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Evolution Makes No Sense on This Molecular Clock Problem

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Evolutionary thought did not begin nor end with Charles Darwin. To be sure Darwin was its most important exponent, but evolutionary thinking goes back centuries before 1859 when Darwin first published his book on evolution, and it continued to develop long after Darwin. For example, for all his theorizing Darwin had little idea how biological variation—a crucial, fundamental component of evolutionary theory—actually occurs. How do species change to begin with? About half a century later evolutionists constructed neoDarwinism which added to Darwin’s theory the idea that random genetic mutations provided the needed biological variation which occasionally hit upon improvements which would be preserved via natural selection. Indeed, according to evolution, whales, oak trees, and humans all must have been created by an incredibly long series of random mutations. The theory did not work very well for a number of reasons. For example, mutations don’t slowly add up to arrive at complex biological structures and mechanisms, and biological change is rapid and directed, not slow and random. Those are merely two of a great many false predictions generated by evolutionary theory. One of them is the concept of a molecular clock.  Read more

Comments
Virgil Cain:
Yes, FLAWS can be accounted for by non-ID evolution. Very good, you are starting to learn.
Exactly. The flaws we see in the "design" of organisms points to non-ID evolution as being the cause. Looks like we're both learning.Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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Virgil Cain:
How so? Being random with respect to fitness does not mean they were unguided, ie genetic accidents. You are confused.
I expect that any mutation that is guided by an ID designer would not be wasted. If the intelligent designer has a goal, he would be guiding his mutations toward it. A change that is not goal-directed however, is exactly what you would expect with non-ID evolution since it does not have a "target" it is working toward. Fitness is the "target" of the population yet non-ID evolution doesn't have one, so this is exactly what you would expect to see.Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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Yes, FLAWS can be accounted for by non-ID evolution. Very good, you are starting to learn.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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wd400:
What? No. There are plenty of cases of predator-driven extinctions, after all.
Yes and we humans are probably the worst, but in a working stable system, both prey and predators have reached a level where each can maintain stable populations regardless of any disadvantages that individual organisms may have. The point I was making is that you cannot "fix" bad "design" and expect that population-wise, the ecosystem will benefit. Flaws of individual "designs" are handled well by non-ID evolution.Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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Carpathian:
If most mutations are “random with respect to fitness”, that is an argument for non-ID evolution.
How so? Being random with respect to fitness does not mean they were unguided, ie genetic accidents. You are confused.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Virgil Cain:
The debate is whether or not the mutations are happenstance events or not. “Random with respect to fitness” is irrelevant in that regard.
It is actually the point of this whole debate. If most mutations are "random with respect to fitness", that is an argument for non-ID evolution.Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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Carpathian. What? No. There are plenty of cases of predator-driven extinctions, after all.wd400
June 16, 2015
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Evolution requires reproduction and populations do not reproduce. What population do is reign in the marginal, ie the mutants. Also unguided evolution does not produce optimal- local or otherwise.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Eric Anderson:
We are constantly being informed by evolutionary proponents that nature is full of sub-par designs, poorly-cobbled-together jumbles, occasional meaningful sequences swimming in a sea of junk DNA. Yet Zachriel now tells us that most biological systems are “at local optimums,” not likely to tolerate further changes. So which is it? The story seems to change depending on the rhetorical stance needed in a particular case.
It is the systems that are "at local optimums", not individuals. If predators suddenly become more efficient overnight, their prey may be at risk of extinction. If this happens, both prey and predator populations will suffer. Evolution is more concerned about populations than it is about individuals.Carpathian
June 16, 2015
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Zachriel:
Modern genetics has found that most mutations are random with respect to fitness,
The debate is whether or not the mutations are happenstance events or not. "Random with respect to fitness" is irrelevant in that regard.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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We are constantly being informed by evolutionary proponents that nature is full of sub-par designs, poorly-cobbled-together jumbles, occasional meaningful sequences swimming in a sea of junk DNA. Yet Zachriel now tells us that most biological systems are “at local optimums,” not likely to tolerate further changes. So which is it?
