Novel features and the evolutionist word-magic flimflam: If you assert it aggressively enough that will make it true.

There's a new thread at EvC about how novel features could have evolved, started by Tangle, who is one of the best posters EvC has ever had. Yes, he's an evolutionist but he's reasonable, he approaches the different subjects carefully, really makes an effort to grasp the best creationist arguments and treats them as rational rather than idiotic, is able to express the arguments articulately, and tries to find good evidence to answer them.

That's what he hopes will come of this new thread, since the last one on the subject degenerated into side issues and what he calls "exotica," or a sort of theoretical neverneverland -- which is usually where I stop reading a thread myself.

Some 17 posts into this new thread my assessment of him is holding up as he's dealing well with the other posts so far and keeping the creationist argument he wants to defeat clearly on the table.

I do want to comment here on JAR's contribution because JAR's arguments for the theory of evolution are mostly irrational and emotional, assuming most of it without evidence and thinking he's produced evidence when all he's done is assert the theory and dumped an observed fact or two into it. That's more or less what they all do but JAR is over the top most of the time. What I quote from Taq in my previous post on genetic information a couple days ago is an example of this kind of thinking, a real salad of assumption, assertion and the occasional fact. And for an example of JAR's inability to distinguish evidence from fantasy see his thread about the mummified man Oetzi from a few years ago.

Anyway, here we have another JAR production. First he asks:

Is this another hunt for the super genome? I thought we put that absurdity to bed long ago?

Tangle does a marvelously clear job of answering this later, the answer being No, a super genome isn't needed, the creationist position is that all the material for variation is in the genome we see now. Again if it weren't for my arthritic bones I'd jump and dance for joy at such clarity.

I used to think some sort of super genome was probably called for to explain the very great genetic variability that would have been needed to support the vigor and longevity of pre-Flood life, both human and animal, but I came to realize that simple heterozygosity for most traits provides an enormous range of variability. And, if junk DNA represents all the genes lost through the bottleneck of the Flood, and killed by mutations down through the generations since then, there would have been a huge range of genetic possibilities available before the Flood, and these two factors alone amount to a "super" genome without having to posit any difference in its structure.

Then JAR gives us this information:

We have come a long way in a fairly short period of time in sequencing various genomes. There are grape and cow and human and ancient human and neanderthal and bee and chimp genome sequencing projects and one factor has become pretty much a universal characteristic and that is that the genomes can be identified.

Send a lab an unknown sample and they send back a short note saying "That's a goat." or "That's a human." or "That's a elm tree".

We have samples from ancient folk and modern folk, from here and from there.

Marvelous! Exactly what a creationist would expect to see! Exactly what exists in reality! Observed facts that confirm creationism. Of course he doesn't notice that he's confirming creationist expectations and assumes instead that he's confirming his evolutionist bias -- or perhaps he thinks that if he announces it aggressively enough it will stop supporting creationism.

But then in a mind-boggling non sequitur he says this:

Novel features evolve over time in populations by changes in the genome that then get filtered by natural selection.

But all he's offered so far is nothing that could support this amazing leap into Evo Fantasyland but in fact supports the creationist view. The fact that solid scientific laboratories can so clearly recognize different Species from a look at their DNA naturally raises the question how one could evolve from another, how novel features could possibly arise. But of course he doesn't know, all he can do is recite the Evolutionist Creed that flatly declares that they DO arise, do "evolve over time in populations by changes in the genome". Uh huh. HOW, Jar? Silence. And he also knows that they "then get filtered by natural selection." Which isn't in dispute.

Then he adds another non-sequitur in another bit of creed:

It all comes down to imperfect copies.

I'm glad Tangle seems to know how to avoid getting entangled as it were in this typical frustrating evolutionist irrationality, and I hope he can continue doing so and get this thread on the track of something useful.

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Then in Post #18 JAR says:

But today we can identify not just individual species from a DNA sample, but often specific populations within a species.

That shows that genomes do change over time.

Again, he says this as if he's saying something that supports evolution, but in fact it supports creationism just as well. It's great to hear that DNA can tell them so much about a species and its varieties, really great. It reflects exactly what a creationist sees in the phenotype, and it's great to see that the DNA reflects it so exactly. The usual variation, the expected variation built into the genome. Microevolution.

Why can't these people at least LEARN what the creationist claims are and stop arguing with their straw men? And this is only one part of the futility of the Evo-Creo debate.

Well, again, I hope Tangle is up to untangling all this.

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5/24 Too bad, apparently Tangle isn't. The thread has degenerated into obscurantist technospeak, more credal announcements peppered with the usual accusations of creationists.

And of course nobody has criticized JAR for posting information as if it was evidence for evolution when it actually confirms creationist expectations just as well, proving again the futility of debate there.

Too bad, started well.

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May 30 follow=up. Tangle again seems to have extricated the question from the oblivion that was threatening:

There have been a couple of further studies by the same people on these mice that add to the evidence. This one shows that natural selection is the mechanism that matches dark mice with dark rocks and light mice with light rocks. (Sadly, I can see only the abstract)

Previous work has demonstrated that two Mc1r alleles, D and d, differ by four amino acids, and are responsible for the color polymorphism: DD and Dd genotypes are melanic whereas dd genotypes are light colored. To determine the frequency of the two Mc1r allelic classes across the dark-colored lava and neighboring light-colored granite, we sequenced the Mc1r gene in 175 individuals from a 35-km transect in the Pinacate lava region. We also sequenced two neutral mtDNA genes, COIII and ND3, in the same individuals. We found a strong correlation between Mc1r allele frequency and habitat color and no correlation between mtDNA markers and habitat color. Using estimates of migration from mtDNA haplotypes between dark- and light-colored sampling sites and Mc1r allele frequencies at each site, we estimated selection coefficients against mismatched Mc1r alleles, assuming a simple model of migration-selection balance. Habitat-dependent selection appears strong but asymmetric: selection is stronger against light mice on dark rock than against melanic mice on light rock. Together these results suggest that natural selection acts to match pocket mouse coat color to substrate color, despite high levels of gene flow between light and melanic populations.

Jun;58(6):1329-41.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15266981 The writers of these papers are very confident that they have identified the genes responsible for coloration in the mice that they have studied (but not other mice in other locations) and say that the difference is 4 amino acids.

How confident can we be that the allele changes are as a result of a mutation of an 'original' gene?

Good question I say. But I'd also say they don't have an answer because that question isn't one they are investigating. Mutation is usually assumed rather than made the subject of scientific inquiry.

Genetic Evidence of the Bottleneck at Noah's Flood Part 1

Well, hi de ho, somebody finally decided to try to have a discussion about the claim that the bottleneck of Noah's Flood should have left genetic evidence that it didn't leave. I've many times wondered exactly what evidence they think they would find, so let's hope somebody finally defines it.

