Why evolution is true

[Maeght]

...... so cannot become more complex as the ToE requires.

That is not a requirement of the ToE.

[Stranger]

I still think that new variants have less ability to adapt than their ancestors...

How do you know, and how are you going to define and measure "ability to adapt"?

...and so cannot become more complex as the ToE requires.

You really aren't paying attention, are you? The Theory of Evolution does not require such an increase.

For example if you put a population of negroid people in Scotland and do not allow them to have kids with white people, will their skin eventually turn white over many generations? Probably not. White and black people descended from something in-between, in whom there was the potential for white or black skin to develop.

Meanwhile, in the real world of evidence...

Comparisons between known skin pigmentation genes in chimpanzees and modern Africans show that dark skin evolved along with the loss of body hair about 1.2 million years ago and that this common ancestor had dark skin. Investigations into dark skinned populations in South Asia and Melanesia indicate that skin pigmentation in these populations is due to the preservation of this ancestral state and not due to new variations on a previously lightened population.

-- Human skin color

Rather than ignoring what you've already been told and making stuff up, I suggest again that you should consider why pretty much everybody who spends their lives studying this subject agrees that the Theory of Evolution is established way beyond reasonable doubt, and the tiny, tiny minority that don't, are obviously biased by religion.

[SteveH]

If they are random, then whatever changed can be changed again as Stranger has explained. If a DNA base A can mutate to a G, then there is no reason that it cannot mutate back to an A.

and that disproves definitively the nonsense about mutations only destroying information. If an original mutation destroys information, then the reversion (reverse mutation) must add information.

[Spud]

How do you know, and how are you going to define and measure "ability to adapt"?

Nine examples from the present which demonstrate that "when one looks at the evidence in the real world, stand-out examples of natural selection and mutations show a consistent loss or mere maintenance of genetic information, not the gains that microbes-to-man evolution requires:"
See:
https://creation.com/natural-selection-can-eliminate-never-create

You really aren't paying attention, are you? The Theory of Evolution does not require such an increase.

Perhaps not. The question is still, did all life arise from a common ancestor though.

Meanwhile, in the real world of evidence...

Comparisons between known skin pigmentation genes in chimpanzees and modern Africans show that dark skin evolved along with the loss of body hair about 1.2 million years ago and that this common ancestor had dark skin. Investigations into dark skinned populations in South Asia and Melanesia indicate that skin pigmentation in these populations is due to the preservation of this ancestral state and not due to new variations on a previously lightened population.

-- Human skin color

I know chimpanzees have pale skin, but what is the evidence that chimps and humans had a common ancestor?

"The most dramatic discovery concerned a gene known as MFSD12. Two mutations that decrease expression of this gene were found in high frequencies in people with the darkest skin. These variants arose about a half-million years ago, suggesting that human ancestors before that time may have had moderately dark skin, rather than the deep black hue created today by these mutations."
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/new-gene-variants-reveal-evolution-human-skin-color
My previous post may have been ill-informed, but may not have been inaccurate according to the above research. I have not seen any evidence that pale-skinned people would become dark over the generations if they were re-settled near the equator, nor that very dark-skinned people would become pale if they moved to high latitudes.

Rather than ignoring what you've already been told and making stuff up, I suggest again that you should consider why pretty much everybody who spends their lives studying this subject agrees that the Theory of Evolution is established way beyond reasonable doubt, and the tiny, tiny minority that don't, are obviously biased by religion.

You are pointing to DNA evidence that "these two genes look similar, so one must have duplicated millions of years ago to form the other", which is a bit of an assumption. Evidence from present day examples shows that mutations can help creatures adapt, but do nothing to make an offspring more complex.

[Stranger]

Nine examples from the present which demonstrate that "when one looks at the evidence in the real world, stand-out examples of natural selection and mutations show a consistent loss or mere maintenance of genetic information, not the gains that microbes-to-man evolution requires:"
See:
https://creation.com/natural-selection-can-eliminate-never-create

Well that's as disguising, ignorant and/or dishonest as I'd expect from a creationist site. A good part of the article went on about natural selection not being evolution and that natural selection can't create information - no shit.

