Re: Howard Hershey: Correction by RM

On Oct 16, 12:15 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 15, 11:34 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 15, 1:15 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 15, 1:57 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 15, 7:07 am, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 12, 9:14 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 12, 3:23 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Oct 9, 2:48 pm, Augray <aug...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 14:00:57 -0700, Ray Martinez
<pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<1191963657.529533.186...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> :

On Oct 8, 9:12 pm, hersheyh <hershe...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Oct 8, 5:52 pm, Ray Martinez <pyramid...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[snip]

how many mutations have
nothing to do with reproduction success?

We were talking about Jim's crooked fingers; and nobody would consider
them beneficial for anything.

Why not? As Jim's already pointed out, it improves his grip in certain
situations.

Notice the utter lack of any objectivity defending an obvious
deformity.

I am re-asking this question (after cleaning up some of the language)
because I have not gotten an answer from Ray. Lots of evasion.
Restatement of his personal opinion. But no real answer. And his
answer is certainly important to any thesis he will be presenting in
his "magnum opus" against evolution.

What is your question, Howard?

Its down below. And you have continued to avoid answering it. You
have no *alternative* way of determining if a *phenotypic* trait is
"deleterious", "neutral", or "beneficial" other than your personal
unsupported and undefined opinion.

I said explicitly that I subscribe to the Naturalist view of
evolution. It is this view that I will be refuting, Howard.

Yet you assert elsewhere, without producing any evidence that you
understand enough to be able to do so, that you can show that "natural
selection" does not exist?

If he has no real *alternative* way of determining if a trait is
"deleterious", "neutral", or "beneficial" other than his own personal
opinion, he will have a rough time trying to scientifically "prove"
that evolution via natural selection (there is still evolution through
neutral mechanisms) is impossible in principle.

Darwin argued that natural selection model explains a whole mass of
facts.

http://bevets.com/equotesl3.htm#rlewontin

Richard Lewontin has said that natural selection explains
"everything"; therefore, (he goes on to say, not included in the link)
its power to explain "everything" exempts it from Popperian
falsification because it is true nonetheless.

Lewontin is wrong.

You are the first evolutionist that I have ever encountered to say
this bluntly. Lewontin is the premier evolutionary geneticist alive.
He is brutally honest and forthright.

And you are probably distorting or quote-mining what he said. But if
he actually said that natural selection explains "everything" about
evolution rather than that it explains "many" things about the
adaptation of organisms to environment, he would be wrong. Most
evolutionary change, we now know, is non-adaptive and selectively
neutral. The fact that such purely stochastic changes *also* produces
(to a great extent) the same pattern of historical descent as was
deduced from morphology and fossil evidence (features related to
selection) is a great confirmation of the idea of historical descent.

Now I am engaged in a discussion with an evolutionist who has rejected
one of my sources and by implication demanding that his preconceived
ideas are still factually true.

Which source and why? Can't you do anything but vague non-answers?

They are now unsupported opinions. NS
is not falsifiable by Popperian standards.

Yes it is. In fact, as I just pointed out, NS is specifically
falsified (rejected as a useful explanation) in cases where there is
no significant selective difference (meaning a difference in
reproductive success) between traits. And, mathematically, that is
when the variation generation to generation due to chance alone is
significantly larger than any variation that is due to selective
factors. Population size matters. In small populations or when the
frequency of a variant is small, chance is more important than
selection.

Dawkins and Dennett and a
host of others have all written books based on the claim that NS is
the main mechanism to explain the existence of nature.

NS is the main mechanism that can explain why organisms have
*adaptive* features rather than anti-adaptive features. It is, thus,
the main (but not the only) mechanism that can generate and
discriminate between *adaptive* features of living organisms. NS does
not explain "gravity", nor "volcanos", nor "earthquakes", nor "the
atomic nature of matter", so it is absurd to say that "NS is the main
mechanism to explain the existence of nature".

NS does claim
to explain "everything," and Lewontin goes on to say that this fact
(which Darwin himself said explained a "mass of facts") is exempt from
falsification because of its explanatory power.

