Question for KSC

Hi Karl,I was wondering if you have been able to find any credible evidence that all structures within, say, a limb require specific mutations in order to alter their morphology, as you have implied numerous times in the past with your claims regarding 'multiple, serial mutations' or whatever it was. Remember? Like the time you posted a litany of structures found in a limb (veins, muscles, etc) and insisted that each of them requires their own mutations to change?

message deleted by ksc

​

[This message has been edited by ksc, 05-12-2002]

Aside from your absolutist dismissal of the possibility of macro-scale evolution, your response is a non sequitur. That major evolutionary changes take many generations and many mutations is not the issue. A morphological change resulting from even a single mutation requires corresponding changes in the phenotype, even for micro-scale evolution. This is no surprise, and highlights responses necessary in development and adaptation even aside from evolution. For example, if a fetus receives better nutrition than another and in consequence develops a larger newborn, developmental processes generally compensate, rather than producing a newborn with, for example, incomplete flesh coverage, vascular development, and so on. Thus, a simple mutation could produce a bone-spur in the wrist of a panda, and the resulting panda still manages to have hide and fur covering it. The false 'thumb' is useful for handling bamboo, so confers an advantage, favoring subsequent mutations that lengthen and define it. At no stage does it lack for developmental compensation.------------------
jhs

​

[This message has been edited by scarletohairy, 05-08-2002]

message deleted by ksc

​

[This message has been edited by ksc, 05-12-2002]

quote:

---

Originally posted by ksc:
My original post (now lost) if my memory serves me correct was in reference to the changes required to change a leg into a flipper or a scale into a feather.
Lets look at the leg, mutations were needed to lose the fur of the animal. Mutationswere needed to change the bone structure. Mutations were needed to grow the "new" flipper material. Mutations to the DNA coding at practically every instance isneeded to produce this change. It is not an issue if a bigger flipper will be covered completely with skin.

---

And therein lies your error - which has been pointed out to you many times. Changes in developmental genes - and sometimes in genes not directly impacting development - can have profound phenotypic effects. My favorite is the point mutation in the gene encoding the receptor for FGF-3. This mutation produces achondroplasia (dwarfism). That single point mutations changes: bone length and proportion for ALL limb bones; alters the propoprtion of certain bones in reference to others; alters all relevant muscle size and shape; alters all blood vessel routing; alters all nervous tissue in the limbs; etc.What "new flipper material" are you referring to? What does a flipper have that a terrestial limb does not?As for the "mutations were needed to lose fur" , you are doing the old creationist cart-before-the-horse trick. Why do you assume that a whale needed to lose its fur? That it did (I guess...) is a bonus, but otters do quite well and they have more hair follicles per unit area than any other animal alive. Taking the extant and coming up with a list of things that HAD to have happened in order to get where that creature is today is illogical. Take computers. Look at all of the things that HAD to happen - in order - for us to be having this exchange right now. Gee - what are the odds? I guess the computer that I am using could not have been built by humans improving on earlier versions - clearly, it was created as is by some deity...

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ksc:
[b]Considering evolution doesn't happen on the macro-level, there can't possibly be any proof. [b][/QUOTE]Proof of what? And thats quite a matter-of-fact statement there. Any supportive evidence?

quote:

---

​

BUT

​

It is up to the evolutionist to present proof that a single mutation has the ability to change a fin into a leg or a leg into a flipper.

---

Why is that? Who said that this was the case?[b] [QUOTE] Now considering that there are evos who claim that it is a slow process lasting many of millions of years with scads of mutations I would venture to say that your theories dictate that multiple serial mutations are required to produce the evolutionary changes you evos claim happens when a leg is mutated into a flipper. [/b][/QUOTE]What are "multiple serial mutations"?

message deleted by ksc

​

[This message has been edited by ksc, 05-12-2002]

ksc: You're not entirely accurate here. Whales may not have fur, but several species DO have hair - a vestigial remnant of their land-dwelling forebearers. Examples include the right whale (Eubalaena spp) which has hairs along the chin and upper jaw and the bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) has hair follicles on the snout, lips, and chin, and behind the blowhole.The vestigial hair on whales is a result of directional selection - you remember, the one you insist is somehow required in evolution? In this case it happened just like you claim it has to. How come it's okay to insist evolution must cause morphological changes in one species while denying it's possible in another? Fur loss is a positive adaptation for a fully-sea going mammal.

