That is the question they are asking over at Science Friday.
Now, scientists are questioning whether that’s actually true—or if mutation is more likely to occur in some parts of the genome than others. New research published in the journal Nature this week looks at just that question, in a common weed called Arabidopsis thaliana. After following 24 generations of plants for several years and then sequencing the offspring, the team found that some genes are far less likely to mutate than others. And those genes are some of the most essential to the function of DNA itself, where a mutation could be fatal. Conversely, the genes most likely to mutate were those associated with the plant’s ability to respond to its environment—potentially a handy trick for a highly adaptable weed.
Amazing how the forces which cause mutation seemingly discriminate.
Here is another look at the same discovery:
https://www.livescience.com/non-random-dna-mutations
Of course they are more likely in some parts of the genome. But that has nothing to do with whether they are random. “Random” does not imply “with a uniform probability distribution.”
And here is a completely unrelated article which appeared recently:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/01/13/world/icefish-colony-discovery-scn/index.html
The article is about the recent discovery of a colony of icefish. It states:
“Icefish are the only vertebrates to have no red blood cells. … To survive at such low temperatures, it has evolved an anti-freeze protein in its transparent blood that stops ice crystals from growing.”
Imagine the transitional steps from blood which contains red blood cells to blood which does not. Imagine the DNA coding required to synthesize a non toxic antifreeze protein.
I will sit back and wait for the ID opponents to explain these marvels.
Neil,
“Random” at its most basic level means “with no discernable pattern.” If a data set does have a discernable pattern, one may conclude that the data set reflects a non-random cause. The data set in question here has a discernable pattern.
Only 24 generations …only a few years …
I don’t understand one thing… did this weed start to mutate just now? What did it for the last millions of years? I would expect, that the part of genome they looked at was already mutated …
The same for viruses… i hear all the time, that e.g. coronavirus mutates very fast… so how it is possible, that after millions of years of existence we can still recognize a new mutation… i would expect, that after millions of years, everything is over- mutated…
Could some smart Darwinist explain ?
Science Daily 2021
Martin_r/6
From the same paper
So maybe this could be a source of all that new genetic information that neo-Paleyists are so concerned about.
Seversky, you have missed the point again … i posted the paper here, because it is showing, that the same mutation at the same place in various species don’t necessary means a common descent …. As you can see, there might be other explanation ….
Seversky, will you comment on my 5 ?
That is not what mathematicians mean by “random”. And it is not what biologists mean by “random”.
What role do built-in repair mechanisms play here, in making DNA mutations look less random? I.e., can they happen at nearly any point, but repair mechanisms fix them at a subset of those points only, leaving other damage unrepaired? (Haven’t gotten to the paper yet.)
Neil –
The biological meaning of “random” is that they occur without respect to the potential usefulness. However, the mutations found are much more highly correlated with usefulness (by not mutating genes that are dangerous to mutate) than others. Therefore, by the biological definition, these are non-random.
Neil, “That is not what mathematicians mean by “random”.”
First, It is certainly what Darwinists themselves mean by “random” in their theory.
Secondly, since when have Darwinists ever really cared what mathematicians have to say about their theory? i.e. “The Wistar Symposium anyone?
Supplemental notes
etc.. etc.. etc..
Also of supplemental note; Wolfgang (not even wrong) Pauli himself stated, “they (Darwinists) use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’”
The slow curve,
“We conclude that epigenome-associated mutation bias2 reduces the occurrence of deleterious mutations in Arabidopsis, “
Now the fast break,
“… challenging the prevailing paradigm that mutation is a directionless force in evolution.”
If all life from simple to complex has the goal to survive, guess what? If there is a single word implying a goal ,aim, purpose , etc then you don’t need to be a “scientist” to understand there are no random mutations. Not even a single one. Could be erroneous mutations induced by external factors that superseds the capacity of adaptation .
Erroneous is not equal to randomness ,erroneous means there is a goal and that goal wasn’t achieved because the system adaptation was overpowered .
Neil Rickert:
I was going to put my two-cents in but you’ve covered much of the core ideas.
I think I would just add two things:
This is not all that new or revolutionary; I’ve been hearing about certain genomic domains being more prone to mutations than others for years. And I think some of that past research has prompted conclusions by folks like Dr James Shapiro.
What modern biologists ACTUALLY say is that mutations are random with respect to fitness. That is: irregardless of where they occur, particular mutations are not predictably beneficial.
