Re: Breeding Errors smack down Natural Selection in Evolutionary

On Jun 12, 12:38 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
family-living wrote:

I'm sorry, but that post was incoherent. Let's look at it anyway.





Breeding Errors smack down Natural Selection in Evolutionary Theories

I note: [Columella, a respected Roman scholar and writer
of the first Century A.D., was a very prolific writer on the topic
of animal care and breeding. He recorded and used the term
"veterinarius" for a person who is a caretaker of pigs, sheep
and cattle. (It is interesting to note that the word veterina
was the Roman word for "pack animals". In Rome the term
"souvetaurinarii" was another word that was used for someone
who took care of animals.) Between 42-68 A.D., Columella
wrote 12 volumes of animal-related publications on topics such
as animal breeding, husbandry, and health in livestock. His works
include descriptions of disease, and medication formulae that were
used up into the Middle Ages.]
http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/VetHistory/vethistory.htm
http://wahvm.vet.uu.nl/specific/resources/graecoromanperiod.html

There seemed to be nothing in that paragraph that is relevent to natural
selection, evolution, or anything on topic.

Breeding appears to have been around for thousands of years.

Well known. So?

"But because genes are often tied to multiple traits, scientists
warn, deliberate selection of certain ones can backfire. The gene
responsible for those silver-coated Labradors, for example,
is tied to skin problems."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/science/12dog.html?ex=1339300800&en...

True. Linkage and pleiotropy can affect artificial selection so as to
spread undesirable traits with the desirable ones. Natural selection
doesn't quite work that way, because change must be a compromise among
all the various desirable (selected for) and undesirable (selected
against) traits. If silver coats and skin problems were strongly linked,
silver coats would spread only if the advantage of the color outweighed
the disadvantage of the skin problems. And an individual in which the
color and skin problem became unlinked would have considerable breeding
advantage. Not all that relevant to evolution, though. Is this supposed
to somehow make evolution impossible?

Biblical statements concerning the earth being corrupt,
with all flesh upon the earth being corrupted, are mentioned
during the time of the Patriarch Noah, 2944 to 1994 B.C.
There were giants on the earth in those days that attempted
to take away the life of Noah, indicating from Holy Scripture,
the time frame for the worldwide culmination of the development
and mutation of dinosaurs, plants and other distorted, abnormally
deformed creatures.
http://academic-genealogy.com/ancientandmoderngenealogies.htm

This appears to take some kind of bizarre, young-earth position in which
dinosaurs are mutant monsters, not real species like doggies and
piggies. Aside from the scientific absurdity of YEC, few creationists
would consider dinosaurs to be monsters. I won't even bother to ask for
evidence of any of these contentions.

DNA evidence cannot "prove" exact pedigree genealogy connections.
Carefully note: "DNA evidence, combined with other non-controversial
historical evidence, recently brought to closure the long-suspected
relationship between Thomas Jefferson, or his brother, and Sally
Hemmings." (This should be stated as reasonably connected to
the Jefferson family DNA). Neither can Evolution be "proved" to be
more or less than individual personal speculations and broad based
assumptions, a so called "scientific" mythological family tree, not
grounded in exact factual reality.

Note that the DNA evidence was able to show that the Hemings family
descended either from Th. Jefferson or a close relative. That's exactly
what phylogenetic evidence shows. Fortunately this is enough to show
creationism wrong. You seem to take the position that if we don't know
everything to complete exactness, we know nothing. But that's silly. If
my yardstick is accurate to within 1/32 of an inch, I can't measure the
distance between two points exactly. But if I say they're 27 1/4 inches
apart, the fact that they might really be 27 3/32 inches apart doesn't
seem like a big problem to me. You?

Carefully note the assumptions: "A few generations of human
evolutionary change is but a blink of an eye compared to what
has gone before.

No, not an assumption. We have a very good handle on the age of the
earth, and we know that life is at least 3.5 billion years old, and we
know that humans are related by common descent to all other life.
There's very good evidence for all of this.

It might take 25,000-50,000 generations --
a half million to a million years or more - for really significant
change to occur." Note: "might take".

That all depends on what "really significant" means, doesn't it? We know
that evolutionary change can happen at different rates at different
times. We also know that rates calculated from the fossil record are
orders of magnitude *slower* than rates observed in the present.
Presumably this means that visible changes happen both quickly (over
times we can observe them) and rarely (so they add up over long
geological times) in populations.

Nevertheless, "scientific"
culture believes this to be true, and they use the supernatural
to interpret natural events and to explain the nature of the universe
and humanity; i.e., they cannot be explained from actual laws
and current species living and a part of the observed natural world.

Sure they can. We can't see Niagara Falls receding upstream, but we can
observe the processes that make it happen at the rates necessary to
account for the amount of recession we can infer from the local
geography. Same with evolution.

There is no greater lesson taught: nature's reproducing processes
- the day to day creations in trillions, of "after their own kind".
http://darwiniana.org/intro1.htm

I'm sorry, but that pronouncement requires vast ignorance of biology.
Every individual is a mutant many times over. Most mutations have no
effect. Of those that do have an effect, most that we see have small
effects, and merely introduce additional variation to the population, on
which selection can act. Populations are observed to change due both to
selection and drift. There is no visible mechanism that stops this
change from proceeding indefinitely. And there you are with evolution.

In a nutshell. Absense of evidence is evidence of absense.
Yet scientists are beginning to discover things like repair
mechanisms. You would have been better served to have claimed that
there has been no major observed mechanism that limits this change.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Seanpit, ID and complexity
    ... random mutation and I assume natural selection. ... think (using empirical evidence to support your position) each of them ... I, in fact, did define evolution: ... Even Paley recognized variation within a species. ...
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  • Re: Howard Hershey: Correction by RM
    ... his "magnum opus" against evolution. ... without producing any evidence that you ... that evolution via natural selection (there is still evolution through ... reproductive success in a population, then NS would be falsified (and, ...
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  • Re: Breeding Errors smack down Natural Selection in Evolutionary
    ... deliberate selection of certain ones can backfire. ... Not all that relevant to evolution, ... "DNA evidence, combined with other non-controversial ... observe the processes that make it happen at the rates necessary to ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Breeding Errors smack down Natural Selection in Evolutionary
    ... family-living wrote: ... deliberate selection of certain ones can backfire. ... Not all that relevant to evolution, ... "DNA evidence, combined with other non-controversial ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Evolution and Observation Gap
    ... around the world to observe the transit of Mercury. ... Try and grapple with the evidence. ... and the Theory of Evolution. ... They did their math, made predictions, then observed to see if the ...
    (talk.origins)