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Still More Evidence for Evolution
Uche writes: "Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have uncovered the first genetic evidence that explains how large-scale alterations to body plans were accomplished during the early evolution of animals."
Many years in the future, a bunch of scientists manage to contact God.
"God," they go on to say, "we no longer need you. Anything you can do, we can do. We know now how everything works."
"Is that so?" God responds. "Well, in that case, how about a contest? You create a man, and I'll create a man and we'll see which turns out better."
"Agreed," the scientists repond.
"But," God continues, "you'll have to do it like I did and create a man from the dirt."
"Not a problem," the scientists chortle, knowing enough to be able to resequence basic elements into complex structures like DNA. So, in unison, the scientists get out their beakers, bend down, and scoop up some dirt.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," God says. "You get your own dirt."
My point? Evolution is a non issue. The real debate is in the origin of the framework by which everything evolves. Scientists playing with DNA can make pretty much anything happen. But they still can't create matter with a thought.
- JoeShmoe
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-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Unfortunately, while the scientists presuppose the existence of matter in your argument, you presuppose the existence of a God that can create that matter. No one wins this argument, like any other of this sort.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I also believe in creation to the extent that some higher being at one point installed the last "spark plug", if you will, in order to give humans that certain something extra that separates us from mere beasts.
For many of us 'creationist-bashers' its exactly this type of comment that gets us pissed off. 'Mere beasts'!!! 'Spark Plug'!!! WTF
I won't scream 'show me the evidence!' I won't scream 'when your dead your dead - deal with it!'
I'll simply say stop being so damn arrogant. We're just a lucky lump of carbon and water that happens to be able to use tools and stuff - big wow!
Plenty more where we came from I'll bet.
> I also believe in creation to the extent that some higher being at one point installed the last "spark plug", if you will, in order to give humans that certain something extra that separates us from mere beasts.
Your delusions arise from the false assumption that we are separate from 'mere' beasts. The more we learn about the other apes, the more we realize that all the "humans only" stuff is merely a difference in degree of ability, not some great unbridgeable gap.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> The creationists mostly lied the whole time.
I've never been to a creationist debate, but from what I've read about them their SOP involves -
- Pack the audience with True Believers (sometimes by bussing, though that probably wouldn't be necessary at a university).
- Use their clock time to throw out scores of false claims, each of which would take the scientists several minutes to refute.
The net result is the appearance of having won. And of course that's all their striving for, since the movement is political rather than scientific.Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I think you're missing the point. This sort of thing isn't really taking a stand on the issue you're talking about, although we all tend to jump right to that anyway. Like you said, it can't be proven (or at least, we have absolutely no conception as to how to prove it right now) but what they are finding is the mechanism by which these things happen.
Before you discount the importance of this in the face of "God/No God", think of this: where would we be if Newton hadn't told us that, yes, the universe does have rules. Pasteur told us that, yes, there is something tangible (not just "sin") that causes disease. It might not directly be addressing your fundamental question, but it is an important thing to answer for both sides of the debate, as well as anyone in the middle or way out in left field. If you're looking to understand God or the Universe or something else entirely, discoveries like these help to realign your perceptions about how the world works in very jarring and enlightening ways. You don't have to go around believing you got the plague because you were a bad person, even though you thought you did everything right. You don't have to believe that there was a storm because you were destined to wind up at the bottom of the ocean for that affair you had. You can believe these things if you want to, but you gain the freedom and knowledge to make a more informed decision than our ancestors were able to make.
That, in my opinion, is the ultimate form of progress.
This does not really impact the fundamental question that you're addressing at all, nor does it take away from the beauty of the world around us. Indeed, I think things like this only serve to enrich both, and I find it sad that most people use these sorts of findings just to deconstruct the world for science or God.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
> Doesn't it seem that these scientists are going out of their way to discredit creationists?
Since creationists (I'm not counting just the belief that humans have a divine something as creationism) are going out of their way to discredit science, is that too unreasonable? The difference is that the scientists do it using the results of solid research, and the creationists do it by bullshit and lies. So it isn't really stooping to the same level.
