Intelligent Reasoning

Promoting, advancing and defending Intelligent Design via data, logic and Intelligent Reasoning and exposing the alleged theory of evolution as the nonsense it is. I also educate evotards about ID and the alleged theory of evolution one tard at a time and sometimes in groups

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Natural Selection is Really Insignificant

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Oooops, so sorry evotards-> natural selection is impotent:
The explanation that best fits the data tells us that >99% of all evolutionary change is due to random genetic drift and not natural selection.

Very few evotards understand evolution well enough to appreciate that.

And taht means their position boils down to sheer dumb luck.

Yeah baby...

4 Comments:

  • At 4:45 PM, Blogger Richard Edwards said…

    Oh dear, oh dear. Would you care to hazard a guess how many fixed genetic changes there are between species?

    Let's take something close, like chimp and man. Now, let's consider just the non-synonymous (protein changing) differences. Current estimates are 99.4% identity. That means 0.6% sites are different. There are approx 21k human proteins with an average length of ~500aa, which gives approx 11,500 sites. Even though the figure you quote is derived from predominantly functionless DNA and we would therefore expect a lower proportion of neutral substitutions in protein coding regions, I will be generous and say let's imagine >99% are neutral. That means that up to 1% are not. Rounding down, that is up to 100 adaptive changes, half of which would be in the human lineage. And that is just looking at the most conserved 0.0004% of a single genome during a period of approx 0.2% of it's history. Do the maths and see how laughable your statement is that Natural Selection is impotent!

    If I was you, I would delete that post quick! Shame, really. I thought you understood the Neutral Theory. Clearly not.

     
  • At 7:24 AM, Blogger Joe G said…

    Oh dear, oh dear- just because fixed genetic changes exist does not mean that A) natural selection did it nor B) evolution didit.

    Take chimp and human geniomes- to date no one has done a complete side-by-side comparison so we do not know how similar the genomes really are.

    Neutral theory? I need real evidence. So perhaps you can find some experiment that supports this alleged neutral theory.

     
  • At 7:58 AM, Blogger Richard Edwards said…

    Just Google and read. If I can be bothered, I'll do it for you later. (Unfortunately, this post has lost any modicum of respect that I had for you, so probably not.)

    My point is that your post is total nonsense. You conclude that if "The explanation that best fits the data tells us that >99% of all evolutionary change is due to random genetic drift and not natural selection" this means " their position boils down to sheer dumb luck."

    This is hogwash of the highest degree. Us evotards, who clearly understand evolution much better than you, understand both why this is predicted by theory, why it is the best explanation for the data, and why it makes absolutely no difference to the power or effect of selection. It is merely saying that, in the average genome - and this for large genomes, like humans, the figures for bacteria will be very different - there are many more mutations that do nothing than that have a beneficial effect.

    Once again, your comment is so confused about what your position predicts (which is nothing) that you are happy to simultaneously attack evolutionary theory for predicting neutral mutations and finding that the data supports neutral mutations.

    You are making a logical fallacy. The explanation that fits equally well with your ridiculous "Natural Selection is Really Insignificant" claim is that ">99% of all evolutionary change is really insignificant". I have no problem with this statement. (They're useful as genetic markers etc. but does not result in important phenotypic changes.) All the interesting adaptive changes are in the remaining minority. It's what we expect and what we see.

    What does ID say about neutral mutations. Are they compatible or not? If they are, and you are happy that there are as many as there are, you might as well entitle your post "The Designer is Really Impotent" because your Designer is only filling the role of Natural Selection in your fantastic scenario. If it does NOT allow for so many neutral mutations then we have a great, cheap and easy way to falsify ID. Which is it?

     
  • At 8:16 AM, Blogger Joe G said…

    I read about Kimura and the neutral theory. I am looking for evidence.

    Next you say evotards understand evolution better than me- yet you don't provide any evidence for that.

    Then you say:

    All the interesting adaptive changes are in the remaining minority.

    That is the propaganda, unfortunately it lacks evidentiary support.

     

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