hezekiah jones

Then why do you keep linking to articles in a "technical journal" called "Ex Nihilo"? You know what "ex nihilo" means, right?

Ahem.

Automaton

Aw, what's the matter, are we making you use your brain for once? Gee, poor fundy.
All you did was wrongfully quote Gould. Your quote was wrong, Gould says the exact opposite of what you believe, and even if he did say that, you don't seem to understand that a quote is not an argument, but merely an appeal to authority.
Out of context opinions are not arguments.
WE have dodged the issue?! When all you do is spout meaningless rhetoric. What the hell was the point of this post if you were not going to answer the questions anyway?
Is anyone else's extreme hypocracy meter also going off the charts?
Cry me a river.
There is no "evolutionist movement", there is only a creationist movement. Biology is not a political ideology, it is a science. Unfortunately your heavily indoctrinated brain can't seem to differentiate.
You mean it's easier for you to rip stuff off Kent Hovind this way.
Oxymoron of the century.
Obviously.
How useful!
The joke's really on you, my small craniumed friend. Order and design must come from order and design (intelligence)? That is self-defeating. You commit the fallacy of argument from incredulity. You commit the fallacy of assuming what you're trying to prove - your propaganda is loaded with the word "design", which by it's nature must be designed. When you take away the "design" lie, you just have "order". Do you know what a snowflake is? Do you think a snowflake is more or less ordered than randomly moving water and dust particles?
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
It won't be for long if your type get in power and force your bullshit onto impressionable children.
So you apply arbitrary constraints on any old group of organisms that you happen to think of off the top of your head and magically there appears the biological machinery inherent in all of these organisms that cross references mutations with an immutable central code, and inhibits any mutations if they reach any arbitrary distance away from the original code. And you call us the mental deficients!
"Kinds" is just something that little kids and creationists dream up, there's absolutely no science to it.
And where, exactly, is the biological machinery to perform this task of biblical proportions? How does the genetic code know whether or not the mutations caused in it are due to "design" or not? Is there some undiscovered law of physics that transfers from an intelligent agent's fingers to the genetic code?

Go back to under your bridge, troll.

pangloss

Since 'kinds' is mentioned, I thought I would produce a sneak preview of my upcoming refutation of creationist Fred Williams' egomaniacal rantings (www.geocities.com\huxter4441\Williams.html):


Williams:
"Remove this assumption, that is, stop comparing human DNA to simian DNA in an attempt to determine the mutation rate, and the problem (cost) goes away."


Ok, let's do this. One can assume that even creationists accept that common chimpanzees and bonobos are of the same 'kind' that is, they share an ancestry.
Using DNA sequence data from Common chimp and bonobo, we can see that they differ by about 0.8%. If we assume that this rate is consistent across the genome, then we should expect there to be a difference of about 24 million nucleotides, or 12 million per species. Williams has argued in the past that this number is off by some 20% due to polymorphism, so let us apply that here. That leaves us with 19.2 million differences. Williams believes in a literal interpretation of the King James version of the bible, and so believes that all extant diversity is the result of hyperevolution after the Flood of Noah, which most creationists seem to put at about 2,500 -4,500 years ago. Let us go with the older date, 4,500 years ago. Chimps have a generation time of around 10-15 years, so this means that a maximum of about 450 generations have come and gone since the flood waters subsided. If we assume that the rate of evolution has been stochastically consistent over time, then we should expect an average of 42,600 nucleotide changes to become fixed in the chimp population, or about 21,300 in each lineage (chimp v. bonobo) in the allotted time - PER GENERATION. Clearly, only a fraction of these changes would be of the beneficial variety, but we should consider that many deleterious mutations, especially the very deleterious ones, will have been removed via selection (I will ignore that for the sake of simplicity). Williams accepts ReMine's claim that non-beneficial changes actually require longer to reach fixation, and we will ignore that as well. Since Williams unquestioningly accepts Haldane's model, which puts a 'speed limit' on evolution of the fixation of 1 beneficial mutation per 300 generations, the chimp-bonobo descent from an original kind requires a fixation of a minimum of some 21300 mutations per generation, or about 6.4 MILLION times faster than allowed by Haldane's model (if I did the math right).