This isn't really "more evidence for evolution" and more than gravity wave detectors are supposed to give us "more evidence for gravity" to refute flat-earthers. This is evidence about more detail of how evolution happens.
rant
In all of the debate, they only had one true argument, and it was a bad argument at that. Guess what that argument was? "Positive" mutations haven't been reproduced or observed in the laboratory, therefore they do not exist, therefore evolution is false. And this article is about just that.
What about antibiotic resistant bacteria? A relatively quick case of evolution in action. Obviously not a positive mutation from our viewpoint - but a positive one from the organism's viewpoint.
[Insert pithy quote here]
First, the thing to keep in mind is sucess is not being better at anything, success is passing on your genes. If you manage to pass on your genes, you're done. For all intents and purposes, you can drop dead at that point, your job is done. Now it's up to your offspring to procreate. As long as they manage that, the "species" is OK. Just keep poppin' em out faster than they drop dead or get eaten.
/. with some guy about the eyeball, I don't want to have it again.
Second, nobody said you need to grow a fully formed stomach when there was none before. I've already has this conversation on
Stop thinking stomach, and start thinking proto-organs, or even single cells that exist symbiotically within another organism. Ameobas don't have stomachs, they have, I dunno, specialised cell groupings that secrete a 'digestive' chemical that extracts nutrients from any external piece of whatever that happens to float by. This is not a "chicken/egg" problem, so stop coming at it from that angle. As for those 999,999 generations of nonworking "stomachs": that took a whole 2 or 3 days of debugging in a pond somewhere to get the right one, way back 600 million yrs ago. After that it was just code tweaking.
What is it with people and evolution, that they can't imagine some slimy chemical mud that has "intent" - in so far as it gravitates toward another chemical gradient (food) - being alive?
Imagine Q or Rod Serling standing next to a small puddle explaining this to you OK? Here we have a pool of chemical x that naturally moves towards chemical y. In a few moments, this chemical soup will undergo a common reaction involving common chemicals. It will become "alive". It will contain a few simple organic compounds that, given some quiet time to themselves, will intermingle and maybe even begin to replicate - the ablity to harvest nearby chemical compounds and assemble them in a *near* mirror image. Hell some of those compunds can be from other "proto-organisms" and we already have predator and prey evolving. Neat huh?
Asking how stomachs and eyeballs formed while imagining them as real functioning eyeballs and assholes is like asking how you get a fully formed modern man equipped with a cell-phone -- from a club-swinging neanderthal. You don't. Because the neanderthal never picked up a club with the express purpose of building a cell-phone. If he did, he would have quickly found that he was without the proper environment to create one, let alone NEED one.
So too, did early life not set out to outfit itself with a stomach, but instead went for the more practical "I just found a new way to eat my food by actively enveloping it instead of passively absorbing it from my environment -- COOL"
what follows sounds like a linux bash but i cant be bothered to clean it up, take what you want. I'm getting tired....
And your comp sci analogy doesnt work either, as building the Linux kernel that way is akin in biological complexity to building a chamaeleon or something from scratch. Try creating a kernel that can "eat", "defend" and "replicate"(sounds like windoze). Your Linux/chaemaleon is wasting time trying to be 10 different species/server tasks. Whereas a flatworm just does what it needs to divide and move on. Maybe you should write the comp sci equiv of a flatworm (haha windoze again), then maybe your flatworm kernel will be able to withstand random mutations?
So explain Psychology,
I see your point. God MUST have created us, because of Psychology!
you conscious (if you have one),
You either mean consciousness (self-awareness), which other animals have been shown to have; or conscience, (awareness of right vs. wrong), which is part of abstract reasoning which does indeed make humans unique. I'll give you that, even though some researchers believe otherwise. But your argument wasn't that humans were unique, was it?
human compassion
Define compassion. Some humans have it, some don't. Will humans ever be able to live more peacefully than, say, deer? I doubt it, but one can only hope.
why we can talk,
Hmm. This is one of the arguments used to bolster evolutionary theory.
why we have a great capability to learn and a drive to achieve...
Because it increased our chances of survival in ancient times?
But you say, oh apes can talk and can learn, and have compassion. And I say, you are correct, so can my dog. But neither has made any great advancements in scientific research lately
You mean like the research you are currently discounting out of hand?
and my dog likes to go pee on my fence on regular basis.
