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Human Genome Confirms Evolution
xpccx writes "Here is a very interesting article at MSNBC by Arthur Caplan, Ph.D., director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He states that "The genome reveals, indisputably and beyond any serious doubt, that Darwin was right - mankind evolved over a long period of time from primitive animal ancestors. Our genes show that scientific creationism cannot be true." This is arguable but should spark quite a debate." Even Kansas agrees.
All our genes are belong to Darwin.
The only form of creationism I know involves an omnipotent creator. Such a creater can obviously do anything (that's omnipotent for you), including faking evidence of evolution. However, any theory requiring an omnipotent creator is unscientific, as it can never be disproved. One requirement for a scientific theory is that is falsifable, i.e. it is possible to design an experiment with a possible outcome that would disprove the theory.
Which makes me wonder, what is this "scientific creationism" thing? Creationism without an creator? Or just another abuse o fthe word scientific?
Note that "scientific" does not mean "true". A theory can be scientific and false, or unscientific and true.
This is a very well-written and interesting editorial... but it's not a scientific article.
Dr. Caplan does an excellent job of pontificating his viewpoint - that Darwin was right and "all those who thump their bible and say there is no proof" are wrong; he very clearly and concisely tells us that the proof of evolution is in our genes, and that every scientist worth his/her salt agrees that there is no other explanation other than Darwinian evolution.
However, not once does he lay out the proof of which he speaks. Whether Dr. Caplan's viewpoint is correct or not, this article is nothing more than an emotionally persuasive argument with no scientific credibility whatsoever. It's well and good to say that there is undeniable evidence of Darwinian evolution in the human genome - that's what most people have been hoping for, searching for; but if such a sweeping statement is going to be made, especially to the rather scientifically ignorant masses that MSNBC and other mainstream media outlets serve, then it must be backed up by the actual evidence in question, lest we fall into the trap of believing a Big Lie that simply gets repeated enough times.
Science is detailed observation of the natural world, and this article offers no such observations, only emotionalism. I would greatly enjoy reading a scientific paper on this subject.
Please distinguish between the "Bible-thumping zealots" and people who actually practice the tenets of Christianity while at the same time taking a reasonable viewpoint. By "reasonable" I do not mean "scientifically mainstream", however. The fact that living things change over time is quite plainly true. The fact that all DNA is constructed from the same basic building blocks is also true. The revelation that a fraction of the former estimates for human DNA are actually relevant is interesting, but ultimately it doesn't prove anything along the lines of "we are descended from bacteria". The fact that we may have genetic sequences in common with bacteria is not in itself proof; we're also composed in part from minerals like iron, and I see nobody suggesting that human beings evolved from rock. Shared components do not in and of themselves prove ancestry.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
If DNA is god's signature, then all we need is his credit card number. And behold, let there be sixteen-way xeon systems! And the users did rejoice, and did feast upon the CPU cycles.
I will say that evolution is one of the better explanations we have today, but phlogiston was once the best explanation we had for combustion. Evolution is not falsifiable -- even if it were, no amount of science can disprove a mystical, revealed truth.
I guess I could also bring Nietzsche and Wittgenstein's views of "science as a religion, flawed like all the others" into the fray, but I fear I will catch enough heat for this.
No matter what side of the issue you're on, this article offered nothing to decide the matter. It didn't even look like it was trying to convince a non-believer, just a bluff to try to sound superior to "those who thump their bibles." (I just did a Google search on Caplan, it seems like that's his standard level of dialogue when he's censoring or chastizing a Christian point of view.) Why would a neutral person think that mapping the human genome decides the matter definitively? If it does, Caplan didn't even come close to showing that. And this clown actually gets paid to teach students?
Cheers,
Of course, you could argue that an Intelligent Designer created all these species in an apparently jury-rigged fashion for a different purpose, but what is that purpose?
