Is Syamsu a creationist or an evolutionist?

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I have won.

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hey mark..you won ages ago...but watching Sy do the self contradiction, hypocrisy, laundry dance ( a dance unrelated to the cabbage patch) has been extremely entertaining.I'll give you 5 bucks if you can get him to square dance with his arguments in the next 2 posts

You're on!

Dear Syamsu,As has been pointed out before, by me, it is meaningful to compare elephants and ants, indeed comparative biology is one of those 'whole organism in an environment' based disciplines of the type you seem to favour. Here are a few important biological factors shown by comparison of elephant and ant - Vertebrate Vs. Invertebrate, Small Vs. Large, R strategy Vs. K strategy, Colonial life history Vs. Individual life history, Endotherm Vs. Poikilotherm.I'm not sure that the fundamental premise that as soon as the ability to digest nylon appeared there became two populations is necessarily reliable. To show that it is you must demonstrate or provide evidence that nylon eating bacteria cannot survive without nylon. I'm fairly sure this isn't the case for either Flavobacterium strain KI72 or P. aeruginosa strain NK87. If the nylon digesting bacteris can live in an environment without Nylon then it is perfectly reasonable to discuss relative success.Scenarios: Assuming equal initial numbers of wild type and Nylon metabolising bacteria.1) Normal media, No Nylon. Either both strains live happily or possibly nylon digesting strain suffers some disadvantage due to producing a redundant protein.2) Normal Media, Nylon Present. Depending on the efficacy of the Nylon metabolism the Nylon digesting bacteria may show improved fitness relative to the Wild type strain or may not have a sufficient advantage to produce any difference from scenario 1.3) Minimal Media, only Nylon present as Carbon Source. Wild type cannot reproduce and remain at stasis or die off. Nylon digesting bacteria reproduce.The replacement event has occurred but obviously subsequent to that event you won't see a change relative ratio in the population if all of the Wild type have died of in the minimal media + Nylon enviroment. But you have still had your replacement and change in relative ratios. The Minimal media + Nylon is acting as a selective medium, cna you show that the nylon eating bacteria cannot survive on a normally permissive but not Nylon containing medium? Otherwise you are not showing a clear enough separation of the two populations, precisely as you failed to do in our previous dicussion of the evolution of photosynthesis. You seem to think these new forms appear de novo in the environment which is suited to them and forms lacking particular adaptions are forever barred from encroaching on that environment.Cheers,WK

Well congratulations then on becoming champion apples and oranges comparison first class.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

First you say it's always reasonable to discuss relative success, then you say it's reasonable to discuss success when the two variants share a resource.And then you take scenario's with only variants, forgetting scenario's with no variation in nylon eating.Supposing you had a nylonfactory, would you find it passable that the biology experts you hired would be prejudicially focused on talking comparitively about nylon eating, and non-nylon eating bacteria? That they couldn't just focus on limiting the succes of the nylon eating bacteria, because that simply would fall outside the theoretical framework in which these biologists operate which requires comparison.You are grasping at straws trying to legitimize the comparison, and as before, there may be something to it in the case of getting at a replacementfactor, but in no way can this be considered a basic theory of selection because of it's limited scope of applicability.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Syamsu,Try not to be obtuse. Of course I don't look at situations with no variation if I am looking at comparisons, the point is that a situation with no variation would not be the one we are discussing, it would be your original clonal population which as we have endlessly discussed is obviously never going to tell you much about differential reproductive success nor evolution.Just for you though here are the situations on WT or Nylon metabolising based clonal populations-Scenario:1) WT- Growth until limiting factors take effect, I.e. nutrients or space run out.
NM- Growth until limiting factors take effect.2) WT- Growth until limiting factors take effect.
NM- Growth until limiting factors take effect.3) WT- Stasis or death.
NM- Growth until limiting factors take effect.Your nylon factory manager is a gigantic strawman, nevertheless I can envisage a number of situations where a knowledge of non-nylon eating strains might be vital. If you allow that these strains might evolve nylon eating capabilities then whatever steps you take to remove Nylon metabolising bacteria would have to be applied at any stage where potentially nylon metabolising bacteria could infect the system, or you would need to control for potentially nylon eating strains themseleves as well. As an example, imagine your scientists, studying only Nylon metabolising bacteria, find a useful gas which interferes with the NM bacterias metabolism and kills it, you have all your workers and machines fumigated with this gas and only allow your workers into the sterile area after decontamination with this gas. Unfortunately this gas is specific to NM bacteria, as your scientist might have known had they looked at any non NM bacteria. Consequently a non-NM strain insinuates itself into your clean area, unaffected by the gas, and subsequently evolves over many generations into a strain capable of metabolising nylon. Can you direct me to where? I can't track your paraphrasing offhand.Cheers,WK

Syamsu, It's not apples & oranges though, is it? You agreed yourself to the relevance.Mark

