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.

[H.sapiens]

[Replying to post 20 by H.sapiens]

Additionally, consider an organism's niche, that's an n-dimensional hyper-volume measured across n resource states. Each resource state is in a balancing selection tension and this tension, these vectors, add and subtract to/from the organism's overall fitness much as multiple wave fronts do on the surface of the ocean. Most importantly they combine and cancel each other out, depending on the "location" of the plane that is the air water interface, or in this analogy the plane that describes fitness. So what is wonderful fit in one place may create minimal fitness somewhere else. Multiple fitness peaks in the plane, when combined with a lack of gene flow is what creates new "species" and wide open niche space (e.g., after an extinction event or large local environmental change) punctuates the equilibrium with almost explosive adaptive radiation.

[stcordova]

Most evolutionary change is the result of what is called balancing selection,

That's incorrect. Kimura demonstrated if heterozygous advantage is the reason for polymorphisms, the genetic load would be too great, hence most evolutionary change is free of selection.

Balancing selection would induce such a great genetic load because of disposal of homozygous forms that there would not be available offspring to evolve favorable traits. In other words the cost of maintenance would deplete resources needed for construction of new forms. A lot of offspring are just killed off because they have homozygously unfavored traits. That's a waste, and it won't evolve creatures. Try having a thousand heterozygously favorable traits in all the species of a population, and with the reproductive excess of something like mammalian species, the population would not at all be in good shape. Imagine all the US population with sickle cell anemia, tay sachs, plus 900 other strongly favored heterozygous traits and it becomes apparent the claim that balancing selection governs evolution is indefensible.

That idea has long been refuted.

Additionally, consider an organism's niche, that's an n-dimensional hyper-volume measured across n resource states. Each resource state is in a balancing selection tension and this tension, these vectors, add and subtract to/from the organism's overall fitness much as multiple wave fronts do on the surface of the ocean. Most importantly they combine and cancel each other out, depending on the "location" of the plane that is the air water interface, or in this analogy the plane that describes fitness. So what is wonderful fit in one place may create minimal fitness somewhere else. Multiple fitness peaks in the plane, when combined with a lack of gene flow is what creates new "species" and wide open niche space (e.g., after an extinction event or large local environmental change) punctuates the equilibrium with almost explosive adaptive radiation

Incorrect for the reasons stated earlier. As the number of traits increase, as a matter of principle the N traits cannot be strongly selected for hence will approach more and more a condition where what trait emerges in the next generation is not governed by selection unless it is severely deleterious (in which case the trait disappears).

Radiation happens independent of selection. It can happen simply as a matter of mutation and population growth and reproductive isolation (what you call lack of gene flow) of mutants and further mutation.

The genetic changes in such cases are hardly explosive (i.e. a slighty different fish is still a fish, not a bird).

[H.sapiens]

Most evolutionary change is the result of what is called balancing selection,

False. Kimura demonstrated if heterozygous advantage is the reason for polymorphisms, the genetic load would be too great, hence most evolutionary change is free of selection.

I disagree. I think that you are way out on a limb and are sawing fast.

Kimura's neutral theory of molecular evolution posits that at the molecular level most evolutionary changes, most of the variation within and between species, is not the result of selection but of random drift of neutral mutations. There are many evolutionary biologists that cast a jaundiced eye at the idea that a mutation can be truly neutral and not affect an organism's ability to survive and reproduce.

Kimura's neutral theory allows for the possibility that most mutations are deleterious, but holds that because these are rapidly purged by natural selection, they do not make significant contributions to variation within and between species at the molecular level. I agree that would be the case.

Mutations that are, in fact, advantageous he assumes to be mostly neutral rather than clearly beneficial. In addition to assuming the primacy of neutral mutations, his theory assumes that the fate of neutral mutations is determined by natural sampling defined by random genetic drift.

Kimura even admits that his theory applies only at the molecular level, and goes on to state that phenotypic evolution is controlled by Darwinian natural selection.

A "neutralist-selectionist" controversy concerning even the molecular level and polymorphism is still ongoing among evolutionary biologists, and I would say does not bode well for the neutralist position.

Balancing selection would induce such a great genetic load because of disposal of homozygous forms that there would not be available offspring to evolve favorable traits. In other words the cost of maintenance would deplete resources needed for construction of new forms. A lot of offspring are just killed off because they have homozygously unfavored traits. That's a waste, and it won't evolve creatures. Try having a thousand heterozygously favorable traits in all the species of a population, and with the reproductive excess of something like mammalian species, the population would not at all be in good shape. Imagine all the US population with sickle cell anemia, tay sachs, plus 900 other strongly favored heterozygous traits and it becomes apparent the claim that balancing selection governs evolution is indefensible.

That idea has long been refuted.

