But not all of them. It’s interesting that even the most hardened creationists who have exposure to some science still cannot quite bring themselves to rule out the possibility of a beneficial mutation. Here’s Sal:
Much (not all) the heterozygosity and alleles were created and thus differences were strategically positioned to not cause functional compromise and most of the mutations thereafter are rare variants and slightly damaging.
So if most are slightly damaging then a few are beneficial. And if a few are beneficial then even fewer will be highly beneficial.
It’s not just Sal, but many IDCreationists seem to allow the possibility that a mutation may occur that is beneficial. Indirectly, of course, usually similarly phrased to the above. I don’t even think most of them know they are doing it.
So, Sal et al. What is it that is stopping the tiny number of beneficial mutations that you unwittingly admit happens spreading in a population? As presumably what you give with one hand you take away with the other. There must be some other mechanism preventing that, otherwise you are basically agreeing with the evilutionists. That is the topic of this thread.
Go team!
What ridiculous objection? I think your objection to my setting the record straight is ridiculous.
Right, lets keep remembering which parts are random and which aren’t.
The pupil, the iris, the optic nerve, the tear duct system, the cornea, the ability to see colors- all random occurences, agreed?
Keeping them, that is the non-random part.
Your contention that fitness is not a useful concept.
You have moved on to discussing the inability of natural selection to evolve complex features, such as the eye. It seems to me that in order to discuss that, you have implicitly accepted that certain features have adaptive value (= high fitness), and you are now arguing that “what is created” isn’t random. But that is a different topic, much closer to the discussion of the evolution of complex features that is the staple of ID proponents like Behe.
Of course I am arguing that, this is the whole point of ID.
And your side is arguing that what is created IS random.
It would just be nice if your side didn’t always try to hide from that fact.
No.
None of those arrived in a single event. Nor just “randomly”. In fact they can’t really be said to be truly independent components that can be somehow added or subtracted from eyes. It’s not like there was ever a fully formed human eye, but without a cornea, or an optic nerve and then this randomly got added at some point.
That’s simply not how biological organs and tissues work. They grow by cells dividing and slowly altering gene-expression patterns. That’s also why they don’t evolve in the way you seem to imagine, as if some sort of seperate component is added in some sort of fully formed state, to an eye that doesn’t have it.
The human body also didn’t evolve by there being a naked and smooth, but limbless human torso without a head, or arms and legs, and then one day a left arm appeared, and then later a hand appeared on that left arm.
All of these structures have ancestral states that were different. Evolution works by duplicating, changing and repurposing things that already exist and perform other functions. And it does this by reprogramming with mutations in the DNA, how the cells that make up these higher-order structures, act and differentiate in response to local internal and external environmental cues.
None of the eye “components” you list were somehow added in the way you seem to imagine. As if mutations magically created a tearduct, and then “attached it” to an already fully formed eye or what have you.
Look, you just don’t know shit about biology in general and it’s painfully obvious. About how biological organisms form and take shape.
Read up on gene expression, cell differentiation, embryology and development. Yes, you can start with that terrible bastion of skeptical bias called wikipedia, as the articles on these subjects are actually quite decent. This will then start to make sense of how evolution changes and evolves new structures and functions from already existing tissues.
Regardless of whether that is true, it is independent of the reality of variation in fitness. Without fitness differences, designed mutations cannot spread or be maintained in the population, and complex adaptations will rapidly collapse by the ongoing introduction of mutations. ID needs purifying selection too.
I don’t have a side. I am an independent thinker 😉
Corneel,
Great, then you will have no problem acknowledging that all new innovation in evolution is random.
Others have a problem saying that out loud. I suspect its because if they articulate it too clearly in high school classes, they will get laughed at. Probably even in elementary school classes they would.
The term “random” is slightly too slippery for me, but I will concede that all new innovation* in evolution arises without forethought or intent.
