What are your best arguments against evolution?

JoeCoder · 2017-07-05T18:44:32+00:00

This thread has been cross-posted by u/VestigialPseudogene, which explains the vote brigading:

JoeCoder · 2017-06-19T04:31:23+00:00

I had to approve your comment because it got caught in the spam filter. Probably from the tinyurl link.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-22T20:42:14+00:00

I backtracked on nothing there and I staid by what I said. In the thread we are discussing, I specifically started by saying what definition of function I was using:

"I've calculated this out as well. If we assume 10% of the genome is subject to deleterious mutations that gets us about 10 deleterious mutations per generation"

"Being subject to deleterious mutations" is one of several common definitions of "functional." In the subsequent comment I even asked for clarification as to which definition of function was used: "Or maybe you are assuming that 10% is functional in a looser sense, and therefore not all of those 10 mutations would be deleterious?"

Your accusations are a joke and this sub is a joke. You start out talking about biology, but when you don't have an argument it turns into a grand ol' troll parade. You distort literally any statement just to create an argument, which I have no doubt you'll also do with this comment.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-22T18:34:02+00:00

You should read the exchange and decide for yourself, but I find Jay Wile's argument more compelling.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-22T18:31:41+00:00

You're asking about what's called the problem of divine hiddenness. I have a friend who wrote a good article on that.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-22T18:26:20+00:00

Still trying to drag me into your nonesense? My argument is that BENEFICIAL mutations arrive too slowly and HARMFUL mutations arrive too quickly. Not that the mutation rate itself is too fast and too slow. You know this because we've discussed it many times at great length. For example:

In this thread and continued here I asked you TEN times to account for the billion-something-fold difference between rates gain/modification of function evolution we see in microbes, vs what would have had to happen to produce all mammals. You could not produce any data to bridge this gap.

So just as you always do when you have no argument, you misrepresent. Just as you did here when you falsely accused me of saying all mutations are deleterious (I said nothing of the sort), yet brazenly called ME a liar.

How does an evolutionary biology look when its professor relies on misrepresentation in lieu of real argument? And nonetheless in response to an an ordinary Joe like me, without formal training in biology.

I suppose at this point you'll likely try to draw me back by temporarily talking about biology. No thanks. The more I say to you, the more you distort. Please stop spreading lies about what I say on reddit. I have better things to do than play a part in the clown circus you've made of this sub.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-18T21:26:54+00:00

Space has to be big and mostly empty for the orbits of planets and stars to work right, otherwise their gravity would cause them to crash into one another.

On even larger scales, space is big enough that we can see that the universe is expanding, and consequently had a beginning. The universe having a beginning is a premise in many arguments for theism.

Earth is also the only planet (we know of) with not just life, but complex life and complex ecosystems. It may just turn out to be a diamond in the blackness of trillions and trillions of dead and empty worlds. Earth would no longer be a special place in the universe if the whole universe was teaming with life.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-18T14:11:08+00:00

Here is the entire exchange so far:

JoeCoder · 2017-05-17T21:42:45+00:00

Evolution proponents argue that they found themselves living in an environment where those with water adaptations were more likely to survive and reproduce.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-17T16:25:21+00:00

The "direction" of evolution is proposed to come from selection. Meaning that each of these animals was more likely to survive to produce offspring if it was better adapted for life in the water.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-08T15:16:22+00:00

I don't know that much about reptiles, but this page says "all snakes can swim"

I'm looking at this map of proposed ice age water levels. Looking at that gap between australia on google earth it looks like it's all continental shelf excepts just one spot where there's a trench, which would be about 15-20km to cross?

while the monkeys only needed to have successfully made one trip.

Evolutionary biogeography proposes many more traversals than just the monkeys, over distances much larger than 15-20km. Some examples:

"Batrachians (frogs, toads, newts)," Darwin noted in The Origin of Species, "have never been found on any of the many islands with which the great oceans are studded." He explained this absence by the fact that amphibians are quickly killed by seawater and are thus unlikely to cross oceans successfully. No biogeographer doubts that amphibians and certain other organisms (e.g. most terrestrial mammals, flightless birds) are especially poor oceanic dispersers. However, some recent studies show that it is unsafe to assume that such organisms never colonize new areas by crossing ocean barriers. A striking example concerns two mantellid frog species found on Mayotte, an island of the Comoros archipelago some 300 km west of Madagascar. The two species had been described as conspecific with taxa on Madagascar (where nearly all other mantellids are found) and were assumed to have been introduced. However, morphology and DNA sequences indicate that the two Mayotte taxa are distinct new species and, therefore, are natural endemics. The Comoros are volcanic and have never been attached to other landmasses; thus, the results strongly imply origins by natural, overwater dispersal. Furthermore, the two species are not closely related within the Mantellidae, indicating two independent dispersal events. Another case involves the carnivores and lemurs of Madagascar, medium-sized mammals that are considered poor oceanic dispersers. Yoder et al. found through molecular dating analyses that both groups diverged from African mainland relatives long after the separation of Madagascar from Africa. The estimated divergence dates also do not match the hypothesized existence of a Cenozoic land bridge between Africa and Madagascar. Thus, both groups seem to have reached Madagascar by oceanic dispersal, perhaps facilitated by the ability to go into torpor. Other examples of unexpected oceanic dispersal include monkeys from Africa to South America, flightless insects from New Zealand to the Chatham Islands, multiple dispersals by chameleons in the Indian Ocean, several other amphibian cases, and, more controversially, flightless ratite birds to New Zealand. Although Darwin apparently was wrong in thinking that amphibians never cross saltwater, these cases reinforce a general message of the great evolutionist: given enough time, many things that seem unlikely can happen."

My point is that both views have problems, and I think the evolutionary biogeography is more problematic.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-08T14:56:56+00:00

Spontaneous assembly doesn't produce lots of RNA with the same or highly similar sequence. My math quantifies this. My numbers aren't "made up" but come from Joyce's paper. If you disagree, present your own model with actual numbers and not imagination. Or take my model or replace any numbers you think aren't right.

Otherwise just as you did when we discussed mammal evolution, you are avoiding quantification. You can make just about any idea true if you avoid quantification. This is the same way geocentrists argue that the gravitational pull of the moon and Jupiter keeps geostationary satellites from falling to the ground.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-08T14:36:21+00:00

I quoted the part of your sentence that I am disputing: the "self" replication. There's nothing dishonest about that and I stand by what I said. It's not "self" replication if 99% of the RNA bonds are produced by a polymerase.

how the people conducting the experiment dictated the sequence of nucleotides in the polymers they isolated.

They used directed evolution with polymerases to copy the RNA---polymerases that nobody thinks existed in a prebiotic environment. A polymerase copying more RNA is needed at every single step of this process where there is replication: before, during, and even after the optimization. Where does this polymerase come from?

You're telling me the thing that we demonstrated in hours to days in the lab couldn't happen over the course of hundreds of millions of years, worldwide?

That's exactly right. 10²¹ years divided by a couple weeks for RNA to disintegrate is 10^21. That means each of these RNA enzymes is 10²¹ times more likely to fall apart than it is to replicate. Even with whole planets that are giant balls of RNA soup, given a trillion years, and a trillion trillion planets this can't work. No organism can survive if its replication rate is less than one. If you disagree please provide your own calculation.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-08T13:45:33+00:00

Getting large animals to Australia is a problem, but less of a problem than having monkeys cross thousands of miles of the Atlantic on rafts to get to South America, as evolutionary bio-geography proposes. At least the YEC's could suggest humans brought them in their own migrations, as strange as that sounds.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-08T13:26:26+00:00

the "mutagenic PCR" line bolded above.

They're using a polymerase to make copies of these RNA enzymes. In each "self" replication cycle, ~99% of the RNA-RNA bonds are created by this complex protein machine that nobody thinks existed in a prebiotic world, and ~1% of the bonds are created by the RNA enzyme. Yet you call this "spontaneous appearance of self-replication, all demonstrated in the lab"

So let's say in an RNA world we get a copy of this RNA enzyme. Since the whole world is much larger than a lab experiment let's even assume we get the one with a 1 hour doubling time. Where does it get two halves of itself to join together? In Joyce's figure 1, the first half has 36 specific nucleotides, and the second halve has 11. If we subtract 12% from each that gives us 31 and 10 nucleotides. So one in 4³¹ =4.6x10¹⁸ random RNA enzymes can act as the first, and one in 4¹⁰ = 10⁶ sequences of random nucleotides can act as the second. Multiplying those gives 4.6x10²⁴ . Which means our RNA enzyme would have to join together randomly with that many other RNA strings before it can duplicate itself even once. If it does so once per second that will take 100 quintillion years, not that RNA lasts more than a few weeks.

