ID falsifiable, not science, not positive, not directly testable

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There was a time when people believed the moon craters were the product of intelligent design because they were so perfectly round “they must have been made by intelligent creatures living on the moon”. That idea was falsified. If hypothetically someone had said back then, “The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) made the moon craters”, the claim would have been falsifiable, but it really doesn’t make a positive case for the FSM, doesn’t make the FSM directly testable, doesn’t make the FSM science. Substitute the word “ID” instead for “FSM”, and one will see why I think even though ID is falsifiable, I don’t think ID has a positive case, and I don’t think ID is directly testable, and I don’t think ID is science at least for things like biology.

I accept stonehenge was intelligently designed because I’ve seen humans make similar artifacts. The case of design in life is a different matter because we have not seen a designer of such qualifications directly. If we saw God or some UFO sending flames down from the sky with a great voice and turning a rock into a living human, then I would consider ID a positive case at that point. For now there is no positive case, but a case based on some level of belief. One might redefine science to allow ID to be defined as science, but I prefer not to promote ID as science. I’m OK with calling ID science for man-made things, but not for God-made things, unless God shows up and gives us a visual demonstration.

NOTES:

Johannes Kepler

The invention of the telescope led scientists to ponder alien civilization. In the early 1600s, astronomer Johannes Kepler believed that because the moon’s craters were perfectly round, they must have been made by intelligent creatures.
Is Anybody Out There?

435 thoughts on “ID falsifiable, not science, not positive, not directly testable”

  1. You’re missing my point: on a species level what constitutes damage?

    We can only determine that unequivocally if we have access to the ancestral genome and what genes are permanently damaged in all individuals of a species relative to the ancestor.

    The Y-chromosome studies and the loss of genes are examples of what even evolutionists view as “damage” on all the members of a species — but this is based on an assumption of universal common ancestry.

    But my point is, showing such damage among all individuals is not a requirement to demonstrate genetic deterioration. We can quantitatively demonstrate deterioration of a species without demonstrating the EXACT same kind of damage to all individuals in the population of that species.

    I’m not exactly on the fringe as far as genomic damage (aka reductive evolution). Yet another great paper from the stealth creationists at NIH:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23801028

    A common belief is that evolution generally proceeds towards greater complexity at both the organismal and the genomic level, numerous examples of reductive evolution of parasites and symbionts notwithstanding. However, recent evolutionary reconstructions challenge this notion. Two notable examples are the reconstruction of the complex archaeal ancestor and the intron-rich ancestor of eukaryotes. In both cases, evolution in most of the lineages was apparently dominated by extensive loss of genes and introns, respectively. These and many other cases of reductive evolution are consistent with a general model composed of two distinct evolutionary phases: the short, explosive, innovation phase that leads to an abrupt increase in genome complexity, followed by a much longer reductive phase, which encompasses either a neutral ratchet of genetic material loss or adaptive genome streamlining. Quantitatively, the evolution of genomes appears to be dominated by reduction and simplification, punctuated by episodes of complexification.

    The punctuated episodes of complexification are an artifact, imho, of a misinterpretation of the fossil record. The Punctuated emergence was the special creation events.

  2. 1. YEC is such a stupid idea that it is fair to call it delusional. It’s Time Cube stuff, Sal. Others are welcome to address it, but it’s a waste of time.

    2 Irrelevant, since 1 is rubbish.
    3. Yes, they are, by actual experiment. Why does evidence not count?

  3. petrushka:
    1. YEC is such a stupid idea that it is fair to call it delusional. It’s Time Cube stuff, Sal. Others are welcome to address it, but it’s a waste of time.

    2Irrelevant, since 1 is rubbish.
    3. Yes, they are, by actual experiment. Why does evidence not count?

    Evolutionism is such a stupid idea it is fair to call it delusional

  4. stcordova: How many think the human genome is on average acquiring more functionality or is it acquiring more damage in the present era?

    One man’s damage is another man’s functionality.

  5. Neil Rickert: One man’s damage is another man’s functionality.

    I would say one environment’s damage is another’s benefit, provided absolute fitness doesn’t go to zero.

    I can see now why Sal clings to YEC. It is the only way he can cling to genetic entropy. He cannot explain the non-extinction of mammals unless they haven’t been around very long.

    So the answer is to pitch all consilience out the window. Physics, astrophysics, astronomy !, biology, geology. All reduced to rubble on the basis of a few explanatory gaps. Which, like the Star Wars garbage compactor, keep getting smaller and narrower.

  6. Robin:

    To take an example, roughly 2-3 million people in the US are estimated to have some form of heart disease (of that, roughly 600,000 die annually from it). Let’s assume 3 million for easy math. If 3 million people have heart disease in the US (population 318 million), then that would be just less than 1% of the population. So, how much “evolutionary” impact would you estimate Homo sapiens “experiencing” from something that effects 1% of the population? How much does this “genetic damage” affect the entire human genome?

    The answer is the “gene pool” is damaged.

    One of the world’s most respected evolutionary biologists uses the phrase “gene pool” and “mean phenotype”. The idea is the gene pool is polluted, and even if random drift or some selection purges it out, there is risk that more novel defects will continuously get introduced to replace the bad that got cleaned out of the pool.

    Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear that most of the mutation load is associated with mutations with very small effects distributed at unpredictable locations over the entire genome, rendering the prospects for long-term management of the human gene pool by genetic counseling highly unlikely for all but perhaps a few hundred key loci underlying debilitating monogenic genetic disorders (such as those focused on in the present study).

    Thus, the preceding observations paint a rather stark picture. At least in highly industrialized societies, the impact of deleterious mutations is accumulating on a time scale that is approximately the same as that for scenarios associated with global warming—perhaps not of great concern over a span of one or two generations, but with very considerable consequences on time scales of tens of generations. Without a reduction in the germline transmission of deleterious mutations, the mean phenotypes of the residents of industrialized nations are likely to be rather different in just two or three centuries, with significant incapacitation at the morphological, physiological, and neurobiological levels.

    Michael Lynch

    and Nobel Prize winner who looked at the effect of radiation on the human genome:

    it would in the end be far easier and more sensible to manufacture a complete man de novo, out of appropriately chosen raw materials, than to try to fashion into human form those pitiful relics which remained…

    it is evident that the natural rate of mutation of man is so high, and his natural rate of reproduction so low, that not a great deal of margin is left for selection…

    it becomes perfectly evident that the present number of children per couple cannot be great enough to allow selection to keep pace with a mutation rate of 0.1..if, to make matters worse, u should be anything like as high as 0.5…, our present reproductive practices would be utterly out of line with human requirements.

    Hermann Muller quoted by John Sanford
    Appendix 1, Genetic Entropy

  7. stcordova: Lynch: Without a reduction in the germline transmission of deleterious mutations, the mean phenotypes of the residents of industrialized nations

    You realize, don’t you, that Lynch is speculating on what could happen if purifying selection is eliminated by medical technology.

    He is not saying anything about your bullshit musings about what happens to populations not having recourse to medicine.

  8. petrushka: Which, like the Star Wars garbage compactor, keep getting smaller and narrower.

    🙂
    Yanno, they did manage to swim around in the garbage long enough for someone else to rescue them.

    Clearly the ID strategy.

  9. hotshoe_: Yanno, they did manage to swim around in the garbage long enough for someone else to rescue them.

    Or long enough to think of some new ad hoc reason why evolution or geology or astrophysics doesn’t work.

  10. stcordova: The answer is the “gene pool” is damaged.

    One of the world’s most respected evolutionary biologists uses the phrase “gene pool” and “mean phenotype”.The idea is the gene pool is polluted, and even if random drift or some selection purges it out, there is risk that more novel defects will continuously get introduced to replace the bad that got cleaned out of the pool.

    and Nobel Prize winner who looked at the effect of radiation on the human genome:

    As fascinating as those two quotes are, they don’t really address what I’m getting at. Currently the mutation load on the “gene pool” is not selecting against the human race as a whole, or even some majority of it, for example (or is there some grand human mortality of which I’m unaware?)

    So again I ask, what is genome “damage” in relation to the species as a whole? What, if anything, are all humans really, Really, REALLY vulnerable to due to genome damage?

  11. As for Lynch’s disgenics concerns, I’d say that within a century we will be up to our eyeballs in GATTACA type genetic manipulation. We will have genetic rescues for people born with debilitating mutations, and we will have directed germ line manipulation to reduce the number of sick people born.

    In short we will treat genetics the same way we have treated food and energy production. Possibly with some unhappy results, but that doesn’t mean evolution didn’t happen. It just means that evolution will probably smarter than designers. And if humans extinguish themselves, bacteria are always waiting patiently.

  12. stcordova: The answer is the “gene pool” is damaged.

    This is surely wrong.

    It might be that a killer disease emerges tomorrow, and wipes out most of the population. The only survivors are from among those genetically prone to heart disease.

    Or, in other words, what you see as “damage” to the gene pool might be what saves it from complete collapse.

    You have to be careful about what you call “damage”. The gene pool is enriched by variety, even if some of that variety has what you see as deleterious effects.

  13. Neil Rickert: You have to be careful about what you call “damage”. The gene pool is enriched by variety, even if some of that variety has what you see as deleterious effects.

    Some deleterious alleles have benefits for populations. People who inherit multiple copies of certain genes suffer, but others that have reduced dosages benefit.

  14. So again I ask, what is genome “damage” in relation to the species as a whole? What, if anything, are all humans really, Really, REALLY vulnerable to due to genome damage?

    The average number of heritable diseases per human will continue to grow, even though not necessarily one disease will dominate.

    what is genome “damage” in relation to the species as a whole?

    The species is on average sicker. More allergies, more autism, more emotional and mental problems, more cancers, more vision problems, on average at earlier ages. We all die of something, and stuff breaks down, but it will break down on average more quickly.

    A researcher at an NIH event mentioned to me the cancers in her epidemiological surveys are showing up at younger and younger ages on average per generation.

    This isn’t politically correct, but well ….

    http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-05-29/news/8902050179_1_white-women-progress-women-iq

    Maybe only science fiction fans know what to make of Richard Herrnstein`s dire forebodings. He fears the quality of the nation`s gene pool is deteriorating because its brightest women of all races are having fewer children than less intelligent women.