Refuted? Hardly!

e.g., Schaffner, Pardis and Sabatini, in their 2008 paper: Evolutionary Adaptation in the Human Lineage state:

Malaria Resistance

The development of agriculture also changed the selective pressures on humans in another way: Increased population density made the transmission of infectious diseases easier, and it probably expanded the already substantial role of pathogens as agents of natural selection. That role is reflected in the traces left by selection in human genetic diversity; multiple loci associated with disease resistance have been identified as probable sites of selection. In most cases, the resistance is to the same disease—malaria (Kwiatkowski, 2005).

Malaria's power to drive selection is not surprising, as it is one of the human population's oldest diseases and remains one of the greatest causes of morbidity and mortality in the world today, infecting hundreds of millions of people and killing 1 to 2 million children in Africa each year. In fact, malaria was responsible for the first case of positive selection demonstrated genetically in humans. In the 1940s and 1950s, J. B. S. Haldane and A. C. Allison demonstrated that the geographical distribution of the sickle-cell mutation (Glu6Val) in the beta hemoglobin gene (HBB) was limited to Africa and correlated with malaria endemicity, and that individuals who carry the sickle-cell trait are resistant to malaria (Allison, 1954). Since then, many more alleles for malaria resistance have shown evidence of selection, including more mutations in HBB, as well as mutations causing other red blood cell disorders (e.g., a-thalassemia, G6PD deficiency, and ovalocytosis) (Kwiatkowski, 2005).

Malaria also drove one of the most striking genetic differences between populations. This difference involves the Duffy antigen gene (FY), which encodes a membrane protein used by the Plasmodium vivax malaria parasite to enter red blood cells, a critical first step in its life cycle. A mutation in FY that disrupts the protein, thus conferring protection against P. vivax malaria, is at a frequency of 100% throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa and virtually absent elsewhere; such an extreme difference in allele frequency is very rare for humans.

I agree that you will not "evolve creatures" or create new species on the basis of something like HBB, it is just an extreme example of what Darwinian selective pressures can do to an allele that permits half of a population to survive a hostile environment.

Additionally, consider an organism's niche, that's an n-dimensional hyper-volume measured across n resource states. Each resource state is in a balancing selection tension and this tension, these vectors, add and subtract to/from the organism's overall fitness much as multiple wave fronts do on the surface of the ocean. Most importantly they combine and cancel each other out, depending on the "location" of the plane that is the air water interface, or in this analogy the plane that describes fitness. So what is wonderful fit in one place may create minimal fitness somewhere else. Multiple fitness peaks in the plane, when combined with a lack of gene flow is what creates new "species" and wide open niche space (e.g., after an extinction event or large local environmental change) punctuates the equilibrium with almost explosive adaptive radiation

False for the reasons stated earlier. As the number of traits increase, as a matter of principle the N traits cannot be strongly selected for hence will approach more and more a condition where what trait emerges in the next generation is not governed by selection unless it is severely deleterious (in which case the trait disappears).

Your clearly stated reasons do not apply, even your featured authority would not agree with you.

Radiation happens independent of selection. It can happen simply as a matter of mutation and population growth and reproductive isolation.

Is evolution possible without selection, solely on the basis of drift? I would argue that it is not, the best you'll see there would be minor variation ... but we will never know because the reproductive isolation that your hypothesis requires also guarantees significant variation in the niche space, and that's the basis of selection, different alleles doing differentially well under different circumstances.

Where did you get your evolutionary biology training?

[Peter]

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 organic being, because some organic beings are just plain eliminated.

Darwin is right. Natural Selection is constantly selecting for a better organism by killing off that which doesn't work in the current environment. The problem is, now this is key, Evolution is very slow so if the environment changes too fast the organism can't adapt fast enough and dies out. That's a pretty simple concept right? I don't want to make this complicated but try to remember that there are other organisms all competing for their place in the sun and sometimes one organism evolves such a superiority that it displaces other organisms which die out. See? Extinction is part of the evolutionary process. If it makes you happy to diss Evolution you could almost say that Evolution "failed" those organisms that went extinct. Mother Nature is a harsh mistress so if you can't cut it you die off.

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.

Whoa! How does Natural Selection preserve destructive variation? How is blindness a problem in an environment with no light? Sickle cell anemia gives some resistance to malaria, etc. Your examples are very poor. Natural Selection only kills off that which doesn't work and by default selects for that which does. Again, it's a dead simple concept.

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

Even a slight survival advantage (that isn't apparent in any one individual) will result in a population change because of the slight survival differential over thousands of generations. Try to remember it takes lots of time unless we're working with something like bacteria. We can see big changes in bacteria in the lab because of the short reproductive cycle of bacteria.

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!

Man is the dominant species on the planet so everything else is getting stressed. Global warming will probably result in many extinctions for organisms that can't adapt fast enough.

