More on the Evolution Requires Reduction in Genetic Diversity thread at EvC

Just a few more thoughts on the criticisms against me that showed up on my thread at EvC toward the end.

Speciation

I don't know why someone thought my whole point was how Speciation comes about, and I'm not up to going back to track down how that idea might have occurred, but I would have thought I'd made it clear that Speciation is just the possible end point of the processes I'm talking about, but that it's the processes themselves and the TREND to reduced genetic diversity that is my focus.  Speciation can be treated too much as a special case and get off on a tangent so I don't emphasize it.  The point I'm trying to make is that wherever a new phenotype is being developed in a new population you are going to get reduced genetic diversity. 

It also occurs to me that some may be confused about the word "phenotype" as I'm using it although again I've tried to be clear about that too.  I'm not talking about single traits in individuals when I use the term, although that is a correct use of the word, but about the development of a COLLECTIVE phenotype that comes to characterize a new population over time due to changed gene frequencies from the mother population, brought about by reproductive isolation from that mother population. 

I do believe Speciation is usually just the extreme end point of these processes but that could take me off my focus so I tend to avoid it, thinking it could be discussed later IF the main part of my argument ever gets fully communicated.

I know I explained the processes a number of times on that thread but when you have five or six people all misunderstanding you in their own peculiar ways, two or three of them so far out there's no way to guess where they're getting their odd notions, while at the same time acting as if they are nevertheless some kind of authority on your argument, it's easy to get scattered and fail to follow up on an important point. 

So I don't know if this makes anything clear or not about where Speciation stands in my argument, but there it is for now.

The American Curl

The other topic I want to try to clarify is the example of the American Curl cat which was apparently brought up as some kind of rebuttal to my argument.  This is a cat that has distinctive curled ears that showed up in an individual some thirty years ago and has been bred to preserve the trait ever since.   It hasn't been subjected to the selection processes that would bring about the reduced genetic diversity I'm talking about although supposedly it has been getting developed as a breed over the last thirty years.

But it hasn't.  It isn't developing as a breed.  All that has happened is that they've taken pains to preserve the trait itself, the curled ear that showed up in a single individual cat many years ago.  By continually breeding cats with that trait with other types of cats they preserve the trait while increasing the genetic diversity.  They need to do this because it would threaten the survival of the cats to allow the genetic diversity to be low, and with one individual as the founder of the breed it would be very low indeed. 

So this is NOT what I'm describing at all.  They are NOT developing a new collective phenotype in this way which is what I have been talking about.  They are merely trying to build up the genetic diversity by blending in a variety of cat breeds.  This way you do not get a new breed although you do preserve the trait.  You get a great number of cats with the curled ears, and a lot of different kinds of cats with that trait, different colors and markings, long hairs, short hairs and so on.  But you are not getting a distinctive American Curl Breed.  Yet.

That WOULD take selection and isolation which is what I'm talking about.  And from what was said I gather that is beginning now.  Perhaps they will get a number of distinctive breeds with the curled ear trait, but they won't get a true breed until it's been inbred over a number of generations, and producing that distinctive breed is what reduces the genetic diversity.

Just another way my argument was NOT getting understood.  Not that I would expect it to, but it's frustrating that people THINK they are getting it when they so clearly are not.

Oh one more point.  It was emphasized over and over that this trait must be a mutation because it is autosomal dominant but it wasn't explained why this has to be the case because the person making the point isn't interested in truth but only in trying to trip me up.  So eventually I'll have to study up on this and see if it's really true that it must be a mutation for this reason.

Later Update: 

Wow, the way they discuss me over there why on earth would I want to come back and subject myself to that level of abuse?  I put up with it far too long as it was.

Now one more thing.  I'm supposed to have misused the Speciation chart because I used it to prove my point when according to them it obviously proves me wrong.  Really can anybody read over there?  What did I use that chart for?  To illustrate the formation of species through the isolation of a small population from a larger population which is my main example,.  The claim about mutations is IRRELEVANT to that point.  Sheesh.

O O O That Evo-ha-looshinist Mizrabul-buh-loozyist Cantwinferlosinist Ra-ag

{3/5 update at bottom}
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Just another ridiculous experience at the evolution forum. Yes I finally left, after the usual series of frustrations. Wasn't intending to post on the "evolution defeats evolution" argument again but it came up on another thread and needed to be moved so that's how that happened. No point in trying to recapitulate the usual nonsense but a couple of things should be mentioned.

Of course I may misuse terms from time to time and contribute to the confusion but I thought I got it said fairly well for the most part.  It's a simple argument so everybody thinks they understand it but as a matter of fact this was the first time anybody ever grasped the basics at all, and only a few at that. It's simple but it's not easy to keep it in mind.

Two things came up toward the end: The first was somebody claiming that the processes of selection I'm describing don't bring about speciation, and I didn't have the presence of mind to refer back to this pretty much classic representation of Speciation from Wikipedia that says otherwise:



What are all these supposed modes of Speciation but illustrations of how small populations form from larger populations, which is what my argument is all about:  genetic diversity is always reduced when this happens, when new gene frequencies are created for the new population by the reduction in number of members. 

