Slashdot Mirror
Disgusting, Scary 'Walking' Fish Invades Maryland
texchanchan writes: "It's from China, it's a predator, and it can live for DAYS out of water. And it's in Maryland as reported at Yahoo. 'They can survive for two to three days out of water, breathing air with a primitive lung, pushing themselves around with their pectoral fins.' Read about it at the Maryland Fishing Report site or just look at its picture. Maryland Fishing Report says: 'This fish was most likely introduced by an individual with an aquarium. Never release aquarium fish into ponds and lakes!' Those exotic species will get us yet."
could this be living proof of the evolutionary path that aquatic creatures took to make it to land many millions (billions) of years ago? looks like it to me :-) I love hearing about this.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but how many bars do sell nails? Just because the bar does not sell nails does not mean the bar does not have nails (and other tools).
cpeterso
All of your points are excellent. It is obvious that I do not have the background in biochemistry necessary to carry this on in the fashion you would prefer.
You state that a nonliving protein is "completely directed". By what?
There were only two, small points I wanted to make. You proposed that the odds of life spontaneously generating are one chance in 2^410 or more than 10^123 . All I was saying is that that's only if you are calculating with totally independent events.
As soon as you throw in the possibility of a self-replicating protein of significantly smaller size then the chances get down to 10^50 according to you. This is already significantly more possible.
Finally, once you have a self-replicating molecule the chances of there being mutations in the replicating process leading to other, shall we say, interesting developments are much higher than any one thing happening as if by magic (ie as a one 10^123 chance).
The "completely directed" means directed towards replicating, creating more, becoming more life-like, as opposed to a bunch of building blocks randomly bumping into each other in a primordial alphabet soup.
And if gradual evolution is to be accepted, why are there no 2-5 cell creatures - why unicellular and many-cellular, no few-cellular? Surely it would be adaptive to have a bicellular organism with one able to work in acid, one in base, and the inactive one goes dormant during its non-advantageous state (myriad other examples are simple to imagine).
This is a strange argument. Why does evolution need to go through every possible state to get where we are? In any case, we are constantly finding new species. (Wasn't a new species of deer just discovered in China or something? A big, mammal walking around under our noses for 5000 recorded years and we've never catalogued it.) Just because we haven't uncovered an entire fauna of low-cellular creatures doesn't mean they are not out there.
I'm not saying your belief in creationism is wrong, I'm just saying that there might be some ramifications you may want to make in your arguments if you'd like to be more effective. All of your data about the possibility of a bunch of AA's coming together and making life in one fell swoop don't mean anything if that's not the expected path of it happening. You didn't give any mention of the possibility of catastrophes (asteroids, volcanoes, etc) injecting energy into the system, for example. A lot can happen over millions of years, and the whole idea is that something has to happen just once and stick in order for there to be life. Just handwaving and saying the "possibility for life being created in the particular fashion I've described is so low as to be preposterous that it's proof of God" is not sound.
I find your attempt to educate me about "science" amusing as you are taking the position of someone who is attempting to defend a theory based in mythology versus someone who is attempting to help your credibility. I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with creationism per se, it's interesting, it's just that it's very hard to recreate, and having theories about things that are very difficult to reproduce or that do not imply much tangible is more akin to philosophy than anything else. Evolution, on the other hand, makes specific predictions about the nature of life. These are testable. People have theorized that evolution can account for the generation of more complicated life from simple beginnings. This is testable, and is being tested right now. Creationism is a done deal. It's over. You either believe it or you don't and it's extremely difficult to collect "evidence" for it. This makes it a difficult theory for a scientist to stand behind.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
> The odds are not just low, they are flat out impossible. 10^50 is considered a mathematical equivalent of impossible, and 10^123 is way beyond that.
No, p=0 is the mathematical equivalent of impossible, and there is no concept of "way beyond" impossible. You're just spouting creationist bunkum.
I know it's pointless trying to convince you, but if any lurkers are reading this and haven't thought it out before, consider what happens when you shuffle a deck of cards and then examine the resulting order. The probablility of getting that order is 1/52!, AKA 1/10^68. Clearly, 1/10^68 is not "impossible", because it happens every time someone shuffles a deck of cards.
