Haldane's dilemma and recent human evolution
Manuel Doria
between Homo sapiens idaltu and modern man. Applying the substitution
cost of 1 beneficial gene substitution for every 300 generations, that
renders around 33 substitutions.
Is this really enough to account for all the physiological diversity in
existing human ethnicities? All local polymorphisms? Recall this study
on recent human evolution (post-agricultural times) from last year:
http://tinyurl.com/2oror8
Oh, and by the way, Nicholas (NashtOn) from what I recall is a biblical
literalist. By defending the arguments from Walter Remine, who fully
accepts the mainstream understanding of cosmology and geology and
standard arrow of natural history on Earth, he is shooting himself on
the foot. After all, he believes mankind suffered a genetic bottleneck
around 4,400 years ago and not even the most generous substitution cost
will account for the existing human diversity (unless the Designer
intervened again, separately, in the genomes of the several post-Flood
population clusters).
John Harshman
> Under Remine's generous estimate, we have around 10,000 generations
> between Homo sapiens idaltu and modern man. Applying the substitution
> cost of 1 beneficial gene substitution for every 300 generations, that
> renders around 33 substitutions.
>
> Is this really enough to account for all the physiological diversity in
> existing human ethnicities? All local polymorphisms? Recall this study
> on recent human evolution (post-agricultural times) from last year:
> http://tinyurl.com/2oror8
I think you're a bit confused about this. "33 substitutions" means 33
fixations. Alleles that have not been fixed have not paid the cost that
Remine is talking about. And of course most human polymorphisms are
neutral and therefore don't enter into it at all.
> Oh, and by the way, Nicholas (NashtOn) from what I recall is a biblical
> literalist. By defending the arguments from Walter Remine, who fully
> accepts the mainstream understanding of cosmology and geology and
> standard arrow of natural history on Earth, he is shooting himself on
> the foot. After all, he believes mankind suffered a genetic bottleneck
> around 4,400 years ago and not even the most generous substitution cost
> will account for the existing human diversity (unless the Designer
> intervened again, separately, in the genomes of the several post-Flood
> population clusters).
Or unless most of that diversity is neutral, which it most probably is.
The real problem with a flood bottleneck is that the neutral
evolutionary rate is not enough to account for existing diversity.
Nothing to do with Remine.
Mark Isaak
> Under Remine's generous estimate, we have around 10,000 generations
> between Homo sapiens idaltu and modern man. Applying the substitution
> cost of 1 beneficial gene substitution for every 300 generations, that
> renders around 33 substitutions.
I don't recall anyone putting the matter into these terms before, so
correct me if I'm wrong. . . .
ReMine's Dilemma is based on the fallacy of the Great Chain of Being, the
mistaken view which implies that more recent species are more advanced, or
in some sense "better," than their ancestors. Which would mean that the
changes have to consist of beneficial mutations. But recent species are
not better; they are merely different, which invalidates ReMine's
assumptions.
--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) earthlink (dot) net
"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of
the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are
being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger." -- Hermann Goering
John Harshman
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:31:23 -0800, Manuel Doria wrote:
>
>
>>Under Remine's generous estimate, we have around 10,000 generations
>>between Homo sapiens idaltu and modern man. Applying the substitution
>>cost of 1 beneficial gene substitution for every 300 generations, that
>>renders around 33 substitutions.
>
>
> I don't recall anyone putting the matter into these terms before, so
> correct me if I'm wrong. . . .
>
> ReMine's Dilemma is based on the fallacy of the Great Chain of Being, the
> mistaken view which implies that more recent species are more advanced, or
> in some sense "better," than their ancestors. Which would mean that the
> changes have to consist of beneficial mutations. But recent species are
> not better; they are merely different, which invalidates ReMine's
> assumptions.
I'm not sure this is correct; in fact I think it isn't. I don't think
ReMine made that assumption at all. He's not claiming that every one of
the 40 million differences between humans and chimps is selected, only
that 1666 (his figure for the maximum possible number of selective
changes) is too small a number to account for the clearly adaptive
differences. It's not clear how he determines how many such differences
there are out of that 40 million; I'm not sure he ever tries -- he may
be just appealing to an intuitive feeling that 1666 is too few.
But this is the important point: as far as I can tell, ReMine does not
claim that all differences between humans and chimps must be accounted
for by selection. He does not ignore the existence of neutral fixation.
And the Index claims he does.
Bobby Bryant
"Manuel Doria" <manue...@gmail.com> writes:
> Under Remine's generous estimate, we have around 10,000 generations
> between Homo sapiens idaltu and modern man. Applying the substitution
> cost of 1 beneficial gene substitution for every 300 generations, that
> renders around 33 substitutions.
Is there any reason only a single beneficial gene can be incorporated
at a time?
8<
> After all, he believes mankind suffered a genetic bottleneck around
> 4,400 years ago and not even the most generous substitution cost
> will account for the existing human diversity (unless the Designer
> intervened again, separately, in the genomes of the several
> post-Flood population clusters).
Almost without exception, vocal creationists are only interested in
winning the current argument, and never pause to think about self-
consistency in the bigger picture.
Also, they quote-mine each other just as they do real scientists.
--
Bobby Bryant
Reno, Nevada
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