Comment on Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment? by Sean Pitman M.D..
Carl: As I understand it, there are severl tricky things about mutation rates. First, most are neutral and there is debate about how many are beneficial as opposed to detrimental. Second, those with a beneficial impact persist long enough to influence the organisms proliferation while those that are not beneficial will disappear quickly, thus having less impact.
You’re mistaken Carl. There is no significant debate over either the mutation rate per individual per generation nor over the likely ratio of neutral vs. detrimental vs. beneficial. It is quite clear that the detrimental rate far outpaces the beneficial mutation rate when it comes to functional non-neutral mutations – by a factor of at least 1000:1. The references can be found here:
http://www.detectingdesign.com/dnamutationrates.html
So, odds are very good that a given person in a given generation will have at least 5 detrimental mutations and no beneficial mutations are very good. The question is, what are the odds that anyone in a given generation will have no detrimental mutations at all? Well, those odds are less than 150:1. In other words, if natural selection culled out all individuals with a negative functional difference relative to the parent generation, before of these had offspring of their own, the death rate would have to be 300:1 in order for 2 individuals to survive without a negative functional change vs. their parents. That’s a huge death rate! Humans simply don’t reproduce fast enough to handle this sort of death rate. Not even close.
Your notion that natural selection is able to solve this problem is based on ignorance of the available facts. You simply don’t grasp the implication of the statistics involved.
It just amazes me how you can present arguments in such a factual manner when you have no references to back yourself up on even the factual elements of your argument – factual elements which are so far off base when it comes to known reality.
When it comes to entropy, it’s not clear to me that one can make a proper application of the laws of thermodynamics when considering DNA. I see it as a law of physics taken out of context.
The problem isn’t with thermodynamic entropy, but with informational entropy. They are related, but distinct concepts. For further information on this topic see:
http://www.detectingdesign.com/meaningfulinformation.html
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Sean Pitman M.D. Also Commented
Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment?
David Kendall, BMus, MA says:
Hi Shane,
I am not sure you can make a strong connection between the statement in the excerpt and common ancestry. DNA research does point to varying degrees of relatedness among species. This does not have to conflict with a recent six day creation, though some may make the argument that it must.
What it argues for, and what Grismer clearly believes, is the idea that all life is related through process of common descent by innumerable tiny modifications from a common ancestor life form – a process that required hundreds of millions of years of time.
This notion strikes directly at the concept of the relatedness of all life because of its source in a common Designer of all the basic “kinds” of life on this planet, produced during a literal 6-day creation week in recent history.
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment?
Ron Nielsn: @Sean Pitman M.D.: Sean, I am not a geologist, and I haven’t read much about this, but your argument doesn’t make logical sense. Where does the sediment that is “washed off†go, except down slope, and as long as the uplift is equal or greater than the erosion rate, there is always going to be sediment at the top
Your argument assumes that all rock is sedimentary rock – it isn’t. Only a thin layer of sedimentary rock covers the underlying granitic or metamorphic rock. So, the obvious question is, how has the very thin layer of sedimentary rock avoided being completely washed off of the underlying non-sedimentary rock if it has in fact been exposed, as an erosional surface, for tens of millions of years?
You do see how the argument for continued mountain uplift does not solve this problem? – right?
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
Are LSU professors breaking the 8th commandment?
BobRyan: Thus evolutionists who quickly admit that molecule-to-human-mind evolutionism (storytelling) requires “a massive DECREASE in entropy†as the net result over billions of years (at the local isolated system level of course )– are leaving themselves with no place to go.
Not true. A local decrease in thermodynamic entropy is possible using the Sun’s energy to produce the local effect (at the expense of an increase in the Earth-Sun thermodynamic entropy of course).
Recall that in the case of the dropping ball, and the iron rusting and the water evaporating — the definion for “universe†that was needed to observe those examples demonstrating entropy was simply “an isolated and localized system and it’s immediate surroundings†EVEN if that system is standing out in broad daylight (or in complete darkness). No need to “reach for the sun†before you can see the increase in entropy as iron oxidizes. Speaking of “oxidation demonstrating entropy†– our biology courses admit to that oxidation process as well.
You forget that the reverse of all these processes you use as examples of increases in local entropy can be reversed as well, by using energy derived from the Sun. The ball can be driven uphill, as can the water in the rivers that run downhill. Therefore, local reductions in entropy can be achieved by using the increase in entropy of the Earth-Sun system…
Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com
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