Further to the OP Munging ID it seems that there is still a significant amount of confusion as to whether ID could be, or even is, compatible with common descent… Moreover, Mike Behe has been quoted by Paul Nelson here at TSZ as one of the very few from among the Discovery Institute (DI) who “supports” common descent, common ancestry or descent with modification…
While I doubt we would be able to get Mike Behe to post at TSZ, for the reasons I have already mentioned in the moderation issues in the past, unless his book critics decide to post here and he would be provoked to respond, let’s just watch some of the videos where elaborates on those very issues:
Intelligent Design and Common Ancestry – Michael J. Behe, PhD
Another issue related to common ancestry is the that some members of DI, including Mike Behe and Ann Gauger apparently accept the possibility of “guided evolution”… which in my view would be an oxymoron…I must stress however that I have not seen any real details about that coming from either of them, so I don’t really know what they mean by “guided evolution”…Perhaps Behe’s upcoming book will provide us with some insight on the theme…Have they come to a similar conclusion Jonathan Wells has with the embryo development (cell differentiation) where the information beyond DNA would have to be added in the process? I don’t know at this point…
I have also mentioned it in the past that ID supporters, as well as logically thinking creationists, must accept some sort of “micro-evolution” or descent with modification within “kinds”…
The example of that type of evolution, or rather devolution, is the “evolution” of dogs from wolves by the breaking genes or the decreasing gene functions…
Other possible “evolutionary changes” leading to dog evolution from wolves could be compared to the antibiotic resistance evolution that had already existed in the some genomes before the antibiotics were even developed…
According to John Harshman deleterious alleles are not selected against.
Across the tree of life, there are no sequences with no mutations. Zero. There is no universally identical gene.
John Harshman has never said such a thing.
You might be confusing your Al(l)ans. I certainly said no such thing. Quite the opposite.
Citation please.
As evolution proceeds, organisms become less and less like each other. And of course, if you roll the tape backwards, as you go back in time, they become more and more alike.
“Profound discontinuities” are inconsistent with that model of evolution.
I’d hope experience, if not charity, would make your first port of call ‘phoodoo read it wrong!’ 😃
Worth mentioning that the idea of junk was quite strongly resisted initially, by evolutionists. They were persuaded by sound arguments, and data.
Yes. That is the prediction. If we observe that pattern then we have evidence for evolution. The stronger than pattern is, the stronger the evidence for evolution.
It would seem to me that you’d eventually get “profound discontinuities” as a consequence of time. If something is diverging more and more over time, eventually it will be almost nothing alike, to such an extent that it could have become impossible to infer any degree of similarity between it. It really just depends on the amount of time, and the rate of change.
Of course, we really need to define exactly what is meant by a discontinuity, and a “profound” one. I didn’t bring up the term but assumed what was meant was something like “no detectable similarity that could not be plausibly explained by chance”.
https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/darwin-devolves-ch-1-the-pretense-of-knowledge/4102/87
Mung, your Harshman cite is lacking the key word “against”.
Will you be retracting, or obfuscating further?
I noticed in that thread Mungs’s comment was hidden- wth?
So?
It’s simple logic, if it can’t be selected, it cannot be selected against.
I predict Mung still won’t ban you.
And I predict Alan will do something retarded instead.
Well, it seems what John must be saying then, is in NS there is only selecting for, there is never selecting against. He has made the term “selected against” an oxymoron.
I doubt that anybody with John’s level of mathematical understanding would make such an absolutist claim. I’d imagine John saying something like “not always,” or “depending on how deleterious,” etc.
Surely you’d understand that if a mutation kills an organism, before reproduction, that organism is gone (selected against), regardless of what you imagine that John said (?).
Did you read Rumraket’s comments on the matter?
Oh, good grief. Picking over the bones of ‘he said, she said’. Yep, ID’s in great shape, don’t let anyone tell you any different.
This is the best they got when they don’t have any science. Let’s bicker endlessly over the patently obvious. Zzzz.
Yes, and Jock and Allan. Their interpretation seems to be there is no concept of selected against. There is only selected.
New Evolution theory I guess.
Can we select this to be the quote of the month?
… against, I mean.
Corneel,
Actually I think there is a kernel of truth there. Natural selection doesn’t do any selecting against, if a DNA sequence exists, it was selected. Therefore there is no such thing as a deleterious mutation. Every mutation is advantageous (because they exist), some just more so perhaps.
