Do all deer share a common ancestor?

You’ve had over 1000 posts to provide a reason for skepticism. At this point it is safe to say there is none.

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No, it’s not. It might be a model of how neutral mutations accumulate in a population, but since it doesn’t take into account deleteriousness, it’s not a model of how deleterious mutations accumulate.

If you can’t understand that modelling deleterious mutations requires modelling their deleterious nature, you should have given up 1000 posts (or a decade) ago.

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I not asking about my arguments I am asking if you see any red flags in his model. I am interested if you take all scientific statements of authority at face value?

Yeah, Lynch explicitly models the Texas Sharpshooter scenario like Behe does, and uses a fantastically low rate of gene duplication derived from the rate at which duplicate genes have been been fixed by selection in yeast. The rate at which duplicate genes are favored by selection to go to fixation is emphatically NOT the rate at which gene duplications occur.

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This is it? :slight_smile:

Lynch has clearly stated that his model is not intended to reflect what happens in reality. Behe has, in the end, also admitted this of his model, though not in a particularly straightforward manner.

I have no reason to doubt that Lynch got the math correct in his model. Do you?

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Nice Gish Gallop. We were discussing your false claims:

He does neither. Why can’t you simply admit that?

No, I am pointing out that Behe ignores existing variation (all Darwin ever observed and noted) and does not explain why.

Yes. That’s it.

Can you think of another? :slightly_smiling_face:

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He assumed all mutations are neutral and they are not. The model is also represents a 2 residue adaption which explains very little about biological innovation.

The most sensitive item in these simulations is the number of residues in the adaption.

I don’t. Why do you take Behe as an authority when he has zero training or experience in the subjects on which he pontificates?

If evolutionary biology is simply wrong, wouldn’t there be many biologists trained in it who would be exposing it? It’s not like there are good jobs available for all of them.

Why do you have so much faith in a mediocre biochemist who refuses to test his own hypotheses?

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Thanks for getting “residue” right. What’s an “adaption”? Is it like an adaptation?

If so, in what way are they at all digital, as Behe tries to model them?

I suggest reading these papers (note the first author!), as the experiments were thorough:

Since I predict that you won’t read them, here’s the money quote from the latter abstract:

Of the 109 barnase positions subjected to substitution, only 15 (14%) are vulnerable to this extreme level of inactivation, and only 2 could not be substituted without such inactivation. A total of 33 substitutions (amounting to 5% of the explored substitutions) were found to render barnase wholly inactive.

That reality is not even remotely consistent with Behe’s assumptions. Where does he note this major weakness?

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I have known Mike for more than 5 years. He is a straight forward as anyone I know. I don’t take his authority on face value I do however think the design argument has some value to science.

What I don’t get is why you object to his arguments. They are philosophically aligned with your thinking as he does not object to evolution as a logical possibility. He just believes we don’t know what the causal mechanism is.

I disagree with him on this point as I do not think the single origin model has adequate support and is misleading to people making conclusions based on it.

Yet you claimed:

When neither is true. It appears that neither of you are being straightforward from my perspective.

You’ve been scammed, Bill.

Yes, you do. See above. You make false claims to support him.

He refuses to test his hypotheses. That makes him a pseudoscientist.

His assumptions have little basis in reality.

No, I think that those claiming to be scientists need to empirically test their hypotheses, not write multiple books aimed at gullible laypeople like you.

If he believed, he would rigorously test his hypotheses. He obviously doesn’t.

Your silly claims that we are assuming common descent instead of testing it are objectively false, too.

False. Lynch:

The mutation process can be summarized as follows. All gene copies mutate to defective nulls at rate μ (per gene per generation). Thus, one-copy alleles (types 1 and 2) mutate to an inviable state at rate μ, as do alleles of types 6 and 7 when the copy with the ancestral function is removed. In addition, two-copy alleles can be converted to functional one-copy alleles in several ways: 4 → 1, 4 → 2, 6 → 1, and 7 → 2 at rate μ; and 3 → 1 and 5 → 2 at rate 2μ. Letting v 0 denote the rate of nonsynonymous mutation per codon (converting one amino acid to another), then the loss of a key amino acid residue causes the following allelic conversions: 2 → 1, 4 → 3, and 7 → 6 at rate v 0; and 5 → 4, 6 → 4, and 7 → 5 at rate 2v 0. Letting v 1=v 0n /19 be the rate of mutation to a gene carrying one key residue from a gene carrying none, and v 2=v 0(n −1)/19 be the rate of mutation to a gene carrying two key residues from a gene carrying one, the conversion to alleles with new key residues can be described as: 1 → 2, 4 → 5, and 6 → 7 at rate v 1; 3 → 4 at rate 2v 1; and 4 → 6 and 5 → 7 at rate 2v 2. Finally, allelic types 2 and 7 are converted to nulls at rate v 2 when the appearance of the new function in a one-residue allele results in the complete loss of ancestral function.

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He’s a con man and you are the mark. He wants you to think he is straightforward and honest. That’s how con men work.

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Perhaps but in my experience the real scammers end up being the ones who attack their opponents personally vs making meaningful arguments.

I will read the papers you cited in the next few days. Do you realize Doug Axe is the first author named?

So who’s the real scammer here?

In my experience, scammers flit from falsehood to falsehood. For example:

Neither of your claims is true. You are trying to cover for Behe’s failures. You are complicit.

Sorry, I don’t believe you.

Yes, I do. Do you realize that he has far more experienced coauthors on those papers, while his execrable 2004 paper is his alone? Something to think about, no?

respect to the original function but also effectively neutral, with one caveat noted belowBased on these observations and in contrast to Behe and Snoke, the following model assumes that the intermediate step toward a two-residue adaptation is nondebilitating with.

From Lynch’s paper.

That doesn’t say they treat all mutations as being neutral. It says that mutations intermediate between the ancestor, and the specific MR feature the model is being asked to produce, are neutral.

In other words, if the MR feature requires two sites (position 121 and 126, say) in the protein to mutate to cysteine for a specific new function to occur, then Lynch assumes any single mutation to cysteine at those two sites, are neutral.

Do you understand?

I agree and thanks for the correction.

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