Darwin Proven Wrong?

[sswhateverlove]

Last time I checked, oh, I don't know, the dictionary, all atheism was was a disbelief or lack of beliefs in gods. I know an atheist friend of mine who believes that Area 51 covered up Roswell, for crying out loud. However, I think the majority of us, due to our skeptical thinking on the existence of gods, would call ourselves skeptics on a variety of other issues such as Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle.

From what I understand (anybody who is more knowledgeable in biology, please feel free to correct me) genetic mutations are made to the base code of an organism's DNA and cannot be changed within an organism's lifetime, but can be passed on at least in part to offspring. Gene expression is already understood as the way that genetic information is interpreted by RNA so that functional proteins can be created. This absolutely can be influenced by the environment.

However, gene expression is only interpreting the blueprints (mutations). So natural selection pressures bears down on an organism and if their mutation and its expression is disadvantageous in their environment, then they'll die and not pass that on. This is basically what the modern theory of evolution is. What you seem to be saying is that just because mutations can be expressed dynamically in the environment by an individual organism, that mutations don't matter (yeah...). The best of Lamarckism combined with the best of intelligent design and pseudoscientific woo, but it's not at all going to derail the modern theory of evolution.

Sorry for the double post, but I'd like a reply from sswhateverlove sometime this week.

Methylation can reduce the expression of a mutated gene by up to 70% and is environmentally influenced. You do not think this is an important variable to consider with regard to how influential natural selection based on gene mutation has been?

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You still don't understand epigenetics.

Epigenetics can determine whether you get fat or not. So, why is it that nobody, regardless of their epigenetic status, has their fat collect as a big hump on their back like camels do? Because no matter how much we alter epigenetics, we still don't have the genetics to get the fat hump on our backs. No amount of genetic markers will change a gene that we don't have in the first place.

As for my source, that would be basic college level biology text books. Do you really need me to look it up online and post a link?

As far as know, scientists have also not been able to change one species into another by mutating any particular genes, but if you have a source that conflicts I would like to see it. I find this interesting, especially when there are many species that share so many of our genes that they should be so similar, but they are not. The most significant factor that seems to be diverse amongst different species (and even within same species) is methylation/histone protein status that is "epigenomic", not "genetic".