Hi CTD

You say mutation provides the mojo, but the tenets of your religion say it is recombination that does it.
Actually the modern understanding of ToE says that both play a role, exactly what percentage is due to each varies from situation to situation, in large diploid species such as ourselves recombination and crossover mixing of existing genetic code accounts for a significant percentage of the change that occurs in DNA and thus in our phenotypes while in the bacterial experiments I have discussed with you earlier where there is no duplicate DNA strands involved recombination and crossover mixing don’t occur at all so all of the change is due to pure mutation. Horse for courses.

I’m still baffled why you would think that quoting the opinion of one person from 70 years ago should be seen to define and/or constrain the entire modern field of evolutionary biology? That’s was the point I was making.

Does it explain why you present clear evidence in line with ToE yet claim that it contradicts ToE?
Why should I bother with your hollow assertions? It gets rather old exposing every false accusation, and I don't see that it has jack to do with this topic. Ad hom's generally don't.
It’s not an ad homonym fallacy to point out that your opponent in a debate is presenting false evidence only to suggest that his ideas should be ignored because of his character. You’ll note that I did not do that to you. I pointed out that you were wrong simply because you presented false information.

Most folks who frequent forums have enough sense to read what's been copied & pasted. Had you done so, you would see that it does not match the propaganda either you or RAZD have presented.
Oh I read it. I’m not about to defend Wiki, it’s not a definitive source on this stuff though there is a detailed article on Genetic Recombination on Wiki if you care to look as RAZD pointed out and another linked right within the one you cited that explains crossover. You write off one of these ideas while accepting others for no apparent reason, all form part of our current understanding of genetics and so form part of our current ToE. Now maybe I move in the right circles but I’ve known about recombination for a very long time, it has been a crucial part of our understanding of how genetic changes occur for quite a few years now. The article on Chromosomal crossover also explains in some detail the existence in each of us of just two allele’s of any given gene as I was trying to explain earlier to you. Have a read and see if you can understand what I’m talking about. The truth is always worth the trouble to study.

Show me the mechanism that limits the sequences to fall within ‘design parameters’ other than the fitness test of natural selection?
Show you the mechanism? Show me the mechanism that prevents a gasoline engine from revving to 300,000 RPM.
Sure, there are several. The maximum mixture throughput of the induction system limits maximum RPM by restricting the amount of fuel and oxygen that can reach the engine. Unloaded this still accounts for a very high RPM but there is a limit. Exhaust restrictions also limit the maximum RPM an engine can reach due to the back pressure caused by the systems inability to clear the combustion gasses from the last cycle during the open time of the exhaust valve. Many modern fuel injected engines have RPM limiters programmed into them to avoid engine damage. This system works by reducing the amount of fuel injected or in some cases by not firing all of the cylinders on every cycle again limiting the maximum RPM an engine can reach by reducing the power generated on each stroke. If all of these factors are removed and the throttle is opened to the max the engine may speed up to the point of failure. This point is determined by the limiting strength of the weakest component usually in the engine’s primary drive train (main bearings, bearing caps, crank shaft, con rods, big end bolts, gudgeon pins pistons etc). The weakest of these will fail and thus limit the maximum RPM that a given engine will reach in a catastrophic failure.

Now back to the question at hand. DNA is just data, show me what mechanism limits how much you can change the document you have in your computer right now? Actually there are a number of limits on that, how about we use a hex editor and you show me what it is that limits your ability to alter the hex code of a file filled with random numbers. That’s probably a more analogous example.

There are limits in DNA as I said, they are Darwin’s insight, natural selection. Any change that makes a creature less fit will be removed while any that makes a creature more fit will become more and more common in succeeding generations. That’s not just an idea it’s a direct observation that comes out of those bacterial experiments I mentioned earlier. It has also been observed in captive breeding programs and in the wild in quite a number of species.

No mechanism is needed to prevent a thing from doing something it lacks the capacity to do.
Indeed but I have explained that there are no known limits that behave as Russ suggested. Can you show me one that I have missed? DNA can change by random mutations. It is not restricted in this other than by fitness. Such mutations are random so they don’t follow rules they just occur.

