Plotting “Random” Mutations on a Fitness Curve

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Categories : Intelligent Design

Editor : DaveScot

published: mardi 9 janvier 2007 7:09:11

Recently and many times in the past I’ve remarked that life doesn’t have the illusion of design. Design is real. It has the illusion of chance and neccessity. Over at ATBC I noticed a couple members of the anti-ID peanut gallery clucking to themselves that mutations plotted on a fitness curve have a random distribution. IOW there is no predictability in where any one mutation will fall on a fitness curve (harmful/neutral/beneficial). It will be a scattershot plot without any pattern. Thus even if the universe is deterministic and no mutation is truly random they appear random when plotted on a fitness curve.

This is just utter dreck. You can predict with almost 100% confidence that any given mutation will be either harmful or neutral on a fitness curve. That means that a large fraction of the plot, that portion of it in the beneficial third, will have few if any points plotted in it. In fact if you press the orthodox evolutionists to give you an example of an observed beneficial random mutation you’ll get a short list of a few micromutations that gave some lucky organism disease or toxin resistance. You can find an endless number of observed mutations that either reduced fitness or had no observed effect. Ask for a plot of mutations in humans known to cause genetic disorders, early spontaneous abortion, no effect, and/or are beneficial. The plot will be dominated by neutral and harmful mutations and if they give you any beneficial mutation at all it’s arguable about whether it’s really beneficial.

This is emphatically NOT a random distribution. Whoever made up that particular bit of idiocy about mutations being random with regard to fitness deserves many lashes with a wet noodly appendage and anyone who accepts the supposition uncritically should hang their head in shame too.

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