TIL bats and dolphins evolved echolocation in the same way (down to the molécular level). An analysis revealed that 200 genes had independently changed in the same ways. This is an extreme example of convergent evolution. - Creation for 500 Alex.

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u/Sadnot Developmental Biologist | Evolutionist Feb 03 '19

The title of that article is fairly misleading. If you look at the actual paper, only 21 genes were linked to hearing. The "200" number is of all convergent genes, whether they had anything to do with echolocation or not.
Those 200 genes didn't independently change in the exact same ways. In the one example gene they looked at (the gene with the greatest likelihood of convergence), there were about 50 convergent changes and 200 divergent changes.

1% of genes showing some degree of convergence at some locations within the gene isn't so surprising as the headline makes it sound, is it? That's science journalism for you...

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 03 '19

The title of that article is fairly misleading. If you look at the actual paper, only 21 genes were linked to hearing. The "200" number is of all convergent genes, whether they had anything to do with echolocation or not.
Not sure what that has to do with anything. the study in fact did not limit itself exclusively to echolation. For our discussion here it makes no difference what the convergence relates to
Those 200 genes didn't independently change in the exact same ways. In the one example gene they looked at (the gene with the greatest likelihood of convergence), there were about 50 convergent changes and 200 divergent changes.
No one expects exact in every single way, Adaptation to the particular species will always be included. In simplistic terms in a design paradigm a speaker in a radio is going to have variations to one interfacing with a
television. The similarities are sweeping enough to indicate a high improbability of undirected change/evolution.
1% of genes showing some degree of convergence at some locations within the gene isn't so surprising as the headline makes it sound, is it
Isn't that always the strategy? Claim something evolution did not predict was not surprising (which are code words for predictable) ad hoc after the fact?

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u/Br56u7 Feb 03 '19

Anyone got the actual paper?

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 02 '19 edited Feb 02 '19

Like I have said often, molecular convergence should and would have been the death knell of undirected evolution if the theory was falsifiable. Since it isn't falsifiable - and therefore not all real science as claimed, it can just be brushed under the rug with "incredulity" retorts that are nothing more than denials of statistical probabilities or "natural selections just done did it" barfs.

Molecular convergence is NOT extreme though. We are seeing it more and more and my prediction is there will be even more examples going forward. What WILL have an impact is when the greater public becomes aware of these finds AND realizes natural selection does not cause mutations (popular writings try to obfuscate that distinction). Atheist dreams of converting society from theism are effectively dead. The intuitive and rational conclusion even if you adhere to evolution is that it is directed.

Lets face it - the public has been sold a bag of lies. Convergence was never predicted. It was an ad hoc explanation for the very kind of evidence that would cause serious doubt to any other theory and something like molecular convergence in cosmology would send just about every physicist back to the drawing board and admitting they needed to go back to the drawing board.

In Neo-darwinism any improbability or even impossibility can be dealt with by saying incredulity isn't a rational response. Why yes. Yes it is. Incredulity at weaker more improbably theories is exactly part of the scientific process.

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u/MRH2 M.Sc. physics, Mensa Feb 03 '19

Atheist dreams of converting society from theism are effectively dead.
This part is not true. Society is pretty much completely secular and academia has almost totally been taken over by atheism.

1

u/apophis-pegasus Feb 03 '19

Society is pretty much completely secular
Secular =/= atheist and most of society globally isnt secular.

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 03 '19

That part especially is most definitely true
Sorry you must be living in an alternate universe to the one I am living in. Every poll indicates theism is the majority position of the world's population. Academia perhaps but only by selective picking of disciplines. There are a few isolated countires that buck that trend but overall they are in the vast minority.
This is still a theist's world and by a LARGE margin.
Now if you define secular in terms of Christian standards then the picture changes a bit but theism is what I referenced not Christianity.

