The strange case of John Sanford, creationist

[leroy]

So you agree all of these then you must understand how genetics explains how evolution occurs and completely supports the theory of evolution. Thus you must be a supporter of evolution and we can agree the evolution explains how life changed and diversified on earth resulting in what we see on our planet.

We both agree on that we humans evolved from ancient apes, that we share a common ancestor with chimps and that stuff like the human eye evolved from a simpler organ.

We both agree that we likely evolved through a variaty of mechanisms including none random mechanisms that played a major role.

It is @tas8831 who would disagree with us, and claim that "only random mutations are important" or that we evolve mainly by random mutations that where selected ether by NS or genetic drift.

Perhaps you have more luck than I and you can convince @tas8831 that his view of "just random mutations" is controvertial in the scientific community (to say the list) and that there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest an important role of non random mechanisms in our evolutionary history.

 

[shunyadragon]

So you agree all of these then you must understand how genetics explains how evolution occurs and completely supports the theory of evolution. Thus you must be a supporter of evolution and we can agree the evolution explains how life changed and diversified on earth resulting in what we see on our planet.

. . . and time is not issue for evolution to take place naturally.

 

[shunyadragon]

We both agree on that we humans evolved from ancient apes, that we share a common ancestor with chimps and that stuff like the human eye evolved from a simpler organ.

We both agree that we likely evolved through a variaty of mechanisms including none random mechanisms that played a major role.

It is @tas8831 who would disagree with us, and claim that "only random mutations are important" or that we evolve mainly by random mutations that where selected ether by NS or genetic drift.

Perhaps you have more luck than I and you can convince @tas8831 that his view of "just random mutations" is controvertial in the scientific community (to say the list) and that there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest an important role of non random mechanisms in our evolutionary history.

My view as a scientist it that "only random mutations are important" is not remotely the view of the sciences that support evolution such as genetics. The "random mutations" do not cause anything, and all the mutations do is develop the genetic diversity of populations. The only thing that is random is the timing of individual mutations, and the outcomes are limits by natural processes and laws of nature. The chain of cause and effect events such as genetic mutations results are not random . Naturally all the determining Laws of Nature, natural processes, and environmental selective pressures that are the cause of evolution are 'none random mechanisms.'

 

[Bear Wild]

We both agree on that we humans evolved from ancient apes, that we share a common ancestor with chimps and that stuff like the human eye evolved from a simpler organ.

We both agree that we likely evolved through a variaty of mechanisms including none random mechanisms that played a major role.

It is @tas8831 who would disagree with us, and claim that "only random mutations are important" or that we evolve mainly by random mutations that where selected ether by NS or genetic drift.

Perhaps you have more luck than I and you can convince @tas8831 that his view of "just random mutations" is controvertial in the scientific community (to say the list) and that there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest an important role of non random mechanisms in our evolutionary history.

@tas knows that random random are an important factor but not the only mechanism. His knowledge of genetics is greater than mine and would be aware of all of the different ways that genetics contributes to phenotypic expressions. The fact that you are finally accepting evolution theory is wonderful news. Once you know you understand how we and the rest of life are interconnected. Wish you well.

 

[tas8831]

I guess you already know "Leroy" will not be able to come up with any of the evidence for 1-7.

I've known that for some time. He has his schtick, and he is sticking with it no matter what - well that and adding stuff as he sees fit when his usual schtick is wearing thin and he has no real reply.

The technique of continually coming of with new objections and never being able to resolve the original objections is their only technique to argue because the know they will fail if they just stick to one.

Yes - that is one of their go-tos.

Wait their are two other techniques.
One is just to deny the evidence every time without even trying to know what the evidence is and
Second to keep coming up with more and more bizarre explanations creating a whole knew pseudoscience to twist reality to fit the fantasy presented in the bible.

Those, too.

And then there is the unwavering reliance upon erroneous applications of, for example, calculations - demanding a response to them even after being shown that their numbers were in error.

I'm sure there are many other common antics.

 

[tas8831]

@tas8831 is the one who disagree with us

Funny, I had to explain that to you.

YOU are the one claiming that transposons are NRM and are involved in most change AND - and this one is hilarious - that they evoke change in a single generation.

Funny that you cannot see how foolish that claim is, even after I explained it to you more than once.