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

If you're paying attention you know that's not true. Darwin got it mostly right which, for the time, represents an amazing insight.

"Reductive evolution" is destructive 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.

It's a free country so you're entitled to believe what you want. So, let's assume that the Theory of Evolution is just an elaborate scientific conspiracy against your personal god. Tell us your theory of god creation so that we can appreciate its merits.

[stcordova]

Most evolutionary change is the result of what is called balancing selection,

So how do you explain novel allele fixation via balancing selection.

[Peter]

Most evolutionary change is the result of what is called balancing selection,

So how do you explain novel allele fixation via balancing selection.

What is your theory to explain the observed diversity of life? Maybe you will be the first to put forth an actual theory of creation for consideration.

Start with something easy to explain like the existence of fossils. If the Sciences are all wrong about fossils how do you account for them?

[H.sapiens]

Most evolutionary change is the result of what is called balancing selection,

So how do you explain novel allele fixation via balancing selection.

I don't need to, that is why I use the word "most."

Again, I don't find neutral mutation creditable on a theoretical basis and I see nature as push/pull in almost all things from evolution to movement to physiology.

[sfs]

Most evolutionary change is the result of what is called balancing selection,

False. Kimura demonstrated if heterozygous advantage is the reason for polymorphisms, the genetic load would be too great, hence most evolutionary change is free of selection.

I disagree. I think that you are way out on a limb and are sawing fast.

Kimura's neutral theory of molecular evolution posits that at the molecular level most evolutionary changes, most of the variation within and between species, is not the result of selection but of random drift of neutral mutations. There are many evolutionary biologists that cast a jaundiced eye at the idea that a mutation can be truly neutral and not affect an organism's ability to survive and reproduce.

Like who? There's really no question that most mutations in many species (e.g. large mammals like humans) are effectively neutral.

Mutations that are, in fact, advantageous he assumes to be mostly neutral rather than clearly beneficial.

Say what?

In addition to assuming the primacy of neutral mutations, his theory assumes that the fate of neutral mutations is determined by natural sampling defined by random genetic drift.

That's pretty much the definition of "neutral mutations".

Balancing selection would induce such a great genetic load because of disposal of homozygous forms that there would not be available offspring to evolve favorable traits. In other words the cost of maintenance would deplete resources needed for construction of new forms. A lot of offspring are just killed off because they have homozygously unfavored traits. That's a waste, and it won't evolve creatures. Try having a thousand heterozygously favorable traits in all the species of a population, and with the reproductive excess of something like mammalian species, the population would not at all be in good shape. Imagine all the US population with sickle cell anemia, tay sachs, plus 900 other strongly favored heterozygous traits and it becomes apparent the claim that balancing selection governs evolution is indefensible.

That idea has long been refuted.

Refuted? Hardly!

e.g., Schaffner, Pardis and Sabatini, in their 2008 paper: Evolutionary Adaptation in the Human Lineage state:

First, it's Schaffner and Sabeti, not Sabatini, and "Pardis" is Sabeti's first name. Second, nothing in what you've quoted suggests that most evolutionary change involves balancing selection, and I can guarantee that nothing in their whole article does either. Positive selection is very important in phenotypic change, but balancing selection is pretty rare.

Not that any of this makes stcordova's argument any more correct.

[stcordova]

I don't find neutral mutation creditable on a theoretical basis and I see nature as push/pull in almost all things from evolution to movement to physiology.

A. Do you have an estimate how many traits can be selected for simultaneously, like say in a human population.

B. How many traits under selection can be fixed in a population per generation? 200,100, 1, .... 1/300?

If the answer to B is 1/300 for human populations, then most evolution is neutral at best (or destructive extinction).

[WinePusher]

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.

From an evolutionary perspective 'survival of the fittest' deals with populations, not individual organisms. Remember, only populations evolve so your post is grasping a straws.

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.

In all honesty the majority of mutations are neutral, but yes the amount of harmful mutations does exceed the amount of beneficial mutations. The reason why this doesn't matter is that these harmful mutations are not preserved within a population due to natural selection.

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.

Yes, if we leave out some major crucial factors we can conclude that Octomom is more fit than Dawkins since Octomom had a greater number of offspring. However, it's important to remember that Octomom didn't naturally produce 14 kids, she needed help from modern technology. Similarly Octomom is a female, Dawkins is a male and Dawkins isn't able to walk into an IVF clinic and pop out 14 babies on his own without having sex. Also, the disparity in talent, skill and knowledge that exists between Octomom and Dawkins has nothing to do with natural endowment. Octomom wasn't born mentally defective and dysfunctional and Dawkins wasn't born brilliant and wealthy, these are traits that were acquired overtime due to nonenvironmental, societal factors.