Since Haldane/1667 mutations is unanswerable, should evolution continue to be taught in schools?

Question

Can 1667 benefical mutations over 5 million yrs of man's so-called development explain ALL the uniquely human adaptions including, tripling the brain size, upright posture, hand dexerity, vocal cords to name a few? Remember 1- Paleontologist say the majority of a species existence is spent in stasis! 2- According to geneticist a "substitution" is typically ONE-NUCLEOTIDE. Walter James Remine's "Biotic Massage book agrees with Haldane's cost calculations. Evolutionary geneticist including John Maynard-Smith agree that "Punctuated Equilbrium" is NOT the answer. The Neutral theory is NOT the answer as Walter ReMine predicts. Therefore should Evolution/Abiogenesis continue to be taught in schools as an empirical science? Or provided a "walling-wall" and cathedral and taught as a religion? Or abandoned as a "Harry Potter-like fable?

Answer 1

I'm assuming this is a serious question and you're not a religious nut, so my serious answer is;
Evolution is an evolving science (pardon the pun) and many of the theories need more work. However, it is the best fitting and most likely explanation so far, so the discrepancies are worth working on as they will probably be explained eventually. Also, there is no better theory on offer, and in the case of no proof, the best theory should stand.

Answer 2

Well, the fun thing about science is that it is always changing. Everyday, people are coming up with new, testable ideas that debunk previous ideas.
When evolution was first proposed by Lemark, he said that organisms change their own genetic structure in order to become more reproductively successful (his example was the giraffe's long neck....he said that it basically continued to stretch out its neck so that it could reach the leaves at the top of the tree).
That idea was debunked by Darwin, who said that natural selection was the way that organisms increase their reproductive success.
As far as mutations go, I was always taught that they were the least prominant factor in evolution (out of 5 factors).
Right now, Darwin's theory is the best that we have for describing the reason for why there are differences between species, but also some similarities (like the finches that Darwin studied).
As a scientist, I would love to see what the future brings in terms of defining this concept better. But, untestable "theories" like creationism do nothing more that make two opposing sides angry with one another. If creationism could be tested with the scientific method and proven to be true, then I would consider it as another explaination. Unfortunately, it cannot be tested through science, so it remains a matter of faith and belief rather than science. Science is a logical and rational approach to understanding, so I believe it should be taught. Creationism should be taught to those who want it taught to them, not forced down their throats against their will.

Answer 3

There is no dilemma.It's best to check here before you post creationist drivel.http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB121.html Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. He divided by a fitness constant in a way that invalidated his assumption of constant population size, and his cost of selection is an artifact of the changed population size. He also assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, but because of sexual recombination, the two can be selected simultaneously and both reach fixation sooner. With corrected calculations, the cost disappears (Wallace 1991; Williams n.d.).

Haldane's paper was published in 1957, and Haldane himself said, "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision" (Haldane 1957, 523). It is irresponsible not to consider the revision that has occurred in the forty years since his paper was published.


ReMine (1993), who promotes the claim, makes several invalid assumptions. His model is contradicted by the following:
The vast majority of differences would probably be due to genetic drift, not selection.
Many genes would have been linked with genes that are selected and thus would have hitchhiked with them to fixation.
Many mutations, such as those due to unequal crossing over, affect more than one codon.
Human and ape genes both would be diverging from the common ancestor, doubling the difference.
ReMine's computer simulation supposedly showing the negative influence of Haldane's dilemma assumed a population size of only six (Musgrave 1999).
Also,i would reccomend reading here for a more thorough refutation http://www.gate.net/~rwms/haldane1.html I suggest actually studying evolution before posting comments about it.Ii'm sure you will ignore this and claim some kind of victory.I've never met an honest creationist.Maybe you'll surprise me.

Answer 4

My view is that evolution should be taught in schools, but with a disclaimer, as has been proposed in the Unites States a number of times. Alongside should be mentioned intelligent design. People say that ID is not science, but rather an illogical "god of the gaps" religion. That's nonsense; all that needs be done is this. Whenever something interesting that evolution applies to arises when teaching a science course, the teacher details what the current thinking is for how this would have arisen through evolution. He will also mention uncertain areas or holes in that explanation. ID is the only other explanation if evolution fails.

The whole question is entirely scientific. There's no religion involved. No reason why God couldn't have used evolution to make life, so its only a question of what evidence there is. I am a Catholic, and I think evolution is ridiculous, particularly because it would take far to long as you mentioned, and also because it has never been observed. But that's not because I'm Catholic, its because the science doesn't convince me.

And the guy above me needs some more respect for people with whom he disagrees.

To the answerer below me, I would say that intelligent design is just as scientific as evolution. Intelligent design is tested in this way: You look at a phenomenon, and you test to see if evolution could explain it. If it cannot, then we use logical deduction to say that nature could not have caused the phenomenon. Thus, it was made by an intelligence. Intelligent design has been tested.

Answer 5

benthic_man is correct. Archie's "argument" is gibberish. Each sentence has no connection to the one before it or after it.

So this answers the question. As long as the overwhelming consensus of the current scientific community endorses evolution, and only people with muddled gibberish for arguments like Archie continue to deny it ... YES evolution should be taught in science class in schools.

Answer 6

Hmmm... it's a universal constant, that when someone uses too many Capital letters, the value of the message is inversely proportional to it's value.

What I find interesting here is that there isn't a SINGLE sentence that matches in content the one before OR after it. It's like someone cut and pasted one sentence out of each chapter of a genetics textbook from 40 years ago.

Answer 7

Your mention of the historic view of the mutation rate and evolutionary change takes into account only a very small fraction of the mechanisms of genetic change. Current knowledge includes lateral gene transfer with mobile genetic elements moving entire encoding units between organisms. This is one of several other mechanisms but with far greater impact than mutation on the rate of evolutionary change.
This area is beginning to open up with the advent of genomic sequencing and proteomics but much research has been accomplished since the very dated material you mention. Given future technical advances we will probably find more ways to explore the elements of genetic change we can't imagine yet.
A known benefit conferred by viral genes to humans is a sequence, installed by a retrovirus, that regulates the amylase gene cluster, allowing us to produce amylase in our saliva. This sequence, that we share with a few other primates, enables us to eat starchy foods. - Coffin, John M.; Stephen H. Hughes and Harold E. Varmus, Eds. Retroviruses, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1997. p 403. There are currently 16 functioning endogenous genes of retroviral origin in the human genome. These came from the thousands of retroviral insertions that mutated but left these few functional genes as an inadvertent bequest.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050328174826.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070621140809.htm
Human retrogenes
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/31/15/4385
One of our retrogenes may have function in tissue migration and neural crest formation
http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/277/41/38803
What happens to the introduced genes over time
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0511307103v1?etoc

Answer 8

Unlike Creationism, where folks adhere to its teaching because "preacher Bob said we had to or we'll go to Hell," scientific theories that have not been invalidated by any existing scientific evidence (as is true for the theory of evolution) are held to be correct.

Any theory that is a powerful unifying concept that helps to explain the connections between basic chemistry, molecular biology, organismal biology, developmental biology and intergrative biology MUST be taught to students if we have ANY hope of them understanding the complexity of science.

I have see students paralyzed by teachings forced on them by their upbringing who failed to grasp basic biological concepts because they could not allow themselves to see what logic dictates. What a waste to see bright young people who succumbed to brainwashing and as a result failed to acheieve their career goals.