Darwinism Intelligent Design

Neutral genetic theory, Darwinism, and folk tales

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Wow. In a world dominated by Darwinism, it’s amazing that anyone dares to tell this story:

If you had braved the jungles of China’s Fujian province in the early 20th century, various accounts say you could have witnessed a stunningly unexpected animal: a blue tiger. These tigers were described as “marvelously beautiful” with bodies “a deep shade of Maltese, changing into almost deep blue on the under parts.” As late as the 1950s, hunters reported spotting their blue hairs alongside the traditional orange fur of other South China tigers on trails. Then the blue tigers disappeared. The last reported sighting was in 1953, and blue tigers were soon the stuff of legends, with not so much as a preserved hide to prove they ever existed. It is tempting to think the cats’ blueness was tied to some flaw that left them unable to compete with their bright orange kin. But it’s more likely their bizarre coats had nothing to do with their extinction; it was simply bad luck that the color arose in a small population that continued to shrink.

Christie Wilcox, “How Neutral Theory Altered Ideas About Biodiversity” at Quanta

So it wasn’t a strong signal but it was a signal.

Imagine all the theories that Darwinians could indulge in as to why blue tigers are more fit…

I remember a U of T prof, Larry Moran, who used to comment at this site, saying he thought neutral theory made more sense. He’s probably right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHCzyl-WIfk

5 Replies to “Neutral genetic theory, Darwinism, and folk tales”

  1. 1
    ET says:
    December 13, 2020 at 10:53 am

    DNA just codes for RNAs. It doesn’t matter how much genetic change there is. Changing genetics an genes will never be able to produce the diversity of life. DNA is not destiny- it does not determine biological form. So it’s back to the drawing board for evolutionists as their current thinking is totally lacking any substance and sense.

  2. 2
    polistra says:
    December 13, 2020 at 11:07 am

    Or it could just be some kind of algae or bacteria. Without any pelts there’s no way to tell.

  3. 3
    chuckdarwin says:
    December 13, 2020 at 2:43 pm

    “Wow. In a world dominated by Darwinism, it’s amazing that anyone dares to tell this story about genetic drift.”
    Wow, indeed and nonsense to boot. When I was an undergrad in evolutionary biology and ecology in the early 70s, genetic drift was already well understood and routinely part of the evolutionary biology and ecology curriculum as one of the numerous types of selection leading to speciation. It was integral to both population dynamics and population genetics.

  4. 4
    bornagain77 says:
    December 13, 2020 at 3:20 pm

    Genetic Drift, and/or the ‘Neutral Theory”, is the ‘educated’ way for Darwinists to honestly admit that they were completely wrong about natural selection being the quote unquote ‘designer substitute’ that they had originally envisioned It to be,,,.

    Austin Hughes and Neutral Theory – Laurence A. Moran – June 19, 2017
    Excerpt: Originally proposed by Motoo Kimura, Jack King, and Thomas Jukes, the neutral theory of molecular evolution is inherently non-Darwinian. Darwinism asserts that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change. It is the claim of the neutral theory, on the other hand, that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance.
    http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2.....heory.html

    Neutral Model, genetic drift and the Third Way—a synopsis of the self-inflicted demise of the evolutionary paradigm
    by Jeffrey P. Tomkins and Jerry Bergman – 2017
    Abstract
    “Because of grievous deficiencies in the standard neo-Darwinian Model of evolution, which is largely selection driven, scientists proposed an alternative postulate called the ‘Neutral Model’ in the late 1960s. The Neutral Model is also mutation driven, but selection is deemed to be an insignificant force of change. Instead, random genetic drift is alleged to be the main driver. Since its inception, the Neutral Model has come to be incorporated in many theoretical evolutionary scenarios at some level. However, due to numerous discoveries in genomics and genome function, the Neutral Model has also become deficient, prompting a new move in science called the ‘Extended Evolutionary Synthesis’ or ‘The Third Way’, which takes a position of blissful ignorance and offers nothing tangible to extend or support evolutionary theory. While Third Way proponents recognize the deficiency of all popular evolutionary models, they maintain that more research is needed to elucidate unknown evolutionary mechanisms and processes despite the fact that the progress of scientific discovery is revealing nothing but unimaginable complexity.”
    https://creation.com/evolutionary-mechanisms

    The mathematics of Population Genetics itself has simply not been kind to Darwinian claims in the least. In fact, because of the “waiting time problem”, Darwinists were forced to cast natural selection, Charles Darwin’s supposed ‘designer substitute’, by the wayside as the supposed explanation for the ‘appearance of design’, (R. Dawkins), that we see pervasively thought life,,,

    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/pm.....MC4573302/

    With Natural selection being tossed aside by the mathematics of population genetics, (and also by empirical evidence itself), as the explanation for the ‘appearance of design’ that we see in life, Darwinists did not accept such a devastating finding from mathematics as an outright falsification for their theory, as they should have done, but are instead now reduced to arguing, via ‘Neutral Theory’, that the ‘appearance of design’ that we see in life is, basically, the result of pure chance with natural selection now playing a very negligible role if any role at all.
    To call such a move on the part of Darwinists ‘disingenuous’ would be a severe understatement.

    “Darwinism provided an explanation for the appearance of design, and argued that there is no Designer — or, if you will, the designer is natural selection. If that’s out of the way — if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.”
    Richard Sternberg – Living Waters documentary
    Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics – Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson – (excerpt from Living Waters video)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q

  5. 5
    AaronS1978 says:
    December 13, 2020 at 5:22 pm

    Ugh I don’t normally agree with the dude tagged ChUcKdArWiN

    But I to had issues with that comment as genetic drift is very commonly taught and has been for many years

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