Other: The evidence for the distance of mutation leading to genetic variation is so overwhelming it is difficult to know where to start.
JVK: The starting point in mutations theory must lead to adaptive evolution. It does not.
Other: Variation produces change and beneficial changes persist. For example, there are a number of mechanisms for the detection and correction of mutation in cells division.
JVK: If mutations are detected and corrected, how do they lead to adaptive evolution?
Other: The mechanisms for detection and correction are not perfect; mutations slip through because there are many errors to start with. The pool of mutations has a known source and is predictable enough to be used as a clock. For example, the number of mutations in a gene can be used to trace two lineages of the same gene back to the beginning of their divergence.
JVK: (Sarcastically) Is the known source of the “pool of mutations” the primordial ooze? Without using mutation theory, I have traced nutrient-dependent amino acid substitutions to species divergence in species from microbes to man. It is clear that pheromones control nutrient-dependent species divergence, because pheromones control reproduction. The most recent example in humans traces the different lineages that emerged in central China approximately 30,000 years to differences in thermoregulation which cause differences in pheromone production and distribution.
Other: Without variation there can be no change. Without mutation there is no source of variation.
JVK: THE source of variation in the different lineages that emerged in central China approximately 30,000 years ago is the availability of nutrients, which also controls pheromone production and variable rates of reproduction. Given these obvious facts, which are exemplified in all species, I can think of only one reason for anyone to approach evolution via statistical analysis of “random” mutations with no evidence of how mutations are selected. They must be determined to avoid the explanatory power of nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled adaptive evolution.
That self-serving determination explains why a ridiculous theory based on statistical analyses with no explanatory power is substituted by many social scientists and philosophers. It attests to the fact that they have bastardized the context in which the central promise of Darwinism was proposed. In that context “… the central promise of Darwinism [was]—to account for both phylogenic continuity and adaptive differentiation by means of the same principles…to integrate in one theory the supposed opposition between Unity of Type and Conditions of Existence.“
“Conditions of Existence” are nutrient-dependent and pleiotropic; nutrients cause variations in protein biosynthesis. “Unity of Type” is achieved via the nutrient-dependent pheromone-controlled transition from pleiotropic variation to species-wide epistasis. This integration into one theory is a matter of biological facts. The integration of facts into one model removes the supposed opposition between Unity of Type and Conditions of Existence. At the same time, it removes random mutations theory, which has never addressed the biological facts, from any further consideration.
Avoiding the context of adaptive evolution and/or substituting statistical analyses of phenotypic traits that somehow evolved is childish. Theoretically, it pits child’s-play in a primordial ooze against the biological basis and the scientific basis of religiosity. Even those whose origins of religious disbelief blind them to the facts of adaptive evolution may someday admit that naturally selected variations in what organisms eat contributes most to their survival. They will then also admit that the metabolism of nutrients to species-specific pheromones is responsible for the survival of our species, which in all species is nutrient-dependent and pheromone-controlled.
Darwin unknowingly approached adaptive evolution via ecological, social, neurogenic, and socio-cognitive niche construction. He could not possibly have known that our socio-cognitive niche construction has its origins in what he deduced about ecological niche construction. With what is now known about the molecular epigenetics of adaptive evolution, the only excuse for a theoretical random mutations approach to evolution is ignorance.
