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Top 10 Evolutionary Adaptations
oneill40 writes "The New Scientist has an interesting article up listing the Top 10 most amazing things to have evolved, including sex, death, the eye, language and parasites!" From the article:"Sponges are a key example of multicellular life, an innovation that transformed living things from solitary cells into fantastically complex bodies. It was such a great move, it evolved at least 16 different times. Animals, land plants, fungi and algae all joined in." J adds: Number four, Language, got a careful look from Carl Zimmer a while back. It's Pinker vs. Chomsky, winner take all, pass the popcorn!
AS FAR as humans are concerned, language has got to be the ultimate evolutionary innovation.
:)
really? by reading slashdot, it feels more like devolution to me!
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
How about DNA? It's contains all genetic information that determines how cells are formed and how they behave. It's what allows cells to copy the essence of themselves from one generation to the next, and allows them to continue on the platform from where the last generation left off. If our cells weren't packing around little mini protein 'storage devices', not a whole lot would be happening.
And talk about missing options sheesh! Best evolutionary adaptation? I vote breasts!
Death? Maybe it's just me but I'd consider death an evolutionary failure.
Immortality, now that would be a nice adaptation!
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The single most amazing evolutionary adaptation is undoubtedly YOU. That a mouth breathing dolt, such as yourself, has been able to survive at all, let alone this long, defies all logic and brings the entire theory of evolution into question.
In fact, if ever there was evidence of an omnipotent diety, YOU are it! Obviously, God exists and in your case, he had a terrible accident!
Without reading one of the supplementary articles...
I am not buying language as an object of biological evolution at all. At best, it seems to be an expressed meme, rather than a genetic advancement, or a trait that can be selected for. Also, I am not buying the facts expressed in the article abotu language. Haven't we taught chimps and apes sign language? Aren't there example of such creatures telling us things spontaneously (the most recent example was when the chimp told some scientists that it had a mildly severe toothache)? It doesn't seem that language is merely confined to humans, but it further seems like a learned trait rather than a biological trait. For instance, even if we had the biological capacity for language, there does not seem to be an inherant argument for the actual expression of language. In other words, an organism may have the capacity to express a meme-like trait, but may never actually express it. Thus, in humans, the capacity to understand language may be selected for, but the language usage itself is a socially learned trait. Also I would wonder if we never began using our capacity for language, then if the capacity may be biologically selected for, but if the utility of that capacity is never expressed, then why is the gene for that capacity being selected for?
"It's true that many species, including insects, lizards and plants, do fine without sex, at least for a while." ... don't forget about Slashdot readers... ZING!
How could they omit the female human breast?
Weird. I would have expected to see an opposable thumb on that list. I mean, isn't that kind of important for us? Or maybe I'm just being too human-centric.
Creationists.
*ducks*
Didn't that happen in the 60's?
"However useful sex may be now that we've got it, that doesn't tell us anything about how it got started"
Are they kidding? I'm sure it was a 'double dog dare' on a Tuesday afternoon in the garden of eden.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Farting at will and belching your abc's?
:)
Oh, and sex is defintely #1 in the top 10. Which would you rather have, eyesight or an orgasm?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Time for another beer...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
And the 11th most amazing thing to "evolve"?
11. The ability to create unparalleled controversy by publishing a story that is intended to incite heated argument between two equally strong factions.
Where would we be without journalists? (Probably without the Spanish-American war for one..)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I really wish one of those researchers would spend some time responding to this guy, the owner of a website called Evolution, a Fairytale for Grownups! A lot of the features mentioned in the article come up on his site, although argued against in an un-proffesional manner (for more adult discussion he also posts debates that he's won.
For all the evidence presented by popular media and through the education system, there seem to be a lot of people, including scientists, who can't accept evolutionary theory, and dismiss it as propaganda.
Considering the recent "Just a theory" textbook-sticker fiasco, there are a lot of big divides going on in America right now. Now, since this is Slashdot, the responses are going to be quite biased, but do you Americans find that a lot of friends, co-workers and family don't accept evolutionary theory?
On the day of the Pope's funeral, you post an evolution article like this?!?!?!?
Not even Bender was that callous.
No, I'm fairly certain that First Posts are an evolutionary disadvantage.
I disagree. The most amazing result would have to be republicans.
Photosynthesis is definitely the top for me. It changed the chemistry of the entire planet. Of course the human brain has done the same, but we will soon be extinct and out impact rather small compared to photosynthesis.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
Has he made his way to /. yet?
"Only human brains are able to produce language"
Now if only they could evolve coherent thought to power the language adaptation.
Hell, even in the movie Firestarter the chickens knew to flee eminent firestarting activity whilst government agents watched said chickens run for it...
T and A.
I must say, though, leaving out the evolution of the opposable thumb is pretty shocking. Without an opposable thumb, how do I press the button on my digital watch?!
Sponges are a key example of multicellular life
i s16.html
No, its not called a sponge, its called a falafel thing.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1013043mackr
-Bill
Top 10 Reasons To Procrastinate
10.
So amazing that some would say mere chance isn't enough, that there had to be some intelligence behind their design. :D
homosexuality.. becasue..because it's natural damn it ! i can't prove it but it is !
Somewhat along the same lines, Carl Zimmer also talked about "resurrecting the genome" of a mammalian ancestor from about 80 million years ago. Snippets of the genome are present in all mammals today. By comparing the genomes of various mammals, they were able to come up with a pretty good approximate of the genome. This chart shows how much of the original genome different mammals have. Surprisingly, humans have lost only 25% of the original genome, whereas rats and mice have lost more than twice that. I would have thought otherwise since the earliest mammals were shrewlike... but I'm not a biologist/geneticist/whoever studies these things.
He also wrote this article some time ago that talked about Resurrecting the Genome. Here is another article (by him) on the same topic, that appeared on NY Times.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
The use of the dash in "G-d" is a Jewish custom.
I was about to make the exact same joke. Had my post typed up already and everything.
My four favorite things produced by evolution: yeast, barley, hops, and monks.
really? by reading slashdot, it feels more like devolution to me!
OMG u R teh st00p1D!!11!eleventy-leven!!WTFBBQQED!!111!
Gah - how can people actually communicate that way? That sentence alone (such as it was) made me feel icky.
Perhaps Coneasfast is correct...
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
That's REVOLUTION...dude.
Now pass the pipe *FFFtttttttt....aahhhhhhh*
Life is not for the lazy.
I would think that programmed cell-death is also a way of making sure we don't have runanway growth... which is precisely what happens in cancer.
I'm just speculating here, but what's to say that we didn't have "immortality" at the cellular level before? Perhaps cancer cells are a throwback to this earlier form. Everyone knows that cancer cells keep reproducing until they take down the host with them. That's not a very successful strategy. Perhaps there were organisms that kept growing and reproducing without dying. Eventually the environment couldn't support them, and they could have all died. A strategy around this was probably to have programmed cell death whereby the cells would die off after a certain number of divisions. That way, the population would be somewhat constant, and there wouldn't be such a burden on resources. Furthermore, the dead cells could actually return some of the consumed resources back to the environment. In the long run, this would be more favourable... but once again, I am merely speculating.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
It's what allows cells to copy the essence of themselves from one generation to the next, and allows them to continue on the platform from where the last generation left off.