I interpreted you saying that comparing elephants and ants is meaningful to comparison is always meaningful. After that you made some comment that some circumstance made it reasonable to compare nylon eating and non-nylon eating bacteria.Do you suppose that every bacterie colony of that kind has variation in respect to nylon eating? The discussion about clones was just a strawman. There are many bacterie colonies that don't have variation in respect to nylon eating, they don't have to be completely identical for comparitive Natural Selection to fail to apply.I wasn't bringing up a strawman, I was just bringing up another line of argument which shows that even if you can make a case for comparison, that then this would still not be a basic theory of selection, because of the limited and peculiar scope of applicablity of comparitive selection. Your comments that you can think of some scenario's where it's vital to make comparisons between variants do not deny the absurdity of having comparison between variants as the basic theoretical framework to work in. I already said that maybe you can legitimze comparison for variants to get a replacementfactor, so really it seems all you can hope to achieve is to convince me of something I already think might be true, but which doesn't really counter my redifinition of selection.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Syamsu,So that's it?All that denial of variation, differential reproductive success, & that comparisons within populations are "rubbish", "false", & "nonsense", despite agreeing to it, isn't worthy of at least a partial retraction?Wouldn't you at least agree to my low cunning & resourcefulness, that I managed to get you to agree that the things that you claimed were false, can in fact be true, & not only that, are relevant?I'm not baiting you, Syamsu, I'm after Mammuthus' $5 bet from post 166. At the very least you owe me one last response so that I qualify?$2.50 each?Or should I look up the word "magnanimous" in the dictionary? But to be perfectly honest, given the utterly pointless runaround you have given both others & myself, I'm not inclined to.Mark

You haven't really provided a reason for comparison at all as far as I can tell, I provided the reason of replacement myself, so no you can't claim to have convinced me of anything.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu

Syamsu,Once more for the hard of understanding......Of course I haven't convinced you of anything, you are to insulated from reality with your own erroneous interpretations to realise the colossal hypocrite you have become. That is why victory could only present itself by forcing you to make contradictory statements.You claimed the comparative "method" was "false", "rubbish", & "pointless". You also claimed that variation & differential reproductive success were erroneously connected to natural selection, making lofty claims as to how Darwinists have got it wrong.Then you agreed to,

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#1 For sexual reproducers: The changes in ratios of alleles due to natural selection within a breeding population as a whole, cannot occur unless there are members of a population that are fitter than others.

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And again to this one:

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#2 For asexual reproducers: The changes in ratios of homologous alleles/genes due to natural selection within a population as a whole, cannot occur unless there are members of a population that are fitter than others.

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So, let's see. That would be variation & differential success accounted for, plus the "comparative method" being decidedly un-rubbish, un-pointless, & un-false, right? The Darwinists got it right then?!Everything you argued against you conceded to in agreeing to those statements.Markps Mammuthus- That's $5, as agreed, Euro's will do nicely ------------------
"The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's time" - Thomas Henry Huxley

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ps Mammuthus- That's $5, as agreed, Euro's will do nicely

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Let's see, with the current exchange rate of dollars to euros to pounds...Mammuthus clicks away at his abacus...your 3 US cents and the lint in my pocket will be on their way to you this afternoon I understand that Mr. Hambre will be visiting Syamsu at the Clinic for Arguments that Crashed and Burned to administer last rites.

Minnemooseus tells me that he suspects the title question was answered no later than page 2 of this topic.Perhaps there is some specific detail from this string, that the gang would like to bring to a new topic.Is it time to shut this one down?Adminnemooseus

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And so what was this ratio then with the camouflaged and the colorful? What was the ratio with the nyloneating bacteria and their ancestor? It seems meaningless. I was told that the mutation that enables the nylon eating bacteria to eat nylon, makes them unable to eat what their ancestors eat. So reasonably the population splits along the lines of this mutation, where in stead you repeatedly talk about the population as a whole.

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Why do you define a population by what it eats?Am I (a non-vegetarian) in a different population to my
friends who are Vegans?I suppose if your populational criterion is 'what do they eat?'
then it's true, if it's something else it's false.What do YOU mean by population?

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But I can't really describe the fitness when I'm describing the relative fitness, that is just very confusing. The colorful are fit in respect to mating, the camouflaged in respect to predators, two completely different things. Besides the predators, the camouflaged are a downward selective pressure on the colorful. Focusing solely on real relationships seems to me more easy then mixing comparitive relationships with real relationships.

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Nothing wrong with referring to relative fitness (i.e. fitness
of a trait wrt to some specific environmental factor).You have just compared the reproductive success of the variants
wrt to multiple environmental factors -- that's good and that's
what most of the people arguing against you are saying.There IS variation and that variation affects reproductive rates
relative the the environment as a whole (i.e. all factors). It
can be measured after the fact by allele frequencies.

You are just pulling a lawyertrick because you have no argument why comparing elephants and ants is meaningless, when comparing nylon eating and non nylon eating bacteria is supposedly a meaningful scientific theory.regards,
Mohammad Nor Syamsu