>> Haldane's limit is not determined (or limited by) by
>> comparisons of genetic distances, but instead is based
>> on population genetics calculations. It simply sets
>> an (upper) limit for the amount of selective (beneficial)
>> substitutions possible within a given amount of time.
Then I guess I don't understand what problem Haldane's Dilemma should create for evolution. Can you explain it? I've read the web pages on it, but I don't "get" it, you know what I mean?
>> So I should look into a pro evolution book for answers
>> on evolution? That is just as bad as learning about
>> it from the jw's. Or is it not a pro evolution book?
Ideally, you should read a totally unbiased book that explains the current thinking about the pro's and con's of all views of how species got to be here, but such a book doesn't exist. So the next best thing is to read both pro and anti evolution information and see what makes the most sense to you. If you only read one or the other, you're doomed to believe whatever the author believes. Give yourself exposure to all sides, then form your own opinion.
Dave
Evolution of Man
by bavman 63 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
-
AlmostAtheist
-
Midget-Sasquatch
Well it looks like Haldane was using alleles as the basic units. Mutations to alleles can involve more than one nucleotide substitution (point mutations). So its sort of misleading and disingenous for Remine to say the model puts a theoretical limit of about 1,667 nucleotide substitutions in a 10 million year stretch. The number of nucleotide changes with each mutation event is different, so he shouldn't be so dogmatic about the number.
An interesting detail that few creationists talk about is that the mathematical model assumes an unchanging population size. How realistic has that been for our species?
Remember that Haldane wrote that theoretical model in the late 50s, without all the genetic sequencing evidence we have today, and himself said that it would likely need "drastic revision". I'd rather look at empirical evidence when I've got it, instead of just a model.
-
LMS-Chef
I did have a class in school about evolution. It never convinced me. I had a lot of classes in Biology and science. The probability of all those things happening to create the complex life that I have learned about is just impossible. Everything we know in our world has a creator. not once has a new discovery been made or an invention been made that wasen't made by someone. I am sure we all agree even if we put all of the pieces if a car into a garage it will never put itself together. If sperm and an egg, the two main ingredients in most of life, would never produce actual life. I know about test tube babies but the sperm is always injected into the egg. Life is very delicate, many little pieces need to work together to make it work. In my opinion not by chance but by design.
Michael
-
peacefulpete
Ultimately the Haldane mathmatical issue was specifically about the date of the common ancestor of Chimps and humans. The fossil evidence says something like 6 million years ago humans and other great apes split ways while these calculations based upon averages and speculation and incomplete understanding of genetics says the common ancestor would have been many millions older, too old to fit the fossil evidence. I see the whole thing as a a statistician's quagmire.
-
AlmostAtheist
The probability of all those things happening to create the complex life that I have learned about is just impossible. Everything we know in our world has a creator. not once has a new discovery been made or an invention been made that wasen't made by someone.
Life is incredibly complex. Computers and space shuttles are incredibly complex, but they pale in comparison to life. And it is reasonable to assume that if all other complex things required a designer, then something even more complex would require a designer. Of course, by that same reasoning God himself would be more complex even than life as we know it, and so he would also have required a designer. It's probably safe to say that you don't feel God had a designer.
Not all complex things require a designer. You and I agree on that, I just bow out one step earlier than you do.
It might be easier to deal with without asking, "Where did life come from?" Evolution only deals with what happened to life once it got here. Whether God created the earliest life forms or not, evolution is only concerned with how that original life form became all the species we see today.
Would you agree that mutations sometimes occur? And would you agree that those mutations will rarely but sometimes be beneficial for the creature receiving them? That is the first step in allowing that creature's descendants to form a new species. Do you feel that if enough mutations accumulate over enough generations, you could come up with a creature that only somewhat resembled the original, and was unable to mate with members of the original population that had not undergone the series of mutations?
Dave
-
LMS-Chef
Would you agree that mutations sometimes occur? And would you agree that those mutations will rarely but sometimes be beneficial for the creature receiving them? That is the first step in allowing that creature's descendants to form a new species. Do you feel that if enough mutations accumulate over enough generations, you could come up with a creature that only somewhat resembled the original, and was unable to mate with members of the original population that had not undergone the series of mutations?
Yes i do argee. Everything adapts. IF things didn't they would die out. but I just don't see a new species coming out of it. No I do not think god had a creator. It is very hard to comprehend for me but I am only an imperfect human. It really is part of my faith. All powerful, will make everything better, knows more about me than myself. But I have been taught that all of my life. I am also not saying that god doesnt maybe use some sort of evolution or adaptation to make species how they are. Noone really know for sure.
Michael
-
AlmostAtheist
IF things didn't they would die out. but I just don't see a new species coming out of it. No I do not think god had a creator. It is very hard to comprehend for me but I am only an imperfect human. It really is part of my faith. All powerful, will make everything better, knows more about me than myself. But I have been taught that all of my life. I am also not saying that god doesnt maybe use some sort of evolution or adaptation to make species how they are. Noone really know for sure.
You've touched on what I think is an important point. Evolution doesn't preclude the existence of God. I think people are under the impression that you have to reject God or at least diminish him in order to accept evolution. On that basis, people reject the entire concept. But evolution isn't incompatible with God at all. Some believe God started life, and let evolution take its course. Others believe he has directed evolution along the way. It's entirely possible to accept evolution AND believe in God at the same time.