Want "way beyond" impossible? Just add more cards. Two decks gives 1/10^167. Three gives 1/10^276. Tell me how impossible you want it, and I'll tell you how many decks of cards you need.
Unless you want p=0, which can't be done by cards - by definition.
Scientists do not posit that the first self-replicator came about via random chance, any more than a chemist reckons that it is random chance that delivers NaCl + HOH when you mix HCl + NaOH in a beaker. The universe is not a random assemblage of matter and energy; there are all manner of laws and forces that make some conformations enormously more likely than others.
Without knowing what the first self-replicator was and by what pathway it arose, your probability calculations are just numbers pulled out of your ass.
> And if there were a self-replicating protein, what would prevent it from continuing to exist today?
A planet full of life that eats proteins? An oxygen-based atmosphere? (What was I saying earlier about creationists and thinking?)
> And if gradual evolution is to be accepted, why are there no 2-5 cell creatures - why unicellular and many-cellular, no few-cellular?
Assuming this claim is even correct, what's the problem? Some cells stick together as colonies and others don't - why should we require some to stick together in colonies of an arbitrary size? Multi-cellular life is thought to have arisen via cell specialization in multicellular colonies. It's a silly parody of evolution of the theory of evolution to claim that a life form with n+1 cells arose from a lifeform with n cells, and that all the lifeforms of sizes {1, 2,
Also, large modern multicellular creatures don't have any difficulty bootstrapping themselves up from a single cell without leaving 2-5 cell intermediates lying about. Why should evolution have any difficulty doing the same thing?
> Science is not about "might be". It's about facts.
Actually, science is about providing the best possible explanation for the evidence currently at hand. When there's insufficient evidence bearing on a topic they sometimes have to rely on conjectures, or even "we don't know".
> And a simple fact is that unless the "self-replicating protein" were near-perfect in replicative abilities, it would not be able to accurately reproduce itself.
Actually, an imperfect replicator is exactly what we are looking for. Evolution doesn't happen to perfect replicators.
Also, speaking of "the" replicator may lend to misconceptions, since "the" replicator may have been a cycle of reactions involving multiple "agents". I.e., at the earliest stages of proto-life we may be looking at mixtures of reagents rather than individuals.
> And simple entropic principles would lead to its degradation into simpler parts.
Care to show the math on your entropy calculations?
Lurkers take note: creationists are tres fond of invoking entropy, so long as they don't have to define anything, measure anything, or show any mathematics. (If you ever find a creationist willing to do all that, please bring it to my attention.)
But skipping the standard creationist handwaving fare and getting back to the original post... What you are arguing here is abiogenesis, not evolution. The theory of evolution doesn't care where the original replicators came from; it merely explains the pattern of changes you see once you do have a system of imperfect replicators. (Remember what science is? We see massive evidence that life has changed over time; we try to explain it.)
And FWIW, both scientists and creationists agree that abiogenesis happened at some point in the earth's history. The only disagreements are over when it happened and what the mechanism was. If you want me to accept your made-up probabilities for chemical abiogenesis, are you willing to accept my made-up probabilities for divine abiogenesis?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> You are making a classic probstat error...
d00d! You forgot the most important part of your post, which should have gone something like this: And though it's optional, I heartily recommend adding the following disclaimer as well: But having made your bed, let's see how well you lie in it.
First, let me call to the attention of any innocents reading this post that your probability argument - like all creationist probability arguments I've ever seen - relies critically on a hidden assumption that life is a completely random assemblage of atomic components. Lurkers my want to speculate, publicly or privately, why creationists always make this (hidden) assumption; my own speculation is that it's a combinaton fo these three factors:
- the typical creationist knows exactly diddley-jack about the natural sciences, and thus couldn't assume a more realistic mechanism even if he wanted to; and
- admitting that the arrangements of the molecules in biological organisms is the result of laws and forces that bias the outcome runs a great risk of unwittingly admitting that the mechanisms proposed by the theory of evolution really work; and
- any assumption other than completely random configurations with uniform probabilities will not produce the astonomical numbers needed to impress the rubes with an otherwise silly argument.
