There’s a gene for that…or is there?

One can see that 'artistic license' for human evolution being played out on the following site.

10 Transitional Ancestors of Human Evolution by Tyler G., March 18, 2013 http://listverse.com/2013/03/18/10-transitional-ancestors-of-human-evolution/

Please note, on the preceding site, how the sclera (white of the eye), a uniquely human characteristic, was brought in very early on, in the artists' reconstructions, to make the fossils falsely appear much more human than they actually were, even though the artists making the reconstructions have no clue whatsoever as to what the colors of the eyes actually were.

Evolution of human eye as a device for communication - Hiromi Kobayashi - Kyoto University, Japan Excerpt: The uniqueness of human eye morphology among primates illustrates the remarkable difference between human and other primates in the ability to communicate using gaze signals. http://www.saga-jp.org/coe_abst/kobayashi.htm The Fragmented Field of Paleoanthropology - July 2012 Excerpt: "alleged restoration of ancient types of man have very little, if any, scientific value and are likely only to mislead the public" Earnest A. Hooton - physical anthropologist - Harvard University http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/the_fragmented_062101.html The Red Ape - Cornelius Hunter - August 2009 Excerpt: "There remains, however, a paradoxical problem lurking within the wealth of DNA data: our morphology and physiology have very little, if anything, uniquely in common with chimpanzees to corroborate a unique common ancestor. Most of the characters we do share with chimpanzees also occur in other primates, and in sexual biology and reproduction we could hardly be more different. It would be an understatement to think of this as an evolutionary puzzle." http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/08/red-ape.html "One famous fossil skull, discovered in 1972 in northern Kenya, changed its appearance dramatically depending on how the upper jaw was connected to the rest of the cranium. Roger Lewin recounts an occasion when paleoanthropologists Alan Walker, Michael Day, and Richard Leakey were studying the two sections of skull 1470. According to Lewin, Walker said: You could hold the [upper jaw] forward, and give it a long face, or you could tuck it in, making the face short…. How you held it really depended on your preconceptions. It was very interesting watching what people did with it. Lewin reports that Leakey recalled the incident, too: Yes. If you held it one way, it looked like one thing; if you held it another, it looked like something else." Roger Lewin, Bones of Contention, Second Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p 160 Good-bye Heidelberg Man: You Never Existed - July 11, 2014 Excerpt: “If someone kills one person they go to jail,” anthropologist Zeresenay Alemseged of the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco noted last month at a meeting here in France’s deep south. “But what happens if you kill off a whole species?” The answer soon became apparent: anguished debate. In the balance was Homo heidelbergensis, a big-brained human ancestor generally seen as a pivotal figure, (common ancestor of modern humans and our extinct closest cousins, the Neandertals), during a murky period of evolution. At the invitation-only meeting, researchers debated whether this species really was a major player—or "no more than a paleoanthropologists’ construct". http://crev.info/2014/07/heidelberg-man-never-existed/

Verse and Music:

Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Glory to God Forever sung by Fee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX5J3WThiac

bornagain77

AB as to:

"Exactly what extrapolation have you hallucinated that I was making."

it would be this hallucination that I thought you were making:

parade of apes becoming more human - image http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/evolution/missing_link_fossil_discovery_l.jpg

Since you deny trying to make that particular extrapolation/hallucination from the evidence you alluded to but did not cite, I'm glad that you finally admit to the truth that you have no real evidence of man evolving from some chimp like ancestor in your evidence,,,