 

[tas8831]

We both agree that we likely evolved through a variaty of mechanisms including none random mechanisms that played a major role.

It is @tas8831 who would disagree with us, and claim that "only random mutations are important" or that we evolve mainly by random mutations that where selected ether by NS or genetic drift.

Random mutations are not selected by drift.

I guess this whole thing flew over your head...

Interesting thing - part of my graduate research was on the evolution of a gene family in mammals. There are multiple genes in the family, all mutated copies of each other. One of the major duplication events was facilitated by the insertion of a LINE between 2 of the genes.
The most common LINE in mammals is L1, and it is able to recognize the hexanucleotide "TTAAAA"
and use that to insert itself into a genome. In that sense, it is non-random, since it uses a specific DNA sequence.

Would you like to guess how frequently that sequence shows up in genomes? Just for kicks, I searched GENBANK for the sequence for human chromosome 3. It is about 200 million BP, and my browser kept crashing, so I only downloaded 20 MB of it ( quick back of the envelope calculation indicates that 20 MB = only about 10 million 'letters' representing nucleotides, or about 1/20 of the chromosome in question). Once it loaded, I did a simple search for TTAAAA...........................
How many times do you think TTAAAA showed up?

22,679 times.

That is, there are potentially 22,679 insertion sites for the L1 LINE in about 1/20 of just 1 chromosome.
But sure, transposon insertion is totally 'non-random'....wrt fitness....

It is not that I do not think they play a role in evolution or fitness or selection - they clearly do (I have referred to one such insertion that conferred DDT resistance to fruit flies), but this genotype STILL has to spread throughout a population for it to become fixed, just like plain old SNPs. So your "speed" issue... isn't.​

You see, I go through all that only for you to.... ignore. Which is why I am not going to waste much time anymore replying to you with facts and data and evidence. I will be like you - relying almost entirely on mere assertions, repetition of mantras, and garbling science.

Perhaps you have more luck than I and you can convince @tas8831 that his view of "just random mutations" is controvertial in the scientific community (to say the list) and that there are multiple lines of evidence that suggest an important role of non random mechanisms in our evolutionary history.

When will you present these "multiple lines" of evidence that "none random mutations" play an important role.
Curious as to how you think your claim that transposition makes evolutionary change in "a single generation" would fly...

 

[tas8831]

Prove that the mechanism of random mutations and natural selection (and perhaps genetic drift) can account for the genetic differences between chimps and humans, or more specifically between humans and the common ancestor. (given you only have 5M years)

Already did in more than 1 way. Also, not constrained to your 5 million years because there is no specific date.
Also never said that ONLY RM&NS is 100% responsible (unless we allow that indels and transposition also counts as RM&NS). For crying out loud, I mentioned that I studied a gene family that was at least in part produced via LINE activity!

This is one of the shortcoming of trying to argue at the 700-level while not even having a 200-level background.

 

[tas8831]

The problem is that such a paper doesn’t seem to exists and the proof is that there are over 100 posts in this forum where I ask for such a paper, and evolutionist simply ignore my recuest or answer something to else

Where is the scientific paper that documents the greater importance of transposons acting in a single generation? It was NOT in the NatGeo article re: Tattersall, and that is the ONLY link you have provided.

 

[tas8831]

500,000 mutation is the maximum number of beneficial mutations that could have happened in 5M years assuming a an unrealistically optimum scenario

Cool mere assertion. Pity that you cannot even provide documentation that this is relevant, much less realistic. You just keep asserting it over and over.

30,000,000 is the actual number of mutations that you would need to evolve a human from a common ancestor.

More mere assertions.

Still waiting for your EVIDENCE that most of these must be beneficial.

For a selections most of this 30M mutations would have to be benefitial

More mere assertions.

Still waiting for your EVIDENCE that most of these must be beneficial.

This argument woundt apply for a neutralist, but neutralism has “other problems”

Which you've never documented or even alluded to.

Is it really so hard to understand?

Not at all - I totally understand that creationist-types with ZERO relevant education or background in these topics cannot grasp that their repeated assertions are erroneous/irrelevant/nonsensical.

What I DO have trouble understanding is Why do people like you think that just saying the same things over and over - even after they've been questioned/debunked repeatedly - will help your position? Why do you think acting this way makes you look like an honest player in this?