No JVL, Darwin’s theory holds that mutations are random, i.e. unguided, period. Completely random mutations are the friggin teleological denying core of Darwin’s theory for crying out loud!
Moreover JVL, for you to claim this (i.e. directed mutations) is not ‘revolutionary’ whilst mentioning James Shapiro in the same breath would be a big surprise for Shapiro who holds that this “has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences.”
Moreover, even your attempted dodge to try to get around the fact that mutations are now known to not be truly random, as Darwinists hold as a foundational presupposition, and to try to claim that mutations are only held to be random ‘with regard to fitness’, i.e. to the needs of the individual, is now known to be a false claim in and of itself.
Bornagain77: No JVL, Darwin’s theory holds that mutations are random, i.e. unguided, period.
If you choose to not keep up with the latest iterations then you’re going to look foolish arguing against something that is no longer considered accurate. Decent scientific views adapt to new data and results.
Mutations are more likely in some genomic domains than others; that has been clearly established. But, the mutations whenever they occur, wherever they occur are random with respect to fitness. They are not predictably beneficial to the life form. The rate of mutations is separate from they’re being random with respect to mutation.
Moreover JVL, for you to claim this (i.e. directed mutations)
Something I did not say or support. Do you really expect people to want to discuss these issues with you when you can’t even accurately hear what someone has said/written? Perhaps you don’t really care if anyone seriously tries to discuss these issues with you if they have a different opinion from yours. That would explain why you don’t bother to really listen and respond. That would explain why you make a lot of assumptions and pre-judge others. You can’t see any way you could be incorrect (your view is unfalsifiable) so it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. That does explain a lot actually.
JVL, “If you choose to not keep up with the latest iterations (or Darwin’s theory)”,,,
LOL, too funny, the only thing that we have any real evidence for “evolution”‘ is with Darwin’s theory itself.
Darwin’s theory is found to be false in core presuppositions, (completely random mutations in this case), and Darwin’s theory itself will, time and time again, simply “evolve” so as to try to avoid any potential falsification from empirical evidence.
As Cornelius Hunter put the ‘no bad news’ problem with unfalsifiable “Darwinian science”:
Despite whatever lies JVL may try to tell, and due to Darwinists refusing to adhere to the criteria of falsification, Darwin’s theory simply does not qualify as a hard and testable science.
Again, Darwin’s theory simply does not qualify as a hard and testable science. And is, in fact, more properly classified as being a pseudoscience, even a religion for atheists, rather than as being a hard science.
Bornagain77: Darwin’s theory itself will, time and time again, simply “evolve” so as to try to avoid any potential falsification from empirical evidence.
Any good scientific view should be updated and modified when new evidence and data is discovered. It’s non-sensical to defend an old text down to every dotted I and crossed t. You’d be a fool to do that when new knowledge (which doesn’t contradict the basic core idea) is accepted.
Perhaps in theology you have to continue to argue over the same old statements and proclamations. But that’s not the way science works. A long time ago Aristotle was considered the ‘science’ expert. New data and evidence showed he got some things wrong. That didn’t mean we threw out everything he said or wrote, just the stuff that was shown to be incorrect. Newton came up with a new paradigm/system of thinking about the natural world. And it worked better than Aristotle’s so we adopted it. Then, a bit over one hundred years ago Einstein found an even better model of mass and motion and time and so we supplanted some of what Newton said with the new, better ideas.
Darwin got a lot of things right, not all though. The reason he is still referred to is because aside from getting things generally right (and, by the way, he never, ever spoke of mutations since he knew nothing about modern genetic) he presented a well-reasoned, detailed argument for his conclusions which changed the way biologists in particular looked at the history of life forms on Earth. And, while his statements and hypotheses have been altered and updated and refined he was mostly right and he clearly was one of the first to blaze a fruitful and insightful trail.
If you want to argue against ‘Darwinism’ then please address the updated and modern version. That means learning what that updated and modern version actually says. And, regarding mutations, the statement is: mutations are random with respect to fitness. Maybe in 10 or 20 or 100 years that will have been altered or changed because of new discoveries and evidence. But it’s silly to argue against an old idea no one supports anymore. And, like I said, Darwin himself could never have possibly made any kind of statement about mutations. He spoke of variation, inheritable variation. And slow, fairly steady change and modifications. He saw clear evidence that the variation was sufficient based on observed breeding histories. And he knew that some variation was selected against while some was ‘preferred’. He got the general idea right.