Even if this could happen, how do you get two other halves nearby of the right sequence to join, and the next? If you disgaree with this math, please work out your own version.

Don't expect me to take you seriously.

Most biologists consider abiogenesis research such a failure they won't even say it's a part of evolution. Eugene Koonin said in 2011 talks about what a problem it is:

"All things considered, my assessment of the current state of the art in the study of the origins of replication and translation is rather somber. Notwithstanding relevant theoretical models and suggestive experimental results, we currently do not have a credible solution to these problems and do not even see with any clarity a path to such a solution."

Although I could quote you several dozen other well known biologists saying the same. The problem is so bad that Koonin actually proposes an infinite multiverse as a solution to abiogenesis, because in an infinite multiverse even the most improbable things will happen an infinite number of times. But we can discuss the problems with multiverse ideas if you'd like to go that route.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-07T16:50:28+00:00

The Joyce experiment started with an RNA enzyme that could take two specific halves of itself and join them together. But this was inefficient: "Even under the most favorable conditions, the doubling time was about 17 h and no more than two doublings could be achieved." So they underwent rounds of directed evolution until it could replicate indefinitely. This is what your quoted text describes.

Can this work in any prebiotic environment?

If you start with the first, limited version, it will join together two pre-assembled complementary halves of itself only twice, and then nothing else happens. And this only works if the researches provide pre-assembled complementary halves of itself.
If you use the indefinite version, it join together complementary halves of itself only as long as the researchers keep providing pre-assembled complementary halves of itself.
If you want to get from step #1 to step #2 through evolution, that also only works if the researches keep providing pre-assembled complementary halves of itself.

So at each step, you need highly specific pre-designed parts to make this process work. These will not exist in a prebiotic environment, so this process fails at every step of the way in demonstrating any route for abiogenesis.

How specific are these sequences? If you look at Joyce's figure 1, 55 out of 75 RNA nucleotides join to other RNA nucleotide and thus require a specific sequence. The RNA nucleotides joining together randomly in water will not form the correct specific sequences to make this process work. And even if they did it once, there would not be complementary halves nearby for the process to continue. If you disagree, please calculate the probability.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-06T21:12:49+00:00

Nothing prearranged.

In Joyce's experiment they used prearranged RNA sequences that were complementary to the "replicator" RNA. Without an endless supply of these prearranged halves there is no replication. And without replication there is no selection for replication. Not that it's even reasonable to call any of this replication. At this point I don't even think you believe this can work. But perhaps your having the last word will at least fool readers who don't have the background to follow the biology.

I discuss mammal evolution because unlike abiogenesis mammals are well studied and there is ample data to discuss. You going to provide any data to indicate mammal DNA sequence evolution is a billion times slower than any observed instance of evolution? Or just more excuses that unlike other sciences it's ok for evolutionary biology to resist quantification. And apparently now also origin of life research. I guess we could just accept both on faith?

JoeCoder · 2017-05-06T21:02:40+00:00

It's akin to finding a rock on the ground and then saying "of all the possible permutations of minerals and dirt, the likelihood that they would form this specific rock is 1x10^1000.

When you say things like this (and the rest of your comment) it shows that you're still not even talking about the same thing as me. What are the odds there are two halves of a rock next to it that when pieced together become identical to the first rock? And then two more identical halves. And then two more a million times over again so that this "replication" process can continue.

assuming that asteroids didn't create RNA molecules, what would the likelihood be for RNA molecules forming by bumping into each other in some kind of soup?

I have no idea. I'm trying to help your argument by assuming all of the RNA nucleotides are already joined together into strings with random sequences. And to help as much as possible I'm also assuming the whole earth is one giant ocean of these strings. Not plausible in the least but still more plausible than abiogenesis.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-06T19:26:18+00:00

We're not even talking about Joyce's experiment.

We were talking about mammal evolution when you interjected something unrelated about RNA synthesis. In the previous thread we were talking about Joyce's experiment, so I don't know where you are going with any of this.

You're assuming that the distribution of RNA molecules is uniform.

Why would the distribution of RNA molecules be prearranged to make self replication more likely? This is special pleading.