When a similar argument was presented by me some time ago on an internet discussion board, Williams went through a series of hand-waves and self-described 'refutations' (which were groundless), and in the end claimed that this difference was most likely due to "non-random mutations" (aka 'directed mutation', stationary phase mutation', 'Cairnsian mutation'etc.).

Stationary phase mutations were first hinted at in the 1980's by Cairns (1980):

Nature 1980 Jul 10;286(5769):176-8
Efficiency of the adaptive response of Escherichia coli to alkylating agents.
Cairns J.

Others delved into the phenomenon and found many such examples in which it appeared that specific genes or regulatory elements were being mutated by environmental factors such that they allowed pre-existing genes to be turned on. Creationist physicist Lee Spetner pounced on this information (totally ignoring the references I will mention shortly) and proclaimed in his book "Not by Chance"(1997) that this mechanism is THE mechanism of post-flood hyperevolution (in so many words) - the original 'kinds' had all this variety 'designed' into their genomes, and so when the environment warranted it, these 'kinds' could speciate. Williams and other creationists love this idea - they claim that it 'explains' the post-flood diversity AND it avoids the 'cost' issue. What a neat little package, eh? Trouble is:

These early studies were flawed in that they had only examined the genes involved in their experimental conditions. Later studies, which examined larger portions of the genomes of the microbes involved, found that the phenomenon was not 'directed' to specific genes at all, but rather is a genome-wide hypermutation caused by oxidative stress:

Genome-wide hypermutation in a subpopulation of stationary-phase cells underlies recombination-dependent adaptive mutation.

Torkelson J, Harris RS, Lombardo MJ, Nagendran J, Thulin C, Rosenberg SM
Department of Biochemistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

Stationary-phase mutation in microbes can produce selected ('adaptive') mutants preferentially. In one system, this occurs via a distinct, recombination-dependent mechanism. Two points of controversy have surrounded these adaptive reversions of an Escherichia coli lac mutation. First, are the mutations directed preferentially to the selected gene in a Lamarckian manner? Second, is the adaptive mutation mechanism specific to the F plasmid replicon carrying lac?We report that lac adaptive mutations are associated with hypermutation in unselected genes, in all replicons in the cell. The associated mutations have a similar sequence spectrum to the adaptive reversions. Thus, the adaptive mutagenesis mechanism is not directed to the lac genes, in a Lamarckian manner, nor to the F' replicon carrying lac. Hypermutation was not found in non-revertants exposed to selection. Therefore, the genome-wide hypermutation underlying adaptive mutation occurs in a differentiated subpopulation. The existence of mutable subpopulations in non-growing cells is important in bacterial evolution and could be relevant to the somatic mutations that give rise to cancers in multicellular organisms.


Also:

"Researchers first noticed this happening in 1988 when John Cairns, then at Harvard
University, showed that mutation rates in the bacterium Escherichia coli increased when the microbes needed to evolve new capabilities in order to survive changes in their environment. At the time, it seemed that only those genes directly involved with the adaptation changed, and this idea of adapative or directed evolution caused quite a stir.

But then last year, molecular geneticist Susan Rosenberg at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and her colleagues showed that mutation rates increase throughout the genome, although only in a subset of the population. Another group also found that more than just the relevant genes changed." (How the Genome Readies Itself for Evolution, Elizabeth Pennisi, Science, vol 281, Number 5380, Issue of 21 Aug 1998, p1131-1134)


There are many more citations in the literature on this phenomenon - which has, by the way, NEVER been observed or inferred to occur in multicellular eukaryotes, much less been documented with actual empirical evidence. Despite this, creationists - such as Williams - continue to cling to this fantasy, claiming that it rescues their nonsensical 'creationary genetics'.

RufusAtticus

Pangloss: <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

I love the fact that you used Chimps and Bonobos and Williams own "logic" to destroy his position.

You should submit that (or some similar form) to talk.origins. It would make a great contribution to Remine debates.

I need to get more familiar with Haldane's model before I post another reply to his crazyness on BB.

Thanx.

