It’s simple, but I think over-simple: a collection of 3 disconnected rocks in it seems less complex to me than the same collection with the same rocks connected to one another with springs such that moving one rock influences the motion of the others. That system can get patterns of simple harmonic motion that are simply impossible for the system of disconnected rocks, so suggesting that it is more complex doesn’t seem like a stretch (pun intended).
I guess you could say that adding 3 springs increases the number of elements… but I still reckon ‘collection of disconnected rocks and springs’ is less complex than ‘connected rocks and springs’.
I did understand what you meant. You understand where creationist arguments on evolution work and take small chunks of the ideas.
You were saying that evolution could be a simplifying mechanism driven by entropy. It makes the system less complex but more efficient.
This seems like everything I hear them say. We just differ on what complexity means (I say it’s more function, not more parts) and I’d disagree on the random assembly.
I guess you can tell me where I misunderstood you.
I am saying that some of the mutations that separate us from chimps are responsible for our uniquely human characteristics. You asked how those mutations came about, and I said they came about the very same way that mutations are being produced in the human population right now, and in all species for that matter.
Okay, well thanks for at least clarifying this much. You care about the number of functions, and so you see increases in functional complexity, which you take to mean essentially more new functions, as something evolution can’t explain.
Yes, and I’m asking how you imagine that to work since the vast majority of those in the population are deleterious, and I was asking how beneficial mutations arise and become fixed in the population.
Sure. Give me the examples of a new function that arose while keeping all previous functions. That was my definition above. So far the examples I have seen show the new function arose while losing a function.
Okay, great. I’ll proceed to link you a host of such publications.
Meanwhile, could you tell me whether it is your opinion that the evolutionary gain of functions without loss cannot occur, or has never been observed to occur, and if and how large a role these possible views play in your rejection of evolution?
Oh and, perhaps something about how you came to be persuaded of that?
I’ve just been observing in the forum and as I’ve watched related YouTube videos that comes up. The ones scientists typically bring up have been argued to show a loss of function as well. Gain of function without loss doesn’t seem to have occured except possibly in bacteria.
But they have nothing to with my rejection of the current theory of evolution. Only the Bible does.
I would just like to know the science behind both sides as well so I can continue to refine my understanding of the science around the theories.
If you took some chimps, and set them up to live as humans live but without human caretakers, they would surely die out. And if you took some human and put them in a tropical rain forest to live as chimps live, they would surely die out.
If you start with chimps, and try to change them to humans, the mutations would mostly be deleterious to chimps. But those would be the same mutations that were beneficial to humans.
Whether a mutation is deleterious or beneficial depends on the environmental niche. You do not get a sequence of mutations that changes chimps to humans, unless that is accompanied by a sequence of niche changes. And some of those niche changes come from changes in behavior of the evolving organisms.
@thoughtful if ATATAT is same complexity ad ATATAT-ATATAT, and ATATAT is same complexity as ATATAG,
then by extrapolation
A is same complexity as AAAA which is same complexity as AGAG which is same complexity as AAAAAGAG or every possible genetic sequence.
By extrapolation, your position is that every possible genetic sequence, no matter how short or long, has the same complexity as every other possible sequence!!
At this point, I honestly do not see the value in further bringing the scientific evidence, then. If it is your firm conviction that the Bible says that beneficial mutations are not possible, then no amount of scientific evidence will challenge that conviction, because it’s the wrong kind of evidence.
I would be interested in the theological evidence for this contention, though. What chapter and verse, or whole study, in the Bible, prohibits beneficial mutations?
I used to watch Bear Grylls. I’m not sure that’s true.
But I am confused on the scientific process of how a particular mutation can be identified as beneficial or deleterious by scientists in the first place. If there is a resource for that, that would be helpful. I’ve tried the web and I’m not getting anywhere. So maybe I am just misunderstanding an awful lot.
Good point. But I don’t believe in unbounded extrapolation. In that context, I should have thought of my definition for complexity. To be more clear, I would say it’s certain phenotypical differences beyond proportion and size when compared to another organism - an obvious difference in function. None of those examples struck me as ones that affected phenotype. Maybe I’m wrong. But I think that’s what I was thinking at the time.
None. He asked me about evolution. The theory as it stands as a whole is a problem for me - natural evil and death must be a result of the fall.
If duplicating a sequence does not change the complexity and changing one letter in a sequence does not change the complexity, then, since all possible sequences can be generated by a combination of these two operations starting from an initial sequence of ‘A’,* all sequences are equally complex.
Since that isn’t true, your intuitions about complexity aren’t true either.
*strictly speaking this can only generate sequences of length 2n, but I would expect Valerie to say ‘AAAAAAAAAA’ and ‘AAAAAAAAA’ are also equally complex.
Amazing, then, that we allegedly wound up getting a march of progress from single cells to human beings. Masterclass in having your cake and eating it.
The vast majority of mutations are effectively neutral. The mutations that are deleterious are selected out of the population while those that are beneficial are amplified and kept.
Individuals with the beneficial mutation tend to have more offspring which causes the mutation to become fixed over time.
A good example is the evolution of coat color in rock pocket mice.
They were able to find the beneficial mutations in the pocket mouse Mc1r gene that gave the mice black fur. We know the coat color is beneficial in environments with black lava rocks because nearly all mice in those regions have those mutations while the mice outside of those black rock environments don’t have those mutations, even though there is interbreeding between black and brown mice.
You understand where creationist arguments on evolution work and take small chunks of the ideas.