Did you miss the word "local".wd400
June 16, 2015
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Zachriel @12: I know you are talking with BA77 and I don't intend to get into a discussion right now, but for our readers and lurkers this jumped out at me: "Because most functional complexes are already at local optimums, so any change is likely to be detrimental." This is nonsense. There is scarcely a biological system in existence that couldn't be improved in some absolute sense. Wouldn't it be better for the cheetah if she could run a bit faster, or leap a bit higher, or see a bit farther? Of course it would. And the same is true of every other organism. The entire edifice of Darwinian evolutionary thought that rests squarely on the idea of "slight successive changes" leading inexorably over time to biological improvement is shown to be nothing more than a confession of ignorance and an ad-hoc rationalization. We are constantly being informed by evolutionary proponents that nature is full of sub-par designs, poorly-cobbled-together jumbles, occasional meaningful sequences swimming in a sea of junk DNA. Yet Zachriel now tells us that most biological systems are "at local optimums," not likely to tolerate further changes. So which is it? The story seems to change depending on the rhetorical stance needed in a particular case. If one looks at biological systems for what they clearly are -- islands of design that take into account trade-offs of performance with functional constraints and parameters, rather than Darwin's "plastic" organisms that can move imperceptibly from A to B to C through a series of "slight successive changes," then the overall picture starts to make some sense. Or we can adopt the evolutionary "logic": biological systems are at their local optimum, which is why we don't actually see biological systems evolving; but biology is full of sub-optimal systems, which is what we would expect for a chaotic trial-and-error process. Biological systems are exquisitely formed; except when they aren't. They are optimal; expect when they aren't. Some are. Some aren't. Yet another example of the Great Evolutionary Explanation: Stuff Happens.Eric Anderson
June 16, 2015
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Zach, I'm satisfied with the exchange thus far, and will let the unbiased reader judge for themselves who is providing solid evidence for his position and who is out in left field day-dreaming that he has any evidence whatsoever. Good day!bornagain77
June 16, 2015
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The increasing problems with the molecular clock are interesting and stand in contrast to the party line we often hear. I seem to recall a discussion in this forum a while back regarding the molecular clock as it relates to humans and divergence from a recent common ancestor. wd400 (if I recall) was supportive of the calculations, but it seems the calculation turned out to be somewhat circular. In any event, it is likely that we are dealing with more than one phenomenon, which is no doubt part of the reason for the disconnect. 1. We can measure with some reasonable accuracy the rate of mutations from generation to generation. That is simply an observational measurement and ought not to be particularly controversial. 2. On the other hand, that mutation rate is then subjected to the following further extrapolations and assumptions, only some of which may be reasonable: (i) The mutation rate is assumed to be relatively constant. I would say that this is probably a reasonable assumption, absent specific reasons to think otherwise. (ii) It is assumed that the basic generation-to-generation random mutation changes that don't provide any significant observable evolutionary change nevertheless, over time, accumulate into vast evolutionary changes. This is an assumption for which there is no real empirical support. It is simply an article of faith of the theory. (iii) It is assumed that organism A is "related" to organism B, based on genetic or morphological similarities and that, therefore, there must be some unbroken evolutionary chain linking the two. This is an assumption for which there is no observational support. It might be true, but unfortunately we cannot confirm it -- the actual sequence of events leading from A to B being unfortunately buried in the detritus of time. So it remains but an assumption of the theory. Furthermore, this impression of "relatedness" has been compounded by poor studies and faulty thinking about what constitutes relatedness. For example, the oft-cited 98% similarity between humans and chimps (or 99% or 95% or whatever your preferred number) is based on a very simplistic and facile (and almost certainly wrong) view of what constitutes DNA "equivalence," as well as a simplistic and facile (and almost certainly wrong) view of DNA's role in organismal development. ----- As with so many things in biology, there is a disconnect between the observational science and the historical narrative. #1 is a good, hard fact: it is real; it is observable; it is good science. In contrast, #2 is a story, a narrative "explanation" for some alleged long-past historical causal chain of events.Eric Anderson
June 16, 2015
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bornagain77: With all that hand waving that you do Zach you must be staying very cool this summer. Actually, we answered your questions directly. bornagain77: 1. Since Darwinism is a non-falsifiable pseudo-science, Darwinism is consistent with anything and everything that may be found. This is directly contrary to your previous statement, that neodarwinism isn't consistent with large numbers of non-beneficial mutations. bornagain77: 2. Darwinism does not predict ‘local optimums’. In fact supposed Bad Designs, that are supposedly not optimum, (based on the ignorance of Darwinists I might add), have been a staple of Darwinism’s theological core argument against design since day one. Here you conflate local optimum with global optimum. A lineage can be trapped on a local peak, while a higher peak is nearby but not reachable in a stepwise fashion. That's why many adaptations appear to be kludges or workarounds.Zachriel
June 16, 2015
