Watch Evolution in Action

originally posted by: whereislogic
What you're perhaps thinking about is that somehow somewhere 1 organism gets a mutation that's beneficial but none of the detrimental ones, that is unrealistic if you observe how mutations work. If you're thinking (or acknowledging) that if 1 organism gets 1 beneficial mutation for every 10000 or more "detrimental" ones (I'm not exaggerating the actual statistics), that you can still think of that organism being fitter for its environment and going in the direction of for example prokaryotic unicellular bacteria to humans, then you're deceiving yourself with false reasoning.

This has already been explained more than once in the thread. Nobody is deceiving themselves here except you. Organisms that get detrimental mutations die and don't pass down their genes, SO THEY DO NOT EFFECT THE GENE POOL. A single organism does not get 10,000 or more detrimental mutations, there are around 64 mutations per generation, and the VAST MAJORITY are neutral. Sometimes you get a negative ones and the creature dies. Sometimes you get a beneficial one and it gives them an advantage over others. Even if it's rare, it still happens. Maybe you should actually observe how mutations work instead of getting your info from religious propaganda sites, because your point above is complete nonsense easily debunked. There is no reason to assume that having more detrimental mutations than beneficial is a problem since they don't pass those genes down.

I really have no idea what htis is aobut

originally posted by: SusanDonavon
I really have no idea what htis is aobut

Is that creationist satire? If so, you totally nailed it.

a reply to: SusanDonavon

The OP or the last few pages of the thread?

a reply to: Barcs
Cherrypicking something you can twist easier concerning what I was referring to (cause I misphrased it; and then upon seeing that I got curious to see if anyone was going to do the usual routine, and too lazy to find a way to change what I said) and then responding to that. I see nothing has changed. Conveniently ignoring everything I said about the observations from experiments on genetic lineages (which I specified before; before someone wants to twist it again to pretend I'm talking about just any publication that uses that terminology), which shows that what you're saying doesn't happen in reality the way you're describing it.

But you won't even respond to John Sanford already addressing everything you said there in the video, you'll just discredit and ignore him instead.

And note how the argument described starting at 6:50 in the video called how to confuse pesky darwinists is used again.

Nice distraction away from the beneficial to detrimental ratio though by bringing up so-called "neutral" mutations. Am I the only one who noticed you didn't say anything about the beneficial to detrimental ratio but bringing up the ratio of "neutral" mutations compared to the other 2 instead? Which are much less important to consider regarding the topic of genetic degradation and the effects on the living organisms (and do not affect the first mentioned ratio, i.e., bringing it up doesn't affect it either).

Here's more information about the topic of the ratio, but perhaps more importantly, the behaviour of those who talk about this subject (or skip past it, twist it, distract from the facts of the matter, etc.):

a reply to: whereislogic

Prove that the video isn't showing evolution in progress. With evidence to back you up.

Anything else you say is nothing less than a rant to derail the thread.

a reply to: whereislogic

Cool video! I'm fairly open-minded and I'm willing to entertain the idea of an intelligence playing a role in our origin. I'm also pretty open-minded about what I'm willing to accept as a form of intelligence. When I play chess against a program, as far as I'm concerned, the chess program has a form of intelligence. I'll accept just about anything using a metaheuristic as having a form of intelligence (including Darwinian processes). So, if we were to assume Darwinism or Neo-Darwinism to be correct, I'd say the neural networks which developed as a result of natural selection were created through an intelligent process.

So, some questions occur to me after watching the video. Is the intelligence he's talking about coming from a supernatural being outside our universe? Or could the intelligence be a manifestation of the chemical processes or quantum mechanical processes following the laws of nature? I can't rule out the existence of a supernatural being, but before we can even try to assert the likely-hood of such a being, we need to deal with what we can examine in our own universe. Our natural elements have the ability to generate some very sophisticated processes (the human brain and our digital computers are examples of intelligent mechanisms that can arise in nature).

Assuming what he said about the percent of genetic codes which can produce proteins to be true; I'll agree that the processes generating DNA are probably more ordered than random. Something created the first strand of DNA though. When the DNA is being copied, are the mutations that occur really equally likely to lead to any point in the search space? It seems like there might be some corrective mechanisms involved which sieve out codes leading to the worst parts of the search space. Natural selection would do some of that work; but even if that isn't enough, how do you know there isn't a sieve integrated into the DNA copying process? It also seems likely to me that once we have the code to a good spot in the search space, that we can derive other useful codes from that one without adding as much information as would be required generate them from scratch.

