It might be fun to ask sometime: "Do you believe any individual creature has a 100% survival chance?" The world is a dangerous place, after all. There are all sorts of disasters: volcanos, tornados, forest fire, prairie fire, flood, etc. But in spite of all this, there is one creature "guaranteed" to always survive: the first one to possess a beneficial mutation. Or so I've been told... I think more honest answers are available.
Please provide a source reference for your "one creature "guaranteed" to always survive" statement.
The evolutionists have a lot of faith in their luck god. A little actual experience with probabilities goes a long way toward understanding these things. A roll of pennies is 50 cents, so it's not expensive to play around & see how many heads or tails one can get in a row.
For those who can program a computer at all, the job is easier. One can put twists on it too. I did some myself one time, testing out gambling. The most noteworthy thing I found is that a small edge is not enough for the house. At 50.5% to 49.5%, for example, it freqently happens that the house is beaten in a series of 10,000 bets. The results look the same as the results of 50/50 tests. This explains why the smallest house advantage in real-world casinos is always over 52%. Smaller advantages should still eventually add up in their favour, but they don't intend to wait around 100 years or more to make a profit.
Maybe the house doesn't intend to wait because the owner wants to see a profit in his lifetime. Evolution doesn't have a time limit.
What do you mean by "the house is beaten in a series of 10,000 bets"? Are you saying that in 10,000 bets with a 50.5 to 49.5 advantage the house loses money overall? Is that always true? What about 1 million or 1 billion bets? Does the house still lose? Can I see your source code on your program that gave this result?
For anyone with any experience or knowledge about probability, the evoarguments are pretty funny. Some of them'll say a mutation that hurts a lifeform's survival chance by 1/10 of a per cent will be immediately detected and result in death, whereas a "beneficial mutation" of the same magnitude will always be passed on. Now such is untrue. It's just an attempt to sell the selection god(ess).
Who are these "some" that say these things...people you interviewed on the street? Perhaps a quote from an actual science publication or an actual biologist would be more appropriate here.
By definition, improving survival chance by a whole percentage point means the selection god(ess) has only one chance in 100 of getting it "right". 1/10 of 1% reduces this to one chance in 1000.
Now if you call them on it, most often they'll say "Oh yes, it could take 3 or 4 generations, but..." Nonsense! No thinking person can believe you'll hit a 1 in 1000 shot in 3 or 4 tries, and this overlooks the fact that in the case of a defect, the defect is being reproduced.
Again a reference for your quote regarding this miniscule amount of "tries" would be good here since it is in quote marks. Otherwise the only "Nonsense!" is your assumption.
Additionally, why do you think that defects will be reproduced? Are you talking about harmful mutations? You haven't defined your parameters very well.
"In 3 or 4 generations, you're talking about eliminating at least 8 or 12 decendants (or many thousands in the case of insects & plants), and the selection god(ess)' chances are still only 1 in 1000 for each one. (S)he's never going to catch up. Never ever EVAR! It's mathematically impossible." Your own statement refutes this. 8 or 12 were already eliminated so "impossible" while having nice emotional appeal, is not an accurate descriptor.
And that's not all. In sexually reproducing life, there's a 50/50 chance the mutation in question will be unavailable for "selection". (It's actually worse.) Genes are inherited from both parents and form pairs, only one of which is used. If the mutation isn't used, how can the selection god(ess) "select" the individual?
The gene can get passed on even if it is recessive, so it still spreads in the population.
Actually, they've observed a strong tendancy for mutations to be "recessive", so it's worse than 50/50; but even at 50/50 it's not hard to see that the selection god(ess) needs supernatural knowledge in order to the job.
I think this would be a good time for you to define your terms:
1. Mutation:
2. Beneficial Mutation:
3. Harmful Mutation:
I asked for this in a different thread when you brought the subject up. I realize your current responsibilities make it easy to overlook these minor requests so I repeated it here. Please provide your reference for the definitions that you state.
Even supposing detrimental mutations outnumber "beneficial mutations" by as little as 30 to 1, it is too big a job for both god(ess)s put together. This is a better rate than any of their experts dare to claim, but the math here is certain. The detrimental mutations simply cannot be detected on the first try, and this is exactly what is required.
If this statement is to make any sense at all you need to define your terms, which I requested above.
Once they spread, it doesn't become easier to eliminate them - just the opposite. The "good mutations", if they spread, will be likely to remain, but they're going to be outnumbered by 29 to 1. Extinction will occur long before transformation.
Your ambiguous inference as to what a "detrimental" mutation is, makes this statement unsupportable.
The math isn't hard. Assign an average value to mutations. It doesn't matter if you pick a high value or a low value. Neither favors evolutionism. You can say the average mutation effects survival chances by 1% or 0.1%, and it won't change the final outcome.
29 x .01 = .29 > 1 x .01 = .01
29 x .001 = .029 > 1 x .001 = .001[quote]This math assumes that the individuals with "detrimental" mutations (still undefined) will have as many offspring as those with the beneficial mutations. This kinda flies in the face of what Darwin stated and is probably opposing the definitions that you still need to supply.
[quote]See? It makes no difference at all. They can't win either way. I have simplified this ever so slightly - IN THEIR FAVOUR. (I have rounded DOWN to 29 from the actual numbers which would be 29.xxx, and the mantissa will in any case work AGAINST the evogod(ess).) The only value that works is 100%. If the average bad mutation absolutely guarantees death, and the average good mutation is guaranteed to survive, "natural selection" would work. That's the point of my original question. Do you remember your response?
Nope because this is the first time you have brought this up.
Actual investigations by evolutionists don't support anything near an 100% figure. Not even 50%. Nor 10%.
which might be why you won't find an evolutionist that says this...hence your statement saying so above is incorrect.