And if you don't have DNA, you don't have imperfectly-replicating life forms, which means that you don't have evolution. As such, you cannot use evolution to go from the stage where there is no DNA to where there is, because it involves at least one step where you don't have reproducing life forms.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I'm not accusing the people who anthropromorphize as being bad scientists - I'm sure that they have the proper understanding of evolution and natural selection and similar concepts within their mind. However, what you have to realize is that your audience may not. Making consistent use of words like innovation and discovery, and general verbs associated with multicellular life makes the article sound more like journalism than science.
I realize that it's probably convenient to not have to worry about portraying modern evolutionary theory in the right manner, but it's also responsible. I wouldn't be bringing this up if I didn't run into it every single day - we anthropromorphize to such a degree that eventually we ourselves begin to believe that evolution really is a deliberate mechanism that acts towards creating the "perfect" life form.
Oh, and I thought it was short of Gi-had.
I can't believe Linux isn't on there!!
It's an adaptation in response to commercial software companies, and it was(is) evolutionary!!
my blog
that's how we got anal
I'd use one of your fingers. Or just have your pet monkey do it-- whichever is most convenient.
However useful sex may be now that we've got it, that doesn't tell us anything about how it got started
Well, I recall reading somewhere that there is an evolutionary basis. In organisms that reproduce asexually, there is a direct copying from the parent to the child. A retrovirus (or some other parasite) could easily include its genetic code into the host, thereby continuing into the next generation. In sexual reproduction, you have two copies that merge, well half of each. This reduces the chance for parasites to hijack the reproduction mechanism, enabling us to stay one step ahead of them.
Also, it feels REALLY REALLY GOOD.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
When the french wake up tomorrow, they totally going to take this out on some confused canadian tourists.
You don't see any of these deficiencies in an octopuses' eye. So God's supposed "crowning creation" has worse vision than the lowly octopus?
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Were early cells missing this trait. Were original cells immortal? Is there any evidence that this trait evolved from cell lines that were inherently endlessly dividing?
wow. just, wow.
i tip my hat to you, sir. i could never, in a million years, come up with something that assinine.
you, sir, are a paragon of evolution in action.
you got here.
But the No Base Pair Left Behind Act lead to massive grade inflation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...without some moron like you coming in, spewing out a completely invalid analogy founded upon faulty premises and a total lack of understanding of the actual theory of evolution and then arrogantly acting as though you've somehow falsified the last 150 years of biological research with the amazing power of your ignorance.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
This article provides some fascinating topics to ponder when considering the 'big questions' like: "What is life?", "What is its purpose?", and of course, "What is *our* purpose?" Taking a look at some of these fundamental and extraordinary evelutionary developments might provide some insight into the grand design of things.
I would put the arguments against evolution as one of the more interesting things that have evolved over the years. Well, maybe not interesting enough to be top ten. But the arguments against evolution have evolved in amazing ways. The latest, so called intelligent design, is a clever set of memes that try to deal (though poorly) with some of the intellectual slap-downs that have been dealt to creationism.
Not quite correct. This simplest bacteria (no nucleus) uses only RNA. The mechanisms of transcription have likely evolved significantly as well.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Survive a few 100 generations??? How does the species even get to Gen2 if they 'give it up'?
aha, someone dreaming about her/his PHB or such
Big Bang is a theory on how the solar system was formed. Evolution is a theory on how species evolved. Two seperate theories. Neither theory states people formed by dust settling.
There is a theory where an all-powerful being willed us here and we just appeared.
There's another where the earth was seeded by aliens. We're just a petry dish for them.
There's another where this is all a dream and none of this exists at all.
Pick and choose and you wish. After all, its likely that none of them are correct anyway. But perhaps you could learn about other theories before discrediting them. Don't worry, you won't go to hell for thinking... Free your mind!
Thank you.. please pay at the second window.
There's no place like ~/
Simply put, the Pope had made statements over his life that if not complete endoresments of evolution, were hardely condemnations of it.
Although it's open to interpretation, I'd say that this is a tacit admission that evolution is correct.
Sangloth
I'd appreciate any comment witb a logical basis...it doesn't even have to agree with me.
If youre walking along a beach and find a watch do you logically assume that nature made it? Of course not! It had to be designed! Therefore evolution doesnt make any sense and the only reasonable explanation is that G-d made everything a few years ago with magic and oh yeah the world is flat and suspended on the back of a turtle.
"G-D" is total BS anyway. There's a tradition in both Judaism and Christianity to avoid the name of God, but "God" is not God's name in the first place, it's his job title. His *name* is usually translated into English as Jehova.
:\
But logic and religion don't mix well, I suppose.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
This is the best comment I've read in a while. Funny, and scathingly insightful.
Makes me wish I had mod points.
Yes, and birds can fly. Oh my God, what was HE thinking not giving us the best of EVERYTHING?
Fix Your Own TV - RiddledTV.com Avoid the Landfill
Funny... this one didn't seem to mention my
pen!s size
as a contributing factor...
Real programmers can write assembly code in any language. -- Larry Wall
by injesting the magic mushroom, our minds leaped forward in terms of evolutionary progress many years ago, at least accord to mckenna. the mushroom should deserve some credit in this discussion.
another interesting parallel is, how did the mushroom get here in the first place.. did it perhaps get blown in from space?
--
http://unk1911.blogspot.com
Also, was not meant to be a dichotomy. Instead, it was a response to two different items contained in the original article (1 that language is limited to humans and 2 that it is a biological trait).
Seems to me to be the most wonderful and frustrating result of evolution ever. Seems you would need this before language became a want or need.
Nipples on guys. Go on, tell me there's an adaptive reason for man-tits. I dare you.
Koko reads Slashdot!! That really is one smart gorilla!
1. tonsils - create more problems than they're worth. F*cking swelling, soreness and sleep apnea.
2. appendix - that's a winner.
3. coccyx - I had to look this up to spell this useless thing right.
4. funny bone - this has never made me laugh. It has helped with new curse words though.
5. needing sleep - 8 hours-c'mon, can't we evolve down to 2 or so.
6. the knee - there has got to be a better way- stretched ligaments, torn ACL's etc.
7. religion - nuff said.
8. ingrown toenails - trim trim trim
9. ingrown hair - great fun digging them out
10. balding - (or hair migration to the back) what is the point of this "evolutionary advance"?
I'm sure I missed many
is a fantastic point. Unfortunately by anthropomorphizing the processes that occurr in nature we give tacit credence to ideas that intend to create sentience and teleology around events whenall we meant to do was create a simple metaphor.
Article: A true eye needs something extra - a lens that can focus light to form an image.
... though genetic evidence suggests one ancestor for all eyes.
This excludes pin-hole eyes (no lens). Both types focus light and form images.
Article:
That's assuming that Nautilus eyes are not eyes at all - which is quite a stretch.
This is not my sig.
Because we at the top of the food chain, there are few if any predators that keep our population in check. We could easily deplete all the food, space, water, etc.