If an omniscient being designed this system, surely they would be capable of designing a suitable sieve to allow evolution through random mutation if they were so inclined. Why do you assume they didn't?

a reply to: whereislogic

I’m an evolutionist. Richard Dawkins says he is one too. Does nomenclature matter so much?

I am also an atheist, a Pantheist, an empiricist, an ironist, an Epicurean, a radical centrist, a scientific materialist, a Nietzsche fan and a dilettante. In short, in your terms, I am the Devil, and I started this threat pour éclater les créationnistes.

Why persist? Are your motives salvation-dependent? Which of us do you hope to draw closer to the Lord?

a reply to: TerryDon79
If you'd be willing to take a moment to understand my comments about the longterm effect of mutations (in genomes of living organisms) acted upon by natural selection, something that is often called "evolution" by others but according to the evidence and observations from organisms of known* genetic lineage, is actually better described as "genetic degradation" especially when the longterm effect that has been tested for (and discovered, established fact) is considered; then you might notice that the 2nd video of my last comment contains a detailed look at many similar things as the example used in the OP (other examples of supposed "evolution in action", often used by people using the same type of reasoning and not getting to the details of what's actually happening and what it means for the longterm when the whole picture is considered, all the data from other experiments as well). And the one titled "Beer is intelligently designed" discusses an example of bacterial resistance, just like the OP. The topic of the effect of mutations acted upon by natural selection goes to the very heart of the OP. Sorry for doing that, I know some of you guys don't like things getting clearer and more detailed.

* = from breeding bacteria and plants directly (knowing what relates to what genetically), not speculation of genetic lineages

a reply to: whereislogic

So no evidence to counter the fact that the video shows evolution in progress?

Didn't think so. Just your religiously bias opinion.

a reply to: TerryDon79

No, what he's saying makes sense and is relevant, he's just wrong. The video shows something happening that it attributes to evolution. He say's this isn't so, because evolution is impossible.

According to his sources, why is evolution impossible?

Because every species requires information, and if we want species we didn't have before, we'll need to add information we didn't have before. The data contained in the DNA will be sufficient to explain how their argument works.

According to our current theory of evolution, DNA won't always be copied perfectly. Some random changes will sometimes be made to the copy. This means the genetic entropy will increase (we will be less likely to be able to compress our digital representation of the descendant's DNA, to fit in the same amount of memory required to hold the compressed digital representation of its ancestor's DNA).


The data passed through the DNA will 'degrade' over successive generations. Meaning more distant descendants will probably have more differences between their genetic code and their ancestors, than less distant descendants to the same ancestor.


What appears to be evolution, is therefor more accurately described as 'genetic degradation'. Since we're losing information over time rather than gaining it, no new species can occur, and evolution is impossible; all existing species will instead have genetic diseases accumulating over time because our wise and all loving god who created us, designed us to accumulate genetic defects to make some kind of point.


If he says our DNA has more entropy than our ancestors, he can't say our genes hold less information than them, without contradicting himself. While we lose the information from our ancestors, we gain more overall information from the mutations than we lost, or our genetic entropy would be decreasing rather than increasing.

Even if we have more information than our ancestors, he says this information is useless, or coding for genetic disease, because more 'harmful' gene sequences exist than 'useful' ones. I'm still not convinced that natural selection is not enough to solve this problem, but he says it's been proven. He seems not to entertain the notion of other mechanisms being possible to reduce the accumulation of bad genes either.

a reply to: whereislogic

Dude! Can't you be direct and to the point? I'm tired of reading through all extra baseless rhetoric about me every time I disagree. I don't have an issue with you personally or your beliefs. I have an issue with the argument being presented.

1. I did address the ratio. I explained how the ratio is irrelevant because detrimental genes are not passed down. You gave no response to this at all. You just told me to listen to a young earth creationist as a source for science.

2. Neutral mutations are certainly not a distraction. They are important because they account for the vast majority of gene changes, and are the reason why both beneficial and detrimental mutations are so rare. Obviously much more study needs to be done on this. Evolution takes millions to billions of years, which is plenty of time for beneficial mutations to occur.

a reply to: VP740
Not quite, but you are being affected by those going out of their way to twist what I'm saying into something they want you to think about, so you're 'forgiven'.