    That, says the provocative Harvard psychologist in Atlantic and Newsweek articles, will decrease America`s average IQ by about one point per generation. Worse, it will also mean a decline of about 60 percent in the portion of the population with an IQ over 130 and a same-size increase in the group that scores lower than 70.

    This is at least superficially a testable prediction, and it may not be just because smart women decide to have fewer kids.

    I’m not sure this has relevance, but anyway:

    http://www.news.com.au/technology/science/a-grey-matter-of-size-brains-arent-what-they-used-to-be/story-fn5fsgyc-1226074059863

    Scientists have found that modern-day people are about 10 per cent smaller and shorter than their hunter-gatherer forebears.

    Most of the decline has happened in the past 10,000 years, and has been accompanied by a 10 per cent decline in brain size.

    FWIW:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2770698/

    Global and regional findings of volume-based intelligence correlates

    For assessments of relationships between global brain volume and intelligence, results from existing studies have shown predominantly positive correlations ranging from 0 to 0.6, with the majority of MRI studies reporting correlations around 0.3 or 0.4

    Back to your question:

    what is genome “damage” in relation to the species as a whole?

    On average the human race will be sicker and dumber, and thank God we have technology (like computers and artificial insulin) to help us out.

  15. Neil Rickert: This is surely wrong.

    It might be that a killer disease emerges tomorrow, and wipes out most of the population.The only survivors are from among those genetically prone to heart disease.

    Or, in other words, what you see as “damage” to the gene pool might be what saves it from complete collapse.

    You have to be careful about what you call “damage”.The gene pool is enriched by variety, even if some of that variety has what you see as deleterious effects.

    This is exactly my point that Sal seems to be missing. The human “gene pool” is an incredibly large, diverse, and flowing system.There are an awful lot of changes that occur within and across groups of humans on a daily basis, but I can’t think of any change that has happened to a majority of humans in the last…geez…a million or so years. So I really can’t fathom what “damage” to the human genome from a species perspective even means.

  16. stcordova: One average the human race will be sicker and dumber, and thank God we have technology (like computers and artificial insulin) to help us out.

    This is a political and medical issue, created by technology and probably addressable by technology. If you hadn’t quote mined Lynch, you would have revealed that he is forecasting problems if we continue rescuing sick people and do not apply technology to human genetics.

    Why do you bring it up in the middle of a discussion of genetic entropy? It is not at all the same issue.

    So basically, you have admitted that if YEC is not true, genetic entropy is bullshit. If the earth is not flat, the genetic entropy argument against evolution is bullshit.

  17. Robin: So I really can’t fathom what “damage” to the human genome from a species perspective even means.

    Sal is making the same argument that early eugenics advocates made. We are all going to be morons, because we don’t prevent defective people from breeding.

    Sal is making the eugenics argument from the standpoint of creationism. Kind of ironic.

    Lynch is saying that if we stop doing what we have always done in the past — apply technology to problems — medicine will create new problems.

    It already has. We are in a Red Queen race with bacteria.

  18. stcordova: The average number of heritable diseases per human will continue to grow, even though not necessarily one disease will dominate.

    How is this an effect of supposed “genome damage” and not just the result more access to more members (and thus more varied breeding) across the gene pool?

    The species is on average sicker.More allergies, more autism, more emotional and mental problems, more cancers, more vision problems, on average at earlier ages.We all die of something, and stuff breaks down, but it will break down on average more quickly.

    What evidence suggests that the species is getting sicker more often due to genetic damage and not as a result of their being a greater population of humans (and thus an equal percentage of humans getting sick relative to the population growth? Similarly, what evidence suggests that the species is getting sicker more often due to genetic damage and not as a result of damage to our environment or behavior (such as dietary habit changes)?

    A researcher at an NIH event mentioned to me the cancers in her epidemiological surveys are showing up at younger and younger ages on average per generation.

    See my question above. Does said researcher attribute the rise in cancer to supposed “genetic damage”? If so, what evidence did she point to and how did she eliminate environment and behavior?

    This isn’t politically correct, but well ….

    This is at least superficially a testable prediction, and it may not be just because smart women decide to have fewer kids.

    Irrelevant to my question.

    I’m not sure this has relevance, but anyway:

    Not so much…

    FWIW:

    Interesting, but not relevant either.

    Back to your question:

    On average the human race will be sicker and dumber, and thank God we have technology (like computers and artificial insulin) to help us out.

    Again…how do you know that we will be sicker and dumber due to supposed genome damage and not just poorer behavior or changes in the environment?

  19. I’d say that within a century we will be up to our eyeballs in GATTACA type genetic manipulation. We will have genetic rescues for people born with debilitating mutations, and we will have directed germ line manipulation to reduce the number of sick people born.

    Goes to show intelligent design can do in principle what natural evolution can’t. And we can also thank these developments in part to the creationist who built the Gene Gun. 🙂

    And as far as genetic engineering:

    I think it well may be that we’re living in a time when evolution is suddenly starting to become intelligently designed.

