Re: Floyd, This Is My Repsonse

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nowhere Man) wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Floyd) wrote in message  news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
[restored header]

> Please delete the other post. This response if for Floyd.
> 

> > In short, there are thousands of potential ways to make sure the
> > populations diverge from each other, but I can't think of any
> > mechanism, off the top of my head, that would _prevent_ it.  If you
> > can think of a way to stop this divergence from happening to isolated
> > populations in different environments, I would really appreciate
> > hearing it.  What could do that?  Please let me know.  Thanks.
> >     -Floyd
> 
> 
> This is a common mistake that people who believe in evolution make so
> do not feel bad about it. You ask what would stop these helpful
> mutations from happening. The real question is not what would stop
> them but what would cause them. 

Mutations, regardless of their effect on the phenotype (body, organs,
growth rate, etc.) are caused by a number of factors, including (but
not limited to) ionizing radiation, exposure to some chemicals, UV
radiation, heat, and simple "mistakes" in copying.  *How* mutations
arise is a subject that has been studied in considerable detail.

> If you want to claim that mutations
> can cause new features than you have to find evidence for your claim.

http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v358/n6386/abs/358499a0.html
or 
http://tinyurl.com/wwrv 
 
is a Letter to _Nature_ (358, 499 - 502; August 1992) by Meera Berry,
Frank Grosveld & Niall Dillon.  It describes a point mutation that is
found among some Greek populations that causes fetal Gamma-globin
genes to continue being expressed in adults.  Normally, Gamma-globin
stops being produced at birth, and Beta-globin takes over as the main
component of hemoglobin.

There is a disease that is common in parts of Greece that is known as
Beta-thalassaemia (it is similar to malaria, and spreads by a similar
means, bites by infected mosquitoes).  People who contract
thalassaemia die.  That's bad, as far as the people are concerned, so
I would consider anything that prevents the spread or the fatality of
this disease to be a beneficial thing, at least in the minds of the
Greeks who live where thalassaemia is common.  Wouldn't you?

Well, the Gamma-globin that is common in fetuses, but absent from
adults *does* prevent the fatal effects of thalassaemia.  There is a
mutation, described in that article, that causes adults to continue to
manufacture Gamma-globin throughout their lifetimes.  That mutation
enables those individuals who have it to survive.  That is just *one*
of the many examples of a beneficial mutation that is known in humans.
 There are many others that are already documented for humans, and
there are hundreds that are known in other species.

> I personally suggest that you save some your time because I have
> looked myself and there has never been a benificial mutation that has
> been observed.

Odd.  How hard did you look?  I just now typed the phrase "beneficial
mutation" into Google and got 2390 hits in 0.19 seconds.  It could be
that you aren't looking in the right places; you might want to try
again, expanding your search area a bit. 
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html would be a good place to
start your research.

>  Mutations only do harm. There is evidence for that. If
> you want to say they can cause new constructions then you need to
> provide some  evidence for that.

Well, "harm" and "benefit" are terms that need to be defined, I guess.
 We can't just say something is "useful" or "harmful" in the abstract
sense, we have to specify "useful for *what?*" and "harmful, as
compared to *what?*"

I'm using survival and reproduction as my measurement.  If a mutation
*helps* an organism to survive and have children, I label it
"beneficial" and if it makes survival and reproduction harder or more
unlikely, I label it a detriment.  Are you comfortable with those
conditional definitions?  If not, what definitions do you propose in
their place?  That is, how can we tell if a given change is harmful or
helpful?  What do we compare it to, and what is the "currency" of
measurement?


> 
> Yes I agreed that there is change is all living things but I did not
> say that it was caused by mutations. That would not be reasonable.

Why not?  You are aware, I'm sure, that DNA is composed of a "double
helix" chain of phosphates and sugars, bound together by "bases"
(pyramidines and purines, symbolized A, T, C, and G).  These bases
spell out a list of "instructions" for building amino acids, which are
then combined into proteins which are used to construct enzymes, body
tissues, etc.  Changes in the sequence of bases are called
"mutations," that's just the name we give to *any* changes in the
sequence of bases, whether it has a positive effect, a negative
effect, or no effect whatsoever.

In other words, "mutation" is simply the name we give to alterations
of the sequence of bases in DNA.  It has no other meaning beyond that.

> The
> changes are built into the life form's original designs. That is the
> only reasonable explanation if you think about it.

What are these "original designs" and where can we see them?  And how
does your hypothesis explain the fact that children often have genes
that their parents did not?

I appreciate the fact that you are actually making an effort, but this
last section needs a *lot* more detail before it will be convincing.

1) What, precisely, do you mean by "original designs" in this context?
2) How can we know what those original designs were?
3) How do we account for differences between parents and offspring?  
4) Do the original designs differ in any way from current designs?
5) If so, how?
6) Are these original designs "written" in the "language" of DNA?
7) If so, how do you account for the observed instances of mutations
at all (regardless of their effects, positive or negative)?
8) If not, how do you account for the correlation between genetic
differences and phenotypic differences?
9) If the answer to 6 is "no" then how *are* these original designs
encoded?

You say this is a "reasonable explanation if you think about it," but
you'll need to give me a lot more details about this explanation
before I can even *begin* to think about it!  It's like saying
"everything is explained by X" but then not telling me what "X" is! 
Give me some details, please, so I can do the research and figure out,
for myself, how reasonable it is.  Call me obstinate, but I don't like
to just take people's word for something like this; I like to check
things out for myself.  Thanks.
    -Floyd