Human Devolution

[Angrboda]

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/

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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