"I'm treating the mutation rate as a substitution rate" - Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson

No. What makes you think that? The howler here is that he is claiming that the rates are the same.

You misunderstand.

They’ve always been welcome to. There are even journals that do double-blind reviewing. The problem is that they tend to require new data, which YECs don’t produce.

What’s preventing the organizations that pay them to produce apologetics to fund science instead?

Publishing opinions is a minor part of science. Most of publication is new data. Do you see any coming from YECs?

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How about flat earthers as faculty in geography departments and alchemists as faculty in chemistry departments. Creationist ideas have been subject to the scientific process and they’ve lost repeatedly for over a century. If Jeanson’s ideas were as well supported as he claims they would in Science and Nature.

He’s wrong about mutation across the board whether it’s how he determines mutation rates or how he confuses de novo mutation with substitution rates.

I mean if you want to give up entirely on this genetic entropy nonsense maybe you can apply a molecular clock but you can’t have it both ways.

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Maybe they will. We don’t know the future.

As I said before, this isn’t unique to YEC.

Absolutely not. His computation of the mutation rate is incorrect too.

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Creation science is clearly not science.

And yes what they are doing is just as bad for people of faith as anyone else.

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A mutation can affect function and still be neutral in the sense that it is invisible to NS.

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That’s true.

Sounds like it’s time for Ben Stein to make a comeback in Expelled 2: No Dissent Allowed.

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A mutation or set of mutations cannot both be selectively neutral and also sufficiently deleterious to cause extinction.

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Because it eliminates itself from the population, pretty much by definition. :slight_smile:

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It can if each individual mutation is selectively nearly neutral and if the set of mutations is assembled slowly enough, such that differences in fitness among individuals within a generation are not significant. If so the cumulative decline in population fitness over time can result in extinction.

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This is, reading between Sanford’s lines, the most charitable interpretation of his argument possible: There are minute enough differences in fitness across a population as mutations accumulate over time that there are zero differences in relative fitness within that population.

That…well, I’ll believe it can happen when someone sees it.

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It’s theoretically possible. Of course, if it actually was likely to happen or was universal as Sanford claims, the entire biota would be dead by now.

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Only if you assume deep time and naturalism are both true.

This is not true.
Imagine a track race in a track and field stadium. Imagine that the 10 runners involved, all of approximately equal value, each carry the same backpack. Imagine that at each lap, 1 grain of sand is introduced in the backpack of one of the runners, always the same one. Finally, imagine that this race is organized by a psychopath who has established as a rule that the race will last as long as it takes to fill the backpack of the unfortunate runner to the brim and that the one who arrives last in the race will be executed.
In this story, it is easy to predict which runner will eventually be executed. Why? Because each grain of sand, although having an imperceptible effect on the runner’s performance, still has an effect and a point will arrive at which the cumulative effect of these grains of sand will be perceptible, ie will affect the runner’s performance. Near neutral mutations act the same way than the grains of sand in this story.

That was a terrible analogy, because natural selection eliminates the runner with sand in his pack, leaving the rest of the population just fine. Nor is the set of mutations (the backpack full of sand grains) selectively neutral, though the individual sand grains are. Instead, you need to put that grain into a random invividual each time. Eventually, everyone ends up with a nearly full backpack, nobody has an advantage over anyone else, and the race slows down for everyone. That’s how genetic entropy could work, if it actually happened.

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The first is like saying “only if you assume the sun shines”. The evidence for deep time is overwhelming, and you won’t even talk about it.

The second would require some unpacking. Are you saying, perhaps, that God has prevented genetic entropy from happening? That would explain why we don’t observe it, but it would also falsify Jeanson’s thesis. Or if not that, what are you saying?

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This is silly. You’re illustrating why Sanford is wrong. How? 1. the cumulative effects are selectable (i.e. the runner with the sand is slowest), and 2. Because there are other runners (i.e. other members of the population).

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This analogy also ignores the possibility that there are mechanisms by which sand is removed. In biology, beneficial mutations do occur and they increase fitness which would be equivalent to removing sand from the backpack. Also, the increase in fitness due to beneficial mutations can be orders of magnitude greater than any individual mutations whose decrease in fitness is too small for selection to see.

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By all that is true, that falsifies GE. But in the minds of YEC, this consideration is not a flaw but mighty vindication, a testament to their conception of origin and eschatology.

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