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Everything is not based on faith... Take my word for it.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
To play Devil's Advocate:
I took a Darwin class in college and debated the issue Darwin VS God, where I interviewed a Catholic priest as a primary source, as well, as read through some Church documents. From what I gathered and remember, the Church states, God began the process of creating humans (The presence of a soul in humans separates man/woman from animals). In other words, he didn't say "Hocus Pocus, I am going to pull Adam and Eve from my magical hat." The "process of creation" could be something quite similar to Darwin's evolution theory. The Biblical tale of Adam and Eve should be interpreted as "folklore". So this story doesn't fully address nor fulfill "Creation vs. Evolution" debate in the present day. God and Darwin can be both correct.
-- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
I mean, God could have been one half-assed programmer.
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Bush's assertion: there ought to be limits to freedom
All the DNA evidence in the world can't disprove "scientific creationism." In fact, nothing can disprove scientific creationism. It's unfalsifiable, and therefore there's nothing "scientific" about it. A creationist could simply say that God chose to create us with DNA containing similar components from other living things. And who are we to question His choice? Maybe these virtually identical strands of DNA are God's creative signature -- his way of demonstrating that all life is connected to its Creator. I don't believe it, but hey, you can't disprove it.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Account for my English it's my second language. Don't pick on words.
Some background:
First, I think we all agree that solid science relies on facts (or, emperical data) and comes up with a plausible hypothesis to try to explain their relationships (like, cause and effect, interdependence etc) and once the hypothesis is shown to predict relyably the outcome of a certain process, the law is stated with a theory to support it (that is, a 'law' simply states how things shoud work - 'unsupported body falls until it meets the ground' and a 'theory' explains the mechanism). So, we have the distinction between 'facts', 'hypothesis', 'law' and 'theory' layed out here.
Clear minded science, obviously, should look at evidence first and form a theory basing on that.
'Facts', in turn, is something which can be observed and repeated.
So, on to the topic: here's how the evolution theory roughly goes:
Correct me if I'm wrong on this outline (well that was a rough one anyway).
An interesting observation: there is no factual prove of any of these steps having taken place . (the obligatory disclaimer: read before you flame).
Well here were few suspicions about the theory of evolution which so many hold as fact today. I tried to show that every step is taken on faith and is not proven scientifically (e.g. with facts) but instead explained away with more theories or ignored.
The suggestion is to rather have no theory at all than a lousy one, which is based solely on naturalistic world view of most of scientific community and s.c. 'public'. The fact that 'we are here after all' does not prove evolution yet.
I invite discussion.
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God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ --1Thes5:9
An infallible omnicient God (as generally postulated by the monotheists) should be able to figure out in advance an ideal design and just impelemnt it. So the only way to reconcile the observed tight fit to evolution with the hypothesis of such a God as creator is "he wanted it that way".
But what if the creator was something more fallible. Say a hacker. Or an engineering team. (Angels?) Or a series of engineering teams over a long period, such as you find in an industry. (Think "automobiles".)
Such projects are very cut-and-try, make mistakes, re-use previous workable designs with minor changes. It isn't for nothing that people refer to "the evolution" of aircraft, or trains, or warships. How WOULD you distinguish them - especially if they take place in an "intellectual property" enviornment that would limit transfer of designs from one line to another.
Of course you won't find the "Scientific Creationists" postulating a fallible God or long-term teams of fallible angels. But it makes for interesting speculation. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Ok, I'm a Christian and a scientist and I would like to point that I do think evolution could have happened.
However, I would like to point something out which I think people usually fail to take into account. If we take as red for a moment that there is an almighty, all powerful God who created the universe. And that he created us in his own image (thats what the bible says). Well, I have a sense of humor so I think that God probably does to.
Given all of this, what is to stop God having created us the way he did, and then leaving a couple of "jokes" for us to fall for? I could just imagine him laughing... ha, you guys have got it sooooo wrong!
But as I said I actually think that evolution is correct, but is it really "proved" (can you actually prove something which you can't observe and recreate? and even then is it proved?) does knowing that we evolved actually help? Where did the whole universe come from? - the big bang? Well what created the big bang? Don't forget the ask the next question... I found that it led me to God. I find believeing that we are only here because of random chance impossible to believe, just look at the work around us - it's incredible, I can't believe it wasn't designed by God.
