If it involves the change of allele frequencies, then yes.
Can you give an example of a complex ‘new’ trait that might need to be explained?
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Now let me check for understanding. You called survival a goal of evolution. You are incorrect and you will find no takers among your crowd.
That’s correct. And in the same post you pulled the quote from, I showed you how Darwin proposed this. Everyone, including YEC scientists for the last 150 years knows this.
I asked several posts ago for you to provided any quote from anyone that supports your assertion and you simply refused. You and I both know it is because no one actually believes this is a problem.
Both “considers” and “goal” are metaphors. Survival (or, better, reproductive success) is a “goal” of natural selection because that’s how selection is measured. The genotypes of organisms that reproduce will increase in frequency in the population compared to those that don’t. It’s more properly a result than a goal, but it’s a universal result. What we see in the current world is exclusively the descendants of organisms that reproduced. It’s unclear why that would be so hard to understand.
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It is an answer, you just didn’t understand it.
If you don’t understand why extinction is bad for reproductive success, you need far more help than I can offer.
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Both. Your immune system will do both. The capacity of the adaptive immune system to evolve antibodies against novel pathogens (or just different chemical compounds) is really quite remarkable, and in fact provides the basis for the entire immunohistochemistry branch of molecular biotechnology. There’s scarcely a biological compound that some company has not been able to evolve targeted antibodies against for use in some sort of immunostaining-related assay.
In fact your immune system is so good at evolving novel antibody paratopes that, in some people, it has a propensity to overshoot and evolve antibodies against molecules produced by their own body, potentially leading to all sorts of autoimmune disorders. Many people also develop allergies(like food, pollen, or soap allergies) against chemicals and compounds they are exposed to throughout their lives.
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sure. the sense of smell for instance, which is coded by many genes.
first, this can be a designed feature that protect the body. second, i guess that any of these changes are the result of small changes on existing genes, and thus are not realy related to the evolution of complex biological systems.
Smell isn’t a complex trait, it is a collection of simple traits which each individually confer a selective advantage. It also isn’t a new trait at the level of any vertebrate, since each is simply reacting to a slightly different chemical, or in a slightly different way to a chemical. So smell is not an example of a complex new trait. Would you like to try again?
You can rationalize anything to be designed for doing whatever it does. I think this infinite malleability of design-as-rationalization is a bug, not a feature.
And in any case, allergies or autoimmune disorders really do show that the immune system has the capacity to evolve to bind to novel compounds never before encountered. So it’s not just “variations of existing binding sites”.
Ahh I see, so now you’ve changed your mind and moved the goalposts from “are we talking about new binding sites, or variations of existing binding sites or something else?” to another nebulous and ill-defined “small changes on existing genes” which now suddenly (whatever you even mean by that) isn’t related to the evolution of complex biological systems (whatever you mean by that too).
Of course, since you never define where something crosses over from just a “small change” to a “medium change” or a “large change”, it’s a complete waste of time playing whack-a-mole with you on this topic.
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it isnt that simple. to sense a small we will need at least several parts such as special receptors that can bind to odor molecules, a connection to the brain and a part in the brain that can process the signal and and translate into smell:
this isnt just a simple variation of existing system.
i think that maybe we can define a complex trait as any trait that indicates design. thus a vision system is complex when a bump on forehead isnt.
No, the truth is that you do not have a good answer for this.It is far easier for organisms to stop struggling and give in to extinction. The struggle to survive is a concept clearly at odds with a “goal-less” paradigm like evolution. Struggling for anything or towards anything infers direction. For evolution to try and claim this as a plank in their philosophy of science is self-defeating and implodes the entire paradigm.
Actually, the struggle to survive belongs exclusively to the science of Creationism, not evolution.
And I told you I don’t have to do it because you are making this up. If you are so sure that everyone here agrees with you, please tell me, where are they? Everyone is silent because they actually disagree with you.
Survival is not a goal of evolution.
I understand it perfectly and I agree with it. It’s just that you are getting your sciences mixed up if you claim that the struggle to survive belongs to an evolutionary paradigm, when in fact, it contradicts the paradigm.
@cwhenderson clearly claimed that survival was a goal of evolution and now you are trying to do damage control by changing his definition. It is clear that you cannot give your consent to what @cwhenderson claimed. That is all I was trying to point out.
I’m going to guess that none of them are as dumb as I am to actually engage with you on this. @John_Harshman had a much better explanation than I did back in post 84, if you want to read it.
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Your concession is noted and accepted.
Great, maybe you can drop this strawman argument now.
No strawman argument here. The struggle to survive is a Creationist concept. It has no place in evolution.
How do you explain “Survival of the Fittest” that argued 150 years ago that the living things seen on the earth today are the result of the struggle for survival? According to your logic, that makes Darwin a Creationist.
If the Creator chose to exploit a similar genetic genome on which to base certain life forms, are you accusing creationists of saying that great apes and humans all sprang from a single genome? Only in that way would your claim of relatedness make sense, but of course, we know that is nonsense.
Or is that what you are claiming? A single genome?
Do you want to have a civil discussion about this? I am willing if you are.