(January 19, 2017 at 10:32 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

Quote:Sanford’s Genetic Entropy, on the other hand, is simply wrong from beginning to end. It misrepresents everything it touches: beneficial and deleterious mutations, gene duplication, natural selection, and synergistic epistasis. In all these areas, Sanford avoids engaging the large body of work which directly refutes his viewpoint, and instead cherry-picks a few references that seem to point his way, usually misinterpreting them in the process.

https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/stan-4/

Quote:Sanford repeatedly asserts that mutations, by which he seems to mean simple point substitutions or single point insertion/deletion events, do not increase net information. That is generally true for point substitutions or indels, but irrelevant. By “increase net information” I assume Sanford means “increase size of the functional genome” or “increase the number of distinct genes.”  This obviously will not be accomplished by just substituting one amino acid for another at a given point.

However, there is a whole other class of mutations which are common and which do increase genomic size. These are duplications and insertions of genetic material, ranging from small chunks of DNA to complete genes and to duplication of entire genomes.  As usual with major mutations, most of these duplication/insertion events will be deleterious to the organism, but a small fraction will be beneficial, and some will be effectively neutral. In my letter of July [“STAN 3”] I cited three studies showing beneficial gene duplications [9, 40, 41]. Gene duplication followed by further, normal mutations provides a clear path to increasing genomic complexity. Creationists are unable to demonstrate that this path is not viable. This rebuts their claim that natural causes are inadequate to account for the increase in genomic complexity in the evolution of vertebrates from simpler organisms.

https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/stan-4/

More creationist claptrap.

Dr Sanford has responded ; 

  I do not normally spend my time responding to bloggers, but several people have asked me to respond to Scott Buchanan’s polemic1 against my book Genetic Entropy. This article is a one-time clarification as I cannot afford the time to be drawn into the blog-o-sphere and its associated ‘death by a thousand emails’.

Scott’s lengthy essay is certainly not an objective review of my book; it is an ideological attack based upon a commitment to the standard Darwinian theory. He does not acknowledge any of the legitimate concerns I raise regarding the Darwinian process, not even the many points widely acknowledged by my fellow geneticists. Shouldn’t even ardent Darwinists honestly acknowledge the known problems with current Darwinian theory? I will only briefly touch on each of his arguments.

Scott gives his arguments in this order:

First, he claims, that my book is all about deliberate deception, and I am fundamentally a liar (but perhaps I am otherwise a nice Christian man).
He then spends three pages expressing how annoyed he is with the exact way in which I cite a Kimura reference—as I try to make clear the actual distribution of mutational effects.
He argues that, while beneficial mutations are rare, they are not as rare as I suggest. Since beneficial mutations clearly happen, and since adaptation clearly happens, he imagines the Primary Axiom—that man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection—must then obviously be true.
The Primary Axiom:

Man is merely the product of random mutations plus natural selection.

Scott cites a series of flawed ‘mutation accumulation’ experiments, which he thinks demonstrate extremely high rates of beneficial mutation.
He points out that duplications can have real biological consequences.
He also points out that we cannot generally see measurable degeneration in extended lab experiments. He argues that, if I were correct, then in just the last few thousand years all forms of life having short life cycles (bacteria, mice) should have gone extinct. Since we do not see obvious degeneration happening, the Primary Axiom must be true, according to him.
Scott suggests that, since human life spans have increased in the last several centuries, this proves that man is not degenerating.
He argues that Crow’s conclusion that the human race is presently degenerating at 1–2% per generation2 does not mean he stopped being faithful to the Primary Axiom.
He also argues that synergistic epistasis3 really happens (at least to some extent), and cites those who feel this might aid in mutation elimination.
Finally, he casually dismisses all the papers I cite in Appendix 1 of my book, where the leaders of the population genetics field acknowledge all of the basic problems with the Primary Axiom.
It seems to me that Scott makes his arguments in the wrong order, starting with the trivial, and at the end simply waving off the most crucial issue.