    Richard Dawkins
    http://www.salon.com/2005/04/30/dawkins/

  20. Sal, not one says genetic engineering is impossible.

    If humans die off, and some aliens discover our remains, they will discover the discontinuity between the naturally evolved species and the genetically engineered species.

    What you don’t see in existing populations such evidence.

  21. Again…how do you know that we will be sicker and dumber due to supposed genome damage and not just poorer behavior or changes in the environment?

    GWAS — genome wide association studies. The link I provided to the ENCODE 2015 conference was an example of linking kidney failure to genetic factors through GWAS.

    Additionally the reason I know why are the derivations I provide here which are a rehash of equations which agree with Hermann Muller, Larry Moran, and others:

    Fixation rate, what about breaking rate?

    But if you don’t believe the derivations, the GWAS data that the NIH expects to be flooding the scene might be able to falsify or confirm the hypothesis.

  22. Trouble is, in many respects, we have relaxed selection against certain detrimental alleles, by improving survivorship. I don’t think one can pin that on God, or make a general evolutionary case on it. In a way, it’s science’s fault. It meant well.

    I shouldn’t worry though. The human race is going to tear itself to pieces over energy, food and water long before there’s any danger of genetic meltdown! 😉

  23. Allan Miller: … we have relaxed selection against certain detrimental alleles, by improving survivorship …

    Yes, and we should not project this backwards to say anything like “the gene pool was purer back then” as if that were a good thing.

    Nor should we project it forwards as if it’s a good thing, either. It’s not sustainable – not even in the short run much less the next 10000 years. It’s just a momentary bubble of luck and ingenuity.

    The human race is going to tear itself to pieces over energy, food and water long before there’s any danger of genetic meltdown!

    I’m always a pessimist so I’m inclined to agree with you. But I’m not sad about it. I’m watching flocks of streaky sparrows just in the bushes just outside my window, chirping and feeding on bugs. I see a few flashes of red, which are finches. And there’s the resident pairs of jays and hummingbirds around nearby, too.

    If I were to choose between a world full of brilliant beautiful (but destructive) humankind with no birds, or a world full of plain little sparrows but no humans, I know which I’d choose.

  24. Allan:

    The human race is going to tear itself to pieces over energy, food and water long before there’s any danger of genetic meltdown!

    and

    hotshoe_:

    I’m always a pessimist so I’m inclined to agree with you.

    I agree with Allan too.

    I didn’t feel there was large scale disagreement with the OP that “ID falsifiable, not science, not positive, not directly testable” which I think is extensible to creationism.

    So I’d like to thank commenters for the skepticism and thought provoking dialogue.

  25. stcordova: GWAS — genome wide association studies.The link I provided to the ENCODE 2015 conference was an example of linking kidney failure to genetic factors through GWAS.

    Except that those genetic factors effect what…0.000127% of the population? That’s hardly “genome wide”.

    Additionally the reason I know why are the derivations I provide here which are a rehash of equations which agree with Hermann Muller, Larry Moran, and others:

    http://www.uncommondescent.com/genetics/fixation-rate-what-about-breaking-rate/

    But if you don’t believe the derivations, the GWAS data that the NIH expects to be flooding the scene might be able to falsify or confirm the hypothesis.

    I’m not holding my breath.

  26. hotshoe_: Yes, and we should not project this backwards to say anything like “the gene pool was purer back then” as if that were a good thing.

    Nor should we project it forwards as if it’s a good thing, either.It’s not sustainable – not even in the short run much less the next 10000 years.It’s just a momentary bubble of luck and ingenuity.

    I’m always a pessimist so I’m inclined to agree with you.But I’m not sad about it.I’m watching flocks of streaky sparrows just in the bushes just outside my window, chirping and feeding on bugs.I see a few flashes of red, which are finches.And there’s the resident pairs of jays and hummingbirds around nearby, too.

    If I were to choose between a world full of brilliant beautiful (but destructive) humankind with no birds, or a world full of plain little sparrows but no humans, I know which I’d choose.

    Amen!

  27. I don’t find myself overly troubled by the idea that the human race may not persist indefinitely, though it does bother me that my kids or future grandkids may suffer (I’m part of the problem of course – I had kids!). I quite like some of the little fellas.

    Some people seem to think it worth investing huge amounts of capital in getting a few of us off the planet in pods. Can’t see the point myself.

    Future intelligence may have a hard time sorting out what happened towards the end of the Holocene though, and just why all those species just seemed to jump between continents or come to an abrupt halt.

  28. Can’t get sentimental about birds. Just little dinosaurs to me. As a toddler, chickens attacked and tried to kill me. The romantic notion of cage free chickens doesn’t warm me. We had cage free chickens, and they spent half their time pecking the weaker individuals to death. Very slowly.

    Sal’s genetic entropy and YECness put him in the same intellectual bucket at 911 Truthers and flat earthers. People impervious to fact.

    It is, or course, possible to project trends. I once had a dream about that and thought seriously about turning it into a short story.

    In my dream I was eating dinner at a seaside restaurant (based on actual event). During the course of the meal, the tide started coming in. Byt he end of the meal, the ocean was lapping against the seawall.

    During my dream I awoke (Calvin and Hobbes?) the next morning to find the house surrounded by ocean, the tide still rising.