JVL, “Any good scientific view should be updated and modified when new evidence and data is discovered.”
You are, as usual, wrong. Newton’s theory was replaced not modified.,, Einstein’s relativity and Quantum Mechanics have not changed one iota.
Far from being a sign of ‘good science’, the fact that Darwin’s theory keeps modifying and adding ‘epicycles’ to avoid falsification is a sure sign we are dealing with a pseudoscience, (Lakatos and Kuhn). instead of a hard science.
🙂 …and what is considered accurate today will be no longer considerate accurate tomorrow?
When (some) atheists preach about ” the science of evolution” they always talk like they are the owners of absolute truth they are so full of them , so arrogant and next day they tell us with stright face that they were talking nonsense but…today, today they are not talking nonsense because science finally discovered the final-final truth . Hahaha!
Random only with respect to fitness ? What about other respects? 🙂
You know that this is absolutely irrelevant for the subject discussed(non random mutations)
Bornagain77: Far from being a sign of ‘good science’, the fact that Darwin’s theory keeps modifying and adding ‘epicycles’ to avoid falsification is a sure sign we are dealing with a pseudoscience, (Lakatos and Kuhn). instead of a hard science.
Other opinions are available.
Regardless, if you want to argue against modern evolutionary theory then argue against what it actually says not what you think is says or what it used to say. You seem to be a bit confused over these things; why else would you say:
Darwin’s theory is found to be false in core presuppositions, (completely random mutations in this case),
since Darwin knew nothing about mutations. Could it be that modern evolutionary theory doesn’t say what you think it says? Maybe you would actually agree with it if you understood it? Maybe you should read about it instead of mining for quotes which you think tear it down? Maybe you should consider your own pre-held biases and prejudices?
Maybe you should consider why you hate it so much? Is it because it seems an attack on your faith and theology? Some Christians find unguided evolutionary theory perfectly acceptable. Is it because you want people to see and appreciate the divine the way you do in every facet and aspect of the world and all you get from some evolutionary supporters is derision and insults? Does the behaviour of some supporters change the truth of the theory? Is it because unguided evolutionary theory questions your feeling that you are here for a purpose, a cosmic purpose, and if that is not true then your life and goals and sacrifices don’t have the meaning you thought they did? Do your feelings change the truth of the theory?
Why do you hate unguided evolutionary theory so much? What difference does it make to you if some people think it’s true?
“Other opinions are available.”
And those ‘other opinions’, like your ‘opinion’, are wrong.
Darwin Evolution is a unfalsifiable pseudoscience. Period!
🙂 This is an old tactic of evolutionists: “you don’t understand , you are not informed , blabla … is not random random it’s random only with respect to fitness…”. 🙂
When you know the truth you hate the lie when you like the lie you hate the truth.
🙂 Oh dear he didn’t know about basics(1+1=2) of life , but somehow he knew (the result of an complex ecuation) that evolution is true?
Bornagain77:
It’s pretty amazing really. You have spent possibly hundreds of hours collating a searchable collection of quotes (a database? I would think a spreadsheet would be too unwieldy.) decrying unguided evolutionary theory. Why did you do that?
Do you ever regret spending all that time railing against unguided evolutionary theory instead of going to the theatre, having a nice night out with friends and family, going for a long walk in the woods with your spouse, spending time with your offspring, going outside late at night and gazing up at the stars and marvel at the cosmic beauty of it all, just kicking back and enjoying the NFL playoffs?
You’ve spent a lot of your precious time on Earth attacking an idea that is, as far as I can tell, not a threat to you, your way of life or your beliefs. Why would you do that? Why would an intelligent, insightful, thoughtful person spend so much time on something they don’t believe? Is it really that much of an existential threat?
Hate is a commitment of time and effort and caring. Do you really care so much about unguided evolutionary theory to spend hours, days, weeks, years of your life attacking it?
Whose will are you serving?
JVL holds that Darwin’s theory is “not a threat to you, your way of life or your beliefs.”
I wish that JVL could go back in time and explain exactly why Darwin’s theory is “not a threat to you, your way of life or your beliefs” to the over 200 million victims of Darwin’s murderous ‘Death as the Creator” ideology.
