the phylogeographic challenge to creationism

Ah, so dogginess is now wag its butt.So can we define the dog kind as anything that shakes its bootie?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Faith, sorry to continue the dog/cat ness argument, but you did bring it up and some people are just like a dog with a bone with these creationists kinds of generalisations (all puns intended).If there was such a creature as a common ancestor to both cats and dogs then would this be seen by creationists to be evidence of macroevolution (whatever that may be - I don't accept it as a scientific term in the way that creationists bandy it about myself). If this common ancestor produced some other creature that was commonly thought of as a dog but actually had more genetic similarity to a cat (a cat with dogness), what would it be, a dog kind ,or a cat kind?. As this would show a gradation between catness and dogness kinds, would this persuade creationists that this elusive macroevolution did actually happen?I doubt it, but the creature may laugh at our attempts to classify it as either a dog or a cat.Maybe someone can guess what creature I am thinking of?

I'm not following you at all, I'm afraid, [AbE or perhaps I just can't entertain your evolutionist assumptions very far] and yes the dogness/catness idea was a throwaway I don't care to pursue.And I just about never use the term "macroevolution" as I think the whole idea is wrong, only use it when I'm afraid more confusion would result if I didn't.There is only built-in variation according to the genetic mechanisms within the Kind (a term that is used by creationists to avoid as much as possible the connotations evolutionists attach to the term "species").To restate it, this variation is limited, I've come to believe, by the observable fact that the more striking the phenotypic variation from the ancestral type, the more limited the genetic potentials and the genetic diversity in the new population, and therefore the less able to produce new types for further selection. And all this adds up to a REDUCTION in evolutionary potential rather than anything that could possibly further it.The only thing that is ever proposed to counter this trend is mutation, and I have yet to see anything about mutation that suggests it has even the remotest potential to produce enough viable genetic material to support much "micro" evolution against the de-volutionary trends I'm talking about, let alone "macro."What are called Evolutionary Processes in most intros to population genetics are in fact DEvolutionary Processes, as their trend is ultimately always toward less genetic potential, less genetic diversity, and at the extremes great vulnerability to various diseases and deformities and ultimately extinction.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-27-2005 07:14 PM

Two facts should change your mind:The average rate of mutation for mammalian nuclear DNA is roughly 3.1 mutations per billion base pairs (roughly about the same for other classes of organism); andAll functional protein sequences are separated by only one single amino acid change.In other words, there's no functional genetic sequence that you can't arrive at by just one change to another functional sequence; there's no path from one protein to another where you have to go through an intermediate, non-functional stage. The barrier to change you propose simply doesn't exist; it's a mathematical impossibility. Let me leave you with the words of Denton:

quote:

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One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps.

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Sorry that you are not following me, but put simply - if there was a creature that was part way between two kinds would you agree that this showed a gradation between these two kinds?I could not agree more that the whole idea of macroevolution is wrong, it's just that small changes build up to greater ones over time (it's all micro).The hard thing to understand about your concept of built in and limited variation is what is the mechanism of this limit. Many others have asked what this might be, there is even a whole thread on that one on this forum.As others have pointed out selection and bottle necks etc. that are required mechanisms of evolution are reductions in the currently available variations of a large population, however they need variations to work on, and these variations do tend to build up over time and yes, this is due to mutation. I just don't see why anyone should find it difficult to conceive that over time these small genetic variations cannot build up to allow further selection to operate on them.I understand that Darwin himself had similar worries about the trend toward less genetic potential that his natural selection theory proposed, so you are in good company there, however that was before genetic variability was understood.Got to sleep now, I may look in again soon, bye.

I guess you are correct he could have meant "brakes" but then we would be in an even greater and worse yet "tail spin." If it has no brakes (a la aJacob junk yard random city in Jersey built comparison)it must at least ideally have had a break where ever said"brakes" were meant to "De"ripple the moving water, hypothetically.You are correct I only heard it over the air, Vowels are hard to keep down during Thanksgiving!!Thinking in terms of "breaks" is a lot easier given alltalk about gaps,links and transitions etc.Anyway,the water analogy is not a soliton.This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 11-27-2005 08:08 PM

The reduction in genetic diversity that accompanies phenotypic variation is OBSERVED. It is KNOWN. The fact that migrated populations vary from the ancestral population via the reduction of genetic possibilities is KNOWN. Ordinary dominance-recessive patterns are OBSERVED to explain a great deal of it.You'd have to prove that all those mutations have the effects that are much more easily and naturally accounted for by these known mechanisms I am talking about. You'd have to prove they have always occurred at that rate also, and that they do produce beneficial results. In other words, referring to numbers of mutations and the mechanisms of forming proteins does not prove that any of it has anything to do with what Mick originally described on this thread, and he did not appeal to any of those processes either but described it all in terms of population genetics I could easily grasp. Your information simply adds obfuscation whether that is your intention or not.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-27-2005 08:15 PM

To simplify his line of questioning: How many "kinds" are in this picture?

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If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

That helps. I guess I'd agree, if we had arrived at a good definition of the unique features of Catness and Dogness and a convincing combination could be demonstrated. But the two species don't go back to a common ancestor according to evolutionism in any case. The mechanism is the Evolutionary Processes themselves, the very processes that sort and select. The predictable reduction in genetic diversity is the mechanism. Not at all. The greater number of variations are due to the shuffling of ordinary Mendelian factors such as dominance and recessiveness. It's not hard at all. It's a very easy kind of idea. But genetics really doesn't support it. Variations don't exactly "build up." Whenever there is a variation in the phenotype there is a corresponding reduction in genetic diversity that allowed it to come to expression. They go together hand in hand, the reduction of genetic diversity and the production of a new phenotype. You don't get fancy breeds without the aggressive elimination of lots of genetic potentials, and the same thing happens in nature when you get a new type that is tightly designed to fit a niche and so on. It is only by eliminating other genetic possibilities that you get the new "species" and this being the case variation or "evolution" beyond the given genetic potentials of the original ancestral species is impossible. Darwin didn't know anything about genetic potential did he?Seems to me the more that is known about genetic variability the clearer this pattern is, that the reduction of variability corresponds with phenotypic change, and there has to be a natural limit to this process.This message has been edited by Faith, 11-27-2005 08:34 PM

Two.Nope, you didn't understand his question at all. He put it better himself.

Wrong. I think I understood him pretty well. From his post: The animal in question is one of the four in the picture.This message has been edited by DrJones*, 11-27-2005 06:37 PM

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If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

cute, but you didn't set the bar high enough.

There are Two. You have no notion of what a Kind is.

Define it then.

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If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

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