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
But the LORD GOD looked upon his credit report and was wroth. HE looked down upon the sleeping earth and saw that man was corrupted by the might of his bandwith, and pron flowed freely among the systems. And the LORD GOD called upon his credit card company and cancelled the card number and woe unto he who used it after said date. Meanwhile, not less than a swallows flight away, Saint Atalark snuck a hand greande from the arsenal of the great black beast of AARGH. Then saint Atalark raised up the hand grenade on high and said "O LORD bless this thy hand grenade, that it may blow thine enemies into tiny bits, in thy mercy." And the lord did grinand blessed the hand grenade. And the people feasted upon the lambs, and the sloths, and the orangutangs, and the breakfast cereals, and the fruit bats....
This says exactly the opposite.
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If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
Of course we don't actually need a complete genome to tell that evolution has happened. People have been doing cross-species genetic comparisons for years as a way of looking at evolution. There are some genes that have been sequenced in hundreds or even thousands of different organisms, and they show exactly the same kinds of differences that you'd expect based on neo-Darwinism. Similarities are greatest between organisms that were generally believed to be similar already- human myoglobin is identical to that from chimpanzees but is slightly different from that of mice, for instance. Genes that have critical roles in sustaining life undergo evolution more slowly than ones that are less important, so basic structural proteins like actin are very highly conserved and less critical ones like hemoglobin are less conserved. Within a given gene family, changes that have no effect on function, like those that don't actually change which amino acid is coded for, are more common than ones that do change function. Conservative changes, which result in changing an amino acid to a similar one, are more common than radical one that change an amino acid into a totally different one. Changes in unimportant regions are more common than ones in critical regions. The behavior is so well understood that it's been used as the basis for "molecular clocks" that can tell how long ago species diverged by differences in critical genes.
This is so obvious to anyone who's looking at information like this that it's pretty much impossible to deny. It's staring you right in the face every time you look at the data. The genome is nice because it shows things working at an organism level, but crushingly clear molecular evidence of evolution has been available for quite some time.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
DNA looks a lot like your standard computer program, including what is noted in the parent post. You'll also note that it has a compression algarithm (the fact that it's a double-helix is a form of compression that puts human-built lossy compression to shame, even though DNA is lossless!). It runs on a base 4 number system.
Besides the physical, lossless compression noted above, it also has a sort of internal lossy compression, which essentualy builds the fractal-like attributes of an animal it describes. To see how, consider an idea based in the early days of computing and chaos theory:
To play what is known as the Chaos Game, you will need graph paper, a pencil, and a coin. However, results are best with a computer that has a random number generator. Pick a point at random on the graph. It doesn't matter where. Put a point there. Now think up two rules, a heads rule, and a tail rule. A rule can be something like "move up 4, left 5" or "move 20% closer to the center". When you flip heads on the coin, use the heads rule, and on tails, use the tails rule. Put a point where it tells you to move to. Then flip again, and again, and again, until you're sick of flipping.
You will find that you will not get a random pattern of dots, but a very structured pattern; a fractal. The more iterations, the sharper the image gets.
The scientists first trying this then tried to do the reverse: Given an image, how can you create rules that will make that image? Without getting into the details on how this is done, it turns out that the more fractal-like the image is, the simpilar the rules will be.
I beileve that our DNA is basicly a chaos game thats been running for millions of years. Our bodies (and those of any other animal or plant) reak of fractals. Our brain is a fractal. Our fingerprints are fractals. Our blood stream and nervous system are fractals (note how similar they look to the branches of a tree).
Thus, DNA has this beautiful lossy compression system for describing the bodies it creates. Describing each and every piece of something would make it bloated and prone to error. Instead, it is taken care of with a maximum ammount of elegance.
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Not a typewriter
You are absolutely right that this is really only "evidence" of man's evolution to those who were already convinced of the theory's soundness. Critics of Darwinism have already dismissed much more compelling evidence than this, so I seriously doubt that this discovery will persuade them.
On the other hand, genetic similarities which do not correlate with traits like appearance do lend much more credibility to the theory that man shares common ancestors with other primates.