 

[tas8831]

No, in fact my position is that nobody knows how brains, upright postures, cooperative behavior evolved.

Then one has to wonder how it is that you keep claiming that "none random mutations" played a major role and act "in one generation"...
It is almost as if you have no idea what you keep writing about, but cannot accept that you might be wrong.

So why don’t you accept your burden proof and show your evidence, rather than claiming that “you already did”

The irony and hypocrisy is staggering, but not unexpected.

 

[tas8831]

Where is this "evidence"?

I would say that there are many arguments in favor of such a claim, one of them is the fact that mammals and particularly the human line evolved too fast such that random mutations and NS could have not account for such a fast speed of evolution.

Arguments are not evidence. Even in the Tattersall article you linked, nobody said "too fast" - and do tell us all, won't you,. how one can calculate whether or not evolution is "too fast"?

 

[tas8831]

From your paper...

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.

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.

 

[tas8831]

Wow... You DO know, do you not, that it is possible to actually look back a few pages to see your original claims? Right? Or, one can click on the little arrow in your quote and brings one right to the post you are responding to, right?
Or, one can use the search function to find posts, right?

Ok feel free to provide a model that includes as many neutral mutations as you what

Right after you provide your model with 'non random mutations' playing a major role.

Transposons magically spreading through a population faster than any other mutational event - in 1 generation!

Stawman, all I am saying is that" directed mutations" (like trasposons) are more likely to produce big positive selectable changes, explaining this super fast evolution in the human line

Is that where you will stake your claim, is it?

OK:
The strange case of John Sanford, creationist

"All I am saying is that transposons likely played an important role and are responsible for some of the “evolution”

This mechanism can produce new proteins in just 1 generation so yes under that basis the mechanism is “fast enough “​

me:
3. I remind you that a transposon still has to spread through a population like an SNP has to, and ask how this would speed things up. You ignore it.

Yes but transposons can produce new functional and selectable proteins (genes) in 1 generation…….the RM+NS model would require a gene duplication + thousands of point mutations in order to get something that we would call a “new gene”**

...

"None random mutations are more likely to be positive, more likely to be selected for, more likely to build complex stuff like complete proteins) in a single generation, this is why the would spread faster than random mutations."​

And that you consider these:

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

Irrelevant, shows us all the fact that you cannot grasp the subject matter well enough to understand that without answers to these questions, one CANNOT say or imply or suggest, at all, that whatever number of possible fixed beneficial mutations one calculates are possible is "not enough."

If you do not know how much work is needed to build X, if you do not know what you are even starting from to build X, how can you say you do not have enough time to build X???
Why is this so hard to understand?

Here are pelvis comparisons between A. afarensis (proposed human ancestor, ~3.2 MYA), H. erectus (~2 MYA), H. heidelbergensis (~500K ya), and modern humans:

Please explain to us all with your ReMine/Sanford knowledge and your keen math skills, how many fixed beneficial mutations (of any kind) do you think were required, were evolution true (which you seem to believe) to get a modern human pelvis from a "Lucy"? Please show your work and support it with one or two relevant pieces of supporting evidence.

I said no new random mutations being fixed and dominant in the human population in the Last 30 years

No you didn't:

"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"

Nothing about dominant or beneficial. Not that it matters - you did not demonstrate that all newborns were tested for such mutations (otherwise, how can you write what you did?).

Unless you are one of those dolts that thinks a "mutation" is like a new leg or a wing or something?

Your model predicts 7 mutations per year,.... So if your model is inconsistent to what we observe why are you convinced that your model is true?

You keep forgetting that the 6.6 number came from YOUR NUMBERS, not 'my model', whatever that is.

Why can't you even keep track of you unsupported claims? I can keep track of your gibberish better than YOU can!!



** - also, why would we need a "new gene" requiring "thousands" of beneficial mutations when all we need to do is tweak a few genes, and alter some regulatory sequence? The more you try to add "problems" for evolution, all you do is show how little you understand genetics!

 

[leroy]

Funny, I had to explain that to you.

YOU are the one claiming that transposons are NRM and are involved in most change AND - and this one is hilarious - that they evoke change in a single generation.

Funny that you cannot see how foolish that claim is, even after I explained it to you more than once.