Um, my arguments end here.
-bp
bp
I'd find Creationists a bit more convincing if they didn't have to resort to blatant misinformation in their arguments again and again. Half-truths and distortions do nothing more than convince me that some of these Creationists don't even believe their own propaganda, since they can't stick to the facts.
The whole argument is stupid, anyhow. It's based on a mistaken belief that one must cling to a questionable interpretation of the Bible as a matter of faith. Has anyone noticed that only Creationists tie Evolution, Geology, and Atheism together? Those who research Evolution do not insist that one must be an atheist if one believes that evolution rather than recent creation is a better explanation for the development of life on Earth. Those who teach and research modern geology do not insist that one must be an atheist if one believes that geologic processes rather than recent creation is a better explanation for the current geology of Earth.
However, since Creationists fallaciously tie acceptance of modern geology and evolutionary theory to disbelief that God created the Earth, and therefore disbelief in God (i.e., atheism), it has become a matter of faith to oppose evolutionary theory and modern geology as a false, atheistic (and thus, probably diabolic) doctrine by any and all means. If you don't believe me, go read articles and web sites by Creationists that are targetted toward Christians, as opposed to the general public.
To my mind, it is all very pointless because there is no contradiction between evolution and God; who are they to say how God created the universe and life? How can they know that evolution and geological processes are not just more tools in God's toolbox? They can't know, and they who presume to know how God created the universe or to put limits on the methods God used in creation are both small-minded and arrogant beyond belief!
To my mind, the power and grandeur of God is elevated, and not diminished by evolution and geology. To achieve His unknown goals, He started out at least 15 billion years ago with the Big Bang, and designed the entire process of star formation, planet formation, geological processes, evolution, etc! That's a lot bigger than POOF! The Earth was wished into existance a mere 6000-8000 years ago, complete with fake fossils and fake geology.
I wonder if Creationists are afraid of the power and knowledge of the God who created evolution and the Big Bang; I wonder if they want to cut Him down to a size they can comprehend?
---dragoness
Interesting commentary, and I must say that I happen to believe that a "He spoke and it came into existence" does sound a heckuva lot like a "Big Bang".
However, the fact remains that many adherents to the Atheistic Faith (to say that, conclusively, there is no God takes just as much faith as the converse) seek to throw up Big Bang and Evolutionary arguments as proof of the non-existence of God.
I'm also of the opinion that adhering to the tenet that we are descended from Great Apes goes a long way towards reducing people's willingness to believe in the superiority of homo sapiens. I believe that God created us in His image (and the Bible says nothing of intermediary steps in the process) and so, to claim that there was an "open beta test" for hominids is fairly sacreligious, as it calls into question both God's intent and His competency as a Creator.
I'm a big fan of Don Behe's "irreducible complexity" theory (see Darwin's Black Book, ISBN: 0684834936), as it goes a long way towards highlighting the biochemical obstacles to macro-evolution).
Then again, you can always take the Douglass Adams tack: Creation itself is proof of a Divine Creator and since conclusive proof would obviate the need for Faith, Poof! He vanished in a puff of logic.
Man, I'm sorry he's (errrm, Adams, not God) dead. Would have been nice to see the 6th book in his 5-part trilogy completed before his death (instead of the old Tolkien-Unfinished-Works-style book that we'll be getting...)
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Intelligent conversation and discussion can only occur when you throw away all your stereotypes before stepping up to the table. Some
philosopher talked about this once, but basically, you are supposed to try your best to approach the situation without making any
assumption about the person/people with whom are you discussing, how it will benefit you, etc.
I believe quite the opposite. Because of science and its ability to give us solid facts, it's wrong to give all views equal credence at the starting line in a scientific discussion. Of course the idea appeals to us because most of us believe in democracy, equality, etc, and in a purely philosophical question like ideas of right & wrong, aesthetics, etc, you'd be in the right. Science, however, is by no means democratic, by which I mean that any idea MUST match known facts. Discussions on evolution are thus NOT philosophical in nature, because they seek to project facts to formulate an idea about the past. The theory being contested is that animals, including ourselves, developed over time through natural selection. Whether this is true, for a scientist, can only be demonstrated and proven with facts. Creationists OTOH choose to use science when it suits them and discard it when it contravenes their religious beliefs.
