Absurdity of evolution

[EarthScienceguy]

How is evolution even possible in light of the following?

1. Haldane's Dilemma

The cost of substitution Cs is 30 and it is paid off in installments (Ps)of 0.1 each generation. At that rate, it takes (Cs/Ps) 300 generations to pay the cost of substituting one gene. Haldane's conclusion was over the long term the average rate of gene substitution is no better than one gene every 300 generations. (Crow and Kimura, 1970 p 244-252; Crow 1968 p 168-173; Ewens 1979 p 252-256; Merrell 1981 p 187-193)

In a human-like population with a nominal generation time of 20 years 10 000 000/(20x300) = 1667nucleotides could have been changed. That is 0.000047% of the human genome. For 1% of the human genome to be changed in this fashion would take 210,000,000,000 years.

Haldane's dilemma ended the idea of selection causing evolution.

How is there time for evolution?
How can there be evolution without selection?

2. Kimura's Neutral theory of evolution

Kimura is credited with coming up with the solution to Haldane's dilemma. He suggests that neutral mutations is the way that most of the genome was changed.

Error catastrophe is when harmful mutations accumulate too fast and genetic deterioration becomes unavoidable. The standard genetic model the one model taught in every evolutionary textbook -predicts that error catastrophe occurs when the mutation rate gets much above one harmful mutation per progeny. (that is 0.5 harmful mutations per gamete per generation) At that rate, each progeny typically has one more harmful mutation than its parents. Above this threshold, the species would rapidly accumulate harmful mutations from generation to generation.

Kimura estimates that amino-acid altering mutations are roughly ten times more likely to be definitely harmful than neutral. (kimura 1983, p 199; King and Jukes 1969 p 795) That would indicate that the expressed neutral mutations cannot be more common than 0.05 per gamete per generation.

The neutral theory predicts that the neutral substitution rate is equal to the neutral mutation rate per gamete. (Kimura 1983 p 46-48) Therefore, expressed neutral mutations are substituted no faster than 0.05 per generation. In ten million years, a human-like population could substitute no more than 25000 expressed neutral mutations. That amounts to 0.00007% of the genome. So that means if 1% of the human genome were to change it would 14,000,000,000 it is closer to the age of the universe.

How would evolution have time to occur?

3. Punctuated Equilibria

Punctuated Equilibria was developed in response to seeing cladogenesis in the fossil record and not anagenesis. Punctuated equilibria has three central postulates.

Postulate 1: Most evolution occurs in short, rapid bursts (called punctuation events) followed by stasis. This produces a large morphological gap.

Postulate 2: Most evolution occurs at speciation (in other words, punctuation events are closely tied to speciation)

Postulate 3: Speciation has no inherent directionality. A daughter species tends to originate in a random, non-adaptive direction from the parent species.

Punctuated equilibria destroy the idea of discernable phylogeny in the fossil record. Punctuationists declare that evolution is a labyrinthine bush, not an identifiable tree.

How can evolution be true if phylogeny is not discernable in the fossil record?

Remine, Walter The biotic message

[bluegreenearth]

How could it possibly be if Punctuated Equilibrium is based on the idea of speciation and that evolution happens in great leaps? Phylogeny is not possible. And far as human evolution is concerned there is simply not enough time for that to occur. Let alone any major evolutionary changes to take place like fish to human.

Again, while there is nothing wrong with asking critical thinking questions, it should mean something to you that none of the debates occurring among the consensus of experts in the field are about whether there was enough time for evolution to occur. Is this because the consensus of experts are overlooking what you appear to believe is an obvious flaw in the Theory of Evolution or because they are doing the necessary research and experiments but have yet to find any credible evidence anywhere to suggest that there isn't enough time for evolution to have occurred?

Seriously, as someone who isn't an expert this field, I would never be so arrogant as to presume I had discovered a legitimate objection to the Theory of Evolution that was obvious to me as an untrained amateur but somehow completely missed by the consensus of experts in the field who thoroughly and critically examine these types of claims on a daily basis. No, intellectual humility would compel me to ensure this perceived objection wasn't a consequence of ignorance or a misunderstanding on my part. Then, after acquiring the necessary advanced education in the relevant scientific disciplines, if I still believed the objection was legitimate, I would submit it to the consensus of experts in the field for their peer review. To your knowledge, when was the last time a creationist with the necessary advanced education in Evolutionary Biology conducted an experiment which demonstrated that there wasn't enough time for evolution to occur and submitted the methods and results to the consensus of experts in the field for peer review? If this has occurred within the last decade, what was the outcome of the peer review process?