Your comments are a breath of fresh air around these parts though. You seem to be genuinely misunderstanding my points, rather than first twisting them, then responding to that, only to influence the audience and what they're thinking about.

Just remember that I said many comments ago (around the time I shared my first video that uses the terms "new information" and "increase of information"):

Perhaps this video can be of help for those who don't get bogged down on the word "information" or the term "new information", regarding this subject of a slow but steady degradation of the information that is specifically required for the operations within living cells..."
...
Note once more (cause I have a feeling some people might not be able to resist starting that debate I'm thinking about now, in spite of my double 'note' now) that I'm not sharing the video above regarding the subject or terminology "increase of information" but regarding the subject of "a slow but steady degradation of the information that is specifically required for the operations within living cells" which is speaking of going from a state of functional order for this information that is specifically required for these specific operations, to a state of disfuntional disorder for this information that is specifically required for these specific operations (that's a lot more specific and has been observed statistically and experimentally in the way I described earlier in the comment).
[going back to that]
The effects of natural selection have already been accounted for in the video from the geneticist. It doesn't change what he's saying. I also tried to remind people of that when I was referring to the effect of "mutations acted upon by natural selection" over multiple generations (also because I was thinking of the thoughts you just expressed and attempting to address those right away, I'm often hoping to skip the figurative 'surface' of the line of argumentation). That longterm effect is genetic degradation according to all the statistics that have been observed in relation to what one could interpret as "beneficial", "detrimental" or "neutral" to the organisms (regarding their fitness for survival in a given environment and their overall health). As well as according to direct experiments of genetic lineages (organisms that are known to be genetically related through direct experimentation with those organisms, usually lineages of bacteria cause they reproduce nice and fast; but much experimentation has also been done with plants).

Those are the key points of my commentary about the subject of:

the effect of mutations (in the genomes of living organisms) acted upon by natural selection over the long term in entire populations (what Barcs is referring to as "gene pools", so what he says about that is already accounted for as well, just like so-called "neutral" mutations are already included in this)

Which has been observed to be genetic degradation, a word that is referring to those genomes breaking down from a state of functional order (in relation to the operations that preserve life as I specified in more detail above) to a state of disfunctional disorder. The machinery of life and the information or genetic code that codes for it breaks down over time (see my last comment in my thread, becoming "gibberish" as the video about information said it), they do not improve by natural processes alone (viewed longterm in populations, Barcs prefers the term "gene pools"), that's the reality. The evolutionary storyline claims that we evolved from a mysterious unspecified (no specific name) undiscovered mythological prokaryotic unicellular organism. Genetic degradation is not going to do the trick as suggested whenever the phrase "mutations acted upon by natural selection" (or less spelled out) or its substitute word "evolution" is used to fill in this logical chasm in the stories. Their proposed mechanism of "evolution" (you know now what it stands for in this sentence, see above) does not do the things it is claimed it can accomplish, and this has been tested, observed and reproduced so many times now, that's it's clear that the facts are not going to stop evolutionary philosophers from making a career out of selling myths as "science".

Btw, the geneticist John Sanford also uses the term "deleterious mutations" instead of detrimental or "bad". He says something very important at the start of that video in relation to the things Barcs have been telling you early on regarding what gets passed on and what isn't passed on in what he refers to as the "gene pool". The same topic he brought up in response to me. The video below that, has a response to what he's doing with bringing up the ratio of neutral mutations compared to detrimental and beneficial added together. And he's pretending that the ratio I'm talking about is leaving out the effects of natural selection by saying:

I explained how the ratio is irrelevant because detrimental genes are not passed down. You gave no response to this at all.

I did respond to it multiple times, even before he started making those arguments, his suggestion is that it's natural selection that selects out (or weeds out) the detrimental genes so they are not passed down (see comments earlier to you). But natural selection has already been accounted for in the ratio or statistics and experimental observations of genetic lineages. That ratio is already after selection has weeded out the really bad stuff, the downward direction of genetic degradation is of no help for those telling a story of going from a prokaryotic unicellular organism to a eukaryotic multicellular organism (bacteria to humans). Their proposed mechanism (mutations acted upon by natural selection, i.e. "evolution" or 'evolution+natural selection') does not work. It does not have the effect they are suggesting and implying when using the word "evolution" (all living organisms sharing a single common ancestor, a prokaryotic unicellular organism, often referred to as "simple" or "more simple" than the many different multicellular eukaryotic organisms around now).