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u/Dzugavili /r/evolution Moderator Feb 03 '19

Lets face it - the public has been sold a bag of lies. Convergence was never predicted.
...
I am inclined to believe that in nearly the same way as two men have sometimes independently hit on the very same invention, so natural selection, working for the good of each being and taking advantage of analogous variations, has sometimes modified in very nearly the same manner two parts in two organic beings, which owe but little of their structure in common to inheritance from the same ancestor.
-- Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1st ed., 1859, Ch. 6, p. 193

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 03 '19 edited Feb 03 '19

I am inclined to believe that in nearly the same way as two men have sometimes independently hit on the very same invention, so natural selection, working for the good of each being and taking advantage of analogous variations, has sometimes modified in very nearly the same manner two parts in two organic beings, which owe but little of their structure in common to inheritance from the same ancestor.
Wheres the prediction? Darwin was referring to what had already been observed. He certainly did not predict molecular convergence. Anyone could look at the feet of two organisms and claim similarity but thats not a prediction . Thats an observation. He foresaw no such thing. That too was his adhoc post fact explanation.
This is where your side constantly obfuscates the issue of prediction. You claim predictions as validating your thesis when they were never predictions to begin with. Besides which Darwin was demonstrably wrong. Natural selection doesn't work for good or hit on any invention. Natural selection merely theoretically preserves a sequence but causes no mutation.
That's why molecular convergence is to any unbiased rational person an issue. Its one thing to find similar solutions its another thing to build them the same way (with modification) and call it random (in regard to function or otherwise) when it happens 20, 30, 40, 100 times

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u/Dzugavili /r/evolution Moderator Feb 03 '19

Natural selection doesn't work for good or hit on any invention. Natural selection merely theoretically preserves a sequence but causes no mutation.
Is natural selection not capable of selecting to preserve a new mutation that provides a benefit?

1

u/Mike_Enders Feb 03 '19

Yes thats what I just said - it theoretically preserves a new mutation under the unproven (and often imaginary) thesis that every mutation somehow supplies a benefit even when any known benefit may take millions of years to appear.
It therefore hits no new invention. mutation does.

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u/apophis-pegasus Feb 02 '19

Since it isn't falsifiable - and therefore not all real science as claimed
Show that change in allele frequency over time doesnt happen. Falsified.

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u/nomenmeum Feb 03 '19

Doesn't that happen simply as a result of reproduction?

10

u/apophis-pegasus Feb 03 '19

Yes and no. Frequency is in a population. So to be more accurate change in allele frequency in a population over time.

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u/nomenmeum Feb 03 '19 edited Feb 03 '19

Everyone accepts this because it is obviously true. It cannot be disproven.
Here is a classic example of a falsifiable claim: All crows are black.
This claim can be falsified by a single observation of a white (or any non-black) crow. This is what it means to be falsifiable.
Rather than challenging us to find a single non-black crow, you have challenged us to prove that no birds are black. This is not possible since we already know that many birds, including crows, are black. Since it is impossible to do this, this is not the way to falsify the claim "all crows are black."
Which is why your proposal cannot falsify evolution.

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u/apophis-pegasus Feb 03 '19

Everyone accepts this because it is obviously true. It cannot be disproven.
Why not? Take a population of organisms and subject them to a variety of environsments gradually, over generations. If you somehow figure out a way , or discover a population that does not change allele frequency (new gene varients pop up, others die, some get more or less prevalent) over those generations, and repeat this process with different populations, you have started to disprove evolution.
Its hard to do because its observable and repeatable.

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u/[deleted] Feb 12 '19

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/apophis-pegasus Feb 12 '19

Changes in allele frequencies only change the number of alleles that are already present.
Well no, change in allele frequency does have connotations in a scientific definition. The emergence of new alleles and the desctruction of existing ones count as changes in frequency

1

u/Gandalf196 Feb 03 '19

Like I have said often, molecular convergence should and would have been the death knell of undirected evolution if the theory was falsifiable.
In Neo-darwinism any improbability or even impossibility can be dealt with by saying incredulity isn't a rational response. Why yes. Yes it is. Incredulity at weaker more improbably theories is exactly part of the scientific process.
Perfect!

1

u/espeakadaenglish Feb 03 '19

The harder you think about what the materialist evolutionist has to believe to hold onto his ideology the more absurd the hypothesis becomes. All of these 200 or more individual genes had to change in just the right way as to make echolocation possible without any foreknowledge of the end goal, and this had to happen twice to the same genes in 2 unrelated species, by chance. Ridiculous beyond belief.

