What exactly is proved by Ring Species? A CREATIONIST'S PROPOSITION FOR A SCIENTIFIC TEST

[Source of diagram=PBS Evolution Library]
Thoughts about ring species. I've argued many times that this phenomenon demonstrates the inexorable reduction in genetic diversity with each "speciation event" or formation of a new variety of a Kind (new phenotype). It's a great example because many stages of variation (or change or evolution or speciation) are present, from a population that is probably fairly similar to the original to a population at the end of the ring that demonstrates the most changes from the original and may even be incapable of interbreeding with the original or others toward the beginning of the ring. Since reproductive isolation from the earlier populations is one of the definitions of evolution according to the theory, this is called Speciation in the strict sense and considered strong evidence that this is genuine macroevolution.

"Ring species" is the term for a series of more or less isolated populations of somewhat different versions of the same creature, chipmunks and salamanders being examples I've seen discussed, that are distributed all around a geographic barrier such as a mountain or mountain range or a body of water (the illustration shows salamanders found around the Joaquin Valley in California), each population descended from the previous in the ring. Such series demonstrate some of the principles of evolution (or speciation or variation) and are often taken as evidence for evolution.

It is apparently possible to identify the progression from one population to another, which follows a sequential path around the ring (or sometimes separately on each side of the barrier), as well as point to visible features that distinguish the populations from one another. There may or may not be complete reproductive isolation, meaning no interbreeding between the separate populations, and some interaction (or gene flow) may be retained in some cases, but for purposes of understanding the principles involved it's fair to describe each separate population as an isolated species or subspecies unto itself.

[The illustration to the right shows different variations of seagulls distributed around the northern Atlantic and Arctic oceans, and the picture below shows members of two different populations or subspecies at the opposite extremes of the ring]













So there's the concept. I hope it's clear.

Now. I've been arguing that whenever a new population or "species" or variation is formed, whether by natural selection or accidental selection by unpredictable events (bottleneck, founder effect) or by the migration of a part of one population to a new territory, where the new population becomes isolated and inbred among its own members, you get a new type of the creature, a variation, AND you always get it along with the loss of some genetic possibilities, specifically some that defined the previous population that are now changed in the new population and soon set it apart visibly from the previous.

So, if the former population had gray wings (or brown skin in the case of salamanders) you may now have a population with white wings (or striping in the case of salamanders) and changes in other traits as well. Genetically speaking what has happened is that alleles for the old coloring are now suppressed or even eliminated altogether in the new population while formerly unexpressed alleles are now being expressed in the new phenotype. The alleles that form the new traits may or may not be "mutations" but useful mutations are very rare and mutations are not needed for speciation in any case -- AND the same fate would meet the mutation as meets any other allele anyway, whether it is expressed in the new population or left behind in the old, the overall effect is still always reduction in genetic diversity in the new population as a whole.

The changes from the old to the new population demonstrate the famous definition of evolution as "a change in the frequency of alleles." But what is usually not taken into account in this definition is the fact that this change in frequency necessarily reflects a reduction in SOME of the alleles, at the extremes a complete elimination of them, and the only increase is merely a matter of the difference in proportions present in the different populations, the coming to expression of formerly suppressed alleles that were already present in the old population. That is, there is no actual increase in the alleles available, there are simply more of a kind, PROPORTIONALLY, of which there used to be proportionally fewer in the former population, but there is always a decrease in some alleles that defined the original population and in some cases a complete elimination of those formerly expressed alleles and this means an overall loss in genetic diversity.

As this process is repeated around the ring, perhaps over long periods of time though no more than enough years to establish a large and phenotypically homogeneous population, one established population becoming the basis for the migration of a few of its members to a new territory to form a new population, these few members as a group necessarily possess an even more limited complement of alleles from the former population, and the new frequency of alleles becomes the basis for a new phenotype that eventually emerges from the inbreeding of all the members. This is due to the isolation and inbreeding among members of the new population, again forming an identifiable new "species" or subspecies. And this "speciation" event is of course again accompanied by the expected REDUCTION in genetic possibilities, because the change in gene frequency that occurs with the founding of each new population REQUIRES that some of the alleles that characterized the phenotype of the former population are LOST to the new population, at least suppressed.

By the time many such migrations have occurred and there are many populations forming a ring, many alleles from the original population that started the ring are likely to be lost altogether in the more recently formed populations and certainly in the very last in the ring.

YOU DO NOT GET SPECIATION WITHOUT REDUCTION-TO-COMPLETE LOSS OF GENETIC VARIABILITY.