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #4]

Evidently Haldane was wrong ... and writing 64 years ago (1957) when genetics was still in a nascent state of understanding it isn't surprising that he didn't get everything right. This Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_dilemma

has the following comments (reference numbers in above link):

"Motoo Kimura's landmark paper on neutral theory in 1968[2] built on Haldane's work to suggest that most molecular evolution is neutral, resolving the dilemma. Although neutral evolution remains the consensus theory among modern biologists,[3] and thus Kimura's resolution of Haldane's dilemma is widely regarded as correct, some biologists argue that adaptive evolution explains a large fraction of substitutions in protein coding sequence,[4] and they propose alternative solutions to Haldane's dilemma."

Kimura did not refute Haldane's argument he used Haldane's argument to support his "Neutral theory".

Haldane's theory was the death of selection because of the time it took between each successive mutation.

2. Kimura's Neutral theory of evolution

Kimura is credited with coming up with the solution to Haldane's dilemma. He suggests that neutral mutations is the way that most of the genome was changed.
As the first link above suggests, Kimura isn't the only person who has addressed this issue (by far). A more recent example is this (and its references):

https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1 ... -2019-0051

The paper you cited is nothing more than a rehash of Kimura's neutral theory. What the paper says nothing about are the 1000 deleterious mutations that would be produced with the 100 beneficial mutations.

How can evolution be true if phylogeny is not discernable in the fossil record?
Why is phylogeny not discernable in the fossil record?

https://www.britannica.com/science/phyl ... nary-steps

Punctuated equilibrium is based on speciation is caused by punctated events. How is phylogeny possible in that scenario? Punctuated equilibrium is based on direct observation of the fossil record.

There are people on this site who are far more knowledgeable on this subject than I am that I expect will chime in. But you are fighting a losing battle because evolution is still the prevailing "best" explanation for how life diversified on this planet.

Evolution is the only "hypothesis". Naturalists have no other option. The problem is by evolutionists' own math, evolution is not possible.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #8]

All of this evolutionary brain development and physical development happened in a very short time period (couple of million years or less), and it appears to have been a fairly steady progression during that time rather than a punctuated equilibruim situation (look at all the skulls in Miles' post 6 who participated). The "Great Leap Forward" some 50-70K years ago is a behavioral event more than a physical evolutionary event (possibly following the development of more complex language capabilities), but not all evolutionary mechanisms have to be punctuated equilibruim to the exclusion of all others as you seem to be suggesting. They can coexist.

Are you that this great leap forward was caused by natural selection? That is not possible according to Kimura. His solution to Haldane's dilemma was neutral mutations. Neutral mutations would have no direction. Otherwise they would not be neutral.

[Difflugia]

Punctuated equilibrium is based on speciation is caused by punctated events. How is phylogeny possible in that scenario? Punctuated equilibrium is based on direct observation of the fossil record.

You have a broken understanding of at least one concept there because what you wrote just plain doesn't make sense.

Punctuated Equilibrium describes patterns of morphological change (not necessarily speciation) over geological short periods of time. Across longer periods, the pattern looks the same whether gradual change or equilibria punctuated by quicker changes.

Phylogeny is the pattern of speciation. The pattern doesn't change whether the process was gradual or punctuated. You keep asking how phylogeny is possible given Punctuated Equilibrium, but nothing you've said would affect determining phylogeny at all. Something's grievously wrong with your understanding, but you haven't explained enough for us to figure out what that is.

It would be like me saying that because of calculus, division is impossible. There's something badly wrong there because it's nonsense. A mathemetician would know that it's nonsense, but wouldn't know where to start explaining it if I just kept asking how division is possible.

Can you maybe offer a phylogeny of hypothetical fossils A, B, C, and D that assumes gradualism, then retell the story of their evolution with Punctuated Equilibrium in a way that shows phylogeny being impossible?

