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Author Topic:   Explaining the pro-Evolution position
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Message 391 of 393 (792937)
10-16-2016 1:57 AM

What happens when your mouth writes a check that your butt cannot cash...

Kleinman writes:

Let's see how well established the theory of evolution is. Why does combination therapy work for the treatment of HIV?

Followed by dribbling out that works towards a hypothesis that would have been dismissed hundreds of posts earlier if it had been posted all at once. You have been trolled.





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Message 392 of 393 (792940)
10-16-2016 6:15 AM

Kleinman's Failure
Kleinman's argument is built on not understanding natural selection.

It is based on a special case of natural selection, the evolution of drug resistance. In this case the selection is very strong, and it is hard selection. Moreover, since drugs directly attack the chemistry of the target organisms there is a very limited range of mutations - sometimes sets of mutations - that might defeat them.

A proper understanding of natural selection would recognise that these features are relevant to the outcome and study how varying the strength of selection, the hardness of the selection and the possible counters to selective force affect the outcome.

But that is not for Kleinman. He refuses to even consider it. And so he has failed to produce a general model of natural selection by not even trying.

Equally he has failed to produce a probability argument by not trying. As I pointed out early on in the discussion it is not enough to show that a sequence of stochastic events is highly improbable. Such sequences tend to be improbable by their very nature. Kleinman needs more, yet we saw no sign of him making the effort. Indeed he seemed reluctant to even acknowledge the basic fact that highly improbable sequences can be easily generated.

Now maybe Kleinman feels that we are all wrong and only the opinion of real experts matters. If so, I invite him to write up his argument as a general argument as evolution and to submit it to Science and Nature, and other top-tier journals dealing with evolutionary theory. I predict that he will not get far.

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Message 393 of 393 (792964)
10-17-2016 3:58 PM

I will chime in with PaulK with the same conclusion: Most evolutionary pathways don't involve extinction in a single generation unless a series of concurrent beneficial mutation occur.

What we have is an extremely rare case of selection (HIV multi-drug treatment) that has been generalized to all of evolution. It's like saying that if you hit a wall going 3,000 mph in your car you would die. Therefore, all car accidents are fatal. That's the logic of Kleinman's argument.

In reality, a lineage of scaled reptiles does not have to acquire multiple mutations in multiple genes all at once in a single individual in a single generation in order to evolve feathers, contrary to the claims of Kleinman.

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