So JVL, the real question is not why do I hate Darwin’s murderous ideology, that much is abundantly obvious, the real question why do you, JVL, love your “Death as the Creator” worldview that has had unimaginably horrid consequences for mankind?
In this post an hour ago, I argue that Darwinian evolution is self refuting.
It cannot possibly have happened or else every ecology would eventually be destroyed. But they are not.
https://uncommondescent.com/darwinism/is-darwinism-an-empty-theory/#comment-745010
Bornagain77:
So, you condemn a scientific theory because of the way some have chosen to interpret it in a social way? Isn’t that equivalent to me judging Christianity based on the crusaders who, apparently, made the streets of Jerusalem run with blood? Or the Christians who hunted down and killed the Cathars (another Christian sect) because they disagreed with them?
You would say those Christians misinterpreted part of Christian doctrine or only used particular passages to justify their actions.
I would say those who declare: this is the way unguided nature works therefore we should behave the same to have made a mistake. You cannot justify acting like animals because that’s how animals behave. You should not flail around finding a scientific theory that you think justifies the behaviour you have probably already decided to carry out. As Kairosfocus would say: you don’t get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’.
The law of gravity doesn’t justify pushing people off of cliffs. The theory of unguided evolutionary theory does not grant ideologues the right to kill, torture, imprison or even marginalise those they think they are in conflict with.
Groups of humans have been attacking and persecuting and killing other groups of people for millions of years. Just because some of those groups have, in the last 150 years, chosen to claim inspiration from a statement about biological systems does not invalidate the statement or justify their actions.
You attack a theory when you should be attacking the hideous and awful people who probably would have done what they did even if Darwin have never been born. Did Genghis Khan refer to Darwin? Did Alexander the Great refer to Darwin? Did those pursuing witches in the 17th century refer to Darwin? Did the Spanish Conquistadors refer to Darwin when they killed hundreds of thousands of native Americans searching for gold? Did the Irish refer to Darwin when they were bombing and killing each other during our lifetimes?
‘Darwinism’ is not the problem; evil, hateful people are the problem.
“‘Darwinism’ is not the problem; evil, hateful people are the problem.”
Really??? But alas, evil does not even exist in your “ANTI-moral” Darwinian worldview. i.e. there is “no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
You see JVL, it is classical catch 22 trap for you. You desperately want to condemn some people as being obviously, and objectively, ‘evil’, (i.e. Hitler, Stalin, Mao), so as to vainly try to separate Darwin’s foundational influence on those tyrants from their evil atrocities, but alas, without God you simply have no objective moral standard by which to condemn anyone as being evil (or being good for that matter).
As C.S. Lewis explained, “A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”
You see JVL, you need God just to be able to condemn anyone, or anything, as being objectively evil in the first place.
The moral argument for God is summed up at the 4:36 minute mark of the following video and can be stated as such:
Premise 1: If God does not exist, then objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Premise 2: Objective moral values and duties do exist.
Conclusion: Therefore, God exists.
And as Dr. Egnor recently pointed out, “every twinge of human conscience proves His existence.”
You can’t judge Christianity if you really believe in darwinism. If darwinism is true EVERYTHING that happens in this world is the result of evolution(including Christianity, wars, Hitler,etc.) therefore there is nothing good or evil just a random manifestation of a random evolution on the speck of dust in this universe. 🙂
But you do judge Christianity so you don’t really believe in darwinism but (strangely enough) you believe in the moral law promoted by Judeo-Christianity . Please use only the tools darwinian evolution fairytale provides to you: survival of the fittest . Stay away from moral law because good and evil do not really exist they are just in your wild imagination.
Martin_r/9
The passage you quoted from the paper claims that their research showed that some regions of the genome experienced a higher rate of mutations than others. What is the problem with that?
Bornagain77/31
I suspect that is what terrifies you and other Christians the most, that there is no God, no good, no evil just a vast, pitiless universe that is utterly indifferent to our existence.
That is what is, however, it has nothing to do with how we ought to behave towards one another.
What about all the tyrants who existed and the atrocities that were committed before 1859? What about the rampant anti-Semitism endemic in the good Christian nations of Europe for centuries before that? How was Darwin to blame for all that?
I can judge that what Hitler and Stalin and Mao did was evil just as I can condemn the atrocities committed against the Jews for centuries before. I don’t need a god to tell me that treating fellow human beings in those appalling ways was an offense against humanity. I can see that for myself. Can’t you?
Geometry is not the same as morality.
