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→Mutations don't lead to evolution? New genetic information?
::::::: You may not have ''intended'' to stop the mutations there, but that's as far as your example went, and continuing it would have changed the result.
::::::: You may not have ''intended'' to stop the mutations there, but that's as far as your example went, and continuing it would have changed the result.
::::::: Time is not the magic wand that saves the argument. Trains run on tracks. Not when there are active processes working to weed out misfits, etc.
::::::: Time is not the magic wand that saves the argument. Trains run on tracks. Not when there are active processes working to weed out misfits, etc.
::::::: Not every combination of letters—even just three letters—constitutes a valid English word. And not every combination of valid English words makes sense. And not every combination of valid English sentences make sense. And so on. In the case of DNA, there are only 64 ''possible'' "words", and, unlike English, every single one of them "makes sense", i.e. codes for an amino acid. But does every combination of amino acids make sense? And every combination of proteins? And so on all the way up the chain, even to the whole organism. A brain cell in a liver doesn't make sense, for example. This is what I mean by context. You would have wondered what my reference to trains was there for. The words of that sentence are all valid. The sentence itself makes sense. But the sentence ''in this context'' doesn't make sense. (It even ''disrupts'' the flow of thought, as the next sentence seems to refer to it, although it's not meant to.) A random change in a very small unit (e.g. a gene) might well make sense locally, but not in the wider context, especially the wider you go. The wider you go with the context, the greater the chance that it makes no sense at all.
::::::: Not every combination of letters—even just three letters—constitutes a valid English word. And not every combinarntion of valid English words makes sense. And not every combination of valid English sentences make sense. And so on. In the case of DNA, there are only 64 ''possible'' "words", and, unlike English, every single one of them "makes sense", i.e. codes for an amino acid. But does every combination of amino acids make sense? And every combination of proteins? And so on all the way up the chain, even to the whole organism. A brain cell in a liver doesn't make sense, for example. This is what I mean by context. You would have wondered what my reference to trains was there for. The words of that sentence are all valid. The sentence itself makes sense. But the sentence ''in this context'' doesn't make sense. (It even ''disrupts'' the flow of thought, as the next sentence seems to refer to it, although it's not meant to.) A random change in a very small unit (e.g. a gene) might well make sense locally, but not in the wider context, especially the wider you go. The wider you go with the context, the greater the chance that it makes no sense at all.
::::::: I'm out of time now, but I hope that's clear enough.
::::::: I'm out of time now, but I hope that's clear enough.
::::::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 02:52, 3 November 2008 (EST)
::::::: [[User:Philip J. Rayment|Philip J. Rayment]] 02:52, 3 November 2008 (EST)
::::::::Well a sense of the time in which these processes occur in does help with the understanding, as does knowing how often mutations do occur. However, I don't think that your argument about context works against the idea of beneficial mutations. A mutation that doesn't "make sense" in a larger context and decreases the fitness of an organism is selected against. But not all mutations do that. The likelihood of a series of mutations rapidly occurring to make brain cells appear in the liver is not likely. And even if you may not think that it is "in context" it doesn't mean it couldn't be beneficial in some way. Lots of structures have lost their original function and are used for something else, such as legs becoming mouth parts in lobsters. --[[User:Rainedaye|Rainedaye]] 20:41, 4 November 2008 (EST)
== KathrynMonroe's edit ==
== KathrynMonroe's edit ==