    The problem with projecting trends without understanding the underlying dynamics. Map, territory.

    I will ask Sal again, why are mammals not extinct? And why not cockroaches?

  29. Robin,

    I don’t think you’re representing the meaning of GWAS.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-wide_association_study

    It means the entire genome of an individual, not all individuals on the planet.

    However, what would be valuable is if we can get a GWAS of an entire family, then we can see the actual number of new Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) that emerge with each generation. The actual number is not well know accurately as can be gleaned from a GWAS of a family.

    The other project is the 1000 genomes project.

    One ENCODE researcher mentioned the community is spooling up to handle 20 million medical records of inherited diseases. The data available is going to be gigantic.

    I’m not holding my breath.

    I know of no one of any reputation that thinks the human genome pool is getting better naturally. I’ve already cited studies on the Y-Chromosome, of respected evolutionary biologists.

    I’ll cite one more that involves the notion of Muller’s Ratchet. If a bacterial population loses a trait, it is gone forever for that population.

    2014:
    http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v12/n12/full/nrmicro3331.html

    2013:
    http://mbio.asm.org/content/3/2/e00036-12.full

    And look at one of the Authors, Lenski himself:

    Reductive genomic evolution, driven by genetic drift, is common in endosymbiotic bacteria. Genome reduction is less common in free-living organisms, but it has occurred in the numerically dominant open-ocean bacterioplankton Prochlorococcus and “Candidatus Pelagibacter,” and in these cases the reduction appears to be driven by natural selection rather than drift.

    So much for any presumption that selection must be CUMULATIVE, it is often reductive. Lenski goes on and on and on about new features evolving in his lab, but at least he co-authored a paper where he shows existing features just permanently disappear, and the genome is reduced via selection. Weasel is about cumulative selection, we could just as easily write a program that shows reductive selection, but why do we need to, we see it in nature.

    Lenski assumes the free-living (non-endosymbiotic) organisms don’t suffer from reductive evolution, but Koonin argues otherwise:
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/pdf

    Finally, why should this be the case? Muller’s ratchet:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muller%27s_ratchet

    In evolutionary genetics, Muller’s ratchet (named after Hermann Joseph Muller, by analogy with a ratchet effect) is a process by which the genomes of an asexual population accumulate deleterious mutations in an irreversible manner.
    …
    Although Muller discussed the advantages of sexual reproduction in his 1932 talk, it does not contain the word “ratchet”. Muller first introduced the term “ratchet” in his 1964 paper,[3] and the phrase “Muller’s ratchet” was coined by Joe Felsenstein in his 1974 paper, “The Evolutionary Advantage of Recombination”.[4]

  30. So Bacteria have been around for several billion years, replicating many times per day. How many generations does that make?

    And your best guess as to why they haven’t died out due to genetic entropy?

    Can you name any species that died out as a result of genetic entropy?

  31. Sal, I’m going to try to make my point perfectly clear: in a species that is surviving (and heck…particularly in a species that is thriving), there’s no valid basis for claiming that said specie’s genome is “damaged”. Said genome is doing just fine – perfectly in fact – based on the ONLY criteria one can validly assess any genome against. Even if one can point to specific conditions that said genome is now more vulnerable to compared with some previous version of said genome, it would be begging the question to call that change in the genome “damage”. From my perspective, the ONLY valid criteria that anyone can reasonably use to assess whether some genome is “damaged” is if the species carrying that genome all suddenly expired due to some genetic change when there was no environmental change.

  32. petrushka:
    So Bacteria havebeen around for several billion years, replicating many times per day. How many generations does that make?

    And your best guess as to why they haven’t died out due to genetic entropy?

    Can you name any species that died out as a result of genetic entropy?

    The real question is how can anyone in this age of easily accessible online scientific knowledge still think the planet and all its life are less than 10,000 years old.

  33. Adapa: The real question is how can anyone in this age of easily accessible online scientific knowledge still think the planet and all its life are less than 10,000 years old.

    Same way and otherwise competent mathematician can believe he has proved life violates thermodynamics. Having a high IQ does not insulate a person from dunderheadedness.

  34. Robin: if the species carrying that genome all suddenly expired due to some genetic change when there was no environmental change.

    I don’t think anyone (except a few neutral theorists) realized 50 years ago, that mutations can continue indefinitely without killing a species.

    Continue to the point where original protein codes have all but been erased and replaced.

    Territory trumps map.

  35. stcordova:
    Robin,

    I don’t think you’re representing the meaning of GWAS.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-wide_association_study

    It means the entire genome of an individual, not all individuals on the planet.

    Actually, it’s the comparison of the entire genome of many individuals. They are trying to pin down loci of specific genetic disorders for treatment purposes. Again though, this is for treatment purposes for the small percentage of people with that disorder. So again, this does not apply to my point.

    However, what would be valuable is if we can get a GWAS of an entire family, then we can see the actual number of new Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) that emerge with each generation.The actual number is not well know accurately as can be gleaned from a GWAS of a family.

    No question this would be both valuable and interesting, but irrelevant to my point.

    The other project is the 1000 genomes project.

    One ENCODE researcher mentioned the community is spooling up to handle 20 million medical records of inherited diseases.The data available is going to be gigantic.

