I’m all in favor of mocking stupidity, and here’s something definitely worth mocking.
In arguing for evolution, author Alan R. Rogers appeals to the Nilsson and Pelger paper on how simple it is to evolve an eye. He writes:
If eyes evolve, they must do so often and easily. Could it really be so easy?
Dan-Eric Nilsson and Susanne Pelger have answered this question. They constructed an evolutionary story much like the one that I told above.
– The Evidence for Evolution. p. 42.
And what did he write about the story that he told above?
This story is of course a fabrication. p. 40
I’m serious! Can it get any more stupid than that?
Do evolutionists believe fabrications? When it comes to how to evolve and eye it would certainly seem so.
Again I ask you, why should I engage in discussion with someone who works so hard to misunderstand/misrepresent what I write?
I accept whatever we have evidence for, gradual and not gradual. I don’t suffer from the same metaphysical limitations as the Darwinists and their aversion to anything that smacks of not being small step by step changes each one favored by natural selection.
And what did I write to lead you to think that the “jumps” were not designed and that ID only operates by gradual evolution?
I believe that we have evidence that some individuals leave more offspring than others. If that means they were more fit and the others who left fewer offspring were less fit then we have evidence for differences in fitness.
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I deny the mathematics. A genetic change can come to fixation by drift alone. Yes, I accept that.
Drift is probably even more important than selection in that regard. Do we have evidence one way or the other on that?
Age. Gestation periods. Random deaths. Personal choice. …
So what do you call the values you assigned to each genotype for the two kinds of fitness, if not their fitness value?
The birds feasting on the dead carcass were more fit.
Can different genes in the same organism have different fitnesses? Perhaps the dark brown mouse has a light sensitive spot on its back that it uses to sense approaching predators.
Isn’t that the biological definition of what fit means ?
“…we understand in considerable detail how eyes were assembled by natural selection.” (p. 49)
That’s false.
Sure, but that just means that in order to determine the effect on fitness that the color phenotype contributes, you need to look at lots and lots of mice to derive an average.
We’re still trying to pin Joe down on that. But he has to exercise extreme care, else he will be saying that fitness causes fitness. If you are paying attention, you will notice the ever-shifting language. I predict he’ll go back to using natural selection next.
phoodoo,
Mung,
Risky path this. Questions lead to knowledge and understanding.
Doesn’t seem to have worked out that way for you. Back on Ignore as simply a waste of my time. Ciao!
Wouldn’t you have to know how eyes were assembled to know that was false? That is why I keep asking what ID’s position is ,you seem pretty sure you have some definitive knowledge.
Mung, if the phrase “considerable detail” is incorrect, what is the correct phrase? Is it we know nothing? We must know something. So instead of just saying “that’s false” why not offer a correction. Such an offering can only help understanding on both sides.
No.
When we have a large population, and within it a large number of individuals who are of the same genotype, you can have 20% of them have fitness zero, and 80% of them have fitness 1, in which case their average fitness is 0.8. Got it?
We were talking about the effect of differences of fitness that depended on the genotype. Those differences have an effect on gene frequencies (and on genotype frequencies), and one can calculate how much change of gene frequency to expect.
Yes, there is tons of math on when genetic drift will have a stronger effect than differences in fitness. Starting with R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright in the late 1920s. You can find the relevant equations in my online, downloadable-as-a-PDF, free book Theoretical Evolutionary Genetics (just search for the title).
A rough general rule is that when the selection coefficients (fractional differences in fitness) exceed the reciprocal of the effective population size, the differences of fitness start to be very noticeable in their effects. So if we have two genotypes of which one has 1% higher fitness than another, and the (effective) population size is 100,000, the effect of the fitness differences is massive.
I gave each genotype two numbers, a viability (probability of surviving to adulthood) and a fertility (expected numbers of offspring per surviving adult). What we call those are “viability” and “fertility”. Generically, they are often called components of fitness. The fitness itself is their product.
Note that we are in a simple life cycle such as that of an annual plant. There are many more complicated life cycles, such as ours, that have overlapping generations. Then you need more numbers and a more subtle calculation.
Joe Felsenstein,
I really enjoy blether talk by Darwinists…No substance or proof…just blether…
Fitness this…fitness that..
What kind of fitness would I need to develop an eagle’s sight that can, in full flight reputedly spot a rabbit two miles away if it was needed for my and my populations’s survival?
I already have sight that is fading even though I need for survival that is not evolving at all …
Let’s listen to some more baseless blether…
Yeah all that math, what good did that ever do anyone right?
You need to jump off a cliff several times for it to develop. It takes time and practice. It took me a good 5 years, but YMMV. Mind you wabbits might evolve surface-to-air missile capabilities in the process, as an adaptive countermeasure, so make sure you carry a flare gun at all times
Here’s what Elliott Sober wrote:
One might put it this way:
IF organisms differ in their viability or they differ in their fertility,
THEN natural selection occurs.
Or again:
WHEN organisms differ in their viability or they differ in their fertility,
THEN natural selection occurs.
Natural selection clearly being the effect and not the cause. Would you say that it is differences in fitness that cause natural selection?
What with all the good that population genetics has done, it’s a miracle it hasn’t become a religion. Oh, wait.
.. for a nonsensically broad definition of religion.
WHEN natural selection occurs, THEN the frequencies of alleles in the population change.
In this way, natural selection is the cause. So it can be simultanously be understood to be an effect and a cause.