Just because we are at the top of the food chain, doesn't mean that we don't (or wouldn't) have predators. Once the food and space became scarce, I would predict some truly savage warfare and murderous behaviour would start. Monkeys have always been the #1 predator of monkeys...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
why couldn't things evolve without death?
it wouldn't work through our normal dna rna stuff we have now, but why couldn't you could come up with a system where you mutate in place?
or grow a new improved body and copy over your brain.
i see no reason that immortality and evolution would be incompatible.
Of course it would work. New organisms could eat or otherwise kill the weak of the population. Unless you mean no death at all, no ability to kill anything. Hard to imagine that - I mean, an organism cut into small enough pieces may still be alive, but it certainly ain't gonna be happy about it.
It really sucks how what could be an interesting discussion keeps getting hijacked by anti-science religious people.
Let's stick to the topic of this top ten list, and not let things devolve thanks to the creationist weirdos who, for some unknown reason, continue to frequent a technical/science-oriented website.
Damn, dude. When you troll you cover all the bases. The scary part for me though was I found I agreed with you up until the leaving part.
God created the Big Bang and created the aliens. They came to Earth and seeded it with our ancestors.
Or maybe I'm just dreaming.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
It's not as obvious as it sounds.
Please learn the difference between 'theory', 'hypothesis', and 'conjecture'.
I completely agree with you on this one. If someone uses the words First Post in their post, and they actually mean it, they might as well give it up now. For their genes, this is the end of the evolutionary line.
Ever have an attractive, leather-clad woman punch a needle through one of yours? It's something that must be experienced at least once.
Why is it that when scientists can't explain something spontaneous (miraculous?), they call it an explosion?
To parallel this, "Let there be Light!" = Big Bang.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
"Jehova" which is a pseudo-phonetic translation of the Hebrew present-infinitive of the verb "to be".
The functional value of the name is more important than the sound or string of letters. It's nice in the traditional sense, but looses all meaning outside of the context of the original reader.
A close second is the opposable thumb... for the same reason as the first one..
There is a theory where an all-powerful being willed us here and we just appeared.
Actually, that's not a theory, at least not within the context of science.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I can accept the eye as a bad day at the office, but what sort of deranged engineer runs a sewer through the playground???
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Language is better viewed as a co-evolutionary adaptation. Language requires not only a speaker but a listener. The signs/symbols of language are a co-evolutionay process. Gregory Bateson touched upon this in his book Mind & Nature.Adaptation, starvation and poisioning are also players in what we view as the evolutionary game. Of course sexual reproduction leads to the meme of the Selfish Gene as promulgated by R. Dawkins, and leads to viewing us, you and I and everyone of us, as so much packaging shunting genes about. Thinking about the soma as no more than packaging moving genes about via sexual reproduction doesn't seem to take into consideration the generation of negentropy, or, information. The generation and transmission of information via language is the creation of negative entropy and manifests an emergent property that is in a strange way the universe on a course of self discovery.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Their list seems pretty arbitrary in some places. How are eyes and photosynthesis so amazing? They even function in similar fashions: make a chemical that will absorb frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. Simple energetics, and really only a matter of time before these sort of systems would appear. Also sex. Give me a break! Sex had to happen. Evolution is a numbers game. As soon as you start being able to transfer elements of heredity, you improve those cell's odds of having a legitimate set of functioning enzymes. Immense selection, really not that surprising. Far more interesting is the immunological response systems. Think of it: how are we able to have around 30k genes, and yet each one of our bodies can produce millions of unique antigen receptors? Well, I'll tell you. We trapped a transposon, that's how. We trapped it, activate it in our leukocytes and make it randomly reshuffle our Antigen receptor dna to produce a unique antigen binding surface. We trapped the devil to catch the devil! And that's just a beginning. I think slashdot can beat their silly list. Cmon, creationists; give us your best shot.
I always found the mutants to be the most facinating, the platypus being number 1, what other creature is as much of a mix as it is? Makes you wonder what kind of mishaps or strange surroundings must have been in place for such a creature to have evolved.
That's an interesting point. Most aspects of the digestive system are under autonomic control so now you point it out it's quite surprising that we can control our farts. We can control our breathing, but that's probably a side effect of (4). Maybe it's just a side effect of being able to control when we shit (i.e. what Gould whould have called a spandrel).
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
With regards to the first three items on the list, these are best described as "vestigial" stuctures. That is, they're body parts that evolution forgot--they once served a useful purpose, but no longer have any value or function.
The same thing can be said of wisdom teeth, for example. Or paralell ports.
Presumably, as these structures continue to cause problems for some members of the species, while providing no advantages, evolutionary processes would eventually eliminate them.
I recently thought that Virii might be a means for - in place evolution.
In other words - who is to say Virii are anti-evolutionary. Since virii are produced by the living and capable of carrying DNA and implanting it between living orgs.
It seems possible that virii could be used to communicate survival strategies between living orgs in real time rather than over generational time.
By merely surviving and exuding my DNA in the form of Virii, it stands that the population of DNA floating around in the air contains segments of info which belong exclusively to the surviving set, and if I can implement their codes, my chances of surviving are increased - moreover if i can incorporate the codes of my entire tribe into my child, then my offspring will bear the marks of all the living members of my community.
Thus the argument that virii are - hypersexual genetic hints used to inform genetic variation in real time.
AIK
Soon (on an evolutionary scale) to be evolution's obvious #1 achievement: coming up with a brain capable of moving life off-planet.
We're not going to become extinct, and photosynthesis only affected (as far as we know) one planet. We're bringing life to the universe.
Sponges are very cool -- you can put one through a sieve so fine that it's broken down into individual cells, and it will then reassemble itself into a complete sponge, but with every cell rearranged into a new position! Apparently the scientist who first did this (ca. 1900) then tried doing it with two separate sponges of different species at once, and was disappointed when they didn't reassemble into a hyrbid. Shows how little they knew about the microscopic basis of genetics at that time.
Find free books.
It is the Creationists that believe in infallibility, if anything.
Wikileaks, no DNS
As an avid "sponge diver", I feel it is my responsibility to minimize the common misconception that sponges are plants. No, they are animals. Sorry if you rememeber this from elementary school, but sadly lots of people do not.
And fish are our friends, not food. I like them fried, steamed, etc.
Simpy
looses? How about loses?
Rye ergot, the fungus that creates the chemical precursor to LSD
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Don't worry, the magic smoke will escape his computer soon and we'll stop hearing from him.
> Evolution. Yeah, right.
Curiously, your scenario has nothing to do with biological evolution, which depends on descent with modification.
Did your home schooling censor coverage of where Ferraris come from?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
sex evolved?
Man, if only I could evolve now to have it.
Most stuff taught in schools is dumbed down to the extent that it's at least 40% complete bull. This is generally quite an effective teaching technique and only becomes an issue when there's a bunch of religious types of varying degrees of education with a vested interest in picking holes in said stuff.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
It's ironic really that we can perceive such tremendous evidence of cellular/species adaptability based upon UNCHANGING DNA SOLIDARITY.....and call it chaotic.....Lord....what I wouldn't give for a reasonable person. ;)
Think about it: By some freak chance, some amino acids started to procreate, thereby naturally increasing in number. The rest of the process that follows - evolution - is a rather logical continuation, and does not need a higher goal to happen.
This, life has no external purpose. Our lives only have the purposes we choose.
