Tim Buktu wrote this in Ann Coulter’s chatroom:
In his book, “Shattering the Myths Of Darwinism”, Richard Milton says this about mutation:
No one has ever observed a spontaneous inheritable genetic mutation that resulted in a changed physical characterisitc, aside, that is, from a small group of well-known and usually fatal genetic defects. Because no one has ever observed such an event, no one really knows whether they occur at all and, if so, how often. Because deleterious mutations ae known to occur, Darwinists appeal to the statistics of large numbers. If deleterious mutations can occur, then given enough time beneficial mutations can occur. There is no evidence for this claim.
And, in a preceding paragraph:
Julian Huxley estimated that the rate of inheritable mutation was around one in every million births. French biologist Jacques Monod estimated the rate at one in ten thousand births. The reason for this diversity of opinion between the professsor of zoology at Kings’ College, London, and the Director of Paris’s Pasteur Institute is simple: it is because the beneficicial spontaneous genetic mutation remains no more than a hypothetical neccesity to the neo-Darwinist theory.
Hardly shattering. Darwin was writing about a completely different form of mutations.
Define “spontaneous inheritable mutation”?
In fact, mutations are happening all the time in every organism. Whether or not that actually affects the health of the subject. When it comes to mutations, there are millions of possible outcomes all across the globe. The inheritable mutation might be only one in a million, and the outcome of that inherited mutation might be benign or active. If it is benign, nothing changes. If active, there is a chance that it benefits the offspring in some tiny way, or it kills the offspring(s) which ends the mutation’s inheritance capabilities. For humans exposed to any number of chemicals and/or radiation after the childbearing years will not pass on a cancer gene. They may pass on a susceptability to cancer gene that they themselves suffer from. All I’m saying is that the odds of a single mutation being visable in the offspring of any organism is a billion to one at best. That’s why sponntaneous inhertible mutations have not observed.
It occurs to me that Dawrin was not touting spontaneous mutations but was writing about environmental mutations. Creatures either adapt or die to slowly or subtly changing environments. I’m not talking about huge upheavals such as asteroids or volcanos and such, I’m talking about slow changes in the environment or even a species in a new environment not too different from and isolated from the other members of the species. The creatures that procreate the fastest will adapt the quickest. Each generation must either be better at their parents at surviving the new environment if they want to procreate.
Have you ever seen a one back-legged cricket? When male crickets fight for mates, the loser is the one that gets a leg bitten off. That’s loser’s genetic history ends right there. Without a leg, the cricket can not sound off to get a mate. The cricket with both legs will spawn a certian percentage of offspring that are as rough and tough as he is. If a male cricket is never challanged to a fight where he may have lost a leg, his offspring will carry on his half of the genetic thread. Whether that results in stronger or weaker can only be calculated when the offspring start mating.
There is one more thing. I read somewhere on NewScientist about a mathmaticion that claimed to prove that evolution was not as random as some people think.
Example: Say you are handed a 24 alpha character string and are told to find the correct code to decipher a document. But you have a spy that tells you which character is correct as you work the problem. After you are informed that a character is correct, there are only 23 characters left to decode. As each correct letter is found, the possible permutations continue to shrink.
In evolution, survival is the spy. The creatures that carry a correct gene have one less gentic hurdle to overcome. Since that particular gene was a success, it literaly drops out of the evolution equation going forward. At each successful mutation, the number of permutions drops again.
Here is one of my favorite saying that I made up;
Evolution is creatures adapting to the environment they find themselves in.
Intelligence is creatures changing the environment they find themselves in.