Evolution courtesy of Darwin ... no longer works for me ... here's why !

reply to post by Blue_Jay33


We dont know yet how the very first life came to be, so you could believe it was god if you like god of the gaps. But thats the question of origin of life (abiogenesis), and not evolution. Two different things.

reply to post by Maslo


And congratulations, you're the 100th poster to explain this to the guy! Here's your prize!

Originally posted by MrXYZ
reply to post by edmc^2

 

So what does the facts/evidence show? Notice this report that I found on fossil record way back in 1967 report.

So you're basing your opinion on a report that's almost 45 years old? ARE YOU SERIOUS??

Hey, compared to his usual source's 3000-year antiquity, that 1967 report is on the bleeding edge! Cut him some slack, he's kind of bad at this.

Now, up to those who wnat to continue believing a theory based on such evidence. But ask yourselves, will you trust your life on a weak theory based on assumptions, interpretations, imaginations, “missing links” and most of all changing opinions/data? Or from someone who know where life came from, why it came to be and where it’s heading? The Creator of Life himself (Gen 1:1, Ps 36:9)!

So wait...after your attack on the theory of evolution, criticizing gaps...you then present your viewpoint as the only truth? Even though its only backup is the bible...a book that had several parts debunked over and over again?? ARE YOU SERIOUS??

Told ya.

And yes. He's completely and utterly serious.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


A cake is not a lie Yay! Thanx

Originally posted by tgidkp
reply to post by tauristercus

 

first, since youve taken so many hits, i will show you where you have gone right with your thinking:

at the very earliest stages of the protogenome, somehow somewhere functionality arose. but at this stage, a membrane-bound cell is not yet necessary. so, to properly calculate the odds of the very first functional biomolecule you will need to consider 10^10 biomolecules per liter multiplied by total liters of the global ocean multiplied by around 1 billion years.

Hmmm ... some very interesting values you've thrown around there.

10^10 biomolecules per liter ? How did you arrive at this exact value ? What is a biomolecule anyway ?

Why multiply the above value with "total liters of the global ocean" ? For that matter, just HOW BIG was your primeval "global ocean" ? Was it small, medium or large ?

Why further multiply the above by a time scale of 1 billion years ? Why not 0.5 billion ... or 1.5 billion years ?


Some pretty lose and highly inaccurate maths going on there, wouldn't you say ? Unlike my probability calculations which WERE accurate.

So how can you make the following statement

... to properly calculate the odds of the very first functional biomolecule ...

when you're using such sloppy estimations ?

also, keep in mind that "functionality" at this stage is a dubious concept. so nature really doesnt have to work all that hard to come up with some type of functional unit. in fact, there were probably an abundance of such functional units.

"functionality" is NEVER a dubious concept as far as nature is concerned.

Any random mutation that results in a nucleotide sequence that is non-lethal from the carrying organism point of view has "functionality", whether "positive" because it's a beneficial mutation or "neutral" because it's non-lethal.

at this point we still have not established a causal relationship between DNA and proteins

Hmmmm ... unless I've really missed an important point somewhere, my understanding has always been that one of the primary reasons for DNA's existence is to store and supply upon demand the necessary information leading to gene expression / protein synthesis.

If you have an alternative method for protein synthesis that does NOT rely on the presence of DNA, then please mention what it is so I can research it and further educate myself. Thanks in advance !

now, i will show you exactly where you have gone wrong (mistakes underlined):

...These 153 nucleotides MUST be added by nature to the chromosome in the correct sequence for insulin to be the resulting product....
...if insertions (mutations) are NOT ...blahblahblah...there are times when insertions (mutations) are blahblahblah...

now, even though in the initial stages of development, spontaneous polymerization by the addition of random nucleotides was a plausible mechanism, you must now abandon that thought completely!

above in the quotes, you have equated "insertion" with "mutation". abandon it!

Abandon insertion mutations ? Absolutely not !
Insertion of nucleotides within the genome IS mutation.

I'm really surprised that you need ME to point out the following examples of mutation pathways to YOU.
Taken from Evolution 101 - Berkely
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8bc3503fb018.jpg[/atsimg]

you are totally 100% correct in stating that random insertion of nucleotides into our simple functional sequence from above will NEVER result in anything useful. you have been very busy calculating odds. but i will just go ahead and say NEVER!

rather, you must now consider that mutations arise from random mistakes produced by already functional machinery. these are your new dice (see previous quote from Asyntax). on the raw level, you are still working with A,T,C,G. but you are no longer working exclusively at the raw level. there is now a new, higher level of processing. this higher level of processing is capable of making its own mistakes, and the mistakes that it makes are far more interesting and far more useful than the mistakes at the lower level.