    Interesting, but irrelevant to my point.

    I know of no one of any reputation that thinks the human genome pool is getting better naturally. I’ve already cited studies on the Y-Chromosome, of respected evolutionary biologists.

    This directly applies to my point though. So I ask, “better” compared to what? There are 7 billion humans living…THRIVING…on this planet. Is there some indication that all of us are going to expired from some genetic basis tomorrow? No? How much “better” then can we be as a species.

    I’ll cite one more that involves the notion of Muller’s Ratchet.If a bacterial population loses a trait, it is gone forever for that population.

    2014:
    http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v12/n12/full/nrmicro3331.html

    2013:
    http://mbio.asm.org/content/3/2/e00036-12.full

    And look at one of the Authors, Lenski himself:

    So much for any presumption that selection must be CUMULATIVE, it is often reductive.Lenski goes on and on and on about new features evolving in his lab, but at least he co-authored a paper where he shows existing features just permanently disappear, and the genome is reduced via selection.Weasel is about cumulative selection, we could just as easily write a program that shows reductive selection, but why do we need to, we see it in nature.

    Lenski assumes the free-living (non-endosymbiotic) organisms don’t suffer from reductive evolution, but Koonin argues otherwise:
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.201300037/pdf

    Finally, why should this be the case?Muller’s ratchet:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muller%27s_ratchet

    *sigh*…Did the population with the “reduced genome” (whatever that means) suddenly ALL die off? No? Then on what basis is it considered “damage”.

    To put it another way, on what basis are you (or anyone) claiming that a given species must exist in some arbitrarily defined “utopian” stasis and how would you measure that stasis (and, for that matter, the blink-of-an-eye moment it existed) anyway?

    Genomes change on an hourly basis by some measures. So do most environments. Most species have literally BILLIONS of genome variations. Who in their right mind would ever think there could be a situation when some change could quickly permeate throughout an entire species AND be irreversibly detrimental to that species? It makes absolutely no sense Sal.

  36. Robin: there could be a situation when some change could quickly permeate throughout an entire species AND be irreversibly detrimental to that species? It makes absolutely no sense Sal.

    Imagine the last straw, the killer mutation that appears in every individual in the same generation. Didn’t someone write a book about that, the last human generation? And wasn’t it a popular movie?

  37. petrushka: Imagine the last straw, the killer mutation that appears in every individual in the same generation. Didn’t someone write a book about that, the last human generation? And wasn’t it a popular movie?

    Don’t know. Not ringing any bells with me. If so, I’d watch it though.

  38. “Children of Men” envisages a world one generation from now that has fallen into chaos on the heels of an infertility defect in the population. The world’s youngest citizen has just died at 18, and humankind is facing the likelihood of its own extinction.

    from IMDB

    Any guesses as the the philosophical/theistic perspective of the author???

    Anyone? Bueller?

  39. Sal, I’m going to try to make my point perfectly clear: in a species that is surviving (and heck…particularly in a species that is thriving), there’s no valid basis for claiming that said specie’s genome is “damaged”. Said genome is doing just fine – perfectly in fact – based on the ONLY criteria one can validly assess any genome against. Even if one can point to specific conditions that said genome is now more vulnerable to compared with some previous version of said genome, it would be begging the question to call that change in the genome “damage”. From my perspective, the ONLY valid criteria that anyone can reasonably use to assess whether some genome is “damaged” is if the species carrying that genome all suddenly expired due to some genetic change when there was no environmental change.

    Thank you for clarifying. It appears we disagree on what constitutes damage.

    The reason this issue is important to me is that Darwin and Dawkins argue that natural selection accumulated complex features in living things so that they appear to be designed.

    If theory and evidence shows the net tendency is for natural selection to destroy rather than accumulate complex features, then why should natural selection be argued to be a BlindWatchmaker (Dawkins term). A BlindWatch Destroyer is a more accurate description of what theory predicts (like Muller’s ratchet, Black Queen Hypothesis, Behe’s 1st Rule of Adaptation, etc.), and what is actually observed in the lab and field.

    That’s why I don’t believe Natural Selection accounts for complexity in the biosphere. If I weren’t a creationist, I’d probably be scraping for some sort of self-organization, some strange quantum fluctuation, teleological evolution, multi-verses etc.

    It’s because of the Blind Watch Destroyer, I find “God did it” a better explanation for the origin of complex life. I simply don’t believe natural selection can in principle be a Blind Watch Maker based on first principles, and the lab and field evidence bear this out.

    Thus complex life is a miracle, and miracles require a Miracle Maker. That’s my personal belief, it is not science. But I do think genetic entropy is science. It has theory backing up plus experimental and direct and indirect observational facts.

  40. stcordova: If theory and evidence shows the net tendency is for natural selection to destroy rather than accumulate complex features, then why should natural selection be argued to be a BlindWatchmaker (Dawkins term). A BlindWatch Destroyer is a more accurate description of what theory predicts (like Muller’s ratchet, Black Queen Hypothesis, Behe’s 1st Rule of Adaptation, etc.), and what is actually observed in the lab and field.

    Perhaps you could write a book called the Blind Creationist.

