Tunnel-visioned focus on the present and on details misleads Evolutionists away from the truth of Genetic deterioration (entropy)

Waste of a post perhaps, just to comment on one little remark at EvC, but it's typical of this poster Coyote that he makes this kind of assertion and it seems to have some interesting ramifications. Here's the exchange between him and Taq:

[Coyote] If I am reading that correctly, there is a mechanism that limits the effects of genetic entropy?

Is that how you read it?

[Taq] Yes, and that mechanism is natural selection. By comparing the same endosymbiont across several lineages you can determine the substitution rate (i.e. fixed mutation rate) over time. The substitution rate decreases over time indicating that more and more mutations were selected against over time. The strongest candidate for negative selection is deleterious mutations.

The creationist model assumes steady accumulation of deleterious mutations across the entire population, but the evidence in the paper above argues against that. The evidence suggests that the population only carries a certain amount of deleterious mutations, and that any additional deleterious mutations that occur are selected against and do not spread in the population like the slightly deleterious mutations that occurred before them.

[Coyote] Thanks, that's what I thought it said.

That confirms the results we see in the real world, where there are several billion years of evolution without this "genetic entropy" causing it all to go extinct.

This also supports my idea that you have to believe in a young earth and "the fall" to support the kind of genetic entropy that creationists are pushing.

This is almost funny. As if we SEE "in the real world" anything that could be described as "several billion years of evolution." He's simply stating the party line, he's not seeing anything though he states as if it were fact, this evolutionistic theory of billions of years, at every opportunity.

But of course what I "see" in the real world is evidence for the Young Earth construction. Yes, you do have to believe the Bible's doctrine of the Fall to begin to see the world in terms of genetic entropy I suppose. It opened my eyes to the reality around me. Thanks to the Bible I also see evidence for Noah's Flood almost everywhere I look.

Genetic entropy is implicit for one thing in the difference between the relative paucity of living things on earth today by comparison with the extravagantly various and abundant life forms in the fossil record, which is the record of life that was destroyed in the Flood.

It's not all extinct YET, but we don't believe in your billions of years, Mr. Coyote, and wouldn't expect "it all to go extinct" in the actual few thousand years the earth has been in existence, although extinctions are occurring all the time and are evidence in themselves that this is the trend.

But what Taq said also needs an answer:

[Taq] Yes, and that mechanism is natural selection. By comparing the same endosymbiont across several lineages you can determine the substitution rate (i.e. fixed mutation rate) over time. The substitution rate decreases over time indicating that more and more mutations were selected against over time. The strongest candidate for negative selection is deleterious mutations.

I'm glad to hear it, as that means there is some protection against the inexorable processes that are leading to extinction. God knows what He is doing. However, there is a negative to this of course, which I'll get to.

I'd also point out, however, that since this sort of study can of course only be done in the present (though it is usually rashly assumed that what they see now has always been the case), any increase over time in the processes that produce deleterious mutations isn't going to be noticed. But we DO know that thousands of genetic diseases exist in the human gene pool. There's also a blindness that is due to the theory itself: Evolutionism believes -- it's ASSUMED, not KNOWN -- that the MAIN thrust of mutations is in the creative direction so they don't think the disease list means a lot and just don't look in the direction that might show their errors. But from the creationist perspective it means a GREAT deterioration from the initial perfection of living things.

[Taq continues] The creationist model assumes steady accumulation of deleterious mutations across the entire population, but the evidence in the paper above argues against that. The evidence suggests that the population only carries a certain amount of deleterious mutations, and that any additional deleterious mutations that occur are selected against and do not spread in the population like the slightly deleterious mutations that occurred before them

DOES the creationist model assume this? Seems to me we've OBSERVED that there has been quite an accumulation of deleterious mutations -- in fact, in reality. This isn't an assumption. Of course this is good news that they don't spread as much as one might expect, but keep in mind that selecting out such negatives either means the failure to reproduce, OR the death of individuals who carry them. That's good in the abstract, for the total population and for the slowing down of such negatives therein, but death itself -- or even the failure to reproduce -- isn't good news and in itself is evidence for the overall deterioration of life due to the Fall.

The MAIN reason we can expect deterioration over time, in the genome and in our physical capacities, and in all other living things, isn't any particular mechanism such as deleterious mutations, but DEATH. Death over time eventually eliminates genetic possibilities -- from ALL living populations. The GREAT DEATH at the Flood, which is so dramatically represented in the "fossil record," wiped out an amazing multitude of variations that no longer exist. Evolutionists like to arrange those varieties in hierarchies as evidence for descent of one from another, but in reality they all co-existed as variations at the same time, and all died together in the Flood.

Living things now are continuing to survive on a drastically reduced genetic potential, even occasionally approaching such genetic depletion that no further variation is possible -- witness my favorite example, the cheetah. Such is the God-given vitality of life that life continues nevertheless, but if we could see what it was like before the Flood I think we'd be awestruck at the variety and the strength and powers of all living things, and especially human beings.