Hi Russ T

"Evolution is a mathematical absurdity."
Definition of Evolution:
(1) Abiogenesis
(2) Progressive Beneficial Mutation
Whichever definition you select, evolution is absurdly impossible.

I have to agree, both of these definitions of evolution are indeed absurd and impossible but neither is the scientific definition of evolution. I said this to CTD once and it apparently applies to you too Russ T, if you are going to talk about your own straw men and call them evolution it’s going to get many people confused. How about, in the future, you call these straw men RussTloution just to keep it straight and reserve the term Evolution to apply to either the observed facts of evolution or to the scientific theory of evolution. Could you do that for us please Russ? It would make these discussions far more productive.

The scientific theory of evolution has, since Darwin’s day so this is not a new idea, included the idea that some mutations are beneficial but most are not, they are, on their own, in no way progressive it is Natural selection and inheritance when combined with random mutation that produces the ‘progress’ we see though the term progress is misused even here.

Your first definition, abiogenesis, is outside Darwin’s definition of Evolution and it is outside the modern definition, only creationists insist that it is part of evolution so again this must fall under RussTloution not evolution if you wish to use the terms correctly. The evolution we observe could just as logically have stated from a god created organism as from a naturally occurring one. Abiogenesis may have occurred or god may have done it, in either case evolution is still the only theory that accurately describes the evidence we see in the fossil record and in lab and wild studies of extant organisms.

Your second definition, “Progressive Beneficial Mutations” again has very little to do with evolution though it’s closer than the first. Some mutations are indeed beneficial, though most are not, that’s an observation by the way not just a theory. ToE specifically rules out the possibility of progress. Progress entails foresight or goals neither of which exist in ToE or in our observations of evolution in action. The driver for evolution is survival and reproduction not as a goal but as a consequence of the fact that the alternative leads to death and extinction. Those species who happen to reproduce, and only those members of their group who do so, are going to be the only one’s whose genes are represented in the next generation. There have been many creatures who did not reproduce througout history, more than have succeeded in all probability, but they left no descendants so we don’t see their like today. Reproduction is the rule for the simple reason that those who do no are not here, the earth is populated by those capable of populating it, those who reproduce. The word used in evolutionary terms is ‘fittness’ though not in it’s common form, it is used in the sense that a creature is fit if it’s gene’s make it capable of surviving and reproducing successfully. It may be an unhappy, unhealthy, unfit slug of a creature but it it’s reproduces it is ‘fit’ by the evolutionary definition. Mind you those traits are likely to kill it before it can reproduce but that’s a separate question. Fitness in evolutionary terms is judged most easily by the number of successful offspring an individual produces.

(1) Abiogenesis is just plain crazy.

Is that crazy in the scientific sense Russ or crazy in the “The world is going to hell in a hand basket lead by men in a mega conspiracy that they have keep from us all for a thousand years using amalgam fillings and chemtrails to control us” paranoid delusional type of crazy Russ? In the scientific sense Abiogenesis is a plausible hypothesis supported by insufficient evidence to be claimed a theory but it’s early days yet. I’ll leave the paranoid delusional sense for you to comment on Russ if that is how you mean it.

(2) PBM confuses people because on it's face, it seems feasible, but when you consider two things

It seems feasible to you Russ T? You said yourself earlier, and I have to agree, that it is anything but feasible but it is not ToE. ToE is plausible, RussTolution, of which PBM apparently forms part, is not IMHO.

- (a) the ratio of harmful mutation to beneficial mutation, and

RussTloution again Russ T? Do you even know what natural selection is and how inheritance works? Do you understand that harmful mutations will die out in each generation and beneficial one’s will be differentially favoured. There’s no big mystery here, this is something that even most creationists accept, this is micro evolution in action, it has been observed to occur in lab experiments (the sequential bacterial culture work I described earlier) and in the wild (the finches of the Galapagos as just one example).

Benificial mutations have been observed.
Obviously creatures with beneficial mutations will be more likely to survive and pass on those genes, that’s what beneficial means.
The next generation will be adding mutations to the already accumulated beneficial one’s from previous ones and those which are harmful will again die out and any beneficial ones will accumulate with the earlier beneficial ones because the creatures who carry them pass on their gene’s to their offspring and because they are selected based on their overall fitness. Which bit of that picture do you not understand Russ T? I know you don’t want to believe it, you show that clearly by your mocking of it, but do you understand any of it? Do you want help to learn to understand it or are you happy as you are?

- (b) symmetry

I’ve already explained in brief the HOX gene complexes which so easily explain symmetry as to make this an observed fact of biological systems. Are you aware of the function of the many HOX gene complexes that we already know of? Do you want a few links to explain how HOX gene’s lay out symmetrical body plans without the convoluted co-evolution you are suggesting, falsely by the way, is impossible.