EVOLUTION DEFEATS EVOLUTION is my slogan. This expresses the observation that the very processes that form new phenotypes through change in gene frequency, are ALWAYS accompanied by a corresponding reduction in genetic diversity that ultimately reaches a point after many population splits beyond which no further variation/evolution/speciation is possible at all. If complete reproductive isolation occurs at this point then further evolution is completely impossible, though it may often still be possible for reproduction to be resumed with members of some former populations, but overall the tendency is always out to less variability and never to more and this contradicts all the expectations for the theory of evolution. The genetic situation ought to reflect this and ought to be measurable.

This is my claim.

NOW. Although I believe this is pretty close to a fact that ought merely to be recognized by anyone who will think it through, a fact I believe is supported by many observations made by conservationists at least, and very much the same genetic situation that domestic breeders face every time they try to isolate a highly specialized new breed, it ought to be possible to test this claim I've been making, only I don't have any way to do it myself.

It seems to me that ring species ought to be a very accessible proving ground for this claim. The claim predicts that whatever remains of the original population in a ring should have more genetic diversity among its members than the last in the ring, and there should be correspondingly less and less genetic diversity in each new population that is formed sequentially around the ring.

This ought to be testable. Proposed Method: All you need to do is analyze the genomes of whatever number of members of each of the populations in the ring will show what's needed to prove this one way or the other.

Prediction: The newest population should show quite a lot less genetic diversity than the oldest or first population, possibly even homozygosity at some gene loci, or radical total inability to vary in some characteristics beyond that point.

Intermediate populations should show incremental reduction of genetic diversity from the original to the newest population.

Conservationists know about the loss of diversity from migration and even natural selection and anything that isolates a small portion of a population from the greater population. They deal with practical consequences of this all the time. They don't want a few salmon, for instance, to break off from the main river population and head up a small tributary to breed because that will change the character of the fish in ways they don't want to happen by accident, and because this is a bottleneck situation that usually so drastically reduces the genetic variability of the new population that forms that it is vulnerable to environmental threats in a way the more diverse larger population is not.

This ought to be testable. I would really like to see it tested. Who do I talk to?

Perhaps the necessary observations of the genomes of the different populations in ring species have already been made in the service of some other scientific investigation and can just be brought out and looked at specifically for this purpose. That would be nice and easy.

I've dreamed up laboratory tests but they appear to be way too cumbersome. You start with a cage of mice (or whatever creature would work best for this purpose), let them breed among themselves for enough generations to establish a definitive phenotype for the population (which will unfortunately probably number in the thousands by that time, at least hundreds), then you send a few of them to another cage to inbreed among themselves until again a recognizably new homogeneous population is formed with a recognizably different appearance from the former population, and then you send a few from that new population to a new cage and so on until you have a dozen or more well-established new populations of mice that should show some pretty clear differences in characteristics from one another (by this time the mice will have taken over the laboratory), and then you take a look at their genomes. As I say for the above version of the experiment in the field, the newest population should show quite a lot less genetic diversity than the oldest or first population, possibly even homozygosity at some gene loci, or radical total inability to vary in some characteristics beyond that point; and there should be a graded series of reductions in genetic diversity from the original to the end population.

I really think this is obvious and shouldn't really need special testing but since it's doubted whenever I argue it in evolutionist venues it ought to be tested and it is obviously testable.

I would really like to see it tested. Any rich creationists out there who would like to fund this project?

(Yes, of course the evolutionists are going to rush in and assure us all that GIVEN ENOUGH TIME, like bazillions of years, mutation will overcome this effect anyway. It's a big fat delusion but we'll deal with that when we get there (though I've already answered the charge somewhere above). Meanwhile at least the claim that the phenomenon of Ring Species demonstrates macroevolution, and all similar and related arguments, should be dead and buried by this test.)

---CJA

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P.S. I think some of my terminology and description are probably not precisely accurate but I also think anyone who knows about the phenomena I'm trying to describe should understand what I'm getting at and perhaps be able to put it in more precise language. And it doesn't affect the mechanics of the test I'm proposing anyway.

