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

[Purple Knight]

A person's perception will be incorrect when they do not understand the terminology needed to understand the problem. And another thing is that math is true whether you want to believe it or not.

Math is true, though as an aside, there is actually a proof that math can't be proven true. I'm not going to even go onto that hill though, let alone die on it. I admit math is true. What I do not believe is that math always describes biological reality. If we could consider every factor and apply them properly to model the real, biological universe mathematically, we would all be universe-simulator level computers, and we're not. We make mistakes. We disregard factors. I have every reason not to trust math's application to biology even if I can't find a reason to, and I did list several reasons.

What you are suggesting is not possible according to Darwin's theory. There is no reason why a weak naked ape should survive. Darwin's theory is in serious trouble not only from creationists but also secular biologists. https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/

Good. I want it to be in trouble. I want it to be tested. And if it turns out to be false I'll change my view. Someone is going to have to explain to me what actually happened when I thought I was making a better cat out of a regular cat through use of selection, if selection doesn't actually change animals.

But there's every reason a weak, naked ape would survive, and it solves Haldane's dilemma in the case of slow-breeding apes. We got the big brain that allowed us to survive despite hindrances, and so we accumulated a lot of genetic hindrances because they weren't sufficient to kill us off. Perhaps, most of what separates us from the chimp is that we're inferior to them. Dilemma = solved.

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #33]

Right, but this is an example of diversity actually being achieved in 50 years. Dogs that have been bred for hundreds of years no longer resemble wolves. No one would say a pug was the same as a wolf if they didn't already know so. It's not a huge leap to suggest that what can happen in the lab can happen in the field. Assuming it can't would be the assumption you'd have to justify.

And no one should consider your puppy example as evolution. Polymorphism is not considered a mutation.

Again polymorphism is only considered a mutation if it changes the phenotype. So I don't believe your oriental kitty is from mutations in the genome. Especially duplication.

This is a definitional argument. The cat has changed. If it had nothing to do with genes at all it would still represent evolution. Nobody really believes in Lamarckian evolution anymore but it is a mechanism whereby evolution could have been true.

To tell me it's polymorphism you would have to find cats with those traits before 1950. You simply don't see cats anything like that out in the regular population, even in places like Egypt where it is very hot and would advantage these traits.

[Difflugia]

Polymorphism is not considered a mutation.

By whom? I've never even heard another creationist say that.

The first hit from a search for "types of mutation" has "base substitution" first on the list. That's what a "single nucleotide polymorphism" is. I assume that's what you mean by "polyorphism."

A person's perception will be incorrect when they do not understand the terminology needed to understand the problem.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Again polymorphism is only considered a mutation if it changes the phenotype.

No.

[Purple Knight]

Polymorphism is not considered a mutation.

By whom? I've never even heard another creationist say that.

The first hit from a search for "types of mutation" has "base substitution" first on the list. That's what a "single nucleotide polymorphism" is. I assume that's what you mean by "polyorphism."

A person's perception will be incorrect when they do not understand the terminology needed to understand the problem.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Again polymorphism is only considered a mutation if it changes the phenotype.

No.

I believe what he's saying is that every individual trait that makes a pug different from a wolf actually existed out there in the wild before we put them all together and pieced together an abomina- *cough* I mean a pug, from a wolf.

To be as logically chivalrous as I can be, brachycephaly (the most defining feature of a pug) seems to come up a lot, indicating it might be floating around out there in a lot of species.



As an aside, I do not agree with breeding for brachycephaly as it hurts the animal.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #39]

But here's the problem with Haldane's dilemma. He writes that:
In the introduction to The Cost of Natural Selection Haldane writes that it is difficult for breeders to simultaneously select all the desired qualities, partly because the required genes may not be found together in the stock; but, he writes,
" especially in slowly breeding animals such as cattle, one cannot cull even half the females, even though only one in a hundred of them combines the various qualities desired."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_dilemma

You are not understanding what the dilemma is.

The number of loci in a vertebrate species has been estimated at about 40,000. 'Good' species, even when closely related, may differ at several thousand loci, even if the differences at most of them are very slight. But it takes as many deaths, or their equivalents, to replace a gene by one producing a barely distinguishable phenotype as by one producing a very different one. If two species differ at 1000 loci, and the mean rate of gene substitution, as has been suggested, is one per 300 generations, it will take 300,000 generations to generate an interspecific difference. It may take a good deal more, for if an allele a1 is replaced by a10, the population may pass through stages where the commonest genotype is a1a1, a2a2, a3a3, and so on, successively, the various alleles, in turn, giving maximal fitness in the existing environment and the residual environment.[5]

This is the problem. For the new trait to become fixed the entire population that does not have the new trait has to die off. The population has to rebound to a point in which another beneficial mutation can happen again. Haldane calculated this to be 300 generations. So all the cats would have to die off so that just the short-haired cats remain. In nature that is what has to happen for a trait to become fixed in a species. So your bull example is nothing more than a bunch of bull. Because for to be an example of refutation of Haldane's dilemma all bulls would have to like like your bull and that is a bunch of bull.

