Originally posted by melatonin
They offer the same sort of 'proof' (i.e., evidence) that supports your claim that mutations can result in detrimental outcomes. One you want to
suggest you accept, the other you don't want to accept.
actually no.. the papers you posted basically said that they saw a change. thats it in terms of proof. they then figured that it might be because of
mutations.
fruit fly experiments have been going on for a long time. and offer concrete evidence.
some things about the experiments...
- despite speeding up the "evolution" of the fruit flies with x-rays, mutations have been on the micro scale. the fly is still a fly despite the
speed up. some experiments on fruit flies have already exceeded the equivalent of a million years of people living on earth. so evolution is slower
than we think?
- there are limits to a species' qualities. the following is an excerpt from a book that talked about the findings.
"In the first experiment, the fly was selected for a decrease in bristles and, in the second experiment, for an increase in bristles. Starting
with a parent stock averaging 36 bristles, it is possible after thirty generations to lower the average to 25 bristles, "but then the line became
sterile and died out." In the second experiment, the average number of bristles were increased from 36 to 56; then sterility set in. Mayr concluded
with the following observation: Obviously any drastic improvement under selection must seriously deplete the store of genetic variability . . The most
frequent correlated response of one-sided selection is a drop in general fitness. This plagues virtually every breeding experiment."—*Jeremy
Rifkin, Algeny (1983), p. 134.
- fruit flies which receive mutations are weakened in one way or another.
- the mutated creatures die out, when placed out in nature with normal hardy specimens.
"A review of known facts about their ability to survive has led to no other conclusion than that they [the mutated offspring] are always
constitutionally weaker than their parent form or species, and in a population with free competition they are eliminated . . Therefore they are never
found in nature (e.g. not a single one of the several hundred [types] of Drosophila mutation), and therefore, they are able to appear only in the
favorable environment of the experimental field or laboratory."—*H. Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildng (1957), p. 1186.
lets say hypothetically that mutations DID in fact create beneficial changes in life. do the math.
you have innumerable amount of species over the span of millions of years. mutations would have to be the norm right? because it wouldnt just happen
once to a species, but many many times. if humans all came from the same single cell that all life has come from, then that means we would have had
many mutations to arrive to where we are today.
yet we just dont see it. we see macro changes in the wild but noone can say definitively what is causing those changes. there is not one example of a
macro change caused by mutations.
look up chernobyl, you would thing that a cataclysm like that would be a gold mine for mutations. and it is but all detrimental. most immediately
fatal. you would think that with all the wild life and lifestock there would be on example to support evolution by mutation.
seriously think about it. the fossil record show changes that are abrupt and sudden. the only possible explaination for this is mutations, but we dont
have these examples. the fruit fly experiments have been going on for 60 years and they all point for mutations "mostly" = bad! i say mostly because
even if an experiment found a mutation that was beneficial, this still means that those types of mutations are rare. the data cannot be ignored.