Richard Dawkins' new book: an inadequate attempt to supply the needed evidence

I had a sinking feeling as it occurred to me that MAYBE I should read Dawkins' latest book (The Greatest Show on Earth. See ad at his website) because it's intended to be a mustering of the evidence for evolution. (His other books have merely assumed evolution). What we want IS a thorough mustering of the evidence and I would very much like to read a book that promised to do this, but that sinking feeling is a forboding, based on much experience in the effort to find just such a compendium of evidence, that this book is not likely to live up to its promise -- because evolutionists really do not understand fully what evidence is (I MUST conclude this from their strange inability to produce much that really fits the requirement) or what sorts of evidence we need. This in itself is testimony to their own sloppy thinking that amounts to faith rather than reason in their embrace of evolutionary theory, but be that as it may, I was very happy to run across this wonderfully insightful and articulate review of his book at Amazon, which has spared me the expense and frustration of finding out for myself that it's not worth my time:

183 of 224 people found the following review helpful:
A good book, but didn't live up to its subtitle, September 28, 2009
By The Agnostic Apatheist

This book is the latest among a long list of evolutionary texts by Dawkins. By his own admission, this book differs from his previous works. While his other books assume the truth of evolution, and thus, sought to answer specific and common criticisms against evolution (often espoused by creationists), this is the first time Dawkins has attempted to lay out the actual evidence for its acceptance by the scientific community.

His book was well written, articulated in a readable style, and quite enjoyable. In fact, I found it difficult to put the book down. Dawkins provides a good general view of why scientists accept evolution and a good case for the plausbility of natural selection as the vehicle for adaptive change. However, I do have some criticisms of his book, which prevented me from giving it 5 stars, especially if I view it from the mindset of a biblical literalist (a view I once shared many decades ago... and these are the people who need the most convincing).

My number one complaint is that he did not provide much in evidence, and where he did provide evidence it was short on detail. For instance, in Chapter 2, Dawkins mentions that all dog breeds are descended from the wolf. Similarly, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and other commonly distinct vegetables today are all descendants of the wild cabbage. While this might seem evident to the scientifically literate, if you don't accept evolution, you might need some convincing to show that this is true. But he doesn't provide evidence or even an explanation of how we know that dogs descended from wolves or broccoli from cabbage. He merely asserts this as evidence and then moves on to chapter 3, which concerns natural selction.

In chapter 3, he discusses flowers and insects (and birds) and presents this as evidence for evolution (specifically by natural selection). But he doesn't provide much explanation of how we know this to be true. For instance, why should we conclude that this arrangement between pollen producing flower and pollinating insect to be the result of co-evolution? How do we know that the pollen producing flower was not always the way it is and that the pollinating insect was not always the way it is and that these two merely "found" or discovered one another, in essence, falling into and exploiting a niche that was always present? [This might seem crazy, but this was actually used in an argument by a creationist]

Another criticism. He was careful to define the distinction between a scientific theory and a mere hypothesis or conjecture. Yet through much of the first few chapters of his book, he is short on evidence and long on speculation. For instance, he mentions the Heika japonica crab, with the resemblance of a samurai warrior on the back of its shell. While Carl Sagan states that this was the result of natural selection, Dawkins states it probably was not; it was likely coincidence. But this very case has often been cited as evidence for evolution (by selection). Is this evidence of evolution or not? And if not, then why is Dawkins' mentioning this in his book. If anything it calls into question how we determine that something is the result of evolution (and therefore qualified as evidence), as opposed to coincidence or something else? From this example, it seems almost arbitrary.

His review of the fossil record is compelling but rehashes the same information presented in other books. And he doesn't explain how we know that the discovered fossils represent a history of the same clad, as opposed to distinct, unrelated organisms. This is particularly important since we are often comparing fossils from different time periods, from different geographical locations, and don't have access to the entire skeletal remains (let alone genetic information) of the organisms that we are claiming are descended from one another. For example, how do we know that we aren't merely pattern seeking when we look at Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, and Basilosaurus? Or Australopithecus and Homo? Moreover, he spends most of the chapter on human evolution explaining why paleontologists feud over the specific genus (or species) of particular fossils and why such arguments would be predicted under evolution precisely because they represent intermediates. But his explanation could've been condensed into 1 paragraph. It would've been far better if he spent the time to present more evidence among the mountains of evidence that are claimed to exist.

His chapter, "You did it yourself in nine months", was spent explaining by analogy that matter is capable of self assembly from the bottom-up, rather than a top-down approach as espoused by creationists. He presents his hypothesis that this is possible via "local rules" and uses the analogies of the starling and origami as examples, but this is not evidence. In fact, while analogy can clarify and improve understanding, it does not constitute evidence. Dawkins forgets that the "local rules" are functioning from a template coded in our genome. Thus, can we truly say that it is the "local rules" that create the appearance of design when a recipe is necessary for determining these "local rules"? He needs to show that the genome is capable of self assembly by local rules and that a complex organism can be created from this base. While he implies that possibility during his discussion of viruses, he does not provide much detail. Thus, the reader is left unconvinced and with more questions. Thus, if you get to this point, you will have read 50% of the book and realize that much of the book has been devoted to explanation, speculation, hypotheses, and very few presentation of actual evidence. He uses computer models to illustrate or make his points. But once again, while these models may help explain concepts, they do not constitute evidence.

