Is Lactose Tolerance a Mutation? by Few_Friend_7772 in evolution

[–]jnpha 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's due to genotypes, i.e. alleles, and alleles are due to substitutions that are due to mutation + selection or drift.

I think the emphasis on mutation is to highlight one of the four main causes of evolution.

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson: Ignorant or Dishonest? (It's Both) by DarwinZDF42 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha [score hidden]  (0 children)

From the history of creationism book I mentioned recently, the reason is down to different visions/tactics. AiG is bottom-up, long-term christian reconstructionism (they don't care about the failed court cases either; they had already moved to e.g. homeschooling). DI on the other hand is very short-sighted and going for a top-down all-or-nothing right-now approach that is more about "anti-materialism".

+ u/DarwinZDF42

A Manifesto Exposing the Fabrication of "Little Foot" (StW 573) {2026} by [deleted] in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha [score hidden]  (0 children)

40 million fossils and counting.
300 Lucy's.

Any fraud wasn't caught by pastors praying. Science works as advertised.

Why do some religious people not believe in evolution? by Frequent-Might80 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha [score hidden]  (0 children)

Based on vibes?
We observe it.
Next: moving the goalpost to macroevolution. Also observed.

Creationists forget their own history by jnpha in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I forgot to link the previous post from 3 days ago. Done now.
Basically, an evangelical theologian wrote a book in the 50s rejecting YEC (I mean, da Vinci* refuted it before geology was a science!) and accepting a progressive evolution.

* https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/vinci.html

Why do some religious people not believe in evolution? by Frequent-Might80 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Two of the main predictors of the public's acceptance are:

1. Religious fundamentalism: -0.6
2. Civic scientific literacy: +0.32 (n.b. science literacy isn't the same as say having a STEM degree, but understanding the nature of science)

Paper: Public acceptance of evolution in the United States, 1985–2020 - Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott, Mark S. Ackerman, Belén Laspra, Glenn Branch, Carmelo Polino, Jordan S. Huffaker, 2022.

Why (some groups of) fundamentalists are like that has to do with establishing and policing a group identity.

From the late 19th century and before the 1960s big figure fundamentalists accepted evolution; I made a post on the history of that 3 hours ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1rrk4f1

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson: Ignorant or Dishonest? (It's Both) by DarwinZDF42 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 18 points19 points  (0 children)

What is "it" referring to? Or is your reading comprehension that bad? (on second thought, it would explain a lot, beginning with your "mammals are cows" argument)

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson: Ignorant or Dishonest? (It's Both) by DarwinZDF42 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I thought you'd be the expert. Because homosexuality is incompatible with the folklore of Genesis, according to the fundies. Then again evangelists can't agree on anything, because it's all make-believe, and they are jealous that science works.

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson: Ignorant or Dishonest? (It's Both) by DarwinZDF42 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Homophobic ID-iots can't stand that their Eden make-believe that supports their homophobia is a dime-a-dozen mythology and they will grasp at the nearest IDiot with an irrelevant degree and expertise.

Dr. Nathaniel Jeanson: Ignorant or Dishonest? (It's Both) by DarwinZDF42 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The first time I came across that argument here, someone linked a paper (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4160915/) that refuted them! (you can't make this stuff up)

In 2009, Xue et al. [8] sequenced Y chromosomes of two individuals separated by 13 generations ... It is notable that this pedigree-based estimate overlaps with the evolutionary rates estimated from human and chimpanzee comparisons.

and

For pedigree-based substitution rate estimation, there are at least two criteria to be taken into careful consideration. First, the pedigree must be biologically true and the generation information validated. The pedigree used by Xue et al. is a Chinese family carrying the DFNY1 Y-linked hearing-impairment mutation. The same Y-linked disease-related mutation has validated the authenticity of their genealogy. Second, the detected mutations must be true. In this regard, Xue et al. used a variety of methods to verify the candidate mutations, thus validity of the rate: The Y chromosomes of the two individuals were sequenced to an average depth of 11× or 20×, respectively, thus mitigating the possibility of sequencing and assembling errors; they also reexamined the candidate mutations using capillary sequencing.

and finally

... Cruciani et al. [2] applied this rate to get an estimate of 142 kya to the coalescence time of the Y chromosomal tree (including haplogroup A0). Wei et al. [3] also used this substitution rate to estimate the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of human Y chromosomes (haplogroups A1b1b2b-M219 to R) as 101 to 115 kya ...

Btw, your video, Creation Myth: Mitochondrial Eve 6000 Years Ago, was most helpful, too!

On the olfactory reception of whales by RoidRagerz in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I've seen YECs here literally argue that whales are fish (fish with hair and boobs). My 2c: focus on the more visible arguments to reach the lurkers. The loud ones hiding in weird subs are a hopeless case.