Let me begin by going to the very end of my book (Appendix 1), where I quote key papers written by the leading experts within the field of population genetics. Scott refers to this as my “final shotgun-blast of misrepresentation to the gullible reader”. This seems grossly unfair, since I am simply quoting the leaders in the field where they acknowledge major aspects of my thesis. In my introduction to that section, I am careful NOT to imply that those scientists would agree with my personal viewpoint, but I point out that they all very clearly acknowledge the major problems which I outline in my book regarding the Primary Axiom.

[img=200x0]http://creation.com/images/fp_articles/2013/9164-mutational-meltdown.jpg[/img]
These experts in the field provide strong support for all the main points of my book …

1. Is man presently degenerating genetically? It would seem so, according the papers by Muller, Neal, Kondrashov, Nachman/Crowell, Walker/Keightley, Crow, Lynch et al., Howell, Loewe and also myself (in press). Scott suggests this is foolishness and dismisses the Crow paper (1–2% fitness decline per generation). But Kondrashov, an evolutionist who is an expert on this subject, has advised me that virtually all the human geneticists he knows agree that man is degenerating genetically. The most definitive findings were published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Lynch.4 That paper indicates human fitness is declining at 3–5% per generation. I personally feel the average mutational effect on fitness is much more subtle than Lynch does—so I think the rate of human degeneration is much slower than he suggests—but we at least agree that fitness is going down, not up. Can Scott find any qualified geneticist who asserts man is NOT now degenerating genetically? There is really no debate on current human genetic degeneration—Scott is 100% wrong here, and is simply not well informed.
   virtually all the human geneticists he knows agree that man is degenerating genetically
   
   
2. Is there a theoretical problem associated with continuously growing genetic load due to subtle un-selectable deleterious mutations? Yes, according to Muller, Kondrashov, Loewe, and many others. Population geneticists all seem to acknowledge the fact that a large fraction of deleterious mutations are too subtle to be effectively selected away. The question is, what is that fraction? At what point does the fitness effect of a deleterious mutation become too small to be selected away? I have been studying this for about 7 years. Our numerical simulations indicate that for higher organisms, up to 90% of all deleterious mutations should be un-selectable (in press). This manuscript was previously sent to Scott, but it seems he did not read it. Can Scott explain away this theoretical problem?
   
   
3. What is Dr. Ohta’s view on genetic degeneration? Dr. Tomoko Ohta was a key student of Kimura, and published extensively with Kimura. Dr Ohta came to be known as the ‘Queen of Population Genetics’, and is now an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. She is the world’s authority on the topic of near-neutral mutations. One of my co-authors went to Japan to spend several days discussing with her a manuscript in which we used numerical simulation to clearly demonstrate that near-neutral deleterious mutations generally escape selective removal and lead to continuous and linear accumulation of genetic damage. She acknowledged that our numerical simulations appeared to be valid, and that our conclusions appeared to be valid. This clearly reflects a profound evolutionary paradox (it is the same paradox Kondrashov addressed in his paper “why have we not died 100 times over?”5). When asked about synergistic epistasis, she immediately acknowledged that synergistic epistasis should make the problem worse, not better, just as I argue in my book. Using numerical simulations, we have confirmed that synergistic epistasis fails to slow mutation accumulation and accelerates genetic decline (in press). I think Dr. Ohta would like me to clarify that she is a faithful Darwinist and remains committed to the Primary Axiom, and that she is in fact hostile to the thesis of my book.
   
   
4. The other quotes: I encourage Scott to read all the other quotes in the appendix. It is clear that the leading population geneticists have recognized major theoretical problems with the Primary Axiom for a long time. Why try to deny this?
   

Scott and I corresponded briefly before his posting, and I tried to explain to him why his criticisms were not correct. I did not find him to be a very good listener as I tried to explain how he was misrepresenting me. I then sent him a series of preprints (in press), which extensively and conclusively addressed all his objections. Upon reading his essay now, I can see he did not bother reading those preprints, which are very rigorously written scientific research papers. I also see from his current arguments, that he really did not give my book a fair read. If Scott has misrepresented both the book and myself, then which of us is lacking in integrity?

Dr J Sanford


Emphasis mine.

Dr Sanford's full rebuttal; please Google "Critic ignores reality of Genetic Entropy"

Quote:I did not and do not dispute that James Crow and other scholars have expressed the belief that human genomes are deteriorating, but that pertains to MODERN TIMES ONLY. They state clearly that the reason they believe the human genome is deteriorating is that the world, especially the more industrialized segment, is now running something like a mutation accumulation experiment, with few children per family, and with these children kept alive by medical interventions, and with new chemical mutagens around. They do not believe that human genomes were deteriorating before now. Thus, this in no way supports Dr. Sanford’s key claim that all genomes are deteriorating all the time. James Crow has gone on record to clarify that “My comments had to do with only the recent past (a few thousand years).”

As I noted in STAN-4, in his first reference to Crow (p. 45), Dr. Sanford acknowledges that Crow bases his concern on recent relaxed natural selection. However, that crucial factor is omitted in his subsequent references to Crow, which gives the impression that Crow agrees with Sanford that mutation accumulation is a general problem for the human race. Over a hundred pages later, in pp. 171-172, Dr. Sanford selects a whole page’s worth of quotes from Crow, focusing on the most alarming sentences. Dr. Sanford’s commentary is that Crow’s speculations amount to “an amazing confession about the reality of genomic degeneration.” This implies that Crow’s work in some way supports Sanford’s contention that the human genome is inevitably declining, with or without natural selection in operation. That is grossly misleading, but as of March, 2013, Dr. Sanford still does not admit that.

The same goes for most of the other references cited by Dr. Sanford where he cites all sorts of dire quotes about genomic deterioration. Either they, like Crow, are simply noting that if you turn off natural selection in humans you get mutation accumulation, or they are observing that whatever simplistic genetics model they are working with did not match reality (i.e. the models showed uncontrollable buildup of deleterious mutations). Dr. Sanford’s mistake is to believe the model instead of observed reality. The proper response for a physical scientist is to fix his model.

https://letterstocreationists.wordpress....n_entropy/

---

Quote:As a creationist Sanford is perhaps most famous for his arguments for devolution, for instance in his 2005 book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome, the idea being that mutations and natural selection do not account for the information in the human genome and that instead of evolution these mechanisms are causing devolution in accordance with the myth of the Fall (also here). Indeed, one of his main pieces of evidence for devolution is the decline in lifespans among Noah’s descendants, as described in the Bible – according to Sanford this “is one of the strongest, as a scientist, one of the strongest evidences for me that Scripture is telling us, not speaking figuratively, not speaking creatively, but telling us history. And it speaks of a decline.” Indeed. No paper promoting Sanford’s concept of “genetic entropy” has ever made it through peer review (though it made it into Don Batten’s 101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe).

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2014/0...nford.html

(January 19, 2017 at 6:02 pm)Pulse Wrote: The Documentary "Expelled; No Intelligence Allowed" exposes the well funded, draconian, Nazi-like grip on power that Materialists have on science these days.

So you are telling us that you endorse Ben Stein's conclusions? Ben Stein who is a Jew and does not recognize Jesus as divine and sees Christianity as a fraud?
So you also then see Jesus as a fake and total fraud.

Dear, sweet Uncle Loki -- What a steaming load of pretentious pseudo-scientific tosh!

Pulse, if your knowledge of Christianity is even remotely as bad as your knowledge of biology, I think you've probably committed the Unforgivable Sin (Mark 3:28-29) at least half a dozen times by now without knowing it. If *I* were the Holy Spook, at very least I'd give you one heck of a smack upside the head for being wilfully ignorant.

Suffice to say that I *never* want to end up like you.

(January 19, 2017 at 11:51 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

Quote:I did not and do not dispute that James Crow and other scholars have expressed the belief that human genomes are deteriorating, but that pertains to MODERN TIMES ONLY. They state clearly that the reason they believe the human genome is deteriorating is that the world, especially the more industrialized segment, is now running something like a mutation accumulation experiment, with few children per family, and with these children kept alive by medical interventions, and with new chemical mutagens around. They do not believe that human genomes were deteriorating before now. Thus, this in no way supports Dr. Sanford’s key claim that all genomes are deteriorating all the time. James Crow has gone on record to clarify that “My comments had to do with only the recent past (a few thousand years).”

As I noted in STAN-4, in his first reference to Crow (p. 45), Dr. Sanford acknowledges that Crow bases his concern on recent relaxed natural selection. However, that crucial factor is omitted in his subsequent references to Crow, which gives the impression that Crow agrees with Sanford that mutation accumulation is a general problem for the human race. Over a hundred pages later, in pp. 171-172, Dr. Sanford selects a whole page’s worth of quotes from Crow, focusing on the most alarming sentences. Dr. Sanford’s commentary is that Crow’s speculations amount to “an amazing confession about the reality of genomic degeneration.” This implies that Crow’s work in some way supports Sanford’s contention that the human genome is inevitably declining, with or without natural selection in operation. That is grossly misleading, but as of March, 2013, Dr. Sanford still does not admit that.

The same goes for most of the other references cited by Dr. Sanford where he cites all sorts of dire quotes about genomic deterioration. Either they, like Crow, are simply noting that if you turn off natural selection in humans you get mutation accumulation, or they are observing that whatever simplistic genetics model they are working with did not match reality (i.e. the models showed uncontrollable buildup of deleterious mutations). Dr. Sanford’s mistake is to believe the model instead of observed reality. The proper response for a physical scientist is to fix his model.

https://letterstocreationists.wordpress....n_entropy/

---

Quote:As a creationist Sanford is perhaps most famous for his arguments for devolution, for instance in his 2005 book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome, the idea being that mutations and natural selection do not account for the information in the human genome and that instead of evolution these mechanisms are causing devolution in accordance with the myth of the Fall (also here). Indeed, one of his main pieces of evidence for devolution is the decline in lifespans among Noah’s descendants, as described in the Bible – according to Sanford this “is one of the strongest, as a scientist, one of the strongest evidences for me that Scripture is telling us, not speaking figuratively, not speaking creatively, but telling us history. And it speaks of a decline.” Indeed. No paper promoting Sanford’s concept of “genetic entropy” has ever made it through peer review (though it made it into Don Batten’s 101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe).

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2014/0...nford.html

Sorry, but the authors you so readily rely on misrepresent Dr Sanford and are wrong again; These are just a sample of papers dealing with Genetic Entropy and there's plenty more ;

The most definitive findings were published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by Lynch. That paper indicates human fitness is declining at 3–5% per generation. 

Crow, J., The high spontaneous mutation rate: Is it a health risk? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94(16):8380–8386,1997; pnas.org/content/94/16/8380.

Lynch, M., Rate, molecular spectrum, and consequences of human mutation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(3):961–968, 2010

Kondrashov, A., Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? Journal of Theoretical Biology 175(4):583–594, 1995


Carter, R. and Sanford, J., A new look at an old virus: patterns of mutation accumulation in the human H1N1 influenza virus since 1918, Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling 9(42):1–19, 2012.

See Sanford, J. and Nelson, C., The Next Step in Understanding Population Dynamics: Comprehensive Numerical Simulation, Chapter 7 (pages 117–135) in: Carmen Fusté, M. (Ed.), Studies in Population Genetics, InTech, 2012.

I think you should rethink your deep faith in Scott ; " Scott’s lengthy essay is certainly not an objective review of my book; it is an ideological attack based upon a commitment to the standard Darwinian theory. He does not acknowledge any of the legitimate concerns I raise regarding the Darwinian process, not even the many points widely acknowledged by my fellow geneticists." Dr J. Sanford.


BTW could you please post Scott Buchanan's qualifications, his misrepresentation of academics is making me somewhat suspicious. 

And regarding the second Blogger you keep citing (As if Bloggers are some type of authority in your eyes), His name is G.D and in the About Me section there's nothing, please provide me with this Anonymous persons qualifications.

So you don't have a response to Buchanan's rebuttal. Big shock.

Pulse, you are contradicting yourself: you want to make us believe that Jesus created the world and yet at the same time you are using sources like Ben Stein who thinks that Jesus didn't even exist.

Now tell us why would we even talk to a fool like you who doesn't even know in which fairy made-up being he believes?

(January 19, 2017 at 11:51 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:

Quote:I did not and do not dispute that James Crow and other scholars have expressed the belief that human genomes are deteriorating, but that pertains to MODERN TIMES ONLY. They state clearly that the reason they believe the human genome is deteriorating is that the world, especially the more industrialized segment, is now running something like a mutation accumulation experiment, with few children per family, and with these children kept alive by medical interventions, and with new chemical mutagens around. They do not believe that human genomes were deteriorating before now. Thus, this in no way supports Dr. Sanford’s key claim that all genomes are deteriorating all the time. James Crow has gone on record to clarify that “My comments had to do with only the recent past (a few thousand years).”

As I noted in STAN-4, in his first reference to Crow (p. 45), Dr. Sanford acknowledges that Crow bases his concern on recent relaxed natural selection. However, that crucial factor is omitted in his subsequent references to Crow, which gives the impression that Crow agrees with Sanford that mutation accumulation is a general problem for the human race. Over a hundred pages later, in pp. 171-172, Dr. Sanford selects a whole page’s worth of quotes from Crow, focusing on the most alarming sentences. Dr. Sanford’s commentary is that Crow’s speculations amount to “an amazing confession about the reality of genomic degeneration.” This implies that Crow’s work in some way supports Sanford’s contention that the human genome is inevitably declining, with or without natural selection in operation. That is grossly misleading, but as of March, 2013, Dr. Sanford still does not admit that.

The same goes for most of the other references cited by Dr. Sanford where he cites all sorts of dire quotes about genomic deterioration. Either they, like Crow, are simply noting that if you turn off natural selection in humans you get mutation accumulation, or they are observing that whatever simplistic genetics model they are working with did not match reality (i.e. the models showed uncontrollable buildup of deleterious mutations). Dr. Sanford’s mistake is to believe the model instead of observed reality. The proper response for a physical scientist is to fix his model.

https://letterstocreationists.wordpress....n_entropy/

---

Quote:As a creationist Sanford is perhaps most famous for his arguments for devolution, for instance in his 2005 book Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome, the idea being that mutations and natural selection do not account for the information in the human genome and that instead of evolution these mechanisms are causing devolution in accordance with the myth of the Fall (also here). Indeed, one of his main pieces of evidence for devolution is the decline in lifespans among Noah’s descendants, as described in the Bible – according to Sanford this “is one of the strongest, as a scientist, one of the strongest evidences for me that Scripture is telling us, not speaking figuratively, not speaking creatively, but telling us history. And it speaks of a decline.” Indeed. No paper promoting Sanford’s concept of “genetic entropy” has ever made it through peer review (though it made it into Don Batten’s 101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe).

http://americanloons.blogspot.com/2014/0...nford.html

Wow.  The guy is a pathetic loser.  Wouldn't want to be that guy's supporter.

(January 19, 2017 at 9:23 pm)Pulse Wrote: Please google Has evolution really been observed? on the Creation dot com website for much more evidence which you will obviously ignore point blank, with no credible rebuttal of any type whatsoever.

Please read a book on evolution from a genuine peer reviewed scientist.

I'll respond to your lengthy cut and paste job about GAs after I get back from work. I've only just woken up. Needless to say it's all wrong and easily debunked.

(January 20, 2017 at 12:56 am)Jörmungandr Wrote:

So you don't have a response to Buchanan's rebuttal.  Big shock.

Unfortunately your duplicity betrays you, you still haven't answered who G.D. is but you post his "opinions" about academics as if it was Gospel. 

And you still haven't posted Buchanan's qualifications, or realised that he is An Evengelical Christian, and often quotes the Bible in his rebuttals in the comments section where there is plenty of dissent from his "opinions". 

Well done for quoting a Christian who quotes the Bible regularly