“We have all seen the canonical parade of apes, each one becoming more human. We know that, as a depiction of evolution, this line-up is tosh (i.e. nonsense). Yet we cling to it. Ideas of what human evolution ought to have been like still colour our debates.” Henry Gee, editor of Nature (478, 6 October 2011, page 34, doi:10.1038/478034a) Paleoanthropologist Exposes Shoddiness of “Early Man” Research - Feb. 6, 2013 Excerpt: The unilineal depiction of human evolution popularized by the familiar iconography of an evolutionary ‘march to modern man’ has been proven wrong for more than 60 years. However, the cartoon continues to provide a popular straw man for scientists, writers and editors alike. ,,, archaic species concepts and an inadequate fossil record continue to obscure the origins of our genus. http://crev.info/2013/02/paleoanthropologist-exposes-shoddiness/ New York Times Inherits the Spin, Republishes Darwinists’ Error-Filled “Answers” to Jonathan Wells’ – 2008 Excerpt: And all three of these textbooks include fanciful drawings of ape-like humans that help to convince students we are no exception to the rule of purposelessness. Some biology textbooks use other kinds of illustrations ,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/08/new_york_times_inherits010581.html Paleoanthropology Excerpt: In regards to the pictures of the supposed ancestors of man featured in science journals and the news media Boyce Rensberger wrote in the journal Science the following regarding their highly speculative nature: "Unfortunately, the vast majority of artist's conceptions are based more on imagination than on evidence. But a handful of expert natural-history artists begin with the fossil bones of a hominid and work from there…. Much of the reconstruction, however, is guesswork. Bones say nothing about the fleshy parts of the nose, lips, or ears (or eyes). Artists must create something between an ape and a human being; the older the specimen is said to be, the more apelike they make it.... Hairiness is a matter of pure conjecture." http://conservapedia.com/Evolution#Paleoanthropology "National Geographic magazine commissioned four artists to reconstruct a female figure from casts of seven fossil bones thought to be from the same species as skull 1470. One artist drew a creature whose forehead is missing and whose jaws look vaguely like those of a beaked dinosaur. Another artist drew a rather good-looking modern African-American woman with unusually long arms. A third drew a somewhat scrawny female with arms like a gorilla and a face like a Hollywood werewolf. And a fourth drew a figure covered with body hair and climbing a tree, with beady eyes that glare out from under a heavy, gorilla-like brow." “Behind the Scenes,” National Geographic 197 (March, 2000): 140 picture - these artists "independently" produced the 4 very "different" ancestors you see here http://www.omniology.com/JackalopianArtists.html https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/human-evolution-skull-1470-it-turns-out-has-a-multiple-personality-disorder/

bornagain77

BA77: //"I did not contest gmilling claim as far as it went for Europe, Something you would have understood if you read ‘in the big picture’, I merely showed his extrapolation, for whatever reason, is not true in the big picture"// Exactly what extrapolation have you hallucinated that I was making. I simply said that the average height of Europeans today is greater than it was a few hundred years ago. And that this was the result of environment on gene expression, not a change in genotype. I thought that you would be glad to hear this. But I guess you are incapable of accepting anything that a materialist says. As Gordon (Kairosfocus) Mullings would say, that is very telling. .. acartiabogart

Podcast - Richard Sternberg PhD - On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 4 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-4/ For those who missed them, here are parts 1 thru 3 Podcast: Richard Sternberg - " On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? part 1 http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna/ Podcast - Richard Sternberg PhD - On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 2. (Major Differences in higher level chromosome spatial organization) 5:30 minute mark: "Basically the dolphin genome is almost wholly identical to the human genome,, yet no one would argue that bottle-nose dolphins are our sister species" http://www.discovery.org/multimedia/audio/2014/11/on-human-origins-is-our-genome-full-of-junk-dna-pt-2/ Podcast: Richard Sternberg - " On Human Origins: Is Our Genome Full of Junk DNA? Part 3" http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2014-11-17T14_14_33-08_00 bornagain77