In several threads, Jar has brought up the genetic bottleneck argument against the biblical flood and it appears to me to be a slam dunk of an argument. So I thought it was worth expanding on it and teasing out the details.

Sure, go for it.

Perhaps we should start with when creationists think the flood happened (my bold).

When was Noah’s Flood? 1,981 years to AD 0 plus 967 years to the founding of Solomon’s Temple plus 480 years to the end of the Exodus plus 430 years to the promise to Abraham plus 75 years to Abraham’s birth plus 350 years to Shem’s 100th birthday plus 2 years to the Flood. The Biblical data places the Flood at 2304 BC +/- 11 years.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/...v4/n1/date-of-noahs-flood

So this is about 4,300 years ago. (Maybe other dates around that time will be claimed but a bottleneck should still be apparent.)

I sometimes round it to 4500 years ago but 4300 is more accurate though a couple hundred years isn't going to change the evidence anyway.

Because all existing species have descended from so few individual so recently, their genomes should be very, very similar to each other - simply because all members of the same species would be close cousins.

Species that we know have undergone a bottleneck, such as the elephant seal and the North American bison - which were hunted to near extinction - and the cheetah, which appears to have also gone through a bottleneck 10,000 years ago, show this genetic fingerprint. In the cheetah's case their genetic variance is so small that their immune systems have so much in common that skin grafts aren't rejected between individuals.

So is this the sort of evidence you'd be looking for? Many fixed loci such as the cheetah's? Is this the "genetic fingerprint" you have in mind?

Jar's argument goes that if all animals and plants on earth (with the possible exception of some fish which may have been able to survive salinity changes) were reduced to either pairs, or sometimes a few more of each species (I don't see how 'kinds' could make a difference) we would see the bottleneck fingerprint in pretty much every plant and animal alive today.

The bottleneck should only be applied to creatures on the ark. Plants were not systematically saved on the ark but had to fend for themselves, same with sea creatures and apparently also insects and microorganisms.

But we don't. And because we don't it's not possible that virtually every species on earth was reduced to two or three individuals only a few thousand years ago.

And this should just about do it for the evolutionist side of the argument. I wonder if any creationists there will be up to answering it.

This is rather a unique situation; the proof does not rely on having witnesses around thousand of years ago, partial archaeological records, 'inferences' or any of the usual escape clauses of indirect evidence, it's repeatable, direct, clear, present and obvious.

I agree, it's a nice set-up for your purposes.

So what's wrong with it?
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/...o101/IIID3Bottlenecks.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck

"What's wrong with it" coming up. Let's see how the thread goes for a bit and then I'll bring on my answers here. I'll post this and then add to it.

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JAR has now posted his response in Message 3:

IIRC I first presented that idea back in 2005 or 2006 and the beauty of it is that it begins by assuming only what the Bible stories say is true and asks, "If true, what must we see?"

If someone claims that they shot and hit the target, then we must see a hole in the target. If we look at the target and there is no hole, then the claim that the target was hit is falsified.

The test is also independent of when the flood happened; it does not matter if it was yesterday, 4300 years ago or 200,000 years ago.

Regardless of when the flood happened the genetic bottleneck would have been at the same time for every surviving species. The population would have been reduced to at best 14 critters of a kind and at worst 4 critters of a kind.

Actually it was seven and two of the animals and six human beings -- the three sons of Noah and their wives. Noah and his wife had no more children after the Flood so their genes only count in their sons.

But let's not let this go on too far before giving at least a sketchy answer to it: As JAR goes on to anticipate, the answer is in the "super genome" -- but see my previous post in which I've come around to modifying this notion to mean a more fully functional genome in which what is now junk DNA was then alive and contributing many more genes and alleles to the mix.

I also did a post on this some time back as a matter of fact, answering this same challenge from JAR. There ARE markers of the bottleneck in the genomes of all affected, in reduced genetic diversity which is shown in a reduced percentage of heterozygosity for each species.

JAR is anticipating a much more drastic genetic reduction on the order of the cheetah's and the elephant seal's to near-total HOMOzygosity, but those situations occurred very recently and occurred in gene pools that were already much genetically reduced from the time of the Flood after many generations of population splits. In recent times a severe bottleneck is much more likely to reduce many genes to fixed loci, meaning one allele shared by all the individuals of the bottlenecked population, than would have been the case back at the ark. At that time, assuming the much greater heterozygosity of the far more fully alive genome with very little dead or junk DNA, each individual on the ark would have been heterozygous for enough genes to produce all the variations we see today without the specific markers for reduced genetic variability that JAR is expecting based on TODAY's effects.

As I report in that post I linked above, today's human population has about 6.7% heterozygosity, about which I report one researcher said:

a single human couple with just "6.7% variety" could produce 10 to the 2,017 children ...before they would have to produce an identical twin..."

He goes on to say that the whole spectrum of skin color we see today would be easily produced IN ONE GENERATION with just this 6.7% heterozygosity for that trait. Combining that with the same breadth of possibilities for size, hair or fur color, bone type, muscle type, and so on and so forth, would certainly yield an enormous variety of individuals within each created kind or type.

So I figure this 6.7% heterozygosity is what remained on average to all creatures after the Flood, or perhaps it was somewhat more then and has decreased since then. It's still enough to produce enormous variety, everything we see today.

THEREFORE, at least that much heterozygosity was represented in the passengers on the ark, and since that percentage is standard today there would be no reason to expect to see the usual drastic markers for a bottleneck of the sort that produced the cheetah.

That is, this percentage of heterozygosity we have today IS the marker of the Flood bottleneck. Because of population splits since the Flood that would have reduced it even further, it was no doubt much higher then than it is now, but BEFORE the Flood it would of course have been much much higher. I don't know whether to suppose that ALL genes could have been heterozygous back at the Creation or not, and that would include all the genes that are now in the junk DNA graveyard, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility. For that 100% to have been reduced to 6.7% of the 5% of living DNA still in our genome is a perfectly reasonable expectation of the degree of loss of genetic diversity in the Flood bottleneck.

And THAT's your marker OF the bottleneck. And as I say in that post and imply above as well, so is the great percentage of junk DNA in the genome as well.

There are your markers. But you know what, I know that thread is going to go reeling on without acknowledging this idea. I'm easy to ignore out here in cyber space.

So there really isn't more to say on this subject. However, I'll continue to keep tabs on the thread, including the rest of JAR's post:

But wait, there is more...

one possible way around it has been to invoke some super genome, that the pre-flood genome was somehow different and so allowed for greater variation.

Well, there are two major problems there.

First, even if there was some super genome if the Biblical flood stories were true there would still only be at best 14 copies of it to work with and that is still a bottleneck.