Whether you are working on the "raw or higher" levels, as you put it, is immaterial.
The simple reason is that you can NEVER escape from, bypass or side-step the probabilistic mechanism generating random mutations that operates at EVERY level.

Lets take a look at the "raw level" first:

In this case, we're looking at creating a functional protein from scratch ... in other words, NOT reusing or borrowing existing base sequences.

Now as I've pointed out so many times before, a simple 153 base protein such as insulin has odds of 10^92 against a successful creation ... taking into account the 10^24 degenerate alternatives, still gives ultra-astronomical odds of 10^68 against.

Someone earlier tried to side-step these odds by saying that each additional base to be added to complete the sequence actually needs much smaller odds for success, of only 1 in 4 ... however this was incorrect.
They were treating each new base addition as an isolated event completely independent of any previous or future base additions. But this line of thinking was fallacious as each new base addition IS entirely dependent on what's come before ... and what's to come after.
We are talking CUMULATIVE probability even on the "raw level", resulting in those stupendous odds of 10^68 against creating that 153 base sequence.

You can dispute this conclusion all you want but the fact remains that creating the required 153 base sequence randomly from scratch is entirely probabilistic and entirely controlled by the Laws of Probability.
Go look it up in any high school maths book !


Ok, now for your "higher level" approach ...

Here, I assume, you're talking about creating a new functional protein derived from base sequences that already exist within the genome somewhere ... possibly as non-functioning sequences or as part of other protein sequences that are functional.

In this example, lets give nature a break by picking an easy task and assume that by some fluke, there exists a strand of base sequences EXACTLY 153 bases in length and that is ALMOST 90% identical in sequence (you can't say I'm not being generous) to our desired end product sequence ... namely insulin.
This means that approximately 138 bases are in the correct location within this sequence and 15 are not.

So natures task is to "replace" the 15 incorrect bases with 15 correct bases ... and if successful, out pops an insulin protein.

Now we have 23 pairs of chromosomes with 3.1 billion base pairs distributed amongst them ... so on average, each chromosome pair has 135 million base pairs. But this value of 135 million base pairs is based on today's genome estimate ... so again, lets help nature out even more by going back in time to when the average chromosome had say, half these bases - let's go with 75 million base pairs, shall we ?

Therefore we have our starting 90% correct sequence located on a chromosome, somewhere amongst those 75 million bases ... already a bit of a needle in a haystack situation, wouldn't you say ?
But lets press on regardless.

Now we'll assume a mutation rate of say, 100 mutations along that chromosome and we'll only consider mutations that make a base replacement only ... as opposed to the other kinds of mutations that could potentially alter the existing 90% of already valid bases along that sequence, consequently reducing the 90% down to lower values and taking us further away from our goal of 153 correct sequential bases.

So, we have 100 base replacing mutations that are entirely RANDOM and could happen ANYWHERE along the 75 million base length of our chromosome. This works out to an average of 1 mutation every 750,000 bases.
This means that there is a probability value of 1 in 4,900 that one of those 100 random mutations would happen somewhere within the chromosome location containing our 153 base sequence. So we are looking at odds of 4,900 to 1 against any of those 100 random mutations even being in the right 153 base neighbourhood !

Ok, 4,900 to 1 against ... not bad odds, you might say.

However those are just the odds of one of the 100 random mutations happening somewhere within our target sequence. We have to bear in mind that out of that 153 base target, 138 bases are already correct and we do not want them changed by a random mutation ... we only want one of the remaining 15 incorrect bases to be randomly mutated, hopefully into the correct base for that particular location within the sequence.
But based on the above information, we see immediately that there is a far greater chance (almost 91%) that the random mutation (if it even happens) will hit one of the 138 correct bases instead of one of the 15 incorrect bases that we DO want to change.

So it's quite plainly obvious that a random mutation acting against an existing but only partially correct sequence of bases, has a substantially far greater probability of causing degradation to the sequence then it would have of improving it.

But wait, it gets worse ...

We calculated above that there was only a 1 in 4,900 chance that the random mutation would target one of the 153 bases in the sequence ... and out of that a further 9 to 1 chance against one of the 15 incorrect bases being the actual target ... significantly decreasing further the TOTAL odds of an incorrect base being hit.

But lets say that nature got lucky and did indeed hit one of those 15 incorrect bases with a random mutation.
Now we find ourselves in the situation that the already bad odds get even worse.

Lets say that the incorrect base about to be mutated is say an A ... and we actually need it to be replaced/mutated into say, a C.
The odds against this happening are 3 to 1.
The existing A could be replaced with another A, or replaced with a G, or replaced with a T ... all of which are incorrect and do nothing to improve the quality of the 153 base sequence but instead, degrades it further away from our goal of evolving an insulin gene.


