Hi Russ T

I’m not sure I can agree with RazD that RussTolution is dead as that would imply that it ever had life and I don’t believe that is true.

You claim that 1:1000000 beneficial mutations to harmful is a generous figure but lets look at what would result if that were indeed the correct figure before we get into trying to narrow down what the actual figure is.

If we had a large population, say bacteria, of some billions of organisms, and among them they had 1000000 harmful mutations and one beneficial one what would be the result.

The 100000 with harmful mutations would die so we’d be left with a population of several billions of ‘fit’ bacteria less a few dead ‘unfit’ ones plus one with a beneficial mutation. That individual would probably survive and produce more offspring over successive generations than the rest and, like the effects of compound interest, its gene’s would soon dominate the gene pool. Of course at that rate you’d have at each generation the addition of a percent of so of harmfully mutated individuals and a new beneficially mutated one each round so over a million generations you’d have a population that looked nothing like the original as it had accumulated around one beneficial mutation per generation and remember that number of bacteria can live in a thimble sized body of water and will reproduce more than once per day. How many beneficial mutations does this equate to if we count all the organisms over the whole of the earth over 3.5 billion years?

Now let’s look at some real science to put the final nail in the coffin of this facet of RussTolution. Note that I link to and talk about science from well qualified scientists while Russ T keeps raising the thoughts of the likes of Kent Hovind who has no relevant credentials what so ever and continually raises objections that have long since been proven to be false.

Science 25 June 1999: Vol. 284. no. 5423, p. 2108 DOI: 10.1126/science.284.5423.2108
Test Tube Evolution Catches Time in a Bottle by Tim Appenzeller

I’ve talked about these experiments before so I won’t go into too much detail but in brief these experiments start with a single bacteria so there is no genetic variation in the original gene pool. Bacteria don’t have diploid DNA so one individual carries one Allele of the gene at any given locus.

Now the experiment takes that one individual and allows it to grow in culture for many generations. The resultant colony is broken up like a gardener breaking up a running plant, and the parts are used to start new colonies. Some of the parts are stored in liquid nitrogen, some samples are put through a full DNA analysis.

After some time each of these colonies is different, mutation has changed the offspring from the parent, but they are still ‘fit’. They are tested against stressors and the results compared to the parent’ organism so the phenotypic effects of their genetic changes are measured at the same time that DNA analysis shows exactly what those changes where.

Now the interesting bit, some of these colonies are now added to a growing medium that has a poison in it. Not a 100% deadly one but one that will kill a large percentage of the organisms, say 99%. The effect of this is to kill many and to dramatically slow the growth of the survivors. Over successive generations these organisms will evolve, while they are being watched, novel mechanisms to deal with the poison. Once they have invented a new way to survive in this environment and their growth rates have returned to normal, still in the presence of the poison, they are sampled again and again their DNA is read out. From this scientists can see exactly what mutations have made what changes to them to allow them to not only survive the poison but to thrive in its presence.

The crucial thing about this experiment for this discussion is that it proves that Russ T and his RussTolution theory are wrong. Here are creatures who initially possess no genetic variation so all changes seen in them are due to evolutionary forces. From that base of zero variability they constantly evolve into new forms capable of digesting novel new chemicals and surviving new threats from poisons to phage’s to temperature extreme’s. Selection among pre-existing variation can’t account for this as there was no pre-existing variation, nor can loss of genetic information as the DNA analysis shows the addition of novel new code to their genome yet these creatures constantly, and in reproducible ways, change, adapt and evolve while we watch them.

The direct physical evidence shows that evolution happens, that Mutation is a key part of it and that Natural selection is it’s driving force all in this one series of elegant and telling experiments.

First, the context is symmetry, that is: How do all of these parts form perfect mirror images of each other?
Moooooo!!

“Asked and answered your honor”

Look up HOX gene’s Russ T. Sorry RazD I think you have this one wrong. Gene’s do not conatin a description of a left eye and a separate descriptiton of a right eye. DNA contains a blueprint (of sorts) for an eye and a command to build one in the appropriate place facing this way and a second one facing that way.

When you build a house do you have 20 separate blue prints for building a light bulb? Or do you use a single design, or one of a few, and reuse them where and when you need them in your overall blueprint. HOX gene’s are the architect plans and the details of individual appliances are held in separate plans. Some fridges even come, from just one plan, in a right or left handed version very much as our eye’s do.

Evolution is not as stupid as you paint it to be in RussTolution, it has no mind but it is still far ‘cleverer’ than that.