"theory" as evolution and the Big Bang use it, are like Gravitational Theory or Theory of Relativity. Facts that can be confirmed by experiments. The "theory" is the "why" as to how they work and work they do. The why is often refined, but that doesn't discredit the successes it has had.
Your all powerful theory, along with aliens and your dream, are akin to the "Single bullet theory". Just because something makes sense to some people doesn't mean it's valid. A good theory is backed up by repeatable experiments.
I am a relatively educated man. I'm not a theologian, nor am I a scientist by trade. I do consider myself a thinker. I also want to put on the table that I have a bias. Philosophically I object to the concept that time and chance are the cause of life, or differentiation within kinds of life. Lets be fair. Some of you reading this have an opposite bias. Let's try to lay that bias aside for this discussion, shall we?
We need to define terms clearly.
Evolution is a broad topic. I consider that there are two major components described as 'evolution' The first is 'adaptation' which I will define as relatively small changes observed within a type of creature. I accept this because it can be confirmed through pure application of the scientific method.
We can clearly observe and repeat circumstances in which the environment is such that a creature with attributes more fit for the environment tends to persist - where those traits can be passed on and eventually (generations later) a creature exists that is similar to, but discernably different from the original. Look at the differentiation between a snowshoe rabbit and the european common rabbit. It makes sense to me, based on observation, and scientific principles that they are variations within a type of creature.
The second is what I refer to as 'macro-evolution' or the change from one type of creature to another - say - from a cat to a dog. There is some doubt about how this works, even within the community of evolutionists. Did we see gradual change over time from one type to another, or did we see a substantive change all at once? There's a reason that the 'punctuated equilibrium' theory exists, and it was not a creationist who came up with the idea. In fact, it was an atheist who said 'phyletic gradualism' 'was not seen in the rocks' - in other words, the evidence was not compelling, so a new theory was developed.
If we start from the perspective (as did Carl Sagan) that 'the cosmos is all that there is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be' we are making a philosophical statement rather than a scientific one. Science is unable to comment on anything that cannot be tested via the scientific method.
I see a number of problems with assuming that time and chance got us here. I'll be happy to elaborate without appeal to philosophy.
To me, evolution as the 'origin of species' is one explanation, but it appears to be a particularly *bad* explanation, based on the way that the data points fail to line up. I look forward to the day that the conventional wisdom within the scientific community sees this issue in the same way that it sees the geocentric model of planetary movement. A bad explanation that was the best that had been found at the time.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Your view about the meaning of "God" as a description of his office has the consequence that the person who is actually God might not have been God, and that someone else might have held that position. It isn't clear that this makes sense.
is (was? is she still alive?) to call something a "shitty crocodile" because she evidently hated crocodiles. So much so that researches used stuffed crocodiles to keep her out of places they didn't want her to go.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There is clearly selection instead for unsightful commentary and commenters. Never mind.
Wikileaks, no DNS
The what?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
On the whole, organisms don't biologically adapt to survive. What typically happens is that the organisms with useful traits survive. Sometimes biological adaptability is itself a trait, as with amphibians capable of changing their gender after birth. But for the most part, adaptation and evolution are separate elements of biology.
Well, my wisdom teeth have developed and don't cause me any problems as of yet (I'm 34 years old). Not really sure what that means. I also have straight teeth but never wore braces.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Bill Gates meant that as a rhetorical point (he was stating the side commonly taken by the audience). The point he was making is, if you don't pay us then you will prevent new software from being written.
Now, that was later disproven by the GNU and all that came after, but the point is, Bill wasn't then (1976) condoning software piracy.
no, you're just whining.
...we don't know what would have happened without them either. The greatest evolutionary development ever, permitting us survival in vacuum and psychic ability as well as some other uninmaginable abilities may have been crushed by a tree billions of years ago.
So we can't say what would or would not have happened with out this or that. Things would have gone _differently_, for sure, but that's all we can say.
Without aging and death, the younger generation will not be able to compete with the ancient super-veterans
But yeah, it's a great way to learn new curse words ;-)
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
with Chomskey arguing that (as I understand it) there is no one gene for language, that many seperate adaptations happened, in many species, each one giving some kind of evolutionary advantage. Only in humanity is the final piece of the language pie added, giving us full blown language. Pinker, OTOH (again, I may be misreading this) argues that there is only one language gene that evolved fully only in humanity.
Chomskey talks about a major factor that seems unique to humans language, recursion. We can merge sounds into words, words into phrases, phrases into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs recursively.
In any case, there are certainly creatures that have a more rudimentary form of language, and even culture, so memes ("use stick to catch termites! wash sand from yams!") were being passed around before full blown language came about. The article doesn't claim that all language is confined to humans, just that language as humans use it/i
is, which is self evident.
As far as being biological, this was Chomskey's major thesis from way back. He showed that all languages are built around identical deep structures. If language were merely learned, and not in some sense inherent, that would not be the case. We would find languages that were constructed in vastly differing ways. Instead, there are certain built in rules that all languages comply with.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Sorry, sometimes I like to throw their own stupid rhetoric back at them...
Your post is full of inaccuracies and wishful thinking, and pretty much utter bullshit.
Everyone knows that nice new Ferraris evolved gradually from centuries, if not millenia, of industrial and automotive advancements using consumer preference as a selective force. Did you think that Ferraris just miraculously appeared one day by the will of God?
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Evolution is not science, but a religious belief system.
Redo your code, law and everything people. Make another, learn from it and then kill the old one.
Death is useful for progress.
A blog I run for the wealth
So does this mean you're trolling for a rise from these folks, or you've really committed your opinion to intelligent design?
How in the hell is the parent 'flamebait'??? somebody mod this up
Funny how some people have as little understanding of religion as all that. Religion is not the polar opposite of science, just ask Sir Isaac Newton.
Good, you've taken the first step; you accept microevolution, which many of your coreligionists don't. (insert co-philosphists if you're not particulary religious)
Now, sit back and ponder that you can breed camels to llamas, two animals widely separated in geography, and seemingly very different.
Now go look up papers by Thomas Ray, concerning his Tierra simulator, and follow that by a couple of weeks reading Dawkins. Make sure you understand both before continuing to the last step.
Let go of your need for there to be any _reason_ for you and your life, other than that which you imbue it with.
I know, letting go of Iron-age theology, bronze-age philosophy, and stone-age prejudices is painful, but you'll be much better off in the end.
Big Bang = Solar System? That is a common claim of Creationists, but not something I expect to hear on /..
[For those who don't know, the Solar System is not the same thing as the Universe.]
Just a couple examples: ceramic disk brakes vs. iron drum brakes, electronic fuel injection and management vs. carburators, turbocharged engines vs. normally aspirated, sequential 7 speed paddle shift gearboxes with automated hydrolic clutches vs. three speed manual with cabled clutches, etc.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
How could these fools forget CowboyNeal!?!
This statement is baseless, unless you make certain implications about what a "life form" is. In any case, evolution isn't about life forms it's about replicators and DNA is but the mechanism used by one type of replicator here on earth.
Have a look at Dawkins' Selfish Gene or Blackmore's Meme Machine for some good explanations of replicators and their evolutionary powers.
Yahweh is the more common name of God for the christians.
