Do all deer share a common ancestor?

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704

So you admit Behe deliberately constructed his model to defy reality. The fact that Behe tossed one vaguely generous assumption in there is enough for you to excuse and special plead for all his numerous and much more intentionally restrictive (and, as he even admits in the paper, physically unrealistic) assumptions.

Please do the math that shows how the different model parameters affect the outcome. I mean if you claim to know which part of the model is “most sensitive” you must have done the modeling, right?

Pleas show that Behe’s one generous assumption is equally balanced out by all the restrictive assumptions he makes. That’s what you said above is the result. That he “balanced out” the issue of the assumptions. So you must think this equalizes the result. That his one generous, and numerous restrictive assumptions, in total contribute equally in opposite directions to his computed waiting time.

This is a rhetorical request. You are incapable of showing this and we all know it. You know it too and you knew it when you said it. You lied. Gave false witness.

Completely irrelevant because Behe isn’t modeling the divergence of WNT family members. It has zero relevance to the Venn diagrams or common descent.

Also you have no idea whether any of the WNT proteins have a novel function, or how many of the differences between different family members are required to specify any presumed new function is irrelevant.

You also have no idea whether any putative novel function required the protein to go through strongly deleterious intermediates.

You have no idea how many mutations it would take. You have no idea where in the process of divergence any putative novel function occurred, be that at the 1st, 23rd, 57th, or 100th mutation.

It could technically be at any point, so merely showing the total amount of differences between two homologous proteins doesn’t tell you whether it has new functions, nor how many of them are required to enable it.

I have already explained all of this to you before and you ignored it. You understand nothing of the subject. You’re a know-nothing blatherer. You don’t understand what Behe is doing, and you don’t understand that it isn’t relevant to what you are arguing. You’re just repeating the same small collection of memorized catchphrases over and over again, harping on the same long-debunked nonsense.

Here’s a collection of paper actually relevant to the WNT family divergence:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00238-8

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705

You have no clue about the Texas sharpshooter problem, unfortunately.

That’s a buzzphrase. But what does it mean?

After what amount of time? Ask yourself that one.

706

“it could be at any point” is always a claim you can make as science is tentative. For evolution to explain the various Venn diagrams the new functions must be close to the duplicated sequence. If we find this is not generally true this invalidates the single origin hypothesis.

What makes the WNT duplication hypothesis a difficult claim is that the like WNTs are preserved.
The receptor the WNTs bind to is also preserved
The different WNT and frizzled receptors have hundreds of amino acid differences.

Why are the various WNT sequences not close to each other? How did the duplicated gene retain function with this much random change?

Do you still believe the spliceosome was constructed by gene duplication and divergence :slight_smile:

Do you know the history behind this label being used in these debates? @AlanFox should because of extensive discussion at TSZ. Here is Gpuccio’s response to DNA Jocks misuse of this label.

https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/defending-intelligent-design-theory-why-targets-are-real-targets-propabilities-real-probabilities-and-the-texas-sharp-shooter-fallacy-does-not-apply-at-all/

In means that total sequence space is very large and functional space is a small subset of it. DNA and proteins are sequences. Based on this random change will move a functional sequence toward non function.

How is it possible for a duplicated gene to randomly change this much and maintain function?

707

Is there a reason I should actually look this up? If so, what is it?

I do believe that the problems with that claim have been explained to you quite a few times to no effect. I see no point in repetition.

Apparently the adaptive peak it’s on is rather large or at least has changed position over time.

708

The tentative nature of science is irrelevant to the point. If ten mutations accumulate in a protein, and one of them confers a new function, then the fact that there’s 10 of them in total that have accumulated is irrelevant. In the span of 2 years over 40 mutations accumulated in the spike protein of SARS-Cov2. None of them are required to have conferred a new function, and even if one or more of them did, the fact that there’s >40 in total is irrelevant to when the function-creating ones occurred.

What new functions? The Venn diagrams don’t show any new functions. And no, they don’t have to be “close”. If a new function evolved it could be the 1st, or the 100th difference or more. That just means that either the new function came early after divergence(long ago), or late(closer to the present). It doesn’t tell you when.

Still irrelevant to common descent what the source of novel genes is. Behe accepts common descent, but thinks design interventions are required. That’s still common descent.

Is there a future possible where you gain the cognitive capacity to understand this extremely simple fact?

No, the papers I linked show there’s nothing difficult about it. At all.

Which is an expected outcome of drift under purifying selection. Read the papers.

They also share common ancestry something like 800 million years ago for the most diverged members. As expected from the slow drifting apart in sequence space over such eons of time.

Time since their common ancestry has allowed mutations to accumulate. Read the papers I linked.