The last few chapters of the book are better (beginning around page 285), but by this time he's likely to have lost most of his readers, that is, those who have not already accepted evolution prior to reading this book.

My final criticism is in regard to his reference section. Most good books concerning scientific topics contain plenty of references to primary articles. But there are very few primary articles listed in this book. In fact, you'll find more scientific literature referenced in a pop diet book than here. And I am not joking! Go to a bookstore and look at the "Notes" section of Dawkins' book yourself. He does include a bibliography, but most of the entries represent secondary or tertiary sources. This doesn't mean the information is inaccurate, but it would've been nice to have citations to primary sources for those wanting to do further research.

There are some experiments mentioned in the book (rather clever ones too), but given the fact that evolutionists are always touting the volumes of evidence (and not just from fossils) for the fact of evolution, I was disappointed to find that only a handful are mentioned in the book. As mentioned earlier, most of the book is either providing background information (about rudimentary chemistry or biology), providing explanation, or tearing down common creationist arguments or criticisms against evolution, rather than focusing on positive evidence favoring evolution. Moreover, Dawkins practically ignores the evidence from molecular biology and glosses over genetics.

In short, Dawkins writes his book as if he is talking to a fellow evolutionist (preaching to the choir). But such a person does not need convincing or evidence of evolution. You can merely point or mention the "obvious" and expect the person to understand. You don't need to go into detail or explain much. On the other hand, if you do not accept evolution or require convincing, then you will likely find that Dawkins assumes too much and does not provide sufficient data or detail as to why evolution is the best explanation for the observations under discussion.

Needless to say, I was disappointed with the book since it failed to live up to its subtitle - "The Evidence for Evolution". A more apt title would've been "The Plausbility of Evolution". He makes a good case for the reasonableness of evolution but does not provide much compelling evidence. If you are a creationist contemplating whether there is sufficient evidence for evolution, you will not be convinced by reading this book. Two far superior books (that provide better and more compelling evidence) can be found in "Why Evolution is True" and "Making of the Fittest". It isn't that Dawkins' book is bad; it provides sufficient information (on a high level) to be useful and entertaining, but don't expect it to arm you for a debate with a creationist or use it as a reference. And don't expect your creationist friend to read it and walk away a convert.

[my emphases throughout] Yup, my forboding is anticipated and articulated in this review as only too prescient. This same reviewer thinks this is a better book and I might consider getting this one, though I suspect it's going to be only a more sophisticated defense of faulty reasoning and denial of the obvious.

[Later: a look at the Table of Contents suggests that it might be more interesting than that. He touches on issues that aren't usually part of the debate that I think I may have some good creationist answers to, such as vestigial organs and other examples of supposed "bad design," the implications of tectonic plate movement, pseudogenes (also known as junk DNA) and so on].

--CJA

Richard Dawkins and Wendy Wright, continued: an exercise in frustration

Here's Part One of my response to the debate -- or discussion or maybe it's an interview, Dawkins interviewing Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America. I figured since this discussion is specifically about evolution it should be continued at my evolution blog.

Unfortunately her manner is annoying. She's really not getting what he's trying to say, so she's not getting across the points that matter to a creationist. She smiles wildly and mockingly at times and she talks over him and evades his questions -- I think she's nervous and afraid of being railroaded, but he's simply trying to find out if she's actually seen what he considers to be evidence. This is in part 2 of the video series. She's saying she thinks THEIR talking over "us" comes out of a frustration that so many still don't believe in evolution, and of course his answer is that yes, he's frustrated but that's because he's given the evidence she claims is lacking and she refuses to acknowledge it. "Why do you keep saying 'Present me with the evidence' when I've done so?" he says.

But the evidence he's given is exactly the sort of thing that is not evidence and she isn't getting it across how it isn't, how the museum models of Australopithecus and homo habilis et. al. are not evidence but merely imaginative constructs that are meaningless without specific and detailed information about the facts they are based on. They are exactly what evolutionists always give us, mystifying mental constructions with NO way to track down how they arrived at them and no recognition that their interpretation of the facts may not be the only possible interpretation.

