Disagree. For example, while most of us have trichromatic color vision, a rare percentage have tetrachromatic color vision.
While trichromats can see about 1 million colors, tetrachromats may be able to see an incredible 100 million colors, according to Jay Neitz, PhD, an ophthalmology professor at the University of Washington, who has studied color vision extensively.
Another fine example is synesthesia. I assume these are neutral mutations since they don’t seem to help nor hurt survival.
Related to this is supernumerary organs. In addition to extra teeth and nipples, extra kidneys and spleens, for example, have been discovered in perfectly healthy people. I can see where a mutation to such an organ could lead toward a new or additional function, and after many generations, a wholly new type of organ.
Hi scd,
You have speculation.
Lenski and the rest of the biological community have enormous amounts of data that contradict your speculation. Neutral mutations sustained across tens of thousands of generations have been documented. A series of neutral mutations accumulated over millions of generations resulted in antifreeze proteins in Arctic fish. Biology journals abound with peer-reviewed studies about neutral mutations sustained over very long times and fixed, eventually, when they contributed to new functionality.
Dozens of such neutral mutations have been observed in the LTEE alone.
So let’s see: I have to choose between your speculation, on the one hand, and peer-reviewed data and studies on the other. I think I’ll go with the peer-reviewed studies.
Best,
Chris
That doesn’t answer @scd’s obection. He is asking about the evolution of “new body parts.” So, according to his scientific understanding of the theory of evolution, we should be seeing a child born tomorrow with completely new light sensing organs, completely unlike eyes, sprouting out of his head, or some other bodily location, capable of perceiving EM radiation frequencies the rest of us cannot us perceive visually, thru some sense beyond the ones we all have.
Because @scd understands evolution so perfectly well, of course!
I suspect that is his best response.
Yeah seems like the air was let out of that balloon.
It’s highly relevant that you have no idea how biologists understand evolutionary mechanisms to work. You are using la falacia del hombre de paja.
No, evolution only happens to populations. This is as basic as it can be, but you don’t understand this.
i dont. i actually assume a minimal bar for a new part. if a new part take more mutations then my point will be even stronger.
if in general a functional sequence appeare one in a billion mutations, then we will need more billion mutations after the first functional sequence appeared.
not a complete wing but at least a part of it. say a feather part:
(image from https://www.pinterest.com/pin/270778996321044823/)
first, i dont think that this case is about new part but about a variation in the visible spectrum. second, according to evolution mammals lost their tetrachromatic ability. so maybe its not even a new function but a function that reappeared in humans.
ok, but its not something new. just a duplication of existing parts.
i dont think so. first we are talking about bacteria here. so its not the same as animals. second im talking about a new system that need at least several new anatomical parts. again: its not something that we can see in bacteria experiments.
but any new trait in a population need to appeare first in individual. so or so its irrelevant to what i said in the first place, so this have nothing to do with my argument.
That’s not what you said at first. You based you claim on the fact that we see no “new parts” in the people now on earth. Nothing about the frequency of functional sequences. Do you even understand you own argument?
In any event, the fact that you possess 100-300 new mutations that neither of your parent possess, yet are still functioning nornLLY (at least in some respects) demonstrates that your 1 in a billion claim is way, way off.
Ah. So according to your understanding of evolution, it would predict that a human child should have recently been born who was covered in feathers.
Thanks for further confirming you have no clue whatsoever about evolution.
BTW, here is some info on how feathers evolved:
its bascially the same. if in say 7 billion people we see no new mutation that produce new anatomical part then we can conclude that the chance to get a new functional sequence is less than 7 billion mutations.
no feather but at least a part of it if my minimal bar is correct. i never said that evolution predict this so dont make claims that i never claimed.
from the article:
“The reason the gene doesn’t cause the development of a fully feathered alligator is that unlike birds, alligators don’t have the underlying genetic architecture evolved to support these central feather-making genes”
" but hints at five separate genetic processes active in birds that needed to work together to create modern feathers"
so we need more genes to evolve feathers from non feathers.
Completely wrong.
“Functional” means merely that it has phenotypic effects.
Your definition of “new body part”, OTOH, pertains to something that would likelyl never happen if evolution is true.
So how would you know if a child was born that did not have a slight, barely noticeable, variation that, a million years from now, would turn out to have been the presursor to a “new body part”?
Exactly.
Now, can you see how this explains why the presumptions of your argument are wrong? You should.
If not, see if this helps: You have admitted that alligators have features that represent the early stages in the development of feathers.
Now, if you observed an alligator, but had no knowledge of the existence of organisms that possess feathers, would you identify an alligator as an organism that meets your “minimal bar” for the development off a new body part, ie. feathers?
You’ve just shot down your own argument, whether you realize it or not.
But none of this is irreducible, right?
That isn’t actually clear from what is being quoted. It might be we need mutations in several, already existing genes, to recapitulate the evolution of scales into feathers. That doesn’t mean we need “more genes”. Perhaps they’re just expressed differently.
But even if “more genes” are required (which would just be novel regulatory pathways), that can rather easily happen by gene duplication.And there’s no reason to think lots of such mutations couldn’t occur and get fixed on million-year timescales.
No. There merely needs to be a tiny step in that direction, not what you are calling a new trait. In the case of the OP, an individual that is greener than most is all that is necessary to start evolving that camouflage.
Your arguments are based on your being ignorant of the most basic evolutionary mechanisms. Perhaps you should learn ANTES DE ATACAR?
You clearly don’t understand how genes work. “Genetic processes” doesn’t mean “more genes” or “new genes.”
And there’s no reason to assume that selection does not act on existing genetic variation, but that’s what virtually every evolution denialist seems to do.
Note the last six words in bold.
In the mail I received when @scd first responded, @scd wrote:
but any new trait in a population need to appeare first in individual. so or so its irrelevant to what i said in the first place, so this have nothing to do with my argument. so you are the one who actually use a straw man here, not me.
Then later, for some reason, @scd deleted the reference to a straw man.
So, if @scd actually is an Israeli, why did s/he so seamlessly translate what I wrote in Spanish?
And there’s no reason to assume that selection does not act on existing genetic variation, but that’s what virtually every evolution denialist seems to do.
you know what guys? lets say (just for the sake of the argument) that the IC argument is wrong. even in such a case we cant realy prove that comon descent is true without using faith. so i see no big difference if IC is true or not in either case.
Translation: “Wow, I sure got my ass handed to me on a platter right there. I obviously have no clue what I am talking about. But my religious faith still won’t allow me to accept evolution, so I’m just going to continue to deny it, no matter what.”