This leads me to another argument of yours, that creationists are in the majority. That may be so, but the facts do not rely upon consensus, only on veracity through experimentation. Also, the silly pretense that creationism isn't a religious belief is belied by the fact that it relies on a sort of de novo, deus ex machina placement of life on the planet by a higher power, an inherently religious phenomenon. One could argue in response as Richard Dawkins does, that the idea of the development of man over millenia from more basic organisms is infinitely more awe-inspiring than being plopped here by the almighty about 6000 years ago.
Creationism is to some worthy of ridicule, and understandably so. It's a relic of a time when humans looked up at the sky and thought the stars spoke to them, when we didn't understand why the ground shook or the sun turned dark in mid-day. While I don't agree with bashing people's religious beliefs, when they want to use those beliefs to create public policy, or mandate the passing of those beliefs on in schools, in science classes no less, it's only my duty as a scientist and someone true to simple fact to oppose such stupidity, here and anywhere else I see it.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Bias Disclosure: I am a Christian and Biblical Creationist.
The article opener claims that this finding can explain how sea creatures could evolve into insects. That isn't what it explains at all.
So they change a key gene or two and the shrimp lose some legs. SO WHAT? As useful as this may prove to be for gene therapy and all, this does not explain away the Creationists' argument!
To my knowledge, no evolutionist claims that insects were the first land animals. An animal that can survive in a marine environment just cannot migrate to land, no matter how many legs it has.
To explain away the Creationists' argument, not only does a candidate mechanism such as this have to be found, but there must be a detailed explanation of which changes occurred, to which species, in what order, and how the resulting creatures could survive in either land or water.
The evolutionists still have a lot of work to do. If a shrimp loses legs and gills, and absorbs oxygen through the skin, can it still survive in water long enough to go ashore?
Whenever I get in a discussion with evolutionist types, they often respond with an attitude of over-skepticism. Stuff like, "I won't even consider this belief system without absolute proof!" Are those same people now criticizing Creationists for not bowing before this non-proof?
Now as for myself, I have very little knowledge of Biology (just high school level), but I'm no dummy. I know all about the black and white moths, and the drug-resistant bacteria, and the Galapagos finches, and all that. No one I know, Creationists included, doubts that variations occur over time. But I for one reserve the right to doubt an idea like evolution, that if true would completely invalidate my world-view, without more evidence than we currently have.
NOTE: I did not say that I have no doubts about Creationism. I have quite a few, not the least of which is the "Starlight & Time" problem. But that's another topic.
My point in summary: Lots of you Slashdot types love the stance of universal skepticism, but everybody believes something they can't prove. Evolution may be yours, or atheism, or astrology, but Creationism is mine.
LAMP hosting on Debian, SSH, no bandwidth cap, PayPal accepted - http://secondbrainhosting.com/
I don't disagree with the basics of your statements. The Creationist's argument is mostly emotional, so he uses the tactics of throwing out numerous nice-sounding but false claims, in the hope of staying ahead of a rigorous analysis of those claims.
However, it's ironic that you still have this in your sig:
The court ruled it legal to fuck the voters by running out the clock, and demonstrated how to do it.
A rigorous analysis has shown that in some ways of counting votes, Bush won. In some ways of counting votes, Gore won. From a more neutral perspective, the Florida Supreme Sourt screwed up by not taking control of the process when they had the opportunity to create the perception of an honest vote count. Instead, they allowed numerous abuses by the counting methods of Democrat operatives to go unchallenged. So, the US Supreme Court kept them from allowing a legally conducted election to be overthrown by questionable vote-counting methods.
In the end, it was just a power struggle between two political parties, and had nothing to do with the voters getting "fucked".
Viewing it in some slanted light isn't about facts, it's about religion.
Being Scientific often means forgetting the fact that you have a horse in the race for a bit, and instead evaluating the evidence from a neutral perspective. It's the reason why Science has brought us so far in the past few hundred years, whereas Religion accomplished nothing of the sort in the hundred thousand years before the Scientific Method was even postulated.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
"So we will stop being wolves and start being domestic dogs."
... probably taller"
We are already domesticated. A key indicator of domestication is neotany--retaining the characteristics of youth. The flatter human face with the bulging skull makes us look much more like babies, and also giver room for a larger brain. The human jaw is shrinking, and canines becoming much blunter than in ape. (Generally--mine look like a baboons, which is a real pain if I bite my lip)
"Intelligence creates material success, which is a prize factor for breeding."
I'm going to have to disagree with you here. People who are wealthier tend to have fewer children, later, than people who aren't. True, this is a cultural trend, and will probably reverse itself. Otherwise we'll end up in Kornbluth's world of the _Marching Morons_.
"Human beings will continue to become
I could be wrong, but I don't think people are evolving to become taller. I believe that all the increases in height (fairly recent, and much to rapid to be evolutionary) are due to better diet. This is an environmental change allowing a fuller expression of genetic potential for height, not a genetic evolutionary change tht will be passed down to our descendents.
Wow.
;-P
All of this creationism hot air. But on Slashdot? Isn't this a technodweeb's paradise? A science geek's home?
Whenever a debate on evolution springs up on the net, does some appointed sentinel of the far right ring the clarion call of Christian Fundamentalism and call forth a vanguard of babbling halfwits running to the scene of the crime to proclaim The Truth?
I'm really sorry. Mod me troll, mod me flamebait. I know it is no good to throw a pail of water on the idea of commentary on a website devoted to comments. But this is Slashdot, isn't it? We believe in science and tech here, no?
Look, some guidelines for non-creationists, as I see it, for whatever it is worth:
Don't talk to them.
PLEASE! Don't take the bait! They only relate babbling pits of tomfoolery to your mind. You can not reason with them! Every pound of logical heft you hurl in their direction will be replied with immediately by 10 pounds of so much clangityclank of the brain that you will only be left dumbfounded by the psychology of it all. The point is to not engage them. Because engaging them will not allow their ideas to die the ignoble historical death their ideas deserve. The dustbin of history must not be disturbed, as it is already disturbed enough as it is. The more you try to persuade them to reason, the more you breathe life into a sinking ship. Your pleas for reason will only be replied with with flim flam.
They mean well, and that is their problem. But they can't get their brains past a bad idea. They must justify it, by any means possible. So the harder and harder you blow against them, the harder they hold their cloak of belief. Stop blowing, let time and solitude relax their grips on their insanity.
I hear some primitive tribespeople fear having their pictures taken because they think the camera steals a bit of their soul. So if they don't see a camera, they don't get excited. And when their backwards beliefs are not challenged, they live peaceful, harmless lives. In other words, don't show creationists cameras. Get it?
After all, Al Qaeda is nothing more than a Muslim Fundamentalist backlash against the "decadent West." New ideas are dangerous. Progress is disturbing to some people. Some do not accept new, and better ideas. They instead cling to old, crazy ones and get very defensive about it. They frame it in absolutes, that evolution goes against God, for example. Evolution does not go against God. Science is not allied against religion. Any forward-thinking religious person can incorporate evolution into their world-view without evolution challenging their beliefs. It will, in fact, enrich their understanding of the world, deepen the mystery of life by making more clear the complexity of it all, and therefore, eventually, reaffirm their belief in God. But all of this assumes an open mind. Unfortunately, there are a lot of closed ones.
Don't show creationists cameras!
Leave them to their strange ways. Left in peaceful backwards isolation, they will eventually go the way of the Dodo, no irony intended. Right now their numbers are too large and the voraciousness of their passion too disturbing in the USA to be considered harmless. They are quite harmful, to the education and intelligence of all of our children. Give it time, many years, and they will fade away into history. Someday, decades from now, creationism will sound almost cute and harmless, like we laugh at the Spanish Inquisition in Monty Python skits.
Until then, they are just a massive pain in the ass. Please, ignore them! Here on Slashdot, and in the rest of your life. Your intentions are good in trying to challenge them in honest debate, but please, just walk away from them. There is no winning, just lots of hot air for you to inhale.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it