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Ready, Steady, Evolve
Stront writes "New Scientist is reporting that plants and animals can 'bottle up' evolution until they need it. A certain protein 'hides away' mutated genes acting like a genetic valet, however in extreme environments, such as high temperature or noxious chemicals, the cleaning process breaks down and the mutations are released all at once. This goes some way to explaining examples that are considered to defy standard evolutionary theory, such as the Bombardier Beetle."
All these examples where the standard theory failed showed the basic flaws of the evolution theory. Now they bring up a extremely complicated theory to get the "standard theory" right. Ironically it contradicts itself the evolutionary theory by such plants and animals with "hidden genes" are more prone to get gene-defect diseases like cancer etc. So that's basically a huge evolutionary drawback which should have eliminated by evolution.
Sorry pals. The standard evolution theory by Darwin is basically flawed. I'm not one of these air-heads who doubt carbon dating etc. But we have record in all older human of a superior alien power interfering which life on this planet. Why should this be in fact wrong ? The acients surely saw something and misinterpreted it, without having much knowledge about the world. However humans are not cracked up such much as they seem to be so it's very unlikely that this is all made up.
You guy defending the evolution theory so keenly are in fact a new kind of religious zealot - you just replaced the trinity with natural sciences.
I wonder when the first fires will burn and the whitchhunts start.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Come on moderators, this is a blatant troll!
Genetic algorithms are not proof of evolutionary theory. They merely demonstrate that, under very controlled conditions, the application of "survival of the fittest" and random mutations in a "gene pool" can allow solutions to develop in a way analogous to natural selection.
You can't make a jump from that to proving the theory of evolution by natural selection. Indeed, it's highly unlikely that that theory will ever be proved beyond doubt, and many people (not just loonies) expect it to be debunked sooner rather than later. (Personally, I don't hold that view.)
Genetic algorithms are interesting - I've had fun with them myself. But they *prove* exactly nothing.
These sigs are more interesting tha
Its not that all of the chemicals and mechanisms exist that is amazing about the bombadier beetle, it is the fact that they all appeared together to form a chemical reaction on command. Each chemical of the reaction is stored in different chambers of the beetles body until the beetle is ready to fire the boiling water. The chemicals are released into a common chamber that is then aimed and opened to expel the water. The bombadier beetle's boiling water mechanism is irreducibly complex. Any of the parts of the system that would have evolved would have been useless and arguably detrimental without the other parts of the system.
I would recommend reading Pandora's Black box to better understand how the bombadier beetle works.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
Hey buddy, Christianity isn't 100% proven either. In fact, the only proof you've got is the Bible, and all it does is assert the correctness of itself. That's what's called "begging the question". And if you're going to get all semantical on the "theory" of evolution, I'll have to ask you to look up "faith" and how it's compared to "proof".
Science is the quest for knowledge. Religion is the opposite. Did you know that people used to think that the weather was caused by gods? That sounds pretty crazy now that we discovered pressure systems and cold fronts, doesn't it?
So there's this big question we all have: where did we come from? Science tries to figure it out using all the available data. You try to think of a plausible theory to explain all of the data and then see if you can use it to predict things. If the prediction is right, you make a little check mark on a clipboard. If the prediction is wrong, or new data shows up to invalidate your theory, you change the theory.
With religion, you're supposed to continue to have faith despite being proven wrong. Religion is intellectually bankrupt. You ask why we're here and religion says, "Because of God. Go pray and stop asking questions." Why do you want to take the easy way out? That kind of reason barely even works on little kids; even they know that "because I said so" is not a good reason. And even if you play along with the whole God created Man thing, you're in for it when you ask where God came from. Because, it turns out, He's always been here. Well, golly, I guess I'll just stop trying to figure stuff out and let others just tell me what to think.
If you want to talk morality, maybe you should read some Nietzsche. And I can tell you that my morals are just fine without an invisible superhero friend in the sky.