But she just keeps going on about how the evolutionists can't be all that confident in their beliefs or there wouldn't be this effort to silence creationists, which is a highly questionable proposition, and unfortunately that is not what is going on here if it's ever valid. He's simply saying she's ignoring the evidence he's given her. I'm beginning to despair of this ever getting clarified and it's going to go on for another five parts after this one. Oy.

She's just rambling on from one topic to another, how evolution is an ideology now etc. etc. etc. This is a mess.

RICHARD DAWKINS DOES NOT NEED TO HEAR ALL THIS WILD STUFF, WENDY, HE NEEDS TO UNDERSTAND WHY THE MUSEUM MODELS AND THE BOOK ILLUSTRATIONS ARE NOT EVIDENCE. OY.

Ah finally, she does repeat the concern that these illustrations are not the material evidence we need. And then he says there are casts in the museums of the exact fossils for each model if we want to see them and I wish she hadn't changed the subject at that point -- it would be important to know to what extent these fossil casts DO amount to the sort of evidence we are asking for: I suspect very little but I also suspect we're not going to get to hear enough about them to find out.

...because she changes the subject again, asks why it matters so much to him that everybody believe as he believes, and actually, that's a decent question -- but for some other time, not at this point in the conversation, and of course his answer is going to be predictable.

Haeckel and racism he dismisses as Victorianism, mistakes that have since been discarded, denying their still-important implications for the theory itself. This is something to answer later.

He asks, Can we point to any positive evidence for creationism? She says DNA shows individuality. Shows that there is intervention at the point of each person's creation. Then that annoying smile. She may have a point here but it's a weak one.

He says there HAS to be individual variation or Darwinism wouldn't work.

She says Hm.

That's a whole area I've discussed here at great length. The first answer of course is that this is microevolution that nobody disputes.

But I've had to stop watching this, it's just too frustrating.

Later: I'm listening to the end but there isn't much more I want to comment on.

It's frustrating that she introduces concepts such as the soul and other evidences for God when what I think needs to be done is to show the falseness of the claims for evidence of evolution.

Any concession to evolution is too much for me. There's NO real evidence for it. What they are calling evidence is not evidence, it really isn't -- it's speculation, conjecture or argument from analogy and so on, and what IS factual is subject to other interpretations that they overlook -- but it seems hopeless to make that case.

He really does believe what they've got is factual evidence that creationists are simply refusing to look at. For instance "Lovely fossils of fish coming out onto the land." Evidence of transition from the reptilian jaw to the mammals. He really believes that fossils are evidence, that mere morphological comparisons can provide some kind of proof of descent. He really believes that. What a monumental illusion.

---CJA

Down the rocky road of debate

The conversation mentioned in my previous post has become so confused there is no point in continuing so I ended it, but I thought I'd bring some of it over here just to finish it off for myself.

(PB said) The founder effect and the population bottleneck, a special case of the founder effect, are the loss of genetic variation, but some genetic variablility will remain.

(Faith said) You really don't read well at all. I've over and over affirmed that SOME genetic variability ALWAYS remains, but that the overall TREND is to decrease and ultimate depletion. And bottleneck and founder effect are merely extremes of the trend, not special cases.

Faith, the problem here is your reading skills.

If I state something that you have said, even over and over again, it is because I need to remind you of it to continue further. There is no need to get excited like you do. You misread again if you think I said bottleneck and founder effects are special cases of a TREND. What I said, read it again, is that bottleneck is a special case of founder effect.

How can he think I thought HE "said bottleneck and founder effects are special cases of a TREND?" Obviously he didn't say that, I did. That's MY argument, with which I am answering his.

I've also not been "excited" at any point in the discussion; I can't imagine what he thinks amounts to that. When communication gets this difficult it becomes an exercise in futility to continue.

The point I've been trying to make is that there is a trend toward genetic depletion which accompanies ALL the processes that are considered to contribute to evolution. This is fact, not speculation, and it is recognized particularly by conservationists because it causes problems for particular species, or for human interest in particular species -- as food perhaps.

These processes I sometimes sum up as "selection" processes although Natural Selection is the only one officially named as a selection process. This term is used to emphasize the adaptedness of the new "species" as something positively selected by the environment for that effect, while I use the term to describe them all because they all lead to the same end, although Natural Selection is survival-determined and the others are random. I haven't yet been able to find a term for the whole package that says the same thing. "Isolating" perhaps comes closest, as it refers to a fact that describes all these scenarios -- that a part of a population becomes cut off from another part so that new genetic potentials become expressed at the expense of old ones.