This again? Okay.
Objective moral values, if they are objective, must exist whether or not they are perceived by or otherwise within the awareness of the subject. In other words the existence of subjects who might be aware of them is irrelevant to their existence and that must be true even of the greatest of all subjects, the Christian God. Objective moral values could exist without God.
Premise denied.
Unproven assertion.
Premise denied.
Non sequitur
The argument fails.
>”I suspect that is what terrifies you and other Christians the most, that there is no God, no good, no evil just a vast, pitiless universe that is utterly indifferent to our existence.”
What concerns me is that people will take to heart the saying that without God, all is permitted. Or follow it to its logical conclusion. I realize people of all belief systems have done evil things. I’m most concerned about those systems nearest in time, less concerned about things in the more distant past. Things closer would seem to be more of a threat (Communism, e.g.). We’re not living in the middle ages anymore. At least I’m not. I try to proportion my concern to the actual risk.
JVL,
Why doesn’t BA77 just go to a movie?? Bury your head in the sand much? Good things like liberty require eternal vigilance. I’m glad some people here are exhibiting that vigilance and not simply turning to pleasure and distraction to avoid thinking about where we’re headed.
Actually, this is not the case. Moral *values,* which are subjective, could exist without God, but moral *truths,* which are objective, could not. Objective moral truths (The Ten Commandments, Sermon on the Mount, Natural Moral Law, Golden Rule, Reason’s rules, etc.) are also objective moral laws, which cannot exist in the absence of a Lawgiver.
🙂 If there is no ought then why in the world you tell us what we ought to think? You don’t need to shoot yourself in the foot every time you post a comment.
Martin_r @ 5 –
Err, no. There are a lot of other mutations of the weed(*). But the experiment only started following those lines for 24 generations.
(*) I did my PhD in a plant sciences institute when A. thaliana started to become a model organism. I was in the cereals department, so of course we would disparate it as “the weed”. For extra fin, when talking to a plant molecular biologist, call it by its common name, thale cress, and see how long it takes them to realise what you are talking about.
Barry @ 4 (and a few people subsequently) –
Hi, professor of statistics here. That’s not what we mean by “random”. For a lot of random processes there is indeed a very discernable pattern, which is why we model them with techniques such as random fields. For example, a common pattern is that things that are physically closer to each other are more similar. This creates a correlation that varies in space, and for a general class of correlations, this can be modelled as a random field.
One could actually model mutation rates as a random field across the genome (because you would expect positions close to each other to have more similar mutation rates).
Bornagain77: But alas, evil does not even exist in your “ANTI-moral” Darwinian worldview. i.e. there is “no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
Uh huh. I think if you ask a wide selection of grown ups if Hitler was evil they’d say yes, he was. I agree with and refer to those notions which are common ‘knowledge’.
We’ve probably exhausted this particular conversation; you just seem to be at the ‘you can’t use that term because I’ve said you can’t therefore I win’ stage. I’m sure you will obsessively follow me around the site as usual and jump all over anything I say that might, even in the slightest, give you a chance to exercise your vast collection of links and quotes which you are so fond of. Has it ever occurred to you that most readers of this forum don’t bother to read any of them? Are you really ‘doing good’ by spamming threads with multiple replies which no one pays any attention to?
Bob O’H states: “Hi, professor of statistics here.”,,,
And Bob, professor of statistics, has also stated elsewhere, “I torture data until it confesses. Sometimes I have to resort to Bayesianism”
And the obvious problem with Bob, professor of statistics, self-admittedly torturing data until it confesses, is that is that data, especially in statistics,, will confess to anything damn you want it to if you torture it long enough.
The point being is that unless you are extremely careful, statistical models are just as likely to mislead you, and give you a false positive, rather than give you a correct answer.
As the following subtitle in a Nature paper stated, “P values, the ‘gold standard’ of statistical validity, are not as reliable as many scientists assume.”
As the American Statistical Association itself stated, “By itself, a p-value does not provide a good measure of evidence regarding a model or hypothesis.”
Moreover, when one is (very) careful in choosing models to ‘statistically’ compare to one another, as Winston Ewert was in the following paper,
,,, when one is (very) careful in choosing models to ‘statistically’ compare to one another, (as Winston Ewert was in his paper), then we find the dependency graph (intelligent design) model beats out the evolutionary/common descent model. And it beats it out by a ‘statistically’ jaw-dropping, astronomical, degree.