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Thanks Virgil @ 10. I believe you are referring to this study: Experimental Evolution in Fruit Flies (35 years of trying to force fruit flies to evolve in the laboratory fails, spectacularly) - October 2010 Excerpt: "Despite decades of sustained selection in relatively small, sexually reproducing laboratory populations, selection did not lead to the fixation of newly arising unconditionally advantageous alleles.,,, "This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve," said ecology and evolutionary biology professor Anthony Long, the primary investigator. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2010/10/07/experimental_evolution_in_fruit_flies http://eebweb.arizona.edu/nachman/Suggested%20Papers/Lab%20papers%20fall%202010/Burke_et_al_2010.pdfbornagain77
June 16, 2015
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With all that hand waving that you do Zach you must be staying very cool this summer. :) 1. Since Darwinism is a non-falsifiable pseudo-science, Darwinism is consistent with anything and everything that may be found. Darwinists merely concoct another epicyclic just so story to cover up embarrassing empirical falsifications. (See Hunter's false predictions linked in the OP). 2. Darwinism does not predict 'local optimums'. In fact supposed Bad Designs, that are supposedly not optimum, (based on the ignorance of Darwinists I might add), have been a staple of Darwinism's theological core argument against design since day one. 3. The trade offs, no matter how they are modeled, don't work:
Neo-Darwinism's Catch-22: Before Evolving New Features, Organisms Would Be Swamped by Genetic Junk - Casey Luskin - April 10, 2015 Excerpt: A new peer-reviewed paper in the journal Complexity presents a computational model of evolution which shows that evolving new biological structures may be deterred by an unavoidable catch-22 problem.,,, This is a bit complex -- let's go over it again. Darwinian evolution either (1) produces nothing new, or (2) it's destined to produce boatloads of deadly junk. In the case of (2), the reward for trying new things is high compared to the cost of building new structures. But in order for the ratio to be high enough for complexity to increase, the cost of building new things must be negligible. Novelties proliferate, but the fraction,, that's vestigial grows, and the organism is eventually swamped and overwhelmed by harmful vestigial features. However, if you try to avoid the problem of (2) by making the reward-to-cost ratio lower, as in (1), then nothing new ever evolves. The authors think real biological organisms are closer to position (1). Indeed, study in the field of systems biology increasingly finds that biological systems contain very little junk.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/04/neo-darwinisms_095121.html
Supplemental question Zach, since 'random', as it is used by Darwinists, is more or less synonymous with the word 'miracle', why are you an atheist instead of a Christian Theist since you believe in miracles?
Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on the Empirical Problems with Neo-Darwinism - Casey Luskin - February 27, 2012 Excerpt: "In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of 'natural selection' in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. 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.'" Wolfgang Pauli (pp. 27-28) - http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/02/nobel_prize-win056771.html
Actually on a more serious note Zach, (as if there can possibly be a more serious note than a person's eternal salvation in Christ), since 'unguided randomness' forms the basis of Darwinism's theoretical core, unguided randomness prevents Darwinism from every becoming a proper scientific theory instead of the pseudo-scientific theory that it is:
Murray Eden, as reported in “Heresy in the Halls of Biology: Mathematicians Question Darwinism,” Scientific Research, November 1967, p. 64. “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.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/ReferencesandNotes32.html
bornagain77
June 16, 2015
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bornagain77: First, since neo-Darwinism is dependent on a fairly large percentage of random mutations being beneficial, in the sense of building up functional complexity, False premise. neodarwinism is consistent with most mutations being neutral. Of those mutations that are not neutral, neodarwinism is consistent with most mutations being deleterious. bornagain77: why is it that the vast majority of supposedly beneficial mutations are found to be detrimental in terms of building up functional complexity? Because most functional complexes are already at local optimums, so any change is likely to be detrimental. bornagain77: Zachriel, the second question that I have in regards to random mutations as they pertain to neo-Darwinism is, why is it that mutations are found to be not truly random as was postulated within Darwinism’s core theoretical framework? What is the difference between random and "truly random"? In any case, Darwin was at least somewhat Lamarckian in his views of heredity. Modern genetics has found that most mutations are random with respect to fitness, but that the rate of mutation can vary over time and within a genome. bornagain77: Zachriel, the third question that I have in regards to random mutations as they pertain to neo-Darwinism is, since Darwinism is dependent on random mutations to DNA to provide the raw material for evolution to occur, why are there such elaborate, overlapping, repair mechanisms in place that are dead set against allowing random mutations to occur to DNA in the first place? Those organisms that are more able to accurately replicate themselves, while fending off genomic invaders, are those that persist in the population. However, there's a tradeoff between accurate reproduction and evolutionary flexibility.Zachriel
June 16, 2015
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In other words, making measurements based on evolutionary theory leads to problems. The resulting DNA mutation rates are not even close to what we can measure more directly, free from theoretical assumptions.