1 boobies
2 boobies
3 boobies
4 boobies ...
need i say more?
Yes, RNA enzymes can reproduce themselves.
See this somewhat satisfying Wikipedia article:
Ribozyme
Comment removed based on user account deletion
George W. Bacteria declared war on the infidels that threaten the single cellular life way of life.
How exactly do you evolve the ability to evolve? That would presuppose that you had the ability to evolve in the first place, but if you never had the ability to evolve then you certainly couldn't develop it, and... and... MY HEAD HURTS.
... for the diversity of life. I had a post somewhere else in this mess of posts about how scientists use words like "Big Bang" or "Cambrian Explosion" to describe sudden phenomenon that they can't understand. This sounds too much like miraculous talk -- not the work of a God, but whenever science doesn't have an explanation, they tend to just gloss over the problem in much the same way Creationists do. First off, a word to Creationists: if the creation story is literal, then you must also believe that the devil is a literal snake. Now, on to Evolutionists. This theory explains very little. It applies a very loose pattern to an inconsistent pool of data. Whenever the fossil record doesn't support Evolution, that information is generally supressed in some way. When Creationists can't explain the earth's complexity, they throw God in. When Evolutionists can't, they throw Time at the problem. You know what I've observed when animals must make significant adaptations in order to survive? They DIE! I'm not talking changing spots or growing a little larger or smaller. The amount of good luck required to make Evolution work is laughable. It's as wishful thinking as every species fully-formed popping up out of the ground.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
from the don't-make-me-choose-between-my-brain-and-sex dept.
Like you didn't already make that choice when you became an editor for Slashdot.
I mostly agree, except that evolution and "big bang" are the only scientific theories that you mentioned, the others may be "theories", but not scientific theories.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Anybody else ever considered regigions as some kind of parasistic idea, living and propagating on the human mind, and subjected to the same kind of natural selection as living beings ?
Imagine that : religions appear and mutate randomly, and only the liveliest branches, the ones most able to hold out against reality and other religions gain followers and thus multiply...
I never realized the universe was limited to what you could figure out.
That's the biggest problem with creationists. They think that because they can't figure out, for example, how eyes could evolve it couldn't have happened.
At it's heart, that's a really arrogant argument.
I know, letting go of Iron-age theology, bronze-age philosophy, and stone-age prejudices is painful, but you'll be much better off in the end.
What an arrogant thing to say.
At any rate, your belief that any model for evolution (or abiogenesis, for that matter) disproves the existence of God is absurd. Well before there were amino acids there was matter, and consistent laws of physics. Can you, in your God-like wisdom, explain that?
I know what the canned answer here is. It might be tempting to tell me that we should approach such questions objectively, and that creating our own hypothesis that we accept dogmatically without evidence runs contrary to reason. And you would be correct, but I have all the evidence I need.
The truth is, despite your best efforts to convince yourself that your views are scientific, have made a glaring leap of logic.
I have no inclination to try and reason my beliefs because if reason could bring you to accept the truth, reason could also lead you away. I'm just trying to establish that the belief in God (theism) is not hanging on whether or not evolution by natural selection is true.
Your other assumption is that Christianity is the product cultural diffusion is incorrect; if you study how it was formed, it introduced radically new thology* and philosophy in a very short period of time, in a place where there was really no competing ideas that resembled it.
* If you study this further, you'll see that I'm actually lying here, and both the context and the ideas based in Christianity had their root in pre-Christian Judaism. However, the extent to which the old concepts were fulfilled and expounded upon was simply much more than a small group of men could come up with. The Jews in power around the time of Christ for many reasons would not have come up with the ideas that formed Christianity.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
...Threesomes?
With a little dance, and the funk, and the monkey monkey monkey dance.
Justa groovin', justa smoothin', justa humpaty humpaty hump hump.
Jiggy now!
The bomb in a junk-yard sounds like the "tornado in a junk-yard making a 747" analogy to me. I'm not exactly sure what this analogy is analogizing, but it certainly isn't comparable to abiogenesis (or evolution, for that matter), IMO.
Lets also not forget that even if this was a valid comparison, it wouldn't matter insofar as the validity of the theory of evolution. How life began isn't what the theory attempts to explain; it attempts to explain the "how" for the fact life changes gradually over time.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
all lies. we were created from mud. and god or jesus or someone took a rib out of something and put it in another pile. and then suddenly humans had eyes and ears and hearts and lungs. no need for evolution.
Penises beat the others by a mile (give or take a few inches).
What bacteria would that be?
Bzzt! Thank you for playing our game. Please try again.
Arceobacteria,Proteobacteria, and Cyanobacteria are the oldest, and all have a nucleoid ( non-membrane region containing one circular DNA molecule -- one circular chromosome).
The membrane is not a defining attribute for DNA use. First DNA developed, then the cell evolved a purse to stash it in.
DNA may or may not be the basal component of what constitues life, but once you get past its presence, things look pretty mechanical, not organic.
Old urban legend.
Also depends on what you define as "people": go back 6,000 years? 10,000? 250,000?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
And if you don't have DNA, you don't have imperfectly-replicating life forms, which means that you don't have evolution.
If you take evolution to mean stochastic random probability applied to a competition for shared resources, random processes can "evolve" in the same way that living things do. In _The Selfish Gene_, Richard Dawkins explains how this might have happened to create DNA from more basic chemicals, using esentially random chemical processes.
Suppose several chemical processes happen, initally at random. There are initially equal chances of any of a number of chemicals being produced. But now assume that each time chemical A is produced, the odds that more chemical A will be produced goes up. Assume this is not true for other chemials.
If we run a lot of these random processes, what do we expect will happen? Well, if the process starts to produce chemical A, it will tend to continue to do so: in other words, it will "evolve" in that direction, despite not being "alive" in any real sense of the word.
After all, "life" is just a vague English word for certain kinds of physical processes; it's not magic in and of itself, and past a certain point, the term becomes somewhat meaningless. Is DNA "alive"? In some sense, it's less "alive" than a cell, but more "alive" than an atom. Eventually, it all comes down to definitions.
--
AC
And if you don't have DNA, you don't have imperfectly-replicating life forms...
You probably have. Other reproducing mechanism are observed or at least imaginable. Maybe RNA could support life alone b/c it has catalytic effects and it can be copied. Even before RNA clay crystals could have been evolving. I wouldn't dare calling them "life forms", but by growing clay crystals reproduce and they are a substrate on which proteins can evolve. This is only a hypothesis (not mine, I just lost the link) and we will have a hard time observing such a process, but evolution without DNA is quite imaginable.
It's Pinker vs. Chomsky, winner take all, pass the popcorn!
Where does the versus come in? From everything I have read by Pinker, he seems to be a loyal disciple of Chomky. Don't they both fall far onto the nature side of the fence? Who is the nuture proponent in this equation?
If we start buying CDs then the terrorists have already won.
In other words, "Top 10 reasons for believing in creationism."
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
From what I understand about medical doctors, they take an oath to preserve and protect life (humans at least) from sickness and death.
So at what point does a doctor go to far? What if a doctor has the ability to provide immortality yet also causes over population which in turn causes suffering and starvation?