Mr Frank you claim that "none of your links have anything to do with neo-Darwinian thinking" Yet, contrary to what you falsely want to convey, this 'ascent of man' icon is exactly what Neo-Darwinists want to convey,,, 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 Moreover, for you to hand wave off the fact that genomic degradation is the rule rather than the exception, only further clarifies how intellectually dishonest you are willing to be to defend your atheistic worldview. Of related note: No Known Hominin Is Common Ancestor of Neanderthals and Modern Humans, Study Suggests - Oct. 21, 2013 Excerpt: The article, "No known hominin species matches the expected dental morphology of the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans," relies on fossils of approximately 1,200 molars and premolars from 13 species or types of hominins -- humans and human relatives and ancestors. Fossils from the well-known Atapuerca sites have a crucial role in this research, accounting for more than 15 percent of the complete studied fossil collection.,,, They conclude with high statistical confidence that none of the hominins usually proposed as a common ancestor, such as Homo heidelbergensis, H. erectus and H. antecessor, is a satisfactory match. "None of the species that have been previously suggested as the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans has a dental morphology that is fully compatible with the expected morphology of this ancestor," Gómez-Robles said. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131021153202.htm Skull "Rewrites" Story of Human Evolution -- Again - Casey Luskin - October 22, 2013 Excerpt: "There is a big gap in the fossil record," Zollikofer told NBC News. "I would put a question mark there. Of course it would be nice to say this was the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and us, but we simply don't know." - http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/10/skull_rewrites_078221.html "A number of hominid crania are known from sites in eastern and southern Africa in the 400- to 200-thousand-year range, but none of them looks like a close antecedent of the anatomically distinctive Homo sapiens…Even allowing for the poor record we have of our close extinct kin, Homo sapiens appears as distinctive and unprecedented…there is certainly no evidence to support the notion that we gradually became who we inherently are over an extended period, in either the physical or the intellectual sense." Dr. Ian Tattersall: - paleoanthropologist - emeritus curator of the American Museum of Natural History - (Masters of the Planet, 2012) bornagain77

BA77 - none of your links have anything to do with neo-Darwinian thinking. They are mostly pop-science articles about the fact that the human brain has got smaller in the last 20,000 years. There is no reason why this should be to do with genetic degradation or even be considered a loss of any kind. Smaller brain does not equal less clever. Mark Frank

correction, 'many more references in post 6' of related interest: evidence for the detrimental nature of mutations in humans is overwhelming for scientists have already cited over 100,000 mutational disorders. Inside the Human Genome: A Case for Non-Intelligent Design - Pg. 57 By John C. Avise Excerpt: "Another compilation of gene lesions responsible for inherited diseases is the web-based Human Gene Mutation Database (HGMD). Recent versions of HGMD describe more than 75,000 different disease causing mutations identified to date in Homo-sapiens." I went to the mutation database website cited by John Avise and found: Mutation total (as of 2014-05-02) - 148,413 http://www.hgmd.cf.ac.uk/ac/ 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! http://creation.com/genetic-entropy John Sanford on (Genetic Entropy) - Down, Not Up - 2-4-2012 (at Loma Linda University) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=PHsu94HQrL0#t=1040s Notes from John Sanford's preceding video: *3 new mutations every time a cell divides in your body * Average cell of 15 year old has up to 6000 mutations *Average cell of 60 year old has 40,000 mutations Reproductive cells are 'designed' so that, early on in development, they are 'set aside' and thus they do not accumulate mutations as the rest of the cells of our bodies do. Regardless of this protective barrier against the accumulation of slightly detrimental mutations still we find that,,, *60-175 mutations are passed on to each new generation. Human evolution or extinction - discussion on acceptable mutation rate per generation (with clips from Dr. John Sanford) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC_NyFZG7pM "it would in the end be far easier and more sensible to manufacture a complete man de novo, out of appropriately chosen raw materials, than to try to fashion into human form those pitiful relics which remained… it is evident that the natural rate of mutation of man is so high, and his natural rate of reproduction so low, that not a great deal of margin is left for selection… it becomes perfectly evident that the present number of children per couple cannot be great enough to allow selection to keep pace with a mutation rate of 0.1..if, to make matters worse, u should be anything like as high as 0.5…, our present reproductive practices would be utterly out of line with human requirements." Hermann Muller quoted by John Sanford; Appendix 1, Genetic Entropy No Matter What Type Of Selection, Mutations Deteriorate Genetic Information - article and animation Excerpt: The animation asserts that if harmful mutation rates are high enough, then there exists no form or mechanism of selection which can arrest genetic deterioration. Even if the harmful mutations do not reach population fixation, they can still damage the collective genome.,,, Nobel Prize winner HJ Muller (of Muller’s ratchet fame) suggested that the human race can’t even cope with a harmful rate of 0.1 (mutations) per new born. The actual rate has been speculated to be on the order of 100-300. The animation uses a conservative harmful rate of 1 and argues (with some attempts at humor) that deterioration would thus be inevitable even with a harmful rate of 1 per new born. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/evolution/nachmans-paradox-defeats-darwinism-and-dawkins-weasel/ Dr. John Sanford "Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome" part 1 of 2 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ-4umGkgos bornagain77