Well then, the facts must just be wrong.Mung
June 16, 2015
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boarnagain77- There was a fruit fly experiment in which no new allele became fixed after over 600 generations- They said:
We conclude that, at least for life history characters such as development time, unconditionally advantageous alleles rarely arise, are associated with small net fitness gains or cannot fix because selection coefficients change over time.
Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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as to: "Fixation is much faster under selection." Actually the types of mutations that are most easily fixed under selection (i.e. detrimental) are not the types of mutations that Darwinism needs in order to be viable as a theory: Biological Information - Loss-of-Function Mutations by Paul Giem 2015 - video playlist (Behe - Loss of function mutations are far more likely to fix in a population than gain of function mutations) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzD3hhvepK8&index=20&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUUhiC9VwPnhl-ymuObyTWJ Biological Information - Mutation Count & Synergistic Epistasis (mutation accumulation) 1-17-2015 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gdoZk_NbmUbornagain77
June 16, 2015
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Zachriel:
Fixation is much faster under selection.
If the selection pressure stays the same, which we know it doesn't.
Here’s an introductory explanation.
No theory there. Try again.Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Virgil Cain: How can natural selection affect the rate of molecular evolution? Fixation is much faster under selection. The fact that the rate of molecular change is more or less constant is evidence that much of molecular evolution is due to drift, not selection. Virgil Cain: What evolutionary theory? Here's an introductory explanation. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_02Zachriel
June 16, 2015
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The bottom line is that such sophisticated repair mechanisms, (which, by the way, are orders of magnitude more efficient than man-made repair mechanisms), are incompatible with Darwinism in principle.
The Evolutionary Dynamics of Digital and Nucleotide Codes: A Mutation Protection Perspective - February 2011 Excerpt: "Unbounded random change of nucleotide codes through the accumulation of irreparable, advantageous, code-expanding, inheritable mutations at the level of individual nucleotides, as proposed by evolutionary theory, requires the mutation protection at the level of the individual nucleotides and at the higher levels of the code to be switched off or at least to dysfunction. Dysfunctioning mutation protection, however, is the origin of cancer and hereditary diseases, which reduce the capacity to live and to reproduce. Our mutation protection perspective of the evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes thus reveals the presence of a paradox in evolutionary theory between the necessity and the disadvantage of dysfunctioning mutation protection. This mutation protection paradox, which is closely related with the paradox between evolvability and mutational robustness, needs further investigation." http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toevolj/articles/V005/1TOEVOLJ.pdf Contradiction in evolutionary theory - video - (The contradiction between extensive DNA repair mechanisms and the necessity of 'random mutations/errors' for Darwinian evolution) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzh6Ct5cg1o The Darwinism contradiction of repair systems Excerpt: The bottom line is that repair mechanisms are incompatible with Darwinism in principle. Since sophisticated repair mechanisms do exist in the cell after all, then the thing to discard in the dilemma to avoid the contradiction necessarily is the Darwinist dogma. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-darwinism-contradiction-of-repair-systems/
supplemental question Zachriel. Why is it the random mutation rate is far higher than what even leading Darwinian theorists agree is acceptable for Darwinism to be viable as a theory?