True, but since the mere 6.7% heterozygosity still available in our genome today can account for enormous variety, and AT LEAST that much was represented by the few individuals of each species on the ark, a bottleneck then would have not been reduced to anything like the genetic depletion we expect today. Therefore you are looking for something that fits only your own limited imagination rather than what would really have been the genetic result of such a bottleneck. Just as the early creationist geologists and all of today's geologists persist in looking for evidence of the Flood in all the wrong places.

Second, we have genetic evidence from humans that date to before the 4300 years ago date, from as far back as 30,000 years ago and as far back as 14,000 years ago in the Americas and there is no sign of any super-genome.

I think these two lines of reasoning are pretty solid.

Well, here a creationist simply parts company with the "sciences" that take their mere conjectures about time to be fact. Sorry. The Flood occurred about 4300 years ago and the Creation about 6000 years ago and your age reckonings are nothing but delusion.

And I'm going to skip most of JAR's usual debunkeries of the Bible which usually tend to the blasphemous, and go on to:

In both myths lots of critters get killed, in the myth found in Genesis 6 it seems to be talking about land animals and birds while the myth found in Genesis 7 goes even further and wipes out all living things.

If we play mix and match and take the best scenario from each of the myths we might be able to claim that only the birds and land animals were wiped out based on the passage from the Genesis 6 story and that we have the larger saved population found in Genesis 7.

Based on that mix and match game set we have a situation where all land animals and birds found today will be descended from a population that consisted of at most fourteen critters (seven pairs of clean animals and birds) and at worst case four critters (two pair of unclean animals).

No, take the smallest numbers as I have and only for passengers on the ark, six humans, two unclean animals and seven clean (and remember that most of the clean would have been sacrificed to God by Noah after the ark landed and not have passed on their genes). Sea creatures and plants and others no doubt also perished in great numbers off the ark but we don't have the numbers to calculate in their case.

As for the passengers on the ark, the much greater percentage of heterozygosity in the pre-Flood genome even reduced to a few individuals still accounts for all the variety we see today.

Now that is what I would call a real bottleneck.

We know we can see bottlenecks in the genetic record; a great example is the one in Cheetahs but we even see them in the human genome and most other species.

BUT...

If the flood actually happened we would see a bottleneck in EVERY species of animal living on the land and EVERY bird and EVERY one of the bottlenecks show up in the SAME historical time period.

Talk about a big RED flag.

Yup you're expecting to see the same situation as in TODAY's bottlenecked populations, the extreme homozygosity even to majority fixed loci, instead of the bottleneck markers that really DO exist, the mere 6.7% heterozygosity and the 95% or more junk DNA.

That bottleneck signature would be something every geneticists in the world would see. It would be like a neon sign, Broadway at midnight on New Years Eve. It would be something even a blind geneticist could see.

So it seems to me to be a very simple test that will support or refute the Flood.

If that genetic marker is there in EVERY species living on land or bird of the air, then there is support for the flood. It does not prove the flood happened but it would be very strong support.

If on the other hand that genetic marker is NOT there, then the Flood is refuted.

Good try but the marker IS there, in fact TWO markers are there, but you miss them because your expectations are wrong.

And for the second argument see the thread Looking for the Super-Genome. -And it ain't found.

Well, now I do have a different idea of what that original genome would have looked like by which I would expect to find a pre-Flood genome with hardly any junk DNA and a majority of heterozygous genes.

The relevant question is whether it's possible to SEE the genome of ANY creature that lived before the Flood or not, and as far as I know they're all fossilized or destroyed and their DNA is not available. JAR's favorite "Oetzi" is most certainly NOT contemporaneous with Adam and Eve but lived after the Flood despite the preposterously dogmatic claims for his age. He was found in the Alps but his DNA shows him to be related to Corsicans, who most certainly did not exist before the Flood. This is all post-Flood terrain that's being described here. The Alps also did not exist before the Flood but like all the high mountains were formed by tectonic forces set in motion along with the other geologic phenomena associated with the Flood event.

In any case the markers for the Flood bottleneck ARE apparent in today's genomes if 100% or near-100% heterozygosity and no junk DNA characterize the original "super" genome.

Evidence for the Super Genome

Another new creationist at EvC has claimed that the original genome had to have been much larger than today's, which is of course a necessary inference from the creationist claim that all we have genetically is what was given at Creation to the separate Species, no further input since then. This means that an original genetic endowment for each Species has been playing out through all the variations down the centuries, and for that to be possible the original must have been much larger than today's genome.*[see bolded paragraph below about the idea it must be bigger]. And of course the opposition is demanding evidence for this "super genome" which according to their own view of things does not exist.

Considering that THEIR "evidence" consists largely of totally subjective classifications of creatures into "clades" and "nested hierarchies" from which they then infer genetic descent without a shred of ACTUAL evidence; or homologous organs scattered all over the Linnaean classification system that they've imagined into a sequence of genetic descent and called it fact; or purely imaginary made-up tales about how this or that creature came to be, or did or didn't continue to exist; or "beneficial mutations" as the source of all genetic material that in fact exist only in a few highly compromised forms while all the rest are "neutral" or the cause of thousands of genetic diseases; or collections of fossilized dead things in separated strata that are clearly related to one another that they've imagined into evolution from less to more "advanced" over time rather than contemporaneous variation, just 'cause it fits the theory; and the layers of solidified sediments themselves to which they've laughably applied time period designations etc etc etc -- you'd think they might be a LITTLE bit cautious about demanding evidence from others.

Naa.

So what IS the evidence for the super genome? It's an inference from the fact -- provable fact, not imaginary construct -- that population splits tend toward reduced genetic diversity as they also produce new phenotypes. Reason it backwards and you come to, first, the Flood where a huge bottleneck must have brought about a huge decrease in genetic diversity, but not enough to reduce any particular line of variation to fixed loci like the cheetah or the northern seals, because the genome WAS so much bigger then than now, and then back before the Flood to the Creation where you MUST suppose a much much greater genome. Add back in all the genes that died in the Flood and down the centuries that now form the "junk DNA" and that should begin to reconstruct the original genome for you. I used to think that original genome might have been appreciably differently constructed somehow than today's, but now I think that all those reinstated genes with the maximum of alleles for each, fully heterozygous all of them, all combining basically according to Mendelian principles, is quite sufficient to have produced every creature now living and in the fossil Flood Graveyard as well.

*To be accurate, it's probably not right to think of the original genome as "bigger" exactly, simply fully functioning, all of what is now junk DNA fully operational-- a MORE ALIVE genome then. The one we have today, that all the rest of the ark-preserved creatures also have, is something like 90 to 95% dead.

What we have is a model that can explain most of the data and makes sense. We don't have direct evidence of this original fully functional genome, and maybe we can't, but it ought to be recognizable, from the fact that genetic diversity does decrease with phenotypic variation, that such an original is perfectly logical and likely.