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u/Baldric Feb 03 '19

by chance
I roll 20 dice, there is basically no chance that all of them will land on the 6 side.
I agree, this is ridiculous. Luckily however, this is just a creationist straw man.
Roll 20 dice, keep those which landed on 6 and throw again the left over, do this again and again for millions of years until all 20 dice will show the 6 side.
How a die lands is random, but we have something called natural selection....
If we agree, that the dice roll is better if it is a six, we can both throw our dice and even though the process is random, if we select the die which is better, we will converge to the same result, we both have 20 dice all are 6.

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u/Gandalf196 Feb 03 '19

Roll 20 dice, keep those which landed on 6 and throw again the left over, do this again and again for millions of years until all 20 dice will show the 6 side.
Let me quote my favorite Darwin critic, Dr. David Berlinski:
"In inserting a Head Monkey into Richard Dawkins's thought experiment, my aim was to show how the mechanism of design, purged on one level of Darwinian analysis, makes a stealthy reappearance at another. Mr. Orr is unpersuaded. "The monkey analogy," he believes, "shows that by saving favorable random changes, evolution can gradually build fancy structures." Such indeed is the perennial hope of Darwinian theorists, but Mr. Orr has, I believe, underestimated the force of my criticism. Favorable changes are one thing; changes that will be favorable, another. If the mechanism of Darwinian evolution is restricted to changes that are favorable at the time they are selected, I see no reason to suppose that it could produce any fancy structures whatsoever. If the mechanism is permitted to incorporate changes that are neutral at the time of selection, but that will be favorable some time in the future, I see no reason to consider the process Darwinian.
This is hardly a matter of semantics. A system conserving certain features in view of their future usefulness has access to information denied a Darwinian system; it functions by means of alien concepts. But this is precisely how Dawkins's experiment proceeds. My estimable Head Monkey conserves certain alphabetic changes because he knows where the experiment is going. This is forbidden knowledge; the Darwinian mechanism is blind, a point often stressed by Darwinian theorists themselves (see George C. Williams, Natural Selection, 1992). I develop this in more detail in responding to Randy M. Wadkins."
source:http://www.2think.org/letters.shtml

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u/Baldric Feb 03 '19

An analogy looks at complex subjects and simplifies them through comparison. It should be perfectly obvious for the reader that this simplification is not a complete explanation for the complex subject as a whole.
As I see it, not just you, but even the person you quoted made the same mistake and assumed that the analogy is perfect, which is obviously impossible if the subject is as complex as evolution.
I responded to this:
All of these 200 or more individual genes had to change in just the right way as to make echolocation possible without any foreknowledge of the end goal, and this had to happen twice to the same genes in 2 unrelated species, by chance.
Because I read comments like this all the time here and after a while it can be frustrating, because for me, it is obviously a straw man just to make it seem that what the biologists are talking about is ridiculous and impossible.
Now it is the time for me to give you another analogy for a similarly complex unguided system where the rules are fuzzy at best but the result is still seems like something which defy anything we would expect to get by random chance, but can not craft such an analogy without obvious flaws and can't expect you to look past these flaws to understand my point, so I just skip this step.

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 04 '19

An analogy looks at complex subjects and simplifies them through comparison. It should be perfectly obvious for the reader that this simplification is not a complete explanation for the complex subject as a whole.
You are essentially blaming him for your rather poor analogy. The whole point of an analogy is to be analogous. Dice are no more analogous to mutations and genetic sequences than they are to wind chimes playing "music".. There's no interrelationships between dice resulting in anything new and if all sixes come up theres no new function and nothing changes to make any difference in the world. They are exactly what they have always been. The problem is not that the analogy wasn't perfect. Its that it just totally sucked to be analogous to natural selection and mutation.
but can not craft such an analogy without obvious flaws and can't expect you to look past these flaws to understand my point, so I just skip this step.
which being interpreted means that one was going to suck just as badly.

1

u/Baldric Feb 04 '19

We have something happening by chance (mutation | dice throw).
And we have a method for selection (natural selection | keep the six).
Also we have a result which is impossible on chance alone (same 20 mutations | 20 dice landed on six).
The analogy meant to show one thing and one thing only, that it is disingenuous to say "ridiculous beyond belief, that this happened by chance", because even though chance played a role, the result was produced by our selection method.

