Richard Dawkins says eugenics works because he assumes we are just like animals

___ Materialists Hate Mankind:

"Materialists insist that men have no spiritual souls, no free will, that we’re meat machines, that we are merely animals who are deluded into thinking we are special, that we have no actual knowledge of reality at all (i.e., our brains “construct” reality for us), that human life begins long after conception and its moral value depends on rationality, that there are too many humans on the earth and we need to depopulate humanity (through contraception, sterilization, and abortion) to save Gaia, that mankind can and should be bred like cattle (eugenics), that disabled children in the womb should be killed before birth because they’re imperfect, that pesticides that (might) kill birds but save millions of human lives should be banned, and that the human mind is entirely material or doesn’t even really exist at all (i.e., eliminative materialism). The list is endless. For materialists, mankind really sucks". https://evolutionnews.org/2019/07/milton-and-the-psychology-of-materialism/

Truthfreedom

Yes, Bob O'H does not seem to care at all about Ed George's posts. It is kinda weird seeing the man chatting with himself. I guess it is easier than thinking hard about serious and complex issues, cf: https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/michael-egnor-why-the-mind-cannot-just-emerge-from-the-brain/#comments Truthfreedom

Wow. "Ed George" is so deluded it is having a conversation with itself. Another own goal, for "Ed". See how I can get "Ed" to post its stupidity. Sweet... ET

Bob, you just can’t make this up. If ET has been MIA for a couple days all I have to do is post a comment. And just like Pavlov’s dogs, he starts salivating. :) :) :) Ed George

LoL! "Ed George" continues to respond to me even after "Ed" sed he was going to ignore my posts, again. "Ed" just cannot help itself. Yes, "Ed", your hypocrisy is very entertaining. Thank you and nice own goal. ET

Bob, ring, ring. :) now do you understand the entertainment value of my approach? Ed George

LoL! "Ed George" is the only drooling dog here. Like clockwork, indeed. I wonder if "Ed George" the drooling dog knows any new tricks? Or is it a one trick sick puppy? ET

See Bob, I ring the bell and Pavlov’s dog comes out drooling. Just like clockwork. :) I wonder if it is possible for this dog to stop reacting to the bell. Ed George

There wouldn't be any alleged uncivil commenters if UD would disallow liars and insipid trolls, like "Ed George", to post here. But it is entertaining watching "Ed George" prove that it doesn't know jack about science. That is "Ed" avoids science topics like the plague. Yes, "Ed", you are predictably pathetic. :razz: ET

See Bob, I told you that my approach to uncivil commenters was entertaining. It’s like ringing a bell in front of one of Pavlov’s dogs. The reaction is predictable. And, somewhat pathetic. :) Ed George

All I do is make astute observations. It isn't my fault that "Ed George" is a liar and insipid troll. "Ed's" posts speak for themselves. It isn't that I just disagree with people like "Ed". It's the sheer volume of total BS they post and think it's an argument. And I don't care that you don't respond, "Ed". Everyone reading knows that if you did you would just be buried deeper in your own excrement. ET

Bob

Barry – are you OK with people calling each other ‘scum’ on UD?

The biggest offender her is ET. Yet, for some reason, he gets away with it. I have found that the best way to deal with people who are incapable of treating those they disagree with in a civil fashion is simply not to interact with them. This approach has the added benefit of being fun to watch the offenders get mad because you are not responding to them. :) Ed George

Truthfreedom at 131, "The Species Problem", nice find!

The Species Problem, Why Again? By Igor Ya. Pavlinov - February 6th 2013 Exerpt: The idea of the species belongs to such basic conceptions in the biological sciences, this idea has being been acknowledged repeatedly over the centuries. Accordingly, in the light of the above paradox, the species notion was and remains to be among the most disputed and controversial in biology, with a compass of viewpoints ranging from acknowledging the unconditional and self-evident objective reality of the species to denying it as an objective (natural) phenomenon. Despite the efforts of generations of theoreticians, it appeared impossible to reach a universal and all-suiting understanding and definition of what is the species of living organisms, i.e. the “biological species” in its most general (not particular Mayrian) sense.,,, Discussants, even belonging to opposite research schools, can quite agree with each other in recognition of fundamental status of the above “Boethian question”, whatever its particular answer might be. For instance, both “methodist” Linnaeus and “naturalist” Buffon (in his later years) believed in objective (real) status of the species as a universal and fundamental “unit of the Nature”. On the other hand, evolutionist Darwin, rejecting alongside with logician J. Bentham distinctiveness of the species as a fundamental taxonomic and eventually natural category, called however his famous book just “The Origin of Species...”, and not of races or of something like that. https://www.intechopen.com/books/the-species-problem-ongoing-issues/the-species-problem-why-again-

bornagain77

@136 Bob O'H wants to ban Stephen Hawking, a man (or "bunch of fermions and bosons"?) who is no longer among us.

"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant..." Stephie Hawking

Truthfreedom

Barry - are you OK with people calling each other 'scum' on UD? Bob O'H

Timothya, do not use that term to refer to BA77. Only warning Barry Arrington

Darwin Married His First Cousin Truthfreedom

On the Origin of A *very fuzzy concept * by Means of A *very fuzzy concept*. Truthfreedom

@127 Bob O'H

ba77 @ 124 – thank you, I appreciate the effort you put into providing the punchline.

Bob O'H, according to you: what does 'species' mean? Truthfreedom

@124 Bornagain77:

Says the man who just blatantly ignored the fact that Darwinists simply cannot ground ‘permanence of form’ of any sort, and thus cannot provide a rigid definition of species in the first place (post 120),

A tough one. :)

"The species problem, in such a general meaning, emerged simultaneously with the very notion of species (= eidos ) in the Ancient times, where it initially had quite different interpretations (see 2.2)". "In the scholastic period, this ambiguity has been reduced to a logical interpretation of the species. In modern times, however, dominated became biological understanding of the species as a group of organisms, which diverse interpretations are currently being tried to reduce to its evolutionary or genetic (reproductive) or operational meanings". "Another contemporary attempt, if not to reduce but at least to put diverse treatments in some order, is to build a kind of “conceptual pyramid” of different levels of generality of these treatments (see 4.1)" The Species Problem

Truthfreedom

Bob: "thank you, I appreciate the effort you put into providing the punchline." I guess it could be considered a sad punchline. A sad punchline to the sad joke that you never honestly address any of the issues that directly falsify your Darwinian worldview, but that you always try to dodge the issues at hand. A disingenuous and sad joke indeed! Kind of like finding something small to laugh about at a funeral I guess. bornagain77

Earth to Bob O'H- Anyone who thinks the diversity of life started from some unknown population or populations of prokaryotes, believes in unlimited plasticity. That you fail to understand that says quite a bit about your agenda of obfuscation. So clearly you are the problem here. ET

TimothyA- Please tell us how horizonal disease resistance arose via blind and mindless processes. But first you have to show how eukaryotes arose via blind and mindless processes. Good luck with that... ET

ba77 @ 124 - thank you, I appreciate the effort you put into providing the punchline. Bob O'H

How much does the concept of species weigh? How long in the concept of species in millimeters? How fast does the concept go? Is the concept of species positively or negatively charged? etc.. etc..

Does the concept 'species' weigh more in english or in chinese? Truthfreedom

As to Timothya;s comment on horizontal disease resistance.:

BA77: “Yet there is ZERO empirical evidence that mutations will ‘add up’ to produce a new complex functions and/or ‘traits’.” Timothya: Apparently BA77 has never heard of horizontal disease resistance.

This is just absurd. In response to the fact that Darwinian processes have never been observed to create a single gene and/or protein, (Axe, Gauger), or to build more than 2 protein-protein binding sites, (Behe), Timothya responds that I 'never heard of horizontal disease resistance.' For crying out loud, horizontal disease resistance is not proof that any gene and/or protein was created but is instead proof that plants have a sophisticated, in-built, preexisting, ability to resist pathogens:

In the first round of breeding for horizontal resistance, plants are exposed to pathogens and selected for partial resistance. Those with no resistance die, and plants unaffected by the pathogen have vertical resistance and are removed. The remaining plants have partial resistance and their seed is stored and bred back up to sufficient volume for further testing. The hope is that in these remaining plants are multiple types of partial-resistance genes, and by crossbreeding this pool back on itself, multiple partial resistance genes will come together and provide resistance to a larger variety of pathogens. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_resistance

Thus, Timothya did not point to a single gene/or protein being created, or to any functional complexity being 'built up', but instead pointed to a preexisting, inbuilt, sophisticated, ability, i.e horizontal disease resistance, for genes to develop resistance to pathogens. Moreover, the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent,

Is Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics an Appropriate Example of Evolutionary Change? – Kevin Anderson, Ph.D. Excerpt: Resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobials is often claimed to be a clear demonstration of “evolution in a Petri dish.” ,,, all known examples of antibiotic resistance via mutation are inconsistent with the genetic requirements of evolution. These mutations result in the loss of pre-existing cellular systems/activities, such as porins and other transport systems, regulatory systems, enzyme activity, and protein binding. http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp “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/ Biological Information – Loss-of-Function Mutations by Paul Giem 2015 – video (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 Michael Behe – Less is More: How Darwinian Evolution Helps Species Adapt by Breaking Genes – 2019 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKmXMlsQ5sg&list=PLS591mpvSTo3vP8g1BNfIMh3wUyrrWzQA&index=9

Thus Timothya's claim that horizontal disease resistance is proof that Darwinian processes can create genes/proteins or build up functional complexity is completely bogus. Of supplemental note to plant genetics in general:

Peer-Reviewed Research Paper on Plant Biology Favorably Cites Intelligent Design and Challenges Darwinian Evolution - Casey Luskin December 29, 2010 Excerpt: Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why — even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements — all the important mutation breeding programs have come to an end in the Western World instead of eliciting a revolution in plant breeding, either by successive rounds of selective “micromutations” (cumulative selection in the sense of the modern synthesis), or by “larger mutations” … and why the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated by the almost infinite repetition of the spectra of mutant phenotypes in each and any new extensive mutagenesis experiment instead of regularly producing a range of new systematic species… (Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some Further Research on Dollo’s Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation,” Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology Vol. 4 (Special Issue 1): 1-21 (December 2010).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/12/peer-reviewed_research_paper_o042191.html Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, (retired) Senior Scientist (Biology), Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Emeritus, Cologne, Germany.

John Sanford, who specialized in plant breeding, and who made significant contributions to pathogen-derived resistance, certainly does not hold that plant breeding proves Darwinian evolution: In fact, he holds the opposite, i.e. plant breeding proves 'Genetic Entropy For instance

"What about polyploidy plants? It has been claimed that since some plants are polyploidy (having double the normal chromosome numbers), this proves that duplication must be beneficial and must increase information. Polyploidy was my special area of study during my Ph.D. thesis. Interestingly, it makes a great deal of difference how a polyploid arises. If somatic (body) cells are treated with the chemical called colchicine, cell division is disrupted , resulting in chromosome doubling - but no new information arises. The plants that result are almost always very stunted, morphologically distorted, and generally sterile. The reason for this should be obvious - the plants must waste twice as much energy to make twice as much DNA, but with no new genetic information! The nucleus is also roughly twice as large, disrupting proper cell shape and cell size. In fact, the plants actually have less information than before, because a great deal of the information which controls gene regulation depends on gene dosage (copy number). Loss of regulatory control is loss of information. This is really the same reason why an extra chromosome causes Down's Syndrome. Thousands of genes become improperly improperly regulated, because of extra genic copies. If somatic polyploidization is consistently deleterious, why are there any polyploidy plants at all - such as potatoes? The reason is that polyploidy can arise by a different process - which is called sexual polyploidization.This happens when a unreduced sperm unites with a unreduced egg. In this special case, all of the information within the two parents is combined into the offspring, and there can be a net gain of information within that single individual. But there is no more total information within the population. the information within the two parents was simply pooled. In such a case we are seeing pooling of information, but not any new information.",,, "in some special cases, the extra level of gene backup within a polyploidy can outweigh the problems of disrupted gene regulation and reduced fertility - and so can result in a type of "net gain". But such a "net gain" is more accurately described as a net reduction in the rate of degeneration." John Sanford - Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome - pages 191-192 - Dr. John Sanford has been a Cornell University Professor for more than 25 years (being semi-retired since 1998). He received his Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin in the area of plant breeding and plant genetics.,,, His most significant scientific contributions involved three inventions - the biolistic ("gene gun") process, pathogen-derived resistance, and genetic immunization.

bornagain77

Bob states

He’ll probably accuse me of bobbing and weaving, and then change the subject.

Says the man who just blatantly ignored the fact that Darwinists simply cannot ground ‘permanence of form’ of any sort, and thus cannot provide a rigid definition of species in the first place (post 120), (certainly not a minor problem for Bob), and then directly signed on to the side issue of horizontal disease resistance so as to avoid having to deal with his 'species problem'. ,,, More on horizontal disease resistance later. But first, Darwinists, as is clearly illustrated in post 120, in their inability to define what a species truly is. simply have no overarching unifying principle in order to explain life, nor to explain why there should be an overarching 'top down' classification scheme apparent for life. (i.e. kingdom, phyla, classes. orders, families, genera, species). To repeat, Darwin, because of the reductive materialistic foundation that his theory rested upon, denied that there were any true ‘species’. He held the the term species “as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience” and that it “does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms.”

“I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.” – Origin of Species: second British edition (1860), page 52

As unbiased readers can clearly see, Darwin was hardly being concrete in his definition of species. And the reason for his fuzziness in his definition of species is clear, the term species is an abstract property and/or definition of the immaterial mind that cannot possibly be reduced to any possible materialistic explanations. i.e. How much does the concept of species weigh? How long in the concept of species in millimeters? How fast does the concept go? Is the concept of species positively or negatively charged? etc.. etc.. The term species, just like all other abstract properties of the immaterial mind, simply can find no grounding within materialism. The fact that the term species is an abstract definition that is created by the immaterial mind creates an irredeemable problem for Darwinists. You don’t have to take my word for it. To repeat what was said in post 120, a Darwinist admitted that “The most important concept in all of biology, (i.e. species), is a complete mystery”

What is a species? The most important concept in all of biology is a complete mystery – July 16, 2019 https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-species-the-most-important-concept-in-all-of-biology-is-a-complete-mystery-119200

Besides destroying the ability of Darwinists to build any coherent classification scheme for life, this inability for Darwinists to define what the concept of species truly is within the materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution gives us a glimpse into a irredeemable, and catastrophic, defect within the Darwinist’s reductive materialistic framework. Darwinists ultimately seek to ‘scientifically’ explain everything in materialistic terms. i.e. Reductive materialism. And yet, if something is not composed of particles or does not have physical properties (e.g., length, mass, energy, momentum, orientation, position, etc), it is abstract, i.e., spiritual. Numbers, mathematics, logic, truth, distance, time, beauty, ugliness, species, person, information, etc.. etc.. all fall into that category of being an abstract property of the immaterial mind. It is amazing how many things fall into that ‘abstract’ category even though most of us, including scientists, (“scientists” also happens to be an abstract term itself), swear that they exist physically. This inability of Darwinists to ground abstract immaterial concepts within their reductive materialistic worldview leads to the catastrophic failure of Darwinian evolution as a scientific worldview. The main, and primary, reason that Darwinian evolution winds up in catastrophic epistemological failure as a scientific worldview is that mathematics itself, (which is the very backbone of all science, engineering and technology), is an abstract concept that simply can find no basis within the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution.

What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? – M. Anthony Mills – April 16, 2018 Excerpt: Barr rightly observes that scientific atheists often unwittingly assume not just metaphysical naturalism but an even more controversial philosophical position: reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html

Simply put, Mathematics itself, (as well as logic itself), exists in a transcendent, beyond space and time realm. A platonic immaterial mathematical realm of abstract concepts which simply is not reducible to any possible materialistic explanation. (Of note, Plato was a Theist)

Platonic mathematical world compared to physical world – image http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/i.....ysical.gif Naturalism and Self-Refutation – Michael Egnor – January 31, 2018 Excerpt: Mathematics is certainly something we do. Is mathematics “included in the space-time continuum [with] basic elements … described by physics”?,,, What is the physics behind the Pythagorean theorem? After all, no actual triangle is perfect, and thus no actual triangle in nature has sides such that the Pythagorean theorem holds. There is no real triangle in which the sum of the squares of the sides exactly equals the square of the hypotenuse. That holds true for all of geometry. Geometry is about concepts, not about anything in the natural world or about anything that can be described by physics. What is the “physics” of the fact that the area of a circle is pi multiplied by the square of the radius? And of course what is natural and physical about imaginary numbers, infinite series, irrational numbers, and the mathematics of more than three spatial dimensions? Mathematics is entirely about concepts, which have no precise instantiation in nature,,, Furthermore, the very framework of Clark’s argument — logic — is neither material nor natural. Logic, after all, doesn’t exist “in the space-time continuum” and isn’t described by physics. What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction? How many millimeters long is Clark’s argument for naturalism? Ironically the very logic that Clark employs to argue for naturalism is outside of any naturalistic frame. The strength of Clark’s defense of naturalism is that it is an attempt to present naturalism’s tenets clearly and logically. That is its weakness as well, because it exposes naturalism to scrutiny, and naturalism cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny. Even to define naturalism is to refute it. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/naturalism-and-self-refutation/

Simply put, Mathematics itself, contrary to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, does not need the physical world in order to exist. And yet Darwinists, although they deny that anything beyond the physical world exists, need this transcendent world of mathematics in order for their theory to be considered scientific in the first place. The predicament that Darwinists find themselves in regards to denying the reality of this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics, and yet needing validation from this transcendent, immaterial, world of mathematics in order to be their theory to even be considered scientific in the first place, should be the very definition of a scientifically self-refuting worldview. Moreover, the fact that mathematics in and of itself is immaterial, and yet we have the ability to utilize mathematics, is proof that we ourselves MUST have an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the materialistic explanations of Darwinists. As Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's contemporary, noted "Mathematics is alone sufficient to prove in man the possession of a faculty unexistent in other creatures. Then you have music and the artistic faculty. No, the soul was a separate creation."

Nothing in evolution can account for the soul of man. The difference between man and the other animals is unbridgeable. Mathematics is alone sufficient to prove in man the possession of a faculty unexistent in other creatures. Then you have music and the artistic faculty. No, the soul was a separate creation. - Alfred Russel Wallace

Thus mathematics itself, which is a primary prerequisite for any theory to be considered scientific in the first place, is scientific proof in and of itself that Darwinian materialism must be false and that we MUST have an immaterial mind and/or soul. As Berlinski noted, "There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…."

An Interview with David Berlinski – Jonathan Witt Berlinski: There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…. Interviewer:… Come again(?) … Berlinski: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects. http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/found-upon-web-and-reprinted-here.html

Thus, I can see why Bob would want to sign on to the side issue of 'horizontal disease resistance' so quickly, and to ignore the 'species problem' for Darwinists. The 'species problem' when fleshed out in detail, points to an abstract immaterial realm of the mind, an abstract immaterial realm that also includes mathematics itself. A realm that, although it is necessary for us to even 'do science' in the first place, cannot possibly be grounded within the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinists. Needless to say, this IS NOT a minor problem for Darwinists! bornagain77

MatSpirit - oh, thanks. I think trying to explain something to ba77 is a losing battle. He'll probably accuse me of bobbing and weaving, and then change the subject.

Apparently BA77 has never heard of horizontal disease resistance.