(It does not neccessarilly follow, from this evidence alone, that it happened slowly over a prolonged time. There is growing popularity around the theory that many of evolution's most radical mutations happened in quick bursts, with long periods of little or no change in between, rather than the steady march of slow and subtle changes.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Darwin was right - mankind evolved over a long period of time from primitive animal ancestors" Too bad that's not Darwin's theory of evolution. If one were to actually read The Origin of Species, he or she would learn that Darwin believed that all creatures evolved together from more primitive versions of themselves, not that humans evolved from monkeys who evolved from lesser creatures. That is the common misconception about the theory of evolution.
Thank you for using bold face type. Your assertions are much more believable now that you've indicated that you're emphatic about them. :)
I do not have a signature
Roundness of the earth (Isaiah 40:22)
Almost infinite extent of the sidereal universe (Isaiah 55:9)
Law of conservation of mass and energy (II Peter 3:7)
Hydrologic cycle (Ecclesiastes 1:7)
Vast number of stars (Jeremiah 33:22)
Law of increasing entropy (Psalm 102:25-27)
Paramount importance of blood in life processes (Leviticus 17:11)
Atmospheric circulation (Ecclesiastes 1:6)
Gravitational field (Job 26:7)
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' Ore stabit fortis a fine placet ore stat '
- found on a park bench
' Ore stabit fortis a fine placet ore stat '
- found on a park bench
Scientific Creationism is merely a name given to right-wing bible-thumping zealots who wish schools in our country to not educate our children. See, most reasonable people, even those who believe in some sort of creation story, feel that evolution does actually happen. In fact, there is a popular, middle-of-the-road school of thought that would claim that the whole ball of wax, as it were, came into being via the hand of God, creating blue-green algae all those millenia ago, and then He (or She or It) took a hands off approach and let things get on with things. Frankly, I find this to be the scientific equivalent of being an agnostic. I find it easy to reconcile the two accounts: one is a religious story, meant to provide a direction to moral development, and the other is a scientific investigation, which has no moral to it's story, and is not meant to be believed blindly (emphasis on blind). In practice, the two should have no effect on one another. They don't for me.
Now back to the bible-belt zealots: unsatisfied with miseducating their own children to the nature of science, they want our schools to not teach evolution. But that's stupid. And dangerous. That way, you end up with presidents like Ronald Reagan who go on national television and say, "Well, it's just a theory," when asked about teaching evolution in the schools. So, most schools, at least those outside of Dixie (the South, to those of you in other countries that don't have to deal with this crap), say, "Sorry, no, we're teaching evolution and that's that." So, to muddy the waters (which is what zealots do, be they green or white-sheeted), the thumpers introduce this counter-intuitive bullshit called Scientific Creationism. The word scientific is used in this case to confuse and cajole the unwashed masses who can't tell the difference, kind of like calling Buzz Lightyear the ultimate in playtime fun. But really, it's just religion in a lab coat, so that the government won't notice they're violating the separation of church and state by forcing this steaming load of non-scientific lies down the throat of children, be they christian, muslim, jew or whatever. So, yes, it's just another abuse of the word scientific. A dangerous one at that. If I wanted my children (not that I have any yet, and this kind of thing is not making me want to have any) to learn about creationism, I'd send them to Sunday School to be indoctrinated.
Anyway, even the Pope says that evolution is more than a hypothesis (the link here is the only one I could find where the pontiff's statement was not followed by still more irrational, counter-intuitive, rabid drivelling by the religious right).
In short, my friend, be glad you live in Denmark.
Do not touch -Willie
Just to prove my point, what if this had been an opinion piece asserting that the human genome findings supported creationism? Would all those who support evolution suddenly decide that creationism is correct? Of course not, for it would only be an opinion piece and we would say his opinion is wrong, let's see the scientific data instead.
Next week I'm going to post to MSNBC an opinion piece that asserts that the universe is actually a few thousand light years in diameter, but looks much bigger because of the use of strategically-placed mirrors. Trust me, my opinion piece will absolutely, positively prove the point, even without the use of messy scientific facts...
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