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Random Degradation and Natural Deselection

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Truth in advertising would have random mutation and natural selection renamed to reflect what’s really happening.

Orthodox evolutionists tell us that mutations are random when plotted against fitness but this is not the case. Mutations are random when plotted against position in the genome. An error can occur anywhere and it’s pretty much an unpredictable location at this point. But the effect of errors are certainly not random. These errors in duplication are occuring in highly optimized systems and as anyone with common sense and a bit of insight into the behavior of complex machines knows, random failures seldom if ever result in improved performance. Random mutations are in fact random degradations. I have yet to see compelling evidence that any so-called random mutation resulted in improved performance except perhaps a few trivial and arguable examples of an organism escaping the effect of a toxin by minor change in an enzyme which may very well be a directed change. The vast majority of random mutations, if not all random mutations, are neutral at best and immediately fatal at worst.

Since natural selection must by definition act on changes in fitness (differential reproduction), and those changes in fitness caused by random mutation are always or almost always detrimental, natural selection is really natural deselection as it works in almost all cases to deselect organisms whose genome has wandered from its optimized incarnation through random degradation.

Orthodox evolution theory’s weakness isn’t survival of the fittest. That’s readily explainable by the theory of random degradation and natural deselection. The weakness is arrival of the fittest. If there were a law requiring truth in advertising for orthodox evolution theory the problem of arrival of the fittest would be more easily understood.

Comments
Dave, It truly is a good way to shine light on the subject. Similar to what Jehu mentioned. It is degeneration, loss of information, not gain, loss of function, not increased ability. We see it all across the spectrum. For example, just look at the many breeds of dogs. Some are so specialized that they now have severe problems associated with their breeding. This indicates strain on the DNA system, not gain. This is a very demonstrable fact in genetics as well as known disease in breeds. This happens in nature as well. Polar bears loose their pigment. This is a loss of information, not gain. Specialized survival thru selective breeding of natural environments. But if we toss polar bears into the lower 48 states, what will happen? External variances happen from informations already available to the genome. What we observe is a straining of that information thru environmental sieves. Its beautiful to see, but it does not explain the origination of information, only loss of such.Michaels7
January 18, 2007
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We might add that the prevailing theory that serves as an adjunct to Darwinism, is that of a gradualistic (Lyelllian) geology. There's a lot of evidence suggesting that catastrophism better explains much of the fossil record. Seen this way, the fossil record becomes simply a record of the catstrophe survivors, which only serves then to underline the incredible "stasis" of species. (As you've pointed out before, "things suddenly appear, and then suddenly disappear", and they remain fairly the same in the interim.) So how did those "arrivers" arrive?PaV
January 18, 2007
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[...] Dave Scott has a good article over at Uncommon Descent arguing that mutations, the driving generative force behind the theory of evolution, should be more accurately called degradations. [...]Random Degradation » Nathan’s Blog
January 18, 2007
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One of the (many) miracles of living systems is that they have survived and made viable copies of themselves for so long, in spite of random errors. Human engineers have produced nothing anywhere close to this kind of self-replicating and self-correcting design.GilDodgen
January 18, 2007
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Just curious, I'm fairly interested in the idea of no mutation being an actual net gain in functional genetic information. So far, the idea is good. However, someone pointed me to the true acid test recently, and after looking at it, it seems that a new function was added, new genes were sequenced, and no other function was destroyed (other than the initial removal of one of the genes involved in the multipart structure of lactose digestion). It seems that none of the "new" genes were the same as the old genes that were removed. Does this not constitute an addition in functional genetic information without the removal or degradation of another? Nathan www.nathanrice.orgnathan
January 18, 2007
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Orthodox evolutionists tell us that mutations are random when plotted against fitness but this is not the case. Are you suggesting that because 1/3 of all mutations are not beneficial, 1/3 are not neutral, and 1/3 are not bad that therefore the effect of mutations are not "random"? Also aren't these two statements: Mutations are random when plotted against position in the genome. and minor change in an enzyme which may very well be a directed change. Contradictory?franky172
January 18, 2007
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