Even though we can observe retroviruses inserting randomly into host genomes and producing ERV’s, you refuse to accept this as a mechanism. Is that correct?
WE OBSERVE IT.
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Why are you not able to test the feasibility of fixation?
You did not observe all the events that lead to fixation in the population. You need a model based on the frequency of mutation, the frequency of positive mutations, the population size, the frequency of deleterious mutations.
These models exist today so once you have the above numbers established you can test the hypothesis.
How is fixation not feasible???
What are you smoking???
Do you know how inheritance works? Did you know that parents pass down their DNA?
Geez, it’s almost like we need a branch of biology that deals with the dynamics of genetics in a population. You know . . . we could call it POPULATION GENETICS!!!
For crying out loud . . .
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I did not make this claim.
The rest of your argument which you have been making for years is we observe X so X is the cause of Y.
So create a model and test it if you think the number of observed ERV mutations are of random origin.
I will give you the last word.
FALSE!!!
We observe X causing Y. THAT IS WHAT WE ARE SAYING!! WE OBSERVE RETROVIRUSES CREATING ERV’S!!!
The models already exist. The models in population genetics show multiple routes for a single mutation occurring in a single individual reaching fixation. This can be through bottlenecks, selection, or neutral drift in an idealized population.
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There’s no point in shouting. Bill won’t hear you in any case.
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Another rousing victory for Intelligent Design. They must be giddy with so much win.
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Hopefully other people can now see why it is a fool’s errand to try and meet requests made by ID/creationists. They have no intention of considering any of the evidence they ask for.
For example, they ask for observed instances of evolution producing an irreducibly complex system. We can see in this very thread what their response will be:
“Well, maybe that irreducibly complex system you are pointing to evolved, but you are just assuming the rest of the IC systems evolved.”
That’s going to be their response. Short of a time machine, there is no evidence they would ever accept if it goes against the beliefs they already hold, even the very evidence they ask for.
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No, why would it be expected on common design? You think God created all species to look very similar to one another, and since then they’ve been getting more and more different?
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Well, that was a very unfruitful discussion. For all their talk about the evils of methodological naturalism, they sure seem to be presupposing methodological supernaturalism. Anything we can’t explain – and even most of what we can explain – has to be caused directly by God, on their view.
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It might, depending on the model of creation. It could be that all life was, for example, created with a single, identical sequence of cytochrome c, and deviations from that form then occurred by independent evolution along each lineage. A star tree, in other words. In such a case, divergence from the initial form would be expected. What would not be expected would be any sort of nested hierarchy in those differences. But of course reconstructed ancestors depend on that nested hierarchy, so Bill would need a hybrid model in which it’s a tree down to a certain point, the ancestral node of each “kind”, and a star tree from there. But of course we don’t see that either. So Bill’s model fails.
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The problem is, in order to explain the ancestral convergence data, they would have to assume that God created the original bilaterian ‘kinds’ with almost exactly the same genome. And that just ends up confirming a sort of common ancestry anyway, with all bilaterians evolving from one original genome.
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Well, to be fair, only for those genes that supply the convergence data. And only for genes that could supply that data, i.e. genes found in all bilaterians. Presumably genes found in only some taxa and various non-genic sequences could be enough to cause the important differences. Of course I don’t know what taxa are being compared or what genes are being compared, and I haven’t looked. And Bill doesn’t know what taxa he thinks are “kinds” either. So there’s no way to compare.
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Good points. Either way, there is no common design/separate ancestry model that can explain all of the data without invoking some sort of duplicitous deity.
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That would be a considerable improvement in terms of coherence and intelligibility over what we typically see here from @colewd and his likes. I find it hard to make my brain operate in a matter that would produce something that hey would come up with, even hypothetically.
The thing is, Bill obviously reads lots of things written by the ID Neo-creationists. Why, then, is he so utterly clueless regarding the barest basics of how genetic inheritance operates? Do the ID proponents not care whether their followers have a grasp of basic biology in order to better understand the arguments those proponents make? Read any article or book about evolutionary biology intended for a lay reader and you can be certain they will cover the background information necessary to understand what is being discussed.
It seems obvious to me why ID proponents do not do the same: It is only to their advantage to have their followers and potential financial supporters remain as ignorant as possible.
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The evils of methodological naturalism. Who has made this claim? We need to recognize points were methodological naturalism which works for most of science may be misleading.
Evolutionary arguments need to be challenged by alternative theories be it YEC OEC or ID. Without a counter argument (separate creation) we just assume universal common descent. If there was actually multiple origin events they will never be discovered with this strategy.
You do – repeatedly. “Constraints of methodological naturalism” is one of your stock (generally irrelevant) objections, that you bring up whenever you cannot think of anything intelligent to say.
Given that you have never demonstrated that MN is misleading, no we don’t “need to”. All we need to do is shrug and think ‘just another one of Bill Cole’s stock non sequitors’, and then move on.
Neither presents any substantive challenge. YEC is just a grab-bag of piecemeal, at-times mutually-contradictory, frequently mutually-disagreed-on claims. ID has no positive theory – it is just a collection of (debunked) arguments as to ‘why evolution is impossible’.
No we don’t. We accept it on the basis of a vast amount of evidence of common descent – evidence that you consistently ignore and/or fail to understand at any level (even when explained to you in excruciating detail).
‘Special creation’/“separate creation” fulfills no function in this research. It is too amorphous to be an adequate comparator.
“If there was actually multiple origin events” and there is sufficient evidence of them, then the Theory of Evolution will be modified to account for this evidence. Lacking such evidence, this is all just speculation.
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When I first heard of evolution, I assumed multiple origin events. The evidence convinced me that was mistaken.
The funny thing about creationists, is that they want the origin events to be where they could not reasonably be (with mammalia, for example).
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It is not just a lack of evidence. There is clear and conclusive evidence, from multiple lines, that “separate origins”, in the sense Bill is using, is not the case. Among of the falsehoods Bill peddles is that common descent cannot be, and has not been, tested.
Easily understood when one realizes their guiding principle is “I ain’t no ape.”
Behe is one exception, only because his particular religion is OK with people being apes.
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Hi Neal
I honestly don’t care where the origin events are as long as they are based on evidence. The claim of incontrovertible evidence for a single origin is nonsense. The reality is we have no clue how the eukaryotic cell originated as it has a completely different architecture then prokaryotic cells. The same goes for many other origin events leading to humans.
I have shown very strong evidence for multiple origin events in vertebrates but evolutionist dismiss it with genes are gained and genes are lost with out any detail.
The ERV argument seems strong until you try to model the origin of the ERV’s fixed in populations and then it falls apart. On another post a professor tries to paint Nathaniel Jeanson (PHD/YEC) as a wacko yet he is offering a tested hypotheses.
When are evolutionary biologists going to take alternative theories or models seriously? It’s been 50 years since the sequence problem was surfaced at Wistar…
On a more optimistic note I do see @dsterncardinale engaging Nathaniel Jeanson. I hope he continues to do so and not cave to the pressure of evolutionary group think.