Secondly, if "unfinished" parts were formed (already mathematically absurd)

Indeed, RussTolution is absurd. ToE does not contain any such thus your straw man fails the test when stood along side the scientific view of the world.

they would not be considered beneficial until the entire component was finished.

What has ‘considered’ got to do with anything Russ T? No one considers anything here Natural Selection is a process that occurs regardless of what anyone or anything might consider.

Therefore, they would hinder (not help) the organism and that organism would be "selected out" before anything complex could form.

It was for exactly this fallacy that I pointed out to you earlier Russ T that Natural Selection works at each and every stage. It is RussTolution that has Natural Selection waiting in the wings till it’s is called up to play it’s part. ToE contains no such rubbish.

As opposed to RussTolutoin ToE says that any change that makes a creature less fit here and now will be selected against here and now. Darwin explained this in great detail in Origins so it’s hardly a new idea. Your complaint is again against RussTolution (I’m going to have to make up my mind how I spell that aren’t I) not evolution. ToE says that every single individual is tested by natural selection, your question above about fossil mutations also hints at this fallacy. Evolution does not invent part of a new organ then wait for it to become useful. If something were ever found that could not evolve one small and useful step at a time then you would have found your proof against evolution. No such structures or organs have ever been found. ID is an attempt to take this problem into the micro realm once it was shown to be false in the macro realm but again the evidence did not support the conclusions. All organs and features of each and every organism have evolved through innumerable steps all of which were a fitness benefit to the organisms which carried them.

Lets look at eyes as a great illustration of this and lets start with a creature that does not have any eyes at all and look through how eye’s may have evolved.

The first step, logically, would have to be light sensitivity. Many of our cells are sensitive to stimulation by electromagnetic radiation, radiant heat for instance so this is a simple change. Many creatures are reliant on sunlight for their survival so cells that can detect light, even very poorly, are beneficial.

Now the simple ability to detect sunlight, once it occurred could be useful without eye’s as it allows a creature to position itself to gather more sunlight which its body may need. Many organisms today have just this sort of simple photosensitivity, plants and animals.

If the detection was fast enough it would also allow the creature to detect the passage of other creatures around it in a very vague sense but in a world without eyes even the most limited ability would be an advantage. Of course many organisms make use of this sort of light sensitivity today so it’s no stretch to suggest that it would have been useful and so a ‘fitness’ benefit in evolutionary time.

Now what could make such simple light sensitivity more useful? One obvious answer is directionality. Sinking the sensitive cells into a depression so that they are shaded from light from some angles would give the creature a crude directional sense. Very crude but still an improvement over the previous version as the creature gains more information about it’s environment. Again there are quite a few extant organisms with this sort of ‘vision’.

At each step from no eye to simple light sensitivity to limited directional sense the creature gains a benefit, there is no step between any of them which is not benificial.

And that continues from there as the depression gets deeper the directionality of the eye improves and the creature gains more information about it’s surroundings until the eye is an enclosed sphere with a small hole in it, an apparatus we would recognise today as a pinhole camera, and full vision has evolved with no detrimental steps what so ever.

Pin hole cameras have a disadvantage, they don’t work well in low light but a bit of clear gelly of any sort in the opening or even filling the cavity with water and letting it form a meniscus would give focus while allowing the opening to enlarge. Again there are creatures in existence today that have eye’s like these, both pin hole camera eyes and simple fluid filled membrane covered depressions lined with light sensitive cells.

So where from there, Focus is a simple matter of a few muscles to squeeze the lens and again any increase in muscle control, even the tiniest bit, is an improvement. Again there are creatures with eyes like this.

Steering is another benefit, the ability to move the eye rather than turning the head is, at every stage from the smallest shifting to the fully floating, rotating eyes that we possess will give a benefit to the possessor.

It’s not true to say that our eyes are optimally designed. The many errors in Kent Hovinds arguments have been pointed out to him for many years but he doesn’t learn. Other animals have eye’s that have the light sensitive surfaces of their eye’s facing the incoming light, that have their blood and nerve supplies attached from the back and so have much higher visual acuity than we do along with the advantages of no blind spots and a well attached retina thus avoiding the problems that detached retinas cause to so many humans. Maybe god thinks second rate eye’s are what we need but from an evolutionary view this is a clear sign of the cooption involved in the process, the modification of existing organs to new functions by mutation and natural selection rather than the intelligent input of a designer with foresight who would have to have been mad or crewel to design our eyes this way.

In Reason

Russell