Yes, and that is the point of contention. I am saying it is relevant. The effects of harmful mutations would erode the preexisting function resulting in vestigial features between species. We generally would not expect so many examples of these vestigial features from a common design model because it involves only additive mutations in creating advanced life.
Keep in mind as well, there are some examples of vestigial features that pertain specifically to common descent rather than just be another functionless feature within an organism. ERVâs, psuedogenes, and the hemoglobin gene have been used as evidence for CD but they are also cases of random mutations.
Harmful mutations might do that, but those would generally be eliminated by selection. I donât know what you think that would show. I also suspect that by âadditive mutationsâ, you mean something quite different from what a biologist would mean by it. And of course your common design (= separate creation) model doesnât deal with mutations at all. Different genomic features are instead created from nothing at the moment of creation. You donât seem to understand your own model.
Theyâre evidence for common descent whether or not theyâre random, as Iâve been telling you consistently for quite a while now. You have said nothing relevant to the question of creation vs. descent and nothing relevant to the subject of this thread. Not once. You should, I fervently hope, eventually start to realize that.
I have already provided an experiment that illustrates what I mean by âonly additiveâ mutations.
Well, you did not acknowledge this before when I kept mentioning that finding function within vestigial features, such as pseudogenes and ERVâs, makes the common design model potentially useful⌠Moreover, it should allow us to differentiate which species are unrelated.
Then, we can probably end this thread right here if that is how you feel.
We talked about it before. I kept telling you that functional or sequence convergence would allow us to differentiate species but you said this would only support guided evolution not common design.
Comparative anatomy should allow us to differentiate species as well when comparing perceived suboptimal designs between species.
Itâs not âhow I feelâ. Itâs a statement of fact. And if thatâs how you feel, why hasnât the thread been ended after the first reply?
Once again: you are using âspeciesâ when you mean âkindâ; please stop using your private language, as nobody will understand you. So what is your response to the question of guided evolution?
But you have never managed to explain how those examples make your point. How does functional convergence show that species belong to different kinds? How does sequence convergence show this? How does comparative anatomy? Perceived suboptimal designs? You seem to think just mentioning them makes an argument. It doesnât.
Within alleged vestigial features that have specifically been claimed to be leftover remnants from a common ancestor, we should find function relative to survivability, reproduction, and fitting environments. This would show that there was a common design between those kinds of organisms rather than a common ancestor.
For instance, âThe chirality of DNA, RNA, and amino acids is conserved across all known life. As there is no functional advantage to right- or left-handed molecular chirality, the simplest hypothesis is that the choice was made randomly by early organisms and passed on to all extant life through common descent. Further evidence for reconstructing ancestral lineages comes from junk DNA such as pseudogenes, âdeadâ genes that steadily accumulate mutations.â (Wikipedia)
Furthermore, âPhylogenetic relationships extend to a wide variety of nonfunctional sequence elements, including repeats, transposons, pseudogenes, and mutations in protein-coding sequences that do not change the amino-acid sequence. While a minority of these elements might later be found to harbor function, in aggregate they demonstrate that identity must be the product of common descent rather than common function.â (Wikipedia)
I might as well address something else you said that seems to be wrongâŚ
I am guessing you disagree with Ernest Mayr on this point then:
âGiven the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead her or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series. New types often appear quite suddenly, and their immediate ancestors are absent in the earlier geological strata. The discovery of unbroken series of species changing gradually into descending species is very rare. Indeed the fossil record is one of discontinuities, seemingly documenting jumps (saltations) from one type of organisms to a different type.â
I mean to ask why all this evidence you present, if itâs evidence at all, doesnât support a hypothesis of guided evolution rather than separate creation?
No, it wouldnât show any such thing. As has been explained before, itâs not necessary that vestigial features have no function at all, just not the same function as, or as much function as, the feature in relatives.
Your quote doesnât support your claim, not even the part you put in bold, which Iâm therefore guessing you didnât understand.
Still doesnât support your claim. But sure, pseudogenes are extra evidence, perhaps more than functional genes. Even if the pseudogene has a function, why should a creator make it look like a protein-coding sequence in another species?
You misunderstand the reasoning.
There are exceptions to everything. But notice that the reason we know that itâs biased gene transfer is that we have other data that tell us the correct phylogeny.
Yes, I do. Mayr in that little quote ignores taphonomic, stratigraphic, and geographic sampling problems. I wonder what happens in the next paragraph, though. Have you actually read the book or did you pull that quote from a creationist web site?
As there is no functional advantage to right- or left-handed molecular chirality , the simplest hypothesis is that the choice was made randomly by early organisms and passed on to all extant life through common descent. Further evidence for reconstructing ancestral lineages comes from junk DNA such as pseudogenes, âdeadâ genes that steadily accumulate mutations.â (Wikipedia)
Noticed that I specifically said, Within alleged vestigial features that have specifically been claimed to be leftover remnants from a common ancestor
You acknowledged this beforehand when I referenced ERVâs, psuedogenes, and more. Now, you are backtracking again.
If so, the article I gave you explains why you are mistaken. As I pointed out,
âPhylogenetic relationships extend to a wide variety of nonfunctional sequence elements, including repeats, transposons, pseudogenes, and mutations in protein-coding sequences that do not change the amino-acid sequence. While a minority of these elements might later be found to harbor function, in aggregate they demonstrate that identity must be the product of common descent rather than common function.â (Wikipedia)
I have already explained this with the ERV article I gave you. It is to provide a defense mechanism against incoming harmful viruses.
And this means nothing because ,as I said before, the common design model allows for pervasive patterns of common descent. It just rejects universal common descent.
But, how do you know he is actually wrong though. Do you have articles that support your contentions?
