Behe vindicated, again!

[T.j_Runyon]

@NLENTS

You are mistaking that something happened with how it happened.”

Another popular one is “saying it looks like it evolved isn’t the same thing as demonstrating that it did.”

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

@BenKissling

This conclusion depends on the likelihood of constructive, beneficial mutations actually existing, which has not been demonstrated.

It appears that you never bothered to look before pontificating:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&pmid=25722415

Can an Arbitrary Sequence Evolve Towards Acquiring a Biological Function? -...

[jorronet]

In your second paper it says this , just a question, who selected it?
“Each generation consists of a maximum of ten arbitrarily chosen clones, whereby the clone with highest infectivity was selected to be the parent clone of the generation that followed.”

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Rumraket

@Giltil

Do you think that the white color of the polar bear could revert to the brown color by RV+NS?

That it could? Yes. It could. Even by the reverting all the same mutations, that could theoretically happen.

But given the myriad other potential routes to a darker fur colour, many of which are likely to require less mutations, in practice it wouldn’t.

[Mercer (John Mercer)]

Despite the use of the passive tense, I think that it is obvious that the researchers did the selecting.

How is that in any way relevant to the fact that both of these papers objectively falsify the claim:

@BenKissling

This conclusion depends on the likelihood of constructive, beneficial mutations actually existing, which has not been demonstrated.

???

[NLENTS (Nathan H. Lents)]

@T_aquaticus

you think human evolution is the product of loss of function? Did the human brain get bigger over time because of a loss of function?

Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast. They get to fill in any events contrary to Behe’s first rool (sic) with the act of the designer. See how that works? Evolution only breaks things. When things get built up, that had to be God.

[NLENTS (Nathan H. Lents)]

There’s no functional difference between a mutation being “fixed in a population” and working with a mutant strain in the laboratory. You are insisting on discussing the former, while dismissing the latter because the latter shows your misunderstanding and the former can only be pontificated about. Others have given you other kinds of examples, but none of us have any illusions that they will convince you. If evidence convinced you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.

[NLENTS (Nathan H. Lents)]

@swamidass

There is no good way to do a “control” experiment with and without ID, so any experimental data against a particular claim can be spun as evidence for ID, rather than evidence against the claim.

But that’s because they’ve arranged their argument that way. Rather than marshaling evidence for their position, they’ve taken to crafting it more carefully so as to make it unassailable by scientific evidence. The problem with that approach is that it also makes it unsupportable by scientific evidence, which brings the whole thing back to the starting point… it isn’t science, it’s theology.

[T_aquaticus]

@NLENTS

Ah, ah, ah. Not so fast. They get to fill in any events contrary to Behe’s first rool (sic) with the act of the designer. See how that works? Evolution only breaks things. When things get built up, that had to be God.

Heads they win, tails we lose. When you are addressing an ideology that starts with the conclusion you will have those who are blind to the errors in their logic due to the simple fact that they didn’t use logic to get to their conclusion. Do any of us think that Behe exhaustively researched the genetic causes of adaptations before writing his “first rule”?

[BenKissling (YEC/ID)]

@T_aquaticus

Do any of us think that Behe exhaustively researched the genetic causes of adaptations before writing his “first rule”?

I do.

[Timothy_Horton]

Why? His cherry-picked data indicates otherwise.

[Faizal_Ali]

@T_aquaticus

Do you think human evolution is the product of loss of function? Did the human brain get bigger over time because of a loss of function?

Sure. If we still had reptilian brains, we’d just leave our young to fend for themselves after their birth. That ability is now broken, and we can probably never regain it.

Just one more example of how Behe is vindicated, again !!!

[Timothy_Horton]

@Faizal_Ali

Sure. If we still had reptilian brains, we’d just leave our young to fend for themselves after their birth. That ability is now broken, and we can probably never regain it.

Just one more example of how Behe is vindicated, again !!!

When bats evolved it broke the ability they had to not fly.

Checkmate Evos!

[Faizal_Ali]

Behe is right, and so what?

Give MIchael Behe credit. He has somehow managed to build a career as a “scientific” writer by taking ridiculously simple and trivial ideas, giving them a big fancy name, and selling it to the public as some major breakthrough. First was “irreducible complexity”, which can be summarized as “If you break or remove some of the parts of a mechanical system, often it stops working.” Human beings have probably known this since pre-history. But thru savvy marketing, Behe managed to sell a lot of books to people who were convinced he had found scientific evidence for God. Next came the “Edge of Evolution.” Here, he expounded on the radical (in his mind) idea that certain traits require so many mutations that they are highly unlikely to ever arise thru evolutionary mechanisms. To which one would be tempted to respond “Thank you for pointing that out to us, Captain Obvious. Here I was, wondering why no pigeons had yet evolved to have a functioning nuclear reactor powering their wings.” …

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Giltil

@Giltil

My statement is true. To see this, you have to consider that I am talking about a loss of function but beneficial mutation that has been fixed in a population. Do you think that the white color of the polar bear could revert to the brown color by RV+NS?

Your statement is 100% false. A simple well know example is the evolutionary history of the peppered moth Biston betularia . Before 1800 the species existed in only one variety, a light colored one which it gave it camouflage when it rested on light colored surfaces such as walls and tree trunks. When the industrial revolution began in England and soot darkened most of the moths’ landing surfaces a mutation to produce a dark version arose. This dark form was such effective camouflage it rapidly spread through the population until by 1895 the dark form accounted for 98% of the moth population. Beginning in the 1960’s there was a huge pollution clean-up campaign begun in England which returned the moths’ landing surface to light colored. Moth populations have now evolved back to being almost all the light colored variety.

My statement is true and your counter example utterly fails because it doesn’t at all document the reversion to a functional state of a broken gene that has spread in a population as a result of adaptive loss of function. I invite you to actualize your knowledge about the molecular mechanisms underpinning industrial melanism in peppered moths.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17951

@Timothy_Horton

The bottom line is - evolution just doesn’t care about your unscientific Creationist beliefs.

LOL

[Timothy_Horton]

@Giltil

My statement is true and your counter example utterly fails because it doesn’t at all document the reversion to a functional state of a broken gene that has spread in a population as a result of adaptive loss of function

You were skeptical of the idea white polar bears couldn’t evolve back into being brown. I merely showed what a ridiculous idea that was. Do you understand at least why your claim was so ridiculous?

BTW I hope you didn’t strain your back pushing those goalposts all the way across the field.

[T_aquaticus]

@Giltil

My statement is true and your counter example utterly fails because it doesn’t at all document the reversion to a functional state of a broken gene that has spread in a population as a result of adaptive loss of function.

Can you point to a single positive example? Can you point to an ancestral and modified genome where a change from one to the other, made by the supposed designer, resulted in a gain of function?

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@Timothy_Horton

You were skeptical of the idea white polar bears couldn’t evolve back into being brown. I merely showed what a ridiculous idea that was. Do you understand at least why your claim was so ridiculous?

Sorry but by your answer here, you clearly manifest that you don’t understand the science behind this dispute. To tell you the truth, I am a bit disappointed for I expected better from you .

[T_aquaticus]

@Giltil

Sorry but by your answer here, you clearly manifest that you don’t understand the science behind this dispute.

If mutations in the polar bear changed the polar bear gene so that it is identical to the brown bear gene, would the polar bear have brown fur?

[Timothy_Horton]

@Giltil

Sorry but by your answer here, you clearly manifest that you don’t understand the science behind this dispute.

LOL! You can always count on Creationist bluster to hide their embarrassment when they face plant. Did you ever figure out how speciation works or why life has been on the planet 3.5 billion years?