The adaptations you mention are referred to as micro-evolution, legs getting stronger to run faster, fur getting thicker when the climate becomes colder, that sort of thing. Macro-evolution refers to a new species arising from those changes. SNG has commented that he doesn't see much of a difference in them, since one is just the accumulation of the other, and I have to agree. For instance, if a certain population of lions found itself in a food-deprived environment, but it couldn't migrate to another area due to envioronmental factors (surrounded by desert, or water, or ice, something), the ones most able to find food would survive. If it turned out that vegetation was more readily available, those that could consume and digest grasses would be more likely to survive. Any mutations that arose to support that would be favored by natural selection. If in time the lion population had flatter teeth (for chewing the grasses), different enzymes (for breaking down the grasses), and a different set of food-gathering techniques (grazing instead of hunting), would it be a lion any more? If you introduced a meat-eating lion back into that population, could they still mate? Likely they couldn't, at which point you would by definition have a new species. The macro-evolution that brought about the new cow-lion, would simply be the accumulation of those tiny changes that allowed the predecessors to survive in their changed environment.
This is arm-chair stuff, I'm not well-versed on the topic. That's why I encourage you to give the idea a fresh look by reading a book by somebody that knows what they're talking about. You've already heard the anti- views, you've heard them all your life. Give the pro- view a look with unbiased eyes, and see what you see. It's no threat to your faith, the two can happily coexist.
Dave
-
hooberus
I'll try to post some more here when I get a little more time.
-
hooberus
Well it looks like Haldane was using alleles as the basic units. Mutations to alleles can involve more than one nucleotide substitution (point mutations). So its sort of misleading and disingenous for Remine to say the model puts a theoretical limit of about 1,667 nucleotide substitutions in a 10 million year stretch. The number of nucleotide changes with each mutation event is different, so he shouldn't be so dogmatic about the number.
I don't think that ReMine made the claim that all the substitutions would have to be single nucleotide substitutions. I believe in his book (my copy is on loan) that he discussed the other types possible (including insertions, deletions, etc.). However, ReMine states that according to evolutionists that substitutions in generally are "typically" single nucleotides, not whole new genes (in the sense of new large DNA blocks).
http://www1.minn.net/~science/index.html
Are the substitutions "genes"?
The thrust of my argument does not speak of a limit of "1,667 gene substitutions." Rather my argument focuses on typical substitutions, which ? according to evolutionists ? are almost always point mutations (a single nucleotide). Yet evolutionists traditionally discussed Haldane's Dilemma in terms of "gene substitutions," which created the false impression that large blocks of new DNA are being replaced, rather than just a single mutation (typically one nucleotide). That habit further obscured the severity of Haldane's Dilemma from public view. In fact, a well-known evolutionary genetics professor from Cornell University expressed shocked resistance when I first explained this point to him: The 1,667 substitutions are typically single nucleotides, not 1,667 whole genes. The substituting 'thing' is a mutation, not a gene. It's a simple concept when explained clearly, though it was habitually overlooked even by professionals at the time. The traditional focus on "gene substitutions" is one of many factors that garbled Haldane's Dilemma for so long.
-
hooberus
http://www1.minn.net/~science/index.html
Regulatory genes?
Mutations to regulatory genes can sometimes have a large biological effect. So, are mutations to "regulatory genes" a solution to Haldane's Dilemma? 1 Brief answer: It scarcely affects Haldane's Dilemma.
Evolutionists do not get to choose the substitutions, say, as "mutations to regulatory genes" or as "mutations with a large biological effect" or as "gene clusters". Rather, evolutionists must accept what nature doles out ? and we can observe what nature doles out. The issue is fundamentally empirical and observable, not one of telling stories about regulatory genes. Take the blend of beneficial substitutions observed in nature. The coloring of melanic moths and the beak size of Galapagos finches are noted examples. Those represent the basic building blocks that nature has to work with, the creative 'power' of nature. Leading evolutionists acknowledge (indeed most of them insist) that substitutions with small effect predominate in evolution. Are 1,667 substitutions (like those) sufficient to create all the human adaptations? The tripling of brain size, fully upright posture, language, speech, hand dexterity, hair distribution, and appreciation of music, to name a few.
It scarcely matters what kind of tall-tales one can devise about regulatory genes. What matters is the blend of the beneficial substitutions observed in nature. Are 1,667 of those sufficient for creating all the human adaptations?
Moreover, when Haldane calculated the total cost of a substitution (=30), he assumed selection coefficients approaching zero, which gives the absolute lowest possible total cost of substitution. The figure rises for higher selection coefficients, and rises especially rapidly when selection coefficients get above one-tenth (s>0.1). Therefore, if evolutionary scenarios invoke high selection coefficients (such as mutations for antibiotic resistance or pesticide resistance), then the total cost of substitution gets quite high ? and the number of substitutions (previously at 1,667) goes to a much lower limit.
In summary, whatever the blend of substitutions, (a) they must correspond to what we observe in nature, and (b) they must meet the cost constraints, (higher selection coefficients will lower the plausible number of substitutions).