The HOX genes are well worth understanding RussT. I have pointed out before that we share the most DNA with our closest relatives as determined by morphological studies and the opposite is true, we share less but in very telling patterns with our less closely related ancestors as determined by those same studies. The HOX gene’s or Homeobox to give them their full name are a set of body plan gene’s that lay out where in our early embryo’s our heads, arms, torso, lets etc will be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeobox
Hox gene’s are laid out in our DNA and in all animals, in the physical order of the features they code for. The HOX gene for our torso falls between the gene for our heads and the gene for our feet with our leg HOX gene being between the torso and the feet etc. HOX gene’s form a scaffold which tells the forming body where to place features that are coded in other genes, they are the blueprint in a way. HOX genes tell the body to put an arm on the left of our bodies and an arm on the right. In both cases it is the same set of gene’s that the HOX gene’s enable to build each limb, there is no duplicate set of left and right gene’s just one set of gene’s for an arm and a HOX gene to tell it where each should be and which way to build it. The system mirrors the one plan on both sides of the body to build symmetrical structures from one blue print and one set of master plans.

This is not new information Russ T, science has know how symmetry is formed within our bodies for some time and I’ve pointed it out to you before. You really need to keep up Russ T if you are going to go on claiming to be an authority on this stuff.

PBM immediately becomes mathematically absurd.

It does indeed if you leave out most of the modern theory of evolution but then the theory of the motor car becomes pretty absurd if all you consider are the breaks. You have to look at all of what evolutionary theory explains not just one isolated though crucial part of it if you wish to understand what it says and how it works. Evolution 101 will clear up this profound misunderstanding for you or I’m sure there are a few here who could help if you are willing to do a bit of work and study. Do you want to understand what ToE says and how it works Russ or are you happy to go on spruking RussTolution?

—H. Nilsson, Synthetic Speciation (1953), p. 31.

LOL that’s a rather out of date quote Russ T! Can we at least try to keep up?

40 years is a very short period of time to expect speciation to occur. It has been observed in far less time but only in very fast reproducing species, bacteria (as explained earlier) and a range of insects and plants. Species with slower reproduction rates will take longer because, obviously, they go through generations more slowly and the number of generations is critical to speciation.

Here’s a small selection of scientific papers that document and discuss observed instances of speciation in lab experiments and in the wild.

Ahearn, J. N. 1980. Evolution of behavioral reproductive isolation in a laboratory stock of Drosophila silvestris. Experientia. 36:63-64.
Barton, N. H., J. S. Jones and J. Mallet. 1988. No barriers to speciation. Nature. 336:13-14.
Boraas, M. E. 1983. Predator induced evolution in chemostat culture. EOS. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union. 64:1102.
Callaghan, C. A. 1987. Instances of observed speciation. The American Biology Teacher. 49:3436.
Clausen, J., D. D. Keck and W. M. Hiesey. 1945. Experimental studies on the nature of species. II. Plant evolution through amphiploidy and autoploidy, with examples from the Madiinae. Carnegie Institute Washington Publication, 564:1-174.
del Solar, E. 1966. Sexual isolation caused by selection for positive and negative phototaxis and geotaxis in Drosophila pseudoobscura. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US). 56:484-487.
Feder, J. L., C. A. Chilcote and G. L. Bush. 1988. Genetic differentiation between sympatric host races of the apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella. Nature. 336:61-64.
Frandsen, K. J. 1947. The experimental formation of Brassica napus L. var. oleifera DC and Brassica carinata Braun. Dansk. Bot. Arkiv., No. 7, 12:1-16
Gottleib, L. D. 1973. Genetic differentiation, sympatric speciation, and the origin of a diploid species of Stephanomeira. American Journal of Botany. 60: 545-553.
Kilias, G., S. N. Alahiotis and M. Delecanos. 1980. A multifactorial investigation of speciation theory using Drosophila melanogaster. Evolution. 34:730-737
Koopman, K. F. 1950. Natural selection for reproductive isolation between Drosophila pseudoobscura and Drosophila persimilis. Evolution. 4:135-148.
Meffert, L. M. and E. H. Bryant. 1991. Mating propensity and courtship behavior in serially bottlenecked lines of the housefly. Evolution 45:293-306.
Rice, W. R. and E. E. Hostert. 1993. Laboratory experiments on speciation: What have we learned in forty years? Evolution. 47:1637-1653.
Schluter, D. and L. M. Nagel. 1995. Parallel speciation by natural selection. American Naturalist. 146:292-301.
Soans, A. B., D. Pimentel and J. S. Soans. 1974. Evolution of reproductive isolation in allopatric and sympatric populations. The American Naturalist. 108:117-124.

Given that beneficial mutations, natural selection and speciation are all observed phenomenon any theory which discounts the possibility of these things as RussTolution does, is clearly wrong. ToE does not contradict these facts however, leaving it as our current best explanation for these phenomenon. Do you have a better one RussT? Is there a new and improved version of RussTolution which can explain the observations rather than contradicting them?

In reason

Russell