It's really ballancing act between what is moral through both death and life. Even worse, just WHO get's to make these choices? Are we even ready to take on the role of "God"?
So many questions, so little answers...as always.
Life is not for the lazy.
The common practice of creationists citing the eye as a challenge to evolution reveals how abysmally primitive their knowledge of science is. To be sure, in Darwin's time the eye seemed miraculous enough that Darwin felt obliged to devote a special discussion to how it might have evolved by selection.
But we know a lot more today that Darwin knew. In particular, our knowledge of biochemistry is more advanced. We now know that all sorts of biochemical reactions are sensitive to light. It is almost inevitable that in a mostly transparent life form, the activity of some nerve cells would be affected by light. Given the extreme selective advantage to sensing light, evolution of light sensors of increasing sophistication seems almost unavoidable.
"... evolution isn't about life forms it's about replicators ..."
Could you please clarify the difference by pointing out some other types of replicators found here on Earth that are not tools used by life forms?
Before I begin.... I know the parent was a troll, but it's a good place to get into a topic I wanted to write about anyway. My message is not meant to be inflammatory in any way.
Thus spake the Anonymous Coward:
George W. Bacteria declared war on the infidels that threaten the single cellular life way of life.
Actually, I'd say it it's closer to say that these couple of new, big jellyfish are busy fighting each other over who gets to eat all of us poor bacteria. (Apologies for any biological inaccuracies there).
This is something that has often bothered me, as someone with very libertarian views on things. I see functional, ethical problems with the majority of large organizations (governments, interest groups, corporations, labor unions, etc), in that they often fail to truly address the concerns and genuine well being of their constituent individuals. Certainly, they are concerned with the general survival and productivity of the individuals, but for the selfish purposes of the organization, and not in the interest of their constituents.
This worries me because of the obvious parallels with the evolution of multicellular life. I, as a multicellular organism, am very concerned with the survival of my cells, but only for the purpose that these cells support my own survival. If an individual cell, or thousands thereof, die for my benefit, then that is good for me. And just by being a part of a multicellular organism, my cells are faced with a slightly longer-term version of the problem that the cells of some "superorganisms" mentioned in the article face: ultimately, only those cells in my gonads get to really reproduce. The rest of the cells are limited in reproduction by the age of my body.
Thus I am faced with an apparent hypocrisy. How can I consistently and non-hypocritically support the aggregation of smaller units at a loss (or at least, a risk) to themselves up to the level of complex multicellular organisms, but then oppose the aggregation of those units into larger "superorganism" societies at a loss or risk to themselves?
Is it perhaps that our organization in societies is not yet structured in the same way as that of a true multicellular organism? As libertarian as my views are I'm still very fond of cooperation and see the mutual benefits in it, so long as the cooperation is supported from the bottom up, and not enforced from the top down. Are multicellular organisms closer to extremely complex networks of similar, but specialized, symbiotic cells - more like an open source project than a commercial project, in Slashdot terms?
I sure wouldn't want to be one of those white blood cells "ordered" to die by my body, any more than I'd want to be a veteran soldier ordered to die so my govt doesn't have to pay veterans benefits.
I guess what it comes down to is, it seems that if my libertarian beliefs are right, and it is ethically (a nonscientific term, I know) better to avoid centralizing power and to build systems from the bottom up and support the individual, then by that logic colonies of bacteria are "ethically" better for the cells than humans are (as strange as it is to apply ethics to single cells).
Or conversely, if it is ethically better for the individual to sacrifice itself for the survival of the whole, even when it means that most if not all individuals are making such sacrifices for the benefit of something which is not any one individual, but some ephemeral concept of the "organism" (or "country") then anyone who opposes the aggregation of centralized power and fights to maintain individual rights is equivalent to nothing but a parasite, or at best, doomed to be outpaced as a lone single-celled organism floating adrift in the sea, while the great multicellular beasts conquer the world.
Or maybe my understanding of biology is wrong and some biologist with a touch of philosophy in him can resolve this dilemma for me?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
By choosing to have my testicles removed, I took sex out of the picture for me. We'll be able to reproduce from cheek cells or the like soon. Life has become a lot more interesting now. Wonder is back in my life. Plus I can cross my legs easier and am much less vulnerable!
Sex is a rather dismal invention. Even in other animals, it clouds any sense of sheer fun.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
"Jehova" which is a pseudo-phonetic translation of the Hebrew present-infinitive of the verb "to be".
"Yahweh" is actually closer to the way it's pronounced, as far as I understand. In English transalations of the Bible, it is usually written as LORD (just like that, all caps) to avoid saying/writing God's true name. Not really sure why that's done.
Literally translated to English, God's name is "I am". See Exodus 3, where (paraphrasing) Moses ask the burning bush, "What's your name?" and God replies "I AM WHO I AM" (cue Popeye jokes). If you don't want to read the Bible, watch The Prince of Egypt, it's a good movie regardless of your beliefs.
If God had meant for man to see the sunrise, He would have scheduled it later in the day.
Let's see if I can out hyperbole you?
Well, not everyone can be a divinely sanctioned professional child mosleter.
The fields of study that you'd like to look into are molecular biology, organic chemistry, and statistical thermodynamics.
Except that an Octopuses eye will not work outside of the water. Octopuses live in the water. Water stops UV light so they don't need the blood vessels in front.
Search around on the web.
Actually it is commonly held that birds and mammals had a common ancestor - reptiles. More specifically, an early type of warm-blooded lizard which predated the dinosaurs, being the common ancestor of both them (who later evolved into birds) and early mammals. Morphologically and genetically, birds are a much further offshoot from this common ancestor than modern mammals or even specifically humans, whom we consider such a far point in evolution.
Humans are actually very closely descended from early placental mammals, which are in turn far more closely related to warm-blooded reptiles than any birds ever were. If I recall correctly, simple reptiles such as lizards, alligators and crocodiles are even more closely related to their fish ancestors than even amphibians are (that is to say, amphibians were a separate offshoot of fish than reptiles, not an intermediate step; both evolving from lunged, air-breathing fish).
It seems keeping to the straight and narrow on the evolutionary path - not diverging so much from out ancestors, avoiding overspecialization - has done our line of evolution some good.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
really? by reading slashdot, it feels more like devolution to me! :)
Are we not men?
We are Slashdot.
The impossible odds argument against evolution (or abiogenesis I guess) is bogus anyway. Sure my odds of winning the lottery may be 50,000,000 to one, but what if I buy 50,000,000 tickets? Now what are my odds?
100 billion stars times 100 billion galaxies times many billion years = a lot of chances for self replicating molecules to form. Add in the multi-worlds theory and its inevitable.
Images formed upside down
Why does it matter where the photo-receptors are physically if they can be logically connected in any way?
Uh Oh. What if the octopus is the crown of creation and humans are just here for their amusment. That would explain a lot.
It seems very likely that other forms of *NA have formed at different times, as it would be extraordinary for such fundamental building-blocks to only have such a limited variety.
I would like to know if extremophiles, such as life near volcanic vents in oceanic trenches, have any differences in the way their *NA works. It would seem that if *NA evolution is possible, then near-absolute isolation in near-absolute diametrically opposite environments would result in the greatest possible change.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not forgetting
4. Lost the ability to see in ultra-violet.
From a study of 'opsins', the chemical molecules that convert light into electrons, and enable vision to work, many small animals and insects have the ability see these wavelengths. Humans seem to have lost this ability, due to the increased refraction at short wavelengths caused by larger eyes.