"it would in the end be far easier and more sensible to manufacture a complete man de novo, out of appropriately chosen raw materials, than to try to fashion into human form those pitiful relics which remained… it is evident that the natural rate of mutation of man is so high, and his natural rate of reproduction so low, that not a great deal of margin is left for selection… it becomes perfectly evident that the present number of children per couple cannot be great enough to allow selection to keep pace with a mutation rate of 0.1..if, to make matters worse, u should be anything like as high as 0.5…, our present reproductive practices would be utterly out of line with human requirements." Hermann Muller quoted by John Sanford; Appendix 1, Genetic Entropy No Matter What Type Of Selection, Mutations Deteriorate Genetic Information - article and animation Excerpt: The animation asserts that if harmful mutation rates are high enough, then there exists no form or mechanism of selection which can arrest genetic deterioration. Even if the harmful mutations do not reach population fixation, they can still damage the collective genome.,,, Nobel Prize winner HJ Muller (of Muller’s ratchet fame) suggested that the human race can’t even cope with a harmful rate of 0.1 (mutations) per new born. The actual rate has been speculated to be on the order of 100-300 (to as low as 30). The animation uses a conservative harmful rate of 1 and argues (with some attempts at humor) that deterioration would thus be inevitable even with a harmful rate of 1 per new born. https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/nachmans-paradox-defeats-darwinism-and-dawkins-weasel/ Human evolution or extinction - discussion on acceptable mutation rate per generation (with clips from Dr. John Sanford) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC_NyFZG7pM
bornagain77
June 16, 2015
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Zachriel, I have a few questions about random mutations as they pertain to neo-Darwinism. First, since neo-Darwinism is dependent on a fairly large percentage of random mutations being beneficial, in the sense of building up functional complexity, why is it that the vast majority of supposedly beneficial mutations are found to be detrimental in terms of building up functional complexity?
“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ "The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the neo-Darwin theory is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume." Lee Spetner (Ph.D. Physics - MIT - Not By Chance) Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation George Montañez 1, Robert J. Marks II 2, Jorge Fernandez 3 and John C. Sanford 4 - May 2013 Excerpt: It is almost universally acknowledged that beneficial mutations are rare compared to deleterious mutations [1–10].,, It appears that beneficial mutations may be too rare to actually allow the accurate measurement of how rare they are [11]. 1. Kibota T, Lynch M (1996) Estimate of the genomic mutation rate deleterious to overall fitness in E. coli . Nature 381:694–696. 2. Charlesworth B, Charlesworth D (1998) Some evolutionary consequences of deleterious mutations. Genetica 103: 3–19. 3. Elena S, et al (1998) Distribution of fitness effects caused by random insertion mutations in Escherichia coli. Genetica 102/103: 349–358. 4. Gerrish P, Lenski R N (1998) The fate of competing beneficial mutations in an asexual population. Genetica 102/103:127–144. 5. Crow J (2000) The origins, patterns, and implications of human spontaneous mutation. Nature Reviews 1:40–47. 6. Bataillon T (2000) Estimation of spontaneous genome-wide mutation rate parameters: whither beneficial mutations? Heredity 84:497–501. 7. Imhof M, Schlotterer C (2001) Fitness effects of advantageous mutations in evolving Escherichia coli populations. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98:1113–1117. 8. Orr H (2003) The distribution of fitness effects among beneficial mutations. Genetics 163: 1519–1526. 9. Keightley P, Lynch M (2003) Toward a realistic model of mutations affecting fitness. Evolution 57:683–685. 10. Barrett R, et al (2006) The distribution of beneficial mutation effects under strong selection. Genetics 174:2071–2079. 11. Bataillon T (2000) Estimation of spontaneous genome-wide mutation rate parameters: whither beneficial mutations? Heredity 84:497–501. http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0006
Zachriel, the second question that I have in regards to random mutations as they pertain to neo-Darwinism is, why is it that mutations are found to be not truly random as was postulated within Darwinism's core theoretical framework?
WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Fully Random Mutations - Kevin Kelly - 2014 Excerpt: What is commonly called "random mutation" does not in fact occur in a mathematically random pattern. The process of genetic mutation is extremely complex, with multiple pathways, involving more than one system. Current research suggests most spontaneous mutations occur as errors in the repair process for damaged DNA. Neither the damage nor the errors in repair have been shown to be random in where they occur, how they occur, or when they occur. Rather, the idea that mutations are random is simply a widely held assumption by non-specialists and even many teachers of biology. There is no direct evidence for it. On the contrary, there's much evidence that genetic mutation vary in patterns. For instance it is pretty much accepted that mutation rates increase or decrease as stress on the cells increases or decreases. These variable rates of mutation include mutations induced by stress from an organism's predators and competition, and as well as increased mutations brought on by environmental and epigenetic factors. Mutations have also been shown to have a higher chance of occurring near a place in DNA where mutations have already occurred, creating mutation hotspot clusters—a non-random pattern. http://edge.org/response-detail/25264 James A. Shapiro PhD. Genetics: "What I ask others interested in evolution to give up is the notion of random accidental mutation." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/jerry-coyne-fails-to-unde_b_1411144.html Evolution Is Not Random (At Least, Not Totally) - Tanya Lewis, - 02 October 2014 Excerpt: Evolution is often said to be "blind," because there's no outside force guiding natural selection. But changes in genetic material that occur at the molecular level are not entirely random, a new study suggests. These mutations are guided by both the physical properties of the genetic code and the need to preserve the critical function of proteins, the researchers said.,,, "So in the end, most mutation is not random, at least for the DNA sequences we analyzed here," http://m.livescience.com/48103-evolution-not-random.html?cid=514636_20141002_32724136 New Research Elucidates Directed Mutation Mechanisms - Cornelius Hunter - January 7, 2013 Excerpt: mutations don’t occur randomly in the genome, but rather in the genes where they can help to address the challenge. But there is more. The gene’s single stranded DNA has certain coils and loops which expose only some of the gene’s nucleotides to mutation. So not only are certain genes targeted for mutation, but certain nucleotides within those genes are targeted in what is referred to as directed mutations.,,, These findings contradict evolution’s prediction that mutations are random with respect to need and sometimes just happen to occur in the right place at the right time.,,, http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/01/news-research-elucidates-directed.html etc.. etc..
Zachriel, the third question that I have in regards to random mutations as they pertain to neo-Darwinism is, since Darwinism is dependent on random mutations to DNA to provide the raw material for evolution to occur, why are there such elaborate, overlapping, repair mechanisms in place that are dead set against allowing random mutations to occur to DNA in the first place? The overlapping repair mechanisms for DNA include, (but are not limited to), the following:
A proofreading system that catches almost all errors A mismatch repair system to back up the proofreading system Photoreactivation (light repair) Removal of methyl or ethyl groups by O6 – methylguanine methyltransferase Base excision repair Nucleotide excision repair Double-strand DNA break repair Recombination repair Error-prone bypass http://www.newgeology.us/presentation32.html Quantum Dots Spotlight DNA-Repair Proteins in Motion - March 2010 Excerpt: "How this system works is an important unanswered question in this field," he said. "It has to be able to identify very small mistakes in a 3-dimensional morass of gene strands. It's akin to spotting potholes on every street all over the country and getting them fixed before the next rush hour." Dr. Bennett Van Houten - of note: A bacterium has about 40 team members on its pothole crew. That allows its entire genome to be scanned for errors in 20 minutes, the typical doubling time.,, These smart machines can apparently also interact with other damage control teams if they cannot fix the problem on the spot. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123522.htm
bornagain77
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Those are merely two of a great many false predictions generated by evolutionary theory.
What evolutionary theory?Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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How can natural selection affect the rate of molecular evolution?Virgil Cain
June 16, 2015
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Cornelius Hunter: Those are merely two of a great many false predictions generated by evolutionary theory. The original discovery of the molecular clock was phenomenological, not theoretical. Furthermore, the original observation was that the rate was only approximately constant. There are many known factors that can affect the rate of molecular evolution, including generation time, population size, and, of course, natural selection.Zachriel
June 16, 2015
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Dr. Hunter, speaking of evolution making no sense, did you see this article that just came out?
Newfound groups of bacteria are mixing up the tree of life - June, 15, 2015 Excerpt: University of California, Berkeley, scientists have identified more than 35 new groups of bacteria, The new groups make up more than 15 percent of all known groups or phyla of bacteria, the scientists say, and include the smallest life forms on Earth, microbes a mere 400 nanometers across. The number of new bacterial phyla is equal to all the known animal phyla on Earth.,,, the accepted tree of life - a division into the three domains of eukaryotes, which includes animals and plants, bacteria and Archaea - needs to be revised.,,, About half of all the genes in these 35-plus phyla are new and unlike other known genes. The recognizable genes suggest that most of the bacteria use a simple process of fermentation to make the energy they need, instead of using aerobic or anaerobic respiration like many other bacteria. They also have unusual ribosomes, the multi-protein machines that translate genetic instructions into proteins. In fact, routine genomic scans would not detect them because of their distinctive 16S ribosomal RNA genes.,,, http://phys.org/news/2015-06-newfound-groups-bacteria-tree-life.html
In my personal opinion, 'Now that's got to hurt',
Now That's Got To Hurt - video https://youtu.be/JAkaxQCe51M?t=10
But I would like to hear your take on it Dr. Hunter. Exactly how did they determine they are not merely new species of bacteria but are a fourth domain of life, and that there are, of all things, 35 new phyla within that new domain of life?bornagain77
June 16, 2015
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