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Darwinism and the Deterioration of the Genome
True.Origin ^ | 8/7/06 | Jerry Bergman, Ph.D.

Posted on 08/07/2006 10:54:34 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo

An evaluation of DNA/RNA mutations indicates that they cannot provide significant new levels of information. Instead, mutations will produce degradation of the information in the genome. This is the opposite of the predictions of the neoDarwinian origins model. Such genome degradation is counteracted by natural selection that helps maintain the status quo. Degradation results for many reasons, two of which are reviewed here. 1) there is a tendency for mutations to produce a highly disproportionate number of certain nucleotide bases such as thymine and 2) many mutations occur in only a relatively few places within the gene called “hot spots,” and rarely occur in others, known as “cold spots.” An intensive review of the literature fails to reveal a single clear example of a beneficial information-gaining mutation. Conversely, thousands of deleterious mutations exist, supporting the hypothesis that very few mutations are beneficial. These findings support the creation origins model.

(Excerpt) Read more at trueorigin.org ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: angryevos; anothercrevothread; crevolist; darwin; darwinism; depressedaboutkansas; enoughalready; evolution; frustratedcriders; ignoranceisstrength; pavlovian; semantics
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To: wyattearp
In the article in Creation Science he is claiming a Phd that he doesn't have. You might not have a problem with that, but I do

In his background, it says:

A court invalidated all degrees awarded after 1997 and ordered the student fees refunded. Bergman has written a detailed perspective on the school's fall from grace.

Since he got his PH.D in 1992, I think his degree is not invalid. Therefore, he HAS A PH.D.

Whether it is worth the paper it is printed on depends on how good his research is. That of course requires invalidating the evidence/argument he presents, not attacking his background.

Abraham Lincoln never graduated from high school or college. Heck, he never even went to law school. But he was a damn good lawyer by all historical accounts. Same principle applies here.
41 posted on 08/07/2006 12:54:31 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
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To: Michael_Michaelangelo
Conversely, thousands of deleterious mutations exist, supporting the hypothesis that very few mutations are beneficial.

The author says nothing which is not common knowledge in biology and he uses the phrase "...very few...," which means nothing unless he gives it a quantitative value, but he implies that his revelation shows to the world that mutations do not contribute to evolution.

I learned in 1962 in Biology 101 that most mutations are deleterious (e.g., lethal) and, furthermore, whether a non-lethal mutation is "beneficial" depends upon the conditions within the envronment, which is continuously changing.

42 posted on 08/07/2006 12:56:24 PM PDT by Rudder
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To: MonroeDNA
I heard the Catholic Church invented the number 8.

SOURCE ??
43 posted on 08/07/2006 12:57:13 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
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To: tallhappy

"He's just mixed up -- he kind of knows what he's talking about but it is words not understanding of the molecules and chemical properties."

Well, his education, even if you throw out the bogus Ph.D. is not an education in cellular biology, DNA research, or anything else. He's an M.D. That's it.

The thing about articles like this is that they're aimed at an audience that doesn't really understand the articles. Had he submitted this to any journal having to do with evolutionary research or cellular biology, it would have been summarily rejected, not because of bias, but because it's inaccurate.

But, for the intended audience, it sounds all academic and stuff, so it's good enough.

Frankly, I'm not well enough educated in the topic to discuss every aspect of the article. In the few areas where I am, however, it doesn't follow well.

To someone who has no background in these disciplines, however, the jibber jabber sounds pretty good. And there you have it.

If he has truly discovered something worth discussing, there are plenty of journals out there.


44 posted on 08/07/2006 1:00:09 PM PDT by MineralMan (non-evangelical atheist)
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To: Rudder

"I learned in 1962 in Biology 101 that most mutations are deleterious (e.g., lethal) and, furthermore, whether a non-lethal mutation is "beneficial" depends upon the conditions within the envronment, which is continuously changing."

There are also many mutations which are seemingly without any effect at all, good or bad. The whole point is that there are some that are beneficial to the organism. That's all it takes for evolution to proceed. Some.


45 posted on 08/07/2006 1:02:44 PM PDT by MineralMan (non-evangelical atheist)
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To: MineralMan
Well, his education, even if you throw out the bogus Ph.D. is not an education in cellular biology, DNA research, or anything else. He's an M.D. That's it.

MD's can know biochemistry.

And I have known people with real PhD's who don't know things that they should (eg that asn is not ionizable).

46 posted on 08/07/2006 1:08:07 PM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: Michael_Michaelangelo

I love these creation/evolution threads. The creationists trot out their ad hominem descriptions of the evolutionists before the evolutionists even know the thread is started.