[Difflugia]

I believe what he's saying is that every individual trait that makes a pug different from a wolf actually existed out there in the wild before we put them all together and pieced together an abomina- *cough* I mean a pug, from a wolf.

You may be right, but then the last assertion doesn't make sense. If what we're calling the SNP was actually put into the genome by Jesus in the first place, then it still wouldn't matter if it affected phenotype or not. It either arose sometime after the first pair of wolves stepped off the Ark, in which case it's a mutation, or it was one of the four possible variants of any given wolf gene in that pair of platonic ideal wolves. Clean animals at least get the benefit of 14 (or even 28, depending on how you read it) possible variants for any given gene, but I'm pretty sure wolves don't have cloven hooves or chew the cud.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #42]

EarthScienceguy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 3:15 pm
Again polymorphism is only considered a mutation if it changes the phenotype.
No.

Yes

https://pediaa.com/difference-between-m ... ymorphism/

[Difflugia]

[Replying to Difflugia in post #42]

EarthScienceguy wrote: ↑Tue Nov 16, 2021 3:15 pm
Again polymorphism is only considered a mutation if it changes the phenotype.
No.

Yes

https://pediaa.com/difference-between-m ... ymorphism/

Did you even read that? It doesn't even mention phenotype. It is wrong about at least one other thing, though (it claims that "polymorphisms" aren't affected by natural selection; that's not part of the definition, either) and probably more (it's rather sloppy in general).

It also agrees with me.

...whereas polymorphism is a mutation that occurs in more than 1% of a particular population.

According to that, all polymorphisms are mutations, but not all mutations are polymorphisms. I'll let you decide if it agrees with me because of its sloppiness or despite it.

Even that, though, is apparently by recent convention and is based entirely on frequency rather than expression. Note this statement in particular:

In the search for a consensus definition of the term “polymorphism,” we discovered that any polymorphism is based on a mutation and that the frequency of the mutation needs to be between 1% and 10% of the investigated population, but there was no consensus definition for the term “polymorphism.”

[JoeyKnothead]

...
What you are suggesting is not possible according to Darwin's theory. There is no reason why a weak naked ape should survive. Darwin's theory is in serious trouble not only from creationists but also secular biologists.

https://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/

From that website...

It has come to our attention that THE THIRD WAY web site is wrongly being referenced by proponents of Intelligent Design and creationist ideas as support for their arguments. We intend to make it clear that the website and scientists listed on the web site do not support or subscribe to any proposals that resort to inscrutable divine forces or supernatural intervention, whether they are called Creationism, Intelligent Design, or anything else.

So we see there's debate about the particulars, but they agree that evolution occurs, and make a particular refutation of intelligent design and creationist arguments.

On the naked apes, there's benefits to not having hair. Sweat would more rapidly evaporate, aiding in cooling.

[Gracchus]

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #23]
Evolution is a change in allele frequencies over time in a population. Selection pressures drive evolution. Humans are a part of an environment and just as "natural" selection pressure as bees and beavers. In dogs, Chihuahuas and Great Danes cannot interbreed. I doubt that you could get anything viable even with artificial insemination. Like ring species, they are connected by intermediates that can interbreed, but if found as fossils they would certainly be classified as different species.

[The Barbarian]

A person's perception will be incorrect when they do not understand the terminology needed to understand the problem.

Hold that thought. We'll get to it in a moment...

And another thing is that math is true whether you want to believe it or not.

Once an engineer "proved" mathematically that a bumblebee could not fly. The math was all true, and his calculations were correct. But he was obviously wrong.
How could that be? Well, under the little levers that make the wings in bumblebees go, are tiny pads of a remarkable substance called resilin. It is a natural rubber that flexes to return almost 100 percent of the force exerted against it. So the bumblebees happily fly on, completely unaware that math has shown that they can't do it. It's not surprising that an engineer would be ignorant of this bit of biological mechanics, but it's a cautionary tale for those who think they can understand biology without knowing much about it.

Again polymorphism is only considered a mutation if it changes the phenotype.

No, that's wrong by definition. Remember when I told you that not knowing what evolution is, is causing you considerable difficulty? It just got you again. By now, just by walking into walls, you should be getting some idea of what the scientific meaning of biological evolution is. Care to make a guess? Or will you continue learning evolutionary theory by whole-body braille?