And here we see that theists have a leg up on evolutionists, because theists just aren’t dumb enough to claim that God caused Himself.
As usual, seems to me analogies to gravity should be didactic enough for creationists: gravity configures mass in space by accretion. In that sense gravity is the cause of mass configuration in the universe: gravity causes mass to accumulate in the form of planets, stars, asteroids, etc..
But wait a minute, doesn’t mass cause gravity according to those deceitful gravitationists?
He just caused his son, who happened to be himself, Lulz
Natural selection isn’t claimed to have caused itself. Back to the dominoes example, when a domino tips over, that is an effect that follows the previous one tipping over and causing it to tip over. Any particular domino tipping over is not it’s own cause of tipping over, it was another domino before it.
So things can be both effects and causes at the same time, without being the cause or effect of itself.
So here we see that the theist has a problem with basic logical reasoning regarding subjects they see as a threat to their religioust convictions.
So natural selections cause natural selections which cause natural selections which cause natural selections which cause natural selections … just like dominoes falling.
#TheDominoEffect
Why don’t evolutionary biology textbooks teach your Domino Theory of Natural Selection? Any thoughts on that Rumraket?
I see you made yourself be confused again.
No, I was just making analogy in order to explain how something can be viewed both as a cause and an effect, without it being the “cause of itself”. That’s it.
But your analogy does not apply to natural selection. That’s what you’re saying now.
“One reason for Darwin’s gradualism was his belief that organisms are so intricately and harmoniously constructed that a major alteration of any one feature would impair function, and so would decrease, rather than increase, the likelihood of survival.”
– Douglas J. Futuyma
Oh the irony.
Also, in the last several comments I didn’t use the N.S. phrase at all. I instead wrote about “fitness differences”. ‘Cause when you do mention N.S., the C/ID people here totally lose it. They start going on about how it does not exist, how it is defined in terms of itself, how I am confused about it.
So I decided to talk about differences in fitness, instead.
Doesn’t seem to keep them from going on and on about N.S., though.
Joe Felsenstein,
Once they are dead, everything has a fitness of 0, so your fitness analysis depends on when you make it. If you are studying mice, after 2 years all your results are invalid. Everything you said had a fitness of 1, is now 0, so go back and change your results.
a
I’ve heard of an experiment where they’ve tried to make the chickens evolve and fly long distances again…they were moving the food further away from the chickens over the cliff to make them fly longer distances… it didn’t work… the chickens either died by falling of the cliff or starvation…
But hey…anything is possible if you have imagination and faith…especially the unfounded faith you so desperately want to believe despite the lack of any evidence…
OK, don’t try it then, I mean… don’t be a chicken… but seriously, don’t.
Surely you’re not talking about me, lol. All I did is predict that you would bring it up again soon. And here you are. 🙂
Perhaps you’re confused about fitness. Perhaps fitness is but a label for a numerical value, like PI. We don’t go around claiming that PI causes circles to be round. And we don’t claim that circles are the cause of PI. And we sure as hell don’t go around claiming that PI causes PI. Do we?
Now that’s the way to do an analogy, Rumraket!
It appears like fitness is nothing but a label we give to a numerical value, and as such it neither causes nor is caused. Fitness is neither cause nor effect. It just is.
Mung,
Right.
And then later it isn’t of course.
To be Zero or One, that is the question.
Math eh? Can you provide the latest math on how many out of 10.000.000 species on earth are currently macro-evolving? How many are in transition?
If you are not sure, don’t overwhelm us! Just give us a ballpark figure or ask Joe Felekstain as he most likely has some recent figures of his own accurate math of population genetics….
Another mind reader. Given all that you know about what I believe, perhaps you could offer your opinion as to why anything about evolution would be a threat to my religious convictions. You’re confused. As usual.
Why do you think phoodoo is an ancient Israelite. You’ve never answered that.
But that wasn’t the question. The question was about how much of evolution is due to one vs the other.
Good one Mung! Lol
However, nothing is confusing, even nonsense or circular reasoning, if you want to believe it…even blindly…
Any suggestions as to how to proceed with the experiment to prove your faith and not mine?
Wait, is Joe saying you can survive and reproduce because of either fitness or genetic drift?
And they way we measure fitness is survival and reproducing?
Bonus question class. Can anyone spot the problem? Its a tough one, but if you really concentrate some of you might get it.
Reading Rogers you would never know that evolutionists were making the same sorts of claims which he targets in his book. Apparently evolutionary theory is quite malleable.
Yet Rogers claims:
Um. No. From there things increase in complexity and difficulty.
You evolutionists go on and believe what you want. Don’t let me stop you.
POOF! AN EYE!
I love evolutionist arguments. Rogers admits his step by step scenario in which each step is adaptive is just a story (“a fabrication”), and that instead “we need real evidence.” And for that he turns to the evidence for common descent.
Douglas Futuyma, on the other hand, in his account of eye evolution, discounts the evidence of common descent as being unhelpful in this case and instead relies on being able to make up a story!
He writes:
One discards the plausibility argument and relies on common descent. The other discards common descent and relies on the plausibility argument. It certainly appears to be a case of throw something at the wall and see what sticks.
But really, who needs evidence. It must have happened.
Futuyma again:
Eyes evolved independently many times.
Therefore, the evolution of eyes is not improbable.
Not that there’s any flaw in that logic!