  41. Sal, what do you think of CharlieM’s theory that evolution was designed to produce people?

    That seems to have been popular with folks like Chardin, Michael Denton, and even with Frankie.

    Even AIG promotes a fast track version of evolution in which kinds diverge into many species of cute fuzzy animals.

  42. stcordova: Thank you for clarifying.It appears we disagree on what constitutes damage.

    Well, we certainly disagree on what constitutes damage from a species perspective. I won’t argue that individual genomes can be damaged. Heck, mine has been pulverized from all the x-rays I’ve had, to say nothing of the abuse it suffered due to my being a child of the 70s (we played in the sun too much and some of us thought doing so while wearing baby oil was a good idea). So yeah…genomes can get “damaged” from that perspective, but an entire specie’s genome? I just don’t see how that could be quantified.

    The reason this issue is important to me is that Darwin and Dawkins argue that natural selection accumulated complex features in living things so that they appear to be designed.

    If theory and evidence shows the net tendency is for natural selection to destroy rather than accumulate complex features, then why should natural selection be argued to be a BlindWatchmaker (Dawkins term).ABlindWatchDestroyer is a more accurate description of what theory predicts (like Muller’s ratchet, Black Queen Hypothesis, Behe’s 1st Rule of Adaptation, etc.), and what is actually observed in the lab and field.

    I think the issue has to do with your concept of “loss” and “damage”. I’m not aware that anyone in evolutionary research thinks that cumulative effects on the genome of a species don’t include the loss of functionality (not even Dawkins thinks this). Darwin noted the smaller wings of Galapagoes cormorants making them incapable of flight, but superior swimmers. So functionality changes and even goes away.

    But on what basis would that be “damage”. Whales clearly lost their legs. Does that constitute a “damaged” genome? Why or why not?

    That’s why I don’t believe Natural Selection accounts for complexity in the biosphere.If I weren’t a creationist, I’d probably be scraping for some sort of self-organization, some strange quantum fluctuation, teleological evolution, multi-verses etc.

    It’s because of the Blind Watch Destroyer, I find “God did it” a better explanation for the origin of complex life. I simply don’t believe natural selection can in principle be a Blind Watch Maker based on first principles, and the lab and field evidence bear this out.

    And yet again I have to ask, where’s the evidence that Natural Selection “destroys” entire species?

    Thus complex life is a miracle, and miracles require a Miracle Maker.That’s my personal belief, it is not science.But I do think genetic entropy is science.It has theory backing up plus experimental and direct and indirect observational facts.

    I just don’t see it. It just strikes me as begging the question.

  43. stcordova:If theory and evidence shows the net tendency is for natural selection to destroy rather than accumulate complex features

    If this were the case, you might have some basis for your belief. Gould wrote a whole book (Full House) explaining this. His analogy was a drunk on a sidewalk, where walking toward the building represented a move toward less complexity, and walking away from the building represented more complexity. He observed that the building represents a limit – life can only get so simple and no simpler. However, in the other direction there is no limit – life can become ever more complex.

    Now consider the drunk. He has no preferred direction, and is as likely to walk toward the building as away from it. But when he hits the building he must stop, whereas in the other direction he can keep going. If you were to trace his path over an extended period of time, you would find that path ventures further and further from the building, purely at random, simply because it CAN.

    Gould points out that when all life on earth is considered, the pattern of complexity is a close match for the drunk’s path. Nearly all life is piled up against the building (bacteria, archaea, protists), and as you move away from the building (toward increasing complexity) the number of species drops off drastically.

    The point is the natural tendency isn’t for natural selection to become EITHER more or less complex. About the same number of conserved mutations add as reduce complexity. Your statement about both the theory and the evidence is wrong.

  44. The net direction of a drunkard’s walk is away from the origin.

    The accumulated points of all steps is densest near the origin.

    But in order to argue against evolution, one must deny common descent.

  45. petrushka:
    The net direction of a drunkard’s walk is away from the origin.

    The accumulated points of all steps is densest near the origin.

    But in order to argue against evolution, one must deny common descent.

    But now, put up a wall on one side of the origin.

  47. Sal, what do you think of CharlieM’s theory that evolution was designed to produce people?

    Any such theories of God-did-it-by-evolution would appear to be falsified by evidence genetic entropy.

    God-did-it-by-special-creation seems more believable to me personally, but that’s not science, that’s a belief in miracles.

    Btw, the hierarchical patterns in taxonomy may superficially suggest Universal Common Ancestry, but the problem is that despite the similarities, we have all these Taxonomically Restricted Features (TRFs) that define the hierarchies.

    Example:

    We can taxonomically divide life into 2 big domains: Eukaryotes and Prokaryotes. The TRFs are the splicesomal introns, the Kozak sequences, the nuclear complex, etc. to define Eukaryotes.

    [The Prokaryotes can be divided into Bacteria and Archaea.]

    The compartmentalization of forms can simply be done by looking for TRFs and making Venn diagrams, and the Venn diagrams produce the hierarchical patterns as seen by creationists like Linnaeus.

    Eukaryotes can be divided into all the major Eukaryotic forms. Not really familiar with all the forms, but we can, as far as I know define the major forms by TRFs. Plants and Animals for example have different cell types.

