Most observed evolution is deterioration not advancement

[stcordova]

For evolution to proceed as Darwin and Spencer conceived, "survival of the fittest" would have to mean the children are more genetically advanced than their parents.

What they have actually argued is that the the fittest of the offspring have a slightly higher probabilty of surviving, but that does not imply the offspring themselves are more genetically advanced than the parents. But Darwin and Spencer beguiled the world into thinking that if the most fit kids survived this some how implied the kids were more genetically advanced than the parents.

Since the overwhelming amount of new mutations are harmful (even if to small degree), the kids on average are more defective than parents. Hence, the fittest don't really survive.

Some will argue anti-biotic resistance and pesticide resistance show genetic advancement, but that is dubious. Many anti-biotic resistant strains are more reproductively successful because they have a defect that reduces the likelihood they die from certain anti-biotics and pesticides. Furthermore, in other cases, anti-biotic resitance is evolved because the bacteria acquired genetic information from other sources through plasmid exchange of pre-existing genetic material.

The majority of lab and field observed cases of novel mutations conferring Darwinian advantage involved defects of otherwise functional systems.

To illustrate the point, Octomom is mentally defective and dysfunctional, but she made 14 kids, whereas very brilliant and wealthy scientists like Richard Dawkins had only 1 kid. In the world of Darwin, Octomom is more fit that Richard Dawkins.

But the real question is whether each generation's genomes are sicker than their parents. There is little doubt of that. And if that is the case now, and more importantly, if that is the case in the past, then the fittest die. By fittest, I mean, more genetically complex.

Further, if a species group goes completely extinct, this means there is no more opportunity for advancement of more complex life forms. The number of species are dying off quickly in the present day.

[Peter]

I don't need to read past this statement because you clearly don't understand evolution. For starters, what do you mean by "genetically advanced?"

Something is more genetically advanced if it is simply healthier or has more integrated capabilities.

Hmmm, maybe we can agree that "genetically advanced" simply means more fit for the current environment. Does that work for you? That way we don't have to debate the meaning of "healthier" or what "integrated capabilities" are and then how they might impact the evolution of the organism.

If a parent fish that can see gives birth to a blind fish the blind fish is not as genetically advanced as the parent since function is lost.

Simply losing "function" isn't automatically deleterious to an organisms fitness for the current environment. If these are cave fish we're talking about then the loss of sight has no effect on the fishes fitness for the current environment.

The topic of this debate was deterioration. One way Darwinists deal with the problem of deterioration is to argue there is not really any notion of better or worse in the functional sense, only in the reproductive sense.

Now you've lost me. An organisms fitness for it's environment is totally about how well it functions in that environment.

If a mentally compromised individual or a blind cave fish makes more offspring, then in the Darwinian sense, they are more "fit". But this leads to bizarre unintuitive way of viewing the world. In the Darwinian sense, people with sickle cell anemia are more "fit" in a malaria and insect rich environment like Africa, but in the functional and medical sense it is a terrible disease. Same can be said for other inherited disorders which Darwinists label as selectively favorable like Tay-Sachs disease, obesity, high cholesterol. Some like Thronhill, Palmer, and Buss argue the tendency to rape and murder are favorable and desirable traits in the Darwinian sense since it tends to perpetuate offspring of such individuals and reduce the offspring of their competitors.

Evolution is primarily about survival not who has the most offspring. Now it just so happens that, generally, those that survive best have more offspring but reproduction isn't the first driver of evolution.

Natural selection then chooses which variations to keep and which to discard.

What do you mean by Natural Selection? What nature actually decides to keep or what Darwin conjectures nature keeps. The two notions are not the same. What Darwin claims is natural selection, isn't what happens in nature and it isn't selection in any meaningful sense of the word.

Who cares what Darwin thought? We've come a long way since then. Natural Selection is simply the fittest survive longer than the unfit. It's just a filter.

If lightning strikes a creature even thought it might be smarter and stronger, is that natural selection?

Yes

If a natural disaster wipes out a species is that natural selection?

Yes

If humans start to destroy eco systems because of industrialization and thus wipe out large numbers of species, is that natural selection?

Yes

What defines natural selection? What is Natural Selection? What actually happens in nature or what Darwin says happens in nature.

Again, who cares what Darwin said. Natural selection is just a filter for environmental fitness. The fit survive more and the unfit do not. That's quite understandable isn't it??

Let me pose this simple question. All the rapid extinction going on today, is that an example of natural selection? If you say, "no" then I'll respond by saying, "well clearly that's what's happening in the real natural world, so how can you say it's not natural? How can you possibly argue what's going on isn't natural? If it's not natural, what would you say it is, magical?"

Of course extinction is part of Natural Selection and Evolution! Lucky for us too or we wouldn't be here today.

If you say "yes", then I'll respond by saying, "then that proves my point, most directly observed evolution is deterioration, not advancement."

What is the evolutionary deterioration and advancement that you're hung up about? Evolution doesn't deteriorate or advance.

You might argue, "that's not what Darwin meant by natural selection". Fine, then what Darwin said is natural selection isn't what really goes on in the real world, only in his imagination.

Darwin is like some kind of Hitler with theists isn't he. Newsflash, I don't care what Darwin said. We know so much more than Darwin ever dreamed of. The best I can say about Darwin is that he got the basics right.

Who brings up Newton today when arguing the finer points of the Theory of Gravity pertaining to black holes? He's just not relevant today and neither is Darwin.

[Peter]

Natural selection is the process by which better adapted organisms tend to survive to reproduce with greater odds than others.

In that case, given what is happening today, it looks like the most complex species are likely to get eliminated leaving only simpler ones (like bacteria and insects) to prosper. But then, that only demonstrates, natural selection hasn't been shown to facilitate the emergence of more complex life, it does a good job of eliminating it in favor of simple life.

Since natural selection is just an environmental filter it follows that if the environment get's really bad then only very simple, tough organisms or very smart (wink, wink) organisms will survive.

[stcordova]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/libra ... 32_04.html

The Current Mass Extinction:


Increasingly, researchers are doing the numbers, and saying, yes, if present trends continue, a mass extinction is very likely underway. ...


The background level of extinction known from the fossil record is about one species per million species per year, or between 10 and 100 species per year (counting all organisms such as insects, bacteria, and fungi, not just the large vertebrates we are most familiar with). In contrast, estimates based on the rate at which the area of tropical forests is being reduced, and their large numbers of specialized species, are that we may now be losing 27,000 species per year to extinction from those habitats alone.

The typical rate of extinction differs for different groups of organisms. Mammals, for instance, have an average species "lifespan" from origination to extinction of about 1 million years, although some species persist for as long as 10 million years. There are about 5,000 known mammalian species alive at present. Given the average species lifespan for mammals, the background extinction rate for this group would be approximately one species lost every 200 years. Of course, this is an average rate -- the actual pattern of mammalian extinctions is likely to be somewhat uneven. Some centuries might see more than one mammalian extinction, and conversely, sometimes several centuries might pass without the loss of any mammal species. Yet the past 400 years have seen 89 mammalian extinctions, almost 45 times the predicted rate, and another 169 mammal species are listed as critically endangered.

Therein lies the concern biologists have for many of today's species. While the number of actual documented extinctions may not seem that high, they know that many more species are "living dead" -- populations so critically small that they have little hope of survival. Other species are among the living dead because of their interrelationships -- for example, the loss of a pollinator can doom the plant it pollinates, and a prey species can take its predator with it into extinction. By some estimates, as much as 30 percent of the world's animals and plants could be on a path to extinction within 100 years.

That is one form of deterioration.

Another form of deterioration, humans are getting sicker:

At least in highly industrialized societies, the impact of deleterious mutations is accumulating on a time scale that is approximately the same as that for scenarios associated with global warming—perhaps not of great concern over a span of one or two generations, but with very considerable consequences on time scales of tens of generations. Without a reduction in the germline transmission of deleterious mutations, the mean phenotypes of the residents of industrialized nations are likely to be rather different in just two or three centuries, with significant incapacitation at the morphological, physiological, and neurobiological levels.

Michael Lynch
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/3/961.full.pdf+html

Now one might say we humans are getting sicker because of industrialization. But this only shows, natural selection is not obligated to improve genomes to perfect health.

The question then is under what conditions will natural selection operate to prevent genetic deterioration in a genome. It might slow it down, but it won't stop it. The reason for this is the mutation rate in humans is high relative to the reproduction rate. This is true of many other species as well.


If natural selection isn't stopping genetic deterioration, it isn't likely the mechanism that created humans.

[Peter]

[Replying to post 13 by stcordova]

Once again, NS is just an environmental filter. If the filter(environment) becomes too extreme for any life to pass through well that's Evolution too! Evolution is not obligated to "improve" anything. Where did you come up with this straw man that if Evolution isn't always "improving" something then it isn't working? Extinction is evolution too.

[FarWanderer]

[Replying to post 1 by stcordova]

How do you measure complexity?

[H.sapiens]

For evolution to proceed as Darwin and Spencer conceived, "survival of the fittest" would have to mean the children are more genetically advanced than their parents.

What they have actually argued is that the the fittest of the offspring have a slightly higher probabilty of surviving, but that does not imply the offspring themselves are more genetically advanced than the parents. But Darwin and Spencer beguiled the world into thinking that if the most fit kids survived this some how implied the kids were more genetically advanced than the parents.

Since the overwhelming amount of new mutations are harmful (even if to small degree), the kids on average are more defective than parents. Hence, the fittest don't really survive.

Some will argue anti-biotic resistance and pesticide resistance show genetic advancement, but that is dubious. Many anti-biotic resistant strains are more reproductively successful because they have a defect that reduces the likelihood they die from certain anti-biotics and pesticides. Furthermore, in other cases, anti-biotic resitance is evolved because the bacteria acquired genetic information from other sources through plasmid exchange of pre-existing genetic material.

The majority of lab and field observed cases of novel mutations conferring Darwinian advantage involved defects of otherwise functional systems.

To illustrate the point, Octomom is mentally defective and dysfunctional, but she made 14 kids, whereas very brilliant and wealthy scientists like Richard Dawkins had only 1 kid. In the world of Darwin, Octomom is more fit that Richard Dawkins.

But the real question is whether each generation's genomes are sicker than their parents. There is little doubt of that. And if that is the case now, and more importantly, if that is the case in the past, then the fittest die. By fittest, I mean, more genetically complex.

Further, if a species group goes completely extinct, this means there is no more opportunity for advancement of more complex life forms. The number of species are dying off quickly in the present day.

You need to understand what evolutionary "fitness" is.

From wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitness_%28biology%29

Fitness (often denoted w in population genetics models) is a central idea in evolutionary theory. It can be defined either with respect to a genotype or to a phenotype in a given environment. In either case, it describes the ability to both survive and reproduce, and is equal to the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation that is made by an average individual of the specified genotype or phenotype. The term "Darwinian fitness" is often used to make clear the distinction with physical fitness.[1] If differences between alleles of a given gene affect Darwinian fitness, then the frequencies of the alleles will change across generations; the alleles with higher fitness become more common. This process is called natural selection.

An individual's fitness is manifested through its phenotype. The phenotype is affected by the developmental environment as well as by genes, and the fitness of a given phenotype can be different in different environments. The fitnesses of different individuals with the same genotype are therefore not necessarily equal. However, since the fitness of the genotype is an averaged quantity, it will reflect the reproductive outcomes of all individuals with that genotype in a given environment or set of environments.

Inclusive fitness differs from individual fitness by including the ability of an allele in one individual to promote the survival and/or reproduction of other individuals that share that allele, in preference to individuals with a different allele. One mechanism of inclusive fitness is kin selection.

[Goat]

I don't need to read past this statement because you clearly don't understand evolution. For starters, what do you mean by "genetically advanced?"

Something is more genetically advanced if it is simply healthier or has more integrated capabilities. If a parent fish that can see gives birth to a blind fish the blind fish is not as genetically advanced as the parent since function is lost.

The topic of this debate was deterioration. One way Darwinists deal with the problem of deterioration is to argue there is not really any notion of better or worse in the functional sense, only in the reproductive sense.

If a mentally compromised individual or a blind cave fish makes more offspring, then in the Darwinian sense, they are more "fit". But this leads to bizarre unintuitive way of viewing the world. In the Darwinian sense, people with sickle cell anemia are more "fit" in a malaria and insect rich environment like Africa, but in the functional and medical sense it is a terrible disease. Same can be said for other inherited disorders which Darwinists label as selectively favorable like Tay-Sachs disease, obesity, high cholesterol. Some like Thronhill, Palmer, and Buss argue the tendency to rape and murder are favorable and desirable traits in the Darwinian sense since it tends to perpetuate offspring of such individuals and reduce the offspring of their competitors.

Natural selection then chooses which variations to keep and which to discard.

What do you mean by Natural Selection? What nature actually decides to keep or what Darwin conjectures nature keeps. The two notions are not the same. What Darwin claims is natural selection, isn't what happens in nature and it isn't selection in any meaningful sense of the word.

If lightning strikes a creature even thought it might be smarter and stronger, is that natural selection? If a natural disaster wipes out a species is that natural selection? If humans start to destroy eco systems because of industrialization and thus wipe out large numbers of species, is that natural selection? What defines natural selection? What is Natural Selection? What actually happens in nature or what Darwin says happens in nature.

Let me pose this simple question. All the rapid extinction going on today, is that an example of natural selection? If you say, "no" then I'll respond by saying, "well clearly that's what's happening in the real natural world, so how can you say it's not natural? How can you possibly argue what's going on isn't natural? If it's not natural, what would you say it is, magical?"

If you say "yes", then I'll respond by saying, "then that proves my point, most directly observed evolution is deterioration, not advancement."


You might argue, "that's not what Darwin meant by natural selection". Fine, then what Darwin said is natural selection isn't what really goes on in the real world, only in his imagination.

Well, 'survival of the fittest' is not really accurate. it is 'survival of the fit enough'.

And, what is the fittest? the 'fittest' is reproductive fittest. Those who can reproduce better pass on their genes better. Those that 'deteriorate' will not pass on their genes as successfully. Therefore the 'deterioration' will be filtered out.

Now, let's look at tay sachs disease. If someone has a double copy of it, they die young. HOWEVER, someone with a single tay sachs gene is highly resistant to tuberculosis. That is a survival characteristic. That is why that specific gene is as prevalent, prior to antibiodics, it gave a reproductive advantage by giving protection against a common , and often deadly disease.

[stcordova]

Where did you come up with this straw man that if Evolution isn't always "improving" something then it isn't working?

I got it from evolutionists who said things like:

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being

Charles Darwin

But that's not reality. Nature clearly doesn't add up and preserve the good, it sometimes dispenses with the good and it doesn't improve each oragnic being, because some organic beings are just plain eliminated.

Natural selection then chooses which variations to keep and which to discard. This process over many millions of generations can evolve man from mouse. The concept is really dead simple.

The concept is simplistic but that does not mean it is correct. If most random variations to the genome are destructive rather than constructive, and if selection decides to preserve destructive variation rather than constructive variation, then a mouse will not evolve into a man, and fish (with no wings) will not evolve into a bird (that has wings). Sickle cell anemia, tay-sach disease, blindness in cave fish, winglessness in beetles -- so many other genetic variations are destructive not constructive.