Oh gods, I hated that term - I could never remember which was horizontal and which vertical. Mind you, the only term I thought was useful was robust resistance", and I was in the same department as the guy who coined it, so I might have been biased.. Bob O'H

And then there is this, from BA77, earlier in this thread: "Yet there is ZERO empirical evidence that mutations will ‘add up’ to produce a new complex functions and/or ‘traits’." Apparently BA77 has never heard of horizontal disease resistance. I remember learning about this phenomenon in my university course about forty years ago. Indeed, I exploited the phenomenon in plant breeding experiments. If anyone is interested in why BA77 is completely wrong in his claim, just google the phrase "horizontal disease resistance" and read the scientific papers that turn up. Please trust me, there are a lot of plant beeders who rely on the horizontal resistance phenomenon to develop new, disease-resistant varieties, for reasons that are precisely opposed to BA77's claim. Horizontal disease resistance is demonstrably true. Horizontal disease resistance exists in nature, and it works by doing what BA77 claims has "ZERO evidence". That is, it works by "adding up to produce a new trait". So BS77, you are just wrong. (And by the way, the Shroud of Turin is not evidence for anything except your religious beliefs). timothya

Bob, I think you missed a vital error that Mr. Knowitall made way back at the beginning of this thread. Go back to Reply 7 and read his words: "As well, inbreeding (continual selection for a particular trait in dogs,) is a very big problem in ‘Pure Breds’ that must be carefully guarded against in animal husbandry since it accelerates genetic degradation" He then compounds his felony by quoting from some breeding manuals which use the REAL definition of "inbreeding", which is MATING TWO CLOSELY RELATED INDIVIDUALS. The manuals go on to describe the hazards of real interbreeding, which can be grim, but only if you actually inbreed them. I'll let you explain it to him. MatSpirit

LOL, Bob O'Hara states,

I don’t believe in ‘unlimited plasticity’.

Yet he believes that some land dwelling creature can evolve into a whale. :) That sure is some kind of 'limited plasticity' that he believes in. :) Bob, you really need to embrace the sheer absurdity of your preferred materialistic theory of Darwinian evolution. Everything in your materialistic theory, at bottom, is just matter in motion. Your materialistic theory simply cannot ground 'permanence of form' of any sort. Shoot, this irresolvable dilemma of 'permanence of form' for reductive materialists, was pointed thousands of years ago by Aristotle and then, later on, further refined by Aquinas.

Darwin, Design & Thomas Aquinas The Mythical Conflict Between Thomism & Intelligent Design by Logan Paul Gage Excerpt: First, the problem of essences. G. K. Chesterton once quipped that “evolution . . . does not especially deny the existence of God; what it does deny is the existence of man.” It might appear shocking, but in this one remark the ever-perspicacious Chesterton summarized a serious conflict between classical Christian philosophy and Darwinism. In Aristotelian and Thomistic thought, each particular organism belongs to a certain universal class of things. Each individual shares a particular nature—or essence—and acts according to its nature. Squirrels act squirrelly and cats catty. We know with certainty that a squirrel is a squirrel because a crucial feature of human reason is its ability to abstract the universal nature from our sense experience of particular organisms. Think about it: How is it that we are able to recognize different organisms as belonging to the same group? The Aristotelian provides a good answer: It is because species really exist—not as an abstraction in the sky, but they exist nonetheless. We recognize the squirrel’s form, which it shares with other members of its species, even though the particular matter of each squirrel differs. So each organism, each unified whole, consists of a material and immaterial part (form).,,, One way to see this form-matter dichotomy is as Aristotle’s solution to the ancient tension between change and permanence debated so vigorously in the pre-Socratic era. Heraclitus argued that reality is change. Everything constantly changes—like fire, which never stays the same from moment to moment. Philosophers like Parmenides (and Zeno of “Zeno’s paradoxes” fame) argued exactly the opposite; there is no change. Despite appearances, reality is permanent. How else could we have knowledge? If reality constantly changes, how can we know it? What is to be known? Aristotle solved this dilemma by postulating that while matter is constantly in flux—even now some somatic cells are leaving my body while others arrive—an organism’s form is stable. It is a fixed reality, and for this reason is a steady object of our knowledge. Organisms have an essence that can be grasped intellectually. Denial of True Species Enter Darwinism. Recall that Darwin sought to explain the origin of “species.” Yet as he pondered his theory, he realized that it destroyed species as a reality altogether. For Darwinism suggests that any matter can potentially morph into any other arrangement of matter without the aid of an organizing principle. He thought cells were like simple blobs of Jell-O, easily re-arrangeable. For Darwin, there is no immaterial, immutable form. In The Origin of Species he writes: “I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual differences, is also applied arbitrarily, for convenience’s sake.” Statements like this should make card-carrying Thomists shudder.,,, The first conflict between Darwinism and Thomism, then, is the denial of true species or essences. For the Thomist, this denial is a grave error, because the essence of the individual (the species in the Aristotelian sense) is the true object of our knowledge. As philosopher Benjamin Wiker observes in Moral Darwinism, Darwin reduced species to “mere epiphenomena of matter in motion.” What we call a “dog,” in other words, is really just an arbitrary snapshot of the way things look at present. If we take the Darwinian view, Wiker suggests, there is no species “dog” but only a collection of individuals, connected in a long chain of changing shapes, which happen to resemble each other today but will not tomorrow. What About Man? Now we see Chesterton’s point. Man, the universal, does not really exist. According to the late Stanley Jaki, Chesterton detested Darwinism because “it abolishes forms and all that goes with them, including that deepest kind of ontological form which is the immortal human soul.” And if one does not believe in universals, there can be, by extension, no human nature—only a collection of somewhat similar individuals.,,, Implications for Bioethics This is not a mere abstract point. This dilemma is playing itself out in contemporary debates in bioethics. With whom are bioethicists like Leon Kass (neo-Aristotelian and former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics) sparring today if not with thoroughgoing Darwinians like Princeton’s Peter Singer, who denies that humans, qua humans, have intrinsic dignity? Singer even calls those who prefer humans to other animals “speciesist,” which in his warped vocabulary is akin to racism.,,, If one must choose between saving an intelligent, fully developed pig or a Down syndrome baby, Singer thinks we should opt for the pig.,,, https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=23-06-037-f

This is not just some minor philosophical dispute, but it plays out today in the real world. Modern day Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no way to demarcate what a species truly is:

What is a species? The most important concept in all of biology is a complete mystery - July 16, 2019 Excerpt: Enough of species? This is only the tip of a deep and confusing iceberg. There is absolutely no agreement among biologists about how we should understand the species. One 2006 article on the subject listed 26 separate definitions of species, all with their advocates and detractors. Even this list is incomplete. The mystery surrounding species is well-known in biology, and commonly referred to as “the species problem”. Frustration with the idea of a species goes back at least as far as Darwin.,,, some contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology have,,, suggested that biology would be much better off if it didn’t think about life in terms of species at all.,,, One of the great discoveries of evolutionary biology is that the human species is not special or privileged in the grand scheme of things, and that humans have the same origins as all the other animals. This approach just takes the next step. It says that there is no such thing as “the human species” at all. https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-species-the-most-important-concept-in-all-of-biology-is-a-complete-mystery-119200

It is highly ironic that Charles Darwin sought to explain the 'origin of species' and yet modern day Darwinists are at a complete loss to define what a species even is, Needless to say, if you cannot even provide a rigid definition of 'species' in your theory that claims to explain the 'origin of species', well then, so much for the claim from Darwinists that Darwinian evolution qualifies as a hard science. Of supplemental note:

“If you have no God, then you have no design plan for the universe. You have no prexisting structure to the universe.,, As the ancient Greeks held, like Democritus and others, the universe is flux. It’s just matter in motion. Now on that basis all you are confronted with is innumerable brute facts that are unrelated pieces of data. They have no meaningful connection to each other because there is no overall structure. There’s no design plan. It’s like my kids do ‘join the dots’ puzzles. It’s just dots, but when you join the dots there is a structure, and a picture emerges. Well, the atheist is without that (final picture). There is no preestablished pattern (to connect the facts given atheism).” Pastor Joe Boot – quote taken from 13:20 minute mark of the following video: Defending the Christian Faith – Pastor Joe Boot – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqE5_ZOAnKo

bornagain77

Again, Bob’s belief in, basically, ‘unlimited plasticity’

More rubbish. I don't believe in ‘unlimited plasticity’. And you've failed to present any evidence that anyone else does. Why do you persist with falsehoods? Bob O'H

Yes, Bob, in the real world there is a limit. In the evo world there isn't. But in the evo world you don't even have a mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes. So there is a problem with evo thinking. ET

Bob, besides presenting a false dilemma, (which is a formal logical fallacy) , is apparently unaware of just how majestic whales actually are: Here is a cool animated video showing a sperm whale using 'designed' echolocation to 'deep dive' hunt a giant squid in the murky depths of the ocean

Sperm Whale Vs Giant Squid - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_z2Lfxpi710

Again, Bob's belief in, basically, 'unlimited plasticity' is highlighted by the fact that he falsely believes it is possible for some type of land dwelling creature to evolve into a whale:

Whale Evolution Vs. Population Genetics - Richard Sternberg PhD. in Evolutionary Biology – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85kThFEDi8o More "Design of Life" Evidence: Whales - Oct. 4, 2015 Excerpt: More About the Male (Whale's) Refrigeration System The system actually works better when the whale swims hard. How can that be, when the testes are located right between the abdominal swimming muscles? It's like trying to keep a refrigerator cold between two furnaces. It works because the blood pumps harder during exercise, allowing more heat to escape into the water through the dorsal fin and tail. The higher volume of cool venous blood then enters the "miraculous web" (Latin rete mirabile, read more here) between the abdominal muscles, where the heat from the arteries is transferred to the cooler veins before entering the testes. It's a marvelous solution: a "counter-current heat exchanger" (CCHE) mechanism. As Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson explain in the film, without both internal testes and the refrigeration mechanism existing simultaneously, natural selection would halt, and whales would have gone extinct. Females, too, have a CCHE to protect the young during pregnancy. Similar CCHE systems are found in other marine mammals such as manatees and seals, providing more unlikely examples of "convergent evolution." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/11/more_design_of_1100621.html

In the following video, Philip Gingerich, the paleontologist who discovered and reconstructed Rhohocetus, which has been called by evolutionists, 'the most spectacular intermediary fossil in whale evolution', states this about that supposedly "most spectacular intermediary fossil",,,

"Well, I told you we don't have the tail in Rodhocetus. We don't know for sure whether it had a ball vertebrate indicating a (tail) fluke or not. So I speculated (that) it might have had a (tail) fluke.,,, Since then we found the forelimbs, the hands, and the front arms, the arms in other words of Rodhocetus, and we understand that it doesn't have the kind of arms that can be spread out like flippers are on a whale.,, If you don't have flippers, I don't think you can have a fluke tail and really powered swimming. And so I now doubt that Rodhocetus would have had a fluke tail." Philip Gingerich paleontologist - Whale Evolution vs. The Actual Evidence – video - fraudulent fossils revealed (11:40 minute mark) https://youtu.be/VSmO4nQ717U?t=699

i.e. Evolution is a fairy tale for adults that makes Santa Claus look mild in comparison. bornagain77

Ah, so ET are you saying that there i a limit to a whale's plasticity? Does this also apply to smaller pinnipeds, which are the same size as some fish? Bob O'H

LoL! @ Bob:

If ‘unlimited plasticity’ exists, why don’t whales breath with gills?

They can't get enough O2 via gills, Bob. ET

ba77 - if you're going to make your argument valid, you're going to have to show how you extrapolate from one transition to unlimited possibilities for transitions. If ‘unlimited plasticity’ exists, why don't whales breath with gills? Why do they still have to come to the surface to breath? Bob O'H

^^^^^ Bob at 111 HUH??? What??? You don't believe a land dwelling mammal evolved into a whale? My simple point, which seems to be lost on you, is that If you believe that some land dwelling mammal evolved in a whale, then you yourself believe in, basically, 'unlimited plasticity'. If you do not believe that some type of land dwelling mammal evolved into a whale, then you are not a Darwinist. Its your preferred theory for crying out loud! Own up to it, and quit 'bobbing and weaving'! bornagain77

Bob O'H:

Has anyone claimed that ‘unlimited plasticity’ actually exists?

That is the entire premise of evolutionism, Bob. The diversity of life from some unknown population or populations of prokaryotes IS unlimited plasticity. Or don't you understand the claims being made by evos? ET

ba77 - you're meant to say "yes, and here's a link to someone saying that". If you're unable to provide an example, then perhaps accept that the answer could be "no", and don't repeat this claim? Bob O'H

LOL

Has anyone claimed that ‘unlimited plasticity’ actually exists?

Asks the man who believes that a land dwelling mammal evolved into a whale! :)

Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics - Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q

bornagain77

Thus inbreeding strongly suggests that Darwinists are wrong in their claim that species have basically ‘unlimited plasticity’ to transmutate into brand new species.

There is not a single scientific proof of that alleged ‘unlimited plasticity’ (except in the imagination of darwinists).

Has anyone claimed that ‘unlimited plasticity’ actually exists? Bob O'H

@106 Bornagain77:

Thus inbreeding strongly suggests that Darwinists are wrong in their claim that species have basically ‘unlimited plasticity’ to transmutate into brand new species.

There is not a single scientific proof of that alleged 'unlimited plasticity' (except in the imagination of darwinists). Due to their failure to acknowledge reality and its limits, they have turned themselves into the alchemists of our era. What is Alchemy? (Darwinism) Alchemy (darwinism) was/ is based on the belief that there are four basic elements in nature: air (genes), fire (natural selection), water (drift) and earth ("randomness"). Alchemy (darwinism) is an ancient (19th century) practice shrouded in mystery and secrecy. Its practitioners mainly sought (seek) to turn lead (bacteria) into gold (dinosaurs), a quest that has captured the imaginations of people for thousands (150+) of years. Truthfreedom

I can see why you would want not to “bring in inbreeding” as a major problem in animal breeding, and try to focus on some minutiae of your field. Inbreeding, and the problems thereof, simply does fit the overall Darwinian narrative that you want to spin.

No, I explained in post 105 why I didn't bring up inbreeding. It's no surprise you just ignored it and continued to make the same false claims.

I can see why you would want not to “bring in inbreeding” as a major problem in animal breeding, and try to focus on some minutiae of your field.

I'm not sure "why animal breeding works" is the minutiae in the filed of animal breeding. Just a wild guess, but I think animal breeders would consider it rather important. Bob O'H

Bob O'Hara, whatever, you've got nothing. As the article I highlighted earlier, (that you disparaged among the posts as me 'barfing out posts'), stated, "Darwinian evolution is a massive extrapolation from selective breeding in animals." The reason why inbreeding is interesting to this whole ID vs. Darwinism debate is because inbreeding highlights the fact that there are fairly strict limits to how far you can push any species in any one direction, via selection, before problems with inbreeding start to become more and more problematic. As the article, that you disparaged, further explained,

Of course animal breeding “works,” up to a point.,,, But there are limits. Dogs can’t be bred to become cats, nor pigeons into bats. There appear to be set limits. Why? Behe has noted the problem that dog-breeding, canine eugenics, is accomplished largely by breaking genes:,,,

Thus inbreeding strongly suggests that Darwinists are wrong in their claim that species have basically 'unlimited plasticity' to transmutate into brand new species. I can see why you would want not to "bring in inbreeding" as a major problem in animal breeding, and try to focus on some minutiae of your field. Inbreeding, and the problems thereof, simply does fit the overall Darwinian narrative that you want to spin. Unfortunately. you not wanting to "bring in inbreeding", also reveals the fact that you have the annoying habit of dodging issues that falsify your Darwinian worldview. It is literally your modus operandi, hence the nickname "Bob and weave" You not wanting to "bring in inbreeding" says far more about the disingenuous nature of your debating style than it does for any lack of knowledge that I may have in the details of your field of expertise. Come to think of it, I'm not too impressed with the disingenuous nature in which you 'torture data until it confesses" in your field of expertise

Bob O'Hara Professor at NTNU I torture data until it confesses. Sometimes I have to resort to Bayesianism https://de.linkedin.com/in/bob-o-hara-93b0a210

Perhaps you should just let the data speak for itself instead of torturing the data to say what you want it to say? Just a suggestion Bob. :) bornagain77

ba77 - I didn't want to bring in inbreeding, because I was hoping you'd try to understand what I was explaining. It's not worth getting into inbreeding until you've understood that. For what it's worth, yes breeder are aware of problems with inbreeding, and have been for a long time. And yes, they do take it into account in their breeding (by trying to cross individuals with a low inbreeding coefficient). None of this is a secret, but I appreciate that you're more interested in criticising biologists, and that's much easier if you don't understand what you're criticising. Bob O'H

Bob O'Hara states

I didn’t want to get onto discussing inbreeding until you had understood the basics of animal and plant breeding.

too funny, when I bring up the fact that inbreeding is a major concern for animal breeders and that advances in genetic analysis therefore are not "that much of an improvement over what ranchers have already done in the past.", Bob dodges the issue by saying

I wasn't talking about inbreeding.

Yet when I point out the fact that inbreeding is and has been a major concern, arguanly more so in the genomic era, Bob again dodges and states

"I didn’t want to get onto discussing inbreeding until you had understood the basics of animal and plant breeding."

There you go folks, Darwinian debating skills 101. Heads I win, tails you lose. Oh yeah, lesson number two in Darwinian debating skills 101, don't forget to disparage the intelligence and comments of people that contradict you, as Bob did. That way you never actually have to address the meat of the substance in the comments that falsifies Darwinian evolution. bornagain77

ba77 @ 97 -

LOL, if modern breeding techniques do not protect against inbreeding, via analyzing the genetic robustness and diversity of parental stock,

They do, though.

And according to this following article, you are wrong in your claim that inbreeding is not a major concern in the genetic analysis of parental stack:,

I never claimed that, though. I didn't want to get onto discussing inbreeding until you had understood the basics of animal and plant breeding. Seriously, rather than spend time barfing out posts, use some of that time to educate yourself. Who knows, you might actually learn something interesting. Bob O'H

also of note:

If Human Eugenics Wouldn’t Work, Human Evolution Has a Big Problem - February 18, 2020 A Massive Extrapolation In an email, a geneticist friend notes the irony. Darwinian evolution is a massive extrapolation from selective breeding in animals. Of course animal breeding “works,” up to a point. Darwin in the Origin of Species cited the efforts of pigeon fanciers. In a New York Times book review, Dawkins once taunted Michael Behe with the successes of dog-breeding. But there are limits. Dogs can’t be bred to become cats, nor pigeons into bats. There appear to be set limits. Why? Behe has noted the problem that dog-breeding, canine eugenics, is accomplished largely by breaking genes:,,, The extrapolation from dogs or pigeons to macroevolution fails because building genuine biological novelties, not just a Chihuahua as distinct from a poodle, requires more than merely breaking stuff, aka devolution, as Behe has shown in his book Darwin Devolves.,,, ,,, that’s why Dawkins felt compelled to “combat” the idea that eugenics with humans is impossible. For the Darwinist, whether it is seen as a good or a bad thing, it must at least be possible. https://evolutionnews.org/2020/02/if-human-eugenics-wouldnt-work-human-evolution-has-a-big-problem/

bornagain77

Of related note:

I work on human genetics and am honorary professor at the UCL Genetics Institute. I’m the editor-in chief of a journal which used to be called Annals of Eugenics. I just wanted to say that we now know from the latest research that eugenics simply would not work. I have published hundreds of scientific papers on human genetics including on intellectual disability, mental illness and the predictive ability of genetic. Let’s say that the aim of eugenics is to intervene at a societal level to improve the genetic stock of the population, for example to eliminate undesirable characteristics or to produce average increases in the values of desirable traits. Animals are bred in controlled environments and have short generational times with large numbers of offspring. In these circumstances selective breeding can produce desired changes in a small number of specific traits such as milk yield or racing performance. So why wouldn’t it work in humans? Let me start by saying that there have been tremendous advances on our knowledge on this subject in just the last couple of years and our understanding has changed a lot. My claims are based on results of genetic epidemiological studies of hundreds of thousands of people, such as UK Biobank, and sequencing studies of many thousands of people. These results have emerged recently and many commentators may not fully appreciate them... Read more here https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1229701171721445376.html

bornagain77

Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement of the cell or of an entire organism in general. Whereas Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to. As Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Moreover, we now also have empirical evidence from quantum information theory that entropy is a “property of an observer who describes a system.”