Full Dosclosure: I am in the evolutionist camp. Evolution has evidence to back itself up, and religion has only faith. Sorry, but I'll take fact over faith any day. That's how God made me.

To address the point in the article, that seems to say that the vast majority of changes in the genetic code of a species can be harmful rather than beneficial, remember that there are now 7 billion human beings alive today, and that some species feature trillions of living members. If the odds of any particualr mutation being beneficial are 100 million to 1 against, that still leaves a significant number of potential beneficial mutations. If a beneficial mutation provides a survival advantage, the mutatee (mutant?) will have a greater chance at reproducing, and thus a greater chance of adding it to the gene pool. The converse is also true, creating disadvantages. Cancer is one such disadvantage.

It's kind of like elementary school art. Millions of kids all accross the country produce artwork in school on at least a weekly basis. Most of it is pretty lame, except to the child's parents. But every once in a while, some kid is going to draw a really nice picture.


47 posted on 08/07/2006 1:11:54 PM PDT by webheart (Have a nice day!)
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To: MineralMan
To someone who has no background in these disciplines, however, the jibber jabber sounds pretty good. And there you have it.

His jibber jabber is not that bad -- but that is the problem on these threads and in these discussion -- that it is jibber jabber in the first place.

It's people talking past each other because they are talking about philosophies and world views, not science and neither side has participants in this rather trivial debate that actually know the science.

There's a quote I can't quite remember but it is to the effect that a little bit of knowledge can be worse than none at all.

48 posted on 08/07/2006 1:13:13 PM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: SirLinksalot
>>Actually it isn't the Catholic Church per se that helped in the development of science, but the CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW in general. <<

"Helped with the development of science" - no argument from me.

"Invented science" would not be reasonable since the pre-Christian Greeks had science.
49 posted on 08/07/2006 1:15:10 PM PDT by gondramB (Never appeal to an enemy's better nature, he might not have one. Self interest yields more leverage)
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To: SirLinksalot
May I add though, that the important thing is to address HIS ARGUMENTS.

But his argument is so obviously stupid, it hardly calls for a rebuttal. Nevertheless, I will make it. Take a genome containing a gene. The gene is duplicated (due to an error in recomibation say) to make a copy - the genome now has two copies of the gene. The copy suffers a further mutation (a single nucleotide change say) so that it produces a different product. Two mutation events, unaided even by selection, have produced new biological information.

50 posted on 08/07/2006 1:36:55 PM PDT by edsheppa
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To: A. Pole

>> I'm pretty sure that Aristotle was not a Christian.

>First he was not a scientist, he was a philosopher.

Perhaps. But Aristarchus (310 BC - c. 230 BC), Archimedes (c. 287 BC – 212 BC) and Eratosthenes (276 BC - 194 BC) most assuredly *were* scientists. At the time, the difference between "scientist" and "philosopher" was vague and ill-defined and it has been until argueably sometime in the 19th century.

It was largely through the re-discovery of the works of Greek pagans and agnostics that the Rennaissance was made possible.


51 posted on 08/07/2006 1:39:34 PM PDT by orionblamblam (I'm interested in science and preventing its corruption, so here I am.)
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To: GarySpFc
The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable, and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments.

It is formulated like a religious dogma. But American National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) do not represent science - they represent school teachers.

The cargo cult of science is called scientism.

52 posted on 08/07/2006 1:44:11 PM PDT by A. Pole (Saint Augustine: "The truth speaks from the bottom of the heart without the noise of words")
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To: SirLinksalot
I am no scientist, but even I can recognize that some of what he is saying doesn't work.

Likewise, changes that are beneficial will be selected for, but these helpful changes are close to nonexistent, indicating that the genome was optimal from the beginning.

The conclusion does not follow from the statement. If the genome was optimal from the beginning, then why did the age of reptiles end, and the age of mammals begin? Why are plants, and animals constantly going extinct? They go extinct if their genome does not adapt to environmental changes.

Natural selection operating on mutations may in some cases optimize survival if acting on an existing functional gene, but mutations cannot build-up the code in the first place.

He hasn't stated where he is getting this. Mutations most certainly can build up the code. Anemia is a defense against malaria. The sickle cell variant is deadly. Anemia was a mutation. It is hereditary. Not all humans have it. If not a mutation, then where did it come from?