Since I just wrote the qualification "ark-preserved" I realized there are other categories, sea creatures that probably survived in different proportions than did the land creatures on the ark, for instance, and bacteria that could have survived just about anything anyway. And the evidence that bacteria DID survive better than other creatures is the fact that they DON'T have a lot of junk DNA. This is of course explained evolution-style HERE:

...which is why bacteria tend to have very little of it.

--but it IS acknowledged that they have very little of it, which according to my version of Creationism means they still have most of their original genetic endowment which the majority of the rest of the creatures don't. Also, this alone should make comparisons between bacterial genetics and the genetics of higher animals highly suspect.

That article, by the way is about how junk DNA IS junk, and how the creationists are wrong who keep trying to find function in it in order to fit their expectation of a perfect Creation in the genome. But as I've said before, junk DNA is much better understood from a creationist point of view as a record of death since the Fall. The original perfect genome would have had no death, there would have been no junk or dead DNA, but since the Fall all life is subject to death, and it makes perfect sense that this would be reflected in the genome. As the article concludes:

The bottom line, though, is the genome is mostly dead, transcriptionally. The junk is still junk.

The Creation Model explains the facts quite nicely

We're talking a different whole model here, one that is at least as consistent with the facts as evolutionism. At least.

In the creation model I always have in the back of my mind (some of which I certainly got from creationist sources but some is my own or at least my own way of organizing the material), species are defined at the genetic level by a particular genetic endowment that was built in at creation.

DEFINING THE ORIGINAL SPECIES, ALSO KNOWN AS THE KIND:
In the debate the evolutionists insist that creationists give a definition of a Kind or of microevolution versus macroevolution, which is of course difficult. I've given my dynamic definition of it many times and a test for it as well -- there should be measurably reduced genetic diversity after a series of population reductions as in a ring species, showing the outer limits of the Kind beyond which further evolution is impossible. But I note that Percy/Admin at EvC was apparently trying to reduce the haranguing on the subject in one thread recently by trying to give a brief definition. I think he meant to say that a change from a gray squirrel (population) to a red squirrel (population) is MICROevolution but in fact he said MACROevolution which destroyed his intent, and if so I'd have to agree with that. In general I think if you're inclined to call it by the same name as its predecessor, a "squirrel" in this case, you're talking about MICROevolution. I'm sure there are exceptions but this is most likely the rule. When you're talking about a change from a reptile to a bird or a worm to a human or an ape to a human you're talking MACROevolution.

The original genomic endowment of each species has a great deal of variability built into it that defines the limits of change available to the species, that is, there were many alleles that change the effect of particular genes, originally many more than continue today, and there were many more genes, even many for a particular trait as well, many more than today (They are all now junk DNA, but I get ahead of myself).

This is sufficient for great variability of the species as populations split off from each other down the generations.

VARIATION OR "EVOLUTION" REDUCES GENETIC DIVERSITY
Over time the variability is inevitably reduced by these splittings and isolations for any given population, but the original genetic complement was so rich that the variability remains high for many generations and it's very rare that a particular line of variation gets to the point of allelic depletion for many gene loci, such as happened with the cheetah, but it would happen occasionally with severe bottlenecks -- though originally it would have taken many bottlenecks to reduce the variability to the extent of the cheetah -- and would happen over many generations with many less drastic population splittings as well.

SOME EXAMPLES OF VARIABLES THAT WERE BUILT IN:
Among the original built-in variables for most creatures could be size differences from as big as an elephant to as small as a mouse, as big as a sabertoothed tiger but as small as a housecat, as big as a dinosaur, as small as a lizard. All within the same species. Size and shape of features and limbs would also have a fair degree of variability. Color and patterns of skin or fur or scales also. Length of fur. The excess skin of the Shar Pei is most likely also a built-in variable, one that would probably take many generations of population isolation (nature does it randomly but domestic breeding does it intentionally) to emerge according to this creationist model.

SPECIATION
So: Many variations develop from the original created Species over generations, forming new populations with their own peculiar characteristics, often to the point of "speciation" or cessation of interbreeding with former populations. Speciation in this model is simply what happens when a particular line of variation -- either by random population splitting in nature or intentional splitting by domestic breeding -- has produced a population whose genetic diversity is sufficiently reduced, or whose gene pool has become sufficiently inbred, to prevent breeding of its members with those of the population from which it originally split off. Of course breeding may cease between the two before a genetic reason for it exists, simply because of preference of members of a population for members of the same population. The effect is the same: the separate characteristics of the separated populations are preserved and so are their separate gene pools.

You NEVER get a new "species" in the sense of the original Species or Kind by any of these processes of variation, only variations on the theme of the original Species itself, but they are quite wonderfully many and diverse. So while what is called "speciation" by evolutionists clearly does happen, it's nothing more than a variation that no longer interbreeds with the rest of its Kind, so that its own pecular characteristics are preserved.

As such variations inbreed and become established in their own niches they refine their own gene pool and that further cuts them off from other members of the species.

MUTATIONS
In this model, mutations are mistakes or accidents brought about by the Fall. They have no positive function in the organism, only a negative or destructive one. They may produce no identifiable change at all, but only because the original DNA is not easily damaged. But the fact that they change anything at all in the originally perfect genetic design makes them a disease process.

Whenever I read a description of a trait as produced by a mutation I simply doubt it, recognizing it as a notion that is required by the competing model of evolution but in reality most likely simply the result of an unusual combination of the pre-existing built-in allelic possibilities that go back to the creation, brought about by many generations of population splittings and consequent reduced genetic diversity which just happened to bring this particular combination to expression.

So, I habitually reinterpret descriptions of traits that ascribe them to mutation, as in this description of the wrinkled skin of the Shar Pei dog for instance:

Scientists from the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle, announced in January 2010 that they had analysed the genetic code of 10 different pedigree dog breeds. In the Shar-pei they discovered four small differences located in the gene HAS2 which is responsible for making hyaluronic acid synthase 2. That enzyme makes hyaluronic acid, which is one of the key components of the skin. There have been rare cases in which a mutation of the same gene has caused severe wrinkling in humans as well.[3]

While this MIGHT be a mutation -- a mistake in the replication of the gene -- especially where it produces a clear deformity, it is most likely, according to the creation model, to be simply a case of a rare allele having come to expression in the breed after many generations of isolation and inbreeding.

Is it possible to tell a pre-existing normal nonmutated allele from a supposed mutation as expected by evolution? I don't think so. Mutation is simply assumed, because the theory of evolution requires it.

MACROEVOLUTION
What I'm describing is often called "microevolution" but it's the only kind of evolution that is possible, variation within the species based on the genetic endowment built in at the Creation. No other genetic input is required. For "macroevolution" to occur, however, meaning changes that transcend the Species or Kind, would require genetic input from somewhere, and this is what "mutations" are assumed by evolutionists to provide, but if they are mistakes that confer no benefit on the organism obviously this should be recognized as a dashed hope.