quote:

---

Land mammals have some form of hairy fur, which serves among others as insulation. Whales don't have fur. In water, fur needs a lot of maintenance in order to maintain its insulating properties. Furry marine mammals like sea otters spend a considerable amount of time preening. Also, the fur would cause a drag when swimming. Losing the fur gave whales a perfectly streamlined body. For insulation, they have a thick layer of blubber (fat) under their skin, which helps to maintain the body's streamline, serves as energy storage and protects the whales from heat loss. In whales, the remnants of the fur can still be seen. Young dolphins have small whiskers and in older animals, the hair follicles can still be seen on the snout. Some dolphin species (e.g. river dolphins) have whiskers throughout their life. (from this site

---

Of course, other aquatic mammals - such as Pinnepeds (seals and sea lions) and sea otters (Enhydra lutes still retain more or less all their fur. Of course, they're not fully adapted to pelagic existence, either...[Edited to fix ubb code.]

​

[This message has been edited by Quetzal, 05-10-2002]

quote:

---

Originally posted by ksc:
slpx
s for the "mutations were needed to lose fur" , you are doing the old creationist cart-before-the-horse trick. Why do you assume that a whale needed to lose its fur? That it did (I guess...) is a bonus, but otters do quite well and they have more hair follicles per unit area than any other animal alive. Taking the extant and coming up with a list of things that HAD to have happened in order to get where that creature is today is illogical. Take computers. Look at all of the things that HAD to happen - in order - for us to be having this exchange right now. Gee - what are the odds? I guess the computer that I am using could not have been built by humans improving on earlier versions - clearly, it was created as is by some deity...

---

No tricks slpx, the fact are that the whale lost it's fur. sorry. According to YOUR theories...mutations were needed....

---

You simply do not get it, do you?

As an addendum - creationism needs mutations, too. How else are you going to explain getting all those cats from the original cat-kind?

message deleted by ksc

​

[This message has been edited by ksc, 05-12-2002]

of course they may not need to be by nutating mutations what about dedifferntiation physioloigcally triggered by already exisitng expressed mutations?

quote:

---

Originally posted by ksc:
There is variation with in an already established gene pool from the created kind. There was and still is no requirement to bring about the different cat species thru mutations.

​

Now it sounds like you are claiming that the whale flipper came about with no mutations. Is that true?

---

How would there have been variation in a 'gene pool' contributed to by only a single male and female?What were the genetic mechanisms that dictated which phenotype would be expressed?No, it is not true that I believe that the 'whale flipper' came about without mutations. However, you are still hung up on two key issues:
1. The number of mutations
You insist that some large number of mutations were required; that these mutations had to happen "over and over again" and "be directed to" the "DNA strand" that deals with flipper/limb morphology. Ignoring for now the obvious dearth of information you possess regardiong developmental genetics, I have provided a documented example of single point mutations producing relatively large scale phenotypic limb changes. You ignore this.2. You are still using what I call the reverse cart-before-the-horse fallacy. You are looking at the extant 'whale', taking evolutionary hypotheses of its descent, and wondering how evolution could have accounted for the specific mutations that have occurred. You do not/cannot/will not see the fallacy in that.Allow me to demonstrate using an analogy.Karl Crawford exists. Yet his parents were two of several billion humans that could have mated. Each of them have genomes on the order of 3.2 billion nucloetides. What are the chances that their specific sequence of nucleotides existed? that their specific haploid genomes merged to form the zygote with a unique diploid genome that produced Karl? The mutations that produced Karl had to have happened over and ove again in the lineaqges leading to him, in the correct order. It is impossible for this to have happened. Therefore, Karl could not possibly be the result of the mating of his parents.Therefore, sexual reproduction does not occur.Silly? You bet. Then, I just employed the same sort of backwards logic that KSC and those like him do.

[Hack deleted. --Percy][This message has been edited by ksc, 05-12-2002]

​

[This message has been edited by Percipient, 05-13-2002]

Talking shite, deleted.

​

[This message has been edited by mark24, 05-10-2002]