-RvFvS

ps418

Nice job Pangloss!

randman

The simple and accurate rebuttal is that we have only observed, and only have records of speciation within a kind of creature.
Darwin's finches for instance is not an example of a finch becoming something different than a finch.
It is sad to see so many of you obviously mentally afflicted with a willful disposition to not acknowledge facts.
Could common descent be true?
Possibly, but it has not been observed, nor documented in any fashion.
Could God have created a prototype of every kind?
Yep, and the same is true.
The evidence is very consistent with the idea of God creating a kind that reproduces.
It is ony through theoritical imagination that the evidence can fit into evolutionist models, which as assumed to have happened prior to the fact.
Really, what is going on is evolutionary presumption and dogma is a religion in itself.

[ March 09, 2002: Message edited by: randman ]</p>

Daggah

Damn it randman, just leave, you're wasting our time. pangloss just took the time to write out a rather large and intelligently written post, and all you can do is sit there and continue to spout propaganda. You're not adding anything intelligent to the debate. Please, just stop wasting our time. You've made it clear that you prefer ignorance to facts and truth.

hezekiah jones

Aha. I told you you'd be better off making your "case" in the Church/State forum. Maybe you have an actionable claim, on free exercise grounds, against the evolutionary priesthood that has lied to you all your life. Those prevaricating conspiratorial bastards have systematically prevented you from properly exercising your sincerely held religious beliefs.

And Daggah is right. You've wasted a lot of good peoples' time, that have inundated you with information you've obstinately refused to consider.

But there is one thing your presentation has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt in this forum, however. And that is the pigheaded ignorance with which creationists attack complex scientific problems about which they know little, if anything.

If anyone here is "obviously mentally afflicted with a willful disposition to not acknowledge facts," I think it quite plain exactly who is standing accused.

Automaton

randman, once again, tries to lie and rhetoricize his way out of the situation.
Since there is absolutely no definition of "kind", I'll assume "kind" means CHNO-based life. On that definition, I'm sure we all agree with you.
What do you base your definition of a "finch" on? What simply looks to YOU like a finch? Gee, you must be the world's greatest empirical scientist then.
We accept facts, we just don't accept your blatant, outright, lies.
Common descent HAS been observed, with phylogenies, the fossil record, etc. Just because something happened in the past does not make it unobservable. Technically, the very moment after anything happens, that anything becomes in the past. Therefore all of the experimental sciences must be false!
Actually, no. Noone has ever defined "kind", it is just a meaningless slogan that idiotic creation zealots spurt constantly from their dual waste and speech orifice. Until you can define "kind", it can mean absolutely anything. (A plastic definition suits you just fine though, that way you never have to back anything up with facts.)
Well if you accept this piece of tripe, then the evidence is ALSO very consistent with three magical goblins creating a kind that reproduces last thursday, which omnihyperevolved to life's present state, and all our memories and the fossil record etc. were just implanted to trick us (oh, those tricky goblins!)
Yeah, all those evolutionary scientists have no idea what they're talking about! Just because you don't understand evolution, doesn't mean everyone else has to.
Praise Darwin, and all the demi-gods Huxley, Haldane and Dawkins! Offer sacrifices of transitional fossils that Evil Atheist Conspiracy Scientists conjured up in their labs or are "clearly" not transitional at the altar weekly! Stop trying desperately to lower a real SCIENCE down to YOUR level. It's not going to work. We've been around too long to be fooled by your ridiculous sleight-of-hand.

TROLL! BRIDGE! NOW!

hologos

Is it possible that this creation/evolution flap belongs in the religion/philosophy class? In as much as real science cannot deal in origins since we know of no one who was there to report such things any hypothesis cannot be proved or disproved. Any "scientific" conclusions drawn from such speculation would be considered more "faith" than science by those who consider such things with the paradigm of an open mind. The apparent absurdity of certain proofs of evolution should cause one to be suspicious of evolution theory.(some would say Fact of evolution). Whence cometh the need for the fraudulent reporting of data of which a so-called scientist was convicted at Jena University? The man was called Ernst Haekel; his ontogony/phylogony drawings were seriously flawed--fraud some said--overzealous wishful thinking. What is really curious about this is that such information is still being peddled as science in modern textooks--without a disclaimer. Scholastic dishonesty is unacceptable in any circle for any reason. Why do we not just admit that we know not the mechanism of origins and quit wasting the time and effort of travelling dead end streets. Let's get off the mental orgasms in the wonderful world of panspermia and work on something worthwhile like feeding the hungry. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />