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John Sanford: Mutations produced “no meaningful crop improvement”

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Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome

During the last century, there was a great deal of effort invested in trying to use mutation to generate useful variation. This was especially true in my own area – plant breeding. When it was discovered that certain forms of radiation and certain chemicals were powerful mutagenic agents, millions and million of plants were mutagenized and screened for possible improvements. Assuming the Primary Axiom (that the secies are merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection), it would seem obvious that this would result in rapid “evolution” of our crops. For several decades this was the main thrust of crop improvement research. Vast numbers of mutants were produced and screened, collectively representing many billions of mutation events. A huge number of small, sterile, sick, deformed, aberrant plants were produced. However, from all this effort, essentially no meaningful crop improvement resulted. The entire effort was a failure, and was eventually abandoned. – Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome , page 25

Comments
tjguy:
And those IDers who do not believe in common descent, I’d love to hear a more detailed explanation of what they do believe.
If you mean universal common descent then I would like to know why anyone would believe in it. Genes influence traits- and being a chipmunk is not a trait. Being a human is not a trair. Having astripes down your back is a trait (chipmunks). Having blue eyes is a trait. As for what I "believe", I am an ancient alien/ genetic engineer and colonizing type of guy. BTW the Bible does not say God created only pairs of animals- true for humans but not for anything else (and even with humans it is questionable, see "Lilith")Joe
May 31, 2012
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So, the evidence seems to be clearly against Darwinian evolution. So why do we feel that we still need to preserve common descent? I realize that not all IDers hold to common descent. My question is why any still believe in common descent. Not only does the scientific evidence argue against that, but you have to really twist the Bible to make that fit. Either way we have to believe in supernatural intervention by some Intelligent Designer, so why not pick intervention that is in line with Scripture? And those IDers who do not believe in common descent, I'd love to hear a more detailed explanation of what they do believe. Creationists believe that God created the original animal pairs with information rich genomes to allow for speciation and adaption to various environments. So we believe in evolution but it is a change from general to specific traits. Change by the loss of certain traits as the opposite genes are selected. It is a change, but not from simple to complex, but from general to specific, a change in a downward fashion. Sanford shows that if living organisms are as old as OECers claim, we would have been overrun by harmful mutations and gone extinct long ago. This is strong evidence against Darwinism and has implications for OECers as well. According to Sanford the mutation rate is too high for life to persist over billions of years. So in reality, what we see is the devolution of life from the original perfect state of creation as well as the adaption of organisms within the original created kinds to new environments(this includes some speciation), but we don't see appreciative change in the sense of "molecules to man" type change like evolution proposes.tjguy
May 30, 2012
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Dr. John Sanford "Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome" Below is additional support for IDvolution. Some quotes from Dr John Sanford on genetic entropy. Very consistent with IDvolution and Scripture. To get the full effect take the time to view the videos. Listen carefully where he states it is "kind of a trade secret of population geneticists." The design of the genome is astonishing and shows intelligence, design and purpose. "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is a thought of God."Pope Benedict XVI ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "a vastly superior operating system" "a galaxy of design and complexity" "over 90% of the genome is actively transcribed" "the genome has multiple overlapping messages" "data compression on the most sophisticated level" "more and more the genome looks like a super super set of programs" "more and more it looks like top down design" "the reality is everybody is mutant" "the selection process really has nothing to grab hold of" "so it's kind of a trade secret amongst population geneticists,any well informed population geneticist understands man is degenerating" "so in deep geological time we should have been extinct a long time ago" "the human race is degenerating at 1-5% per generation" "so personal and so immediate, because there is no circle of life where things where things stay the same, and it's not an upward spiral of evolution, things keep getting better and better, it is a downward spiral exactly as described in Scripture" "I realized it had major implications for evolution, but I had no... I couldn't have guessed how profound the biblical implications are, how profoundly the evidence supports the biblical perspective of a dying universe and a dying world, we are dying because of the fall" "and our only hope is Christ" The following videos can be seen at IDvolution.org Dr. John Sanford "Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome"1/2 Dr. John Sanford "Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome" 2/2buffalo
May 29, 2012
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Bought it years ago and loved it!! Like Collin, I also wish Dr Sanford would write another one.Blue_Savannah
May 29, 2012
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I'll answer my own question. "In 'Genetic Entropy', Cornell University researcher John Sanford lifts the rug to see what evolutionary theory has swept under it. He shows that, not only does Darwinism not have answers for how information got into the genome, it doesn't even have answers for how it could remain there." —Dr. Michael BeheCollin
May 29, 2012
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I appreciate this post. I wish that Mr. Sanford would do a follow-up to this book and/or would become more involved in the ID community. At first I thought this was a post directly from him which made me really excited. I am also curious about what the heavy weights in the ID community think about the genetic entropy concept. Any comments from Michael Behe? Seems to go well with his "Edge of Evolution."Collin
May 29, 2012
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