Mr Frank, and I have many more references in post 2 that show the finding was not distorted. The only distortion, and ad hominem, is from you trying to downplay the findings.,,, I did not contest gmilling claim as far as it went for Europe, Something you would have understood if you read 'in the big picture', I merely showed his extrapolation, for whatever reason, is not true in the big picture. Something which you yourself apparently agree with. ,, I suggest you get out of the politic mode of defending a bankrupt theory and be more honest to the evidence so that such devastating findings to orthodox neo-Darwinian thought can have a full impact on you instead of making youself appear dishonest. bornagain77

BA77 #8 Your links are to a crackpot website which links to The Daily Mail which links to The Outsider which references the CU press release about the paper. As a result things get distorted. If you want to be taken seriously I suggest you only link to original sources or reputable digests and also make sure you understand their relevance to the point you are trying to make. As it happens even in the first link it is clear that the research is about changes that took place 10,000 to 3,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture which does not in any way contradict gmiller's claim: "The average height of Europeans is much greater today than it was a few hundred years ago." This is obviously true - just look at old beds, doors, clothes, suits of armour. If you look at the press release you will see that this study suggests decreased mobility as man moved from a hunter-gatherer society to a agricultural society - hardly a bug surprise. There are no links beyond the Daily Mail to the second paper about decline in size. It would be interesting to see what it actually said. But in any case it also about a completely different timescale. Mark Frank

"Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals." That's just ignorant. Aggressiveness (physical violence) is NOT the prime variable for career criminals. Too much violence is usually a career-stopper. Career criminals are primarily short-term thinkers with zero patience. Their goal is to find the shortest path to the greatest gain. If that path involves violence, fine. If not, fine. polistra

gmilling, From your ad hominem tone are you a Thorton sock puppet, or perhaps an adapa sock puppet? bornagain77

Actually, if you read my posts, at least the first link of them, you would not embarrass yourself.,,, Scientists Discover Proof That Humanity Is Getting Dumber, Smaller And Weaker By Michael Snyder, on April 29th, 2014 Excerpt: An earlier study by Cambridge University found that mankind is shrinking in size significantly. Experts say humans are past their peak and that modern-day people are 10 percent smaller and shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors. And if that’s not depressing enough, our brains are also smaller. The findings reverse perceived wisdom that humans have grown taller and larger, a belief which has grown from data on more recent physical development. The decline, said scientists, has happened over the past 10,000 years. http://thetruthwins.com/archives/scientists-discover-proof-that-humanity-is-getting-dumber-smaller-and-weaker My claim stands. Humanity as a whole, when looking at the big picture, has shrunk! bornagain77

BSC77: //"as to this claim: “The average height of Europeans is much greater today than it was a few hundred years ago. But nobody is arguing that this is because of significant changes in our genes.” Actually humanity, as a whole, has shrunk significantly,,,"// Then try to be a 6" person walking through a flu hundred year old doorway without ducking. And try responding to comments without cut-and-pasta that everybody, including your ID friends, scroll past. gmilling

