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The Average Human Has 60 New Genetic Mutations
mcgrew pointed out a story about a new study that found the average person is born with 60 genetic mutations, very few of which involve weather manipulation or an amazing healing factor. This number was less than expected, leading the researchers to believe human evolution happens more slowly than previously thought. From the article: "Sixty mutations may sound like a lot, but according to the international team of geneticists behind the new research, it is actually fewer than expected. 'We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child,' Philip Awadalla, a geneticist at the University of Montreal who co-led the project, said in a press release. 'Our genetic study, the first of its kind, shows that actually much fewer mistakes, or mutations, are made.'
...before a little girl passes through a wall at the federal reserve!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Mutations, smutations! Everyone knows that evolution is bunk and that humans were created in their current, perfect form just 6000 years ago.
My intuition tells me they're missing something. I've always felt that mutation rates among stressed organisms would be a lot higher than among healthy sucessful organisms. Again, intuitively, not scientifically, from a "selfish gene" perspective, an organism that generated more mutations in its offspring when it wasn't doing well would be more likely to have ANY of its genes passed on to future generations, while an organism doing well would mutate less.
From a simpler perspective: more viruses, more bacteria, more cell damage all make mutations of some kind more likely as well. Mutations are copy-errors, and a cell under stress would be less able to error-correct its genes.
None of this has a hypothesis I'd be willing to put out, but I think studying first world humans misses some possible independent variables.
I know this is probably going to go down in flames, but exactly how do creationists deal with this sort of finding? Answers from actual creationists preferred...
It's the evolution of intelligent design: iterative design. The X-Men might actually exist had God opted for an Agile design process.
But you're assuming that mistakes are detrimental. Mutations are, by definition, a mistake in the genetic copying process.
No!
The main difference between you and your brother aren't mutations, but which part of your DNA you get from your mother and which part from your father.
(I'm not a biologist/geneticist.)
In terms of a DNA sequence making an exact copy of itself, yes they are mistakes (that is the very definition of a mutation). Whether that mistake turns out to be beneficial to the organism or not is a separate issue.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"Sixty mutations may sound like a lot, but according to the international team of geneticists behind the new research, it is actually fewer than expected. 'We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child"
Don't worry, most parents are going out of their way to make up the difference and then surpass it.
The problem is that the human brain really likes to put things into categories. That is an hamster, but that over there is not. Just because that is the way the human brain likes to work doesn't mean that it's a universal truth. Species do not exist as a phenomenon outside of the human brain. Trying to decide where one species starts and another species ends is like picking two points of the visual spectrum at random as new colors and then arguing over where one starts and the other stops. Sure, if you look at one color and then the other, you can tell that they're different, but if how do you decide where the cutoff point is? Any point you choose is going to be arbitrary because your starting points were arbitrary. The same is true for organisms.
There are organisms which are genetically similar enough to allow for viable offspring, and organisms that are not. But even that can't magically create an immutable category, everything inside of which is a hamster and everything outside of which isn't.
Simple. They claim that mutations are always harmful to the organism and it's descendants.
When biologists show them examples of beneficial mutations happening in nature and in the lab, the creationists change their claim to that mutations are statistically speaking almost always harmful and that therefore the sum over time of mutation upon mutation will always be harmful to a population (and by doing so they prove that they don't understand the process of iterated natural selection).
When biologists show them many examples of how species have adapted to changing environmental conditions the creationists agree that populations can mutate and develop in beneficial ways, but claim that the changes are always small and that over really long periods of time the change always gravitates around the God-given species equilibrium. The creationists call this "microevolution".
When biologists show them examples of massive evolutionary change such as the chain of fossils of the transition from a land-living animal to whales, the creationists begin to write sophistry about "irreducible complexity" and information "theory" and claim that there's a science called "intelligent design".
When biologists show them that irreducible complexity is not observed in nature and point out that complexity is observed to arise spontaneously in thermodynamic processes such as for example the formation of snowflakes, the creationists will surely come up with some other dumb crap. This is the stage we're at right now, so I don't know what it'll be, although a stupid idea known as "specified complexity" seems likely to become popular. These guys are completely immune to knowledge, so rest assure that there will be something new.
Serendipity is the art of making useful mistakes. Nature is 100% serendipitous.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...mistakes make you! ...as, indeed, they do everywhere else...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I also believe the universe and everything in it was created by an omnipotent being with a specific intent a relatively short time ago. I get that from the protestant christian Bible, and my best understanding of it.