They started with one individual and so no variability for selection to work on and no crossover as bacteria are not diploid leaving the inventiveness of mutation as the only source of genetic novelty yet thousands of generations later the products were very diverse and very different from their distant ancestor from which the colonies started. If your complaints were true this is not what we would expect to see.
What you "expect to see" is distorted by both your evogoggles and your false assumption that bacteria produce clones.
I don’t believe for a moment that bacteria produce clones; if they did then we would expect to see no change in all of those generations. Bacteria evolve very quickly accumulating mutations at a rate way beyond what humans do. The question you need to ask is where do those changes come from. There was only one ancestral DNA strand to work from so recombination is out the window at least until mutation had produced some variability for it to work on. But if there was no variability in the first place and if you are correct that mutation does not work then were did that variability come from. Is god getting down and dirty in test tubes now?

Furthermore, if evolution were true, it would account for lifeforms that reproduce sexually, and there ought to by some observations available by now. They've sure harmed enough fruit flies over the years.
I think we can safely say that sexually reproducing species are the products of evolution, you and Russ have been pointing out the importance of mixing, crossover etc. These processes which allow beneficial allele’s to get together on one DNA strand and so to be combined into one body only occur in recombinant species which includes all sexually reproducing species. Without recombination each line would have to individually evolve each and every change. Evolution would be much slower and any line that achieved recombinant reproduction would have a huge advantage. That’s not a point that can be proved right now but it’s a logically sound hypothesis to explain sexual reproduction. The difficulty is that recombination arose so very long ago that we can’t observe it so we have little if any direct access to evidence of how it arose so we probably will never move beyond such hypothesis but never say never.

Actually the vast majority of mutations are neutral having no discernable effect on the individual who carries them.
An argument from ignorance. Just because you don't know what harm is done does not mean no harm is done.
If you read what I said I explained that it was no discernable harm. Of course we know that many mutations are silent because they don’t code for a change in protein sequences. Proteins are coded for in DNA by three bases each of which can be one of four possible DNA bases which gives 64 combinations. There are however only 20 amino acids coded for. Many amino acids are coded for by a number (up to six) different combinations. The first form of silent mutation is thus those which do not change in any way the protein coded for by simply changing the DNA code from one sequence that codes for a given amino acid to another which codes for the same. Given code similarity between them this is a common occurrence.

Another form of silent mutation is mutations which occur in non coding DNA. This is harder to quantify as it’s hard to tell for sure what DNA sequence is really silent but there are some long stretches in the human body which do not contain start or stop codons and for which no protein equivalents are ever detected so chances are that many if not most of these are silent.

There are also many protein sequences that are not critical. The active sites on proteins are often very sequence specific, if even a minor change is made the protein will not function but there are many areas that are not so specific if they are specific at all. For these areas which are usually structural, changes of amino acids will not affect the function of the protein. This too gives great scope for silent or at least harmless mutations.

Of the remainder most are indeed harmful and only a minority are beneficial. Darwin’s insight was a mechanism by which the beneficial ones can come to dominate a species while the harmful ones are weeded out (that’s what natural selection does).
Darwin didn't even know what mutations were. Your devotion to your prophet is noted.
Indeed he did not but he did observe that phenotypic traits were heritable; he further observed that they were discreetly heritable and finally he observed that they were mixed in the offspring in very specific ways. He showed that ‘good’ traits would be passed on more often and so would come to dominate a species and that they could be consolidated in one individual by mixing. He did not know of modern genetics, he had no idea how the information got from one generation to the next, yet he had some profound insights into how it worked from a phenotypic viewpoint none the less.

Just as with compound interest only a tiny percentage of benefit is required and over time these benefits will compound and come to dominate the species.
Conjecture. Actually, that's a compound conjecture, since the 'benefits' are themselves conjectural.
Read that info I gave you ages ago on bacterial experiments, it’s worth it.

If you want to counter what I have said I suggest you find evidence relevant to what I have said, evidence regarding how evolution works,
Cute. Send Russ off on a wild goose chase. There is no evidence evolution works. I doubt this stunt will work.
Do you really believe that Russ’s counter to my point which discussed the motivations of people many years after the establishment of evolutionary theory and which did not discuss that theory itself were a reasonable answer to my explanations of how recombination and mutations work as part of ToE?

Sorry no time to proofread this. Apologies!!

All the best CTD

In Reason

Russell