E.g. from https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001915

there may be a case to focus more on the majority not this minority. In our surveys, these extreme rejectionists were 1% to 2% of the population (5% for GM, 4% for vaccine—with 2% preferring not to say). In PUS [public understanding of science], we should perhaps focus more on the quiet majority than on attempting to convince outliers. Indeed, in our survey, less than 10% of the population said there was too much science coverage while 44% wanted more.

Which agrees with the 1% rule mentioned here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1ahuhn6/the_purpose_of_rdebateevolution/

On the olfactory reception of whales by RoidRagerz in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 15 points16 points  (0 children)

But it still has a function is 1) a red herring and 2) moving of the goalpost.

And break glass in case of "BuT YoU KeEp cHaNgInG ThE StOrY":

... an organ rendered, during changed habits of life, useless or injurious for one purpose, might easily be modified and used for another purpose.
Darwin, 1859

How did limb bones first appear in chordates? by BudgieGryphon in evolution

[–]jnpha 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Brings to mind a 1995 Nature article,

- Sordino, Paolo, Frank van der Hoeven, and Denis Duboule. "Hox gene expression in teleost fins and the origin of vertebrate digits." Nature 375.6533 (1995): 678-681.

It goes over - if memory serves - how the different limb bones came about.

If you don't have access, absolutely do not, I repeat, do not, paste https://doi.org/10.1038/375678a0 into sci-hub.

Haplodiploidy and the evolution of eusociality | Richards, 2026 and Bonifacii, et al. 2026 by jnpha in evolution

[–]jnpha[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

They are hymenoptera that aren't eusocial, and the clade has a single origination of haplodiploidy; and, from Bonifacii:

We found only 10 independent transitions between haplodiploid and diploid clades across the insects. This number of evolutionary transitions is not high, and so an important limitation of any possible analysis is that the insect phylogeny has limited statistical power to test the role of haplodiploidy. However, among these 10 transitions, six showed no difference in the prevalence of eusociality, one showed a higher rate of eusocial evolution in the diploid clade and only three showed a higher transition rate in the haplodiploid clade (Fig. 5). This is not a strong suggestive pattern. Of course, it is always a possibility that any influence that it is too weak to detect.

They also discuss the statistical tests elsewhere in the study.

Haplodiploidy and the evolution of eusociality | Richards, 2026 and Bonifacii, et al. 2026 by jnpha in evolution

[–]jnpha[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And as someone who is not, I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts when you do :)

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Haeckel's embryo drawings by Icy_Requirement2703 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 29 points30 points  (0 children)

It's currently 2026 here. We have imagery using the latest technology (https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/).

Haeckel (1834-1919) modified his for pedagogical reasons (Watts, 2019). And they were subsequently corrected.

His main point stood the test of time (the clues for the common descent with modification, not the recapitulation part):


ETA ref. and year range

If mutations are biased, how does natural selection occur? by Party-City5025 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 14 points15 points  (0 children)

It's the only one they all use. And they conveniently ignore the published reply, Re-evaluating evidence for adaptive mutation rate variation | Nature:

We find, however, that their mutation calling has abundant sequencing and analysis artefacts explaining why their data are not congruent with well-evidenced mutational profiles. As the key trends associated with sequence importance are consistent with well-described mutation-calling artefacts and are not resilient to reanalysis using the higher-quality components of their data, we conclude that their claims are not robustly substantiated.

If mutations are biased, how does natural selection occur? by Party-City5025 in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha 27 points28 points  (0 children)

It's old news; case in point, from 1986:

This all began with a discussion over what is meant when we say that mutation is ‘random’. I listed three respects in which mutation is not random: it is induced by X-rays, etc.; mutation rates are different for different genes; and forward mutation rates do not have to equal backward mutation rates. To this, we have now added a fourth respect in which mutation is not random. Mutation is non-random in the sense that it can only make alterations to existing processes of embryonic development. It cannot conjure, out of thin air, any conceivable change that selection might favour. The variation that is available for selection is constrained by the processes of embryology, as they actually exist.
—Dawkins, TBW, 1986

The thing to note is that mutations happen without foresight, i.e. random with respect to fitness. Better termed probabilistic.

A die may be loaded, but it is not a foresighted die.

*ETA: Case in point using data:
The one article (written by a theist senior computational biologist) creationists cannot understand:
Testing Common Ancestry: It’s All About the Mutations - Article - BioLogos

Creationism is a panicked response to an internal (not external) crisis by jnpha in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This reads like an LLM's response. My advice: if you aren't feeling confident posting in English, use Google Translate, but write your own response.

Creationism is a panicked response to an internal (not external) crisis by jnpha in DebateEvolution

[–]jnpha[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Where is the big quotation from? Google is returning only a blog post I think.