I intellectually manage that by remembering three things: 1) We don't know everything about the physical universe. 2) We don't understand everything in the Bible. 3) We don't really know what happens when something is created from nothing, but wouldn't it make sense that whatever is created comes into existence at a specific age? I think it's called the "Ideal Age" theory or something like that in philosophy/theology.
I thought about that little further. If you'd seen Adam 5 minutes after he was created you'd think, "He's an adult male, probably 20-30 years old." And you'd be right. He's a 20-30 year old male that's only been around for 5 minutes. He'd bear every mark of having been born and matured like any human, because he really was an adult. If you'd look at the universe you'd say, "It's about 13-15 billion years old." And you'd be right. It's a 13-15 billion year old universe that's been around for a few thousand years, bearing every mark of a universe coming from a big bang complete with background radiation, dark matter, rate of expansion, the whole deal. Earth itself bears every mark that a 4.5 billion year old life-bearing planet would have; a fossil record, evidence of cyclic ice ages, etc, because it is a 4.5 billion year old life-bearing planet. It came into existence at that age.
Some Creationists say that God planted the fossils and other geological evidence to "test our faith" and I don't buy that. Doing so wouldn't be consistent with what we can see of God's nature -- consistency and truth (with one or two curious exceptions in the Bible). It's not an illusion or a trick; it's reality. It looks old because it is old. I don't think the age of the universe was ever meant to test anything, except maybe the egos of the people who think they have to be right about everything in the Bible.
But, to more directly answer the parent's post, wouldn't fewer mutations argue against evolution anyway? Don't we need, now, a lot more time for our species to evolve? And are we sure the rate of mutation has been constant, anyway? I still think it's an interesting discovery, anyway.
Apologies for throwing fuel on what will just end up being another flame war....
No, that empirically does not work on this subject. That is how scientists around the country tried to deal with the problem for 50 years and at the end of that half century there were more people against the teaching of evolution than there were at the beginning of it. The problem is that for every troll, there is an actual creationist out there who believes what they are saying (which, IMO, makes them uneducated, but not a troll). Leaving these people to their own devices just sets them up in an echo chamber of their own misunderstandings until we end up in a situation where decision makers believe this nonsense. Then you have school boards, text book publishers, even presidential nominees who will state proudly that they don't believe in evolution. At the very least, I will voice my disagreement to make it clear that there are those who disagree, those that will hear the proud statement of a candidate's ignorance and irrevocably put them on the 'will not vote for' list.
So please, if you see someone politely, non-aggressively stating their misunderstandings, correct them politely and non-aggressively. If it's a troll, you won't have given them the satisfaction of making you angry because you will have been polite. If it's someone who actually believes what they are saying maybe, just maybe, you'll convince them to take another look at what they believe. Even if they don't believe what they are saying, someone reading it probably does, and if you can convince just a single person to rethink the subject it is, IMO, worth the 2 minutes it took to write out a reasoned, polite response.
Actually, nature doesn't make mistakes. It just does stuff. Some of the stuff works, some of it doesn't. The stuff that works we consider "evolved." The stuff that doesn't we consider "politicians".
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Intelligent Design is a branded version of Creationism with certain things obfuscated (like who the creator was) in order to try and fool people into believing it is science. It is the lowest of the low, sleazy backhanded way of trying to trick people.
The creationist tenet that there is no speciation has recently been demonstrated false in fruitflies. Genetic mutations occurred that rendered two different strains unable to interbreed and produce viable offspring. On this basis, they are now two species. Since they cannot share DNA, they are bound to continue diverge significantly after enough generations have passed.
It's not quite that simple. See ring species for one example where that categorization breaks down.
You've posted in this discussion so your mod points are no good here.
Free Martian Whores!
The answer is simple. A recent study (did I see it here?) showed that bible literalists and athiests have smaller hippocampuses than agnostics, protestants, and Catholics. There's no point in arguing with someone who has a shrunken hippocampus.
Unless God has evidenced himself to you, the only logical choice is agnosticism, since there can be no proof one way or the other. Keep in mind that once you've seen an elephant you can't disbelieve elephants existance. "You're crazy, you just hallucinated that elephant! Was it pink?"
Free Martian Whores!