Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

. Response implies intelligence

(a) What Professor Nilsson said recently about the model he and Dr. Pelger created

I claimed above that Professor Nilsson had recently acknowledged that the step-by-step sequence from a light-sensitive spot to a camera eye, which he and Dr. Pelger described in described in their 1994 paper, was actually an intelligently guided evolutionary sequence. I’m now going to supply “chapter and verse” to back up that claim. I recently contacted Professor Nilsson, and asked him about the 1994 paper he co-authored with Susanne Pelger, and he was kind enough to respond. In his response, he patiently explained to me exactly what he and Pelger were trying to establish with their model:

If there is random and heritable variation separately controlling a large number of different parameters, then selection would, for each generation, choose the route that causes the largest improvement of whatever selection was set to favour (e.g. acuity). So, if there is more than one parameter that can vary, evolution can be expected to follow different routes depending on how much the different parameters vary, and how much impact they have on acuity. In real eye evolution, there would be numerous different parameters that express heritable variation in the population, and the amount of variation could itself be modified by selection. Real eye evolution has also resulted in many different end products, using different ways to form images, and different cellular organizations to obtain particular structures. These are all interesting questions, but the Nilsson and Pelger 94 paper does not address these questions. Instead the paper asks the much more tenable question: is there a continuous route from a flat, non-imaging light detector to a focused camera type eye, where each little modification, no matter how small, would generate an improvement in acuity. The important answer we find is yes, there is at least one such route. Although this route was devised by us (by deciding which parameters were to change during different phases along the route) the important result is that there is at least one route where acuity continuously improves at each new generation. Real evolution may find an even shorter route, where acuity improves more for each generation, but that would not change the important conclusion that an eye can evolve from a patch of light sensitive skin by numerous tiny modifications.

Referring to his model of how the eye evolved, Nilsson admits that “this route was devised by us,” in order to generate “a continuous route from a flat, non-imaging light detector to a focused camera type eye, where each little modification, no matter how small, would generate an improvement in acuity,” and that it was constructed “by deciding which parameters were to change during different phases along the route.” That’s intelligently guided evolution.

I have already provided info on models assessing the likelohoods of actual mutations, as observed by comparing two bits of genomes. and they say that these mutations are likely enough.

yeh, as bj fails to understand in many types of models using "decision trees in steps" (especially in evolution). The modeler(s) usually omit altrnative pathways of evolution or development whenever theres a "common ancestor " nodal point.

The modeler(s) usually omit altrnative pathways of evolution or development whenever theres a "common ancestor " nodal point

The Hardy-Weinberg model consists of two equations: one that calculates allele frequencies and one that calculates genotype frequencies. Because we are dealing with frequencies, both equations must add up to 1. The equation

p + q = 1


describes allele frequencies for a gene with two alleles. (This is the simplest case, but the equation can also be modified and used in cases with three or more alleles.) If we know the frequency of one allele (p) we can easily calculate the frequency of the other allele (q) by 1 ó p = q.

In a diploid organism with alleles A and a at a given locus, there are three possible genotypes: AA, Aa, and aa. If we use p to represent the frequency of A and q to represent the frequency of a, we can write the genotype frequencies as (p)(p) or p2 for AA, (q)(q) or q2 for aa, and 2(p)(q) for Aa. The equation for genotype frequencies is

p2+ 2pq + q2 = 1.