Re: Mendel refutes evolution

mccoy@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Some interesting thoughts:

Two falsehoods in three words! Excellent. (I'll grant you "some".)

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/7evds10.txt

6. THE MENDELIAN INHERITANCE LAW


The unity of the human race is further established by Mendel's
Inheritance Discovery on which evolutionists so much rely. G. Mendel,
an experimenter, found that when he crossed a giant variety of peas
with a dwarf variety, the off-spring were all tall. The giants were
called "dominant"; the disappearing dwarfs, "recessive". But among the
second generation of this giant offspring, giants and dwarfs appeared
in the proportion of 3 to 1. But when these dwarfs were
self-fertilized, successive generations were _all_ dwarfs. The
recessive character was not lost, but appeared again. Experiments with
flowers likewise show that the recessive color will reappear.

Also experiments with the interbreeding of animals have shown similar
results. The recessive or disappearing characteristics, or the
disappearing variety, will appear again, in some subsequent
generation, and sometimes becomes permanent. This law prevails widely
in nature, and the recessive traits appear with the dominant
traits. "If rose-combed fowl were mated with single-combed fowl, the
offspring were all rose-combed, but when these rose-combed fowl were
mated, the offspring were again rose-combed and single-combed.... If
gray rabbits were mated with black rabbits, their hybrids were all
gray, the black seemingly disappearing, but when the second generation
were mated, the progeny were again grays and blacks."--God or
Gorilla--p. 278. _The recessive character always reappears._

Apply these widely prevalent laws to dominant man and his recessive
alleged brute ancestor. The simian characteristics would appear in
some generations, if not in many. We would expect many offspring _to
have the recessive character of the ape_, and we ought not to be
surprised, if some recessive stock became permanent.

This reveals that the author has no idea what "recessive" means, or why
recessive alleles are recessive. Nor, of course, does McCoy.

Following analogy, we ought to look for a tribe of human beings that
had degenerated into apes. That we find no such recessive
characteristics even among the most degenerate savages,

I'm interested in knowing which groups of humans the author considers
"the most degenerate savages". Any ideas? If Darwin had said anything
like this, David Ford would be quote-mining it forever.

and no such
ape-like tribe of human beings, is a decisive proof that man never
descended from the brute. Else such recessive characteristics,
according to the Mendelian Law, would be sure to appear. We would also
find monkeys and apes,--the recessive species--descended from man.

The reasons why this is nonsense are too many to list. I'll content
myself with a couple.

1. Species aren't recessive. Alleles are recessive.
2. Even recessive alleles are lost from populations, whether by drift or
by selection. Mendel's experiments were irrelevant to that point.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Mendel refutes evolution
    ... THE MENDELIAN INHERITANCE LAW ... recessive character was not lost, ... "If rose-combed fowl were mated with single-combed fowl, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Mendel refutes evolution
    ... THE MENDELIAN INHERITANCE LAW ... recessive character was not lost, ... "If rose-combed fowl were mated with single-combed fowl, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Mendel refutes evolution
    ... THE MENDELIAN INHERITANCE LAW ... recessive character was not lost, ... "If rose-combed fowl were mated with single-combed fowl, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Mendel refutes evolution
    ... THE MENDELIAN INHERITANCE LAW ... recessive character was not lost, ... "If rose-combed fowl were mated with single-combed fowl, ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Mendel refutes evolution
    ... THE MENDELIAN INHERITANCE LAW ... recessive character was not lost, ... "If rose-combed fowl were mated with single-combed fowl, ...
    (talk.origins)