Because purifying selection never stopped. Read the papers I linked.

Have you wished something into existence yet? :clown_face:

709

It is not a “label” Bill, it is an “informal fallacy” – i.e. something that is wrong as a matter of logic.

Given that:

  1. Gpuccio has expertise in neither population genetics nor logic;

  2. Gpuccio’s claims discussed on the Intelligent Design and design detection thread demonstrated extremely muddled thinking on his part; and

  3. Uncommon Descent’s notoriously low standards,

why would you expect anybody to bother reading his 9000-word screed on that site?

To defend a position that nobody seems to find credible, you have directed us to an overly-long screed by somebody who we don’t see as credible, published on a site that we don’t see as credible.

710

Thank you Bill for immediately demonstrating @Rumraket’s point. Your repeated invocation of Venn diagrams is yet another example of this. The Venn diagrams provide no information on whether or which of the genes summarised in it perform “new functions”, or whether their divergence was due to “duplicated sequence”.

Likewise, these Venn diagrams provide no information on whether the WNT gene has changed between the species surveyed, or how much it has changed if it has done so – rendering WNT likewise irrelevant.

These Venn diagrams provide no basis for analysing the plausibility of Common Descent. Your continued invocation of them will simply be taken as further evidence of the utter vacuity of ID, and possibly as the basis for part of a game of Bill Cole Talking Point Bingo.

711

Some years ago. Gpuccio was allowed to express his view on this site in a special, very unusual way, ie through a dedicated thread only open to the scholars frequenting this site. Quite a strange state of affairs for someone nobody here sees as credible!

You don’t need to be an expert in logic to think logically.

712

Well, that’s certainly an argument that’s been used before, and the fact that you make it is an argument against giving creationists a platform, because they’ll use it to claim credibility. No good deed goes unpunished, apparently.

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713

:rofl:

That is hardly unusual on this forum. And certainly not an indication that the individual so ‘honored’ is worthy of any credibility.

Gpuccio doesn’t “think logically” – his “analysis of the jump of functional information” turned out to be nothing more than an extended fallacy of equivocation.

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714

Unfortunately they also take ignoring them as an admission that they’re right. :roll_eyes:

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715

The use of logical fallacies like ad hominem attacks, arguments from authority and straw-man arguments are usually in the tool box of the side with the weaker position. Gpuccio is a logical thinker and very articulate in his second language. His ideas around information jumps in evolutionary history are quite interesting.

To understand that you are misusing the term. Genes are functional sequences not random sequences. This is equivalent to seeing a recognizable pattern to the bullets vs the shooter generating the illusion of a pattern with an after the fact target.

There are no problems with this clam as it is mathematically sound. Start randomly mutating your phone number and see when it stops making US based calls. 3 X 10^8 phones vs 10^10 total possible phone numbers. For every actual phone number there are 30 numbers that don’t successfully call someone.

Behe model is based on an average of 14 out of 19 possible AA substitutions causing a null allele. This makes a duplicated gene remaining functional after 20 random substitutions a black swan event.

716

You don’t understand the Texas sharpshooter problem and never have, especially as it applies to your “waiting time” claims. But to address your word salad, functional sequences can also be random sequences. Various studies show a high proportion of random sequences demonstrating a particular function. Consider that the proportion would be higher if the assay were for any function rather than some particular one. But of course we’ve been over that many times. But here we are again, despite the continuing absence of a point in repetition. Still, I will refrain from further comment.

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717

It is

It is

718

The "“any function will do” claim is much closer to the TSS fallacy than anything the ID guys proposed. Biology requires many specific functions to allow animals to sustain life and reproduce.

719

Gpuccio is not a creationist, not at all. Now are you advocating that interesting people that don’t share your views should not be allowed a fair hearing?

Aren’t you patronizing here?

720

Exactly ! And I would add censorship to the tool box of the side with the weaker position.

721

Not this fatuous argument again. No, someone being given a platform doesn’t mean they are taken to be credible, merely influential enough that their views deserve a proper thrashing in a public way.

By your own logic, considering how desperate ID-creationists of various sorts have been to debate scientists and biologists on all sorts of topics, for decades, that seems to indicate they consider these many scientists extremely highly credible.

722

Your attempt at reasoning is impenetrable.

I’m not quite sure what he is. You may be right. But feel free to substitute some other term, perhaps “cargo cult scientist”.

No. Are you saying you’re a communist?

I don’t see it that way, certainly. You are trying to use his being granted an opportunity to present his views as an endorsement or legitimization of those views. I merely point out that nothing of the sort is actually implied, and that this assumption of legitimacy is an argument against engagement. What’s incorrect about any of that?

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723

And yet you’ve both utterly failed to defend them.