5. To be able to visualize magnetic field lines.
Magnetically sensitive molecules have been found in avian retinas. The theory is that these could appear as some sort of overhead display in the bird's mind (although, nothing more than lines running across the field of view, or maybe a pair of light/dark spots).
6. To be able to visualize polarised light (as used by the octopus). Underwater, light is polarized by the reflection of light reflected off fish scales. Many fish try and camouflage themselves by trying to match the optical intensity of their surroundings. For simple predators this works, but more complex creatures
such as the octopus are not fooled.
Also, polarized light can be used to signal to other members of the species without attracting undue attention.
7. Or having 16 visual pigments like the Stomatopod, which is also known to use polarised light to signal to others of the same species (And which also has stereo vision using one eye).
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
nanobots. dont exist yet, but its an example.
-- No Text --
Wikileaks, no DNS
And like evolution, but very much unlike a junk-yard making a 747, the first self-replicating molecule was probably quite a bit cruder and simpler than RNA or DNA.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
While I disagree that this has been in vain (I think we can safely say that superorganisms are responsible for everything from industry to computers to spaceflight), I am happy to see this posited in such a forward way in the article. It's about time that we begin to acknowledge that we are cells in a multicellular (multi-individual) life form and that our DNA expresses phenotypes outside of the boundaries of our bodies (e.g. some of us have predisposed genetic advantages to specialize in social orginzation, communication, leadership, etc..). In fact, we should be looking at population samples of DNA to determine the genotypes of the master system that we compose rather than decomposing to the level of the individual human being.
Human evolution has been bound by societal pressures for far long enough for those pressures to be the primary forces at work on our evolution.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
You say that a hare an a rabbit are the same time, while a cat and a dog are not. How do you tell if two creatures are of the same type? Where does the line lie? What stops many small changes from becoming one big one?
Why does it matter where the photo-receptors are physically if they can be logically connected in any way?
First, you quoted a different sentence than the one that stated that the photoreceptors are backwards.
I think that what he means are that the photoreceptors are positioned BEHIND the ganglion and bipolar cells, which seems a very poor choice for cells allegedly 'designed' to receive light coming in from the pupil. It would make more sense to have the photoreceptors right up front, where the light can hit them directly, unobstructed.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I, for one, welcome our new octopus overlords.
Looked at from that perspective, economic orthodoxy can be seen as counter evolutionary, concentrating most of the assets in the hands of those who are starting to feel too tired and too mortal to take any risks changing the system.
At least the young can still try to fight back by throwing more raw energy at their objectives, but the blockade maintained by my fellow boomers means the young have to expend so much energy just to stay in the game that they have little capacity left to drive competitive change.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
Did you know that Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, and Marie Curie are amoung a large number of creationist scientists? Or do you not consider them to be real scientists?
The common practice of evolutionists confusing evolution with a scientific theory reveals how abysmally primitive their knowlege of the use of science is... or how they are so stubborn they don't want to admit the truth.
Ever heard of the Scientific Method? It goes a little like this: You start with an observation. You do experiments in a closed system. From there, you draw conclusions based on the facts.
The Evolutionary Method seems to go like this: You make an assumption. You look at the facts for "evidence" to support your assumption. Then you discard everything that doesn't help you. (The second step must be optional since evolution today is taught as "fact" in our schools despite not having any evidence to support it.)
BTW, a growing number our top scientists are rejecting evolution.
I agree we know more than Darwin did. We know that the fossil record he was relying on for his "theory" to be proven is incomplete and does not support the fantasy of evolution.
One other thing... it is one thing to sense light. It is quite another thing to see.
"How about things that have evolved only once, or not at all? The wheel, with a true, freely rotating bearing, seems to have evolved only once, in bacteria, before being finally invented in human technology... I put the challenge to my Oxford colleague the entomologist and naturalist George McGavin, and he came up with a nice list, but still a short one compared with the list of things that have evolved many times. Bombardier beetles of the genus Brachinus are unique in Dr McGavin's experience in mixing chemicals to make an explosion. The ingredients are made and held in separate (obviously!) glands. When danger threatens, they are squirted into a chamber near the rear end of the beetle, where they explode, forcing noxious (caustic and boiling-hot) liquid out through a directed nozzle at the enemy..."
San Francisco Photographers
Sexual reproduction is at the top of my list of favorite evolutionary adaptations. Just need to watch out for that pesky "reproduction" part.
It evolved out of sticks and stones in the ground, all by itself. Yes, I know a bunch of idiots will say 'somebody designed it' and junk like that, but it doesn't phase me. Weren't they listening in school?
I am NOT a number! I am a - oh wait, I'm number 761710. Look! 761710!
these two geniuses had some interesting comments
one might not have expected on the origins of the eye...
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances
for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting
different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical
and chromatic aberration could have been formed by natural selection,
seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. "
(Charles Darwin, Origin of the Species)
"The eye is created by the light, for the light.
(Goethe)
"Evolution is not a progression to ever greater and greater differentiation.
but... is first an ascent to a higher point, and after having reached this point
is then a descent to more and more simple forms. (Steiner, Michael IX)
evolution = tree coming out of seed.
involution = tree concentrating itself back down into seeds.
The line of reasoning is valid, but the evidence does not completely line up with that.
There are two ways to accomplish the radical differences between creatures:
1. Throw HUGE amounts of time at the problem so that occasional favorable mutations can bring the differences.
2. Move to puncutate equilibrium where radical changes happen within a single breeding cycle. For example, this suggests that I should make sure that the windows are closed when my wife gives birth in case she has a bird instead of a baby human.
Neither seems probable to me. Occam's razor suggests that the simplest explanation is the most likely, and I think that it's more reasonable to suggest that there is a designer/creator that set up the universe and creatures of different types.
Some problems with the chance and time combination are:
a) to go from the "basic building blocks of life" to complex structures would take immense periods of time. In fact, an expert in statistical probability, Dr. James Coppege says that chance is *so* bad at doing things that "Chance requires ten billion tries on the average in order to count to ten" (See "Evolution, Possible or impossible? Northridge CA: Probability research inmolecular biology 1993")
b) Michael Behe's concept of 'irreducible complexity' - there are a certain number of parts that need to be assembled in a particular order to work and therefore be favorable. Behe's example is a mousetrap - you must have a spring, board, bar, and release for a mousetrap to work. If you don't have those part, in that order, it won't work. Many biological structures are far more complex than this simple device. How can it be that these came to be? (see Darwin's Black Box for more on this topic.)
What stops the little changes from adding up? It takes too long, it's too hard, and sometimes you just can't get there from here because the parts by themselves, until they are assembled in order don't provide any benefit to the creature.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
10. Salma Hayek.
9. Catherine Zeta-Jones.
8. Monica Belucci.
7. Alessandra Ambrosio.
6. Victoria Silvstedt.
5. Elizabeth Hurley.
4. Angelina Jolie.
3. Caroline Corr.
2. Andrea Corr.
1. Sharon Corr.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
You obviously know nothing about Gnosticism.
