Genetics

Joe Felsenstein is a world class geneticist. Joe is credited with coining the phrase “Muller’s Ratchet” after Nobel Prize winner Hermann Muller. Even though Joe is an evolutionist, Joe holds a unique position of being highly regarded by creationists for his work on population genetics. His work on Muller’s ratchet became a pillar of creationist population genetics. Most certainly creationists reject the bulk of his claims on one of his favorite topics, phylogeny, but they have high regard for his works on population genetics. Joe is incredibly generous in making the compilation of his research of 34 years into a freely downloadable textbook for students of population genetics. I can attest to the great effort Joe put into the book Read More ›

In 2013 Larry wrote On Beating Dead Horses

I was reminded of this while reading Salvador Corova’s latest post on Uncommon Descent because he refers to beating dead horses [If not Rupe and Sanford’s presentation (8/6/13), would you believe Wiki? In this case, yes]. I’m not going to make any comments. Read it and weep for the IDiots.

Well, it turned out Larry did make comments in that very same thread. 🙂

Sal begins with …

Evolutionists reluctantly admit most evolution is free of selection and therefore non-Darwinian …

I’ve been trying to teach this to the IDiots for over twenty years. Yet they still insist on referring to evolution as “Darwinism” and they continue to ignore random genetic drift in their attacks on evolution. About 99% of all IDiots have no idea what Sal is talking about. (Sal Cordova doesn’t know either.)

What Sal is saying is that practically all of the mutations being fixed in humans are either neutral or slightly deleterious. That has implications. It strongly suggests that most of our genome is junk.

Not quite, but almost, let me re-write the previous paragraph with errors corrected:
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[cross posted at CEU IDCS, Neutral theory and non-Darwinian evolution for newbies, Part 2] Part 1 laid out the claim that most nucleotides in populations cannot as a matter of principle be under strong selection, but must be neutral. MOST certainly does not mean ALL. Clearly some deleterious traits if they appear would be lethal, and conversely in certain contexts like antibiotic and pesticide resistance, some traits can be strongly selected for, but these cases do not speak for most of the rest of the molecules in various species. As one scientist said: Most molecular evolution is neutral. Done. PZ Myers Part 2 will focus on how neutral or nearly neutral traits in small finite populations get “fixed” where the Read More ›

[cross posted at CEU IDCS Neutral theory and non-Darwinian evolution for newbies, Part 1 ] The Darwinian view: Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers Charles Darwin Software that models the Darwinian view are genetic algorithms like Avida, Tierra, Ev, Steiner, Geometric and Cordova’s remarkable algorithm. Winston Ewert discusses these here. By way of contrast, I expressed my view as: Evolution in the wild slowly lets go of the good, and keeps adding up the bad. Software that models this view is Mendel’s Accountant. This view is also unwittingly modeled in most Read More ›

Walter Remine mentioned in passing about a parasite that slowly evolved to lose all its organs except for its anus. Unfortunately he didn’t recall the name of the creature or whether he got all the details right, but rather than peppered moths, if that creature really exists, it should be the poster child of Darwinism. I’ve argued almost from the beginning that most observed evolution in real time is loss of function. Loss of function is called reductive evolution. And the fact that most selectively favored adaptations involving function is loss of function rather than acquisition of function is what I refer to as Behe’s Rule. But far be for evolutionists to salute creationists and IDists who have pointed out Read More ›

Larry actually had some rare kind words for me. He said here Cordova is correct. Thanks for the kind words, Larry! Larry goes on to argue that organisms can tolerate lots of mutations and still reproduce. Yes, I agree, but reproduction is not the real thing in question, it is the existence of designs. I’ve argued even with creationists the issue isn’t whether mutations are “beneficial” or “deleterious” in the sense of differential reproductive success, the question is whether neutral evolution and real selection in the wild will tend to destroy design rather than build it. What’s the simplest fix to the problem of irreversibly accumulating bad mutations (as I illustrated here)? Simple, renormalize the selection coefficients and declare being Read More ›

Hats off to VJTorley for vindicating claims I’ve made about neutral theory (non-Darwinian evolution) for almost the last eight years at UD. He found this by PZ Myers: M]aybe we should be honest from the very beginning about the complexity of modern evolutionary theory and how it has grown to be very different from what Darwin knew. First thing you have to know: the revolution is over. Neutral and nearly neutral theory won. Fixation The Neutral Theory’s Achilles Heel Oh you mean PZ you all weren’t honest from the very beginning. 🙂 Just kidding! I would argue a slightly different Achilles heel, not the rate of “fixation” (awful term as it suggests improvement when in fact it could just as Read More ›