Nobody thinks natural selection creates new variants, that's what mutation does - but you've read almost half of the article before they bother to tell you that. What follows is handwaving nonsense. It doesn't define 'genetic information' and it doesn't address the argument that if a mutation can go one way it can go the other, so any clam that mutations always reduce information is clearly false.

I'll point you again to CB102 which gives several references and points out that random variation maximises information (novelty - information is measured by 'unexpectedness') and that natural selection is the mechanism that eliminates (yes, that is what it does) non-adaptive variation and fixes adaptive variations. If evolution didn't happen, given random variation and natural selection, we'd have to be asking why not.

I'll also point you again to this: 'Why Evolution Is True'.

Rather than ignoring what you've already been told and making stuff up, I suggest again that you should consider why pretty much everybody who spends their lives studying this subject agrees that the Theory of Evolution is established way beyond reasonable doubt, and the tiny, tiny minority that don't, are obviously biased by religion.

You are pointing to DNA evidence that "these two genes look similar, so one must have duplicated millions of years ago to form the other", which is a bit of an assumption. Evidence from present day examples shows that mutations can help creatures adapt, but do nothing to make an offspring more complex.

Your comment doesn't appear to have anything to do with what I suggested you should consider. Your comment is also a gross misrepresentation of the genetic evidence.

Seriously Spud, do you think that the generations of people who have studied this subject, from all sorts of cultures and faiths, have all so totally misunderstood the evidence, and that some tiny band of religious fundamentalists, with a blindingly obvious vested interest, have seen through it? That's before we get to all the other science these people usually disagree with: physics, cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, archaeology, geology, and so on. The pretence that they are only disagreeing with "evolutionists" is a lie in itself.

PS - it's always a laugh (in a sickening sort of way) to search for "old light" on creationist sites, to see them tying themselves in knots trying to explain how we can literally see things that happened millions or billions of years ago, in a 6000 year old universe. How can anybody take these people seriously?

[Stranger]

You are pointing to DNA evidence that "these two genes look similar, so one must have duplicated millions of years ago to form the other", which is a bit of an assumption.

Here's an article on genetic evidence for you, from a publication called Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (September 2010).

Genesis and the genome: genomics evidence for human-ape common ancestry and ancestral hominid population sizes.(pdf)

It's quite long (13 pages) so here are some interesting snippets...

"Common ancestry also predicts that, beyond human-chimpanzee common ancestry, the common primate ancestor also shares ancestry with other vertebrates in the more distant past. For example, evolutionary theory predicts that humans, like all vertebrates, are descended from egg-laying ancestors. As with all placental mammals, humans do not use egg yolk as a source of nutrition for their embryos. Other vertebrates such as fish and birds do employ egg yolk, as do a small number of extant mammals such as the platypus.

One protein used as a yolk component in egg-laying vertebrates is the product of the vitellogenin gene. Since placental mammals are proposed to be descended from egg-laying ancestors, researchers recently investigated whether humans retained the remnants of the vitellogenin gene sequence in pseudo-gene form. To assist in their search, this group determined the location of the functional vitellogenin gene in the chicken genome, noted the identity of the genes flanking the vitellogenin sequence, and located these genes in the human genome. They found that these genes were present side-by-side and functional in the human genome; then they performed an examination of human sequence between them. As expected, the heavily mutated, pseudogenized sequence of the vitellogenin gene was present in the human genome at this precise location. The human genome thus contains the mutated remains of a gene devoted to egg yolk formation in egg-laying vertebrates at the precise location predicted by shared synteny derived from common ancestry.

While the vitellogenin pseudogene is compelling, it is but one example of thousands that could be given. For example, there are hundreds of genes used for the sense of smell (olfactory receptor genes) in the human genome that have become pseudogenes. Moreover, many of these pseudogenes have identical inactivating mutations shared among humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. Furthermore, determining degrees of relatedness solely based on genomes that share identical inactivating mutations in olfactory receptor pseudogenes, independently arranges humans as most closely related to chimpanzees (most errors in common), and less so with gorillas (fewer errors in common), and even less with orangutans (fewer still errors in common). Additionally, no "out of place" pseudogenes were found in this study: pseudogenes with identical inactivating mutations common to humans and gorillas were also present with the identical mutation in chimpanzees; mutations common to humans and orangutans were present in chimpanzees and gorillas.