No, you quoted already. I have no idea why you think itâs evidence for separate creation.
Yes, you did. But how is that an answer? You must assume that if I didnât see your brilliance the first time around, just repeating the same words will not help.
Either that or the article is mistaken. Wikipedia? Seriously?
No, that explains nothing. And ERVs are not pseudogenes.
Now I no longer know what you mean by âpervasive patterns of common descentâ. You donât apparently mean the same thing that another person would mean.
How do you know heâs right? Did Mayr support his contentions? Or are you just relying on the fact that Mayr is a famous dead guy?
Thereâs no such thing as a little bit of both. Itâs one or the other. Iâm taking that as an admission that you just pulled it from a creationist web site and donât know what came after that quote.
I suspect this one, which has the exact same extract. Other creationist sites have an ellipsis where Luskin has â(saltations)â, both of which are suspicious. Unfortunately I donât have my paper copy handy, so canât check the original text.
The students of diversity raised some observational objections to natural selection. On the basis of the survival of superior individuals and the gradual change of populations, one would expect complete continuity in nature, they claimed. What one actually found was nothing but discontinuities: All species are separated from each other by bridgeless gaps; intermediates between species are not observed. How could the sterility barrier between species have possibly evolved by gradual selection? The problem was even more serious at the level of the higher categories. Higher taxa, like birds and mammals, or beetles and butterflies, are far too distinct from each other, the skeptics said, to permit the explanation of their origin through gradual evolution by natural selection. Furthermore, how can selection explain the origin of new structures like wings, when the incipient new organs can have no selective value until they are large enough to be fully functional? Finally, what is the role of the very small differences among the individuals of a population, seen in all gradual evolution (including geographic variation), when, it was said, the differences are far too small to be of selective significance? The defenders of gradual evolution had to be able to refute these objections and had to provide evidence in favor of a rather formidable list of prerequisites of their theory:
Availability of an inexhaustible supply of individual variation
Heritability of individual variation
A selective advantage of even the slightest variation to be of evolutionary
significance
No limits in the response to selection
An explanation by gradual variation of major evolutionary novelties and the
origin of higher taxa
Neither Darwin nor his supporters were at first able to supply this evidence. As a result the traditional objections were raised again and again, up to recent times, most forcefully by Schinde wolf (1936), Goldschmidt (1940), and some French zoologists (Boesiger, 1980). It was not until the period of the new systematics that Rensch, Mayr, and others demonstrated the populational origin of the discontinuities (Mayr, 1942; 1963) and that the geneticists supplied the evidence on the variation needed to permit natural selection to be effective.
The quoted statement was simply Mayr articulating an objection in order to address it.
Quoting it out of context, as many creationists have, is extremely dishonest.
This, @Meerkat_SK5, is one more reason why a âmodelâ based upon such quote-mines is utterly worthless. The more you quote from such dishonest sources, even after their dishonesties have been pointed out to you, the more you will be viewed as displaying a reckless disregard for the truth.
Mayr wasnât talking about the fossil record at all, despite what @Meerkat_SK5 claimed,(âThe fossil record apparently concurs according to an Ernest Mayre[sick] quote but I am sure you will correct me if I am wrongâ), but about gaps between extant species.
Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to doc- ument a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series. New types often appear quite suddenly, and their immediate ancestors are absent in the earlier geological strata. The discovery of unbroken series of species changing gradually into descending species is very rare. Indeed the fossil record is one of discontinuities, seemingly documenting jumps (saltations) from one type of organism to a dif- ferent type. This raises a puzzling question: Why does the fossil record fail to reflect the gradual change one would expect from evolution?
All of his life Darwin insisted that this is simply due to the unimaginable incompleteness of the fossil record. Only an incredi- bly small fraction of organisms that had once lived are preserved as fossils. Often the fossil-bearing strata were on plates that were sub- sequently subducted and destroyed in the process of plate tectonics. Others were strongly folded, compressed, and metamorphosed, obliterating the fossils. Only a fraction of the fossil-bearing strata is presently exposed at the Earth's surface. But it is even highly improbable that any organism ever becomes fossilized at all, since most dead animals and plants are either eaten by scavengers or decay. They become fossilized only when, immediately after death, they are buried by sediment or volcanic ash. Fortunately, occasionally a rare fossil is found that fills the gap between ancestors and modern descendants. Archaeopteryx, for instance, a primitive fossil bird of the upper Jurassic (145 million years ago), still had teeth, a long tail, and other characteristics of his reptilian ancestors. However, in other respects, for instance in its brain, large eyes, feathers, and wings, it is rather similar to living birds. Fossils that fill a large gap are referred to as missing links. The discovery of Archaeopteryx in 1861 was particularly gratifying because anatomists had already concluded that birds must have descended from reptilian ancestors. Archaeopteryx confirmed their prediction.
Yes, with exactly the same typo, âher or sheâ. That may or may not be the original creationist source, but they at least descend from the same creationist source.
Aha! Mayr does address taphonomy, etc., and so we have a clear quote-mine, and more evidence that @Meerkat_SK5 never read the book heâs supposedly quoting from. This is dishonest and needs to be called out, more so as itâs habitual with him. Itâs not a case of mere misunderstanding. Itâs a deliberate lie.
I find typos invaluable for exposing quote-mine users.
That specific typo occurs in very few of the sites that use that quote-mine. Google finds only two: Luskinâs and this oneâŚ
Given the unlikelihood of @Meerkat_SK5 making the exact same typo as Luskin, itâs clear @Meerkat_SK5 was lying when he cited Mayrâs âWhat evolution isâ directly.
Iâm inclined to give @Meerkat_SK5 the benefit of the doubt on the âdeliberate lieâ question. It is my impression that his misunderstanding is so severe that he cannot tell the difference.
