That's a nice claim but you haven't shown, nor has science, a comparison of expected loss via genetic drift and subgroup isolation with rates of gain. That's the point. Mutations, for example, are thought to happen slowly with most being deleterious.
Under a heavily selectionist view that's ignorant of actual genomic data, perhaps. But neutral theory and genetic study shows that's not the case at all.
A number of mutation pairs have been identified where one of those mutations or the other alone does effectively nothing, but both mutations together have a massive effect. Take, for instance, the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR, activated by the hormone aldosterone), and the glucocorticoid receptor (GR, activated by the hormone cortisol). Originally, there was only the MR receptor. Somewhere along the line, the gene for the MR receptor was duplicated, resulting in two genes coding for MR. This was a neutral mutation, since the functionality of the genes didn't change at all (duplicate genes for MR have no actual effect on aldosterone sensitivity when coded). Then came two changes in the duplicate MR: first, leucine was replaced by glutamine at position 111. This was also a neutral mutation, since while it created a new amino-acid chain, it virtually wiped out all sensitivity in that duplicate receptor (which, of course, did nothing at all to the organism, since the original copy of MR provided all the aldosterone sensitivity needed). Then came the second mutation, where serine was replaced by proline at position 106. This repositioned the amino-acid chain, allowing it to form a hydrogen bond with a hydroxyl group of cortisol (something aldosterone lacks). The end result is now the organism now has receptors for
both cortisol and aldosterone, new genes with a novel function created via duplication and neutral mutations.
Other functions are separated by even larger mutational gaps. Erik Schultes and David Bartel transformed one ribozyme sequence into a completely different one, unrelated in sequence, structure, or enzymatic activity. And they did it by changing the first sequence one molecule at a time. It took only 40 mutations total. The first 18 or so of those changes did not change the enzymatic activity of that sequence (ie, it still functioned to encode the ribozyme). The next four changes suddenly swapped the function, so that it suddenly performed the enzymatic activity of the
other ribozyme sequence, and kept that functionality all the way through the remaining mutations.
Isolation and genetic drift, however, decrease genetic variation rather quickly.
Losses which are made up for by things like duplication. Again, see Ohno and Rodin.
Assuming a large genome, this may not make a difference in producing a new species as gene loss can work, but the process serves to diminish genetic variation over time, and evos have not shown a comparison to verify their claims of gains offset the losses over time making the origin of gene families more tenuous as far as Darwinian and observed alternative mechanisms.
I gave you a study that made a
direct comparison of gain vs. loss rate.
Which is exactly what critics of Darwinism said all along as far as selection being a conservative process limiting macroevolution.
No, this nothing like what you and your creationist buddies have been arguing.
Whether Lynch's solution is adequate is intriguing but no proven. It just adds more hope to a failed Darwinian paradigm.
No, it explains how things evolved using known processes as discovered and discussed by scientists working in their respective evolutionary fields.
And you are wrong to claim the Darwinian narrative isn't changed. By Darwinian, I refer to the Modern Synthesis. Lynch gives you the reason up front in arguing evolutionary progress results principally in terms of novel genes with a relaxation of selection pressures.
The Synthetic Model is not a set theory with a single explanation for everything, despite your repeated attempts to claim otherwise (viz your constant use of the term "NeoDarwinism" to refer to the whole theory, when that term is properly applied to one small aspect of it).
There are a number of different mechanisms, all acting at different times on different things in different circumstances, with the relative function and importance of each mechanism changing depending on what part of evolution you're looking at.