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

In other words, some ‘outside observer’ who is outside the space-time of the universe, is now required in order to give us an adequate causal account so as to explain how it is even possible for this immense amount of positional and/or quantum information to somehow be coming into the developing embryo ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method in order to raise the developing embryo to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium. (i.e. 2,000 Titanics full of thumb drives!) On top of all that, quantum information is physically conserved. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.

Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time - 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html

The implication of finding 'non-local', beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”

Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe - Oct. 19, 2017 - Spiritual Excerpt: “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://www.disclose.tv/leading-scientists-say-consciousness-cannot-die-it-goes-back-to-the-universe-315604

Thus, when one traces out the mystery as to what is actually determining how an organism may be achieving is basic form, one is led, by the empirical evidence itself, inevitably to the existence of a soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our physical bodies. Contrary to how Darwinists may negatively react to this, finding experimental evidence, via quantum information theory and quantum biology, for the actual existence of a soul, a soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our physical bodies, is VERY GOOD NEWS that we rightly ought to greet with a profound sense of joy instead of greeting it with irrational hostility as Darwinists are prone to greet such evidence for the soul with. Verse:

Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?

bornagain77

As to this comment from the preceding article, “they admit that more must be going on.” And indeed, there is much ‘more’ that is going on than meets the eye. As Doug Axe states in the following video, “there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.”

“There is also a presumption, typically when we talk about our genome, (that the genome) is a blueprint for making us. And that is actually not a proven fact in biology. That is an assumption. And (one) that I question because I don’t think that 4 billion bases, which would be 8 billion bits of information, that you would actually have enough information to specify a human being. If you consider for example that there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.” Doug Axe – Intelligent Design 3.0 – Stephen C. Meyer – video https://youtu.be/lgs6J4LqeqI?t=4575

And at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, ‘positional information’ must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into multiple different states during embryological development.

Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017 https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484

The amount of ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method is immense. Vastly outstripping, by many orders of magnitude, the amount of sequential information that is contained within DNA itself. First off, it is important to note just how far out of thermodynamic equilibrium life is: The positional information that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be on the order 10 to the 12 bits,,,

Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: - Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz' deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm

,,, Which is the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. 'In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”

“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong - The Creation-evolution Controversy 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894

Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.

Size Comparisons of Bacteria, Amoeba, Animal & Plant Cells Excerpt: Bacterial cells are very small - about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells. https://education.seattlepi.com/size-comparisons-bacteria-amoeba-animal-plant-cells-4966.html

And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells in the average human body,

Revised Estimates for the Number of Human and Bacteria Cells in the Body - 2016 Abstract: Reported values in the literature on the number of cells in the body differ by orders of magnitude and are very seldom supported by any measurements or calculations. Here, we integrate the most up-to-date information on the number of human and bacterial cells in the body. We estimate the total number of bacteria in the 70 kg "reference man" to be 3.8·10^13. For human cells, we identify the dominant role of the hematopoietic lineage to the total count (?90%) and revise past estimates to 3.0·10^13 human cells. Our analysis also updates the widely-cited 10:1 ratio, showing that the number of bacteria in the body is actually of the same order as the number of human cells, and their total mass is about 0.2 kg. https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002533

Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of positional information that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method. As the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.

In a TED Talk, (the Question You May Not Ask,,, Where did the information come from?) – November 29, 2017 Excerpt: Sabatini is charming.,,, he deploys some memorable images. He points out that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000. Later he wheels out the entire genome, in printed form, of a human being,,,,: [F]or the first time in history, this is the genome of a specific human, printed page-by-page, letter-by-letter: 262,000 pages of information, 450 kilograms.,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2017/11/in-a-ted-talk-heres-the-question-you-may-not-ask/

Moreover, we now have evidence that ‘quantum information’ is ubiquitous within molecular biology. As the title of the following paper states, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules”

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

As well, at 24:00 minute mark of the following video Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.

“What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state.” Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176

What is so devastating to Darwinian presuppositions with the finding pervasive quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement within molecular biology, is that quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement is a non-local, beyond space and time, effect that requires a beyond space and time cause in order to explain its existence. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, ““Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”

Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php

bornagain77

Bob O'Hara at 96

ba77 @ 93 – :Moreover, my main point all along with Bob has been that this is still a far cry from proving that genotypes can generate phenotypes. Bob: Ah, so you were arguing something totally different! FWIW, there is a lot of work on this, start with Mendel.

Okie Dokie, We will start with Mendel. For decades Mendel was persona non gratis for Darwinists,

Scientific Consensus? You've Got to Be Kidding, Right? - May 4, 2015 Excerpt: last week defending that reliability of “scientific consensus,” theoretical astrophysicist Ethan Siegel wrote: "Evolution was the consensus position that led to the discovery of genetics…" What a hoot! The truth is that Gregor Mendel, (an Augustinian friar), discovered genetics with no help from evolution. Mendel published his theory about the same time that Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species, but Mendel did not accept Darwin’s theory, and Darwin’s followers ignored Mendel’s theory for decades. Here’s an excerpt from a chapter titled “You’d Think Darwin Invented the Internet” in Jonathan Wells’s book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design: Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel found Darwin’s theory unpersuasive. The data he collected led him to conclude that heredity involves the transmission of stable factors that determine an organism’s traits. Although the factors can be mixed and matched during reproduction, they remain discrete and unchanging from one generation to the next. Darwin’s view of heredity was quite different. He believed that every cell in an organism produces “gemmules” that transmit characteristics to the next generation in a blending process he called “pangenesis.” The advantage of Darwin’s view was that gemmules could be changed by external conditions, or by use and disuse, and thus account for evolutionary change. The disadvantage of Darwin’s view was that it was false. Mendel’s theory of stable factors contradicted Darwin’s theory of changeable gemmules. Thus, although Mendel’s work was published in 1866, Darwinists totally ignored it for more than three decades. William Bateson, one of the scientists who “rediscovered” Mendelian genetics at the turn of the century, wrote that the cause for this lack of interest was “unquestionably to be found in that neglect of the experimental study of the problem of Species which supervened on the general acceptance of the Darwinian doctrines… The question, it was imagined, had been answered and the debate ended.” Even after 1900, Darwinists had little use for Mendel’s theory. By the 1930s, however, the evidence had corroborated Mendelian genetics. Darwinists abandoned pangenesis and subsumed Mendelism in a “neo-Darwinian synthesis” that still dominates evolutionary biology. In 1999, Darwinist Bruce Alberts claimed that Darwinism is “at the core of genetics.” Yet Mendel had no need for Darwin’s hypothesis. How can Darwinism, which contributed nothing to the origin of genetics and resisted it for half a century, now be at its core? It is Darwinism that needs genetics, not genetics that needs Darwinism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/05/scientific_cons095761.html

So much for Mendel being a friend of Darwinists. Moreover although Darwinists “subsumed Mendelism in a “neo-Darwinian synthesis”, and assumed that random mutations to ‘discrete genes’ could somehow provide the source for variability that Darwinists needed in order to make their theory of the ‘unlimited plasticity of species’ viable, the fact of the matter is that Darwinists have never shown that it is possible, via random mutations, to gradually change change one ‘discrete’ gene into a brand new gene, nor have they shown that it is possible to change one protein into a brand new protein. Thus Darwinists have never shown that it is possible to gradually change one species into a brand new species,

Evolution by Gene Duplication Falsified - December 2010 Excerpt: The various postduplication mechanisms entailing random mutations and recombinations considered were observed to tweak, tinker, copy, cut, divide, and shuffle existing genetic information around, but fell short of generating genuinely distinct and entirely novel functionality. Contrary to Darwin’s view of the plasticity of biological features, successive modification and selection in genes does indeed appear to have real and inherent limits: it can serve to alter the sequence, size, and function of a gene to an extent, but this almost always amounts to a variation on the same theme—as with RNASE1B in colobine monkeys. The conservation of all-important motifs within gene families, such as the homeobox or the MADS-box motif, attests to the fact that gene duplication results in the copying and preservation of biological information, and not its transformation as something original. http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev201101.htm#20110103a Douglas Axe and Ann Gauger Argue that Design Best Explains New Biological Information - Casey Luskin August 26, 2013 Excerpt: Axe and Gauger observe that “The most widely accepted explanation for the origin of new enzymes is gene duplication and recruitment.” However, they cite experimental work showing that a duplicate gene is much more likely to be silenced (because of the costly resources expended in transcribing and translating it) than it is to acquire a new function. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/08/douglas_axe_and075601.html Right of Reply: Our Response to Jerry Coyne - September 29, 2019 by Günter Bechly, Brian Miller and David Berlinski Excerpt: Indeed, Harvard mathematical biologist Martin Nowak has shown that random searches in sequence space that start from known functional sequences are no more likely to enter regions in sequence space with new protein folds than searches that start from random sequences. The reason for this is clear: random searches are overwhelmingly more likely to go off into a non-folding, non-functional abyss than they are to find a novel protein fold. Why? Because such novel folds are so extraordinarily rare in sequence space. Moreover, as Meyer explained in Darwin’s Doubt, as mutations accumulate in functional sequences, they will inevitably destroy function long before they stumble across a new protein fold. Again, this follows from the extreme rarity (as well as the isolation) of protein folds in sequence space. Recent work by Weizmann Institute protein scientist Dan Tawfik has reinforced this conclusion. Tawfik’s work shows that as mutations to functional protein sequences accumulate, the folds of those proteins become progressively more thermodynamically and structurally unstable. Typically, 15 or fewer mutations will completely destroy the stability of known protein folds of average size. Yet, generating (or finding) a new protein fold requires far more amino acid sequence changes than that. Finally, calculations based on Tawfik’s work confirm and extend the applicability of Axe’s original measure of the rarity of protein folds. These calculations confirm that the measure of rarity that Axe determined for the protein he studied is actually representative of the rarity for large classes of other globular proteins. Not surprisingly, Dan Tawfik has described the origination of a truly novel protein or fold as “something like close to a miracle.” Tawfik is on Coyne’s side: He is mainstream. https://quillette.com/2019/09/29/right-of-reply-our-response-to-jerry-coyne/ Dan S. Tawfik Group - The New View of Proteins - Tyler Hampton - 2016 Excerpt: “Modern neo-Darwinism and neutral evolutionary treatments,” remark Leonard Bogarad and Michael Deem, “fail to explain satisfactorily the generation of the diversity of life found on our planet.” It is not that they did not evolve, they say, but that “... most theoretical treatments of evolution consider only the limited point-mutation events that form the basis of these theories.” Their sober conclusion is that “point mutation alone is incapable of evolving systems with substantially new protein folds.”60,,, “In fact, to our knowledge,” Tawfik and Tóth-Petróczy write, “no macromutations ... that gave birth to novel proteins have yet been identified.”69,,, http://inference-review.com/article/the-new-view-of-proteins

Thus the problem of discrete and unchanging genes and/or proteins from one generation to the next, which Mendel first highlighted, has not been overcome by Darwinists with their appeal to random mutations. In short, Darwinists have no source for the the ‘unlimited plasticity’ that they need in order to make their theory viable. And although this is devastating in of of itself to Darwinian theory, it gets worse for Darwinists, Much worse! ,, In the following video, Dr Denis Noble states that all the rules of the ‘central dogma’ have been broken,

around 1900 there was the integration of Mendelian (discrete) inheritance with evolutionary theory, and about the same time Weismann established what was called the Weismann barrier, which is the idea that germ cells and their genetic materials are not in anyway influenced by the organism itself or by the environment. And then about 40 years later, circa 1940, a variety of people, Julian Huxley, R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and Sewell Wright, put things together to call it ‘The Modern Synthesis’. So what exactly is the ‘The Modern Synthesis’? It is sometimes called neo-Darwinism, and it was popularized in the book by Richard Dawkins, ‘The Selfish Gene’ in 1976. It’s main assumptions are, first of all, is that it is a gene centered view of natural selection. The process of evolution can therefore be characterized entirely by what is happening to the genome. It would be a process in which there would be accumulation of random mutations, followed by selection. (Now an important point to make here is that if that process is genuinely random, then there is nothing that physiology, or physiologists, can say about that process. That is a very important point.) The second aspect of neo-Darwinism was the impossibility of acquired characteristics (mis-called “Larmarckism”). And there is a very important distinction in Dawkins’ book ‘The Selfish Gene’ between the replicator, that is the genes, and the vehicle that carries the replicator, that is the organism or phenotype. And of course that idea was not only buttressed and supported by the Weissman barrier idea, but later on by the ‘Central Dogma’ of molecular biology. Then Dr. Nobel pauses to emphasize his point and states “All these rules have been broken!”. - Professor Denis Noble - President of the International Union of Physiological Sciences. - Rocking the foundations of biology - video http://www.voicesfromoxford.org/video/physiology-and-the-revolution-in-evolutionary-biology/184 "Physiology Is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology": Another Peer-Reviewed Paper Takes Aim at Neo-Darwinism - Casey Luskin March 31, 2015 Excerpt: Noble doesn't mince words: "It is not only the standard 20th century views of molecular genetics that are in question. Evolutionary theory itself is already in a state of flux (Jablonka & Lamb, 2005; Noble, 2006, 2011; Beurton et al. 2008; Pigliucci & Muller, 2010; Gissis & Jablonka, 2011; Shapiro, 2011). In this article, I will show that all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis (often also called Neo-Darwinism) have been disproved." Noble then recounts those assumptions: (1) that "genetic change is random," (2) that "genetic change is gradual," (3) that "following genetic change, natural selection leads to particular gene variants (alleles) increasing in frequency within the population," and (4) that "inheritance of acquired characteristics is impossible." He then cites examples that refute each of those assumptions,,, He then proposes a new and radical model of biology called the "Integrative Synthesis," where genes don't run the show and all parts of an organism -- the genome, the cell, the body plan, everything -- is integrated. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/physiology_is_r094821.html

Moreover, Michael Denton notes that “There (is) no longer the slightest justification for believing there exists anything in the genome remotely resembling a program capable of specifying in detail all the complex order of the phenotype.”

"To understand the challenge to the “superwatch” model by the erosion of the gene-centric view of nature, it is necessary to recall August Weismann’s seminal insight more than a century ago regarding the need for genetic determinants to specify organic form. As Weismann saw so clearly, in order to account for the unerring transmission through time with precise reduplication, for each generation of “complex contingent assemblages of matter” (superwatches), it is necessary to propose the existence of stable abstract genetic blueprints or programs in the genes- he called them “determinants”- sequestered safely in the germ plasm, away from the ever varying and destabilizing influences of the extra-genetic environment. Such carefully isolated determinants would theoretically be capable of reliably transmitting contingent order through time and specifying it reliably each generation. Thus, the modern “gene-centric” view of life was born, and with it the heroic twentieth century effort to identify Weismann’s determinants, supposed to be capable of reliably specifying in precise detail all the contingent order of the phenotype. Weismann was correct in this: the contingent view of form and indeed the entire mechanistic conception of life- the superwatch model- is critically dependent on showing that all or at least the vast majority of organic form is specified in precise detail in the genes. Yet by the late 1980s it was becoming obvious to most genetic researchers, including myself, since my own main research interest in the ‘80s and ‘90s was human genetics, that the heroic effort to find information specifying life’s order in the genes had failed. There was no longer the slightest justification for believing there exists anything in the genome remotely resembling a program capable of specifying in detail all the complex order of the phenotype. The emerging picture made it increasingly difficult to see genes as Weismann’s “unambiguous bearers of information” or view them as the sole source of the durability and stability of organic form. It is true that genes influence every aspect of development, but influencing something is not the same as determining it. Only a small fraction of all known genes, such as the developmental fate switching genes, can be imputed to have any sort of directing or controlling influence on form generation. From being “isolated directors” of a one-way game of life, genes are now considered to be interactive players in a dynamic two-way dance of almost unfathomable complexity, as described by Keller in The Century of The Gene" - Michael Denton “An Anti-Darwinian Intellectual Journey”, Uncommon Dissent (2004), pages 171-2

Bob goes on to state:

BA77: That failure to be able to reduce phenotype to a purely genotypic explanation is a simple fact that is established by numerous lines of empirical evidence. and it is certainly not something that I am making up out of thin air just to suit my own preferences. Bob: I don’t think anyone does that, and people working on quantitative genetics certainly don’t. We include different sources of non-genetic variation as standard, as well as looking at how the genotype and environment interact to produce the phenotype (so-called “G by E”).

And that is exactly why I sometimes affectionately refer to Bob as “Bob (and weave)”. Bob has a annoying habit of dodging the main issue at hand so as to avoid having to deal with any evidence that may directly falsify Darwinian theory. Bob, after asking me to “start with Mendel” in order to see “a lot of work on” how genotypes can generate phenotypes, Bob then, directly after telling me to do that, backpedals and says that “We include different sources of non-genetic variation as standard, as well as looking at how the genotype and environment interact to produce the phenotype (so-called “G by E”).” And yet, while that is all certainly true, it still does not circumvent the primary claim from Darwinists that the main source for novelty in Darwinian theory is held to be random mutations to DNA. In fact, the fact that Darwinists have had to ‘modify’ their theory in oreder to take into account “different sources of non-genetic variation as standard, as well as looking at how the genotype and environment interact to produce the phenotype”… the fact that Darwinists have had ‘adjust their theory’ to do that is, in of itself, a severe departure from neo-Darwinian orthodoxy and should count as falsifying evidence against Darwinian theory. As the following article notes, all of these factors that Bob listed in producing the phenotype are unexpected under Darwinian presuppositions and “taking the longer view, the selfish gene per se is looking increasingly like a twentieth-century construct.”

Genetics: Dawkins, redux - Nathaniel Comfort -Nature - 525, 184–185 (10 September 2015) Excerpt: A curious stasis underlies Dawkins's thought. His biomorphs are grounded in 1970s assumptions. Back then, with rare exceptions, each gene specified a protein and each protein was specified by a gene. The genome was a linear text — a parts list or computer program for making an organism —insulated from the environment, with the coding regions interspersed with “junk”. Today's genome is much more than a script: it is a dynamic, three-dimensional structure, highly responsive to its environment and almost fractally modular. Genes may be fragmentary, with far-flung chunks of DNA sequence mixed and matched in bewildering combinatorial arrays. A universe of regulatory and modulatory elements hides in the erstwhile junk. Genes cooperate, evolving together as units to produce traits. Many researchers continue to find selfish DNA a productive idea, but taking the longer view, the selfish gene per se is looking increasingly like a twentieth-century construct. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7568/full/525184a.html

Moreover, even granting Bob “non-genetic variation” and “environment” factors does not solve the problem of how phenotypes are generated. As the following article notes, "Organoid formation itself demonstrates that cells can become organized in the absence of predetermined long-range external patterning influences such as morphogen gradients or mechanical forces, which are a cornerstone of classic developmental biology.”

