Is evolution possible?

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Generally speaking, the goal for me is not to argue against evolution, but to explore the possibility of it; even if evolution is possible or indeed true, scientists simply expect it to be true, and do not teach it in a way that satisfies my need for a simple, understandable and gapless understanding of the subject. This enrages me. If there is a gap in the theory, theach the gap, dammit. If there is no gap, do not put a gap there by not explaining som concepts simply because you think that they are too difficult for the general public. So that’s my thinking.

I have a bunch of questions, and the answers to these questions would make teaching evolution Gapless in my opinion.
1.What is the force that makes a new gene evolve?
2.What is the number of potential targets for the sequence of this new gene, or in other words how many ways there are to realize this as yet nonexistent new function that the organism needs?
3.In an organism, what is the nuber of potential places that this new gene can come from?
4.What is the average number of steps from potential precursor to potential target that evolution needs to take randomly Before selection can kick in?

The icefish is a good example because

  1. It needed to have an antifreeze gene.
  2. There is a large number of proteins that can act as an antifreeze.
  3. I don’t know the answer to this one. It makes me angry when scientists skip the “I don’t know” part of explaining their science.
  4. The way the antifreeze gene was realized shows us that there was a small nuber of steps that the precursor needed to take before it could perform this useful new function.

So even though I didn’t use numbers here I can envision that, at least in theory, these numbers could be calculated, thereby giving us the exact probability of the icefish gene evolving. Man I’d have massive respect if they tried to do that in every case.

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Good open minded questions. Thank you.

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Jet, are you really motivated by the sake of pure knowledge or are you interested in the debate evolution x creationism and already have a preference?
If you are interested in the debate I am out. If in the curiosity about evolution or not evolution, I could continuing here.
There are other theories about the real natural phenomena of evolution, besides Darwinism. For instance, Matrix/DNA Theory. As something totally new that nobody else knows, ir is very complex, so, we need begin by picturing the world view that suggested this interpretation about evolution.

First of all, there is evolution for an observer standing inside the Universe and there is no evolution for an observer standing outside the Universe. In this Universe is occurring a universal process of reproduction, of the unknown thing that produced the Universe. All reproductive processes are composed by smalls steps, which are evolutionary steps. You see it at embryogenesis. So we really are watching a process of evolution, but when we arrive to the beginning - the Big Bang - or at the end, we discover that we were watching merely a process of reproduction.
How Matrix/DNA discovered it if we are inside? That’s a long history…

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How much are you paying these scientists to teach you in a way that you find satisfactory?

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“Natural Light has the Code for Creating Life!”
Totally
http://theuniversalmatrix.com/en-us/articles/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-MatrixDNA-as-Closed-System.jpg
This diagram is amazing

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My questions mostly came from thinkig about this article, which I also found very helpful
https://creation.com/antifreeze-protein-evolution

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From neo-Darwinism to evolution

However, the story doesn’t end there. The foundational question remains: is this an example of neo-Darwinism evidence for molecules-to-man evolution? There is no doubt that this is a new, functional protein; many readers might be convinced that it answers the creationist’s demand for evidence for naturalistic evolution. But it’s not that simple: to possibly stand as evidence for molecules-to-man evolution, evidence for new proteins has to have at least four characteristics:

  1. they need to be formed by a plausible naturalistic mechanism,
  2. they need to be complex,
  3. they need to be specified, and
  4. they need to be functionally integrated into the organism’s biochemical processes.
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Anger management seems a better way to address this than anything a scientist could do. Chill.

Mutation, drift, selection. All three may contribute.

There is really no way of determining that. I don’t see it as a gap in the theory, though. If I ask what is the total number of potential minerals, is that a gap in geology? Your remaining questions are similarly pointless and impossible to answer. If that enrages you, again, consult a therapist.

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Which scientists, where?

So which courses on evolutionary biology have you taken?

What does that actually mean? What is a gap supposed to be here? Do you mean unknowns, or areas of great uncertainty? Unknowns and gaps aren’t “taught”, they’re researched. There isn’t anything there really to teach. It’s not clear what that would even entail. An instructor stands in front of a whiteboard and says “and we don’t know X”. Has the “gap” then been taught?

I think your thinking is superficial and unclear, but perhaps you have just not expressed your self in much detail here and I’d be interested in hearing what your answers are to all my above questions.

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True, I try to use the least numer of words possible to explai my thinking.
You’d understand me better if you didn’t try to pick apart my argument, but rather treat it as a whole.
The importance of the set of questions I chose is that taken together, they can, at least in theory, determine the viability of the theory of evolution.

There may be other sets of questions that can do the same job.

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Yes. You could, for example, write a paper on counting all the possible potential minerals out there. But als, your analogy breaks down because minerals do not have potential target functions to be realized. Living systems do. So naturally, the same question can be mouch more important in biology, than in mineralogy.

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What exactly do you mean by “new” gene? If one gene is copied and then mutated in a few places, is that then new? How about if it’s 50% mutated, is it then new? 80%? Does it need to be completely, aka 100% dissimilar to it’s ancestor to count as “new”?

Regardless, the answer is that “new” genes evolve by mutation and natural selection. That is the answer, and you won’t find another except to say you can get more detail if you want to see concrete examples of what mutations were occurring, and what the selection pressures(if any) that retained them were.

Mutations change one genetic sequence into another, by either rewriting the sequence of bases, or by adding to it by duplication, or by rearranging the order of bases by transposition, or by deleting parts of it.
And the phenotypic effects of those mutations have the potential to affect the reproductive success of the organism, so if they’re beneficial they are more likely to be passed on to offspring.