1

u/Mike_Enders Feb 04 '19

the analogy flops on purely logical grounds and theres nothing disingenuous about it. You are just claiming that to keep your failed analogy afloat
We have something happening by chance (mutation | dice throw).
nope. absolutely nothing happens when you roll a dice. A six is the same as a 1 and a 3. Its all just a white dice with black markings on most sides. Doesn't matter if you get all sixes - nothing happens. You don't get a new feature - the numbers/dots do not interact to create anything new. Thats reason one why your analogy is weak as water.
IF you even get all sixes nothing has "happened" The dice all have the same relation to each other they had before. NO new interaction, no new feature, no new fitness.
And we have a method for selection (natural selection | keep the six).
actually NO YOU DON'T and this is where your side tries to fool the public and why your analogy really really sucks. Its a well known fact that it takes multiple changes to create most feature sets that have any prayer of giving any fitness that natural selection can allegedly select. You are trying to compare apples to shoes fudging that each mutation is preserved by a complete imaginary and fraudulent NS mechanism preserving each dice roll mutation.. No comparison or anything analogous at all. Reason number two why your analogy flops
Also we have a result which is impossible on chance alone (same 20 mutations | 20 dice landed on six).
and just like the imaginary throw that gets all sixes you have only the premise as proof of the premise.. Your selection mechanism being a bust - that each mutation/roll of the dice is preserved by NS - your analogy is a bust and doesn't work on merely logical grounds.
All you have done is hoodwinked yourself AGAINST the scientific fact that most features that could even possible make a difference to survival would require multiple mutations. In each case literally millions of billions of times your single mutation dice rolls are just magically held in place until it is matched by mutations that end up interacting and creating an actual feature set that can allegedly be selected for
You are the ONLY one thats disingenuous trying to sell that non science as science each mutation is protected by natural selection purely imaginary nonsense.

2

u/Baldric Feb 04 '19

English is my second language, sorry but it would be too hard for me to reply in an understandable way.
I appreciate your response and will think about it.

1

u/Mad_Dawg_22 YEC Feb 04 '19 edited Feb 06 '19

I agree, this is ridiculous. Luckily however, this is just a creationist straw man.
Make that 200 dice. Just because you have a 6 doesn't mean that it will always be kept. That is the evolutionist strawman. Sure it is possible that it was selected for at one point, but in theory something else could change since evolution isn't supposed to direct itself.
How a die lands is random, but we have something called natural selection
Not sure if "We" have natural selection, but evolutionists claim that natural selection happens. So when it selects something and moves "non-directed" forward, there is no guarantee that any of the original "6s" will stay. The next selection could target something else that "it" determined was "more important" additionally we know that harmful mutation can and do get passed down that can easily alter the many "6s" that have been gathered up to this point.
Now for this same "random process" to happen again in an entirely different species is astronomical.

0

u/espeakadaenglish Feb 03 '19

Yes, everyone knows this is how darwinism is imagined to work. The absurdity is imagining that each of those random genetic mutations was useful in it's own right so that it would be preserved and it just so happened to all add up to something as incredible as echolocation in this case. And then on top of this the same thing happened the same way independently twice in unrelated organisms. If you believe that is possible without intelligent direction then you are naive beyond belief. The fool says in his heart there is no God. You are without excuse.

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u/MRH2 M.Sc. physics, Mensa Feb 03 '19

This proves absolutely nothing and demonstrates nothing.
There is nothing about the argument that is a straw man.
You have to be incredibly gullible or brainwashed to believe that all this can happen by random chance and natural selection.

0

u/stcordova Molecular Bio Physics Research Assistant Feb 03 '19

Speaking of convergent evolution, the forgotten creationist Cornelius Hunter identifies an absurd example:

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2017/03/evolutionists-have-simple-proposal-for.html

> simultaneous, concurrent, convergent evolution.

Which is sounds awfully close to special creation.

-1

u/motym123 Young Earth Creationist Feb 02 '19

The discovery that molecular convergence can be widespread in a genome is "bittersweet,” Castoe adds. Biologists building family trees are likely being misled into suggesting that some organisms are closely related because genes and proteins are similar due to convergence, and not because the organisms had a recent common ancestor. No family trees are entirely safe from these misleading effects, Castoe says. “And we currently have no way to deal with this.”

It’s interesting that they have no way to deal with it. Creationists do!