From Genome to Body Plan: A Mystery - January 24, 2017 Excerpt: Decoding genomes has been one of the most important advances of the last sixty years, but it's really just a start of a far larger mystery: the mystery of development.,,, "A long-term aim of the life sciences is to understand how organismal shape is encoded by the genome. An important challenge is to identify mechanistic links between the genes that control cell-fate decisions and the cellular machines that generate shape, therefore closing the gap between genotype and phenotype. ",,, The authors marvel at how "organoids" emerge from induced pluripotent stem cells.,,, After thinking about it, they admit that more must be going on. ,,,"Organoid formation itself demonstrates that cells can become organized in the absence of predetermined long-range external patterning influences such as morphogen gradients or mechanical forces, which are a cornerstone of classic developmental biology. This unexpected lack of requirement for long-range pre-patterning has led to organoid formation being described as an example of 'self-organization', which is defined classically as the spontaneous emergence of order through the interaction of initially homogeneous components.",,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/01/from_genome_to103451.html

In short, the biological form that any particular organism may take is not determined by any “external patterning influences” that Bob, or other Darwinists, may wish to appeal to, and therefore the magic wand of the “spontaneous emergence” of ‘self-organization’ was invoked by the researchers. Which is basically the researchers throwing their hands up in the air and admitting that they have no real clue as to how organisms are arriving at their basic form. bornagain77

Bob at 95

I wasn’t discussing inbreeding. ,,, go back to what I wrote at 83,,,,

Bob at 83

That’s probably because you haven’t studied any quantitative genetics or modern breeding techniques.,,,

LOL, if modern breeding techniques do not protect against inbreeding, via analyzing the genetic robustness and diversity of parental stock, it is worse than what Ranchers have done all along for hundreds, even thousands, of years in breeding their stock to try to enhance a certain trait and yet not fall into the pit of 'pushing the stock too far' into the problems of inbreeding. And according to this following article, you are wrong in your claim that inbreeding is not a major concern in the genetic analysis of parental stack:,

The truth about inbreeding in dairy cattle - October 2019 There is no simple solution to inbreeding. It took years to get into this situation, and it’s not going away tomorrow. - BY ASHLEY YAGER Excerpt: There’s no doubt that inbreeding has been a topic heavy on dairy farmers’ minds as we’ve progressed through the genomic era. For that very reason, the cause and effect of inbreeding was a hot topic at the National Genetics Conference, held in coordination with the 2019 National Holstein Convention in Appleton, Wis. John Cole of USDA’s Animal Genomics Improvement Laboratory provided an in-depth look at the past 10 years along with a glimpse of how we may be able to manage future inbreeding challenges. What is inbreeding? “Admittedly, inbreeding is sometimes made out to be more complicated than it really is,” said Cole. “Inbreeding is simply mating animals that are related to each other. Inbreeding is something we can manage, but it is not completely preventable,” said the longtime dairy scientist. When the science of genomics index surfaced in 2008, genotyping females became quite popular. “This process allowed for added pressure in selection programs, giving us the chance to try and take the best DNA from the population and put it together in one animal,” said Cole. “In fact, genotyping has become so popular, the combined USDA and Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding became the first database with one million genotyped individuals in July 2015.” Creating the best “The principle behind getting the best DNA is this: We take the best Chromosome 1 in the population and match it with the absolute best Chromosome 2 in the population, and we do this with all chromosomes,” he said explaining information in the figure. “If we did that (theoretically), we’d end up with an animal with an estimated breeding value of about $7,304 (NM$),” said Cole, noting that the top genomic bull available for sale is $1,170 NM$. “We still have a long way to go, but the more pressure we put on trying to reach this point, the more we’ll be driven by mathematics and other considerations,” he said. “This will lead to more heavy mating within certain lines, further driving inbreeding,” Cole commented. “I think you’re going to see a shorter generation interval on dams of bull sides.” When it comes to making breeding decisions, genomics is helping us identify the best genes from the best animals. “At the end of the day, we are in a race that never ends,” said Cole. “Everyone is trying to find the high index bull (or female for breeders).” Artificial insemination (A.I.) bulls are going to be bred to meet market demand. “If demand in the market is for high index sires, that’s what A.I. companies are going to provide,” commented Cole. “If breeders are not willing to pay for less inbreeding, the market will not provide it. High genetic merit bulls have high marketability. Lower inbreeding rates (in most cases) result in slower genetic gains. As a dairyman, if you slow down, your competitors just get farther ahead,” said the Louisiana native. “Who is willing to go slower in their genetic selection program to better manage inbreeding? Are you willing to watch neighbors and competitors go faster?” he asked. https://hoards.com/article-26575-the-truth-about-inbreeding-in-dairy-cattle.html

bornagain77

ba77 @ 93 -

Moreover, my main point all along with Bob has been that this is still a far cry from proving that genotypes can generate phenotypes.

Ah, so you were arguing something totally different! FWIW, there is a lot of work on this, start with Mendel.

That failure to be able to reduce phenotype to a purely genotypic explanation is a simple fact that is established by numerous lines of empirical evidence. and it is certainly not something that I am making up out of thin air just to suit my own preferences.

I don't think anyone does that, and people working on quantitative genetics certainly don't. We include different sources of non-genetic variation as standard, as well as looking at how the genotype and environment interact to produce the phenotype (so-called "G by E"). Bob O'H

ba77 @ 85 -

Bob 83, since this is your field, I can see where you want to ‘sell it’, but again, I don’t see this as that much of an improvement over what ranchers have already done in the past. Ranchers have been well aware of the pitfalls of inbreeding and have long taken measures to insure against it:

Eh? I wasn't discussing inbreeding. Please, go back to what I wrote at 83, read it carefully and try to understand it. If there's anything that's not clear, ask and I'll try to explain. Bob O'H

To state the obvious, free will is a tricky concept. Like everyone else, I have the experience of exercising free will in my daily life. But it does not appear to be unlimited As we have discussed before, I did not consciously choose my sexuality and I think this is true for most if not all people. I don't like baked beans, they make me feel nauseous. I tried to make myself like them by eating them but it just didn't happen. Then we have evidence from the Bible in the case of Peter's triple denial of Christ. Even though he had been explicitly warned in advance what was going to happen, he couldn't do anything about it. Could God being trying to tell us something here? And from quantum physics you should ask our resident expert, BA77, about superdeterminism. This has been put forward as a way of explaining the mysterious phenomenon of quantum entanglement. Unfortunately, if true, it also means there is no free will. Verse; -- Marcus Cole, Babylon 5 "You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." Seversky

Well Mimus, I can now see that the equation would be of some use to breeders and reluctantly, but honestly, admitted as much in my discussion with Bob. My point in reply to Bob was that "I don’t see this as that much of an improvement over what ranchers have already done in the past. " You may quibble that it allows breeders to avoid costly mistakes by being more accurate in their measurements for potential genetic inbreeding, and even on that point I would have to agree with you. But still this improvement is along the same line as what professional breeders have done all along. i.e. There are limits to the desired traits that you can get and you must be careful to not go too far or you will wind up with problems with inbreeding. I dare say that this has been known about for hundreds if not thousands of years. Moreover, my main point all along with Bob has been that this is still a far cry from proving that genotypes can generate phenotypes. Which is not a minor point in the debate between ID advocates and Darwinists. In fact I referenced several links, (regurgitated several links in your biased Darwinian view of things), that proved that Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand biology in the first place. That failure to be able to reduce phenotype to a purely genotypic explanation is a simple fact that is established by numerous lines of empirical evidence. and it is certainly not something that I am making up out of thin air just to suit my own preferences. Moreover, this empirically established fact, since Darwinism is based on reductive materialism, goes to the heart of Darwin's theoretical framework and falsifies Darwinism from the inside out. You see Mimus, that is how science works. You set your biases aside, let the evidence speak for itself, and see whether a theory is true or not.

"If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is… If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.” - Richard Feynman on the Scientific Method

I have yet to personally meet a Darwinist on UD who has been willing to set his biases aside and to be honest with the evidence. For instance, I'm to the point of considering it to be an outright miracle if Seversky were ever to be honest with the evidence. :) Here are a few lines of evidence that falsify Darwinian evolution, Lines of evidence that die-hard Darwinists, such as Seversky, simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their atheistic theory:

Darwin’s theory holds mutations to the genome to be random. The vast majority of mutations to the genome are not random but are now found to be ‘directed’. Darwin’s theory holds that Natural Selection is the ‘designer substitute’ that produces the ‘appearance’ and/or illusion of design. Natural Selection, especially for multicellular organisms, is found to grossly inadequate as the ‘designer substitute. Darwin’s theory holds that mutations to DNA will eventually change the basic biological form of any given species into a new form of a brand new species. Yet, biological form is found to be irreducible to mutations to DNA, nor is biological form reducible to any other material particulars in biology one may wish to invoke. Darwin’s theory holds there to be an extremely beneficial and flexible mutation rate for DNA which was ultimately responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. The mutation rate to DNA is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial, information building, mutations whatsoever. Charles Darwin himself held that the gradual unfolding of life would (someday) be self-evident in the fossil record. Yet, from the Cambrian Explosion onward, the fossil record is consistently characterized by the sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record(disparity), then rapid diversity within the group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. Moreover, Fossils are found in the “wrong place” all the time (either too early, or too late). Darwin’s theory, due to the randomness postulate, holds that patterns will not repeat themselves in supposedly widely divergent species. Yet thousands of instances of what is ironically called ‘convergent evolution’, on both the morphological and genetic level, falsifies the Darwinian belief that patterns will not repeat themselves in widely divergent species. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Yet as Doug Axe pointed out, “Basically every gene and every new protein fold, there is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in that gradualistic way. It’s all a mirage. None of it happens that way.” Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.” Yet as Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig pointed out, “in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as modern versions of it.” Charles Darwin himself stated that, ““The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God. Yet ‘our conscious selves’ are certainly not explainable by ‘chance’ (nor is consciousness explainable by any possible reductive materialistic explanation in general), i.e. ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. Besides the mathematics of probability consistently showing that Darwinian evolution is impossible, the mathematics of population genetics itself has now shown Darwinian evolution to be impossible. Moreover, ‘immaterial’ mathematics itself, which undergirds all of science, engineering and technology, is held by most mathematicians to exist in some timeless, unchanging, immaterial, Platonic realm. Yet, the reductive materialism that Darwinian theory is based upon denies the existence of the immaterial realm that mathematics exists in. i.e. Darwinian evolution actually denies the objective reality of the one thing, i.e. mathematics, that it most needs in order to be considered scientific in the first place! Donald Hoffman has, via population genetics, shown that if Darwin’s materialistic theory were true then all our observations of reality would be illusory. Yet the scientific method itself is based on reliable observation. Moreover, Quantum Mechanics itself has now shown that conscious observation must come before material reality, i.e. falsification of ‘realism’ proves that our conscious observations are reliable!. The reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought holds that immaterial information is merely ’emergent’ from a material basis. Yet immaterial Information, via experimental realization of the “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment, is now found to be its own distinctive physical entity that, although it can interact in a ‘top down’ manner with matter and energy, is separate from matter and energy. Darwinists hold that Darwin’s theory is true. Yet ‘Truth’ itself is an abstract property of an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. i.e. Assuming reductive materialism and/or Naturalism as the starting philosophical position of science actually precludes ‘the truth’ from ever being reached by science! Darwinists, due to their underlying naturalistic philosophy, insist that teleology (i.e. goal directed purpose) does not exist. Yet it is impossible for Biologists to do biological research without constantly invoking words that directly imply teleology. i.e. The very words that Biologists themselves use when they are doing their research falsifies Darwinian evolution.

Verse:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.

bornagain77

I think that what Denyse was trying to highlight is the profound difference between humans and the rest of animals. - We can choose to "bypass" certain aspects of nature. - Unless you are among those who think that free will is an illusion and we are pre-determined automatons. Truthfreedom

From "Why Is a Fly Not a Horse?" by geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti:

Sexuality has brought joy to the world, to the world of the wild beasts, and to the world of flowers, but it has brought an end to evolution. In the lineages of living beings, whenever absent-minded Venus has taken the upper hand, forms have forgotten to make progress. It is only the husbandman that has improved strains, and he has done so by bullying, enslaving, and segregating. All these methods, of course, have made for sad, alienated animals, but they have not resulted in new species. Left to themselves, domesticated breeds would either die out or revert to the wild state—scarcely a commendable model for nature’s progress.

What Richard Dawkins hopefully understands is you do not want to limit the genetic diversity to the extent that we become those sad, alienated animals. Other than that, as bad as it sounds, there seems to be people who should never breed. Meaning if theirs was eliminated from the gene pool it most likely would be a good thing. ET

That definition that you yourself provided is basically useless as a scientific tool.

Well, I'm using it for a conservation biology project just now, and I am sure the breeders that I've worked with willl be interested to hear that The Breeder's Equation is useless to them :) I know anything I type will fall on blind eyes, but I think it would be much more useful to try to understand what people are saying that reflexively regurgitate these links every time. Mimus

Bob O'H: OK, so you’re an amoral materialist. I’m not, so I think I can disregard your ideas, which are, frankly, repugnant. So what? Chocolate vs vanilla. It's adorable that you think your repugnance matters in the universe of mere molecules in motion. mike1962

Truthfreedom

you can not get a whale from a hippo. A bat from a flower. Bacteria from nothing.

But that is precisely the claim from Darwinists. i.e. unlimited plasticity. Yet that is not what we see. What we see, as Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig termed it, is 'the Law of Recurrent Variation'

Peer-Reviewed Research Paper on Plant Biology Favorably Cites Intelligent Design and Challenges Darwinian Evolution - Casey Luskin December 29, 2010 Excerpt: Many of these researchers also raise the question (among others), why — even after inducing literally billions of induced mutations and (further) chromosome rearrangements — all the important mutation breeding programs have come to an end in the Western World instead of eliciting a revolution in plant breeding, either by successive rounds of selective “micromutations” (cumulative selection in the sense of the modern synthesis), or by “larger mutations” … and why the law of recurrent variation is endlessly corroborated by the almost infinite repetition of the spectra of mutant phenotypes in each and any new extensive mutagenesis experiment instead of regularly producing a range of new systematic species… (Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, “Mutagenesis in Physalis pubescens L. ssp. floridana: Some Further Research on Dollo’s Law and the Law of Recurrent Variation,” Floriculture and Ornamental Biotechnology Vol. 4 (Special Issue 1): 1-21 (December 2010).) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/12/peer-reviewed_research_paper_o042191.html Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, (retired) Senior Scientist (Biology), Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Emeritus, Cologne, Germany. Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig on the Law of Recurrent Variation, pt. 1 - podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2013-12-09T17_31_28-08_00 "Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig on the Law of Recurrent Variation, pt. 2" - podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2013-12-11T15_59_50-08_00 "Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig on the Law of Recurrent Variation, pt.3" - podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2013-12-13T16_47_09-08_00

Of supplemental note to just how inadequate Bob's model of 'averaging' is to actually explaining the complexity of life, i.e. Bard's grievance which was mentioned in post 53:

“As of now, we have no good theory of how to read networks, how to model them mathematically or how one network meshes with another; worse, we have no obvious experimental lines of investigation for studying these areas. There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes and so provide the basis for a full 21st century model of evolution. As T.S. Eliot almost said: “Between the phenotype and the genotype falls the shadow”.

The following article gives us a realistic glimpse of just how hard it would be to develop a realistic mathematical model for life< "Physicists can use statistics to describe a homogeneous system like an ideal gas, because one can assume all the member particles interact the same. Not so with life. When describing heterogeneous systems each with a myriad of possible interactions, the number of discrete interactions grows faster than exponentially. Koch showed how Bell's number (the number of ways a system can be partitioned) requires a comparable number of measurements to exhaustively describe a system. Even if human computational ability were to rise exponentially into the future (somewhat like Moore's law for computers), there is no hope for describing the human "interactome" -- the set of all interactions in life."

"Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 2012 Excerpt: In a recent Perspective piece called "Modular Biological Complexity" in Science, Christof Koch (Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle; Division of Biology, Caltech) explained why we won't be simulating brains on computers any time soon: "Although such predictions excite the imagination, they are not based on a sound assessment of the complexity of living systems. Such systems are characterized by large numbers of highly heterogeneous components, be they genes, proteins, or cells. These components interact causally in myriad ways across a very large spectrum of space-time, from nanometers to meters and from microseconds to years. A complete understanding of these systems demands that a large fraction of these interactions be experimentally or computationally probed. This is very difficult." Physicists can use statistics to describe a homogeneous system like an ideal gas, because one can assume all the member particles interact the same. Not so with life. When describing heterogeneous systems each with a myriad of possible interactions, the number of discrete interactions grows faster than exponentially. Koch showed how Bell's number (the number of ways a system can be partitioned) requires a comparable number of measurements to exhaustively describe a system. Even if human computational ability were to rise exponentially into the future (somewhat like Moore's law for computers), there is no hope for describing the human "interactome" -- the set of all interactions in life. "This is bad news. Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. " Even with shortcuts like averaging, "any possible technological advance is overwhelmed by the relentless growth of interactions among all components of the system," Koch said. "It is not feasible to understand evolved organisms by exhaustively cataloging all interactions in a comprehensive, bottom-up manner." He described the concept of the Complexity Brake: "Allen and Greaves recently introduced the metaphor of a "complexity brake" for the observation that fields as diverse as neuroscience and cancer biology have proven resistant to facile predictions about imminent practical applications. Improved technologies for observing and probing biological systems has only led to discoveries of further levels of complexity that need to be dealt with. This process has not yet run its course. We are far away from understanding cell biology, genomes, or brains, and turning this understanding into practical knowledge." Why can't we use the same principles that describe technological systems? Koch explained that in an airplane or computer, the parts are "purposefully built in such a manner to limit the interactions among the parts to a small number." The limited interactome of human-designed systems avoids the complexity brake. "None of this is true for nervous systems.",,, to read more go here: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html

bornagain77

What happened to "the blind watchmaker", dawkins? I bet he is retired. 'He', coyne and you are the perfect trio to go feeding pigeons in the park.

"The reason for natural selection’s great success is that it provides a satisfying explanation of how evolution might have occurred: individual organisms vary and if those variations are inherited, the successful ones will survive and propagate and pass down their desirable traits to succeeding generations". "But this process alone does not explain all of evolution; all it can claim is that it could do so in theory. To argue for its total universality one would have to prove that each instance of a trait that characterises such a step in evolution arose through selection. This is an impossible task".

When Darwinism Fails. YES, the author uses the term 'darwinism'. NO, the author is NOT an ID proponent. Truthfreedom

@85 Bornagain77:

Moreover, to repeat, this evidence from selective breeding runs directly counter to the Darwinian claim for ‘unlimited plasticity’.