as to this claim: "The average height of Europeans is much greater today than it was a few hundred years ago. But nobody is arguing that this is because of significant changes in our genes." Actually humanity, as a whole, has shrunk significantly,,, Scientists Discover Proof That Humanity Is Getting Dumber, Smaller And Weaker By Michael Snyder, on April 29th, 2014 Excerpt: An earlier study by Cambridge University found that mankind is shrinking in size significantly. Experts say humans are past their peak and that modern-day people are 10 percent smaller and shorter than their hunter-gatherer ancestors. And if that’s not depressing enough, our brains are also smaller. The findings reverse perceived wisdom that humans have grown taller and larger, a belief which has grown from data on more recent physical development. The decline, said scientists, has happened over the past 10,000 years. http://thetruthwins.com/archives/scientists-discover-proof-that-humanity-is-getting-dumber-smaller-and-weaker 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 brains shrinking to make us smarter? - February 2011 Excerpt: Human brains have shrunk over the past 30,000 years, http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-brains-smarter.html Cro Magnon skull shows that our brains have shrunk - Mar 15, 2010 by Lisa Zyga Excerpt: Using new technology, researchers have produced a replica of the 28,000-year-old brain and found that it is about 15-20% larger than our brains. http://phys.org/news187877156.html Human face has shrunk over the past 10,000 years - November 2005 Excerpt: Human faces are shrinking by 1%-2% every 1,000 years. What’s more, we are growing less teeth. Ten thousand years ago everyone grew wisdom teeth but now only half of us get them, and other teeth like the lateral incisors have become much smaller. This is evolution in action." http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/001604.html of related note: “Neanderthals are known for their large cranial capacity, which at 1600cc is larger on average than modern humans.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal#Anatomy Moreover, the genome has been found to be deteriorating during that time: Human Genetic Variation Recent, Varies Among Populations - (Nov. 28, 2012) Excerpt: Nearly three-quarters of mutations in genes that code for proteins -- the workhorses of the cell -- occurred within the past 5,000 to 10,000 years,,, "One of the most interesting points is that Europeans have more new deleterious (potentially disease-causing) mutations than Africans,",,, "Having so many of these new variants can be partially explained by the population explosion in the European population. However, variation that occur in genes that are involved in Mendelian traits and in those that affect genes essential to the proper functioning of the cell tend to be much older." (A Mendelian trait is controlled by a single gene. Mutations in that gene can have devastating effects.) The amount variation or mutation identified in protein-coding genes (the exome) in this study is very different from what would have been seen 5,000 years ago,,, The report shows that "recent" events have a potent effect on the human genome. Eighty-six percent of the genetic variation or mutations that are expected to be harmful arose in European-Americans in the last five thousand years, said the researchers. The researchers used established bioinformatics techniques to calculate the age of more than a million changes in single base pairs (the A-T, C-G of the genetic code) that are part of the exome or protein-coding portion of the genomes (human genetic blueprint) of 6,515 people of both European-American and African-American decent.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121128132259.htm "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.- 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. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanin#Humans I wonder what Hitler would have thought of all those studies? bornagain77

I agree with WD400. It has long been known that how and when a gene is expressed is strongly dependent on environment. This is not new. The average height of Europeans is much greater today than it was a few hundred years ago. But nobody is arguing that this is because of significant changes in our genes. gmilling

wd400, although you try to downplay News's article, it is far more problematic for you than you pretend. For instance we find this in News's article:

There's a Gene for That...Or Is There? - Denyse O'Leary - November 24, 2014 Excerpt: "We know of more than 50 different genes associated with height ... That has not percolated into the public mind, as the Google search for "scientists find the gene for" shows. The three letter word for -- the gene FOR something -- is the most dangerous word in genetics.",,, Similarly, on the controversial subject of genetics and intelligence (the "genius gene"), scientists used to estimate that about half a dozen genes affected it, then later upped the number to two hundred genes. Another estimate is about a thousand. One psychologist explained, "We can't find the effects of any individual genes that are large enough to seem worth worrying about." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/11/theres_gene_for091421.html

Yet, population genetics can't handle that level of overlapping complexity: The following video and papers provides a detailed refutation of Fisher’s work, from the 1930’s, in population genetics:

Biological Information - Overlapping Codes 10-25-2014 by Paul Giem - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OytcYD5791k&index=4&list=PLHDSWJBW3DNUUhiC9VwPnhl-ymuObyTWJ Multiple Overlapping Genetic Codes Profoundly Reduce the Probability of Beneficial Mutation George Montañez 1, Robert J. Marks II 2, Jorge Fernandez 3 and John C. Sanford 4 - May 2013 Conclusions: Our analysis confirms mathematically what would seem intuitively obvious - multiple overlapping codes within the genome must radically change our expectations regarding the rate of beneficial mutations. As the number of overlapping codes increases, the rate of potential beneficial mutation decreases exponentially, quickly approaching zero. Therefore the new evidence for ubiquitous overlapping codes in higher genomes strongly indicates that beneficial mutations should be extremely rare. This evidence combined with increasing evidence that biological systems are highly optimized, and evidence that only relatively high-impact beneficial mutations can be effectively amplified by natural selection, lead us to conclude that mutations which are both selectable and unambiguously beneficial must be vanishingly rare. This conclusion raises serious questions. How might such vanishingly rare beneficial mutations ever be sufficient for genome building? How might genetic degeneration ever be averted, given the continuous accumulation of low impact deleterious mutations? http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0006 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