As Dr. Cornelius Hunter, (PhD – Biophysics), put it, “the dependency graph (intelligent design) model is astronomically superior compared to the common descent model.”
Verse:
🙂 You don’t need to be a professor of statistics to know that random and discernable pattern(s) don’t belong in the same sentence regarding genetic code discussion. If we have a code we don’t have randomness .
We talk about the cause of a mutation not about your ability to make statistics about a mutation.
LCD points out to Bob, “We talk about the cause of a mutation not about your ability to make statistics about a mutation.”
And indeed, for Darwinists, random chance is a cause unto itself. As I stated previously, “Completely random mutations are the friggin teleological, (design), denying core of Darwin’s theory for crying out loud!”
Again, for Darwinists, random chance is a cause unto itself. “Completely random mutations are the friggin teleological, (design), denying core of Darwin’s theory for crying out loud!”
As Stephen Talbott observed in the Darwinian appeal to completely random mutations, “This “something random” looks every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle.”
And as I previously quoted Wolfgang (not even wrong) Pauli as stating, “they (Darwinists) use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’”
Thus, whenever you hear a Darwinist say that something happened randomly, or that it happened by chance, he is not appealing to any realistic mathematically defined probability, (as Bob is trying to pretend), but he is in fact appealing to a cause unto itself which is “more or less synonymous with the old word miracle.”
Thus for Bob to try to distance Darwinian evolution from its core presupposition of completely random mutations, which, in Darwin thought, are held to be a cause unto themselves, is for him to be completely disingenuous with the actual, teleological denying, theoretical foundation of Darwinian evolution.
Of supplemental note to, via their appeal to completely random mutations, the Darwinian denial of teleology in biology
Sev, 34:
Do you realise you are speaking with people who have had life-transforming encounters with the living God? (Or, do you imagine that projecting delusion and fear etc to us does not raise the issue of fatally undermining the credibility of human minds in general? We are talking of enough millions of people that that would be a very reasonable inference.)
No, the issue is not that there really is no God, or that our consciences that tell us we are governed by and accountable to built in moral law are also delusions. (BTW, that too is self-referential for much the same reason, save that it immediately implicates the race as a whole. Materialistic atheists and fellow travellers really need to revise their thinking i/l/o multiple tendencies to self referential absurdity.)
Much more on point in this day and age, is that we can get ourselves into ideological morasses where lawless oligarchies driven by amoral ideologies become open doors for nihilistic tyrannies and associated slaughter. As the past 100+ years make clear beyond all doubt.
Instead, I suggest, it is time to restore moral knowledge, starting with the very first duties of reason you appealed to by suggesting that Christians lack adequate warrant, have not done duty by right reason and are at best in severe doubt as to truth. The branch on which we all sit built in law opens up a wide range of world-root level questions that we need to address. Starting with, there is one level where the is-ought gap can be bridged, the root of reality.
KF
PS: what part of, we are a race of finite, fallible, morally struggling, too often ill-willed creatures is hard to understand? That ideologies that benumb the conscience and darken the mind to our duties are dangerous? That events over the past 100+ years have clearly documented such?
I’ll bring up again, the idea that there is no such thing as random. The forces are so complicated that it makes predictions impossible or incredibly challenging.
Does anyone believe if I throw a handful of sand across the floor that the position of each grain is not determined by the laws of physics? One would expect certain positions in the genome to be more susceptible to these physical forces than others.
If the change in DNA is positive, what ever that means, is it just due to the forces operating at any moment in a background environment? Is a white allele persistent in a grizzly bear due first to the specific allele arising due to the forces within and outside the genome and then persisting due to natural selection pressures in the specific ecology it finds itself?
We just don’t understand all the forces operating simultaneously at such a small level. We just generalize the types of forces operating and then call the detailed minute outcomes unpredictable.
So we call it random.
Jerry, you raise the issue of how we get to a real or apparent random result. I note:
1: there are quantum processes that seem to be random in the mathematical sense and we use things tied to them to get random results [say a Schottky noise based random number generator], often using other things to flatten the distribution, e.g. a Johnson counter.
2: We get of course pseudorandom generators such as on computers, which look random but are not.
3: We can make two deterministic streams of events clash, e.g. in the old days a phone book was sometimes used as a random number generator. (Line codes are determined, process is determined but the lack of correlation gives a good enough random result. Similarly, we can pick far range digits of pi as there is no correlation between the value of pi and the structure of our decimal system.)
