The “Eyes” Have It!!

PaV, here are a couple of peer reviewed papers and points you may appreciate: As to the 'waiting time' problem of population genetics which you touched upon, Dr. Sanford has this recent paper:

The waiting time problem in a model hominin population - 2015 Sep 17 John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner Excerpt: The program Mendel’s Accountant realistically simulates the mutation/selection process,,, Given optimal settings, what is the longest nucleotide string that can arise within a reasonable waiting time within a hominin population of 10,000? Arguably, the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer), for a single point mutation is not timely adaptation in the face of any type of pressing evolutionary challenge. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. This represents at least 75 million nucleotide changes in the human lineage, many of which must encode new information. While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution. In this light, we suggest that a string of two specific mutations is a reasonable upper limit, in terms of the longest string length that is likely to evolve within a hominin population (at least in a way that is either timely or meaningful). Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect), in terms of the evolution of modern man. It is widely thought that a larger population size can eliminate the waiting time problem. If that were true, then the waiting time problem would only be meaningful within small populations. While our simulations show that larger populations do help reduce waiting time, we see that the benefit of larger population size produces rapidly diminishing returns (Table 4 and Fig. 4). When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573302/ Genetic Entropy – references to several peer reviewed numerical simulations analyzing and falsifying all flavors of Darwinian evolution (neutral theory included),, (via John Sanford and company) http://www.geneticentropy.org/#!properties/ctzx The Real Barrier to Unguided Human Evolution - Ann Gauger - April 25, 2012 Excerpt: Their results? They calculated it would take six million years for a single base change to match the target and spread throughout the population, and 216 million years to get both base changes necessary to complete the eight base binding site. Note that the entire time span for our evolution from the last common ancestor with chimps is estimated to be about six million years. Time enough for one mutation to occur and be fixed, by their account. To be sure, they did say that since there are some 20,000 genes that could be evolving simultaneously, the problem is not impossible. But they overlooked this point. Mutations occur at random and most of the time independently, but their effects are not independent. (Random) Mutations that benefit one trait (are shown to) inhibit another. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/04/the_real_barrie058951.html

Moreover, population genetics, besides falsifying Darwinian evolution because of the waiting time problem, also casts Charles Darwin's main claim to scientific fame, i.e. Natural Selection itself, under the bus:

Haldane's Dilemma Excerpt: Haldane, (in a seminal paper in 1957—the ‘cost of substitution’), was the first to recognize there was a cost to selection which limited what it realistically could be expected to do. He did not fully realize that his thinking would create major problems for evolutionary theory. He calculated that in man it would take 6 million years to fix just 1,000 mutations (assuming 20 years per generation).,,, Man and chimp differ by at least 150 million nucleotides representing at least 40 million hypothetical mutations (Britten, 2002). So if man evolved from a chimp-like creature, then during that process there were at least 20 million mutations fixed within the human lineage (40 million divided by 2), yet natural selection could only have selected for 1,000 of those. All the rest would have had to been fixed by random drift - creating millions of nearly-neutral deleterious mutations. This would not just have made us inferior to our chimp-like ancestors - it surely would have killed us. Since Haldane's dilemma there have been a number of efforts to sweep the problem under the rug, but the problem is still exactly the same. ReMine (1993, 2005) has extensively reviewed the problem, and has analyzed it using an entirely different mathematical formulation - but has obtained identical results. John Sanford PhD. - "Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome" - pg. 159-160 Kimura's Quandary Excerpt: Kimura realized that Haldane was correct,,, He developed his neutral theory in response to this overwhelming evolutionary problem. Paradoxically, his theory led him to believe that most mutations are unselectable, and therefore,,, most 'evolution' must be independent of selection! Because he was totally committed to the primary axiom (neo-Darwinism), Kimura apparently never considered his cost arguments could most rationally be used to argue against the Axiom's (neo-Darwinism's) very validity. John Sanford PhD. - "Genetic Entropy and The Mystery of the Genome" - pg. 161 - 162 Kimura (1968) developed the idea of “Neutral Evolution”. If “Haldane’s Dilemma” is correct, the majority of DNA must be non-functional. – Sanford "many genomic features could not have emerged without a near-complete disengagement of the power of natural selection" Michael Lynch The Origins of Genome Architecture, intro "the uncritical acceptance of natural selection as an explanatory force for all aspects of biodiversity (without any direct evidence) is not much different than invoking an intelligent designer" Michael Lynch The Origins of Genome Architecture, p 368 "a relative lack of natural selection may be the prerequisite for major evolutionary advance" Mae Wan Ho Beyond neo-Darwinism - Evolution by Absence of Selection