A preliminary analysis of the DNA finds that the proportion of amino acids existing in genes, introns, and other DNA are not what would be expected by natural selection. When DNA that has no known function, (excluding DNA used for regulatory purposes, for centromeres, for telomeres, and for the production of RNA or tRNA) is examined, the patterns found are clearly in contrast to expected random mutational patterns shown in Table I. This shows that random changes have had only a small role in producing the genome, both in its protein coding and noncoding sections.

Again, it does not follow. He is confusing natural selection with random mutation. Natural selection is not always random. If anemia is a defense against malaria, and it was a random mutation, then why is it only endemic to populations in areas with high levels of malarial mosquitoes? Why is sickle cell anemia not found anywhere else?

Part of the reason is that mechanisms that function to resist change in the DNA genome exist. But these repair mechanisms would not have existed in primitive cells, which would mean that rapid genomic degeneration would have occurred before the repair system had evolved.

Why would they not have existed in primitive cells? He hasn't shown facts to back this up, and that invalidates the conclusion.

One thing that is difficult to follow is that he is using "mutation", "random mutation", and "natural selection" interchangeably. They are not the same thing. He does this throughout the paper. It is not an accident. I don't think that he understands it.

53 posted on 08/07/2006 1:44:37 PM PDT by wyattearp (Study! Study! Study! Or BONK, BONK, on the head!)
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To: MonroeDNA
Seems to me there is a big time gap between Archemides[sic], Pythagoris[sic], Socrates, Plato, and Newton. Dark ages, perhaps?

Yes. During the so called Dark or rather Middle Ages the system of modern science was worked out. That is why Copernicus, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and Heisenberg are quite different from Tales, Archimedes and Pythagoras.

54 posted on 08/07/2006 1:49:59 PM PDT by A. Pole (Saint Augustine: "The truth speaks from the bottom of the heart without the noise of words")
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To: edsheppa
But his argument is so obviously stupid

What is his argument?

55 posted on 08/07/2006 1:50:58 PM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: tallhappy

"MD's can know biochemistry. "

They can, of course. I did not mean to imply that they could not.


56 posted on 08/07/2006 1:51:37 PM PDT by MineralMan (non-evangelical atheist)
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To: edsheppa
Two mutation events, unaided even by selection, have produced new biological information.

What kind of "information" ?

It’s not the existence of Natural Selection that is questioned- what is questioned is can Natural Selection do anything close to what it is claimed to have done.

According to neo-Darwinian theory, genetic mutations provide the raw materials on which natural selection acts to produce evolutionary novelties.

The argument I read is that animal body plans are determined very early in development, mutations that could potentially produce new body plans must affect early embryos.

My problem with that is mutations that have been observed to act early in development either have no effect or ARE HARMFUL. In fact, the earlier and more extensive their effects, the more harmful they tend to be.

This is not surprising, since disrupting early development would be expected to disrupt all the highly integrated processes that follow.

I have not seen convincing evidence from developmental genetics that the kind of variations required by neo-Darwinism -- namely, favorable body plan mutations -- ever occur.

I'd like to see it, but have thus far, not been convinced.
57 posted on 08/07/2006 1:57:46 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
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To: gondramB
"Invented science" would not be reasonable since the pre-Christian Greeks had science.

The institution of science is something quite different from the Greek philosophy.

In natural science in particular there is a well defined scientific method, formal peer review, hierarchical organization, well ordered division of disciplines and coordinated on international scale.

The science is based on the implicit epistemological and metaphysical assumptions formulated explicitly by the scholastic theologians and philosophers. This was worked out by the Roman Catholic Church during Middle Ages in the form of university system. This is a plain historical fact, although complex one and subtle, requiring some intellectual effort and intelligence to grasp. Sorry.

58 posted on 08/07/2006 2:00:55 PM PDT by A. Pole (Saint Augustine: "The truth speaks from the bottom of the heart without the noise of words")
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To: A. Pole

>>This is a plain historical fact, although complex one and subtle, requiring some intellectual effort and intelligence to grasp. Sorry.<<

what on earth would make you suddenly take that direction in this conversation?

I could understand if you had provided some documentation for your position but this sounds like simply a personal attack.


59 posted on 08/07/2006 2:08:19 PM PDT by gondramB (Never appeal to an enemy's better nature, he might not have one. Self interest yields more leverage)
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To: Matchett-PI

Way back in my university years I attended a lecture by Owen Gingerich on historical astronomy. After the lecture a number of us retired to a lounge and got to chat with him. I recall I asked about the upcoming potential of the Hubble telescope still at that time years away from launch. Nice guy he was.


60 posted on 08/07/2006 2:09:32 PM PDT by xp38
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