Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

[edwest]

You’ll have to repeat the same things over and over and over, ad nauseum…

 

[rossum]

Is natural selection some kind of force of nature?

No it is not. It is the natural consequence of beneficial and deleterious mutations. A beneficial mutation is called that because it increases the average number of fertile offspring produced. A deleterious mutation reduces the average number of fertile offspring produced. Simple compound interest does the rest.

As an example, take a population of 1000 organisms; on average each organism has one descendant in the next generation. Now let a beneficial mutation appear with a 1% advantage, so the mutated organism will have on average 1.01 descendants in the next generation. For comparison I include ten other mutated organism with a 1% disadvantage. Start with a population of 10 deleterious, 989 neutral (or unmutated) and 1 beneficial mutations. See what happens if we let the population reproduce for one thousand generations:

Generation  Deleterious   Neutral    Beneficial
----------  -----------   -------    ----------
     0         10.0       989.00          1.00
     1          9.9       989.00          1.01
    10          9.0       989.00          1.10
   100          3.7       989.00          2.70
   500          0.1       989.00        144.77
   700          0.0       989.00       1059.16
  1000          0.0       989.00      20959.16

That is how natural selection works. Deleterious mutations disappear from the population while beneficial mutations become more common.

There is no need for any mysterious ‘force’. The more fertile offspring you have the more grandchildren you will have and so there will be more copies of your genes in future generations.

rossum

 

[rossum]

You well now by know there is no EMPIRICAL evidence for macro-evolution.

I have shown you an example of macro-evolution. Remember our discussion on the appearance of a new species of crayfish? How is this not empirical evidence?

It is too bad this forum doesn’t have a favorites or something like that so I do not have to continually repeat the same things over and over and over.

Indeed it is, then I would not have had to repeat my link to Dr. Lyko’s paper.

rossum

 

[rossum]

We have been over this and I have. Go back and recheck. I am convinced you are not reading my posts.

If you have then please supply a link and/or thread name and post number.

As a matter of interest, what did the scientific evidence show about the length of a Genesis ‘day’?

rossum

 

[Richca]

Richca:

rossum:

Selection is a conservative process. It generally reduces variation, reducing or eliminating deleterious variants while increasing beneficial variants. In the case of hunted elephants, it reduced the frequency of genes for large tusks and increased the frequency of genes for small or no tusks.

Selection does not introduce or change the genes themselves, that is the job of mutations. Selection acts on the genes produced by mutations, increasing the frequency of those variants that are better suited for the current environment.

rossum

Is natural selection some kind of force of nature? And if so, where is it and can anybody identify it?

Now tell me why and you will have explained natural selection.

Apparently, you didn’t grasp what I said. Take a look at Rossum’s post which I replied too. For example, he says ‘Selection acts on the genes produced by mutations…’. For which reason I asked ‘Is natural selection some kind of force of nature?’ If ‘selection acts’ than it follows by the rules of grammer that selection is presented as some kind of being, cause, or force. However, if we could identify what it actually is if there be any that ‘acts’ on the genes, it is not what is called ‘selection’. It would be a cause of some kind such as something in the body such as enzymes etc. or possibly the external environment somehow such as the weather or heat. ‘Selection’ is not a being or a cause. Accordingly, if you agree with Rossum that ‘Selection acts on genes…’ than my question remains ‘What is this ‘selection’?’

 

[Richca]

Richca:

Is natural selection some kind of force of nature?

No it is not.
rossum

ok, thank you.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

Just because you have ignored and rejected all the evidence does not mean it doesn’t exist. And what has your being Catholic got to do with it? And when you say “science supports Genesis” you are conveniently noncommittal about what specific claims of Genesis you mean (there are many). Some may be supported by science and others not.

Really? After all these posts you still do not get it?

The sheer volume of your postings lends nothing to their (sorely lacking) relevance.

It is too bad this forum doesn’t have a favorites or something like that so I do not have to continually repeat the same things over and over and over.

Repeating an irrelevant posting will not make it relevant.

 

[buffalo]

Deleterious mutations disappear from the population while beneficial mutations become more common.

Yet, now we know that every generation is devolving with more deleterious mutations. See my genetic entropy posts.

 

[buffalo]

The sheer volume of your postings lends nothing to their (sorely lacking) relevance.

The sheer volume is coming from mainstream science. They are super relevant and it is becoming more evident with every new finding evolution has failed as the best explanation. You can continue to clutch onto to it, but times are changing.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Yes, just keep telling yourself that.

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

How in the world could evolution understand the idea of poachers ?

It does not ‘understand’ anything. If a predator is consistently removing individuals with large tusks from the population then the genes for large tusks will become relatively less common, and the genes for small or no tusks will become relatively more common.

Since evolution is defined as “change in the genome of a population over time” then that is evolution.

rossum

How is a small tusk Elephants more fit for survival ? They can face other dangers that don’t come from poachers.

 

[rossum]

Yet, now we know that every generation is devolving with more deleterious mutations. See my genetic entropy posts.

More deleterious mutations appear with every generation. And natural selection preferentially removes those mutations from future generations. More are appearing and more are removed. At the same time the few beneficial mutations that do appear are spreading, as with the mutations for small or no tusks in elephants.