In other words, Neutral theory, and the concept of junk DNA itself, was not developed because of any empirical observation, but was actually developed because it was forced upon Darwinists by the mathematics of population genetics. In plain English, neutral theory, and the concept of junk DNA, is actually the result of a theoretical failure of Darwinism within the mathematics of population genetics! Here are a few quotes on the implications of neutral theory:

(With the adoption of the 'neutral theory' of evolution by prominent Darwinists, and the casting aside of Natural Selection as a major player in evolution, William J Murray comments),,, "One wonders what would have become of evolution had Darwin originally claimed that it was simply the accumulation of random, neutral variations that generated all of the deeply complex, organized, interdependent structures we find in biology? Would we even know his name today? What exactly is Darwin really famous for now? Advancing a really popular, disproven idea (of Natural Selection), along the lines of Luminiferous Aether? Without the erroneous but powerful meme of “survival of the fittest” to act as an opiate for the Victorian intelligentsia and as a rationale for 20th century fascism, how might history have proceeded under the influence of the less vitriolic maxim, “Survival of the Happenstance”?" - William J Murray On Enzymes and Teleology - Ann Gauger - July 19, 2012 Excerpt: People have been saying for years, "Of course evolution isn't random, it's directed by natural selection. It's not chance, it's chance and necessity." But in recent years the rhetoric has changed. Now evolution is constrained. Not all options are open, and natural selection is not the major player, it's the happenstance of genetic drift that drives change. But somehow it all happens anyway, and evolution gets the credit. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/on_enzymes_and062391.html Majestic Ascent: Berlinski on Darwin on Trial - David Berlinski - November 2011 Excerpt: The publication in 1983 of Motoo Kimura's The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution consolidated ideas that Kimura had introduced in the late 1960s. On the molecular level, evolution is entirely stochastic, and if it proceeds at all, it proceeds by drift along a leaves-and-current model. Kimura's theories left the emergence of complex biological structures an enigma, but they played an important role in the local economy of belief. They allowed biologists to affirm that they welcomed responsible criticism. "A critique of neo-Darwinism," the Dutch biologist Gert Korthof boasted, "can be incorporated into neo-Darwinism if there is evidence and a good theory, which contributes to the progress of science." By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/11/berlinski_on_darwin_on_trial053171.html

And, as if the waiting time problem and the casting of Natural Selection under the bus were not bad enough, Donald Hoffman has, through rigorous treatment of population genetics, extended Plantinga's 'Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism' and made it a much more devastating 'Evolutionary Argument against Reality' More specifically, Donald Hoffman has, through numerous computer simulations of population genetics, proved that if Darwinian evolution were actually true then all of our perceptions of reality would be illusory.

The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/ Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark Quote: “,,,evolution is a mathematically precise theory. We can use the equations of evolution to check this out. We can have various organisms in artificial worlds compete and see which survive and which thrive, which sensory systems or more fit. A key notion in those equations is fitness.,,, fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601

Thus, in what should be needless to say, a worldview that undermines the scientific method itself by holding all our observations of reality are illusory is NOT a worldview that can be firmly grounded within the scientific method! Moreover, completely contrary to materialistic premises, conscious observation, far from being unreliable and illusory, is experimentally found to be far more integral to reality, i.e. far more reliable of reality, than the math of population genetics predicts. In fact, in the following experiment it was found that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.