Can you produce the *actual* quote and citation where he says this?
Or are you quote-mining and lying about it? NS does have great
explanatory power, but that is because nature is the way it is.
*Falsification* does not require that a theory *be* falsified. It
only requires that it be "falsifiable" *if* some evidence from nature
were different than it is. *If* there were no possible source of new
phenotypic variance in populations of organisms, NS would be
falsified. *If* the organism's phenotype made no difference wrt its
reproductive success in a population, then NS would be falsified (and,
in fact, there are phenotypes that make no detectable difference wrt
to an organism's reproductive success, so NS is not an explanation for
everything).

Sexual selection and other mechanisms are auxilliary and subservient.
If an adaption exists that NS cannot explain then it is not adaption.

If there is an organismal *adaptive* feature that NS cannot *in
principle* explain, that would be a problem for NS. Darwin described
how many of the *adaptive* features that were thought to be too
complex for NS, such as the eye, in fact could arise, in principle, in
ways consistent with the requirements of NS. For such a feature to
exist and be a useful refutation of NS, you must have real empirical
*evidence* (not the absence of evidence) that NS cannot explain it.
One way to do this would be to have *evidence* that another mechanism
was used. Another way would be to show that NS, which has certain
constraints, could not produce it. For example, the feature might be
both complex (wrt number of differences from the *nearest* related
organism) and of such recent origin that the feature could not arise
in the time available. For example, one species of bat with feathers
on its wings rather than hair. Or one could introduce the "designer"
and tell us how he/she/it/they produced the feature and when they
produced it.

There are clearly changes in organisms that are
NOT due to selection but due to neutral drift (which occurs in the
absence of *significant* selection). What actually is nearly
impossible, given the nature of genes and mutation, is 'created'
permanent stasis in a population. That is true both for selected and
non-selected features. Even *if* evolution were not true of the past,
it would happen in the future.

Where are your changes seen in the *geologic strata* of the Earth? The
same shows stasis and extinction.

Extinction represents change in the species that existed at different
times. The fact is that the species that existed in the Cambrian, for
example, are quite different from the ones that exist now. That is
clearly change. The so-called stasis is a dynamic stasis. There are
two alternative explanations for this evidence. The creationist one
must assume a creator that creates new species as modification of pre-
existing species throughout time, not in a single event. The non-
creationist one assumes that new species tend to arise as small
isolated populations (islands) of organisms at the fringes of existing
ecological territories for existing populations (where life is hardest
for the species and where pressures for adaptation to a hostile
environment is strongest) and that NS acts much quicker than would be
typically observed in the fossil record (only a very small fraction of
*many* species are both fossilized and found; most geological layers
are at least 10,000 years apart). There is no evidence for a
supernatural, but NON-CHRISTIAN continuously producing creator (who
limits him/her/themselves to producing organisms on the framework of
pre-existing species) working throughout geological history. There is
evidence (when you look at species with the best preserved fossil
record and look at the rate of change possible with selection) for the
latter.

Whatever changes that you are on to
that occur at the molecular level are not seen in the *crust* of the
Earth.

The fossil record of the Cambrian is quite different in the species
that it contains from the Devonian from the Jurassic, from the early
Cretaceous, from the Tertiary *even* when you look at sites that
fossilize the same general sorts of environments.

Said principle explains
nature, is not falsifiable, deserves an exemption from falsification
because it explains nature satisfactorily. I agree with Howard that I
am going to have "a rough time" refuting natural selection.

Well, first you have to actually try to refute it.

But my
sources are smarter than Darwin and Lewontin. I have already refuted
natural selection, nonetheless.

Really? Where? And who are these hypothetical sources? What
evidence do they have?

One's personal
opinion is not typically considered evidence in science.

Of course Howard is not talking about Darwin, Fisher, Williams, Mayr,
Gould, Dawkins, etc.etc., or himself?

