Jonathan, I’ve asked Swamidass specifically what is “fantastical” about my model and he has not answered me. I suspect the reason he has not answered has more to do with the amount of time he can spend on this forum but the problem remains that I am not receiving the feedback I need to see what you and some others think is wrong with my model. I have found one or two possible errors in my model as a result of this thread and for that I am grateful, but I need more discussion to better understand them and to be more certain that these are errors. I do not dismiss people’s claims that I do not understand the science, but I need to hear what they think I have wrong.
The last statement of mine you cited (above) is taken completely out of context. Just read my argument which preceded this statement. On this point John has essentially admitted that he was in error. So my response here has nothing to do with someone demonstrating that I do not understand the science. If the only way you can make your arguments is by quoting someone out of context, you show that you do not know how to argue rationally.
But it appears that what you call the normal evolutionary view is a particular variation of what the evidence tells us. However gradual the process might be, there is a last mutation which will with the accumulated genes of the past turn on certain characteristics. Even if it is a small amount of change, it could be quite distinct from what existed previously.
You have received detailed feedback on what people think is wrong with your model, and for the most part you have ignored it.
It is not taken out of context. I cited it as an example of you dismissing John’s statements. Place it in context, and it is exactly that; an example of you dismissing John’s statements. I see no evidence that John has “admitted he was in error”.
On the contrary, John has just responded like this.
It does not appear to me that he believes you are correct and he is wrong.
The issue is that genetics doesn’t transmit reliably. It is hard to see how, for example, all of AEs children would have the genetics to be fully human.
I have addressed this: Survival advantage, at least after some time, though possibly even at first. If there was no survival advantage at first, it could have spread randomly but still remained in the population. Greater intelligence would be the most likely survival advantage. The disadvantage of this greater intelligence occurring at first is that it makes the initial difference between the humans and the non-humans more distinct than I had lately suggested. So it would be not only spiritual and moral awareness but also greater intelligence.
Here I suspect that you will respond by claiming that these characteristics present too significant a difference between H (humans) and N, their non-human predecessors given your gradualist view. But I don’t see how you could demonstrate this. More importantly, this response would not acknowledge that I had offered an alternate explanation even if you are correct. If you say (as you have) that even spiritual and moral awareness and responsibility are alone too great a difference (which I’ve contested), then again you need to remember that I have already offered a scenario to accommodate your gradualism. God may determine at what point along the continuum one has enough spiritual and moral awareness to be considered human.
I know I’ve commented on this post already but I had one other question I needed to raise.
I need to ask you whether you do have a clear definition of humanness since you speak so much of the gradual change from non-human to human and the lack of any distinction between the two. If you see no essential difference between us and any other animal, how can you be morally repulsed at the notion of bestiality? Wouldn’t we all just be animals who are interbreeding with other animals who are just a little different from ourselves? If animals interbreed with other animals, how is that bestiality?
My main objection is that you make up everything as you go along, constantly changing your scenario by introducing ad hoc modifications. Now we have a recessive allele, apparently, that confers greater intelligence along with spiritual and moral consciousness. One allele does all that? But how does it spread before homozygotes become common enough to make a substantial part of the population? “Randomly” doesn’t cut it; that needs another miracle to prevent the fate of most neutral mutations, a quick extinction in one or two generations.
No. There can be no clear definition just as there can be no clear definition of “red” that distinguishes is completely from “orange”.
I don’t want to meddle in whatever weird fetishes you’re into.
Nothing wrong with incest? Please tell me about morally okay incest? Are you saying that there is such as thing as legitimate incest? I guess that goes with legitimate rape in the bible.
Even if this neutral mutation wasn’t lost in a few generations, it would take it (on average) something like a million years for everyone in the population to have two copies of it.
Not exactly. It’s neutral only in a heterozygote and supposedly very beneficial in a homozygote (for some reason I don’t know, it’s supposed to be recessive). So if it drifts up to a reasonable frequency so that homozygotes happen often enough, it will sweep to fixation. Mind you, Dennis hasn’t thought this out at all. The mutation arises in Adam, and as such he’s a heterozygote, and thus doesn’t have the advantageous phenotype. His daughter (and wife) has only a 50% chance to carry the mutation, and also doesnt possess the phenotype. And if she does get the mutation, only a quarter of their kids will be homozygotes. Perhaps Cain was the first true human? Or maybe Seth.
Way out of my field. But I did find this paper from Kimura. Fig. 2 is interesting. Mind you, he assumes a panmictic population. And I believe it shows time to fixation of an allele given that it eventually becomes fixed, thus ignoring the whole rapid extinction bit. Unfortunately, it also assumes the possibility of multiple mutations in the population, i.e. that there is a finite mutation rate with Adam not the only possible source. What do you have?
Under certain conditions, time to fixation of a recessive allele can be shorter than for a dominant allele, because the dominant deleterious allele can’t hide in the population at low frequencies. Once the frequency of the recessive becomes >.5, it goes quite fast.