This would be a great moment to watch the 2nd video addressed to AronRa (of the last 2 videos I shared in this thread) and what's said regarding the examples of so-called "evolution" discussed in that video starting at 11:39 but especially the question that is considering the fact of genetic degradation at 12:37.

a reply to: whereislogic

If your argument was correct, life could not exist at all. Organisms would not breed true from generation to generation.

a reply to: whereislogic

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, I really am trying to understand the position you're presenting. Any error in interpretation is solely my own responsibility, because I'm making my judgments based upon the videos you've posted.

Let me try to go over the Sanford video in more detail.

"You can select for a very bad gene, but you can't select for a typical deleterious gene; because a typical deleterious gene is too subtle, to tiny in its effect. it's like the rust atoms in your car, you don't see them so you can't select for them".

There are three possibilities for anything carrying whatever set of genes we want to examine. We collect statistics and look at the reproduction and mortality rates. Based on these, we can guess if the population will expand (birthrate exceeds mortality rate), shrink (mortality rate exceeds birth rate), or stabilize (mortality rate equals birth rate). Natural selection only comes into play when the population shrinks (this leads towards extinction). Natural selection is not trying to weed out individual 'deleterious genes'. Once the 'rust' gathers to a tipping point, that population is sent on a path towards extinction. Likewise, the expanding population doesn't rely on picking out miner genes. If a population is inclined towards expansion, it will 'try' to expand at an exponential rate. As long as it's expanding, it can stand to carry the 'rust' with it.

"Amazingly if you read carefully the literature, the technical literature of population genetics, over the last several decades; you will find many many of the world's best population geneticists who are saying "there's a fundamental problem with our theory, it doesn't really work!"

You're going to have to provide some of those quotes. I have a feeling he's either misinterpreting what they're saying, or misrepresenting them.

"1. if you have a very high mutation rate, with most of the mutations being bad, there's no selection scheme that could keep up with the mutations that could keep up with the population"

This is true, but we have many populations which tend towards exponential expansion. How often do we see rampant mutations leading to populations going extinct?

"that's not survival of the fittest, that's survival of the luckiest"

No one disputes this. Once the luckiest have been selected, survival of the fittest still plays its role. This doesn't keep genes which lead to population decline, from leading to population decline. If the individual deleterious gene doesn't cause much of a problem, it can be carried by the good genes.

"so, selection can't sort out the good from the bad"

That's just absurd. We're talking about exponential influences here. The gene will usually be driving its carriers towards exponential expansion, or towards extinction (of the gene carriers, not necessarily the entire species if they don't all carry those genes). It doesn't sort out individual good or bad genes, but it certainly can sort the overall effect from the combined genes.

"we can summarize Sanford's argument as follows: 1) Newborns have 100+ de novo mutations 2) Most mutations have small negative effects 3) Natural selection can't remove all bad mutations 4) Therefore, human beings accumulate deleterious mutations with each generation"

Assuming this is all true, this is fine for evolution. We don't need to remove every miner bad mutation to survive, or even thrive. If the cumulative effect from the bad mutations tips towards extinction for a subsection of the species, the rest just carry on. Some entire species can even go extinct, that won't stop the other species (which are expanding their populations exponentially) from carrying on. As long as some little bands of survivors exist where their birth rate exceeds their mortality rate, evolution can just keep running its course.

a reply to: VP740
Here are some of John Sanford's responses to his critics ("degenerating" is a synonym for "degrading", google "degenerate" and you will also run into "decline or deteriorate"; keep in mind the philosophy/idea or story that deterioration, "the process of becoming progressively worse", supposedly turned a prokaryotic unicellular organism into a eukaryotic multicellular organism over multiple generations, that's a direction. Does that story really make sense once you look at the fact of genetic degradation/deterioration/degeneration?):