Phew ... so after all that, what do we have ?

We have starting odds of 4,900 to 1 against one of the 100 mutations actually targeting one of the 153 bases in our sequence of interest.
These odds against are further increased dramatically by a 91% chance that the mutation will still target the wrong base within the sequence.
These odds against are further increased significantly with only a 1 in 3 chance that even if one of the incorrect bases is successfully targeted and mutated, that the replacement base will be a desirable one.

So in conclusion, it is very easy to show that even on a "higher level", as you put it, and using an incomplete sequence that we hope to use as a template to "evolve" a different sequence (to produce a protein), random mutations applied to that incomplete template sequence have been shown to almost certainly degrade that template sequence.

i hope that is a little more clear to you now.

Clarity has never been an issue for ME regarding mutational rate probabilities ... however it does seem to be a major stumbling block for many others.



So based on my examples and explanations above

I hope that is a little more clear to you now.

reply to post by tauristercus

So in conclusion, it is very easy to show that even on a "higher level", as you put it, and using an incomplete sequence that we hope to use as a template to "evolve" a different sequence (to produce a protein), random mutations applied to that incomplete template sequence have been shown to almost certainly degrade that template sequence.

If there were only mutations, the sequence would degrade over time. But thats where natural selection steps in. Degraded sequences (deletrious mutations) get discarded, and positive and neutral ones get promoted by it.

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by tauristercus

 

So in conclusion, it is very easy to show that even on a "higher level", as you put it, and using an incomplete sequence that we hope to use as a template to "evolve" a different sequence (to produce a protein), random mutations applied to that incomplete template sequence have been shown to almost certainly degrade that template sequence.

If there were only mutations, the sequence would degrade over time. But thats where natural selection steps in. Degraded sequences (deletrious mutations) get discarded, and positive and neutral ones get promoted by it.

But natural selection can ONLY work on existing sequences ... good or bad ... useful or not ...

However, you're yet again sidestepping the entire issue that probability theory shows quite plainly and clearly that evolving a long, sequential base sequence that eventually produces a functional protein, that the odds are stacked monstrously against the evolution of just a single, such successful protein gene.

So what are the chances that we've managed to evolve 20,000+ functional proteins through random mutation coupled with selection pressure, over the short time span of 3.8 billion years and starting from scratch.

I'll tell you what, I'd absolutely love to have just one of you come up with a viable and achievable explanation for how the insulin protein evolved. Feel free to use any kind of strategy you like ... but frankly, I don't think that any of you would be able to.

Tell me that I'm wrong in that assumption.

reply to post by tauristercus


I have provided the explanation many times in this thread, but you just did not respond to them. Namely here, here, here, here and here. What you are calculating is not the probability of evolving a protein, but the probability of randomly getting the whole correct sequence on the first try. Nothing esle. Thats not relevant to evolution, since it has selecting function preserving the correct hits and discarding incorrect ones, and happens gradually - builds upon itself. Evolution is NOT random. Only mutations are random.

Evolution = mutations + nonrandom breeding and inheritance + nonrandom selecting function

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by tauristercus

 

I have provided the explanation many times in this thread, but you just did not respond to them. Namely here, here, here, here and here. What you are calculating is not the probability of evolving a protein, but the probability of randomly getting the whole correct sequence on the first try. Nothing esle. Thats not relevant to evolution, since it has selecting function preserving the correct hits and discarding incorrect ones, and happens gradually - builds upon itself. Evolution is NOT random. Only mutations are random.

Evolution = mutations + nonrandom breeding and inheritance + nonrandom selecting function

edit on 26/1/11 by Maslo because: (no reason given)

This!

reply to post by Maslo

But thats the question of origin of life (abiogenesis), and not evolution. Two different things.

I am so tired of hearing that line from evolutionists.
It produces an intellectually dishonest perspective.
It like saying you can build a house with no supporting foundation.

That's a false dichotomy which I have created New Thread on.

reply to post by Blue_Jay33


How is that a false dichotomy? Where is the false 'either or' choice? It's not 'either evolution or abiogenesis' it's "Evolution and abiogenesis are entirely different concepts that deal with entirely separate issues. While they are compatible, one is not required for the other."

How is that a false choice?

Nice post tauristercus... this is something that's always bothered me, especially as we have, in the fossil record, no life but primordial soup for eons then BANG, in a geological blink you get such a diversification in species.

When the true timescales for these mutations are realized, and the probabilities of those mutations involved considered, it does indeed look highly unlikely life did explode in such a handy, neat solution as that proposed and many would have us believe as fact.