Actually, I am talking about all of them. They all try to support
their arguments with clear public definitions and material evidence.
All I have seen in support of your opinion, OTOH, is the bald
assertion that crooked fingers are 'deleterious' or 'deformities'.
All we have is your completely unsupported personal opinion that it is
"obvious" that this trait is "deleterious".

I do not need any other evidence other than the crooked fingers.

Yes you do.

We
both have accepted that Jim's crooked fingers exist. Common sense,
logic and rational objectivity say crooked fingers are an obvious and
unwanted deformity.

Common sense is a poor substitute for logic and rational objectivity.
You clearly lack all three, but you still have not provided a
*criteria* for determining whether a *difference* is a *deformity*.
Until you provide such a criteria, you clearly cannot say that you are
presenting an *objective* conclusion. "Objective" means that you have
used criteria that are clearly stated and that others can apply. You
have presented no criteria for me to apply.

I certainly have given you my "personal opinion" that this
"difference" may not arise to the level of having a significant effect
on reproductive success and thus may be effectively "neutral". But I
clearly labelled that as an opinion *and* told you the criteria that
you could apply as well (reproductive success relative to an
alternative phenotype). All I have from you is that it is "common
sense" because you say so.

Is caucasian skin coloration a "defect" or "deformity"? Is blond hair
a "defect" or "deformity"? You can use my criteria to find out in a
specified environment. How am I to use your "common sense", so-called
"logic", or your subjective (not objective) so-called "rationality"?



There is
ample evidence in biology for differential selection both for and
against specific traits that have arisen by spontaneous mutation.
Since selection *for* [actually all selection is really *against* a
trait; selection *for* a trait is really a simple mathematical
consequence of selection *against* the alternative trait(s) in the
population] a trait is what leads one to define that trait as "good"
or "beneficial" for the organism (as a population of organisms) in
biology, he can hardly deny that selection for traits results (or,
more accurately, tends to result) in optimal adaptation to local
environmental conditions (specifically to the environment that one's
parents faced). If he accepts the biological meaning of "beneficial",
"neutral", or "detrimental" and the methodology used to determine
which term to use and to quantitatively measure the relative impact of
selection, he has lost the game. He *needs* an alternative way of
identifying what is "beneficial", "neutral", or "detrimental".

He needs some definition that is not tied into differential selection
and differential reproductive success. [I would, of course, argue
that the biological way of identifying "beneficial", etc., is pretty
much common sense as long as one recognizes its non-anthropomorphic
idea that the biological "good" means "good for the organism" and not
necessarily "good for humans". The usual creationist fall back is
simply to assert that all mutation is "deleterious" *by definition*.
But Ray *claims* that he has eschewed that as an obviously bogus idea
leading to circular argument. He has not, however, told us how he
determines "beneficial", "neutral", or "detrimental" differently from
biologists. So here is the question repeated.

What I notice is that you, Ray, agreed with me that a mutation is
merely a change and that you necessarily, then, must have criteria
*other than* merely that the observed trait is different from the
"norm" in order to declare it "deleterious" or a "deformity". I have
asked repeatedly what criteria you use to declare this phenotype as a
"deformity" mutation (which clearly implies that you think the form is
deleterious) rather than a mere "difference" mutation?

You just keep saying that it is "obvious". Why is it obvious to you
that this *difference* from the norm is a deformity? Is caucasian
skin color a "deformity"? Is blond hair a "deformity"? Both are
differences from the norm, and, in both cases are caused by gene
products that are less active than the norm. What are your criteria
for declaring that crooked fingers is a "deformity" or "deleterious"
mutation? And did you take into account the possible conditional
nature of that declaration? That there might be conditions under
which the difference is "beneficial" even if those conditions do not
now exist. How do you quantitatively measure or qualitatively
determine whether a phenotype is "deleterious" or a "deformity"?

I have described the criteria that evolutionary biologists use
(reproductive success relative to an alternate phenotype in a
specified environment). Why do you apparently keep resorting to the
bogus circular idea (and it is an idea that you have recognized as
bogus) that anything that is 'different' is necessarily (e.g. is
defined) a deleterious phenotype or a deformity?