2. Most people in the field think the human genome is clearly degenerating, but they dismiss this as merely arising due to relaxed selection. But those who have examined it most closely realize that even with intense selection there is still a profound problem (see many quotes within Appendix A of Genetic Entropy).
...
4. About 100 years ago, Fisher imagined that half of all mutations might be beneficial – because he knew almost nothing of modern biology. To him, genes were “beads on a string”. The essential elements of “Fisher’s Theorem” can now be rigorously falsified (paper in preparation). We now know that a gene essentially operates like executable computer code. In an executable computer program (or as in the text of an instruction manual), random changes of any of the zeros and ones (or text letters) will obviously be almost universally deleterious. By far, the most extensive analysis of mutation accumulation is the Long Term Evolution Experiment by Lenski et al., That work shows that the rate of beneficial mutations is less than 1 per million. Furthermore, that experiment shows that most of the documented beneficials were loss-of-function mutations, ...
...
6. The evidence for real world genetic entropy ... is seen in the past human genome (here), in the present human genome (Lynch, M. 2010. Rate, molecular spectrum, and consequences of human mutation. PNAS 107 (3): 961-968), in virus populations (H1N1, here), in the endangered cheetah population, and in bacteria (American Society for Microbiology, mbio.asm.org September/October 2014 Volume 5 Issue 5 e01377-14. and Koskiniemi et al., Selection-Driven Gene Loss in Bacteria, PLOS Genetics, 2012.).

Source: Genetic Entropy | DEVELOPMENTS

originally posted by: whereislogic
I explained how the ratio is irrelevant because detrimental genes are not passed down. You gave no response to this at all.

I did respond to it multiple times, even before he started making those arguments, his suggestion is that it's natural selection that selects out (or weeds out) the detrimental genes so they are not passed down (see comments earlier to you). But natural selection has already been accounted for in the ratio or statistics and experimental observations of genetic lineages.

That is not an explanation, that is a dodge of my points, and a case of special pleading. I don't care if it is included in the ratio. It is irrelevant because detrimental genes are not passed down.

I'll ask you again, since reasoning is obviously not your forte. Why is it that having more detrimental mutations than beneficial is bad for evolution? Give me specifics, not some BS generalization that has nothing to do with it. You have not answered the question, you just said that they account for natural selection. So what? That doesn't make it an issue for evolution. I'm not watching the stupid videos, I already tried and got halfway thought the first and all it contained nothing but denial, banter and idle chatter, no facts, the usual creationist rhetoric and baseless accusations like you always make about me. I don't watch youtube videos, give me research papers. Give me facts. Anything. I already sense this is going to be a repeat of the other thread where you claimed that design was based on inductive logic of facts and then NEVER posted your facts or your inductive logic, you dodged it repeatedly until you gave up and disappeared.

Please, for once, directly answer a friggin point. You don't need to post an essay to answer one simple question that your argument is dependent on. The genome is not denigrating, it is changing over time. Detrimental mutations are rare enough to not have a big affect. I await your data that counters this fact.

a reply to: Barcs

It is irrelevant because detrimental genes are not passed down.

By detrimental genes, I think he means things like diabetes, predisposition to cancer, asthma, hypothyroidism etc...

Detrimental genes, if they are fatal, say even prenatally, obviously can't be passed. If they're not fatal they reduce fitness, perhaps some can't understand how someone who is better adapted to the environment will tend to have greater reproductive success than someone who is less adapted. For example suppose a mutation that makes someone almost infertile, obviously this individual will have more trouble than someone without it.

That said even in unicellular organisms there is genetic recombination, genetic recombination allows for the segregation of positive from negative mutations. It also happens through sexual reproduction in higher life forms, this segregation of good from bad, allows good to concentrate, and separate from bad by keeping the gene grouping units of reasonable size and mobile, to some degree independent.

Once again a banana is more similar to a strawberry than to a fruit fly a fruit fly is more similar to a mosquito than to a mouse. A mouse is more similar to a man than to an amoeba. This web of relatedness shown at the genetic level is rock solid proof of common ancestry. Any other origin would not leave such a trace, it'd have no reason to.

a reply to: Xenogears

So, Muller's Ratchet is what WhereIsLogic is talking about? I understand some of what you're saying. Black and white skin color in humans was said to be an adaption to balance defense from UV radiation vs production of vitamin D. When considering this, it never seemed like natural selection alone was enough to cause black races to emerge from skin cancer killing those with skin too pale, and vitamin D deficiency causing white races to emerge by killing off the black population where pale skin gave more of an advantage. I can imagine sexual selection arising from natural selection and solving that problem, but I don't understand how genetic recombination can prevent accumulation of deleterious mutations, while still allowing evolution.