Evolution of Man

by bavman 63 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  hooberus

  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.

  Haldane's dillemma is not about the alleged ape-human common ancestor, but instead about evolutionary limits within a lineage. For example the date ReMine uses is not the ape-human date but an older one (10 million years). Haldane's Dillemma is potentially applicable to all higher vertebrate evolution (such as the alleged evolution from a four-legged wolf, cow, hippo, like creature to large sea-going whales).
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  Midget-Sasquatch

  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.).

  Yes, you're right there because just today, I was talking with a YEC'er and he brought up Haldane's Dilemma. Well, I asked about the allele or single nucleotide thingy and he said that Remine for illustrative purposes broke up the maximum 1667 substitutions, into rough groups something like 1500 of them would be point mutations, then 100 another kind of mutation, etc. So I'll amend my opinion: He's not entirely dogmatic about the numbers. But I still think he's willingly choosing to overlook a well known fact about single nucleotide substitutions that I believe has a bearing on his argument.

  However, keep in mind that a gene substitution can involve only a single nucleotide difference and ReMine states that according to evolutionists that substitutions in genearl are "typically" single nucleotides, not whole new genes.

  Its true that most mutations are point mutations. So it would seem logical to also say that most beneficial mutations are of this sort then. But are they really?

  As far as I know, single nucleotide substitutions are mostly neutral so there'd be nothing for selection to work on. There are also some point mutations that are deleterious and even fewer that are beneficial. It doesn't seem like it would be the main source for beneficial mutations. Its not impossible, but there's other info to consider.

  I've read that a number of new genes beneficial mutations are found to be duplicates of other genes, modified over time by deletions, insertions, etc. to have a new function. Now that takes multiple nucleotide substitutions. Thats why I don't think Remine can go with even a rough figure of 1500 nucleotides plus any remainder. But all of this is really useless number wrangling, because the Haldane model itself is an unproven theoretical model.
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  AlmostAtheist

  Sorry to be the dunce of the crowd here, but I still just don't get it. What dilemma is it exactly that Haldane is pointing to? I can't help but feel like he's pointing to a current man, saying that there are only x mutations that could be made in a given amount of time, and the dilemma is that not enough time has passed to do that. But doesn't this require knowing the starting point?
  
  I believe based on what you've already said that it doesn't require knowing the starting point, but that's what I don't understand.
  
  Thanks for being patient with me on this one.
  
  Dave
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  Midget-Sasquatch

  I can't help but feel like he's pointing to a current man, saying that there are only x mutations that could be made in a given amount of time, and the dilemma is that not enough time has passed to do that. But doesn't this require knowing the starting point?

  You've got their line of reasoning down pat. And I agree with you, to throw around specific figures you have to a have a specific starting point. Without the DNA of the human-chimp ancestor we really can't empirically say just how many mutations occurred to result in modern man. To compare humans and chimps you'd also have to figure that chimps have diverged from that shared ancestor as well. By how much? Once we've got all the genomes of humans and chimps sequenced we'll get a better idea.

  Methinks the YECers are saying: We'll choose a starting point of 10 million years ago. So we're giving the process nearly double the time you evolutionists say passed from the human chimpanzee split. But even with all that time the limit is still a puny 1,667 substitutions. In your face Darwin!

  Haldane did that theoretical model in the late 50s before the boom in good DNA data. They like to have things both ways. Evolution is too slow for humans to apes but its totally possible to have that massive burst of speciation in the shorter time from the Flood.