Ray: Given what you say below, I certainly realize that you *still*
are unable to produce an answer to the above question, which was based
on *your* claim that you knew that a particular trait was a
"deformity". You are simply trying to avoid the consequences of that
claim by shifting to another point. Are you admitting that you have
no way of determining that that trait was "deleterious" other than
your personal unsupported assertion?

Negative, Howard.

Then tell me how you go about it. Curious minds want to know.



Do you realize that you are arguing that crooked fingers are not a
deformity? How rational and objective is this? The vast majority of
fingers are not crooked; therefore, crooked fingers are a deformity.
That is all that I have said and argued.

So you are basically saying that you determine that crooked fingers
are a "deformity" based on the current frequency of this phenotype in
the population? This, of course, means that *any* new variant, even
one that allowed greater reproductive success, would be called, by
you, a "deformity" and be considered "deleterious". Is that the
criteria you are using? If so, you are, in fact, declaring, _a
priori_, that *any* new trait is necessarily deleterious. That is,
you are defining mutation as necessarily deleterious. Yet you say
that you are not doing that. Is that an example of what you call
"logic"?



Howard: your entire commentary is built on the silent presupposition
that evolution by random mutation and natural selection is to be
defined and decided at the genetic level.

To the contrary, I say that random mutation is at the genetic level
(mutation is the ultimate source of all heritable variation).

This reply makes no sense when compared to the comment you are
responding to.

For NS to exist and have evolutionary impact, there must be 1) a
source of hereditary variation, 2) a connection between the hereditary
variation and phenotypic effect, 3) at least two different *existing*
variants to compare, 4) an environment which has a differential impact
on the reproductive success of two different phenotypes, 5) a way to
measure relative reproductive success. The absence of any of these
means that NS cannot explain the observation.

1) Mutation (change in DNA) is now known to be the source of all
hereditary variation. We know what kinds of changes can occur in DNA
and all known phenotypic variants that show hereditary properties
involve changes in DNA. But NS clearly would have been exhausted *if*
there were no source of new variation, so one way to falsify NS would
be to present evidence that DNA cannot be changed. This is highly
unlikely, given the already available evidence that DNA can and does
change.

2) We know that not all phenotypic variation is due to hereditary
difference. So NS does not always have evolutionary impact.
Selection against a limbless child who is limbless because of a
developmental anomoly or his mother taking thalidomide is selected
against every bit as much as one who is limbless because of a mutant
or variant gene. But that selection has no evolutionary import.
However, *if* one's genes had no impact on one's phenotype, then *all*
selection would have no evolutionary import. Thus, one way to falsify
NS would be to demonstrate that genes and genetic variation *never*
affects phenotype. Again, the evidence is decidedly against such a
universal. But not always. It is possible to have phenotypic
variation that is non-hereditary. So in some cases one can indeed
"falsify" the idea that selection in such a case has evolutionary
import.

3) Selection can only occur against *existing* phenotypes. It cannot
occur against imaginary, hypothetical, or possible phenotypes. So if
no appropriate variant exists in a population, then NS cannot occur.
Thus, if you can show that it is impossible for a particular variant
to ever occur (even stepwise or indirectly or by chimera formation),
then you would have an argument against that phenotype having occurred
by NS. Unfortunately, if the phenotype *does* exist (as evidenced by
it actually being seen in a population), that means that you have to
present evidence contrary to reality. But this does rule out pegasus,
flying dragons with four limbs, flying pigs, and the typical
descriptions of angels, and other imaginary critters. That isn't
saying much, but many creationists somehow think that NS *produces*
the needed variants during a time of need; that is, NS is a teleologic
process that thinks ahead. That the fossil record is filled with
extinct organisms would seem to be evidnence that that is not the
case.