EVOLUTIONIST JUST-SO TALES
Also incidentally found in that same Wikipedia discussion of the Shar-Pei is the typical evolutionist tale that "explains" the survival of a particular feature, in this case the heavily wrinkled skin:

If a Shar Pei is being attacked the wrinkles keep the Shar Pei from being injured badly.[citation needed]

The sort of "explanation" that is meant to account for the persistence of the feature.

Sometimes such factors may indeed apply, but according to my creation model it's more likely that the trait simply emerged in the process of allele shufflings in population isolations over generations and wasn't a detriment so it stuck around. It may confer benefits of course, but these don't have to be the reason for its existence. The creation model produces creative variations kind-of-just-for-the-love-of-them, as it were, just for the "love" of beauty and diversity, they don't need specific reasons that enabled them to survive. So, for instance, rather than Darwin's finches having evolved their characteristic beak styles in order to fit into a niche where the particular beak was suited to the particular food, the creation model would say the finches that just happened to develop with a particular beak style gravitated to that kind of food just because the beak WAS suited to it, and over subsequent generations THEN the beak could have become established and refined for that purpose within that population.

So the idea that the wrinkled skin protects the Shar Pei from injury MAY be true enough (who knows) but it isn't necessary as an explanation for the existence of the trait. This is just the usual imaginative speculation that makes up, oh, 90% of the whole theory of evolution. It even says "citation needed." Well, maybe someone will come up with a citation to a study that seems to prove it, but evolutionists never really require such proof, the ad-hoc speculation explanation alone usually suffices.

Why aren't there any pre-human hominids (or other varieties of hominids) still running around? Oh probably because we killed them all off or ran them off the territory that sustained them and so on and so forth. They publish whole peer-reviewed papers speculating about the reasons and they'll call it science and they'll beat up creationists who continue to demur. They haven't a clue but such "likely stories" seem to be enough to keep them happy. Of course the REAL reason is that there never WERE any pre-human hominids.

How come there is a bone in the whale skeleton fossil where a hip joint would have been located? Oh that's proof that the whale evolved from a land animal. Huge huge leap but because it fits the ToE they enshrine it as ***S*c*i*e*n*t*i*f*i*c*** F*a*c*t***.

But continuing with my Creation Model:

JUNK DNA
Junk DNA is most likely the record of genetic death over the generations due to the Fall, much of it brought about by mutations that simply killed the function of gene after gene. Probably the majority of it is a record of the Great Death brought about by the Flood. If there is some function left in some of them that is all it is, a bit of crippled life that remains, that wsan't completely killed. Those creationists who want to find function in the DNA are not thinking clearly. They feel they have to prove the original perfection of the Creation and forget that the Fall has made enormous changes in the original perfection through destructive processes -- disease, death, deformity -- that had no part in the original.

NATURAL SELECTION
What about Natural Selection? In this creation model NS is one possible way variations develop, but only one of many. Simple migration will succeed at creating a new variation by isolating a new population just as well as NS will, by creating new gene frequencies, just as adapted to its situation as anything NS produces, and without the death that NS often requires. Natural Selection applies mostly to situations where there is an actual survival threat that prevents the creature from passing on its genes, such as when an aggressive predator wipes out much of the population. Some sort of defensive mechanism in a few of the prey population's members may save some of them and therefore be passed on and become characteristic of the new population. A change in the environment, say the food supply, may kill off many members of a particular population but those that have some form of adaptation to the new food situation will pass on their genes. Etc. etc. It no doubt happens, but probably is fairly rare among all the ways new populations develop from genetic variations, perhaps far more often than not simply leading to extinction rather than an adapted variation. Forced adaptation to specific situations can't be as much of a driving force for change as evolution claims. As far as new variations go, genetic drift does the same thing within a population. Bottleneck is simply a drastic version of either migration or natural selection, creating a severely reduced population with severely reduced genetic diversity in a single event. Etc. etc.

FOSSIL RECORD
What is the Fossil Record according to the Creation Model? Obviously it's overwhelmingly to be explained as the remains of the creatures that died in the Flood of Noah. Obviously.

Why is there the seeming gradation of primitive to advanced morphology in the Fossil Record? There really isn't, there is simply a sorting of creatures according to some physical principle, probably many physical principles, that occurred in the Flood. The apparent gradation is an illusion. Differences between different fossil representatives of one species to be found in different layers or different parts of the world simply demonstrate the same principle of variation I'm describing above, not evolution from one type to another. There are lots of different varieties of Trilobites in the Fossil Record for instance, each variety flocking with its own kind, which evolutionists interpret as evolution over time, presumably from less to more advanced types, but all they are really is separate populations of the many possible variations that were built into the original genome of the Trilobite species.

STRATA / GEOLOGIC COLUMN / GEO TIMETABLE
What about the existence of the strata themselves, known as the Geologic Column? Well, that is really a no-brainer. Nothing BUT a worldwide Flood could have brought about those strata. The interpretation of huge time periods attaching to separated sediments is just plain ludicrous. And don't tell me that is a wrong reading of the geo timetable. Just go look at the model of the Grand Canyon where the "time periods" are associated with the different sediments.

And so on and so forth.

The point of this post is to demonstrate that there IS a Creation Model that IS consistent with the actual facts, can account for just about everything the Evolution model attempts to account for and in my opinion way better.

There is much more that could be added here but I'll have to get back to it later or do it in another post.

==============
From Post at EvC:

No one seems interested that the best microbiology has been able to accomplish is 1+1=2.

Ok, 1 +1 =2. Then we're at 2, and 2 + 1 = 3, then we're at 3, and 3 + 1 = 4. Now we're at 4, and 4 + 1 = 5. 5 + 1 = 6. 6 + 1 = 7. 7 + 1 = 8. 8 + 1 = 9. 9 + 1 = 10.

Lots of little changes add up to a big change. What you need to do, to allow micro but deny macro, is come up with some mechanism that stops little changes from accumulating.

Easy. I told them there and I'm arguing here over and over again: THE PROCESSES THAT PRODUCE VARIATIONS / CHANGES IN THE PHENOTYPE / SPECIATION / "EVOLUTION" ULTIMATELY LEAD TO REDUCED GENETIC VARIABILITY OR DIVERSITY, WHICH EVENTUALLY PUTS AN END TO THE POSSIBILITY OF MORE CHANGES. This end point defines the outer limit of a Species or Kind. That's your "mechanism." It should be testable, both in the wild and in a laboratory.

The Genetic Markers of the Flood Bottleneck

Here comes JAR with his usual wrongheaded assertions (no, no evidence here) against the Flood of Noah.