This pattern is precisely what common ancestry predicts for these species, since an identical mutation present in two species is most readily explained by its presence in the common ancestor of both species. The common ancestor of humans and gorillas is also the common ancestor of chimpanzees, hence inactivating mutations present in humans and gorillas are also predicted to be present in chimpanzees. In short, the existence of shared pseudogenes between primate genomes, their syntenic locations, and their patterns of inactivation and distribution all coherently support the same model of common ancestry based on comparative sequence homology criteria alone."

...

"...what we observe, time and again, is that genetic codes in organisms thought to be close evolutionary relatives based on nongenetic criteria, match at the nucleotide as well as at the amino acid levels. This is precisely what common ancestry predicts, since the hypothesis is that similar organisms once were the same species with identical genomes. From an anticommon ancestry design perspective, this pattern is problematic. It suggests that the designer was unwilling (or worse, unable) to avoid the overwhelming appearance of shared ancestry when implementing design for what, in fact, are separately created organisms."

...

"In summary, homology, redundancy, synteny, and shared pseudogenes are independent lines of genomics-based evidence that converge on a single conclusion: humans are not biologically independent, de novo creations, but share common ancestry with other forms of life. Moreover, attempts to account for genomics evidence from an anticommonancestry ID, common-design viewpoint are enormously strained and severely ad hoc. While each line of evidence is individually problematic from an anticommon-descent, common-design standpoint, their combined, cohesive pattern is devastating."

[Dicky Underpants]

"As expected, the heavily mutated, pseudogenized sequence of the vitellogenin gene was present in the human genome at this precise location. The human genome thus contains the mutated remains of a gene devoted to egg yolk formation in egg-laying vertebrates at the precise location predicted by shared synteny derived from common ancestry."

I'd like to go  off at a bit of a tangent here, but it does involve the ancestry of certain life-forms which interest me - the fungi. Long thought to be strange plants, they have more recently been allocated a complete kingdom of their own. More interestingly, they do show certain similarities with huge sections of the animal kingdom. Unlike plants, their cells contain the substance chitin, which is only otherwise found in the exoskeletons of arthropods and certain bivalve molluscs. It may well be that the creator chose to make them like this, but it seems rather more likely that the fungi and the creatures mentioned had a common ancestor somewhere in the incredibly ancient past.

Furthermore, without the evolution of certain types of fungi, life in the Carboniferous period would have ground to a standstill, and life nowadays would have been very very different. The trees of the period had developed a very tough and stable substance known as lignin, and there were no organisms in the early Carboniferous which were able to break this down - with the result that the planet was littered with the relatively unchanged forms of dead trees. And eventually - no doubt over millions of years - certain types of fungi evolved which were able to break down lignin , and allow the basic constituents of the trees to be recycled  - and thus life was able to evolve with greater diversity once again.
Or maybe God made the lignin-destroying fungi in an instant?

[torridon]

Furthermore, without the evolution of certain types of fungi, life in the Carboniferous period would have ground to a standstill, and life nowadays would have been very very different. The trees of the period had developed a very tough and stable substance known as lignin, and there were no organisms in the early Carboniferous which were able to break this down - with the result that the planet was littered with the relatively unchanged forms of dead trees. And eventually - no doubt over millions of years - certain types of fungi evolved which were able to break down lignin , and allow the basic constituents of the trees to be recycled  - and thus life was able to evolve with greater diversity once again.
Or maybe God made the lignin-destroying fungi in an instant?

Yes, that is why the Carboniferous is a thing.  The evolution of lignin in the absence of any fungal capable of digesting it led to runaway tree growth and this situation ran for 60 million years before fungi evolved to be able to break it down, restoring some balance to ecosystems and hence bringing an end of the Carboniferous.

[Harrowby Hall]

Is the persistence of lignin the reason why coal measures were laid down?

[torridon]

Is the persistence of lignin the reason why coal measures were laid down?

Yes there is a relationship, most of the world's major coal deposits were laid down during the conditions of the Carboniferous.  It might not be the whole story, though, more coal deposits were laid down during the Cenozoic. As often with science, there is more than one theory around the formation of coal.