John P. Turnbull wrote:
> Todd:
>
> There is a brief tutorial on Haldane's dilemma in Drury Woodson's
> recent post titled _Re: Evolution and beneficial mutations_.
>
> Haldane puts forth an arguement that estimates the upper bound for
> the greatest possible divergence in the molecular DNA sequence and
> applies his analysis to show that a supposed pre-human ancestor
> could not have produced more than 500,000 beneficial mutations in
> about 10 million years time which is about 0.014% change. That's
> far too small to account for the 2 - 3% differences between chimps
> and humans. His methods may or may not be bogus, but the question
> I was asking is if we apply the same analysis to the variations that
> originated from some original kind, do we find that differences between
> variations exceed this theoretical limit. To do this, we would need to
> apply his method to estimate an upper limit we can expect for a basic kind
> like a dog, for example, to change over 10,000 years or so and then check
> to see if all variations of the dog kind are within this limit.
I too have wondered about this with regard to all the variation that
occurs within the human family. It would appear that there must have
been a fair amount of mutations occurring since the flood (4500 years?)
to account for all the variation from the tallest Watusi to the
Aborigine to the Oriental to the blond blue-eyed Caucasian. But I
don't think that mutations are needed so much as the proper
recombination of existing genetic material. If you put the right two
parents together, you can cause certain existing, though hidden,
genetic traits to manifest, or predominate. So as long as Noah and
those with him had all the necessary genes, no mutations would be
necessary to produce the varation presently found in the human race.
Is this correct? Couldn't the same also apply to canines?
Tom Krusz