rationalskepticism.org

MarioNovak wrote:

Rumraket wrote:Wait, new alleles did not arise and take control? What qualifies as a "new" allele? What does that even mean "and take control"? Where has this prediction been made?
Where's the problem? The experiment shows that even strong natural selection does not successfully weed out large genetic variation.

In a population genetics new allele is a new gene variation. Mutation is the primary source of those variations(new alleles). "To take control" - to increase allele frequency in population(gene pool).

The researchers were looking for the fixation of positive mutations within the genome and within the whole population. This is referred to using the term "selection sweep". When it occurs, the new mutation at a base pair (a novel single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP) not only experiences replication to be transmitted to the descendants of the organism, but the gene pool of variation is effectively swept clean as the new mutation becomes dominant in the whole population. However, such sweeping was conspicuous by its absence.

"Recent research on evolutionary genetics has focused on classic selective sweeps, which are evolutionary processes involving the fixation of newly arising beneficialmutations. In a recombining region, a selected sweep is expected to reduce heterozygosity at SNPs flanking the selected site. . . . Notably, we observe no location in the genome where heterozygosity is reduced to anywhere near zero, and this lack of evidence for a classic sweep is a feature of the data regardless of window size."
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... bal=remove

This empirical work is worth noting because we are considering a mechanism that is central to Darwinian evolution. Positive natural selection of hereditable variation is the key to understanding how descent with modification occurs. However, the empirical data relating to a sexually reproducing species does not confirm that modification works this way. This is why the primary investigator, ecology and evolutionary biology professor, Anthony Longsaid said: "This research really upends the dominant paradigm about how species evolve".

http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/uci- ... uit-flies/

Thank you for answering my questions, so that's what you mean by "arise and take control".

Well this leads me to ask, since they're testing models of selection. What does this have to do with the ability of evolution to create new genes, or your mistaken views of model and hypothesis testing? Or the applicability of bacterial experiments to eukaryotic genome evolution?

Rumraket wrote:As just shown, they do nothing of the sort. By the way, you have never detailed a rigorous metric for "newness". And regardless, we already know evolution has created basically the entire biosphere, we know this from phylogenetic evidence.

You haven't shown anything scientifically important, you just offered(produced) a mental construct of a human mind(excuse) - a rationalization for ignorance of scientific discoveries. When an orderly long term procedure is carried out(long term evolution experiment) and empirical connection with the two causes - random variation and natural selection is established, a new gene, as na effect is not produced. So, the scientific fact is that evolutionary processes can not create new genes. Your rationalizations will not make this fact ceases to exist.

Rumraket wrote:I notice you have completely ignored the rather large first post I made in this thread where I present some of this evidence. Why is it that ID proponents are invariably always totally silent on phylogenetics? It's almost as if the field does not exist in your minds.

Because the phylogenetics is just the construct of a human mind, which can conceptually be applied to any set of objects with similar characteristics, such as vehicles. So, by your reasoning, if vehicles are recognized, differentiated and grouped into categories that proves that random processes create vehicles.

Ohhh, this is excellent news for your career in law. You'll be earning millions getting people off paternity lawsuits and settlements because, as you imply, patterns of genetic similarity do not imply a genealogical relationship, it's "just the construct of a human mind".

Rumraket wrote:Yes, because we have actual concrete empirical evidence that it did from phylogenetics.

We have actual concrete empirical evidence that vw golf 6 and vw golf 7 are related. How this proves eventual assumption that the blueprint for golf 7 resulted from random change in the blueprint that shows how golf 6 will be made?

You know we actually observe the process of descent with modification, right? You are born with mutations and a combination of alleles from your parents. You also have a phenotypical mix of their attributes. I'm sure you've heard the expression "you have your mother's eyes" and things like that?

Cars don't make copies of themselves, or even reproduce sexually. Organisms do. Changes accumulate over time. You are more different from your great-great-great-great grandparents, than their immediate children were. The corroboration between these two empirically extremely well established processes (what we call the twin nested hierachies, twin because it is corroborated both by morphology and genetics) is simply being extended to longer timescales.

The timescales implied through genetics are roughly correlated with the timescales implied by the fossil record. The process makes specific predictions, which is what allowed researchers to predict the approximate age at which a fossil transitional species like Tiktaalik was eventually found.

This same general principle can be used to test phylogenetic methodology. You've skipped a very important question I posed to you in my post on phylogenetics:
Key question to be answered by the people who deny the phylogenetic evidence for the evolution of novel enzymatic functions through novel protein coding genes:
If ancestral sequence reconstruction is based entirely on phylogenetic trees and substitution models(as it is), but the inferred evolutionary transitions did not actually take place, WHY IS IT POSSIBLE TO RECONSTRUCT FUNCTIONALLY PROMISCOUS ANCESTRAL STAGES OF EXTANT PROTEINS?

This should simply not be possible if evolution did not take place. The artificially reconstructed and inserted mutations, derived from algorithms build on assumptions about how molecular evolution takes place (which in turn are derived from empirical data about how real-world and laboratory populations evolve), should simply not be able to produce functional ancestral states.

Yet they do.

Explain why this is possible when, as you say, these inferred phylogenetic relationships are "just the construct of a human mind".

Edit: Edited for spelling and grammar.