At any rate, giving AC his desired probability model, and given that the universe exists and the matter in his protein actually exists, we find that there is a truly astronomical number of possible configurations for that matter - probably a higher number even than he calculates - with the resulting possiblility of any single one of those configurations existing - given his assumptions - being <<1/10^50, and thus "impossible". However, given that the universe and the matter in the protein does exist, we conclude that the probability that it is in one of those configurations is 1.0 - just as for the outcome of shuffling a deck of cards.So much for creationist probability arguments; they don't even rise to their own standards, let alone to the standards of science.
> You further speculate that there was a non-oxygen atmosphere in the past which the proteins arose in.
No, that's based on evidence, not speculation. For instance, the iron in all your worldly goods was accessible to human miners because it precipitated out of the oceans en masse when the atmosphere "turned over" to an oxygen-based atmosphere and oxidized it. Otherwise it would be (more or less) randomly distributed throughout the crust.
There is other evidence for our pre-oxygen atmosphere; you might want to read up on it if this sort of thing interests you and your faith doesn't rely too much on isolating yourself from facts about the world you live in.
> That's because if you don't have very accurate reproduction, you'll get random mutations which, by the laws of probstat, will degenerate most of the organisms via a mechanism known as "return to the mean".
There is no such mechanism; do not misinterpret the "law of large numbers" as a programmed directional shift. You seem to be one who knows just enough about statistics to be dangerous.
Also very importantly, do not critique the theory of evolution on the basis of a straw-model that omits an enormously important part of the theory, natural selection. (And sexual selection and all that other good stuff you'll hear about if you ever get past them metaphorical Page One in your knowledge of the theory of evolution.)
Hint: Sundayschool ain't the place to learn about it.
> You're claiming that evolution does not involve abiogenesis.
Indeed I am, and that's because it doesn't. The theory of evolution says nothing about where life came from. Terraform a planet and pack off your favorite species for a permanent visit, and you'll find that they will evolve there - just as they will if they get there instead by local abiogenesis, by human creation, or by divine creation. Ultimate origins is irrelevant to the theory of evolution; it merely needs some biological organisms to work with.
> If true (and I dispute that), then evolution needs at least as big a leap of faith as creationism does.
Not at all. It's evidence, not faith, that tells us that the universe is of finite age, and evidence, not faith, that tells us that life now exists in the universe. It follows immediately from those that abiogenesis must have happened somewhere along the way; faith does not play any role in either the premises or the conclusion.
> And again you're fudging things when you say I should accept your probabilities for divine abiogenesis.
Not at all. If you want me to accept numbers that you pulled out of your ass, then it's perfectly reasonable for me to expect you to accept numbers that I pulled out of my ass.
> Since there definitely is a God, there is no need to calculate the probability of Him existing.
That sort of argument is known as "assuming the consequent", "begging the question", or, in layman's terms, "cheating".
> Want proof? Where did all the matter, physical laws, order, information, and initial energy come from?
Not from any god. Want proof? Where did your god come from?
See, it's easy if I get to use the same low standards of evidence that creationists insist on for their own arguments.
[Lurkers please note that I don't offer that as a serious argument. Rather, I offer it as an example of how creationists will reject an argument with a logical form identical to their own arguments, if it does not lead to the "right" conclusion.]
> If evolution does not include abiogenesis, you'd better go tell your local school board - it's in the textbooks with lots of other lies about evolution.
Oddly enough, solar dynamics, kinematics, cloud formation, Turing machines, electic circuits, and a pile of other things that the theory of evolution doesn't say anything about are also to be found in textbooks. You single out abiogenesis only because of your ignorance (and presumably also because it, even more than evolution, is directly contrary to your religious beliefs).
Curiouser yet, none of those textbooks invoke invisible magicians to explain any of those other phenomena, and yet for some reason no one is writing their school boards and legislatures to protest that omission.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade