What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

It's not new information that mutation rates are too low, but that is always just brushed aside. Also, the greater number of proteins than genes is more due to alternate exon splicing than epigenetic factors (although I suspect we will find that even these two phenomena influence each other). It is another mechanism to control gene expression. 


Also, I never said that all mutations are harmful, you built a straw-man. And I don't think you can say 1% good mutations. That is not likely even close. 

Also just because a mutation occurs in the non-coding region of DNA doesn't mean it won't affect the person. Almost all of that DNA is transcribed, and plays a role in regulation. You change the sequence, you change the ability to bind with specificity, you change the ability to regulate things well.

I realize that my wording may be read to imply that I meant epigenetic expression was the reason behind the difference between protein count and gene count; that's not what I meant to say... only that among the factors that complicated the picture was the recently-verified field of epigenetics, in addition to the splicing variations we knew about already back in 1999 but did not fully realize the significance of before the whole picture was in. I was taking my 300-level genetics course when the HGP published its results... it was a very exciting year, as was my senior year.

There are many forms of transcription and coding methods; I think you're referring to the eukaryotic (and some viruses) process, by which introns are spliced out after being copied. Nevertheless, the majority of intron regions are "place-holders", and the actual sequence of DNA there does not affect the process, meaning that a mutation typically goes unnoticed. Don't be disingenuous when you present these facts; it will harm you in academia. On the other hand, if your goal is to finish college with a biochem degree so you can go on to work at the Creation Institute™, then you're well on your way.

As for the "not enough/no beneficial mutations" meme that various Creationists (oh, I'm sorry, Intelligent Design-ists) have been tirelessly pumping out, it's just wrong. The effect has been well-studied, and continues to be studied. (I recommend the links to other related articles, at the side of that article.) You're right that I picked 1% as a "round number", but that's irrelevant to my point here, as I also picked one million as my number of bacteria in a mL of water, and you should know how ridiculously understated that one is, in nutrient-rich environments where reproduction of bacteria would be occurring. In other words, I used round numbers to give an easy-to-grasp figure, and you muffed it.

So I'll start again. The rate of mutation is roughly one in ten million... so if 99% of those are harmful, and a percent of them are beneficial, then the number of beneficial mutations is one in a billion. Sound fair? Since the number of bacteria in ONE MILLILITER of a rich environment like saliva is 100 million, that means one genuine beneficial mutation in every ten generations. How long does it take to have ten generations in a bacterial colony? Yup!

Even if you change the percent of beneficial mutations a few orders of magnitude up or down, it doesn't change the basic calculus, since I'm talking about one droplet of water.