And the other ridiculous nonsense that came up toward the end of that thread was the claim that if reduced genetic diversity could bring about all the breeds of dogs then of course it must also be capable of bringing about the entire animal kingdom.  I must admit I hadn't anticipated that anyone could say something so utterly ridiculous, but since evolution is completely an exercise in fantasy anything's possible.

What is it they fail to understand about RUNNING OUT OF GENETIC DIVERSITY?  The fact that you have enough genetic diversity to produce all the dog breeds and all the varieties of other animal kinds in the wild is amazing enough.  There is also the fact that to get all those dog breeds involves the reduction of the alleles FOR THOSE DOG BREEDS.  There are no other alleles in the dog genome BUT alleles for dog characteristics.  To get a dog breed the alleles for other breeds are left behind as only the desired traits for the breed are allowed to be reproduced.  AND it is in breeding programs that in fact the effects of reduced diversity are most often seen, which all by itself demonstrates that the basic genetic diversity for the entire Species runs out while still producing varieties of the same Species.  But that's when they appeal to the god Mutation for aid.

Mutation doesn't improve the situation because even if it did add genetic diversity it too only gets cut down by the selection processes, so you'd get a short reprieve, a new trait, and the reduced diversity in producing a new variety if that trait is selected.  And you'd need a lot more than mere mutation, which only changes the existing alleles anyway, alleles for traits of that particular Species, dog noses in gthe dog Species, rather than anteater noses or elephant noses.  Evolution needs to change the structure of the genome itself to get from one Kind or Species to another. 

Oh well.  It's obvious but they're blind.

I may not be presenting this very well this morning I'm afraid, just wanted to sketch it out.  There's no hope of proving anything to evolutionists BECAUSE evolution is pure fantasy and they can just make it mean whatever they want it to mean.  There's no winning an argument based on pure mental gymnastics.

Bright Spot Nevertheless:

That was frustrating.  But I did enjoy getting to hear an interview with Tom Vail on the radio recently.  He is retiring from hosting creationist river-rafting tours through the Grand Canyon.  It was just nice to hear a sensible point made:  the fact that the layers in the Grand Canyon walls are all "tabletop" flat PROVES that they were never at the surface of the earth as the establishment view insists.  It's a standard creationist argument and I argued it at the evolution forum too, but Old Earth believers are blind, they cannot see it, simple fact though it is. 

Evolution has been proven wrong in so many ways if they weren't blind they'd have been convinced by now.  No point in continuing such a futile effort. 

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Later: Just got a new comment on an earlier post here by a college student who isn't even ashamed to give his name, so comfortable is he with calling a woman who is old enough to be his grandmother an "idiot" in print. I suspect he must be a poster at EvC forums where such rudeness is not only common but even tolerated by administration depending on who is doing it and who and what it is directed against.

He is objecting to my remark that you have only to look at the layers in the Grand Canyon with the naked eye to see that the standard geological explanation is ridiculous, which is what Tom Vail is also saying as mentioned above.  [Correction:  I'd said that the evidence for the Flood is all over the earth and obvious to the naked eye.  But the tabletop flatness of the Grand Canyon layers and the knife-edge close connections between the layers is part of that evidence].  The amazing foolishness of the claims of Geology that such tabletop flatness was once a landscape should be clear to anyone, but false Belief IS powerful.  The student doesn't feel any need to ask what I mean by what can be seen with the naked eye, and he certainly doesn't feel any need to be at all polite to a total stranger. 

If anybody needs evidence that this world is coming apart at the seams morally this sort of thing ought to be sufficient.

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UPDATE 3/5

Got to remind myself never to give in to curiosity enough to go back to EvC and see what idiocies they've been engaged in since I left, but stupidly I did.

The stupid extension of the idea of reduced genetic diversity on out to include all species is now being attributed to ME as part of MY theory though I'd have thought I've been pretty clear that BREEDERS run out of genetic diversity and that being the case there's NO MORE evolution that could possibly occur at all.  That's the first offense.  If any proof is needed that they can't think honestly and reasonably through a simple argument that ought to do it.

The second is the claim that I don't "know" that the various forms of Speciation depicted in the chart I took from Wikipedia "require mutation."  Do they really need me to point out that I'm giving a DIFFERENT explanation for all these things, that I REJECT the usual explanation and that my argument includes the reason mutations can't make a difference to the end result?

And the usual overall craziness that of course expects ME to be there to learn something rather than any of them.  I'm the one who "misunderstands" the situation according to them, when the reverse is true.  That degree of granite-headed bias can't be penetrated.  But one does usually hope that SOMEONE there might be able to grasp the truth.  And maybe that does happen, but slowly.  It takes time.  Meanwhile sticking around for the stupidity and the abuse is not good for one's health.

Well, people who can't see the implications of the knife-edge table-top flatness of the layers in the Grand Canyon can't be expected to understand anything else either. 

I take back anything I've ever said about how scientists aren't really stupid. Or anybody who believes in Evolution with some knowledge of its claims  They really really are really really stupid, blind as bats about the theory, whatever else they may do right.