How do we describe constructive? For starters emergence of new proteins, emergence of reduntant expression pathways for new proteins, protein regulations, interdependent cascades of interactions, novel developmental mechanisms, etc. etc.

We don't see "the improvement of each organic being" like the bird species. We see many of them just getting plain eliminated rather than somehow adapting to changing conditions!

So observation of evolution in the present day and recent past falsifies Darwin's conception of how nature works.

"Reductive evolution" is destrutive evolution whereby defects in previously functioning systems are perpetuated. As Koonin points out, it is the dominant mode of evolution:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23801028

A common belief is that evolution generally proceeds towards greater complexity at both the organismal and the genomic level, numerous examples of reductive evolution of parasites and symbionts notwithstanding. However, recent evolutionary reconstructions challenge this notion.

If this is the dominant mode of evolution, why then should evolution construct something more complex from primitive ancestors? It shouldn't unless it does something that is not usually observed. What is usually observed is deterioration, not advancement.

Koonin argues that evolution has short bursts of explosive change. But he never articulates where that is ever directly observed in the field or lab. However, we do directly observe in the field and lab explosive bursts of extinction or gradual genetic deterioration.

[Bust Nak]

I got it from evolutionists who said things like:

It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being

Charles Darwin

Note that he said whenever and wherever opportunity offers, i.e. not always.

But that's not reality. Nature clearly doesn't add up and preserve the good, it sometimes dispenses with the good and it doesn't improve each oragnic being, because some organic beings are just plain eliminated.

But nature clearly does add up and preserve the good whenever the opportunity comes up, and dispenses with the bad and improve oragnic being by eliminating those organic beings that are less genetically advanced.

The concept is simplistic but that does not mean it is correct. If most random variations to the genome are destructive rather than constructive, and if selection decides to preserve destructive variation rather than constructive variation, then a mouse will not evolve into a man, and fish (with no wings) will not evolve into a bird (that has wings). Sickle cell anemia, tay-sach disease, blindness in cave fish, winglessness in beetles -- so many other genetic variations are destructive not constructive.

That's moot since selection always preserve the more genetically advanced.

We don't see "the improvement of each organic being" like the bird species. We see many of them just getting plain eliminated rather than somehow adapting to changing conditions!

Only because they are less genetically advanced, exactly as we expected.

"Reductive evolution" is destrutive evolution whereby defects in previously functioning systems are perpetuated. As Koonin points out, it is the dominant mode of evolution:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23801028

If this is the dominant mode of evolution, why then should evolution construct something more complex from primitive ancestors?

Because some times, an oppotunity arises where complexity is more advantagious and hence advanced.

Koonin argues that evolution has short bursts of explosive change. But he never articulates where that is ever directly observed in the field or lab. However, we do directly observe in the field and lab explosive bursts of extinction or gradual genetic deterioration.

Huh, what do you call a doubling of genetic sequence if not an explosive bursts in complexity?

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 19 by Bust Nak]
Most evolutionary change is the result of what is called balancing selection, which can be strong, e.g., sickle cell anemia (in the face of malaria out of four offspring, two survivals to reproductive age, one death due to malaria and one death due to sickle cell trait) or less draconian, e.g., overall height (where strength goes up as the square of a change in linear dimensions but mass goes up as the cube resulting in a tendency to nudge size back toward some optimum).

Even things like complexity and simplicity show the same characteristic. Simple is streamlined, requires less energy, has less opportunity for misapplication, etc. Complex is less efficient, has better self-repair capability but more opportunity for misapplication, etc.

So ... don't going looking for one or the other, that's a fool's errand. Look for the equilibrium that natural selection normally tries to maintain and also look for the punctuation that occurs when changes in the environment or the organisms' niche space causes a radical shift in the direction and magnitude of selective pressure and there is a rapid "sprint" to a new equilibrium. Thus ... punctuated equilibrium.