4) As I have pointed out several time, *if* you can show that, in the
specified environment, there is no differential impact wrt
reproductive success between two phenotypes, there is no NS. That
doesn't mean that there is no change; only that the change is due to
neutral drift. NS, of course, is almost always conservative, meaning
that it conserves the optimum. In constant environments, this means
that you have the appearance of stasis. But the stasis is really a
consequence of a dynamic differential removal of traits different from
those already optimized that occur and recur and occur again and
again.

5) If you cannot measure reproductive success, even if imperfectly or
indirectly, then you cannot empirically determine that NS has
occurred. Differential survival to reproductive age is *one* possible
measure of relative reproductive success, but it is not always the
best one.



Darwin
did not know this, but he knew that much visible variation (phenotype)
was, indeed, heritable and that changes in variation (or sports)
occurred both in agriculture and in nature.

Like Lamarck, Darwin concluded for evolution based on the fact that
species and varieties were difficult to differentiate. Darwin was not
an orthinologist, he needed the London experts to tell him which
specimens were separate species and which were varieties when he
arrived home from the Beagle voyage. According to Mayr, Darwin had
much trouble defining "species." Ironically, Darwin eventually took
Richard Owen's homology facts and inferred evolution; again, this is
the Naturalist method of inferring the "fact" of evolution.

Actually, in *most* cases people do not have trouble distinguishing
between species. If I were to see a beetle (God's preferred
creatures) and a human, I would have no trouble distinguishing that
they were different species. But the fact that as you continue
"dividing" groups into smaller more similar branches it becomes more
and more difficult to tell one species from another means that there
is a pattern to life. That pattern is a very good fit to the type of
*branching* pattern one would expect from history in the absence of
much horizontal information exchange.

In fact,because he did not
know about genetics at the molecular level, he undoubtedly, like all
biologists until DNA and protein sequencing became common,
overestimated the relative role of selection versus neutral drift in
producing (actually reducing) change. It is heritable variation that
is important in evolution but natural selection occurs at the
phenotypic level, NOT thegenotypiclevel. Even though selection
occurs at the phenotypic level, selection will only have
*evolutionary* consequences to the extent that the phenotype is
heritable. If you do not know the difference between genotype and
phenotype, you certainly will have problems understanding what I
said.

Actually, I do understand. Correct me if I am wrong, does not Sean
Pitman say that selection happens at the "genotypiclevel"?

Sean Pitman is often wrong. In fact, it is hard to think of anything
he was right on. Is he one of your "sources"? Again selection, per
se, occurs at the level of phenotype, but only to the extent that
phenotype is due to genotype will there be a selective evolutionary
change.


I just finished reading two replies by Sean Pitman directed at other
posters and the same alerted me indirectly to a major error on my
part. In an earlier post I said something to the effect that
'selection happens at the genetic level' when I knew for certain that
this is false. What I was intending to write is as follows: I was
attempting to relate the Geneticist view and their definition of
evolution and not selection. Said view insists that ***evolution is
defined at the genetic level,*** it was a major blunder for me to say
'selection' and conflate two entirely different things. Having now
realized this error, it was ridiculous of me to ask Howard if Pitman
accepted such an erroneous proposition. Pitman has, of course, denied,
and I apologize for asking such a stupid question to begin with.
Again, the synthesis geneticists led by the Ronald Fisherian school
disagreed with the Naturalists led by Huxley, Wright, Rensch and Mayr,
that evolution is best defined at the genetic level ("a change in gene
frequencies"). The latter agrees that genetics is important but they
reject a gene frequencies definition of evolution, preferring Darwin's
inference method. Also let it be known that Pitman is not one of my
sources. While his website is the best overall Creationist-Design site
I have seen on the Internet (by far) it does have one "major" flaw. Of
course I would never mention this flaw publicly and give comfort to
our evolutionary enemies. But his website is the best in so many
different ways. But unlike Pagano and myself, as far as I can tell,
Pitman is not a team player in that he does not post any support for
any other Creationist-Designist, but posts exclusively against
evolutionists. But again, his website is the best, like I said, in so
many different ways. It is a gold mine of Creationist-Designist truth
and facts, and I have learned a lot from it.


Ray


SNIP....



.

Relevant Pages

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