for evolution and you have none against it.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Again
If the difference between chimps and humans is 2% of “letters” then you would need 30M mutations on each to account for such differences.
Whats so hard to understand about this?
Ok assume any ratio of beneficial/non beneficial mutations that you want…………can you explain the 60M differences in letter between chimps and humans?
If transposons (or similar mechanisms) played a mayor role you can have more genetic changes in less time (this would help to explain the 60M differences between chimps and humans)
Irrelevant, we need 60M mutations to explain the single nucleotide differences between chimps and humans,
Non e of the above seems relevant.
Why don’t you stop dancing around, accept your burden proof and explain how could a difference of 60M “letters” can be explained using evolutionary theory.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
And once again you did not understand the corrections.
Jose Fly
Fisker of men
It's not "controversial", it's ignorance. If humans have three copies of a 25,000 bp gene and chimps only have one, how many mutations account for that specific difference? Hint: it's not 50,000.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Which is assume because nobody in this tread is denying evolution. All I am claiming Is that the mechanism of random variation + natural selection is insufficient...........and as far as I can remember you don’t disagree with this claim
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
When you make a silly claim people need not openly state the obvious.
By the way, I put some numbers to your supposed problem. Did you not see them? It does not appear that mutations becoming fixed in the genome would be a problem.
At this point you need to find evidence why natural selection and variation is not enough. Hand waving does not count as evidence.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Or how a bit of simple math makes creationist nonsense look like the nonsense that it is.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
FYI: for a mutation to achieve fixation, it takes plenty of generations to spread from the individual where the mutation occured, to +80% of ALL individuals of a population.
So why on earth would you think this could happen in 30 years?
I had my first kid when I was 36