Also of note:

Whale Evolution Vs. Population Genetics - Richard Sternberg PhD. in Evolutionary Biology – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85kThFEDi8o Evolution And Probabilities: A Response to Jason Rosenhouse - August 2011 Excerpt: The equations of population genetics predict that – assuming an effective population size of 100,000 individuals per generation, and a generation turnover time of 5 years – according to Richard Sternberg’s calculations and based on equations of population genetics applied in the Durrett and Schmidt paper, that one may reasonably expect two specific co-ordinated mutations to achieve fixation in the timeframe of around 43.3 million years. When one considers the magnitude of the engineering fete, such a scenario is found to be devoid of credibility. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/evolution-and-probabilities-a-response-to-jason-rosenhouse/

Supplemental note:

Why the 'Gene' Concept Holds Back Evolutionary Thinking - James Shapiro - 11/30/2012 Excerpt: The Century of the Gene. In a 1948 Scientific American article, soon-to-be Nobel Laureate George Beadle wrote: "genes are the basic units of all living things.",,, This notion of the genome as a collection of discrete gene units prevailed when the neo-Darwinian "Modern Synthesis" emerged in the pre-DNA 1940s. Some prominent theorists even proposed that evolution could be defined simply as a change over time in the frequencies of different gene forms in a population.,,, The basic issue is that molecular genetics has made it impossible to provide a consistent, or even useful, definition of the term "gene." In March 2009, I attended a workshop at the Santa Fe Institute entitled "Complexity of the Gene Concept." Although we had a lot of smart people around the table, we failed as a group to agree on a clear meaning for the term. The modern concept of the genome has no basic units. It has literally become "systems all the way down." There are piecemeal coding sequences, expression signals, splicing signals, regulatory signals, epigenetic formatting signals, and many other "DNA elements" (to use the neutral ENCODE terminology) that participate in the multiple functions involved in genome expression, replication, transmission, repair and evolution.,,, Conventional thinkers may claim that molecular data only add details to a well-established evolutionary paradigm. But the diehard defenders of orthodoxy in evolutionary biology are grievously mistaken in their stubbornness. DNA and molecular genetics have brought us to a fundamentally new conceptual understanding of genomes, how they are organized and how they function. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/why-the-gene-concept-hold_b_2207245.html

bornagain77

Also

In any event, the 1000 Genomes Project has found about 15 million gene variants in humans, "more than half of which had never been observed before." And that's not the only unexpected recent finding. More than one percent of Scottish men in the "Scotland's DNA" project were determined to be direct descendants of the Saharan Berber and Tuareg tribes. Did any genetic determinist predict that?

To whom are these results meant to be suprising. It's pop. gen. 101 that most variants in an expanding population are rare, so the 10 000 genomes result is just another confirmation of Out Of Africa. What "genetic determinism" has to do with the ancestry of the Scotts is beyond me. wd400

I'm not quite sure what the point of any of this is, but this passage from the ENV article is particularily strange

We are only beginning to learn about epigenetics, the system within our cells that governs whether, when, and how a gene will be expressed. It threatens to upend the nonsense

Epigenetics in this sense has been a central focus of molecular biology since about the 1950s, so we aren't just beginning to learn about it. And I'm not sure what "nonsense" you think learning more about epigenetics is going to upturn -- but it can't be that some traits have a strong genetic basis. We already know that many traits have high hertability, which means variance in those traits is explained by genetic variance. Those genetics variants that contribute to these traits probably do so via epigentics -- after all the biggest contributors to "whether, when, and how a gene will be expressed" are other genes. wd400

Very good News! :) bornagain77