What is not there can not be bred into an organism. So both breeding and natural selection (SILLY NON-DIFFERENCE, EVERYTHING IS 'NATURAL SELECTION ) are both limited to what is programmed in the DNA of each subject. And you can not get a whale from a hippo. A bat from a flower. Bacteria from nothing. Life from chemicals. Because if the programming is not already there than neither is the possibility for something different to be bred. Darwinism is dead. They are experts at concocting just-so stories and they even contradict their own 'science'. Truthfreedom

Bob 83, since this is your field, I can see where you want to 'sell it', but again, I don't see this as that much of an improvement over what ranchers have already done in the past. Ranchers have been well aware of the pitfalls of inbreeding and have long taken measures to insure against it:

This problem has been the same challenge for the past century. In the past there were concerns about too much concentration of the Holstein bloodlines when Rudolph, Blackstar, Valiant, Elevation, Astronaut, Rockman, the Burkes and the Montvics were in their hay days. It is not new in 2013. ,, http://www.thebullvine.com/inbreeding/6-steps-understanding-managing-inbreeding-dairy-herd/

Sure genetics helps, but it is just not that much of an improvement over what was already being done in the past. Moreover, to repeat, this evidence from selective breeding runs directly counter to the Darwinian claim for 'unlimited plasticity'. bornagain77

@82 Bornagain77:

Natural selection produces the same degenerative results as artificial selection does, it just takes longer to accomplish with natural selection.

Naturalists can not coherently explain the alleged difference between these two, because THERE is NONE according to their paradigm . EVERYTHING is 'nature', we are 'nature', therefore EVERYTHING is *natural selection*. More non-sense from that corrupt philosophy. Truthfreedom

ba77 -

Besides the exceedingly trivial, I do not see where such an incomplete genetic model, an incomplete model that cannot explain the generation of phenotypes in the first place, is that much of an improvement over and above what the ranchers do in breeding for desired, and already existing, traits that they want to enhance in their stock.

That's probably because you haven't studied any quantitative genetics or modern breeding techniques. Basically, you want to focus on traits that have heritable variation, and then select animals that have a higher genetic quality ("breeding value"). These may not be the ones with the highest phenotypic value. The breeding value can be estimated by comparing the phenotypes with patterns of relatedness (the details get complicated I'm afraid). This is more efficient than breeding based on phenotype, because the focus is on selecting individuals with a high genetic value, i.e. a value that will be passed on to the offspring. Bob O'H

Bob at 81:

you’ll see that my argument is that we don’t need to have complete knowledge. It’s simply not necessary if we want to use selection to change a phenotype.

Besides the exceedingly trivial, I do not see where such an incomplete genetic model, an incomplete model that cannot explain the generation of phenotypes in the first place, is that much of an improvement over and above what the ranchers do in breeding for desired, and already existing, traits that they want to enhance in their stock. And as mentioned previously in post 13 and 14, this type of artificial selective breeding is not without its pitfalls. To repeat,

“This is the issue I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection. If you want bigger eggs, you keep selecting the hens that are laying the biggest eggs, and you get bigger and bigger eggs. But you also get hens with defective feathers and wobbly legs. Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create….” (Lynn Margulis Says She’s Not Controversial, She’s Right,” Discover Magazine, p. 68 (April, 2011) “The real number of variations is lesser than expected,,. There are no blue-eyed Drosophila, no viviparous birds or turtles, no hexapod mammals, etc. Such observations provoke non-Darwinian evolutionary concepts. Darwin tried rather unsuccessfully to solve the problem of the contradictions between his model of random variability and the existence of constraints. He tried to hide this complication citing abundant facts on other phenomena. The authors of the modern versions of Darwinism followed this strategy, allowing the question to persist. …However, he was forced to admit some cases where creating anything humans may wish for was impossible. For example, when the English farmers decided to get cows with thick hams, they soon abandoned this attempt since they perished too frequently during delivery. Evidently such cases provoked an idea on the limitations to variability… [If you have the time, read all of the following paper, which concludes] The problem of the constraints on variation was not solved neither within the framework of the proper Darwin’s theory, nor within the framework of modern Darwinism.” – IGOR POPOV, THE PROBLEM OF CONSTRAINTS ON VARIATION, FROM DARWIN TO THE PRESENT, 2009, The Dog Delusion – October 30, 2014 Excerpt: In his latest book, geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig of the Max Planck Institutes in Germany takes on the widespread view that dog breeds prove macroevolution.,,, He shows in great detail that the incredible variety of dog breeds, going back in origin several thousand years ago but especially to the last few centuries, represents no increase in information but rather a decrease or loss of function on the genetic and anatomical levels. Michael Behe writes: “Dr. Lönnig shows forcefully that one of the chief examples Darwinists rely on to convince the public of macroevolution — the enormous variation in dogs — actually shows the opposite. Extremes in size and anatomy come at the cost of broken genes and poor health. Even several gene duplications were found to interfere strongly with normal growth and development as is also often the case in humans. So where is the evidence for Darwinian evolution now?” The science here is indeed solid. Intriguingly, Lönnig’s prediction from 2013 on starch digestion in wolves has already been confirmed in a study published this year.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/10/the_dog_delusio090751.html Inbreeding – Pros and cons Excerpt: The ultimate result of continued inbreeding is terminal lack of vigor and probable extinction as the gene pool contracts, fertility decreases, abnormalities increase and mortality rates rise. http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/inbreeding.htm Due to population bottlenecks, inbreeding and stringent artificial selection by humans for particular traits, it was long suspected that modern dog breeds harbor more deleterious mutations due to low effects of natural selection. This research took larger number of dog genome samples than ever did before. The prediction is true. The researchers performed 90 whole-genome sequences from breed dogs, village dogs, and gray wolves including golden jackal. After comparing the data, it was found recent dog breeds have 2-3% more deleterious allele variants than wolves. Human’s persistence for desirable traits and low population size have resulted in less efficient purifying selection. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/17/1512501113

Natural election produces the same degenerative results as artificial selection does, it just takes longer to accomplish with natural selection

“…but Natural Selection reduces genetic information and we know this from all the Genetic Population studies that we have…” Maciej Marian Giertych – Population Geneticist – member of the European Parliament EXPELLED – Natural Selection And Genetic Mutations – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z5-15wk1Zk “We found an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations,” Tishkoff told attendees today (Jan. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. “Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians.” Tishkoff; Andrew Clark, Penn State; Kenneth Kidd, Yale University; Giovanni Destro-Bisol, University “La Sapienza,” Rome, and Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins, WITS University, South Africa, looked at three locations on DNA samples from 13 to 18 populations in Africa and 30 to 45 populations in the remainder of the world.- New analysis provides fuller picture of human expansion from Africa – October 22, 2012 Excerpt: A new, comprehensive review of humans’ anthropological and genetic records gives the most up-to-date story of the “Out of Africa” expansion that occurred about 45,000 to 60,000 years ago. This expansion, detailed by three Stanford geneticists, had a dramatic effect on human genetic diversity, which persists in present-day populations. As a small group of modern humans migrated out of Africa into Eurasia and the Americas, their genetic diversity was substantially reduced. http://phys.org/news/2012-10-analysis-fuller-picture-human-expansion.html Finding links and missing genes: Catalog of large-scale genetic changes around the world – October 1, 2015 Excerpt: “When we analysed the genomes of 2500 people, we were surprised to see over 200 genes that are missing entirely in some people,” says Jan Korbel, who led the work at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany.,,, African genomes harboured a much greater diversity overall. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151001094723.htm

As with you dodging the issue in this thread that you have no basis within your materialism for your objective moral belief that eugenics in humans is bad, here to you are dodging the fact that you have no basis for your belief in Darwinian evolution. In other words, none of the evidence from selective breeding supports the grandiose claims of Darwinists. In fact, the evidence from selective breeding directly contradicts Darwinian claims for 'unlimited plasticity' within species. bornagain77

ba77 @ 78 -

Bob O’Hara at 58, you are dodging the issue once again. Since you do not have “a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes” then you cannot possibly have complete knowledge as to how genes, even on mass average, effect phenotypes.

If you read my post 53, you'll see that my argument is that we don't need to have complete knowledge. It's simply not necessary if we want to use selection to change a phenotype. Bob O'H

AaronS1978 @ 74 - ah, thanks. The paper you link to makes that assumption to pursue the model, but the paper they link to shows a correlation in the phenotype, not a genetic correlation. Bob O'H

I am Stephen Hawking resurrected! Bob O'H the atheist materialist grammar-twister believes in resurrection! :) Truthfreedom

Bob O'Hara at 58, you are dodging the issue once again. Since you do not have "a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes” then you cannot possibly have complete knowledge as to how genes, even on mass average, effect phenotypes. What you have got, as Berlinski quipped in an interview, is a room full of smoke where nothing is clearly delineated (as one would expect from a hard science)

David Berlinski: Rebelious Intellectual Defies Darwinism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S89IskZI740

For prime example of the fact that you cannot make concrete predictions of phenotypic behavior from a genotypic description, I refer to the infamous and mythical 'gay gene'

There’s no evidence that a single ‘gay gene’ exists - Aug. 2019 Excerpt: First reported at a genetics conference in 2018, the study found five genetic variants associated with having a same-sex sexual partner (SN: 10/20/18). But those variants, called SNPs, don’t predict people’s sexual behavior, researchers report in the Aug. 30 Science. “There is no ‘gay gene’ that determines whether someone has same-sex partners,” says Andrea Ganna, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the University of Helsinki. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/no-evidence-that-gay-gene-exists Born gay or transgender: Little evidence to support innate trait, Wednesday, August 24, 2016 Excerpt: "a report finds scarce scientific evidence to conclude that gay and transgender people are “born that way. The 143-page paper, published this week in The New Atlantis journal, combs through hundreds of studies in search of a causal, biological explanation for sexual orientation and gender identity, but comes up empty. “The belief that sexual orientation is an innate, biologically fixed human property — that people are ‘born that way’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,” says the report, written by a psychiatrist and a biostatistician at Johns Hopkins University. “Likewise, the belief that gender identity is an innate, fixed human property independent of biological sex — so that a person might be a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or a ‘woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence,”" http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/24/born-gay-transgender-lacks-science-evidence/

bornagain77

@75 Bob O'H the materialist liar:

Err, no. You’re someone who’s unapologetic about calling people ‘scum’.

Err, sorry way to announce you have nothing. Your materialist doctrine is illogical and you can not stand it :) Truthfreedom

Suppose Person One (Bob O'H) disagrees with Person Two's (Truthfreedom) argument on a topic. In an effort to discredit Person Two (Truthfreedom) Person One (Bob O'H) first starts by quoting Person Two (Truthfreedom) completely in context with Person Two's (Truthfreedom) original argument but with an added emotional spin. Little by little, Person One (Bob O'H) steadily mutates the original quote and position of Person Two (Truthfreedom) into something that is completely out of context and logically fallacious using a steadily increasing emotional theater. This theatrical performance is littered with Person Two's (Truthfreedom) formerly logical argument, carefully repackaged through verbal "slight of hand", until the audience is fooled into believing that the contrived stance that Person One https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/30223/what-is-the-term-for-twisting-an-argument-so-that-it-can-be-defeated> (Bob O'H is really desperate) presents is really what Person Two (Truthfreedom) believes. Truthfreedom

So I am Stephen Hawking?

Err, no. You're someone who's unapologetic about calling people 'scum'. Bob O'H

Bob’Oh @50 No no I know it exists that was driving me crazy but I found it Pekalski uses the example of a coercive government eugenics program that prohibits people with myopia from breeding but has the unintended consequence of also selecting against high intelligence since the two go together.[94] Close [94] Jones, A. (2000). "Effect of eugenics on the evolution of populations". European Physical Journal B. 17 (2): 329–332. Bibcode:2000EPJB...17..329P. doi:10.1007/s100510070148. AaronS1978

@Bob O'H You have nothing of substance. Your own doctrine is killing you. Because materialism = cancer. Truthfreedom

@Bob O'H

More to the point, why are you calling people ‘scum’? You’ve already made the link to Hitler, so do you realise how that makes you appear? If your point is that people who call other people ‘scum’ are terrible, you’re condemning yourself.

So I am Stephen Hawking? I told you: semantic tricks/ twisting grammar won't work. Truthfreedom

Yes. What is the difference between Hitler ‘s doctrine (certain humans = jews are ‘scum’) and Hawkings’s doctrine (all humans are ‘scum’)?

More to the point, why are you calling people 'scum'? You've already made the link to Hitler, so do you realise how that makes you appear? If your point is that people who call other people 'scum' are terrible, you're condemning yourself. Bob O'H

Bob- And those morals came from religions. There is no such thing as a materialistic moral. ET

@66 Bob O'H

And yet I have morals.

Nop. You have the "illusion" of being a moral agent (according to materialism).

Very recently you wrote “Did not Hitler say jews were ‘scum’?”.

Yes. What is the difference between Hitler 's doctrine (certain humans = jews are 'scum') and Hawkings's doctrine (all humans are 'scum')?

“The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies”. Stephen Hawking

Do you realize that Hawking came over as an utterly horrible person? Do you despise Hawkings? Advice: your semantic tricks won't work. We are all adults here. Truthfreedom

Indeed no, ET. My morals come from my parents and the community I grew up in. Bob O'H

If you have morals, Bob, they did NOT come from materialism. Materialists are more than happy to hitch onto the religious morals of the day. ET

There is no difference. Materialism is amoral.

And yet I have morals.

Grow up and own it, you useless ‘scum’

Wow. Very recently you wrote "Did not Hitler say jews were ‘scum’?". Do you realise that you come over as an utterly horrible person? I've no idea if you're like this in real life, but I hope not. I know the online personas tend to be rather different to what people are like off-line. Bob O'H

Bob O'H, according to his own philosophy, "does not exist".

Who do you think you are? Why your sense of self is an illusion. "Most of us are convinced that we're coherent individuals who are continuous in time. There's just one problem with this sense of self – it can’t exist". https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432601-000-who-do-you-think-you-are-why-your-sense-of-self-is-an-illusion/amp/

Bob O'H, according to his cancerous doctrine, is not "a coherent individual continuous in time" :) And he is a liar, playing semantic games to hide the fact that he is ashamed of his materialist doctrine. Truthfreedom

Yawn. Truthfreedom

@62 Bob O'H

I haven’t stated that I’m not a materialist. I did recently state that I’m not an amoral materialist. I hope you can understand the difference.

There is no difference. Materialism is amoral. Grow up and own it, you useless 'scum' (yes, Hawkings was at least intelligent enough to follow his own philosophy to its logical conclusions). You can not have your cake and eat it too. Truthfreedom

TruthFreedom @ 57 -

Some reading comprehension would be helpful. According to materialism, that is how things work.

Indeed. This is what you wrote:

And? As if you had any merit. Let me explain you how things work: a bunch of neurons computed some entering information and gave an output. Then they created an illusory “person” (Bob O’H) that got informed about the ‘output’. But there is not any real person making a moral choice here. Bob O’H is an illusory spectator who believes he is making a moral choice. That is what materialism entails.

Note the lack of "According to materialism", or anything similar. All I could go on was what you wrote.

Bob O’H, you are a liar. You say you are not a materialist, but you are one.

As someone wrote recently, some reading comprehension would be helpful. I haven't stated that I'm not a materialist. I did recently state that I'm not an amoral materialist. I hope you can understand the difference. Bob O'H

MattSpirit:

And how about ET? Do I even have to list his many transgressions?

You would only due so in a quote-mining fashion. You would NEVER list the transgressions I was responding to. And THAT is very telling. ET

mimus:

You still don’t know what the term means.

I am very comforted by the fat that you could never make that case, loser. ET

Materialist priest in action:

"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies". Stephen Hawking

Words of wisdom and encouragement. Did not Hitler say jews were 'scum'? Truthfreedom

ba77 - I'm not dodging the issues, I'm explaining them. For the purposes of what Dawkins was discussing, we don't need to look at the effects of each gene: population genetics feeds into evolutionary quantitative genetics, and we find that we don't need to know what every gene is doing, only their average effects. So quantitative genetics (not population genetics) is the tools to use. Bob O'H

@Bob O'H:

OK, so you’re contradicting yourself. You’ve just explained “how things work”, and now you’re saying that that’s not how things work. A bit more consistency might be helpful.

Some reading comprehension would be helpful. According to materialism, that is how things work. Understanding how a philosophical view works and supporting it are different things, boy. Logic is a POWERFUL tool that will save you the trouble of embarrassing yourself. Bob O'H, you are a liar. You say you are not a materialist, but you are one. Your doctrine dehumanizes people. If it ruffles your feathers, it is your problem. You despise your own doctrine. How ironic :) Truthfreedom

Yes, we do agree, materialism is a dehumanizing and repulsive doctrine.

No, I don>'t agree with that.

No, I am not a materialist. But lots of materialists do not understand what they are really supporting. I believe people are human beings, not “meat-robots” (coyne) or “bags of chemicals” (crick) or “scum” (hawkins).

OK, so you're contradicting yourself. You've just explained "how things work", and now you're saying that that's not how things work. A bit more consistency might be helpful. Bob O'H

@54 Bob O'H Yes, we do agree, materialism is a dehumanizing and repulsive doctrine. No, I am not a materialist. But lots of materialists do not understand what they are really supporting. I believe people are human beings, not "meat-robots" (coyne) or "bags of chemicals" (crick) or "scum" (hawkins). Truthfreedom

Truthfreedom - OK, so you're an amoral materialist. I'm not, so I think I can disregard your ideas, which are, frankly, repugnant. Bob O'H

Bob O'H, you are characteristically dodging the main issue once again. You state,

This argument is simply wrong, and the fact that additive genetic variance is useful (and used!) is why. The reason it’s wrong is the same reason statistical physics works. We don’t need to know the position of every molecule in a gas to be able to predict its behaviour: we can average over them.

Yet Bard never claimed that it was not useful or that it was not used. Bard claimed,,,

the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions

In other words, Bard is not arguing that population genetics is NOT useful and admits that it is qualitatively analyzable. i.e. That certain genes are associated with certain behaviors. (i.e. Bard is agreeing with you here Bob!). What Bard is arguing is that population genetics "requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions",,, i.e. Bard is arguing that population genetics, as far as Darwinian evolution itself is concerned, is of extremely limited utility in making 'quantitatively testable predictions'.

Quantitative biology is an umbrella term encompassing the use of mathematical, statistical or computational techniques to study life and living organisms. The central theme and goal of quantitative biology is the creation of predictive models based on fundamental principles governing living systems.

To further clear this misunderstanding up between you and Bard, in his conclusion Bard more explicitly airs his grievance with population genetics as such, "There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes and so provide the basis for a full 21st century model of evolution"

"As of now, we have no good theory of how to read networks, how to model them mathematically or how one network meshes with another; worse, we have no obvious experimental lines of investigation for studying these areas. There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes and so provide the basis for a full 21st century model of evolution. As T.S. Eliot almost said: “Between the phenotype and the genotype falls the shadow”.

That Bard finds it impossible, via population genetics, "to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes" is not a minor concern for Darwinists. That claim, i.e. "genotypes generate phenotypes", is indeed one of the, if not THE, primary claim of Darwinists. Indeed Darwinists hold it as a primary presupposition that random, unguided, mutations to DNA are the primary means by which all the diversity of life on earth, in all its unfathomable complexity, arose. And yet there are principled reasons to doubt this primary claim from Darwinists, i.e. "genotypes generate phenotypes". For instance, "Contrary to all expectations, many DNA sequences involved in embryo development are remarkably similar across the vast spectrum of organismic complexity, from a millimeter-long worm to ourselves.7 There is, in short, nothing in the genomes of fly and man to explain why the fly should have six legs, a pair of wings, and a dot-sized brain and we should have two arms, two legs, and a mind capable of comprehending that overarching history of our universe. So we have moved in the very recent past from supposing we might know the principles of genetic inheritance to recognizing we have no realistic conception of what they might be. As Phillip Gell, professor of genetics at the University of Birmingham, observed, “This gap in our knowledge is not merely unbridged, but in principle unbridgeable and our ignorance will remain ineluctable."