New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html

Apparently science itself could care less if atheists are forced to believe, because of the math of population genetics, that their observations of reality are illusory! Thus PaV, the mathematics of population genetics is not kind to Darwinian claims in the least. Three devastating problems are revealed by population genetics. The Waiting Time problem, Natural selection is ineffective, and perception of reality itself become illusory. I would say that is three strikes and Darwinism is out! :) bornagain77

BA77: Thanks for the correction. Obviously I read it in a hurry. The line that really sticks out for me is this:

“The response that the photon generates survives all the way to the level of our awareness despite the ubiquitous background noise. Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”

This is an admission that modern-day technology, as advanced as it now is, cannot duplicate what has happened in nature. To then assert that this scientific "miracle" occurred through random mutations is simply stunning. It defies reason. While I'm on a roll, let me just add this about the neo-Darwinian rescue of Darwinism (for, indeed, it was a rescue since Darwinism was almost entirely abandoned after the discovery of Mendelian genetics): Malthus pointed out that populations grow geometrically, while resources grow linearly. This was a pivotal point for Darwin in his thinking since it seemed to give impetus to the power of NS. What Malthus is really pointing out---and this applies, then, to population genetics, or, neo-Darwinism---is the "normalization" of populations. Fred Hoyle in his book, The Mathematics of Evolution, makes this his first point against neo-Darwinism, demonstrating that when "normalization" is taken into account, straight exponential growth no longer applies, and that changes in populations that are thought to take place readily, actually take much longer to bring about. Yet, the really devastating blow to all of this is the following: populations don't 'double' and then fall back to their normal range; they always stay in their normal range. This means that the 'young' who are born, e.g., are the ones who are preyed upon. If, then, Darwin thought that the real power of NS is derived from this 'winnowing' of populations, let us note that this 'winnowing' is likely a very random process itself. IOW, if a bird is going to grow up and be very colorful, attracting many mates, and siring many offspring, thus multiplying its numbers within the populations (i.e., a selection effect), the reality is that none of this will help the young bird escape its predators. Its eventual coloring helps it not one bit in escaping death. It might be the first one to fall out of the nest. Therefore, if the 'winnowing' of populations which we call "normalization" occurs in every generation, and is sizable---probably a two-fold, if not a three-fold decrease in new offspring---then this tremendous 'neutral' elimination of new members of a population must slow NS down to almost nothing. You would expect populations to continue on as they are without change for long periods of time. This is what the fossil record in fact records. I guess the only way around this is to do what population geneticists do: say that the 'real' change in populations takes place in small populations. But, of course, in small populations any needed mutation takes much longer to arrive, which would, again, slow down the effects of NS, and, further, small populations are subject to extinction, which doesn't seem to make this a good long-term solution. All this said, the point here is that Darwin, bereft of the actual rules of genetic inheritance, seized upon Malthus' proposition regarding the disproportion between resources and growth of population as the driving force of his idea; but, in actual fact, this disproportion, results in the "normalization" of the population, and, so, actually works contra NS, and therefore, Darwinism. PaV

In a Neil Degrasse Tyson Simulated Universe, detecting a single photon is merely a programming step. Easy peasy. In a Darwinistic Unguided NS & RM world, detecting a single photon is merely impossible. Oops. ppolish

They overturned the 5 to 7 claim!

Research,, has shown that humans can detect the presence of a single photon, the smallest measurable unit of light. Previous studies had established that human subjects acclimated to the dark were capable only of reporting flashes of five to seven photons.,,, The gathered data from more than 30,000 trials demonstrated that humans can indeed detect a single photon incident on their eye with a probability significantly above chance. "What we want to know next is how does a biological system achieve such sensitivity? How does it achieve this in the presence of noise? http://phys.org/news/2016-07-humans-smallest.html#jCp

of related note:

Molecular Biology - 19th Century Materialism meets 21st Century Quantum Mechanics - video https://www.facebook.com/philip.cunningham.73/videos/vb.100000088262100/1141908409155424/?type=2&theater

bornagain77