This isolating effect or selection, whether random or focused on a particular trait as in Natural Selection, occurs in many forms. In Natural Selection something in the environment, perhaps a predator, perhaps a dietary restriction, kills off some number of the population, leaving others to continue to proliferate. Sometimes these others have a feature that adapts them to the diet or other formerly hostile element in the environment so they thrive, sometimes they don't appeal to the predator or are poisonous to it, so they thrive for that reason. Evolutionists call this "speciation" or the formation of a new species. The term is acceptable to a creationist up to a point, because we know that such changes occur frequently in all living things.

But most events that bring about such changes are less severe. Simple migration of a part of a population to another geographic area can bring about changes or "speciation." A new diet in the new area may discourage the settling in of a bird with a certain kind of beak but a kind that is adapted to it will thrive. The change in the bird beak could have come about simply randomly, simply because the gene for the old type was left behind in the original population so that a new type could emerge in the new population. All population splits bring about new genetic expressions, often simply randomly, that may have some particular use in the new environment or simply be a visible variation unrelated to requirements of the environment. When a small population of chipmunks splits off from a larger one to establish a new territory, it develops new characteristics that visibly set it apart from the old, markings, stripings, size of ears, facial features, tails, colorings etc. may all express differences between the populations brought about by the "speciation" which was brought about by the simple fact of a small number of chipmunks from a large population moving to a new location. The same thing happens with human beings. If a small group moves to an isolated place and inbreeds for generations they will come to have an appearance peculiar to themselves. This is how "races" are formed.

"Bottleneck" is the situation where an extremely small number of individuals splits off from the mother population; "founder effect" I always thought referred to a single individual who "founds" a new population, so that it is a special case of the bottleneck and not the other way around as my debate opponent has it. But such distinctions are trivial. The point is that the smaller the new population the more drastic will be the differences that come to characterize it in relation to the mother population. If a large population were to divide almost equally into new isolated areas, both new populations would develop new characteristics in relation to each other.

This is just the way genetics works. A population carries many alternative genetic possibilities within it, alleles for different characteristics of particular genes. There can be a variety of characteristics potential in a large population, for body type, size, shape, markings, colorings, eye colorings, facial features and much much more. As long as they stay together in a large population freely interbreeding, a certain collection of traits will generally characterize the whole population, but when part of it goes somewhere else they will carry with them a mix of alleles in a different proportion from those of the mother population, and these will eventually develop new characteristics in the new population as it interbreeds.

Although the founder effect can affect the population far into the future, itds effect may be overtcome in deep time, the possibiliy of which you reject on biblical grounds.

No I reject it on scientific grounds. Deep time would only lead to extinction, as already said, and this is because the trend is inexorably to genetic depletion. And by the way, the only way deep time COULD overcome the problem is if you put mutation into the mix, which is what my usual opponents argue, but you've already quite rightly shown that mutation couldn't do that anyway[s].[How interesting: I wrote "anyway" not "anyways" but in his quote he has me using the illiterate "anyways."]

You are misreading, again. What I said you reject on biblical grounds is not the overcoming of the effect, but the possibility of deep time.

How strange, and clearly he's misreading me here, not the other way around. I was clearly saying that I reject deep time, but not on biblical grounds, on scientific grounds, because deep time would lead to extinction given the facts I am describing -- and they ARE facts, they are not speculations.

Populations can't go on indefinitely splitting and changing or speciating, because these processes all involve a corresponding loss of genetic variability with each such event. That's what I mean by "evolution defeats evolution." There is a natural limit to the changes that are possible. Each new population that develops from a small number has fewer genetic possibilities than the population it split from. As new groups continue to be formed new changes emerge along with fewer genetic possibilities for further change. This is because for new traits to emerge, competing traits must be suppressed or eliminated altogether. This is the way you get speciation. This is the famous "change in gene frequencies" that is sometimes used as the definition of evolution. Speciation IS change in gene frequencies. These DO bring about changes, but you don't get change unless competing traits are suppressed or eliminated. (This really only describes the more drastic population reductions. It is possible for change to be more gradual even within a population without the absolute loss of genetic potentials from the population as a whole (this would be one form of genetic drift), but Natural Selection and migration of small populations and certainly founder effect and bottleneck DO eliminate genetic potentials in bringing about the new characteristics of the new population).

It is quite possible for a population with very little genetic variability to go on surviving indefinitely, but it will have less ability to form new different types or "species." The hypothetical end point of this trend is complete homozygosity or only ONE allele for a particular trait, for many different traits. This is in fact reached in nature sometimes, as with the cheetah. Total homozygosity for ALL traits probably never occurs, although PB wants to insist this is a necessary condition of my argument. It's not, it's merely the hypothetical end point, while the trend toward it is my argument).