Between Sapientia and Scientia — Michael Aeschliman’s Profound Interpretation James Le Fanu - September 9, 2019 Excerpt: The ability to spell out the full sequence of genes should reveal, it was reasonable to assume, the distinctive genetic instructions that determine the diverse forms of the millions of species, so readily distinguishable one from the other. Biologists were thus understandably disconcerted to discover precisely the reverse to be the case. Contrary to all expectations, many DNA sequences involved in embryo development are remarkably similar across the vast spectrum of organismic complexity, from a millimeter-long worm to ourselves.7 There is, in short, nothing in the genomes of fly and man to explain why the fly should have six legs, a pair of wings, and a dot-sized brain and we should have two arms, two legs, and a mind capable of comprehending that overarching history of our universe. So we have moved in the very recent past from supposing we might know the principles of genetic inheritance to recognizing we have no realistic conception of what they might be. As Phillip Gell, professor of genetics at the University of Birmingham, observed, “This gap in our knowledge is not merely unbridged, but in principle unbridgeable and our ignorance will remain ineluctable.”8 https://evolutionnews.org/2019/09/between-sapientia-and-scientia-michael-aeschlimans-profound-interpretation/

As if that was not devastating enough for Darwinists, directly contrary to Darwinian presuppositions, it is now also known that it is the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism, As Dr. Jonathan Wells states in the following article , “I now know as an embryologist,,,Tissues and cells, as they differentiate, modify their DNA to suit their needs. It's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism.”

Ask an Embryologist: Genomic Mosaicism - Jonathan Wells - February 23, 2015 Excerpt: humans have a "few thousand" different cell types. Here is my simple question: Does the DNA sequence in one cell type differ from the sequence in another cell type in the same person?,,, The simple answer is: We now know that there is considerable variation in DNA sequences among tissues, and even among cells in the same tissue. It's called genomic mosaicism. In the early days of developmental genetics, some people thought that parts of the embryo became different from each other because they acquired different pieces of the DNA from the fertilized egg. That theory was abandoned,,, ,,,(then) "genomic equivalence" -- the idea that all the cells of an organism (with a few exceptions, such as cells of the immune system) contain the same DNA -- became the accepted view. I taught genomic equivalence for many years. A few years ago, however, everything changed. With the development of more sophisticated techniques and the sampling of more tissues and cells, it became clear that genetic mosaicism is common. I now know as an embryologist,,,Tissues and cells, as they differentiate, modify their DNA to suit their needs. It's the organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/02/ask_an_embryolo093851.html

Here is a particularly crystal clear example of an "organism controlling the DNA, not the DNA controlling the organism."

Duality in the human genome - Nov. 28, 2014 Excerpt: The results show that most genes can occur in many different forms within a population: On average, about 250 different forms of each gene exist. The researchers found around four million different gene forms just in the 400 or so genomes they analysed. This figure is certain to increase as more human genomes are examined. More than 85 percent of all genes have no predominant form which occurs in more than half of all individuals. This enormous diversity means that over half of all genes in an individual, around 9,000 of 17,500, occur uniquely in that one person - and are therefore individual in the truest sense of the word. The gene, as we imagined it, exists only in exceptional cases. "We need to fundamentally rethink the view of genes that every schoolchild has learned since Gregor Mendel's time.,,, According to the researchers, mutations of genes are not randomly distributed between the parental chromosomes. They found that 60 percent of mutations affect the same chromosome set and 40 percent both sets. Scientists refer to these as cis and trans mutations, respectively. Evidently, an organism must have more cis mutations, where the second gene form remains intact. "It's amazing how precisely the 60:40 ratio is maintained. It occurs in the genome of every individual – almost like a magic formula," says Hoehe. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-duality-human-genome.html

As should be needless to say, an organism controlling its DNA is completely inexplicable for Darwinists who hold that it is the DNA that is dictating the behavior of the organism. As James Shapiro notes, "This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW (Read/Write) genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences."

How life changes itself: the Read-Write (RW) genome. - 2013 Excerpt: Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23876611

To state that finding an organism to be controlling its DNA is having "profound implications for all areas of the life sciences", as draatic as that statement is, is still an understatement for Shapiro to have made. These findings flat out falsify the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists As I've stated many times before, such findings as these, if Darwinian evolution were a normal science instead of basically being an unfalsifiable religion for atheists, should count as yet another direct experimental falsification of Darwinian claims. To repeat, Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand biology in the first place:

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg

bornagain77

@51 Bob O'H

Just to make it clear – I have no such plan, and would oppose such a plan. And I find it offensive that anyone would seriously suggest that I would have a plan like this.

And? As if you had any merit. Let me explain you how things work: a bunch of neurons computed some entering information and gave an output. Then they created an illusory "person" (Bob O'H) that got informed about the 'output'. But there is not any real person making a moral choice here. Bob O'H is an illusory spectator who believes he is making a moral choice. That is what materialism entails. Truthfreedom

ba77 @ 13 -

So much for Sev’s, E.G.’s, Bob’s, Dawkins’ and Hitler’s plan to evolve a master race via eugenics and selective breeding.

Just to make it clear - I have no such plan, and would oppose such a plan. And I find it offensive that anyone would seriously suggest that I would have a plan like this. Bob O'H

AaronS1978 @ 17 - thanks for those links, but the first doesn't mention myopia, and the second is the one I provided that show a small correlation, but not a major gene linked to both traits. Do you have any evidence that "myopia is directly connected to a gene that involves high levels of intelligence"? Or had you mis-remembered something you had heard (not uncommon, to be fair). Bob O'H

It was just a matter of time before eugenics started to come back into style. It's really quite simple. Eugenicists, if they ever get their way, will result in less genetic material. Less genetic material will result in future generations having more genetic diseases. Genetically, we are all mutts and those with less of a mutt in them tend to have greater chances of genetic diseases. BobRyan

bA77 -

Mimus, So what? The definition that you yourself provided,,,,

Genetic variance is the is ~ the total variation in genes that contrbute to variation in some trait. Additive genetic variance is the protion of total genetic variance that is additive (that is the effects of two different genes can just be added up, withoug invoking complex interactions and the like).

That definition that you yourself provided is basically useless as a scientific tool. Here’s why (to repeat), “If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this approach is demonstrated by illustrations of the molecular pathways that generates traits [7]: the network underpinning something as simple as growth may have forty or fifty participating proteins whose production involves perhaps twice as many DNA sequences, if one includes enhancers, splice variants etc. Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation..”

This argument is simply wrong, and the fact that additive genetic variance is useful (and used!) is why. The reason it's wrong is the same reason statistical physics works. We don't need to know the position of every molecule in a gas to be able to predict its behaviour: we can average over them. Similarly with genes, we don't need to know all of their individual effects, we can average over them. This is what additive genetic variance does, and it turns out that it works well: even when there is dominance and epistasis, most of the variation is usually additive. What is needed is polymorphism at the genes, i.e. there should be alleles which have differing effects on the phenotype. And these shouldn't have such a weird architecture that there's no additive genetic variance. Bob O'H

@46 Mike1962:

Whether or not it’s “ethical” or “moral” to apply that to humans is another matter. Two different subjects. The next questions is: Where do you get your “ethics” and “morals”?

Well, according to our evolutionist friends, 'natural' processes gave rise to 'morality'. Yes, 'nature' has 'created' brains that go against the same 'nature' that has 'created' them! Of course our evolutionist friends find nothing curious about this. Thinking is hard. 'Nature' is a professional joker. It 'creates' brains with X type of behaviors and their antithesis. Thanks to 'blind' processes, a 'natural brain' can understand that what 'nature' has imbued it with is 'wrong'! We can 'rebel' against 'nature' using 'natural tools'! ('morals'). Truthfreedom

Of course eugenics (selective breeding) works. Does anyone disagree with that? Whether or not it's "ethical" or "moral" to apply that to humans is another matter. Two different subjects. The next questions is: Where do you get your "ethics" and "morals"? mike1962

Barry, How about "Bob (and weave)"? Can we get rid of that needless insult too? And how about ET? Do I even have to list his many transgressions? MatSpirit

I was amazed at these comments. Eugenics as applied to humans meant sterilisation of the ‘unfit’ - ‘ breeding them out’ All this talk of plasticity is beside the point. Refer to Margaret Sanger, Buck v Bell, for the milder though still inhuman forms of eugenics. Belfast

Ed George and MatSprit, refrain from referring to BA77 in such a patently offensive fashion. Only warning. Barry Arrington

Mimus, So what? The definition that you yourself provided,,,,

Genetic variance is the is ~ the total variation in genes that contrbute to variation in some trait. Additive genetic variance is the protion of total genetic variance that is additive (that is the effects of two different genes can just be added up, withoug invoking complex interactions and the like).

That definition that you yourself provided is basically useless as a scientific tool. Here's why (to repeat), "If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this approach is demonstrated by illustrations of the molecular pathways that generates traits [7]: the network underpinning something as simple as growth may have forty or fifty participating proteins whose production involves perhaps twice as many DNA sequences, if one includes enhancers, splice variants etc. Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation.."

The next evolutionary synthesis: from Lamarck and Darwin to genomic variation and systems biology – Bard – 2011 Excerpt: If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this approach is demonstrated by illustrations of the molecular pathways that generates traits [7]: the network underpinning something as simple as growth may have forty or fifty participating proteins whose production involves perhaps twice as many DNA sequences, if one includes enhancers, splice variants etc. Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation.. http://www.biosignaling.com/content/pdf/1478-811X-9-30.pdf

In fact it is now known that far more than three genes underpin a phenotype, The following paper states that phenotypic "traits are the work of thousands of genetic variants,"

What If (Almost) Every Gene Affects (Almost) Everything? – JUN 16, 2017 Excerpt: If you told a modern geneticist that a complex trait—whether a physical characteristic like height or weight, or the risk of a disease like cancer or schizophrenia—was the work of just 15 genes, they’d probably laugh. It’s now thought that such traits are the work of thousands of genetic variants, working in concert. The vast majority of them have only tiny effects, but together, they can dramatically shape our bodies and our health. They’re weak individually, but powerful en masse. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/its-like-all-connected-man/530532/

In fact, for some traits, “multiple” loci could mean more than 100,000."

Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait – June 20, 2018 Excerpt: Mutations of a single gene are behind sickle cell anemia, for instance, and mutations in another are behind cystic fibrosis. But unfortunately for those who like things simple, these conditions are the exceptions. The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way,,, One very early genetic mapping study in 1999 suggested that “a large number of loci (perhaps > than 15)” might contribute to autism risk, recalled Jonathan Pritchard, now a geneticist at Stanford University. “That’s a lot!” he remembered thinking when the paper came out. Over the years, however, what scientists might consider “a lot” in this context has quietly inflated. Last June, Pritchard and his Stanford colleagues Evan Boyle and Yang Li (now at the University of Chicago) published a paper about this in Cell that immediately sparked controversy, although it also had many people nodding in cautious agreement. The authors described what they called the “omnigenic” model of complex traits. Drawing on GWAS analyses of three diseases, they concluded that in the cell types that are relevant to a disease, it appears that not 15, not 100, but essentially all genes contribute to the condition. The authors suggested that for some traits, “multiple” loci could mean more than 100,000. https://www.quantamagazine.org/omnigenic-model-suggests-that-all-genes-affect-every-complex-trait-20180620/

In short, Darwinists don't really even have a firm clue how phenotypic traits are actually generated. They 'guess' that phenotypic "traits are the work of thousands of genetic variants," But they are not even really sure if that captures all that is involved in generating a phenotypic trait. As they stated, it could be that "essentially all genes contribute to the condition". And again, "Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation.."

The next evolutionary synthesis: from Lamarck and Darwin to genomic variation and systems biology – Bard – 2011 Excerpt: If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this approach is demonstrated by illustrations of the molecular pathways that generates traits [7]: the network underpinning something as simple as growth may have forty or fifty participating proteins whose production involves perhaps twice as many DNA sequences, if one includes enhancers, splice variants etc. Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation..,,, Excerpt of conclusion: . As of now, we have no good theory of how to read networks, how to model them mathematically or how one network meshes with another; worse, we have no obvious experimental lines of investigation for studying these areas. There is a great deal for systems biology to do in order to produce a full explanation of how genotypes generate phenotypes and so provide the basis for a full 21st century model of evolution. As T.S. Eliot almost said: “Between the phenotype and the genotype falls the shadow”. http://www.biosignaling.com/content/pdf/1478-811X-9-30.pdf

This insurmountable difficulty for Darwinists in explaining exactly how phenotypic traits are generated should not be all that surprising, The 'biological form' of any given organism simply is not reducible to mutations to DNA, nor is 'biological form' reducible to any other material particulars in molecular biology that Darwinists may wish to invoke:

Darwinism vs Biological Form - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyNzNPgjM4w

Moreover, the failure of the reductive materialism of Darwinian evolution to be able to explain the basic form of any particular organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself. In the following article entitled 'Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics', which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description."

Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics - December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, "We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s," added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. "So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists' point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description." http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html

Like I mentioned previously, Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand biology in the first place:

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg

bornagain77

Mimus

OK, I take it back. You still don’t know what the term means.

:) :) :) Ed George

Wrong again. The term only goes hand-in-hand with Dawkins’ “cumulative selection”. And I have known about that since he first wrote about it.

OK, I take it back. You still don't know what the term means. Mimus

BS77:"Dr. John Sanford has now falsified Fisher’s theorem" And THAT is why we call you BS77. MatSpirit

Minus, "additive genetic variance" is useless to you as to providing you any actual empirical evidence that Darwinian evolution is remotely feasible. You know, actual empirical evidence of like, say, one species of bacteria changing into another species of bacteria?

Scant search for the Maker - Alan H. Linton - April 20, 2001 Excerpt: But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/scant-search-for-the-maker/159282.article Alan H. Linton is emeritus professor of bacteriology, University of Bristol.

Or say, empirical evidence of one protein changing into another protein,

Right of Reply: Our Response to Jerry Coyne - September 29, 2019 by Günter Bechly, Brian Miller and David Berlinski Excerpt: Indeed, Harvard mathematical biologist Martin Nowak has shown that random searches in sequence space that start from known functional sequences are no more likely to enter regions in sequence space with new protein folds than searches that start from random sequences. The reason for this is clear: random searches are overwhelmingly more likely to go off into a non-folding, non-functional abyss than they are to find a novel protein fold. Why? Because such novel folds are so extraordinarily rare in sequence space. Moreover, as Meyer explained in Darwin’s Doubt, as mutations accumulate in functional sequences, they will inevitably destroy function long before they stumble across a new protein fold. Again, this follows from the extreme rarity (as well as the isolation) of protein folds in sequence space. Recent work by Weizmann Institute protein scientist Dan Tawfik has reinforced this conclusion. Tawfik’s work shows that as mutations to functional protein sequences accumulate, the folds of those proteins become progressively more thermodynamically and structurally unstable. Typically, 15 or fewer mutations will completely destroy the stability of known protein folds of average size. Yet, generating (or finding) a new protein fold requires far more amino acid sequence changes than that. Finally, calculations based on Tawfik’s work confirm and extend the applicability of Axe’s original measure of the rarity of protein folds. These calculations confirm that the measure of rarity that Axe determined for the protein he studied is actually representative of the rarity for large classes of other globular proteins. Not surprisingly, Dan Tawfik has described the origination of a truly novel protein or fold as “something like close to a miracle.” Tawfik is on Coyne’s side: He is mainstream. https://quillette.com/2019/09/29/right-of-reply-our-response-to-jerry-coyne/

Without such empirical evidence to confirm that Darwinian evolution is even remotely feasible you simply are not even dealing with reality in the first place but are, in fact, in the realm of imaginary just-so story telling, no matter what terms. (i.e. additive genetic variance), you happen to throw into your 'just-so stories'.

“... another common misuse of evolutionary ideas: namely, the idea that some trait must have evolved merely because we can imagine a scenario under which possession of that trait would have been advantageous to fitness... Such forays into evolutionary explanation amount ultimately to storytelling... it is not enough to construct a story about how the trait might have evolved in response to a given selection pressure; rather, one must provide some sort of evidence that it really did so evolve. This is a very tall order.…” — Austin L. Hughes, The Folly of Scientism - The New Atlantis, Fall 2012 Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530

bornagain77

"Ed George":

What is interesting is that those who are taking you to task over additive genetic variance are those who support ID. This in spite of the fact that it doesn’t make any claim one way or the other about ID.

You clearly have reading comprehension issues. Additive genetic variance doesn't make any sense in a blind watchmaker scenario. It only makes sense in an ID scenario. ET

mimus:

You didn’t know what the term meant until a few minutes ago!

Wrong again. The term only goes hand-in-hand with Dawkins' "cumulative selection". And I have known about that since he first wrote about it. ET

Mimus

I mean, how could you. You didn’t know what the term meant until a few minutes ago!

What is interesting is that those who are taking you to task over additive genetic variance are those who support ID. This in spite of the fact that it doesn’t make any claim one way or the other about ID. Ed George

LoL! No one takes exception to additive genetic variance.

I mean, how could you. You didn't know what the term meant until a few minutes ago! Mimus

LoL! No one takes exception to additive genetic variance. We take exception to that fact people think that unguided, blind, mindless and purposeless processes could do it. However it is something we would expect if organisms evolved by means of intelligent design:

He [the Designer] indeed seems to have “carefully crafted” information in His species giving them the ability to respond to environmental stimuli to alter their own genome to adapt to new environments. He then evidently let them wander where they will with the ability to adapt.- Dr. Lee Spetner “the Evolution Revolution” p 108

ET

as to "There is good reason to think most genetic variance in complex traits is additive" Yet there is ZERO empirical evidence that mutations will 'add up' to produce a new complex functions and/or 'traits'.

