What is Life?

Couldn't find anything in there related to the topic either.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

We will, right after you show us that the information in the web page is accurate.

Your having trouble all right, I'll agree with you up there. That paper copied on to the web-site is nothing but solid meat from start to finish. Every claim made about how evolution is a lie is backed up with facts and figures and mathematical calculations. I don't need to reshow that his calculations are correct and his references (which are many) are solid. You need to show that they aren't. Just saying it is a lot of fluff doesn't disprove one single thing. Show me where he is wrong.The Mutation Problem: The Mutation ProblemPractically every argument made on this forum is researched and indirectly copied from links on the web. What difference does it make if your knowledge is learned from a book or links from the web?
I'll be happy to copy the calculations he presented directly if you would like.

We don't debate by links. Arguments are to presented in your own words with links to sites that support them. Rule #5.But anyways, what does this have to do with the topic: What is Life?

Well, let's skip the figures pulled out of his ass and the occasional wild fits of innumeracy, and move straight on to the biological illiteracy: He's assuming that the rate of fixation of mutations is going to be the same whether they're in coding or non-coding DNA, which is bad enough, and then further goes on to assume that the rate of fixation of harmful mutations would be the same as for beneficial/neutral mutations: "Two-thirds of these would be harmful, or, 4 million in 10 million years."That is, he's implicitly taking the proportion of mutations that are harmful to be equal to the proportion of mutations which go on to achieve fixation in the gene pool that are harmful.There's only one word for this kind of crass stupidity, and that is creationism.---If you don't understand the problem (which obviously you don't or you'd have burst out laughing when you first read this guy's nonsense) let's put it in layman's terms. 100 soldiers run across a minefield. 60 get blown to pieces, and 40 make it across. Now, we know from this that the casualty rate is 60%, which means that of those 40 who made it across, statistically 24 (0.6 40) must have been blown to pieces. Right? Wrong. The death rate among those who made it across was 0%. We know this because they're the ones who made it across the minefield.---I think it's cute how he writes: "These problems with mutation rates do not seem to be appreciated by most biologists".Yeah, and they're strangely oblivious to the flocks of winged pigs currently plaguing our fair nation. I wonder why.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

If you think so, then start a thread on it.All I see are a bunch of alleged facts, with no indication of what they even mean (as in what is being counted).If there is somebody here actually presenting the argument, then there is a possibility that we can ask for clarification whenever we find missing details - and there is a lot of missing detail in that web page.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Quote:
Now, apes and humans are thought to have split about 5 million years ago, according to a number of sources, and have about a 2 percent difference in DNA. The human genome has about 3 billion base pairs and about 300 million base pairs of functional DNA (assuming 10 percent of 3 billion base pairs are functional). Assuming that most of this 2 percent change is non-functional DNA, this implies a rate of evolution of two percent in 10 million years, which implies 6 million point mutations in 10 million years in the functional DNA. Two-thirds of these would be harmful, or, 4 million in 10 million years. This is about two point mutations in the functional DNA every five years, or about 12 every generation. Counting both parents, this gives 24 mutations per zygote, with a chance of only 1/(2.718 12 ) (less than 1 in 100,000) that a zygote will survive and be able to have offspring at equilibrium. Of course, this is ridiculous.How much must we reduce the functional DNA to make this acceptable? It would have to be at least a factor of 12, to about 25 million base pairs (less than one percent of the DNA). This would imply one harmful mutation per zygote, and would contradict estimates that 10 percent of the DNA is functional. Typical genes have 1000 base pairs, so this would be 25,000 genes. Even this rate of mutation is much too high, so there would probably have to be only about 15,000 genes. A typical cell has over 10,000 proteins, so this is about the number of genes needed for a single cell. So this is too few to specify a complete human being. It also conflicts with estimates that humans have 100,000 genes.How long ago would apes and humans have to split to allow evolution to have occurred? It would have to be 12 times 5 million years, or 60 million years. Even this is too high a mutation rate, as mentioned earlier. And at the rate of about 5 percent of gametes having a harmful mutation, it would have to be about one billion years.
Quote taken from:The Mutation Problem
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Its not enough to claim he is wrong without showing your own calculations with the correct numbers.
Show us how your calculations bring the ape to human split back down to the 5 million from the 60 million years his numbers show.

