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To: gore3000
Mutation is a single mechanism of variation. There are others. Sexual reproduction comes to mind. It helps to also not forget that neutral mutations may occur generations before they become advantageous. Alternatively, inconsequential or even destructive mutations, which may prove deleterious in normal conditions may suddenly enable a critter to expand into a previously inaccessible niche (e.g. leucopathy and snow-covered terrain).

I would also like to point out that you have yet to provide evidence for a creator or designer.

But for the time being, I note that "gibberish" and "blather," among others, are starting to creep back into your vocabulary. Oh well. Thanks for the cordial discussion while it lasted.

579 posted on 09/03/2002 9:04:55 AM PDT by Condorman
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To: Condorman
Mutation is a single mechanism of variation. There are others.

I have explained about mutations a few times. Let's remember that almost all mutations prove to be bad. You cannot change a system as complex as a living organism by random means.

Sexual reproduction comes to mind.

Sexual reproduction just mixes the genes which already exist in a species, it does not create new species. Also to say that an entire species will gradually mutate together into another species is ludicrous.

It helps to also not forget that neutral mutations may occur generations before they become advantageous.

Maybe, could be, perhaps are not scientific terms. I keep asking for examples, real examples of favorable mutations which increase complexity (as evolution requires) I never hear any examples.

Alternatively, inconsequential or even destructive mutations, which may prove deleterious in normal conditions may suddenly enable a critter to expand into a previously inaccessible niche (e.g. leucopathy and snow-covered terrain).

Except that the bearers of that deleterious trait would be long dead by then and the dead do not reproduce.

I would also like to point out that you have yet to provide evidence for a creator or designer.

I already did in post# 549, and you have not been able to refute a word of it, here it is again:

Nice rhetoric, but totally disproved by modern science. There is a tremendous amount of proof against abiogenesis. First of all is Pasteur's proof that life does not come from inert matter (and this was of course at one time the prediction of materialists). Then came the discovery of DNA and the chemical basis of organisms. This poses a totally insurmountable problem to abiogenesis. The smallest living cells has a DNA string of some one million base pairs long and some 600 genes, even cutting this number by a quarter as the smallest possible living cell would give us a string of some 250,000 base pairs of DNA. It is important to note here that DNA can be arranged in any of the four basic codes equally well, there is no chemical or other necessity to the sequence. The chances of such an arrangement arising are therefore 4^250,000. Now the number of atoms in the universe is said to be about 4^250. I would therefore call 4^250,000 an almost infinitely impossible chance (note that the supposition advanced that perhaps it was RNA that produced the first life has this same problem).

The problem though is even worse than that. Not only do you need two (2) strings of DNA perfectly matched to have life, but you also need a cell so that the DNA code can get the material to sustain that life. It is therefore a chicken and egg problem, you cannot have life without DNA (or RNA if one wants to be generous) but one also has to have the cell itself to provide the nutrients for the sustenance of the first life. Add to this problem that for the first life to have been the progenitor of all life on earth, it necessarily needs to have been pretty much the same as all life now on earth is, otherwise it could not have been the source of the life we know. Given all these considerations, yes, abiogenesis is impossible.

586 posted on 09/03/2002 7:23:16 PM PDT by gore3000
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