Your turn; Do you have any problem acknowledging that there are situations in nature where the concept of fitness can be used meaningfully?
*Am I allowed to use the word “innovation” like that? It is you who chose that word, right?
I don’t know what you mean. Its more slippery than the way fitness is used on this forum?
You should. Both Joe and Mikkel have already explained that to you:
Random is a word that tends to get yanked out of context to mean something that was never said or intended. I’d like to avoid that.
Encore:
Your turn; Do you have any problem acknowledging that there are situations in nature where the concept of fitness can be used meaningfully?
The latter is true, but I explained above that the random stuff in biological evolution involves changes in DNA, not making random pupils, etc. And Rumraket explained the same thing to you.
So no. But I’m at least happy that you accept that better survival of some variations than others, variations in viability, is nonrandom.
Is that another way of saying that the natural selection is not necessarily not stochastic?
Because it’s true.
Natural selection doesn’t build anything. It just causes changes in gene frequencies. The genes have to be created by something else. Surely you know this.
This is not The Independent Thinker Zone.
Mung,
Come on Mung, don’t be a hypocrite. Creationists want to call natural selection “random” or “stochastic” for mere rhetorical effect.
So do you think that all outcomes have to be equiprobable for a process to be stochastic? Because that’s not the case.
Why don’t you first produce an example where a creationist actually says that natural selection is random. Because I don’t see much point arguing about what I perceive to be a straw-man.
ETA: And natural selection is stochastic. So why pretend otherwise?
Joe seems to think it can only mean a scenario in which all outcomes are equiprobable.
You know this because you are or were a creationist?
Is that the only way to know it?
That is one among many interpretations of the word. That’s also how, often times, creationists use the term. But that is also why I am asking phoodoo to clarify, because if we’re not using the word in the same way we could be saying a lot of things that we can’t agree on or even make sense of, simply because we might have been using different interpretations of it.
I think, but I could be wrong, that phoodoo actually isn’t all that clear on what he means by it. Take his sentence about eye-components being random. What does he really mean when he says the “cornea is random”? Does he mean “the cornea is equiprobable”? I hope that’s not what he means, because that doesn’t make any sense.
I suspect he means something like:
“According to evolution, the cornea came to exist by a process where mutations blindly assembled a clump of cells, and out of all the different possible ways to arrange such a number of cells, those one or few mutations happened by unfathomable luck (unfathomable luck because all the other options were equiprobable but nonfunctional) to create a fully functional cornea-like structure, which could be later “attached” to a (probably non-functional) eye”.
And therein lies a big problem, because lots of hidden assumptions that betray vast misunderstandings of genetics and biology is stuffed into the phrase “the cornea is random”. But I must press here that I could be wrong, and phoodoo could mean something else by the phrase “the cornea is random”. But we don’t know until he clarifies.
See what I mean about evolutionists liking to hide from their own theory like the plague?
The are asked to own up to their random mutations and natural selection definition of the theory of evolution, and suddenly they act like they never even heard of this theory. “Huh, huh, what, random mutations, whoever said random mutations, I don’t know what that word means, I didn’t say that, um, um, can we change the subject please. Are you recording this…”
Rumraket,
No, I suspect I mean the random mutations that your side has been saying for 100 years is the random mutations/natural selection paradigm of evolution.
The word scares the crap of out you guys when you have to be reminded of it.
This doesn’t clarify anything at all.
Mutations are random with respect to fitness. That’s what the term “random mutations” means. Which I can clarify further. It says that out of the distribution of possible fitness effects of mutations, fitness-increasing mutations are not more likely to happen during periods of adaptation.
Which I can also clarify by giving an example. It means that if you were to put a population of bacteria (say) into an environment that contains a carbohydrate they normally cannot metabolize (but would be useful to them if they could), the fact that they then are in this environment is not going to make the proportion of mutations that could potentially beneficially affect their ability to metabolize said carbohydrate, more likely than usual. Which basically implies that the bacteria (or a magic man in the sky) don’t somehow “know” that this carbohydrate is present and therefore aren’t causing specific and particularly useful mutations to happen that otherwise wouldn’t.