To mention "fossils" when talking about the Biblical Flood is of course simply silly. The Biblical Flood, if it had happened, was far too recent to have anything to do with fossils.

Too recent to have anything to do with fossils? 4500 years isn't enough time? Even though evolutionists claim that fossils are being formed every day in our own time in far more mundane circumstances than the global biblical Flood? Excuse me? The Flood buried bazillions of living things which would have been made into fossils in a lot less time than 4500 years. I've seen discussions, probably creationist of course since evolutionists are committed to not knowing such things, that show the process occurring in a matter of years in caves that drip calcium carbonate. If I find such a discussion I'll post it.

The Biblical Flood myths say that all the critters on land and in the air with the exception of those critters on the fictional ark were killed during a very short period.

If that were true, then every land and air critter living today, plant or animal, would be descended from the few critters on the ark.

Very true and they are.

That would leave a genetic bottleneck marker in EVERY single living species of plant of animal, and the marker would be only a relatively few generations back.

If the Biblical Flood happened, then that marker MUST be there.

It ain't.

Case closed.

I've heard this bit of evolutionist lore many times by now, but I have NEVER ONCE SEEN AN EXPLANATION OF EXACTLY WHAT "MARKER" WOULD POINT TO A BOTTLENECK. Perhaps I merely missed it but I've been looking for some time whenever this subject comes up and all that's offered is this assertion, perhaps some ridicule and choice epithets along with it, BUT NO CLUE AS TO WHAT THE MARKER MIGHT BE THAT WOULD DEMONSTRATE THE BOTTLENECK IN QUESTION.

Now that it's come up again perhaps I'll be motivated to make a more dogged search for such information.

But meanwhile I wanted to highlight JAR's post because of something I just learned about these things that opens up a new answer to the question. I've been rereading Morris and Parker's What Is Creation Science? over the last few days, one of the first books on creationism I read after becoming a Christian, and besides recognizing many points they make that I've made my own in this debate although I'd forgotten their source, I've also run across some points that illuminate some things I hadn't digested and am only now beginning to think about.

One of them suggests an answer to just what WOULD be the genetic indicators of the bottleneck at the Flood and they aren't the sort of "marker" that would jump out at you but something a geneticist today would simply take for granted as the normal state of the genome. Whenever I've gone that far into this part of the debate I find myself wondering about a formerly much bigger genome --polyploidy for instance, which never really fit but now I have a better understanding anyway -- from which it would be easier to imagine descent of all the life forms we see today and extravagantly more varieties before the Flood as well, which certainly must have been the case BECAUSE of such an extreme bottleneck.

No, not a bigger genome, but a different genetic situation along more ordinary lines:

Parker describes how all the varieties of humans and animals are easily accounted for by simple Mendelian genetics combining a given built-in array of genes for various traits. The example he gave was of two parents with "medium" or "average" skin color, expressed as AaBb, with the capital letters representing the darkest and the lower case the lightest, saying that EVERY shade of skin that we see on earth can be produced from those two parents, from the darkest African (AABB)to the lightest Scandinavian (aabb). When you think of every other trait as genetically expressed by the same formula, it becomes clear that an enormous variety of combinations would produce an enormous variety of types or varieties or races -- of people and animals of all kinds -- which would become characteristic of groups as they migrated and became geographically isolated from one another.

And all this incredible variety requires is normal sexual recombination AND HETEROZYGOSITY of the traits.

He also gave this statistic on page 112: "[evolutionist Francisco Ayala] says that human beings are "heterozygous" for 6.7% of their genes, on the average. That means that 6 or 7 times in a 100, the pair of genes for a given trait differ like the genes for brown or blue eyes, or for rolling or not rolling the tongue. Now this may not seem like much. But Ayala calculates a single human couple with just "6.7% variety" could produce 10 to the 2,017 children ...before they would have to produce an identical twin..."

He goes on to say that the whole spectrum of skin color we see today would be easily produced IN ONE GENERATION with just this 6.7% heterozygosity for that trait. Combining that with the same breadth of possibilities for size, hair or fur color, bone type, muscle type, and so on and so forth, would certainly yield an enormous variety of individuals within each created kind or type.

So I figure this 6.7% heterozygosity is what remained on average to all creatures after the Flood, or perhaps it was somewhat more then and has decreased since then. It's still enough to produce enormous variety, everything we see today.

Well, what does a bottleneck do genetically anyway? Doesn't it produce HOMOZYGOSITY for a number of traits? Isn't that what happened to the cheetah -- it has reached the point genetically where most of its genes are fixed and no variety is possible at all. Since the cheetah is of course descended from the cats on the ark, with their already drastically reduced heterozygosity -- perhaps comparable to the 6.7% of human beings -- a later bottleneck would have reduced it even further to the current state of almost 100% fixed loci, so that each individual is almost a clone of all the others, and further variation is as good as impossible.

THERE'S YOUR "MARKER" JAR. Not what you were expecting but there it is. It wouldn't be recognizable in the genome because nobody is looking for it. The average heterozygosity seen today would be accepted as the norm for all human beings for all time. It wouldn't be suspected as a marker of anything, although the basic principle is quite well known.

So instead of the genetic complexities I was trying to imagine to account for the necessity of an enormously greater variety among humans and animals before the Flood, I now appreciate that simple ordinary everyday heterozygosity can account for it all, but presumably there would have been much MORE heterozogosity for a much greater number of genes or traits before the Flood. 100% back at Adam and Eve? 50%?

And to that I would like to add another "marker" of the bottleneck, one of my favorite topics, JUNK DNA -- which makes up something over 90% of the genome. You wouldn't suspect that as a sign of the bottleneck at the Flood, would you, JAR? But if it's what I keep thinking it must be, the record of the genetic death brought about by that bottleneck, as well as all the accumulated death from other causes of course, then its mere existence in the genome is very glaring evidence of the Flood, now to be added to the other marker, the very low incidence of heterozygosity that resulted from all that death. This genetic junkyard or graveyard is a hint at enormously more genetic possibilities at the Creation than exist today.

May I please have my Nobel Prize now?

Junk DNA supports creationism better than evolutionism

There’s a proposal for a new thread at EvC mostly about junk DNA

A rising trend among creationists/intelligent design advocates is to imply, or state outright, that all DNA (i.e., junk DNA/noncoding DNA) has function. While this is already demonstrably untrue, many such folk maintain this line, including Jonathan Wells in his new book, 'The Myth of Junk DNA'. [The book is at Amazon of course, and the comments on that page are interesting -- Faith].

On a related note, it is claimed by YEC/IDC 'information' types that functional DNA possesses CSI, and further they claim that CSI is indicative of creation/design. Further, I have been told by a YEC that CSI is determined by calculating the Shannon information of the DNA sequence (which is a function of its number of base pairs) and adding its 'meaning' which is premised on its function (I've been trying to get creationist information types to tell me how to quantify 'meaning' for some time, but to no avail).

