Creationism and evolutionism are two opposing belief systems about our history.
So how do we decide which is more likely to represent what happened? The one that explains all the evidence in terms of mechanisms, or the one that is not falsifiable (except in the cases where it
has been falsified)?
The multiplicative model, truncation, relaxed selection model ETC you may not have heard of, but they are unrealistic models proposed by some geneticists / rejected by other geneticists as a solution to their problem / the paradox.
I see, so something you are telling me about that you say I might not have heard of are things you feel I should find unconvincing.
Their beliefs are inconsistent with the evidence.
So the etc mechanism you haven't told me about doesn't match the evidence that you haven't cited.
Due to genetic load / increasing mutations, humanity is genetically inferior to our stone age ancestors.
Even though we live longer, healthier, safer, more comfortable, more productive lives with a better understanding of our place in the universe, we are in James F. Crow's opinion 'genetically inferior'. Did he really say exactly that phrase? Is that all he said, or have you cherry picked that?
It is interesting that he vastly underestimates the problem for the common ancestry belief system, in that he brushes aside most mutations in the non coding DNA.
...in your opinion.
"It seems clear that for the past few centuries harmful mutations have been accumulating. Why don’t we notice this? If we are like Drosophila, the decrease in viability from mutation accumulation is some 1 or 2% per generation. This is more than compensated for by much more rapid environmental improvements, which are keeping well ahead of any decreased efficiency of selection. How long can we keep this up? Perhaps for a long time, but only if there remains a social order that permits steady environmental improvements. If war or famine force our descendants to return to a stone-age life they will have to contend with all the problems that their stone-age ancestors had plus mutations that have accumulated in the meantime."
I'm sure you would agree that creationist cherry-picking is a blight on any serious discourse, and so would assent enthusiastically to me posting his previous paragraph:
| However efficient natural selection was in eliminating harmful mutations in the past, it is no longer so in much of the world. In the wealthy nations, natural selection for differential mortality is greatly reduced. A newborn infant now has a large probability of surviving past the reproducing years. There are fertility differences, to be sure, but they are clearly not distributed in such a way as to eliminate mutations efficiently. Except for pre-natal mortality, natural selection for effective mutation removal has been greatly reduced. |
So his point becomes a bit clearer, his concern is regarding the modern technology that acts to thwart mechanisms that remove deleterious mutations. Of course there are still many we haven't removed. In my opinion, technology has not made as much such difference to most of the world's population as it has to the minority of the very richest.
Others have raised the additional concern that modern technology is good at exposing us to more mutagens. So it may well be there is something to be concerned about regarding the
past few centuries, but not the past few thousands of years, especially when the claim has been made elsewhere in this thread that 73% of new mutations in the past 5000-10,000 years is pretty much the same as saying there are 200 generations since Adam. Since we have technology that lets us choose embryos for implantation that are missing deleterious mutations, and we have better safety standards for chemical and radiation technologies, perhaps our new technologies will take us away from the concerns James Crow raised more than 20 years ago in this paper. Whatever the case, I don't think you have established any kind of Goddidit.
If you stick by it though, then what kind of creation just lets over 99.9% of all species go extinct, including ones that have no ancestors doing any naughty apple-biting? Maybe you could start with that one if you really want us to understand the mechanisms by which there was a 'fall'.
Of course it would serve no purpose, to have viral DNA inserted into our genome, and could even be harmful. Likewise, it would be harmful to science in general to assume any sequence is a viral insertion.
I see you have made exactly as much progress as all those creationist writers out there, ie none. They certainly are viruses. And, again, we must assume you believe they were created by your god, because that's what scripture says. So, while real science understands that there is no 'purpose' in the appearance of a viral parasite, what is your explanation for their existence? Did your god make something that has no purpose, or are we talking about a spiteful god?
So... If something matches the pattern you believe in, it is due to homology.
The patterns are real. The inference is homology. It's not a matter of me
believing there is a pattern, a forelimb with five digits is a forelimb with five digits.
I wonder if your next step is to suggest that I would be foolish to assume that one generation gives rise to a following generation by reproduction.
And when it doesn't match the pattern the tree is simply redrawn... And when the tree simply can't be redrawn any further, evolutionists call it analogous, and claim that it must have evolve independently.
What is it like living in 1952?
It is science that has been understood by geneticists for about 70 years. HJ Mueller in 1950 recognized that the number of children per couple had to be much greater than the mutation rate. In fact, Mueller thought there may only be 0.1 mutations added to our grnome every generation and he thought was a problem.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1716299/
You are citing a paper that conceded that at the time there was no reliable way to measure mutations in humans. Could that be because in 1950 we did not even know about base pairs?
Genetics provides awesome evidence of the truth of scripture. Our genome is totally consistent with a sophisticated perfectly created genome, subjected to several thousand years of mutation The evidence is totally inconsistent was common ancestry...and, that is why secular geneticists have referred to the problem as a paradox.
There is nothing in our genomes consistent with 'several thousand years of mutation'. It's several billion years. Our genome looks far more like a careless, blind, wasteful tinkerer has taken unimaginable amounts of time to throw together stuff that might work, or might not, then exposed it to live and reproduce, or die. Is that the kind of 'created' you have in mind? It's exactly what the evidence shows.
Stuart