See, that’s what it means to clarify and explain something.
So, can you please explain it in more detail when you say the cornea is random. What does that mean? Parse it out into smaller bits for us.
Ok, well then let’s just call them random.
Random corneas, random tear ducts, random irises.
Or we can use Lucky if you prefer. Lucky with respect to fitness.
Says the most prolific poster
Mung seems not to understand what I mean by it, if that’s Mung’s interpretation.
Really? Well, after you quoted this from Joe:
What did you say?
So, you confirmed that creationists say it, but then you told me that they don’t say it (leaving aside that you’re a creationist yourself). Curious way for me to build a straw-man, by assuming that what you said is what you meant.
Oh, so you say it, even though you just said you don’t say it.
I don’t know if there’s a point to answering this, because I don’t know if you’ll change your claim next time around (without explanation), or from one sentence to the other. Will your memory last enough this time around?
So you too don’t think that natural selection is stochastic, even after Rumraket’s fine post and even after Joe explained it to you?
It’s the way you’ve been using it. And when I asked you to clarify you didn’t.
When you say “purely random” do you mean all outcomes are equiprobable or do you mean something else?
Are they random with respect to building building a cornea? Are they random with respect to the location and positioning of a cornea? Are they random with respect to the role that a cornea might play in an eye? I could go on and on. Do you know now what phodoo means?
Lucky corneas cobbled together by lucky accidents along with a bunch of other parts cobbled together by yet more lucky accidents. An eye!
And you people don’t believe in miracles? Hahaha. That’s exactly what you believe in. The miracles of evolution.
And saying evolution is not random isn’t going to change that no matter how often it is repeated.
Yes. Both of you mean, and happily demonstrate, that you’d rather use those words for obfuscation, than for understanding. No wonder you change your claims from one sentence to the next.
Corneas cobbled together by histories of variation and selection Mung. Histories of variation and selection. This is one of the reasons why not “all outcomes” are “equiprobable.” There’s a lot of history or variation and selection in those DNA molecules. Those histories bias what’s possible at each stage.
Your rhetoric doesn’t make evolution into miracles, it just makes you look like self-deceived fools.
Entropy,
Right, its us who are obfuscating.
Because saying random mutations doesn’t REALLY mean random mutations.
Would you prefer the word accidents? Accidents, combined with lucky timing, mixed with fortuitous locations, and just so happened to be needs?
Darwin seems to prefer the word luck.
Maybe he was superstitious.
Mung and phoodoo seem to have forgotten about selection again, and to think that the process is just mutation. Tiresome, no?
Again with this stupid “building a cornea” shit. Look, tissues just don’t work like that. They grow and differentiate, controlled by gene-regulatory networks.
This is outright nonsensical. It makes it seem as if a cornea is being built, and then randomly placed somewhere on the body. It doesn’t work like that.
What the hell does that even mean? A cornea is defined by it’s function: Refraction of light, and protection of the pupil and iris. If it is not located in a position to do those things then it isn’t a cornea.
I have absolutely no doubt that you can incoherently and cluelessly ramble about biology to the end of times.
No not even remotely. I still don’t know what he even means by the word random, he refuses to clarify.
And you seem to have been saying the exact same thing I scolded phoodoo for blathering about in this post. I’m sorry but there is no qualitative difference between what you said. It is equally nonsensical and unclear.
No, tissues generated by growing and dividing cells suffering mutations in gene-regulatory networks and protein coding genes, which are occuring randomly with respect to their effect on fitness, yet are being continously filtered by their phenotypic effect on the reproductive fitness of carriers. Among the mutations that happen, those that beneficially affect the sense of sight (by, among other things, affecting the refraction of light and the protective properties of the layer of cells covering the iris and pupil), are more likely to make it into the next generation because they help the carrying organism to survive and reproduce.
