Ann Gauger Says Random Mutation Can't Possibly Account for Observed Evolution

The Intelligent Design Creationists change their stories so often that it's sometimes hard to keep up. The latest rationalization has to do with the sufficiency of random mutations. Here's the version given by Ann Gauger, Senior Research Scientist at Biologic Institute.

There's a lot of discussion about this video on the Biologic Facebook page [Biologic Institute]. Some commenters (e.g. Nick Matzke) raise the issue of neutral mutations and Gauger responds (not very well). This is one of the main problems with the current IDiot propaganda. They confuse the probability of specific, single nucleotide, beneficial, mutations at a specific binding site—which have a low probability—with the total number of possible mutations at thousands of different sites, any of which could have an effect on development. Many of the mutations could have been neutral giving rise to an enormous amount of standing variation in the population. (This makes it much more likely that you will get multiple mutations.)

Don't forget we're looking at a specific outcome (evolution of Homo sapiens from a common ancestors over 6 million years). There were thousand and thousands of other possible outcomes that could have given rise to intelligent beings (maybe smart chimps?) who would eventually spawn Intelligent Design Creationists.1 We don't know the total number of possibilities but it certainly isn't just one (1). Our species is a lottery winner and we all know that specific lottery winners are highly improbable.



1. I wonder if there are any possible pathways that would have given rise to truly intelligent beings and no IDiots?
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