No, don’t give him the satisfaction. He doesn’t know how to rebut the evidence, so now he’s seeking an out that allows him to save face. He wants to be kicked, but doesn’t want to leave as it would look like capitulation. If he’s kicked, he can just rationalize it’s because nobody could convince him.
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This is why I say you don’t contribute anything of value @r_speir. You’ve been repeatedly asked to back up your assertion that we’re all misinterpreting the data here, and you respond with nothing but empty rhetoric.
Read @T_aquaticus’ comment below again, think about it, stop, think about it some more, then try to reply with a detailed scientific answer.
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If you want a paper that is more explicit, we could talk about ERV’s in a new thread, if and when you come back.
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Sure.
Test: If gene loss has happened in the past then we should see remnants of functional genes that no longer produce a functional transcript.
Results:
Conclusion: Gene loss has occurred in the human lineage, and is expected to be a mechanism in other lineages.
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Misrepresenting the mathematical relationships between sequences as vague “similarity” is a creationist trope.
Explain the differences. Specifically.
This is fine if the observation is a single gene being lost. This is not what the pattern is showing.
They detected 20,000 pseudogenes in the human genome. Those are just the ones that are recent enough to still show signs of homology within the limits they were using. The real number is going to be higher.
That works fine if you limit your examination to strictly pairwise comparisons. But it fails utterly when you add more species. What your idea produces is a star phylogeny, and yet we see lots of tree structure. You have been falsified.
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To be fair though, most of these represent processed pseudogenes or otherwise duplicated genes/gene fragments, not genes that were lost per se.
This paper tried to quantify the gene losses in humans since we diverged with chimps, coming up with less than 100:
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Please, pin this thread at the top of the discussion list! It wonderfully encapsulates the emotionally child-like behaviour of so many YECs.
Not only do we have Chris Falter’s brilliant post summarising the Bill Cole debate style (essentially the child who just keeps asking ‘but why?’ after every answer) but now we’ve just seen the classic semi-aggressive flounce-out from RSpiers (the boy who would pick up their ball and take it home whenever they didn’t get their way playing football in the park). Great stuff!
It’s funny, in all my years of following discussions about evolution, the only posters I’ve ever seen flounce out of a discussion like that have been YECs.
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The question of common descent among humans, chimps, and apes can be made extremely difficult because of theological commitments. For those, I think cases about common descent can be easier evaluated if we consider non-human species. I’d chose examples among plants, some mammals, insects and other organisms for which there are no pressing theological concerns.
I’d ask, “What species do you think could be related, for example, those of the same ‘kind’ or in the same ‘baramin’?” For example, dogs & wolves, cattle, the Brassica family of plants, Lake Victoria cichlids, Hawaiian silversword plants, various fruit flies, and foraminifera (planktonic animals). Which of the various species could you accepts as having descended from the same source group?
And of those which we think are related, what traits do they possess in common, or slight differences, do we see?
Let’s try dropping human origins for a bit in discussions with @r_speir and see what how the cases work out for other species.
Without having looked into that, my “prediction” is most of these degrading pseudogenes are one of two or multiple duplicates that have still-functioning paralogs in humans. Is that correct?
It’s not immediately clear to me. One limitation is that their method excludes cases where there is a functional human copy of the pseudogene, as this means the pseudogene might represent a recently duplicated fragment that was never functional.
Ahh yeah I can see how that would make it hard to tell the difference.
I would agree that the majority of pseudogenes are duplicates or fragments. There are still plenty of examples of single copy genes that have been lost, and are now pseudogenes. The classic example is GULO, with vitellogenin the new kid on the block. Skimming through the paper you linked earlier, this may be a good one to discuss if Bill feels it necessary:
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I like to use Canidae, since YECs often use the wolf/dog as evidence of evolution being limited to kinds. However, foxes are also within this kind (AIG) and that introduces interesting issues like the placement of Miacids, the original number of chromosomes in the basal (Ark) pair, the process of by which different numbers of chromosomes got fixed into different species, and the time that takes, etc.
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I noticed you did not answer my questions at all. I also note that you cited the article without telling me it had been discussed in detail previously, and in particular without telling me that your interpretation of the article had already been addressed in detail by people who are far more qualified than you. Why did you not tell me that?
This has already been answered; the hypothesis has been tested.
Evolution is a falsifiable theory, and it is not true that “all non tested explanations are accepted”. On the contrary, evolutionary theory has been tested exhaustively for over 100 years, and while the theory has been refined over that time it has persistently resisted falsification.
How? You never explain this. You didn’t even answer my question about your claim concerning mind as a “mechanism”. Here it is again. Here’s a test.
- I have a mind.
- [something happens here]
- A de novo protein appears.
As you can see, something is missing, namely the mechanism. Please describe part two in detail. Please describe how I can use my mind to bring a de novo protein into being. Unless you can do that, your “mind as a mechanism” claim is dead in the water.
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How does showing gene loss occurs test that it created the pattern. There is a large quantity of gene loss and in one case genes lost twice. There is also gene gain in the pattern. You are making false claims but I not sure you are aware you are. I think we’re done on this one.
Answer his question
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Evolution is a falsifiable theory, and it is not true that “all non tested explanations are accepted”. On the contrary, evolutionary theory has been tested exhaustively for over 100 years, and while the theory has been refined over that time it has persistently resisted falsification.
I have nothing more to share with Jonathan on this subject at this point I think we should close this post. Statements like the above are now non starters for me.