Where is that link or reference to your earlier scientific evidence about birds and land animals that supports Genesis?

rossum

 

[edwest]

Selection would work if all available creatures were in a lab. Unfortunately, the pure math approach is nowhere near what happens in the wild. An individual with an ‘advantageous trait,’ whatever that is, might not breed. He might die long before breeding age for a number of reasons. He may even be sterile because deleterious mutations happen as well.

So "unintelligent selection’ ignores a wide array of real life factors. It is special pleading to point to millions of years as time enough to get from Point A to Point B. That is speculation, not science.

 

[rossum]

How is a small tusk Elephants more fit for survival ? They can face other dangers that don’t come from poachers.

Small tusk elephants are in much less in danger from poachers, who are a major elephant predator, especially on mature adults who are old enough to have calves. Absent the poachers, then small tusks would be deleterious, but the presence of poachers changes the environment and the beneficial/neutral/deleterious balance is always relative to the environment.

Currently those other dangers from small tusks have less impact than poachers. For example, tusk size has an impact on food gathering as tusks can be used to dig for roots. Other dangers, such as disease, are not affected by tusk size.

If all the poachers disappeared overnight, then large tusks would again be beneficial and those genes would start to increase in the population.

rossum

 

[Wozza]

rossum:

Richca:

Is natural selection some kind of force of nature?

No it is not.
rossum

ok, thank you.

So my answer to ‘what is selection’ you deemed unacceptable. All you wanted was an answer to whether it was some sort of ‘force’.

You should have been more specific. But I’m glad you have the answer you need to avoid further misunderstanding.

 

[buffalo]

From the paper @rossum linked

Reproductive incompatibility. The marbled crayfish genome is triploid, which represents a major cytogenetic roadblock for meiotic chromosome segregation (Martin et al., 2016; Vogt et al., 2015). As such, most triploid organisms are apomictic parthenogens (Saura et al., 1993) and thus reproductively isolated from sympatric sexually reproducing relatives. In crossbreeding experiments, marbled crayfish females and P. fallax males showed typical courtship behavior and mating (Vogt et al., 2015). However, offspring of marbled crayfish females that had been mated with P. fallax males were exclusively female and exclusively showed the microsatellite markers of the
marbled crayfish mother (Fig. 1C). These findings are in agreement with the notion that the P. fallax male did not contribute to the genome of the offspring and that the progeny is the product of apomictic arthenogenesis in the marbled crayfish mother. Taken together, the data suggest that marbled crayfish are reproductively isolated from P.
fallax (Vogt et al., 2015).

Genetic differences. Genetic analysis can be used to reveal independent species in the absence of distinctive morphological features (Bickford et al., 2007). Furthermore, convergent evolution of morphological characters appears to be common in cambarids (Breinholt et al., 2012), which further illustrates the value of genetic
information for crayfish taxonomy (Owen et al., 2015). Complete mitochondrial genome sequencing of marbled crayfish from diverse sources revealed their genetic homogeneity and strongly suggested a single origin of the known marbled crayfish population (Vogt et al., 2015). In addition, mitochondrial genome sequence analysis
identified considerable genetic differences between marbled crayfish and P. fallax (Fig. 1D). This was further supported by comparative whole-genome sequencing of marbled crayfish and their closest relatives, P. fallax and P. alleni (Gutekunst et al., submitted). Altogether, these findings are consistent with the notion that marbled crayfish represent an independent species.

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So they lost an ability they once had.

 

[Aloysium]

evolution is a scientific theory

Evolution is pseudoscience, pretending that what explains the workings of matter is sufficient to explain the existence of life. That which contributes to a theory of tectonic plates does not go extend into structure that is beyond the material. All we get is a distortion when we reduce a living being to matter and then fill in the subsequent gaps in our understanding of its emergence into existence, with assumptions as to how that matter should behave, when reason states that it does the opposite - mutations are bad and the killing off of organisms is not a means of creation.

the reasons I hear being given for evolution not being a science are mostly about it being something that happened in the past. But those same reasons would say that plate tectonics and magnetic field reversal are not scientific theories because they happened in the past too.

You are hearing wrong.

Appealing to the specialness of humanity as you have done here is called “special pleading”, and is a logical fallacy.

It’s an appeal to reality.

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

How is a small tusk Elephants more fit for survival ? They can face other dangers that don’t come from poachers.

Small tusk elephants are in much less in danger from poachers, who are a major elephant predator, especially on mature adults who are old enough to have calves. Absent the poachers, then small tusks would be deleterious, but the presence of poachers changes the environment and the beneficial/neutral/deleterious balance is always relative to the environment.

Currently those other dangers from small tusks have less impact than poachers. For example, tusk size has an impact on food gathering as tusks can be used to dig for roots. Other dangers, such as disease, are not affected by tusk size.

If all the poachers disappeared overnight, then large tusks would again be beneficial and those genes would start to increase in the population.

rossum

https://news.nationalgeographic.com...ts-lions-attack-prey-predator-animals-africa/

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

evolution is a scientific theory

Evolution is pseudoscience, pretending that what explains the workings of matter is sufficient to explain the existence of life.

Wrong. That’s abiogenesis. A different theory.

That which contributes to a theory of tectonic plates does not go extend into structure that is beyond the material.

Nor does evolution extend beyond the material.

 

[edwest]

It’s good to remember that ‘evolution’ is incomplete and, as such, is materialist only. That does not fit with Church teaching, which overrules such notions. From Humani Generis:

“5. If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principle trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.”