Creationists' Dismantled Film

here is one possible instance:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05859-7

“Language is complicated, and was never going to be explained by a single mutation in modern humans, Fisher adds.”

Hee hee. You just linked to an article that argues against the very thing you were trying to argue.

I love when you guys do that.

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So when I ask what genetic material couldn’t have evolved, you give me language, which isn’t genetic material. And nobody has claimed language evolved by a single mutation anyway, so… what is the problem?

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Not only that. Here is what the article actually says:

The evolution of human language was once thought to have hinged on changes to a single gene that were so beneficial that they raced through ancient human populations. But an analysis now suggests that this gene, FOXP2 , did not undergo changes in Homo sapiens ’ recent history after all — and that previous findings might simply have been false signals…

The idea that uniquely human changes to FOXP2 led to language development has not gone unchallenged. One study found that Neanderthals carried the same mutations4. This suggested that the modifications to FOXP2 happened before the two groups split, more than half a million years ago.

Despite such questions, the 2002 study has never been repeated. It was based on the genomes of only 20 individuals, including just a handful of people of African ancestry, says Atkinson: most came from Europe, Asia and other regions. She and her team have now re-examined the gene’s evolutionary history using a larger data set and a more diverse population.

They found that the signal that had looked like a selective sweep in the 2002 study was probably a statistical artefact caused by lumping Africans together with Eurasians and other populations. With more — and more varied — genomes to study, the team was able to look for a selective sweep in FOXP2 , separately, in Africans and non-Africans — but found no evidence in either.

Even if there was no recent evolution of FOXP2, there is still plenty of evidence that the gene is involved in language, says Simon Fisher, director of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and a coauthor of the 2002 study. Mutations in FOXP2 cause language disorders in humans, and in mice the gene is important for vocalizations and movement — both functions that are crucial to human speech.

Mice. This gene exists and is involved in functions related to language. In mice.

Good find, @scd

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Incidentally, Liz Atkinson is an acquaintance of mine, and she did the work discussed in that article as a postdoc in the same department I’m in.

I got to see her give a talk on it several years ago - very cool stuff!

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Cool. So did she say anything about how her research proved there is a god? :smirk:

I have no idea what her personal beliefs are, but that topic did not come up.

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I’d be more interested in knowing whether she thinks there’s some genetic difference between humans and chimps that couldn’t have evolved.

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I suspect I know what she would answer. :wink:

But it would really help this discussion if @thoughtful and @scd were to set out clear criteria by which we can determine whether not genetic differences can evolve. Then, if we agree on those criteria, we can go out and see if they are met. But for some reason the creationists are playing that card very close to their chests.

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Citing sources is what you do when you want to support a statement that isn’t otherwise supported by your text. Many of the refutations posted here are self-contained arguments that require no external citations. Mine, for example.

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By the way, what was the outcome the other day when Eric Holloway challenged the human-chimp sequencing? I never saw where @John_Harshman successfully argued-down Eric’s point.

Just because you don’t see things, don’t imagine that they aren’t there. Eric has now agreed that his original “simulation” (which has nothing to do with human-chimp sequencing, incidentally) was flawed and tried another version, which was apparently flawed in the same way, plus additional problems. Most of this happened at The Skeptical Zone, but enough to demonstrate the point happened here. Eric knows about as much about phylogenetics as you do, but at least he’s willing to try.

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In what specific fields are you claiming them to be experts?

I am not going to think it was as simple as that. Where is the link showing his response?

Go find it yourself. Isn’t that what you told someone else to do the other day?

Here. Of course his response displays no understanding of the problem. If you think it’s about human-chimp sequencing your problems greatly exceed his.

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(Ok, primate. Big deal.) I don’t see in the comments where you convincingly overturned his analysis. Nor does he agree that you did so.

Why did you not update us here on PS?

No, not primates either. Where did you get these notions?

How would you know, given that you have no understanding whatsoever of phylogenetics?

I will agree that he doesn’t seem to understand what his problem is. But he did change his program in response. That the changes were nonsensical doesn’t alter the implicit admission that his first version had problems, even if he doesn’t have a clue what they were.

Anyone who cared could have looked at TSZ, where the original link led.

This is way off-topic for this thread. There’s a thread where it would have been on-topic. Would it be necessary to lead you there?

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Wow. I don’t know if I have ever seen you dodge like this before and throw hay in the air. This is really interesting.

I don’t think you successfully argued his point down. You are going to have to do better than that to convince us.

Hey everybody here. I ditto this lady’s challenge to you all. I too have not seen any good citations to overthrow this very excellent YEC film.