Michael Behe - Observed (1 in 10^20) Edge of Evolution - video - Lecture delivered in April 2015 at Colorado School of Mines 25:56 minute quote - "This is not an argument anymore that Darwinism cannot make complex functional systems; it is an observation that it does not." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9svV8wNUqvA "The immediate, most important implication is that complexes with more than two different binding sites-ones that require three or more proteins-are beyond the edge of evolution, past what is biologically reasonable to expect Darwinian evolution to have accomplished in all of life in all of the billion-year history of the world. The reasoning is straightforward. The odds of getting two independent things right are the multiple of the odds of getting each right by itself. So, other things being equal, the likelihood of developing two binding sites in a protein complex would be the square of the probability for getting one: a double CCC, 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. There have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the world in the last 4 billion years, so the odds are against a single event of this variety in the history of life. It is biologically unreasonable." - Michael Behe - The Edge of Evolution - page 146 Kenneth Miller Steps on Darwin's Achilles Heel - Michael Behe - January 17, 2015 Excerpt: Enter Achilles and his heel. It turns out that the odds are much better for atovaquone resistance because only one particular malaria mutation is required for resistance. The odds are astronomical for chloroquine because a minimum of two particular malaria mutations are required for resistance. Just one mutation won't do it. For Darwinism, that is the troublesome significance of Summers et al.: "The findings presented here reveal that the minimum requirement for (low) CQ transport activity ... is two mutations." Darwinism is hounded relentlessly by an unshakeable limitation: if it has to skip even a single tiny step -- that is, if an evolutionary pathway includes a deleterious or even neutral mutation -- then the probability of finding the pathway by random mutation decreases exponentially. If even a few more unselected mutations are needed, the likelihood rapidly fades away.,,, So what should we conclude from all this? Miller grants for purposes of discussion that the likelihood of developing a new protein binding site is 1 in 10^20. Now, suppose that, in order to acquire some new, useful property, not just one but two new protein-binding sites had to develop. In that case the odds would be the multiple of the two separate events -- about 1 in 10^40, which is somewhat more than the number of cells that have existed on earth in the history of life. That seems like a reasonable place to set the likely limit to Darwinism, to draw the edge of evolution. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/01/kenneth_miller_1092771.html And please note "Nothing–neither point mutation, deletion, insertion, gene duplication, transposition, genome duplication, self-organization nor any other process yet undiscovered–was of much use.” Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution, pg. 162 More from Ann Gauger on why humans didn’t happen the way Darwin said - July 9, 2012 Excerpt: Each of these new features probably required multiple mutations. Getting a feature that requires six neutral mutations is the limit of what bacteria can produce. For primates (e.g., monkeys, apes and humans) the limit is much more severe. Because of much smaller effective population sizes (an estimated ten thousand for humans instead of a billion for bacteria) and longer generation times (fifteen to twenty years per generation for humans vs. a thousand generations per year for bacteria), it would take a very long time for even a single beneficial mutation to appear and become fixed in a human population. You don’t have to take my word for it. In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect. Facing Facts But six million years is the entire time allotted for the transition from our last common ancestor with chimps to us according to the standard evolutionary timescale. Two hundred and sixteen million years takes us back to the Triassic, when the very first mammals appeared. One or two mutations simply aren’t sufficient to produce the necessary changes— sixteen anatomical features—in the time available. At most, a new binding site might affect the regulation of one or two genes. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/more-from-ann-gauger-on-why-humans-didnt-happen-the-way-darwin-said/

In short, despite all their bluff and bluster, Darwinists simply have no empirical warrant for their grandiose claims that all life arose via Darwinian processes.. bornagain77

I gave you an opportunity to retract. I have now flagged it up to admin..

Fair enough. His/her action will be very informative on the true nature of this site. If he/she bans both of us for referring to others with an ad hominem (“BS” in my case and “Bob and weave” in yours) then neither of us could argue that we weren’t being treated fairly. However, if he/she bans only one of us then he/she would be shown to be a hypocrite. I have faith that the moderator will do the right thing. Ed George

Yeah, so this is one of those cases were knowing literally anything about a topic is helpful. For genuinely interested folks. Genetic variance is the is ~ the total variation in genes that contrbute to variation in some trait. Additive genetic variance is the protion of total genetic variance that is additive (that is the effects of two different genes can just be added up, withoug invoking complex interactions and the like). We can estimate the amount of additive genetic variance from pedigrees and the like. There is good reason to think most genetic variance in complex traits is additive Mimus

Mimus, thank you for bringing up additive genetic variance. It made me look into it in more detail. I don’t understand how anyone can take exception to it. All it is referring to is the ways in which the different alleles get expressed in the phenotype. Ed George

I gave you an opportunity to retract. I have now flagged it up to admin.. bornagain77

Ed George first off are you good with “BS77”? If so, we will correct that ad hominem first and foremost. I will flag it up to admin if you do not retract. And you can argue your case with him or her.

While you are at it you should also raise the fact that another commenter frequently uses the term “Bob (and weave)” when referring to another commenter. A term that means the same as BS in the context it is being used. Ed George

Additive genetic variance? Seriously? See Waiting for TWO Mutations:

Consistent with recent experimental observations for Drosophila, we find that a few million years is sufficient, but for humans with a much smaller effective population size, this type of change would take >100 million years.

That's for TWO additive variations. ET

Ed George first off are you good with "BS77"? If so, we will correct that ad hominem first and foremost. I will flag it up to admin if you do not retract. And you can argue your case with him or her. bornagain77

BS77

There is no such thing as “additive genetic variance”.

Then feel free to publish a rebuttal to this or the hundreds of other peer reviewed papers that disagree with you. https://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1000008 Ed George

Mimus, if “additive genetic variance” does not mean what it seems to mean from simply reading the term “additive genetic variance”, i.e that beneficial mutations should 'add up' over time to eventually produce a new species, then I don't know what it means. nor do I care since it apparently has no bearing on whether Darwinian evolution is actually true or not. The empirical evidence I presented falsifies Darwinian evolution. Period!, regardless of what the term “additive genetic variance” means to evolutionists. Darwinists simply have no evidence that mutations to DNA can lead to new species:

Response to John Wise - October 2010 Excerpt: But there are solid empirical grounds for arguing that changes in DNA alone cannot produce new organs or body plans. A technique called “saturation mutagenesis”1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12. None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans–,,, (As Jonathan Wells states),,, We can modify the DNA of a fruit fly embryo in any way we want, and there are only three possible outcomes: A normal fruit fly; A defective fruit fly; or A dead fruit fly. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html

Shoot, Darwinists, with their reductive materialistic framework, are not even on the correct theoretical foundation in order to properly understand biology in the first place:

Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg

Of supplemental note that may or may not have bearing on 'additive genetic variance' and how Darwinists use the term, Dr. John Sanford has now falsified Fisher's theorem:

Defending the validity and significance of the new theorem “Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection With Mutations, Part I: Fisher’s Impact – Bill Basener and John Sanford - February 15, 2018 Excerpt: While Fisher’s Theorem is mathematically correct, his Corollary is false. The simple logical fallacy is that Fisher stated that mutations could effectively be treated as not impacting fitness, while it is now known that the vast majority of mutations are deleterious, providing a downward pressure on fitness. Our model and our correction of Fisher’s theorem (The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection with Mutations), take into account the tension between the upward force of selection with the downward force of mutations.,,, Our paper shows that Fisher’s corollary is clearly false, and that he misunderstood the implications of his own theorem. He incorrectly believed that his theorem was a mathematical proof that showed that natural selection plus mutation will necessarily and always increase fitness. He also believed his theorem was on a par with a natural law (such as entropic dissipation and the second law of thermodynamics). Because Fisher did not understand the actual fitness distribution of new mutations, his belief in the application of his “fundamental theorem of natural selection” was fundamentally and profoundly wrong – having little correspondence to biological reality. Therefore, we have reformulated Fisher’s model and have corrected his errors, thereby have established a new theorem that better describes biological reality, and allows for the specification of those key variables that will determine whether fitness will increase or decrease. http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/defending-the-validity-and-significance-of-the-new-theorem-fundamental-theorem-of-natural-selection-with-mutations-part-i-fishers-impact/ Geneticist Corrects Fisher’s Theorem, but the Correction Turns Natural Selection Upside Down - December 22, 2017 | David F. Coppedge A new paper corrects errors in Fisher’s Theorem, a mathematical “proof” of Darwinism. Rather than supporting evolution, the corrected theorem inverts it. Excerpt: The authors of the new paper describe the fundamental problems with Fisher’s theorem. They then use Fisher’s first principles, and reformulate and correct the theorem. They have named the corrected theorem The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection with Mutations. The correction of the theorem is not a trivial change – it literally flips the theorem on its head. The resulting conclusions are clearly in direct opposition to what Fisher had originally intended to prove.,,, The authors of the new paper realized that one of Fisher’s pivotal assumptions was clearly false, and in fact was falsified many decades ago. In his informal corollary, Fisher essentially assumed that new mutations arose with a nearly normal distribution – with an equal proportion of good and bad mutations (so mutations would have a net fitness effect of zero). We now know that the vast majority of mutations in the functional genome are harmful, and that beneficial mutations are vanishingly rare. The simple fact that Fisher’s premise was wrong, falsifies Fisher’s corollary. Without Fisher’s corollary – Fisher’s Theorem proves only that selection improves a population’s fitness until selection exhausts the initial genetic variation, at which point selective progress ceases. Apart from his corollary, Fisher’s Theorem only shows that within an initial population with variant genetic alleles, there is limited selective progress followed by terminal stasis.,,, The authors observe that the more realistic the parameters, the more likely fitness decline becomes. https://crev.info/2017/12/geneticist-corrects-fishers-theorem/

bornagain77

what do you think additive genetic variance means? This post doesn't relate to the term in any way I can detect. Mimus

Mimus, not confused at all. There is no such thing as "additive genetic variance". That just another one of those materialistic myths that Darwinists believe in. Moreover, you certainly don't have to be a professor of evolution to understand the simplicity of "additive genetic variance" or why it is a myth. As Laszlo Bencze noted, "The dullest person can understand the basic story line: “Some mistakes are good. When enough good mistakes accumulate you get a new species. If you let the mistakes run long enough, you get every complicated living thing descending from one simple living thing in the beginning. There is no need for God in this process. In fact there is no need for God at all. So the Bible, which claims that God is important, is wrong.” You can be drunk, addled, or stupid and still understand this.

"You might think that a theory so profound would be laden with intimidating mathematical formulas and at least as difficult to master as Newton’s Mechanics or Einstein's Relativity. But such is not the case. Darwinism is the most accessible “scientific” theory ever proposed. It needs no math, no mastery of biology, no depth of understanding on any level. The dullest person can understand the basic story line: “Some mistakes are good. When enough good mistakes accumulate you get a new species. If you let the mistakes run long enough, you get every complicated living thing descending from one simple living thing in the beginning. There is no need for God in this process. In fact there is no need for God at all. So the Bible, which claims that God is important, is wrong.” You can be drunk, addled, or stupid and still understand this. And the real beauty of it is that when you first glimpse this revelation with its “aha!” moment, you feel like an Einstein yourself. You feel superior, far superior, to those religious nuts who still believe in God. Without having paid any dues whatsoever, you breathe the same rarified air as the smartest people who have ever lived." – Laszlo Bencze

Yet Darwinists simply have no evidence that this simple story line of "additive genetic variance" is a biological reality. As the following article states, "all known examples of antibiotic resistance via mutation are inconsistent with the genetic requirements of evolution. These mutations result in the loss of pre-existing cellular systems/activities, "

Is Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics an Appropriate Example of Evolutionary Change? - Kevin Anderson, Ph.D. Excerpt: Resistance to antibiotics and other antimicrobials is often claimed to be a clear demonstration of “evolution in a Petri dish.” ,,, all known examples of antibiotic resistance via mutation are inconsistent with the genetic requirements of evolution. These mutations result in the loss of pre-existing cellular systems/activities, such as porins and other transport systems, regulatory systems, enzyme activity, and protein binding. http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp

In fact, "Most mutations in the genes of the Salmonella bacterium have a surprisingly small negative impact on bacterial fitness. And this is the case regardless whether they lead to changes in the bacterial proteins or not."

Unexpectedly small effects of mutations in bacteria bring new perspectives – November 2010 Excerpt: Most mutations in the genes of the Salmonella bacterium have a surprisingly small negative impact on bacterial fitness. And this is the case regardless whether they lead to changes in the bacterial proteins or not.,,, using extremely sensitive growth measurements, doctoral candidate Peter Lind showed that most mutations reduced the rate of growth of bacteria by only 0.500 percent. No mutations completely disabled the function of the proteins, and very few had no impact at all. Even more surprising was the fact that mutations that do not change the protein sequence had negative effects similar to those of mutations that led to substitution of amino acids. A possible explanation is that most mutations may have their negative effect by altering mRNA structure, not proteins, as is commonly assumed. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-unexpectedly-small-effects-mutations-bacteria.html

Moreover, when the ' ‘top five’ ‘beneficial mutations from Lenski’s long term evolution experiment were combined then "the benefit linked to the simultaneous presence of five mutations was less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually."

Mutations : when benefits level off – June 2011 – (Lenski’s e-coli after 50,000 generations) Excerpt: After having identified the first five beneficial mutations combined successively and spontaneously in the bacterial population, the scientists generated, from the ancestral bacterial strain, 32 mutant strains exhibiting all of the possible combinations of each of these five mutations. They then noted that the benefit linked to the simultaneous presence of five mutations was less than the sum of the individual benefits conferred by each mutation individually. http://www2.cnrs.fr/en/1867.htm?theme1=7

As should be needless to say, that is the antithesis of "additive genetic variance". A Casey Luskin noted, "If this kind of evidence doesn't run counter to claims that neo-Darwinian evolution can evolve fundamentally new types of organisms and produce the astonishing diversity we observe in life, what does?"

New Research on Epistatic Interactions Shows "Overwhelmingly Negative" Fitness Costs and Limits to Evolution - Casey Luskin June 8, 2011 Excerpt: In essence, these studies found that there is a fitness cost to becoming more fit. As mutations increase, bacteria faced barriers to the amount they could continue to evolve. If this kind of evidence doesn't run counter to claims that neo-Darwinian evolution can evolve fundamentally new types of organisms and produce the astonishing diversity we observe in life, what does? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/new_research_on_epistatic_inte047151.html

Moreover, the last four decades worth of lab work are surveyed here, and it was found that "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."

“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/

In fact, it is now found that "Loss of function mutations are far more likely to fix in a population than gain of function mutations"

Biological Information - Loss-of-Function Mutations by Paul Giem 2015 - video (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 Michael Behe - Less is More: How Darwinian Evolution Helps Species Adapt by Breaking Genes - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKmXMlsQ5sg&list=PLS591mpvSTo3vP8g1BNfIMh3wUyrrWzQA&index=9

As the following summation of Behe's book 'Darwin Devolves explains, "The upshot of all this is that Darwin was right in believing that natural selection operating on random variations can cause organisms to become adapted to their environments, but he was wrong in believing that the process was constructive. Nowhere has the Darwinian mechanism been shown to build a complex system. It has only been shown to modify an already-existing system, usually in a loss-of-function manner"

When Darwin’s Foundations Are Crumbling, What Will the (Darwinian) Faithful Do? Excerpt: Here’s a summation of the evolutionary picture that has emerged, according to Behe (in his new book "Darwin Devolves": • The large majority of mutations are degradatory, meaning they’re mutations in which the gene is broken or blunted. Genetic information has been lost, not gained. • Sometimes the degradation helps an organism survive. • When the degradation confers a survival advantage, the mutation spreads throughout the population by natural selection. In genetics, a loss of information generally translates into a loss of function, so it might seem counterintuitive to suppose that a degradatory mutation would confer a survival advantage. Behe gives several examples, though, of instances where damaged genes have been shown to aid survival. In the case of the sickle-cell gene, for example, a single amino acid change causes hemoglobin to behave in a way that inhibits growth of the malaria microbe. It’s a loss-of-function mutation, but it confers a survival advantage in malaria-prone regions. The upshot of all this is that Darwin was right in believing that natural selection operating on random variations can cause organisms to become adapted to their environments, but he was wrong in believing that the process was constructive. Nowhere has the Darwinian mechanism been shown to build a complex system. It has only been shown to modify an already-existing system, usually in a loss-of-function manner. This is significant enough to upend the Darwinian narrative, but it gets worse. The same factors that contribute to adaptation work to prevent a species from evolving much further. Random mutation and natural selection quickly adjust species to their environmental niches, Behe writes, and then they maroon them there. He cites results from the long-running experiment conducted by Michigan State microbiologist Richard Lenski, whose E. coli lineage has surpassed 65,000 generations (equivalent to more than a million years for a large, complex species like humans), as sound evidence that random mutations wreak havoc in a species—and then that havoc gets frozen in place by natural selection. Behe sums up his main argument like this: “beneficial degradative mutations will rapidly, relentlessly, unavoidably, outcompete beneficial constructive mutations at every time and population scale.”1 The only Darwinian examples of evolution that have been observed have followed this pattern and resulted in evolutionary dead ends. Darwin devolves.,,,, https://salvomag.com/article/salvo49/darwinism-dissembled

Darwinists simply have no evidence for their belief in "additive genetic variance". Dr. John Sanford has also done yeoman's work demonstrating that 'genetic entropy' is true and that "additive genetic variance" is false:

John Sanford gives lecture at NIH (National Institute of Health) on mutations and human health – video - November 15, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=10&v=eqIjnol9uh8 Critic ignores reality of Genetic Entropy - Dr John Sanford - 7 March 2013 Excerpt: Where are the beneficial mutations in man? It is very well documented that there are thousands of deleterious Mendelian mutations accumulating in the human gene pool, even though there is strong selection against such mutations. Yet such easily recognized deleterious mutations are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast majority of deleterious mutations will not display any clear phenotype at all. There is a very high rate of visible birth defects, all of which appear deleterious. Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Why are no beneficial birth anomalies being seen? This is not just a matter of identifying positive changes. If there are so many beneficial mutations happening in the human population, selection should very effectively amplify them. They should be popping up virtually everywhere. They should be much more common than genetic pathologies. Where are they? European adult lactose tolerance appears to be due to a broken lactase promoter [see Can’t drink milk? You’re ‘normal’! Ed.]. African resistance to malaria is due to a broken hemoglobin protein [see Sickle-cell disease. Also, immunity of an estimated 20% of western Europeans to HIV infection is due to a broken chemokine receptor—see CCR5-delta32: a very beneficial mutation. Ed.] Beneficials happen, but generally they are loss-of-function mutations, and even then they are very rare! - per creation dot com

In short, like Santa Claus, the belief in 'additive genetic variance' is a fairy tale that simply does not exist in reality.