4: We can use sensitive dependence on initial or intervening conditions. E.g. a die falls and tumbles under deterministic laws but is sensitively dependent due to eight corners and twelve edges, so tumbling and settling are effectively random for a fair die.
5: We can blend.
KF
In biology, random, as in random mutations, means not planed, accidental, happenstance. It doesn’t have anything to do with probability. And there still isn’t any scientific theory of evolution.
JVL:
No, they do NOT say that. What is wrong with you? Shapiro’s natural genetic engineering refutes that asinine claim, anyway.
What modern biologists ACTUALLY say is that mutations are random as in not planned, accidental, happenstance events.
JVL:
Link to it so we can all read it to see what it actually says. Or shut up because it doesn’t exist and you are just a scientifically illiterate troll.
No one seems to be able to find such a theory. So, anyone can say whatever they want about it because obviously it doesn’t exist.
On page 208 of “Evolution” third edition 2013, Futuyma, Mutation as a Random Process:
spontaneous, as in happening in a natural way without being planned or thought about
He goes on to clarify that “the environment does NOT induce adaptive mutations”. (caps added)
There isn’t anything that says what JVL claims. In Mayr’s book, “What Evolution Is”, all he says is that chance rules supreme in the production of variation. Again, not one word in support of JVL.
ET: The spontaneous process of mutation is stochastic rather than deterministic
What does stochastic mean? I know but do you know.
He goes on to clarify that “the environment does NOT induce adaptive mutations”. (caps added)
Correct.
In Mayr’s book, “What Evolution Is”, all he says is that chance rules supreme in the production of variation. Again, not one word in support of JVL.
And yet, it has been shown on this forum that some regions or domains of the genome have a higher mutation rate. So, do we go with the latest and greatest data or . . . .
Oh, by the way, for those who can’t get their heads around mutations being random but also within a pattern: consider heights of human beings. If you pick a human being at random you have no idea what their height will be . . . except . . . you can have a pretty good guess as to the range it will fall into.
If you plot the heights of all human beings you will probably get a somewhat normal distribution. So, while the height of any one person is random it will most likely fall within that normal distribution. As opposed to a purely random event which would have a flat distribution. Example: rolling a fair die: six possible outcomes, all equally likely. But, again, each roll is a random event.
There are lots of probability distribution functions. They each describe the distribution of a random variable.
In biology, random, as in random mutations, means not planed, accidental, happenstance. It doesn’t have anything to do with probability.
Why are you arguing about things you don’t know about? For example: explain the difference between a normal and student-t distribution. Can you categorise a Poisson distribution? What kind of random events are best modelled with a binomial distribution?
There are lots and lots of different kinds of random variables with corresponding different pdf’s. (You can look up pdf, I’m not doing the work for you.) But you think: there is only one kind of random. You don’t understand or have be taught a lot of refinements which are essential for understanding real world events. But you will never, ever admit there are a lot of topics you don’t know and don’t understand.
Go to you local university library. Go to the mathematics area (if you can’t find it then there’s something else you should learn). Find the statistics stuff. Pick up one of the books near the end of the section. See if you understand anything that is on the pages. And think: is this all BS because I don’t understand it OR maybe I still have a lot to learn.
I’ll leave it with you.
🙂 Oh my , is this your answer ? Clueless much ? What can you tell us about “randomness” (mutation) that take place inside the genetic code and not inside a volcano or in the ocean ? Did you forget what was the discussion about?
Of related note to Darwinists trying to downplay directed’ mutations as if they are not a huge problem for Darwin’s theory; Dr. Denis Noble, President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences, wholeheartedly disagrees with the Darwinists’ hand-waving dismissal.
In the following video around the 2:00 minute mark, , Dr Denis Noble states that,
And Dr. Noble, (when Darwinists tried to downplay just how devastating ‘directed’ mutations actually are to Darwin’s theory), stated that “If, as the commentator seems to imply, we make neo-Darwinism so flexible as an idea that it can accept even those findings that the originators intended to be excluded by the theory it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory. If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.”
Verse:
JVL:
You are just dim. Just because they have higher mutation rates doesn’t mean it isn’t just down to chance.
In biology, random, as in random mutations, means not planed, accidental, happenstance. It doesn’t have anything to do with probability.
I know more about this than you ever will. So shut up.