Taking the YEC/IDC position to its logical conclusion, this must mean that an organism with a genome larger than humans possess more CSI than humans do.

Thus, the marbled lungfish, with a genome of 133 billion bps, has ~44 times the CSI [something "specific information" -- Faith] that humans do (if YEC/IDCs are correct).

Which means that the Creator/Designer put more effort into creating them than us.

How can YEC/IDCs reconcile this with their beliefs that humans are 'special'?

I mean without special pleading....

I'm always surprised to find creationists arguing that junk DNA must have a function. I suppose some of it may retain some function after all, I haven't studied the science involved, but its not having a function makes it compatible with the Biblical scenarios of the Fall and the Flood, which imply so much death, and that's how I've been thinking of it for some time -- as the DNA cemetery. Death entered the world because of sin. It makes sense the DNA would die too. The creationist arguments for its functionality are probably due to the fact that evolutionists have claimed its nonfunctionality supports evolution, but really it supports Biblical creation better.

Evolutionists have claimed that junk DNA is evidence for evolution because it must reflect the many genetic trials by natural selection that didn't work out in the long history of evolution (or possibly, the record of previous adaptations that were later obsolesced?) I dunno, seems to me that given the enormously long history they postulate, 98% of the DNA is an awfully small record to show for it, it ought to be more like 99.9999999%. But the idea that 98% of human DNA is functionless or dead is perfectly compatible with the biblical history of the Fall in Eden and the Flood of Noah, as it could be regarded as a record of all the death that was the result of those events, and the time period of 4500 years since the Flood bottleneck is a more reasonable number than millions of years too of course.

[Aug 12, want to add here that at EvC someone or other is always claiming that if there had been a bottleneck 4300 or so years ago that would be apparent in the DNA. I've never caught anyone saying exactly what in the DNA would indicate such a bottleneck, so I can only just shrug off such comments until they do, and since they habitually think in terms of millions of years and can't seem to help themselves, whatever they come up with would have to be taken with a great deal of skepticism anyway. But the Junk DNA seems to me to be a fine indicator of such a bottleneck.]

As for marbled lungfish or any other creature with a genome larger than the human, that also has to be explained by the Fall and the Flood. It doesn't reflect Creation but the destruction after the Fall, and Creationists should recognize this. Some creatures were less affected by the fall of humanity and God's judgment than others, and would have retained more genetic vitality for that reason. The land creatures that were taken on the ark probably lost about the same amount of DNA for their Kind as the people on the ark did, but sea creatures either lived or died without benefit of the ark, and some no doubt survived in greater numbers than others and retained more living DNA for that reason.

Yes, this is all just speculative musing on my part and I can't very well insist on it, it just seems to fit the biblical account while the claim of functionality for the junk DNA doesn't.

Mutations can't save the cheetah because all they do is kill; most of them kill DNA itself over time

Here's another post from that EvC thread where the cheetah example came up that I discuss a couple posts below:

This is from creationist Slevesque, who started the thread:

What I was saying was: The % of functioning genome has been ever increasing in the past few years, as I'm sure you know. Right now, anyone can safely say that at least 30% of the genome is functional.

What I said concerning ENCODE was simply that it ''opened up the possibility'' that the entire genome had a function. I'm not saying it proved anything, and I certainly know the difference between functional and transcribed.

Therefore, all I'm saying is that when seeing how genetics has been unravelling the secrets of previously thought ''junk DNA'', and how more evidence comes to open the possibility that maybe the whole genome is functional, I think it is the idea that any part of the genome is junk that should be regarder with great skepticism, not the other way around.

I haven't followed the whole thread so I don't really know where this fits in, but just to answer what is written here, it seems to me this supposed discovery that some junk DNA is "functional" simply reflects the fact that some of it hasn't TOTALLY lost its function, it's just been crippled, not killed.

An accumulation of mutational disruptions of the code along the length of a gene over generations eventually has to render it less and less functional although it may retain SOME function, and this is most likely all that has been discovered.

Of course the whole genome was once completely and perfectly functional, but the processes of disease and death have been rendering it less and less functional down the generations.

I think slevesque is making a very common mistake that creationists, especially Intelligent Design creationists, often make, that is, not to recognize that dead DNA reflects the Biblical Fall. The whole genome is not NOW functional and it shouldn't be if the Fall is true. The Fall is still operating, at all levels of life, still accumulating death and disease from generation to generation.

It's testimony to the immense vitality of the original Creation that there's still a lot of life left in God's created world, but no matter how much life they discover remaining in the junk DNA it isn't going to be the original life that it was created to have, but something like haphazard spasms of its original life.

===
ALSO, the idea that deleterious mutations will be wiped out of the population by natural selection is no doubt true -- another notion that always comes up in these discussions, and on this thread as well -- as long as there are viable genes in the population at large that survive and get passed on. However, what is not being taken into account in this cheery scenario is that ALL death in a population contributes to the gradual reduction of genetic diversity over time, just as all the selection processes do, just as anything that isolates a portion of a population does.

ALSO, there is no reason for "neutral" mutations to be selected out so they continue in the population even though they represent a segment of dead DNA that means SOME function or other has been destroyed or crippled. As genes accumulate more mutational assaults down the generations, eventually they contribute to the DNA cemetery or junk DNA although the organisms go on apparently functioning, and there is simply no way to know what was lost. A whole population eventually comes to carry these cemeteries in their DNA although they apparently continue to function without them, though no doubt in an increasingly disease-prone condition.

Since we don't know what the original Creation was like we can't appreciate what has been lost, but it would certainly help if science weren't addicted to this idea of evolution and could get focused on the reality of gradual degeneration over time or the reality is going to rise up and bite them in the end (in both senses of the word). Reality is always a nice thing for science to keep in mind.

How the cheetah, living proof that evolution is not possible, becomes just another figment of the evolutionist imagination

Hey, I'm honored, mentioned by Iblis in a post at EvC, of course the usual nonsense argument and I'm not there to defend myself but that's OK. There is no defending yourself at EvC if you're a creationist. The thing about evolutionism is that it can morph in any direction it likes in order to answer you because it's all a fantasy. If you say something that seems to challenge the theory, amoeba-like it just extends a pseudopod to gobble up the challenge -- glurrrp -- and everybody's happy.

And this is a case in point.

Faith used to back her affected agrument by incredulity with specious appeals to "genetic meltdown". Her favorite example was the amazing cheetah.

Lessee, of course you must use all the most derogatory terms you can think of to poison the well against the argument for starters, such as "affected" and "specious," to be sure nobody could possibly think the argument had any merit. Oh and be sure to call it an "argument by incredulity" even though it is no such thing -- that's SUCH a no-no.