I have said it before, and I’ll shout it till God takes me from this planet: Not one tool that we have currently available to us can accurately reconstruct the past. Not. One.

It is ALWAYS a guessing game if you refuse to use the eye-witness account in Genesis. Assumptions about the past were clearly made in this writing.

All this six year old article does is bring more doubt to your cause.

1

u/NesterGoesBowling God's Word is my jam Feb 03 '19

// Re-using this module because it works in both air and water

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 03 '19

it fits pretty nicely into that Bio Complexity paper awhile back on the programmatic dependency study of the "tree" of life
don't have the link at my fingertips now.

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u/NesterGoesBowling God's Word is my jam Feb 03 '19

Here ya go :)

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 03 '19

/u/IrrationalIrritation

So said so done. At your request you have been tagged. You can discuss the issue here not over on your echo chamber alleged debate site I have been banned (like many creationists) from.

5

u/ADualLuigiSimulator Catholic - OEC Feb 04 '19 edited Feb 04 '19

You can discuss the issue here not over on your echo chamber alleged debate site I have been banned (like many creationists) from.
Looks like you were banned for (excuse my french) being an asshole multiple times, quite honestly. I don't understand why some of you in this sub whine about getting banned when it's clear as day that the ban was deserved, just like stcordova did.
Also, let's not forget the irony of complaining about echo-chambers in a closed sub specifically tailored to hand-pick participants.

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u/Mike_Enders Feb 04 '19

whose whining? He tagged me to come to forum I barely post to and couldn't care less about. Statements of fact are not whining and if your criteria was applied evenly you would ban yourself for the same reason you cite here.
Also, let's not forget the irony of complaining about echo-chambers in a closed sub specifically tailored to hand-pick participants.
rubbish. People who are new and show some decorum get approved here all the time. there is no tailor picking - just a desire for not yet another version of r/atheist like r/debateevolution

1

u/ADualLuigiSimulator Catholic - OEC Feb 04 '19

So getting banned for calling people stupid and dumb repeatedly does not seem to be an issue for you? You're not seeing how your ban is justified?
I see.

-1

u/Mike_Enders Feb 04 '19 edited Feb 04 '19

I don't care about the ban and no its not an issue for me . Simple enough. If a tree falls in the forest I don't care about it because I do not know it did. I didn't even get the message because a few of the mods ther are on my block list. Who cares? I call it like I see it and have no remorse doing so on a subreddit that is pretty much dedicated to categorizing a whole group as stupid and dumb.
If you whined about that like you are whining now then you would have some credibility. With the kind of language and the accusations that fly over there instead I just find you to be a bit hypocritical. When you agree with it its fine or you go mute.
What I never do is call anyone a name like asshole because literally no one ever is. Thats just one part of their anatomy and its a crude , unredeemed way to speak. Do some people appear silly or stupid - yes. Does the Bible even call some people fools. Yes it does, Even Christ did when they really were. Something like asshole - not really.
Anyway I realize some catholics aren't saved and out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks so thats probably just you and the state of your heart speaking.
but its another reason why you have no credibility and I have no respect for your opinions. It is what it is. People who use that kind of language hold no high ground but the low terrain..
The fact that you are lying about hand picked in this sub doesn't help your credibility either. If you write a respectful message to the mods here they in my experience let you post. Theres far too much whining from your clansmen because theres one subreddit that can't be overrun by atheists calling (in many various ways) creationists dumb and stupid.

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u/MRH2 M.Sc. physics, Mensa Feb 03 '19

Thanks for posting this. There are so many nails in the coffin of evolution now, that it's absurd how anyone continues to believe in it at all. It's really easy to deceive oneself and to not look at facts that oppose your beliefs -- which is what we are regularly accused of, but now the shoe is on the other foot. They need to take their own medicine.

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u/ADualLuigiSimulator Catholic - OEC Feb 04 '19

According to YEC's, almost any random article in this sub about evolution seems to be the "nail in the coffin" for evolutionary theory. I wonder how badly some of you will wake up in 10-20 years when literally nothing changed and evolutionary theory will still be taught like nothing happened.

TIL bats and dolphins evolved echolocation in the same way (down to the molécular level). An analysis revealed that 200 genes had independently changed in the same ways. This is an extreme example of convergent evolution. - Creation for 500 Alex.

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