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #10]

Phylogeny is just the pattern of speciation. Whether it includes "jumps" or not, the phylogeny won't be affected. Generating a rooted phylogeny from fossil data only requires lists of morphological characters for each fossil and some method to date the fossils relative to each other.

Traditionally, the evolutionary pathways between the fossils were assumed to be gradual processes and each individual fossil was a kind of snapshot along that path. It doesn't matter if it represents a stepped evolution rather than a gradual one, however. The end result will still be the same and have exactly the same relationship to the evolutionary history of those fossils.

Your misunderstanding seems to be that the punctuations represent larger changes through time than were attributed to gradual changes. Remember that if Punctuated Equilibrium is accurate, both the punctuations and equilibria were short enough that paleontologists were still able to infer gradualism from the data. If you find two distinct morphologies that are contemporary with each other, we infer a speciation event resulting in multiple lineages. If not, then we infer a single population that changed through time. That's true whether the process was gradual or punctuated.

To be honest, it's hard to tell what you think Punctuated Equilibrium actually means. Maybe describe the process to us and it'll be easier for us to help you correct your misconceptions.

"The work suggests that natural selection may not be the cause of speciation, which Pagel said "really goes against the grain" for scientists who have a Darwinian view of evolution. The model that provided the best fit for the data is surprisingly incompatible with the idea that speciation is a result of many small small events, Pagel said.

The paper is published in the journal Nature." https://phys.org/news/2009-12-evolution-giant.html

Considering the accelerating number of population and gene studies due to the ease of genetic sequencing, you should have no problem finding support for this in papers published since, say, the year 2000. Let us know when you find them. Until then, this is an unsupported assertion.

It is simple mathematics based on Kimura's numbers. Are you saying that Kimura's numbers are incorrect? Now if that is what you are saying then that would be an unsupported assertion.



EarthScienceguy wrote: ↑Wed Nov 10, 2021 11:28 am
Neutral mutation gets rid of the idea of selection and survival of the fittest. Otherwise, the mutation would not be neutral.
That's obviously not true, so I've no idea what you think is really going on.

If we take the case of a truly neutral SNP, then there's no selection pressure either way. Eventually one or the other variant will reach fixation. The path to get there is just a bounded random walk where each boundary means 100% of one variant and 0% of the other and statistically, one or the other bound will be reached if given enough time. In the case that it was the novel SNP, we say that the result was evolution via neutral drift. In the case where the SNP is either beneficial or deleterious, it's still technically a random walk, but it's biased one way or the other by selection pressure. Genes with more than one variant in a living population are still somewhere along that random walk.

You just doubled-talked yourself.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #14]

You have a broken understanding of at least one concept there because what you wrote just plain doesn't make sense.

Punctuated Equilibrium describes patterns of morphological change (not necessarily speciation) over geological short periods of time. Across longer periods, the pattern looks the same whether gradual change or equilibria punctuated by quicker changes.

Ok, let me explain it like this.

Darwin's theory predicts that we should see is anagenesis.
But that is not what we see in the fossil record. What is observed in the fossil record is cladogenesis


The pattern doesn't change whether the process was gradual or punctuated.

The pattern is totally different between gradual or punctuated.
Gradual is anagenesis
Punctuated is cladogenesis

Gradual evolution predicts a directional evolutionary tree.
Punctuated equilibrium predicts a random bush. So that there is no way to deduce where parent from daughter.

[Difflugia]

"The work suggests that natural selection may not be the cause of speciation, which Pagel said "really goes against the grain" for scientists who have a Darwinian view of evolution. The model that provided the best fit for the data is surprisingly incompatible with the idea that speciation is a result of many small small events, Pagel said.

The paper is published in the journal Nature." https://phys.org/news/2009-12-evolution-giant.html

You're grossly misunderstanding that blog entry and the study that it's about.

"Speciation" in this case is divergence of populations and not a measure of morphological difference. There are two different models for population divergence that this study considered.

The first model is that a larger population gradually diverges into two based on the accumulation of small morphological changes. In this view, a larger population segregates into two by minor changes such that each subpopulation gradually fits a different ecological niche than the other and selection gradually removes phenotypes that are "in-between".