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

bornagain77

Of course Dawkins is correct that selective breeding of humans could, in principle, work to, for example, remove genetic diseases from the gene pool, or breed miniature humans - see for example, my tongue-in-cheek entry at https://thopid.blogspot.com/2019/12/small-could-be-beautiful.html However, Dawkins also says (and I agree) that we should never use eugenics to modify humans. We are simply not wise enough to choose how best to "improve" humans, and we lack the worldwide totalitarian control (fortunately) to enforce and continue such an experiment for several generations. Thus, what is theoretically possible is clearly unwise and practically impossible. As another random thought, one wonders how dogs or cows, for instance, would choose to control their selective breeding, if they could do so? This is one of those rare times when one can mostly agree with what Dawkins actually says. Fasteddious

Do you think, BA, that is might be possible that you are confused an actual Professor in this subject knows something about it. It doesn't matter if there are 3 genes or 3 thousand underlying a trait, if there is additive genetic variance (Va) for that trait (phenotypic variance in which is Vp) the response to selection (z) can be modelled as z = (Va/Vp)*S, which "S" is the strength of selection. In other words, if you have additive genetic variance in a trait you can select for it. Mimus

@16 Bornagain77:

In short, far from ‘selfish genes’ as Dawkins envisioned, genes are instead best thought of as existing in a holistic web of mutual interdependence and cooperation.

dawkins has made lots of cash thanks to lots of fools who despise their own thinking processes. No 'selfish gene' and no 'blind watchmaker'. Just piles of crap, non-sense and illogical thinking. Naturalism is a big mess. Truthfreedom

Bob’Ooooooooooh I’m sorry I couldn’t help that I’m dating myself but I see your name and I am mediately remember peter pan with Robin Williams and Rufiooooo https://www.google.com/amp/s/io9.gizmodo.com/why-eugenics-will-always-fail-5925024/amp https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5382686/#idm140417540743232title But here’s two a quick links The wiki isn’t too bad on this either even though I’m not a big fan of wiki the treatment of certain things like oxytocin is an absolute disaster also their treatment of free will which they are entirely out of date AaronS1978

Bob (and weave) O'Hara claims

Having lots of genes involved isn’t an issue – as long as there is (additive) genetic variance, you can select on the phenotype. Linkage is probably a minor problem, because it would have to be tight, and only a small number of genes involved in the trait of interest

Bob (and weave) apparently doesn't even understand his own area of supposed expertise,

The next evolutionary synthesis: from Lamarck and Darwin to genomic variation and systems biology – Bard - 2011 Excerpt: If more than about three genes (nature unspecified) underpin a phenotype, the mathematics of population genetics, while qualitatively analyzable, requires too many unknown parameters to make quantitatively testable predictions [6]. The inadequacy of this approach is demonstrated by illustrations of the molecular pathways that generates traits [7]: the network underpinning something as simple as growth may have forty or fifty participating proteins whose production involves perhaps twice as many DNA sequences, if one includes enhancers, splice variants etc. Theoretical genetics simply cannot handle this level of complexity, let alone analyse the effects of mutation.. http://www.biosignaling.com/content/pdf/1478-811X-9-30.pdf What If (Almost) Every Gene Affects (Almost) Everything? - JUN 16, 2017 Excerpt: If you told a modern geneticist that a complex trait—whether a physical characteristic like height or weight, or the risk of a disease like cancer or schizophrenia—was the work of just 15 genes, they’d probably laugh. It’s now thought that such traits are the work of thousands of genetic variants, working in concert. The vast majority of them have only tiny effects, but together, they can dramatically shape our bodies and our health. They’re weak individually, but powerful en masse. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/its-like-all-connected-man/530532/ Theory Suggests That All Genes Affect Every Complex Trait - June 20, 2018 Excerpt: Mutations of a single gene are behind sickle cell anemia, for instance, and mutations in another are behind cystic fibrosis. But unfortunately for those who like things simple, these conditions are the exceptions. The roots of many traits, from how tall you are to your susceptibility to schizophrenia, are far more tangled. In fact, they may be so complex that almost the entire genome may be involved in some way,,, One very early genetic mapping study in 1999 suggested that “a large number of loci (perhaps > than 15)” might contribute to autism risk, recalled Jonathan Pritchard, now a geneticist at Stanford University. “That’s a lot!” he remembered thinking when the paper came out. Over the years, however, what scientists might consider “a lot” in this context has quietly inflated. Last June, Pritchard and his Stanford colleagues Evan Boyle and Yang Li (now at the University of Chicago) published a paper about this in Cell that immediately sparked controversy, although it also had many people nodding in cautious agreement. The authors described what they called the “omnigenic” model of complex traits. Drawing on GWAS analyses of three diseases, they concluded that in the cell types that are relevant to a disease, it appears that not 15, not 100, but essentially all genes contribute to the condition. The authors suggested that for some traits, “multiple” loci could mean more than 100,000. https://www.quantamagazine.org/omnigenic-model-suggests-that-all-genes-affect-every-complex-trait-20180620/

In short, far from 'selfish genes' as Dawkins envisioned, genes are instead best thought of as existing in a holistic web of mutual interdependence and cooperation. Which is, needless to say, the exact polar opposite of being ‘selfish’. (And should, if Darwinism were a normal science instead of being an unfalsifiable religion for atheists, count as yet another direct falsification of the theory). bornagain77

Is this man nuts? (rhetorical question)

Unlike animals, we make personal choices, which could be based on reason and free will or on the apparent lack thereof.

- How can you make choices if you lack free will? I think he is senile. Although when he was younger he was always saying non sensical things. And people buy his crap without thinking. Truthfreedom

As to dogs,

The Dog Delusion - October 30, 2014 Excerpt: In his latest book, geneticist Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig of the Max Planck Institutes in Germany takes on the widespread view that dog breeds prove macroevolution.,,, He shows in great detail that the incredible variety of dog breeds, going back in origin several thousand years ago but especially to the last few centuries, represents no increase in information but rather a decrease or loss of function on the genetic and anatomical levels. Michael Behe writes: "Dr. Lönnig shows forcefully that one of the chief examples Darwinists rely on to convince the public of macroevolution -- the enormous variation in dogs -- actually shows the opposite. Extremes in size and anatomy come at the cost of broken genes and poor health. Even several gene duplications were found to interfere strongly with normal growth and development as is also often the case in humans. So where is the evidence for Darwinian evolution now?" The science here is indeed solid. Intriguingly, Lönnig's prediction from 2013 on starch digestion in wolves has already been confirmed in a study published this year.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/10/the_dog_delusio090751.html

As well, inbreeding (continual selection for a particular trait in dogs,) is a very big problem in 'Pure Breds' that must be carefully guarded against in animal husbandry since it accelerates genetic degradation:

Inbreeding - Pros and cons Excerpt: The ultimate result of continued inbreeding is terminal lack of vigor and probable extinction as the gene pool contracts, fertility decreases, abnormalities increase and mortality rates rise. http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/inbreeding.htm Due to population bottlenecks, inbreeding and stringent artificial selection by humans for particular traits, it was long suspected that modern dog breeds harbor more deleterious mutations due to low effects of natural selection. This research took larger number of dog genome samples than ever did before. The prediction is true. The researchers performed 90 whole-genome sequences from breed dogs, village dogs, and gray wolves including golden jackal. After comparing the data, it was found recent dog breeds have 2-3% more deleterious allele variants than wolves. Human's persistence for desirable traits and low population size have resulted in less efficient purifying selection. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/12/17/1512501113

of supplemental note:

Darwin’s Legacy - Donald R. Prothero - February 2012 Excerpt: In my dissertation on the incredibly abundant and well preserved fossil mammals of the Big Badlands of the High Plains, I had over 160 well-dated, well-sampled lineages of mammals, so I could evaluate the relative frequency of gradualism versus stasis in an entire regional fauna. … it was clear that nearly every lineage showed stasis, with one minor example of gradual size reduction in the little oreodont Miniochoerus. I could point to this data set and make the case for the prevalence of stasis without any criticism of bias in my sampling. More importantly, the fossil mammals showed no sign of responding to the biggest climate change of the past 50 million years (the Eocene-Oligocene transition, when glaciers appeared in Antarctica after 200 million years). In North America, dense forests gave way to open scrublands, crocodiles and pond turtles were replaced by land tortoises, and the snails changed from those typical of Nicaragua to those of Baja California. Yet out of all the 160 lineages of mammals in this time interval, there was virtually no response.”,,, In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-02-15/#feature

bornagain77

Seversky claims

We are not “just like” animals, we are animals,,,

Hannibal Lecter would like to have you over FOR dinner to chat about that claim,,

"I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner." - Hannibal Lecter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09TAIcCqFpg

As to selective breeding,

“This is the issue I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a direction set by natural selection. If you want bigger eggs, you keep selecting the hens that are laying the biggest eggs, and you get bigger and bigger eggs. But you also get hens with defective feathers and wobbly legs. Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create….” (Lynn Margulis Says She’s Not Controversial, She’s Right,” Discover Magazine, p. 68 (April, 2011) "The real number of variations is lesser than expected,,. There are no blue-eyed Drosophila, no viviparous birds or turtles, no hexapod mammals, etc. Such observations provoke non-Darwinian evolutionary concepts. Darwin tried rather unsuccessfully to solve the problem of the contradictions between his model of random variability and the existence of constraints. He tried to hide this complication citing abundant facts on other phenomena. The authors of the modern versions of Darwinism followed this strategy, allowing the question to persist. ...However, he was forced to admit some cases where creating anything humans may wish for was impossible. For example, when the English farmers decided to get cows with thick hams, they soon abandoned this attempt since they perished too frequently during delivery. Evidently such cases provoked an idea on the limitations to variability... [If you have the time, read all of the following paper, which concludes] The problem of the constraints on variation was not solved neither within the framework of the proper Darwin’s theory, nor within the framework of modern Darwinism." - IGOR POPOV, THE PROBLEM OF CONSTRAINTS ON VARIATION, FROM DARWIN TO THE PRESENT, 2009,

Moreover, Natural Selection reduces genetic information

"...but Natural Selection reduces genetic information and we know this from all the Genetic Population studies that we have..." Maciej Marian Giertych - Population Geneticist - member of the European Parliament EXPELLED - Natural Selection And Genetic Mutations - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z5-15wk1Zk

Case in point for natural selection reducing genetic information, humans are losing genetic information, They are not gaining it:

"We found an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations," Tishkoff told attendees today (Jan. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. "Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians." Tishkoff; Andrew Clark, Penn State; Kenneth Kidd, Yale University; Giovanni Destro-Bisol, University "La Sapienza," Rome, and Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins, WITS University, South Africa, looked at three locations on DNA samples from 13 to 18 populations in Africa and 30 to 45 populations in the remainder of the world.- New analysis provides fuller picture of human expansion from Africa - October 22, 2012 Excerpt: A new, comprehensive review of humans' anthropological and genetic records gives the most up-to-date story of the "Out of Africa" expansion that occurred about 45,000 to 60,000 years ago. This expansion, detailed by three Stanford geneticists, had a dramatic effect on human genetic diversity, which persists in present-day populations. As a small group of modern humans migrated out of Africa into Eurasia and the Americas, their genetic diversity was substantially reduced. http://phys.org/news/2012-10-analysis-fuller-picture-human-expansion.html Finding links and missing genes: Catalog of large-scale genetic changes around the world - October 1, 2015 Excerpt: "When we analysed the genomes of 2500 people, we were surprised to see over 200 genes that are missing entirely in some people," says Jan Korbel, who led the work at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany.,,, African genomes harboured a much greater diversity overall. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151001094723.htm If Modern Humans Are So Smart, Why Are Our Brains Shrinking? - January 20, 2011 Excerpt: John Hawks is in the middle of explaining his research on human evolution when he drops a bombshell. Running down a list of changes that have occurred in our skeleton and skull since the Stone Age, the University of Wisconsin anthropologist nonchalantly adds, “And it’s also clear the brain has been shrinking.” “Shrinking?” I ask. “I thought it was getting larger.” The whole ascent-of-man thing.,,, He rattles off some dismaying numbers: Over the past 20,000 years, the average volume of the human male brain has decreased from 1,500 cubic centimeters to 1,350 cc, losing a chunk the size of a tennis ball. The female brain has shrunk by about the same proportion. “I’d call that major downsizing in an evolutionary eyeblink,” he says. “This happened in China, Europe, Africa—everywhere we look.” http://discovermagazine.com/2010/sep/25-modern-humans-smart-why-brain-shrinking Are Wisdom Teeth (Third Molars) Vestiges of Human Evolution? by Jerry Bergman – December 1, 1998 Excerpt: Curtis found that both predynastic Egyptians and Nubians rarely had wisdom teeth problems, but they often existed in persons living in later periods of history. He concluded that the maxillary sinus of the populations he compared were similar and attributed the impactions he found to diet and also disuse causing atrophy of the jaws which resulted in a low level of teeth attrition. Dahlberg in a study of American Indians found that mongoloid peoples have a higher percentage of agenesis of third molars then do other groups and few persons in primitive societies had wisdom teeth problems. As Dahlberg notes, third molars were ‘very useful in primitive societies’ to chew their coarse diet. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v12/n3/wisdom-teeth The Genetics of Blond Hair June 1, 2014 Excerpt: ,,,When he and his colleagues studied this regulatory DNA in human cells grown in a laboratory dish, they discovered that the blond-generating SNP reduced KITLG activity by only about 20%. Yet that was enough to change the hair color.“This isn’t a ‘turn the switch off,’ ” Kingsley says. “It’s a ‘turn the switch down.’ ” “This study provides solid evidence” that this switch regulates the expression of KITLG in developing hair follicles, http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/06/genetics-blond-hair Daily thought: blue eyes and other gene mutations, April 25, 2013 Excerpt: "Research on blue-eyes has led many scientist to further affirm that humans are truly mere variations of the same origin. About 8% of the world's total population has blue eyes so blue eyes are fairly rare. In fact, blue eyes are actually a gene mutation that scientist have researched and found to have happened when the OCA2 gene "turned off the ability to produce brown eyes." http://www.examiner.com/article/daily-thought-blue-eyes-and-other-gene-mutations Melanin Excerpt: The melanin in the skin is produced by melanocytes, which are found in the basal layer of the epidermis. Although, in general, human beings possess a similar concentration of melanocytes in their skin, the melanocytes in some individuals and ethnic groups more frequently or less frequently express the melanin-producing genes, thereby conferring a greater or lesser concentration of skin melanin. Some individual animals and humans have very little or no melanin synthesis in their bodies, a condition known as albinism. - per wikipedia

So much for Sev's, E.G.'s, Bob's, Dawkins' and Hitler's plan to evolve a master race via eugenics and selective breeding. bornagain77

This is an incredible fallacy dogs and canines are far more genetically plastic than humans are humans apparently lost most of their genetic plasticity many thousands upon thousands of years ago somewhere around 35%

Is this true? I haven't looked, but I thought dog genetic diversity was low too. It certainly is within breeds, but I don't know about it overall.

Furthermore we have tons of gene now that are all intertwined and interconnected making it even more difficult to filter specific genes out because if you take one gene out you take another one with it

Having lots of genes involved isn't an issue - as long as there is (additive) genetic variance, you can select on the phenotype. Linkage is probably a minor problem, because it would have to be tight, and only a small number of genes involved in the trait of interest (if lots of genes are involved, few will be in tight linkage with other important genes).

Point in case myopia is directly connected to a gene that involves high levels of intelligence get rid of one and you get rid of the other

Oh, I wasn't aware of this. Do you have a citation? The nearest I could find was this study, which suggested a slight correlation (~0.14) between the two traits. Bob O'H

Sev, that has always been the risk of selective breeding. Breeding to obtain positive traits (eg Arnie’s physique, Einstein’s intelligence and Michelangelo’s artistic abilities) often comes hand-in-hand (and inseparably) with some serious negative traits (eg. Trump’s and ET’s pathological narcissistic tendencies). :) Society has decided that it is better off without increasing the frequency of those negative traits. Ed George

We are not "just like" animals, we are animals so we should be just as susceptible as other mammals to selective breeding practices. As Dawkins points out, though, the issue is not whether we could use eugenics on humans, it has always been whether we should. When we talk about a "better" human being, what do we mean? Someone with the physical build of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the scientific genius of Albert Einstein and the artistic flair of Michelangelo? Maybe, but what if all those were coupled with the personality of a Donald Trump? What would you see as a "better human"? Seversky

AaronS1978, if I am reading Dawkins’ quote correctly, he is saying that there is no scientific reason why selective breeding could not result in significant changes in expressed traits for humans as it has for other animals. I don’t think this is seriously contested by biologists and geneticists. For example, I don’t know of any reason why we couldn’t use selective breeding to produce a population of humans with webbed fingers. It is quite possible that this would also result in the fixation of some negative traits as well, but we see the same thing with selective breeding of dogs and other animals. Saying that something is scientifically possible is different than saying that, as a society, we should permit it. Ed George

@5 Ed George

I believe that eugenics was forced on others. They couldn’t exert their free will.

So you do not believe in evolution? Because evolution and free will are incompatible, sorry to let you know.

"The concept of free will is incompatible with the theory of evolution. According to Darwin’s theory, we came to be what we are by passing on genes that proved useful in the struggle to survive. If human actions (e.g. eating and mating) were freely chosen, then we couldn’t explain our evolution in terms of natural selection." https://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2019/11/are-my-beliefs-about-free-will-freely-chosen.html

And the evolutive priest (a.k.a. j. coyne or the philosophical beast here):

"To assert that we can freely choose among alternatives is to claim, then, that we can somehow step outside the physical structure of our brain and change its workings. That is impossible. Like the output of a programmed computer, only one choice is ever physically possible: the one you made". https://www.chronicle.com/article/Jerry-A-Coyne-You-Dont-Have/131165

Truthfreedom

I think a lot of people get the idea that eugenics works on human beings the same way it works on dogs This is an incredible fallacy dogs and canines are far more genetically plastic than humans are humans apparently lost most of their genetic plasticity many thousands upon thousands of years ago somewhere around 35% Furthermore we have tons of gene now that are all intertwined and interconnected making it even more difficult to filter specific genes out because if you take one gene out you take another one with it Point in case myopia is directly connected to a gene that involves high levels of intelligence get rid of one and you get rid of the other Eugenics might work but not practically it kills the genetic diversity and we are already limited on that AaronS1978

Chesterton said (quoting from memory, so sorry for mistakes): "It certainly is possible that doctors and nurses can establish a breeding program that will lead to better humans in the next generation. However, if they are indeed better humans, the first thing they will do is get rid of the doctors' and nurses' involvement in reproduction." johnnyb

Put simply: Beagles beget beagles; that is all beagles can do. So if you want a beagle, you need only go to the source.

Except that beagles were begat from selective breeding of non-beagles.

Eugenics does not work for humans. Unlike animals, we make personal choices, which could be based on reason and free will or on the apparent lack thereof. And those choices confound the ambitions of others.

I believe that eugenics was forced on others. They couldn’t exert their free will. I don’t see what is inaccurate about Dawkin’s statement. There is little doubt that we could use selective breeding on humans to produce a population of taller individuals, or a population of shorter people, or a population of people with webbed fingers. What is seldom mentioned is that even giving full free will many people continue to practice a form of eugenics. My brother’s wife is a haemophilia carrier. They decided not to have any children of their own. The wife of a friend of mine is a carrier of fragile X (causes a form of severe autism). They decided not to have any children. A coworker decided not to have any children because she was a carrier for another genetic disease. I don’t know whether the knowledge of these genetic diseases has resulted in a reduction in the incidents of these diseases, but it would be an interesting study. I think most of us would be opposed to forced eugenics. But I believe that couples who are carriers of genetic diseases should be encouraged not to have children. Possibly even provide incentives like putting them at the top of adoption lists. Ed George

Breeding works for broad characteristics that are simpler and determined by smaller numbers of genes. It doesn’t work as well for specific talents that are determined by “just right” outlier combinations of many genes. Same for all mammals.

Yes, same for all mammals. And classical breeding techniques have been incredibly successful in breeding "better" mammals (e.g. increasing milk yield in cows). This suggest that most traits aren't determined by “just right” outlier combinations of many genes. Or if it does, most of those genes are fixed for the relevant alleles.

Your free will distinction doesn’t work. Other mammals certainly have preferences and make choices. When not forcibly bred, a female dog knows who she wants, and rejects males that don’t fit her template.

I think you're agreeing with me. Bob O'H

Other animals make personal choices. People need to get out in the woods and observe what animals do. ET

Breeding works for broad characteristics that are simpler and determined by smaller numbers of genes. It doesn't work as well for specific talents that are determined by "just right" outlier combinations of many genes. Same for all mammals. Your free will distinction doesn't work. Other mammals certainly have preferences and make choices. When not forcibly bred, a female dog knows who she wants, and rejects males that don't fit her template. polistra

At one fell swoop, Dawkins exposes another frequent weakness of naturalist atheism: direct conflict with facts. Eugenics does not work for humans. Unlike animals, we make personal choices, which could be based on reason and free will or on the apparent lack thereof.

Animals also make personal choices - it's how they make their choices. e.g. Gouldian finches select mates based on head colour, but they can still be made to mate with partners of the "wrong" colour. Bob O'H