Its Pygmallion, dissenters of evolution argue against Creationism to argue against evolution. "How could the insulin molecule manifest from a random assortment of DNA." That's exactly what Creationism is, building complex components of complex system in one sweeping motion. Its building everything from nothing. A 747 from one gust of wind. From a snap of god's finger, a canabalistic praying mantis is formed. That's one sadistic SOB.

Evolution can only act on what's there, yet with devout asseverance opponents of as good as an assertion of scientific fact that we have (evolutionary theory), continue to create a barren regurgitation of absurd rhetoric that is devastating to their own Creationists et al, beliefs. (yes OP I know you mentioned you aren't a Creationist)

reply to post by chocise

Originally posted by chocise
Nice post tauristercus... this is something that's always bothered me, especially as we have, in the fossil record, no life but primordial soup for eons then BANG, in a geological blink you get such a diversification in species.

Yes, in a geologic blink...a few million years. In a few million years with single celled and colony organisms you get billions upon billions of generations.

When the true timescales for these mutations are realized, and the probabilities of those mutations involved considered, it does indeed look highly unlikely life did explode in such a handy, neat solution as that proposed and many would have us believe as fact.

You and I each have about 180 mutations (give or take a few, it's an average for humanity). That's two of us. There are nearly 7 billion people on Earth. 7 billion x 180 1.26 trillion mutations. Amongst humans. We only reproduce 1-5 times in a lifetime (depends on where you live and cultural issues). When you consider that the flora in your stomach will have reproduced millions of times in your lifetime, the numbers make sense.

And as Maslo has pointed out repeatedly, the numbers crunched in the OP are for a spontaneous random occurrence of the gene in question from it not existing in any form, which is not how evolution works.
See this post which links to several posts in which the problems with the OP are thoroughly explained.

Is it not odd, then, that with these microbes mutating billions of times, they remain a distinct organism retaining their original genetic make-up & specific characteristics – they don't mutate into completely separate entities. The replication mechanism appears pretty consistent.

Also, I don't believe the record does show a gradual appearance & diversification even over millions of years. The fossil records appear to show many distinct species appearing around the same period, not millions of years apart... you get a plethora of species, all distinctly formed & independent, some which remain with us today, unmutated, and still in what appears their original forms.

Originally posted by Maslo
What you are calculating is not the probability of evolving a protein, but the probability of randomly getting the whole correct sequence on the first try. Nothing esle. Thats not relevant to evolution, since it has selecting function preserving the correct hits and discarding incorrect ones, and happens gradually - builds upon itself. Evolution is NOT random. Only mutations are random.

Evolution = mutations + nonrandom breeding and inheritance + nonrandom selecting function

I can't live with that. He is suggesting the sequence, although not complete during the mutational process, is somehow sequentially arranged in the correct order over a period of time. The incomplete sequence being stored and subsequently built upon to create a complete working one.

What a sweet notion, but a highly improbable one. I can't see a very large, incomplete [and thus useless] sequence being retained and passed on. It just doesn't add up, we don't see that occurring anywhere, even within microbes.

Originally posted by Blue_Jay33
reply to post by Maslo

 

But thats the question of origin of life (abiogenesis), and not evolution. Two different things.

I am so tired of hearing that line from evolutionists.
It produces an intellectually dishonest perspective.
It like saying you can build a house with no supporting foundation.

That's a false dichotomy which I have created New Thread on.

edit on 26-1-2011 by Blue_Jay33 because: (no reason given)

You can figure out how the window frames are made without knowing about the foundation, no? Your entire analogy fails horribly

Originally posted by madnessinmysoulYou and I each have about 180 mutations (give or take a few, it's an average for humanity). That's two of us. There are nearly 7 billion people on Earth. 7 billion x 180 1.26 trillion mutations.

erm, hang on, our genetic characteristics may vary by 180 differences between individuals, but the core one's, the ones that make us human and include all the biological sequencing necessary for a healthy existence are identical and constant. A single genetic mutation in just one base nucleotide and it's likely you'd be pretty ill.

I'm not bashing Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection as I feel it's an important addition to our collective knowledge & can see how an isolated species might evolve to better suit its environment, but it falls way short of explaining how life formed in the first place, and why we see that massive explosion of life in the first place.

You don't understand fundamental genetics. Most sequences are degenerative, that is, CAT translates the same as CTT. Therefore it is more than likely, in fact almost guaranteed, that most mutations would be neutral, having no affect whatsoever.

reply to post by chocise


Unmutated? Like what? Trilobites? Modern trilobites and archaic ones are quite distinct.

And we do see changes. The bacteria in your stomach adapt to your antibiotic intake.