That is a strawman,


I didn't say that trasposons are involved in most change, I simply said that non random mechanisms (including trasposons) play a major role

 

[shunyadragon]

That is a strawman,


I didn't say that trasposons are involved in most change, I simply said that non random mechanisms (including trasposons) play a major role

'
. . . and I simply said, 'Naturally all the determining Laws of Nature, natural processes, and environmental selective pressures that are the cause of evolution are 'none random mechanisms.'

 

[leroy]

I guess this whole thing flew over your head...

Interesting thing - part of my graduate research was on the evolution of a gene family in mammals. There are multiple genes in the family, all mutated copies of each other. One of the major duplication events was facilitated by the insertion of a LINE between 2 of the genes.
The most common LINE in mammals is L1, and it is able to recognize the hexanucleotide "TTAAAA"
and use that to insert itself into a genome. In that sense, it is non-random, since it uses a specific DNA sequence......
​

I told you what I mean by random. And you accepted my definition, now you are using a different definition.... once again you are using "Word games tactics "
So your whole point is irrelevant
We are using the term random as explained in this website

Mutations are random - Understanding Evolution https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evol...re random,influence the direction of mutation.

STILL has to spread throughout a population for it to become fixed, just like plain old SNPs. So your "speed" issue... isn't.

That is another strawman, I never said that non random mutations get fix in 1 generation.

the point is that non random mutations (or directed mutations) are more likely to be positive, therefore more likely to become fixed.

And they can produce big selectable changes in a small period of time, this is probably why humans evolved so fast in just 5M years.

You see, I go through all that only for you to.... ignore. Which is why I am not going to waste much time anymore replying to you with facts and data and evidence. I will be like you - relying almost entirely on mere assertions, repetition of mantras, and garbling science.

You dont have to waste much time,

All you have to do is provide your conclusive evidence that shows that evolution by random mutations and natural selection is fast enough to account for most of the differences between chimps and humans.

Still waiting

When will you present these "multiple lines" of evidence that "none random mutations" play an important role.

Sure
1 it's a fact that non random (directed) mutations occur

2 it is a fact that at least at the level of " micro evolution" this mechanisms cause "fast evolution"

3 humans evolved too fast (faster than it would have been possible by random mutations)

4 therefore it seems probable that a mechanism of fast evolution occurred..... And I am simply suggesting directed mutations as a likely candidate (..... do you have a better suggestion?)

+ 1 and 2 are uncontrovertially true
+ 3 it's the burden proof that you are avoiding so atleast tacitly you are accepting "3"
+ 4 is probably true (given 1,2 and 3)

 

[leroy]

Already did in more than 1 way. Also, not constrained to your 5 million years because there is no specific date.
Also never said that ONLY RM&NS is 100% responsible (unless we allow that indels and transposition also counts as RM&NS). For crying out loud, I mentioned that I studied a gene family that was at least in part produced via LINE activity!

This is one of the shortcoming of trying to argue at the 700-level while not even having a 200-level background.

Again semantic games and excuses to avoid the burden proof....

We already agreed on a definition of for "random mutations" (https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/mutations_07#:~:text=Mutations are random,influence the direction of mutation.)

Given that definition do you claim that evolution is caused mainly by random mutations and NS yes or no?

 

[leroy]

Where is the scientific paper that documents the greater importance of transposons acting in a single generation? It was NOT in the NatGeo article re: Tattersall, and that is the ONLY link you have provided.

Note how you avoided once again your burden proof for your assertions.

Where is your paper that indicates that RM and NS can explain most of the changes?


As for my burden proof I could show that :
1 Directed mutations occure
2 that they can cause fast evolution (atleast at a micro level)

Would that be enough to conclude that maybe* directed mutations played a mayor role?

If you answer yes I will provide my evidence

If you answer no, then please tell me what else do you need in order to arrive at that conclusion?

 

[leroy]

Still waiting for your EVIDENCE that most of these must be beneficial.

Really? Still repeating that objection despite the fact that I answered it multiple times in the past?

As I said, they don't have to be benefitial mutations if you don't what. Feel free to provide a model with any ratio of benefitial mutations.

I simply suggested benefitial mutations because they are more likely to be selected and become fixed and dominant and relatively fast.

But feel free to find an other solution