Page 208 supports what I said. You lose. And yes, he goes over the fact that some regions are more prone to mutations. You lose. So does Mayr. You lose.
Stochastic means without planning, also. MIndless and mechanistic.
“Evolution” third edition, Futuyma, 2013- a university textbook:
That is how mainstream biology uses the term. Mostly, though, they just use the words “errors and mistakes” that occur during copying and transcibing: Universally high transcript error rates in bacteria
Again, when biologists say “random mutation” they are talking about mutations being accidents (from mutagens) or errors and mistakes from the copying and transcription processes. They don’t calculate the probability to make that determination. It is the underlying assumption of evolutionary biology.
And yes, ID says otherwise. That is the heart of the debate- whether or not mutations are accidents, errors or mistakes, OR are they somehow directed. That, along with what can differential accumulations of genetic change actually do?
As ET clarified, “when biologists say “random mutation” they are talking about mutations being accidents (from mutagens) or errors and mistakes from the copying and transcription processes. They don’t calculate the probability to make that determination. It is the underlying assumption of evolutionary biology.”
And these random accidents, errors, and mistakes are held by Darwinists, (as a core presupposition), “to be at the source of every innovation, and of all creation in the biosphere” – (Jacques Monod)
What is interesting, (and self-refuting for Darwinists), is that to even be able to say that something is an accident, error, or mistake, in the first place you must first have a backdrop of intentional design that has been departed from in order for you to be able to claim that a mutation was an unintentional accident, error, or mistake.
As Dr. Egnor, via Aristotle, explains, “a farmer who ploughs his field and by chance discovers a treasure buried by someone else. The treasure is discovered by chance, but everything else — the farmer’s ownership of the field, his decision to plough it, the accumulation and burial of the treasure by the other man — is purposeful, and in fact the only reason the accident of discovery happened is because it is embedded in a world of purpose. Chance can’t happen — the word has no meaning — in an entirely accidental world. Chance presupposes design.”
Likewise, in biology, to say a mutation is a random event, it must happen in the backdrop of intentional design. As Egnor further explained, “random events only occur, and have their meaning, against a backdrop of purpose and design — in this case, the designed systems, (of),, bodies,”
For an easy to understand and illustrative example, randomly choosing a card from a deck of cards necessarily presupposes a deck of cards that was first intelligently designed.
Yet Darwinists deny that backdrop of design. And it is in that denial of a backdrop of design that Darwinists become ‘very irrational’ (Pauli), and is precisely what prevents Darwinists from ever being able to give a rigid mathematically defined probability of a chance event occurring.
To repeat Pauli, “Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific’ and ‘rational,’ they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’”
Of related note, Murray Eden expressed very much the same sentiment as Pauli in regards to the unscientific nature in which Darwinists use the term ‘random’, i.e. “It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
Yet, as Dr. Egnor pointed out, Darwinists simply cannot provide a mathematical context in which a chance event can be said to occur unless they first presuppose a purposeful context and/or universe in which the chance event can be said to occur.
Thus, it is very much a damned if you do, damned if you don’t, situation for Darwinists. If they refuse to rigidly define chance so as to become scientific they are, as Pauli put it, ‘very irrational’. But if, on the other hand, they rigidly define chance so as to try to become scientific, then they must necessarily define those chance events against a backdrop of purposeful, intentional, design. Again, as Dr. Egnor succinctly summed it up, “Chance presupposes design.”
Of semi-related note to the fact that “chance presupposes design”, it is very interesting to note that in quantum mechanics it is now shown, and as the late Steven Weinberg pointed out, “In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,”
Thus in quantum mechanics itself, (our most foundational scientific description of reality), we find that intelligent agency itself preexists the existence of quantum probabilities.
Which is, (fairly obviously), a rather dramatic confirmation of Dr. Egnor’s contention, via Aristotle, that “Chance presupposes design.”
No, you need to be ignorant of genetics (which, to be fair, some professors of statistics are). But if you know something about genetics then you’ll know that there are patterns in genetics codes. There are even patterns in mutations: they vary across the genome, and also the changes in points mutations are not equal (e.g. if you have a G, the probability that is changes to a T, A, or C are not equal).
You may have been, but Barry was most certainly not talking about causes in his comment, which is what I was responding to.
You have to be ignorant of genetics to say that differential accumulations of mutations produced the diversity of life.
Looking at you, Bob O’H…