I also don't recall ever using the term "genetic meltdown" so it shouldn't be in quotes in reference to my argument.

Now he goes on in a way that is rather hard to follow, kind of a word salad approach that serves mostly to obscure and in any case doesn't get anywhere near the argument I was always trying to make by referring to the cheetah:

He's had it rough as the poster-child for reduction of genetic diversity. Due to depopulation, isolation and inbreeding his genetic variability is so low that skin grafts between unrelated animals do not result in immunological rejection! And so on, there are a lot of lovely fables in this area.

IS that a fable? I don't think I ever used that particular example but everything I've read about the cheetah does say that the genetic variability IS so low that individuals are almost like clones of one another. Is he trying to dispute that even after declaring it?

But contrary to popular belief, this is nothing new for the cheetah.

Contrary to popular belief? Whose belief? I never said it was "new?" What does its being new or old have to do with anything? The point is that the cheetah is a prime example of extremely reduced genetic variability. He seems to affirm this yet also try to deny it. This is a very confused piece of writing.

Well, now here comes the Evo Fairy Tale. Get some popcorn, pull up a chair:

It began thousands of years ago, toward the end of last ice age,

Yes, long long ago ...

in a fairly ordinary genetic bottleneck.

... in a land far far away ...

Did anyone ever suggest the bottleneck was not "ordinary?" The point about a bottleneck is that it eliminates a bunch of genes all at once, leaving a very few individuals to form a new population with the reduced genetic variability they share, whether it's an "ordinary" or extraordinary bottleneck, whatever that might be.

And as result of this process, the cheetah has become the least "feline" of all the big cats.

Well, it has a smallish head as felines go but otherwise it's plenty feline it seems to me. But apparently saying it's less "feline" is supposed to imply that it's an example of evolution. Sigh. Are we getting anywhere with this little dissertation? Doesn't it seem to be wandering around trying to obscure the issue?

So now we go from this completely subjective notion that it's less feline looking to this HUGE jump:

In another million years or so, he may look something like this [here we get a picture of -- a hyena? A doglike animal with some cheetah-like coloring and markings]

Oh brother. Because the cheetah just sort of looks less feline to this guy it's evolving and is going to look even less feline in a million years. Sigh.

The point about such drastically reduced genetic variability is that EVOLUTION HAS COME TO A STOP. That is the point of using the cheetah as an example. The cheetah is NOT EVOLVING. It's reached a genetic dead end. When you have no new genetic possibilities there is simply no direction in which the animal COULD evolve. It goes on producing individuals that hardly vary at all from each other, to the point that they are truly like clones. You CANNOT GET EVOLUTION FROM THAT POINT.

A bottleneck is what happens when for some reason you have just a few individuals inbreeding among themselves to form a new variation of a species. A bottleneck is simply the most drastic way animals get "selected" -- randomly in this case -- and isolated, these being the "mechanisms" or conditions that bring about new gene frequencies, which is supposedly the basis for evolution. And it IS, it is the basis for MICROevolution, or the variation that commonly occurs from generation to generation in any species. If part of a population gets isolated from the rest it develops characteristics to some extent different from the former population with its own reduced gene pool. But it WILL have a reduced gene pool, it WILL have reduced genetic variability compared to the previous population. A bottleneck will simply bring about a DRASTICALLY reduced genetic variability compared to the usual reduction because it involves so few individuals. This is what makes such examples the best for making the point about how evolution comes to an end by simply following out the normal processes that create new varieties, or microevolution. ALL reduced populations tend in the same direction of reduced genetic variability but the extremely reduced populations are where you see the tendency itself in action, where it's hardest to ignore it, the tendency, that is, toward the complete inability to evolve further somewhere down the road.

Of course fantasy can surmount any obstacle thrown up by reality, and here we have Iblis totally ignoring this point and assuming that the cheetah is going to go on evolving although it doesn't have the genetic means to go on evolving:

The misadventures of these fellows actually provides the key to your whole puzzle. You see, when the gene pool is large and conditions remain stable, the overwhelming majority of even the effective, non-neutral mutations are quickly lost in the shuffle. They are outnumbered and as they provide no selection advantage, there is no reason for them to be preserved.

If mutations are going on at the rate they assume, then there is no such thing as their not having an effect. A mutation is a change in a gene, it is a substitution of a new coding sequence for another. If it has no effect all that means is that it has no detectable effect, no effect that they know of. But the very fact that a coding part of the DNA has been changed means that SOMETHING HAS CHANGED in whatever that segment formerly coded for. It can't be a good thing that a formerly coding sequence no longer codes for whatever it used to code for. At the very least something has been killed, some part of the organism no longer functions, a very tiny hardly discernible part no doubt, something beneath the detection capacity of the instruments available, but how can the death of a coding portion of DNA ever be just "neutral?" And most mutations supposedly have this non-effect. But that means that most mutations are killing off genes coding bit by coding bit. This is no doubt how "junk DNA" gets formed and there's an awful awful lot of junk DNA in the genome of most creatures, certainly the human genome. But that's a whole nother subject.

When the gene pool is greatly reduced however, either due to large-scale changes in the environment in terms of selection factors or to the spreading out of outliers of a population into a new area or niche, this changes. The cow's primary source of genetic diversity is, other cows with somewhat different genes.

Exactly, this is how genetic diversity is maintained in most large populations of any animal. Individuals vary from each other, they have different genetic possibilities that can combine with those of other individuals to create the variation that shows up in the next generation.

The cheetah's, though, is mutation.

Uh huh. Mutation is the only thing left to the cheetah, and this is true. But consider the RATE situation now. How many of the expectable mutations provide any kind of change that could be useful to the animal? Actually, it's pretty much zip. You get all those "neutral" mutations and you get deleterious mutations. Those are known. The useful ones are purely imaginary.

Each new trait produced by mutation is valuable to a reduced species and likely to be preserved

Pure fantasy. There ARE no new "traits" known to be produced by mutation. All that is KNOWN to be produced are degenerative changes and "neutral" changes, that, as I point out above, aren't really neutral because they DESTROY genes.

resulting in large-scale morphological changes over a relatively short period of time. Still in the high thousands and millions though.

Man these guys love their theory. They NEVER have to come down to reality and actually PROVE anything, they're quite content to affirm the fairy tale of beneficial mutations that drive evolution even in the face of EVIDENCE that, as in the case of the cheetah, evolution is simply no longer possible.

And this is the main factor underlying Gould's "punctuated equilibrium". For ten million years, everything is fine. Then things change; and when they do, things change. Eerie. But not mysterious, simple statistics.

Eventually you'd think a brain would simply implode from the strain of having to invent all those fictions to support all the imaginary notions that support the imaginary theory.

But thanks for the mention, Iblis, gave me the opportunity to restate my favorite argument.