    The TRFs look like discrete jumps to me, not as big as the discrete jump from non-life to life, but they are pretty substantial. Discrete jumps then appear to me not to be explainable by smooth transitional gradients (like that of the change in average color of peppered moths).

    So the TRFs are the reason, despite similarities, I don’t find phylogenetic reconstructions believable, even though superficially when looking at individual gene phylogenies (like cytochrome C, 16S Ribosomal RNA, etc. etc.) it looks superficially believable much like DNA testing establishing a lineage in humans.

    TRFs combined with the evidence of genetic entropy are some of the reasons I don’t find evolutionary theory believable since it seems to fly in the face of first principles. I suppose, formally people could say, “We don’t know for sure what happened.” Or they could say, “We don’t know for sure what happened, but we believe…”.

    I don’t know for sure what happened, but I believe God did it, and it is the God of the Bible partly because of the mtDNA evidence assigning humans, dogs, cattle to have genetic bottle neck at 10,000 years or less and thus nominally consistent with what would be required of to make Christ’s genealogy in Luke Chapter 3 literal.

  48. stcordova: evidence assigning humans, dogs, cattle to have genetic bottle neck at 10,000 years or less

    Wouldn’t the bottleneck have to be closer to 2500 years, and to a single Y chromosome?

  49. stcordova,

    I simply don’t believe natural selection can in principle be a Blind Watch Maker based on first principles, and the lab and field evidence bear this out.

    One has to be a bit circumspect about lab evidence. Essentially, accelerated mutagenesis forces species into an artificial Muller’s Ratchet situation. If mutations come too thick and fast, there is no opportunity for any population-genetic sifting to take place. It’s like drowning things and concluding that water is inimical to life.

    I’m not sure what field evidence supports genetic entropy, but I’m doubtful. (I don’t count observed extinctions, which are highly unlikely to be due to genetic load, hard to prove once they’re gone).

    But since you have recently developed an interest in population genetics, you might consider Kimura’s famous ‘equation 10’ in this paper . (I offer this with a frank confession that the derivation is beyond me, a mathematical duffer).

    Place realistic s values, positive and negative, into this, and you will see the overwhelming bias against detrimental fixation and in favour of beneficial. Translate that into a ratio, and you should get an idea of the relative ease with which a small number of beneficial alleles can counteract a huge number of detrimental ones of equivalent effect. You can create circumstances where genetic entropy occurs, but it is not reasonable to extrapolate this to the entire history of modern lineages – to effectively deny that there could be a history because of it.

  50. Wouldn’t the bottleneck have to be closer to 2500 years, and to a single Y chromosome?

    Noah would be about, eh 4000-5000 years ago.

    Based on computer simulation (not the Y-chromosome)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor

    Assuming that no genetically isolated human populations remain, the human MRCA may have lived 2,000 to 4,000 years ago.[1]

    But with the Y-Chromosome, some specualtions. The Cohen Modal Haplotype may or may not be Y-Chrosomal Abraham. I mentioned the Cohen Modal haplotype indirectly here at TSZ since Joe Felsenstein’s software was advertised as central to the research and I was wondering why the Jews in Israel were mentioning him. Turns out, Joe is not directly involved in the project, that maybe his name was just used for whatever reason:

    Dr. Felsenstein mentioned in Wikipedia regarding Y-chromosomal Aaron

    But this lead to:

    http://abraham-modal-haplotype.wikia.com/wiki/Abraham_modal_haplotype

    Discovered by Dr. Anatole Klyosov in 2009, The Abraham modal haplotype is a set of DNA marker on the Y-chromsome that has been hypothesized to mark the person when the split between the Jewish and the Arabic lineages. A modal haplotype is used in Genetic Genealogy to trace back ancestry of a group of people of common descent supported by paper trail or historical evidence.

    MRCA (most common recent ancestor) is supposed to have the Modal haplotype while all his descendents either have it or cluster around it. After figuring the Modal Haplotype an estimation of the time to the most recent common ancestor TMRCA of MRCA of Jews and Arabs of haplogroup J1 (subclade J1e) to 4,125±525, a time close to that of the legendary Biblical split into the Jewish and the Arabic lineages.[1]

    Now Abraham is only about 500 years based on the genealogies in genesis.

    The estimate of the time of Noah by YECs is about 4285.
    http://creation.com/the-date-of-noahs-flood

    So adding up Abraham of 4125 + 500 years yields 4625 years, off by 400 but still within the supposed precision since Klyosov allows for his figure of plus or minus 500 years. Not bad.

    But note, the Bible suggest mtDNA eve at 6000 years plus the other mammalian Eve to also have recent bottle necks. Confirmed for humans, cattle, dogs. Human Eve at 6,500 years as attested by review article by Lowe and Scherer.

    Bible suggest ancestor of males was about 2000 years after Eve since Noahs sons (Y-chromsomes) were married to descendents of Eve, not Noah’s wife. A little inference from Abraham Modal Haplotype would be consistent with Noah around 4000 years ago. So one perspective of DNA evidence is at least consistent with the Genesis account.

    Maybe not convincing to the skeptics here, but if I were a betting man…hey I am a betting man. 🙂

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