Deep time would only lead to extinction, I said, if your theory were true. But it doesn’t, so it ain’t. Everyone sensible, and beamish, too, accept that the earth is billions of years old. Hence your theory does not hold up. Flood geology does not hold water.

Yup, I'm totally not sensible. But my theory isn't a theory. I've been describing what actually happens in reality as populations split in reality, and conservationists KNOW this happens. They deal with it every day.

Mutation does have a non-negligible effect in deep time, not in biblical time. Most mutations are selected out, but in the long run some are bound to be beneficial. Mutation is another random source of variation that does not come to an end when genetic variability decreases.

The problem is that the selection processes, the isolating processes, the population-splitting processes, beat mutation to it by a long shot. These are wrongly considered to be the motor that drives evolution, whereas in simple actual reality-based fact they bring about new "species" (varieties of a species or Kind to a creationist) at the expense of genetic variability, which gradually over many such events reaches a dead end beyond which further speciation is simply impossible. And this occurs in what PB calls "biblical" time. All species would be extinct long before we get anywhere near "deep time" or millions of years. The extremely rare beneficial mutation could hardly save the day.

you get strikingly more or less common variants, psi bond, and my overall point is that you get REDUCED GENETIC DIVERSITY IN ALL CASES. YOU DO NOT GET PHENOTYPIC CHANGE WITHOUT CONCOMITANT REDUCED GENETIC POTENTIAL.

"I don’t believe that point has been proven. Repetition is not proof. Nor does uppercasing augment the case for its validity."

Do you realize that this is the VERY FIRST time you've even acknowledged my argument? That is the reason for the uppercase and the repetition, to bring it to your attention. Now, please try to keep it in mind.

Well, I’m sorry you feel I have slighted your theory. However, the way you fiercely preach it, I could not help but have it in mind.

I don't know what he has in mind but it isn't my "theory." This really is the first time I've seen him acknowledge it.

And I go on to spell it out AGAIN. Yes I know it gets repetitive but it's not easy to grasp and I'm probably neglecting to include some necessary information to make it more accessible, simply because I'm so IN the argument I forget what someone who isn't may need to know to get oriented to it.

The proof is a simple matter of THINKING IT THROUGH, another thing I haven't been able to get you to do. You cannot get the expression of a particular allele in a population UNLESS ALL THE OTHER ALLELES for that trait are somehow suppressed. Natural Selection sometimes completely eliminates them from the population -- the snake eats the newts that aren't expressing the poison factor. Bottleneck and founder effect "select" randomly rather than for survival benefit but WHAT they "select" is what remains AFTER ALL THE OTHER ALLELES for a given trait are ELIMINATED. Remember this is a kind of genetic drift. Genetic drift of a quieter sort also eventually drives out some alleles as a random allele comes to expression. Sometimes it merely becomes latent. THIS IS WHAT I AM REFERRING TO AS LOSS OF GENETIC VARIABILITY. If the variability remained you would not have the new trait, you would not have speciation. Speciation REQUIRES the elimination of genetic competition, speciation REQUIRES genetic depletion.

I’m afraid, Faith, that you have fallen into the error of thinking the patterns of nature are necessarily as simple as armchair speculating prefers to make them.

I have NO idea where this put down came from. I'm aware that I'm talking in generalities. Everybody talks in generalities about these things; there's really no other way to talk unless you get into such complicated technical territory the forest gets lost for the trees. There's no denial of the complexities of nature involved in generalities; if the generality is correct it remains correct no matter what the details.

And here he goes off on another round of mischaracterizations:

Speciation does not require the elimination of each alternate of every allele that is selected.

I never said it did. I've been talking about a TREND -- the reduction of genetic diversity with each speciation, not total elimination. I've said alternatives must be SUPPRESSED OR eliminated and I've tried to be very clear which processes actually eliminate, such as founder effect, bottleneck and some Natural Selection. Clearly he is simply not in a mood to understand what I'm saying and this makes continuing the conversation useless.

Speciation does not require homozygosity.

I certainly never said that it did. Again, he just doesn't want to think it through, doesn't care what I'm saying, is quite content to sloppily misstate it.

Loss of genetic variability due to a decrease in genetic diversity is not loss of the capability of genetic variation.

I thought I had made it clear that you can have MANY events of speciation still retaining enough genetic variability for the capability of further speciation -- such processes can repeat many many times before total loss becomes a real threat. The only times it happens rapidly are with the more drastic processes like founder effect and bottleneck where the reduction in population is so acute the genetic variability is drastically reduced in one fell swoop. It STILL may not be reduced to total loss, however. Again, I'm talking about a TREND in the DIRECTION of genetic decrease, an inexorable trend in that direction.