I assume what he was talking about is that depending on the magnitude of
the selection coefficient and on the population size there is a threshold below which selection cant operate because genetic drift counteracts it. I think this was work done by Lynch…..but Joe F. could explain it properly
I would think the word deleterious implies something that results in reduced fecundity. But perhaps there are things that affect health without affecting the number of offspring produced.
LOL
phoodoo is top of the line ID thinker kids.
Let’s not forget that some mutations are lethal. If a cell is born with that mutation, it will quickly die. Fecundity drops to zero.
I believe John was simply pointing out that deleterious mutations, when fixed, are fixed by drift, not selected for (fixed by NS).
*duplicated*
Nope, I don’t think I have said one word on that matter, beyond the above eye-roll. My own view – Hey! Here I am! Ask me! – is that deleterious alleles are indeed selected against, while beneficial alleles are selected for. These processes occur simultaneously – as soon as a beneficial allele arises, its other alleles become detrimental relative to it.
When I see ‘selected’ without qualification, I don’t find myself collapsed in a quivering heap of quandary like you guys pretend to. I just think “well, if you mean ‘fixed by selection’, or ‘for was implicit’, then I guess…”
Ah, that petulant refrain, like music to my ears. I’m impressed you continue to play that game with such enthusiasm, year on year. Shows dedication.
Yup. My take too. But there are points to be scored, y’know?
Everything dies. We count what is alive, that is fitness.
Mung,
It was explained to you, in the thread at PS that you cite, that John’s quote carries an implicit “for”.
I see you have opted for obfuscation. The quality of your material has taken quite the dive lately, almost like you are phoning it in.
You used to be quite good at this.
The more genetic mojo it passes on, the more mojo fitness it has.
And fitness.
Below absolute values of the selection coefficient of positive or negative selection of
, genetic drift operates much more strongly than selection. Basically, drift fixes or loses an allele before it’s fitness can have much effect.
Post your selections for quote of the month in a reply to this comment.
Post your selections against quote of the month in a reply to this comment.
IOW, they are not selected against. Which is what I said.
As a general rule of thumb, when Mung makes a claim about what somebody said, one should assume Mung is wrong. As, of course, is true here. If he cites this comment, he will probably read it incorrectly too.
Anyway, what I was saying is that deleterious alleles, by definition, can’t be favored by selection, which is to say they can’t have positive selection coefficients. Thus fixation of deleterious alleles, which can happen, results from drift, not selection. And this happens when the selection coefficient is small in relation to population size. This should be no surprise to anyone who’s ever read a book or taken a class on evolutionary biology.
Relating it to the context in which it happened, Behe wasn’t talking about deleterious alleles being fixed at all. He was talking about advantageous loss-of-function mutations, or thought he was. Some people apparently mistook loss of function for loss of fitness. Then Mung tried to score a cheap point in some silly game he’s playing.
Positive selection would be selection for and negative selection would be selection against, and both fit under the title “natural selection.”
It’s amazing to me that natural selection can fix an allele in the population by selecting for it, but it cannot remove an allele from the population by selecting against it. Can it just not see them to select them and remove them?
If only you had actually said that.
Thanks Joe, but didn’t you get the memo? there are no mathematical models in evolution according to creationists 😀
It is what he said, I got it after all, how could you possibly miss it? Oh, you’re just trolling again. Nevermind
It is in fact necessary to be able to read for comprehension, which requires that one also be able to remember context from one sentence to the next. You should stop digging.
😉
Evolution News and Science Today, and also Denyse O’Leary at UD, are always saying that evolutionary biologists are unwilling to be hard-nosed and quantitative, unlike their friends the ID advocates.
In 1981 I published a Bibliography of Theoretical Population Genetics (you can download its contents at my web page). It was very complete, and had 7,982 theory papers listed. And that was 38 years ago. I guess UD and EN&ST missed those papers.
Where did that come from? If a new mutation is ultimately going to be lost or be fixed, then the probability of fixation plus the probability of loss will be sum to 1.
Logically the question is why does the Intelligent Designer act in that way, no? I mean, that’s what you think happens right?
I wonder what would happen if ID enthusiasts spent 1% of the time they spent poking at their “Darwinism” strawman developing Intelligent Design instead?
ROTFLMAO, what a bunch of clowns
No, fitness relates to the ability to have offspring. If you are born with a mutation that kills you within a few hours, then the fact that you lived for a few hours is irrelevant, your reproductive success is zero. How can you have been here so long and still not grasped the simplest concepts?
Scientists: We conclude that ~90% of the human genome is junk because only 10% shows evidence of sequence conservation.
J-Mac: That’s not true!!!! Look at that highly conserved DNA, it has function!!!
Scientists: **facepalm**