Hi, ICdesign. When somebody proposes an alteration to a current mathematical conclusion, showing the alteration to be crap is sufficient to restore the current mathematical conclusion.This idiot assumes that all individuals with harmful mutations die without contributing to the gene pool.Then, he goes on to estimate that we still inherited 4 million harmful mutations from individuals who, according to his assumptions, shouldn't have contributed to our gene pool.Based on that, he worked out some more numbers that adjust the current human-ape split from 5 million years to 60 million years.Thus, when we rule out his obviously flawed math, we don't arrive at 60 million years: rather, we arrive at 5 million years, as before.But, this is off-topic here: personally, I think we could have continued it at the "problems with evolution" thread. Still, I think it's time for you to start a new thread if you want to discuss this any further.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Hi Bluejay, Calling it crap is not the same as showing it to be crap. Lets see a little show and tell. Where did he say all individuals with harmful mutations die? He would not have turned around and said we inherited 4 million harmful mutations if he already disqualified that possibility.Again none of you seem to be able to show which of his numbers are faulty by showing what the correct numbers should be. Well according to ToE mutations have everything to do with life as we know it. The other thread would fit better but I don't see why a new thread is necessary when a mutation problem is obviously a problem with evolution....just post your reply over there and we can pick it up from there.

Yes, that's the part that I specifically explained to you was wrong. I have read it, there's no need to quote it at me. I quoted it at you. I showed why he was wrong. Did you not follow the explanation? It is, in fact, quite "enough" when my purpose was to show that he's made a mistake. A ridiculous, crass, stupid mistake.If someone calculates the net average wealth of the American family as $100,000,000 based on the assumption that all their furniture is made of solid gold, then to show that he has blundered in his reasoning it is sufficient to point out that this is not in fact the case. In order to indicate his error it is not necessary for me to calculate the true figure on a more solid actuarial basis.However, if you would like to look at some reality-based figures, I have them here. Though if you couldn't spot the flaw in the kook's reasoning I have little hope that you will be able to follow mine.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

As to be expected from your side of the fence, another idiotic line of reasoning. I agree if the assumption was made using solid gold furniture, the calculations would be exaggerated. What part of his calculations do you equate to being solid gold furniture and why? Well at least you finally came up with some numbers to look at. The difference between the site I posted and the site you posted (besides mine being right and yours being wrong ) is that yours is bias. Oh yeah? Well my daddy can beat up your daddy. Not only that, but your sister is ugly too.
...I would say all the persons involved from both the sites we are posting from are very intelligent people. Obviously both sides of the fence can't be right. I'm sorry you have to be on the wrong side like this but it had to be one of us.I don't have time today but I want to investigate the information from the site you provided.
Thanks for passing it along,
IC

If you don't understand something, it is not necessarily the case that the thing you don't understand is idiotic.In this case it is quite true and quite simple. I can point out the flaws in someone else's calculations without producing correct calculations of my own.Do you actually deny this, or did you just feel an urgent desire to say something stupid? I told you. What the yellow rubbery fuck do you mean: "finally"? I came up with those figures in response to the very first post in which you asked me for them. You say that my site is wrong and his is right. Does that mean that you can find an error in my site, or explain away the huge hulking great error in his?Or did you just say that because you are what you would call "bias", but which I would call "biased" because I can tell the difference between an adjective and a noun? How would you know?Really, if you don't grasp the magnitude of his mistake even after it's been explained to you I feel no confidence in your ability to tell when someone is being stupid.

You know what really stands out about you Dr. A.? You always insult everyone you disagree with.
Your like this little spoiled brat always whining and insulting others. I don't mind saying it is way past old too.

Would it not more adversely affect Dr. A. if you showed everyone why his linked values are false?
You could then also maintain the moral high-ground in this game of name-calling.Because currently it looks like you are doing exactly what you complained about others doing: calling the numbers crap without showing why.I am sure many people would be interested in where his linked web-page is incorrect.

Many of us would be interested in knowing what any of this has to do with the topic which in case you forgot is "What is life?"

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!