The other is that some event separates a larger, homogeneous population into two separate, but initially identical populations. Whatever this single event is, it's enough to completely separate the two new subpopulations that are reproductively isolated, in which case neutral drift is enough to complete the speciation quickly. This doesn't alter the rate of morphological change, since mutation within a population happens at a more-or-less constant rate.

Both of those are known modes of speciation. The novel detail is their relative frequency. The study is claiming that the second method is far more prevalent than initially thought.

This shouldn't be lost on you, but these population details were inferred from phylogenetic trees. If phylogeny is impossible, then whence the trees from which they inferred the modes of speciation?

It is simple mathematics based on Kimura's numbers. Are you saying that Kimura's numbers are incorrect? Now if that is what you are saying then that would be an unsupported assertion.

I'm saying Kimura's numbers are based on speculation, as your original quote noted (emphasis mine):

Kimura estimates that amino-acid altering mutations are roughly ten times more likely to be definitely harmful than neutral.

There has been fifty years worth of progress and research that obviates the need for that kind of speculation. If that's going to be your argument, do your own homework and bring your data up to date.

If we take the case of a truly neutral SNP, then there's no selection pressure either way. Eventually one or the other variant will reach fixation. The path to get there is just a bounded random walk where each boundary means 100% of one variant and 0% of the other and statistically, one or the other bound will be reached if given enough time. In the case that it was the novel SNP, we say that the result was evolution via neutral drift. In the case where the SNP is either beneficial or deleterious, it's still technically a random walk, but it's biased one way or the other by selection pressure. Genes with more than one variant in a living population are still somewhere along that random walk.

You just doubled-talked yourself.

I re-read what I wrote there and it's accurate. If it doesn't fit your claim, then I've no idea what your claim is.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to bluegreenearth in post #11]

Seriously, as someone who isn't an expert this field, I would never be so arrogant as to presume I had discovered a legitimate objection to the Theory of Evolution that was obvious to me as an untrained amateur but somehow completely missed by the consensus of experts in the field who thoroughly and critically examine these types of claims on a daily basis.

This is the reason why Christians spearheaded the scientific revolution. Francis Bacon, Newton, Galileo, Boyle, Mendal just to name a few. The reformation reintroduced the idea of questioning everyone's teaching by comparing what they were teaching to the Bible.

Besides, there are "experts" that agree with me that evolution is impossible. What trumps your experts over my experts? Because of the number of experts, science is not based on popularity but on the ability of a hypothesis to explain what is observed in nature. In this case, evolution cannot explain what is observed in nature, particularly in this case the mathematics.

[Purple Knight]

My question in return is this.

What is the explanation for the rapid change of animals as we selectively breed them? These do not look like regular cats.



If there isn't enough time for changes to occur, how do these big changes occur within 100 years? These modern versions of breeds are not old. In fact, below, the Oriental Shorthair, did not exist in the extreme form until after 1950.

Besides, there are "experts" that agree with me that evolution is impossible. What trumps your experts over my experts?

This is true though. Nothing. Nothing says experts that say one thing are better than those that say another. It's a dangerous game, simply discarding any thoughts you have because, "The experts don't agree, so I can't have discovered a legitimate objection." This is the way to oppression under the guise of intellectualism. This is the way to dystopia.

And you know what? In a functioning scientific community, most things regular laypeople think up, as objections to currently held scientific theory will be wrong. But under the assumption that laypeople can't or shouldn't make those objections, we will not have a functioning scientific community.

...That's called religion.

I am not for treating science like religion.

[Difflugia]

Darwin's theory predicts that we should see is anagenesis.
But that is not what we see in the fossil record. What is observed in the fossil record is cladogenesis

Considering that this diagram from On the Origin of Species shows cladogenesis, I'm pretty sure your assertion is wrong.

Gradual is anagenesis
Punctuated is cladogenesis

That would only be true if there were a single ecological niche with a single best strategy for survival. In that case, there would only be one species. In some environments, that's true in a limited sense (whatever niche the coelecanth inhabits, for example), but that's absolutely not true in any general sense.

Gradual evolution predicts a directional evolutionary tree.
Punctuated equilibrium predicts a random bush. So that there is no way to deduce where parent from daughter.

Whatever you mean by "random bush" must be wrong because Punctuated Equilibrium doesn't affect the ability to infer descent.