Even if it was true that I believed in miracles (it isn’t), that doesn’t mean it is okay for you to do it too. Two wrongs doesn’t make a right.
Sure, you can say that. Usually in experiments where the frequency is measured, they get numbers in the range of between 1% (that would be one in one hundred) and 20% (that would be one in five) of mutations that get fixed, which are “lucky” to have a beneficial effect on the reproductive capacity of the carrying organism. Those are the two extremes, the average rate is somewhere in between. Among the rest of fixed mutations, the majority are neutral or nearly so.
Despite the fact that the frequency of mutations that occur has a much lower fraction with a positive effect on fitness, selection is responsible for massively increasing their rate of fixation. And that is despite the fact that selection events are also “random” or “stochastic”, they are still systematically biased towards fixation of fitness-increasing mutations.
You keep ignoring selection, and it keeps royally fucking up your stupid simplistic rhetorical devices once it is properly included.
Rumraket,
Do you think pupil mutations happen often, but we just don’t notice them?
Do sometimes corneas accidentally mutate on organisms kneecaps, but they just aren’t very useful, so they don’t last long?
Rumraket,
I mean, I guess if you already have two eyes, and they happen to be in the right place to attach to optic nerves, and also happen to be at the end of a neck which can turn, and they can also focus and track together, a third or fourth one popping up on the bottom of your feet isn’t all that useful in most cases.
So whenever these accidents happen now and again, it just doesn’t become popular.
The back of the head might be a good place. Or a shoulder. Maybe eventually.
All of that was incredibly stupid. Incredibly.
It’s like the idea that humans evolved by first evolving a limbless and headless human torso, and without any organs. Then an arm but without a hand, spontaneously appears one day, and then this one-armed torso without a head and organs, has sex with another limbless torso, and their mostly-just-a-torso offspring has half-an-arm on the left side.
Look, I agree with you, if that was how evolution worked, it would be utterly fucking ridiculous. But it isn’t phoodoo. That isn’t how it works.
I am not sure forgotten is the right term. It’s just that when the “random” label seemed to stick better on mutation, they lost interest in discussing natural selection and fitness.
Mung, phoodoo,
Since we have now established that your beef is with random mutations, can we put the fitness/selection matter to rest?
Says you
You know some people have really great eyesight and it lasts much longer into old age for them? Other people are born pretty much completely blind. And everything in between. And that there are demonstrable genetic components to these factors?
But even so, we are much more likely to hear about people having problems, as they often times need help (like glasses), in contrast to people who see well, as to them seeing well just comes naturally. It’s not like you go to the opthamologist to tell him how great your vision is. You look out the window and everything is clear and sharp, so if you’ve never had poor vision, or even “normal” vision, then you’re not aware that your eyesight is unusually good. Or that it lasts longer into old age without you getting nearly as near-or-long-sighted. Rather, you will just not have that many problems compared to people with poor eyesight.
If you don’t have back problems, or are less susceptible to them due to genetics, you don’t go to the doctor to report your lack of back problems either. That’s just the nature of it.
Yes, I believe such mutations happen frequently enough to notice, and that we DO notice them if we pay attention and don’t, so to speak, have blinders on.
Another of your incredibly dumb comments. That isn’t how it works phoodoo. I think you should try to learn some basic biology and genetics.
Why not. What stops the accidents from happening anywhere?
What does that even mean? Please clarify with more detail and explanation.
Rumraket,
An accident caused a pupil, right smack in the middle of a light sensitive skin dimple. Why can’t it happen right smack in the middle of your toes?
Why do you think that is how it happened?
Because the very idea of “an accident caused a pupil right smack in the middle of a light sensitive skin dimple” is idiotic in the first place. They’re not components that get added or subtracted as if you’re assembling fucking legos.