  1. What is the number of potential targets for the sequence of this new gene, or in other words how many ways there are to realize this as yet nonexistent new function that the organism needs?

Nobody knows and it’s probably impossible to predict because the number of factors that affect this are beyond comprehension.

3.In an organism, what is the nuber of potential places that this new gene can come from?

One. The genome. Genes are found in the genome, and evolve by mutating the genome, and nowhere else. You could say they can come from horizontal gene transfer, where DNA from one organism is released into the environment, and then later picked up by another organism and integrated into it’s genome. But in that cause the ultimate origin of that gene isn’t explained, in which case you’d have to trace it to the organism it came from and elucidate how it evolved there first.

4.What is the average number of steps from potential precursor to potential target that evolution needs to take randomly Before selection can kick in?

Well now we need to know what you think counts as a “new” gene, where is the cutoff? And kick in to accomplish what specifically?

The icefish is a good example because

Of what specifically?

  1. It needed to have an antifreeze gene.
  2. There is a large number of proteins that can act as an antifreeze.
  3. I don’t know the answer to this one. It makes me angry when scientists skip the “I don’t know” part of explaining their science.
  4. The way the antifreeze gene was realized shows us that there was a small nuber of steps that the precursor needed to take before it could perform this useful new function.

I don’t understand what this is a list of.

So even though I didn’t use numbers here I can envision that, at least in theory, these numbers could be calculated, thereby giving us the exact probability of the icefish gene evolving. Man I’d have massive respect if they tried to do that in every case.

What would that tell you? You’d get some incredibly low number out of such a calculation. Any particular mutation that happens is extremely unlikely. Yet it happens. Take some population of bacteria that have accumulated mutations for a few decades. What was the probability that the particular sequence of mutations that occurred in that population would obtain?

We can always stand back after the fact that it occurred and say that “there are so many other mutations that could have occurred, but didn’t, so this one is extremely unlikely”. But what does that tell us? It’s completely meaningless then.

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All that shows is your ignorance of geology. You can’t count all the possible potential minerals. How would you? Every so often, a new mineral is discovered. The number of potentially stable (under some condition or other) configurations of elements is unknown and, I would argue, unknowable. The target function of a mineral is, presumably, to be stable under the conditions under which it’s formed. The analogy is just fine and just demonstrates that some thing are beyond our ability to compute. That fact doesn’t make geology unscientific or, one would hope, infuriating.

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I will try to give you my answers to these questions, and some my be repeats of what others have said:

Mutation, selection, drift. (as @John_Harshman noted)

First, there are many new genes that could potentially be adaptive. You shouldn’t focus on just one function. Second, scientists can’t predict how many different DNA or amino acid sequences will produce a specific function, so that number is unknown.

New genes can emerge throughout most of a genome. In a eukaryotic genome there are probably restrictions at centromeres and telomeres (the middle and ends of chromosomese, respectively), but the area between them is wide open.

There are no steps that need to be taken. If a function doesn’t evolve, then it doesn’t evolve. Perhaps some of your frustration comes from your incorrect view that history is super-deterministic and can only happen one way. What we see in natural history is just what did evolve out of a nearly infinite number of things that could evolve. I would suggest understanding this view and approaching your questions from that point of view.

That can’t be done because scientists don’t know all of the different protein sequences that could produce that specific function, nor do they know all of the different functions that could provide protection against cold conditions. These possibilities are currently unknowable because we don’t have the understanding or technology to accurately predict function from sequence data alone.

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Why do they need to be specified?

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Aso th least numer of leters.

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The first issue is to define evolution. As you narrow the definition then almost everyone believes in it as mostly variation from reproduction.

What needs to be established to expand the theory is innovation through reproduction.

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@jety

Calculating probabilities requires better knowledge in two areas:

  1. In order to know all the possible outcomes, it is helpful to know how much of a genome is pure noise, and how much is already being used.

  2. Not surprisingly, if one species has “x” amount of genome, and another species has “10 times x” in raw genome, more mutations can occur each generation.

  3. If we don’t know how much of the genome is “almost ready” to become a gene with a specific use, how can we calculate a probability?

Probabilities work best when you know the universe of possibilities… like the heads and tails of a coin… or the number of possible sides a pair of dice have.

How do you calculate probabilities when someone gives you a pair of invisible dice, and only visible side is the one that is facing up? Your first task is to see how many sides there are … but as you slowly rotate the dice, the number keeps getting higher and higher … with no end in sight!

The logic of evolution becomes more important than the math:

Once one agrees that enough changes can aggregate in a population that makes them no longer reproductively compatible with another part of the population … all other things about evolution are possible!

[1] These changes could involve blood or ovarian chemistry;

[2] These changes could involve physical facilitation (if the male or female become so large or so small that many potential mating partners are physically unable to accomplish the deed);

[3] These changes could be changes in peripheral aspects of mating, like the song birds make to attract mates! In a single generation, a change can happen in a bird’s brain that triggers a different song … and the only ones willing to mate with it might be other descendants that share the same song change.

Once two groups of a single population no longer freely exchange genetic information, then one group will no longer experience the same set of mutations… and they will start traveling their own unique road of genotype and phenotype.

@colewd, I just read your post above… I hope you think my post touches on what you were describing.

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That’s what mutations do.

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Define a mutation.

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Please, let’s not turn this into an endless cycle of definition games.

Assuming you are asking an honest question, a mutation is change in the DNA sequence of a genome.

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