Ratio of Beneficial Mutations to Others

How do you know? Aside from the small detail that their great ages are fictional anyway, you have no evidence either way of the factors influencing their longevity. For all you know, they lived so long because of a special diet that was gradually lost to history, or because they were sustained by God himself.

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by the way if simpler forms (like bacteria) have bigger population (it means better survivability), why complexity evolved at all?

There are tribal populations today whose members can still live to great ages, even though they neglect modern medicine and technology. Shouldnā€™t they be obvious examples of the effects of genetic entropy?

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I will respond to the rest of your post at a later time, Giltil. For the moment, I wanted to point out that you have just conceded that natural selection counteracts what you have termed ā€œgenetic entropy.ā€

Given thatā€¦

  • natural selection is one of the chief forces identified by the theory of evolution
  • natural selection counteracts ā€œgenetic entropy,ā€ as you have acknowledged

ā€¦the obvious conclusion is that ā€œgenetic entropyā€ does not in any way challenge the theory of evolution.

Best,
Chris Falter

This does however depend on the rate of mutation, population size, the distribution of fitness effects of mutation, and fertility.

If fertility is too low, and/or the rate of mutation too high, and/or the ratio of beneficial-to-deleterious mutations too skewed towards deleterious, and/or the degree to which they are beneficial/deleterious is also skewed too much towards negative selection coefficients, and if fertility rates are too low, then genetic entropy is inevitable even though natural selection does exist and works to reduce the rate at which genetic meltdown occurs.

This is where Sanford has argued in his works that these ratios are known to be problematic for the long-term existence of life, which is of course completely ridiculous and outside the realm of rational discourse. The amount of evidence for lifeā€™s enormous age should simply cause Sanford, if he has even the tiniest smidgeon of rationality left in him, to accept his numbers must be wrong. Thatā€™s also why heā€™s not really being taken seriously in the population genetics field as his conclusions are straightforwardly absurd, and they probably dismiss him as just another religious crank with an evangelical agenda.

But population genetics is a difficult field for specialists, so to show that Sanford is wrong requires specialist knowledge of population genetics, which means someone in the field has to take time out of their lives to debunk religious crackpottery nobody understands anyway, and the people who believe Sanford instead of the entire rest of the population genetic field wouldnā€™t understand or believe the counterarguments to Sanfordā€™s case anyway.

The DNA of many humans who lived thousands of years ago have been sequenced. This includes Otzi the ice man (5300 YBP) and Kennewick man (8500 YBP). The oldest complete DNA sequence for a human is a 45,000 leg bone found in central Asia.

Oldest known human genome sequenced

It should be easy for you or Sanford to obtain these published sequences and show us specifically how and where they have ā€œdegradedā€ down to modern human DNA.

Even better, the oldest known horse DNA comes from a specimen approx. 700,000 years old.

Worldā€™s Oldest Genome Sequenced From 700,000-Year-Old Horse DNA

Surely you can point to the genomic degradation between a 700,000 year equine old sample and an extant horse, right?

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This is really the elephant in the room. Sanford is a YEC and bases his claims on the premise all animals were created 6000 years ago with ā€œperfectā€ DNA. That alone is enough to laugh his silly ā€œgenetic entropyā€ out of the discussion.

Not at all Chris. My take is that natural selection is a real force that can slow down the pace of genetic entropy but it cannot stop it.

Can you give examples of this for measles, influenza, or the common cold?

Good point. Itā€™s one thing for Sanford to claim that genetic entropy could be true given enough wiggle-room in biology, itā€™s quite another for him to suggest that it invalidates the copious physical evidence for life being ancient, from radiometric dating to geophysics.

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Graurā€™s work shows that it can. If the rate of deleterious mutations matches the rate of natural selection removing them from the genome then they will be at equilibrium. This is found in his calculations for the number of children a couple needs to have and how many of those offspring need to survive and have offspring of their own. For humans, if the percentage of functional DNA in the human genome is 10-15% then the number of offspring needed per person is less than 1.8 which is completely doable.

If anyone needs more evidence Sanford is a completely off the rails YEC nutter consider his leadership in this YEC group

ā€‹Logos Research Associates

About LogosRA

As Ambassadors for Christ we seek to encourage others to believe in Jesus, to faithfully and deliberately believe what Jesus taught, and to believe Godā€™s revealed Word ā€“ the Gospel ā€“ which is the power of God to salvation. We use scholarship, logic, and the scientific method to show that the historical claims of the Bible are not only credible, but are superior to evolutionary theory to explain the origin of the world we see. We freely acknowledge our own fallibility, the inherent limits of ā€œhistorical scienceā€, and the need for ā€œfaithā€ by adherents of any view about ultimate origins. We urge all people to NOT put their faith in us, or any other form of human authority, but ultimately to put their faith in Jesus Christ.

LRA is a veritable rogueā€™s gallery of well known anti-science YECs including John Baumgardner, Steve Austin, Jerry Bergman, David Coppedge, Russel Humphreys, Paul Nelson, Larry Vardiman, and others.

Check out Sanfordā€™s ā€œBiologyā€ Powerpoint presentation in their Teaching Points section. Sanford argues for Biblical created ā€œkindsā€ which canā€™t evolve into other ā€œkindsā€ and that humans are an entire separate kingdom of life (plant kingdom, animal kingdom, human kingdom). That site has some military grade woo there folks. :astonished:

What do you think then of the comment below by Maynard V Olson in Science where he argues that one of the lesson of the human genome project is that it must have existed a wild type human genome but that we all fall short of this platonic ideal in our own distinctive way. This lesson is very consistent with Sanfordā€™s thesis regarding genetic entropy, isnā€™t it?
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/331/6019/872.3.full

It isnā€™t.

Sanfordā€™s hypothesis predicts that we would find more ideal genomes as we go back in time. We havenā€™t, and more importantly, Sanford isnā€™t the one looking for data with the potential to falsify his hypothesis. He, and you, are doing pseudoscientific cherry-picking.

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What gives you the impression that Olson believes an ā€œidealā€ human genome ever actually existed in nature?

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No. It is expected that every species will carry deleterious mutations called a mutational load, and that is what Olson is talking about. Sanford is saying something else. Sanford is saying that the mutational load will necessarily increase over time, and that isnā€™t supported by any data or observations.

I think you completely dodged the question of the earlier sequenced human genomes. Are you also a YEC and claim as Sanford does the Earth and all life on it is only 6000 years old?

I agree that most of those associated with LRA have isolated themselves from the scientific community and have lost the thread of good scientific discourse, based on what I hear the scientific community saying.

At the same time, I agree with three out of the four sentences in the LRA statement. Prudence would suggest that you not associate Christian faith with bad science, as the Christians who do good science far outnumber those who have isolated themselves from the scientific community.

Thanks,
Chris

Their statement reminds me a lot of Flat Earthers:

It seems to be a common thread among conspiracy theorists to describe themselves as using the ā€œtrue scienceā€ and that only they have the truth. As I have often said, these types of groups are much more interesting if you look through the eyes of a psychologist.

I donā€™t now and never have.

Absolutely agree.

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