You ALWAYS get decreased genetic variability, however slight, however localized or limited, you NEVER get an increase.

---CJA

Evolution defeats evolution debate

Got into a debate with poster psi bond at another message board here It starts a ways down and it does go on and on and on. I may wade through it and try to pick out the best posts sometime.

My argument is very simple:

Change or variation (or "evolution") in living things is always accompanied by a reduction in genetic capacity to change further, or reduced genetic variability or reduced genetic diversity or however that should be put. On out to the ultimate extreme of complete genetic depletion or fixation at a particular characteristic beyond which change is absolutely impossible. But at any point along the line the trend is in the direction of genetic reducttion. The more "new species" you get the less GENETIC ability to change further you also get. This is a trend that may occur slowly over generations, but it may sometimes occur rapidly through events that drastically reduce a population. The point is that change is ALWAYS in the direction of genetic decrease, NEVER in the direction of genetic increase, and that means there is an ultimate end point even if it is only rarely reached. And if there is an ultimate end point to the processes of change, or variation, or evolution, this spells the end of all hope for the Theory of Evolution.

I pointed out to PB at one point that it's interesting he never brought up mutation in answer to my argument, since that's the usual recourse of evolutionists faced with the idea of inevitable genetic depletion caused by evolution itself. This was his answer:

Although it cannot be dispensed with, mutation is n ot as great a factor in evolution as natural selection and genetic drift (which was unknown to Darwin). I did not include mutation in my presentation because, in my computer simulations of evolution, mutation must be set at a very low percentage, yet it cannot be set at zero. Of course, the majority of mutations in nature are lethal or neutral and will be eliminated by natural selection.

[Sept 10 4:12 AM]

Gigantic insects in the pre-Flood world

I just found this page on giant insect fossils by the way. I enjoy getting a sense of what the world was like before the Flood. Of course the poor scientists don't have a clue:

Giant Fossil Sea Scorpion Bigger Than Man:

"Dr Simon Braddy from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, co-author of an article about the find, said, 'This is an amazing discovery. We have known for some time that the fossil record yields monster millipedes, super-sized scorpions, colossal cockroaches, and jumbo dragonflies, but we never realised, until now, just how big some of these ancient creepy-crawlies were.'"

Poor things. They find this sea life all over the dry parts of earth and STILL they refuse to consider the Flood as an explanation. Sigh.

However, whether this gigantic life was normal or not has become a question for me recently as I've been following some of the teachings about the fall of the angels in Genesis 6, which is expanded in the Book of Enoch. Not only did the angels corrupt the seed of humanity, an action aimed at preventing God's promise about salvation through the "seed of the woman" coming to fruition, but also the seed of animals.

Something to ponder.

Evolution defeats Evolution

Back to the topic of the Natural Limitation to Evolutionary Processes briefly.

I think it can be summed up simply:

All Darwin did was observe microevolution, something known for millennia already, certainly in the practice of domestic breeding which was his model, and extrapolate from it to macroevolution without any evidentiary foundation, just imagination.

That's all he observed in the Galapagos turtles, all he observed in the finches.

Darwin put Natural Selection in the place of human selection or Domestic Selection as the engine to drive Evolution, and failed to appreciate sufficiently that Domestic Selection leads to dead ends, not to open-ended opportunity for change. If he didn't have the genetic knowledge for that, we do have it nowadays: Both in nature and in domestic breeding selection leads to change leads to less ability to change, ultimately to dead ends genetically, often to disease proneness and extinction. Selection eliminates unwanted genetic possibilities in domestic breeding, and in nature it eliminates the genetic possibilities that are not adaptive. That's how the change is brought about. Sometimes the selected form is strong enough anyway, but the ultimate end is weakness.

They haven't yet faced that Natural Selection and all the other forms of selection that operate on populations decreases the capacity for change. It's rudimentary, just look at the extremes of domestic breeding, also look at some of the extremes in nature that have been similarly refined out to the point where they are vulnerable and genetically reduced. But they still act as if these processes somehow promote change, you will still find them defined as "processes of evolution."

If you point out the problem to them, that these processes actually decrease the possibility of change, to try to save it they add in prodigious quantities of Time, which is nothing but a diversion, and Mutation, which is fantasy. Mutation couldn't possibly save it even if mutation were ever beneficial.

To sum up: the more change there is in a population the less change is possible genetically. Evolution defeats evolution.