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The "Genetic Load" Argument


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There is a phenomenon much discussed among biologists called "genetic load." It refers to the reduction in the mean fitness of a population caused by some genetic process.

Perhaps most important is mutation genetic load Most mutations are deleterious, even if only slightly, and over geological time the  effect on a gene line of the build-up of a lot of these mutations along the strands of DNA becomes serious.

You might consider genetic load the biological equivalent of entropy. A population can only tolerate a certain load before going extinct, though it is difficult to quantify load and that maximum acceptable level. On a prior principles, there ought to be a highest sustainable level of mutation load.

Some creationists (intelligent-design theorists, if you prefer) contend that the deleterious nature of most mutations, and thus this "load," is fatal to this damned Darwinian nonsense. They see "Darwinism" as the position that life has been gradually moving upward toward greater complexity and intelligence, and that it is moving upward without having been designed to do so -- by the spontaneous force of natural selection. So when they learn about genetic load they say "See! Even the evolutionists have to admit that the tendency of species is to decline not to rise -- the load gets heavier, not lighter, over time.

There is a lot that is wrong with that argument, but let me just say that it exhibits an egregious example of the 'straw man' fallacy and move on.

What is fascinating about 'genetic load is that it seems to have lead some to predict on biological grounds what subsequent biochemical research has confirmed: that much of our DNA is in fact junk.   
https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2017/07/revisiting-genetic-load-argument-with.html


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