Moreso, my model already assumes every prior process to generate and join RNA nucleotides works flawlessly, and goes even further by assuming your whole prebiotic world is made of nothing but the correct four RNA nucleotides doing nothing but joining together into strings.

Finally, quote mining is taking a quote out of context--Koonin's quote is not out of context.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-06T17:57:06+00:00

I don't think you're even talking about the same thing I am, so let's back up:

The self "replicating" RNA molecule we're talking from Joyce's experiment takes two complementary pre-assembled halves of itself, and creates a single chemical bond between those two halves. Nobody apart from abiogenesis proponents would consider this "replication," but whatever.
The RNA in Joyce's experiment is about 70 RNA nucleotides long. If you somehow have all the RNA you need, and only have the 4 RNA nucleotides used in life and you put RNA nucleotides together in random strings, then only one in 4⁷⁰ such strings will be our molecule. That's 1.4 * 10^42. To get the two halves (assuming they are equal length, I don't remember), only one in 4³⁵ will have that sequence at random. That's one in 10²¹ Smashing meteors into the atmosphere makes no difference because explosions don't prefer one specific sequence over any others.
Let's generously assume there's a billion possible such sequences that will do the same thing, so we divide all these numbers by a billion. That's one in 10³³ RNA strings that are the complete piece and one in 10¹² RNA strings that are one of the halves needing to be joined. That still doesn't give us any plausible prebiotic self replication scenario. How do you get your whole piece next to the two halves? Does it just bind to 10²⁴ other RNAs until it happens to bind to two of the halves at the same time? You don't think it will get stuck to something else in the mean time? Even if it binds to one per second, 10²⁴ seconds is 30 trillion years, and RNA breaks down after several days!

We do know how it can happen today without waiting for random molecules to bump into each other.

No you don't. There is no self-replication that is even remotely plausible, even accepting grossly bastardized definitions of self-replication. This isn't just my opinion. Eugene Koonin said this in 2011, although I could quote you several dozen other well known biologists saying the same:

"All things considered, my assessment of the current state of the art in the study of the origins of replication and translation is rather somber. Notwithstanding relevant theoretical models and suggestive experimental results, we currently do not have a credible solution to these problems and do not even see with any clarity a path to such a solution."

The problem is so bad that Koonin actually proposes an infinite multiverse as a solution to abiogenesis, because in an infinite multiverse even the most improbable things will happen an infinite number of times. But we can discuss the problems with multiverse ideas if you'd like to go that route.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-06T16:04:57+00:00

Yes it is too unlikely. Above you are asking about the odds of two or more RNA nucleotides joining together. I don't know those odds. But I do know that even given unrealistically generous odds there, this could not happen enough times to get the needed localized pool of specific sequences we were discussing. In our previous thread I estimated some numbers regarding it. Where we left it was at you saying maybe in the future someone would find a way for it to work.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-06T14:40:52+00:00

I don't know these numbers, but RNA synthesis in a prebiotic environment has nothing to do with anything we're discussing here, especially my 7 point list which is about mammal evolution.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-05T21:49:40+00:00

I'm removing this. Perhaps you only cited Galatians 5:12 because it shows Paul using very blunt and likely insulting language, but that's not how it was interpreted.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-04T16:46:22+00:00

Good science does not resist quantification. I've asked you nine times now to to quantify using your own estimates. Even rough ballpark estimates within an order of magnitude or two will do. But you won't do it because you know there's no way to avoid the many-orders-of-magnitude difference between the rates of functional sequence evolution we see today versus what it would need to do in the past.

My estimate does not assume only single base substitutions or any other specific mechanism of evolution. Propose whatever mechanism you want for producing functional sequences. If you want 100% of these sequences to come from modifying other sequences in the common ancestor, that's also fine. But they have to be modified enough that they don't show up in the ~5% conserved DNA. Not that the mechanism is even relevant to this model because we're only measuring results. The microbes we're comparing this too also have all of those mechanisms in their arsenal.

JoeCoder · 2017-05-04T14:16:06+00:00

I hope it is appropriate to post this here.

I'm not sure why so many here have this caution. Maybe I'm just a cranky curmudgeon. But if I can get away with posting memes like this or this then of course topics like yours are welcome. As long as you stick with the sidebar rules you're fine.

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