One or more of the Gnostic cults postulated that the "God" who created this Earth was a "blind, idiot God" and that there was a (female, IRRC) deity above him that would set things right eventually.
I think Angelina Jolie is her.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Can you imagine if we were all still writing assembly code?
My statement doesn't imply that there are replicators on earth not used by life forms (avoiding the whole question of "life forms" was the point... also, it is very arguable that things are actually the other way around: life forms are the tools used by, at least some, replicators).
What I was pointing out is that replicators are the necessary and sufficient condition for evolution, not DNA or life forms.
If you wish to equate "life form" with "replicator", that is fine by me (though this can lead to the interesting situation where the human body is host to two life forms--genetic and memetic replicators). If you instead choose not to equate replicator and life form, then I'd submit that viruses are nothing but replicators and that they evidently do evolve.
It is an interesting question (that of defining/delineating the realm of what is considered "alive", such as with viruses) that has a tendency to lead to endless debate. Regardless, my comment was an attempt to underscore that we do not need:
in order to have evolution (unless of course you define "life forms" in terms of being replicators). Some nice sites are listed in the first few hits here that may be useful in exploring replicators further.
Regards."The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who do not have it"
George Bernard Shaw.
It evolved out of sticks and stones in the ground, all by itself. Yes, I know a bunch of idiots will say 'somebody designed it' and junk like that, but it doesn't phase me. Weren't they listening in school?
Demonstrating once again that creationists don't study the theory of evolution, because knowing facts would take away the strawmen that they love to attack.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
The "impossible odds" theory involves numbers that dwarf the number of atoms in the universe. Numbers like billions don't even register by comparison.
Newton - lived well before Darwin's theory of evolution.
To quote Pasteur:
Virulence appears in a new light which cannot but be alarming to humanity; unless nature, in her evolution down the ages (an evolution which, as we now know, has been going on for millions, nay, hundreds of millions of years), has finally exhausted all the possibilities of producing virulent or contagious diseases -- which does not seem very likely.
The "large number of creationist scientists" consists of people who lived before the theory of evolution, out of context quotes, and scientists in other fields that have no real familiarity with biology and the theory of evolution.
The Evolutionary Method seems to go like this: You make an assumption. You look at the facts for "evidence" to support your assumption. Then you discard everything that doesn't help you. (The second step must be optional since evolution today is taught as "fact" in our schools despite not having any evidence to support it.)
ROTFL. That is the creationist method.
BTW, a growing number our top scientists are rejecting evolution.
Wishful thinking on your part. Virtually no scientist that works in the areas directly related to evolution (such as biology) reject evolution.
A question for you: Why do major Christian denominations such as the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, and others have no problem with the theory of evolution?
Why? because it goes against the rationale behind modern science: occams razor.
if we evolved eyes to understand the world better, then we should share that with lots of other species (like breasts - we share them with other mammals). If we have had a long time to evolve, then why are our eye->brain connections still upside down? the simplest explaination is that we spent most of our lives upside down.
doesn't sound true to me. You?
TaoBoy
Or, more seriously, it's just a matter of wiring. Having an image projected onto the retina the "right" way up would require more optics. Doing it the way it is is by far the simplest way. And hey, it works.
that is why all forms of life must be annihilated. And they will.
You can't handle the truth.
Man is the creature that makes lists.
What do they offer in the way of proof to support their contention that living things evolved?
A definition of life requires an ability to evolve. Something that reproduces without evolving can be imagined. A robot could do that. A robot is not alive.
What life does is evolve in an inheritable fashion. Evolution is its greatest achivement.
Make an evolving robot and watch out!
Hate to drop the "intelligent design" bomb, but I still want to know just what theory explains how we got from a chemical soup to a single cell organism? I understand how evolution takes us from single cells to sponges to etc to us, but it doesn't explain how we got from amino acids to single cells...
RNA world I think takes us part of the way, but even an early single celled organism is extremely complex and doesn't explain everything...
Maybe intelligent design fills in this blank?!?!
I thorougly disagree! With this definition of utopia, our efforts have not been in vain at all. We have achieved it. Most people don't, for instance, grow their own food, or make their own shoes. So yes, we are achieving a better life by dividing our workload and sharing the fruits of our labors. And although not perfect, we are doing it in strikingly amazing harmony.
Let me try to head off any objections.
Someone might object that we are not "sharing" because money is involved. But money is simply a communication, analoguous to a "signalling chemical" as it were. It is a distributed means of storing state (I gave something, but haven't received in turn; the money accounts for the state of being temporarily shorted) for achieving balance and sustainability of each of the individuals in the colony.
Other analogues to signalling systems include laws and just about every other cultural meme.
Someone might object to "harmony" because, well honestly, because they probably read too much news. The fact is that we are living in striking harmony. Crimes (disharmony) are strikingly rare, in relation to what we could be doing to each other, and only seem frequent because of the news media.
Of course no one division of labor is ever in control of the entire colony. This creates permanent pressures to change things "for the better." I recognize that as a very good thing. Rather than seeing that pressure as a signal that things are "not right in the world", look at it as a means of knowing which subdivision of the colony you belong to... a human body made only of liver tissue, for instance, wouldn't work very well, and I'm sure liver cells are lobbying congress to make every other cell behave more like liver cells!
I see several issues with common thinking along these lines. First is the confusion of capatalism (this utopia I describe) with corporatism. Corporatism is more akin to cancer, where capitalism is more akin to natural body processes.
Secondly, many people have problems with "money" being the signalling mechanism, even though it is exceedingly efficient and distributed. If this is you, I challenge you to try to find ANY alternative that is anywhere near as distributed and efficient. Whining and begging certainly isn't, and voting is extremely inefficient and centralized.
NOTE: I share these thoughts not to lash out against the author, but because her viewpoint is widely shared, and IMHO wrong. It saddens me to think that many people feel the world is not in a state of utopia.
Remember: Evolution is still a theory, although a very convincing one.
A very thought-provoking alternative to the theory of Evolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/behe.html
"GNU/Linux is free freedom." -- Me
in the top left corner -- it reminds me of the start of the Dilbert TV series!
OK, it was off-topic, sorry...
Yow! I'm supposed to have a plan?
Or so I read somewhere. It's natural that it evolves by shrinking, making room for other organs, which is a natural advantage. The problem is that small appendices are more prone to suffer from appendicitis. Evolution has reached a dead-end in the appendix: Won't grow because it's useless; Won't shrink because it kills you. Maybe now, with surgery, it's a different story...
To do list for Windows
Not sure what you meant about "anti-science" religious people as most people I know who are followers of Christ (myself included) are simply in awe of the world He created. We have no problem at all with science. In fact, I believe God created this universe in such a way and gave us the ability to explore it so we could do just that. That's what science is really- our attempt to figure out how things around us work.
Evolution is not science. Not at all. It's not a theory. It's not even a hypothosis. The Scientific Method works this way: You make an observation. You conduct experiments in a closed system. After you get consistent resaults, you draw conclusions.
By contrast, the Evolutionary Method works this way. You make an assumption. You look for evidence to back up your claim while discarding anything that doesn't fit. Then you start putting it in school text books with the hope that you will eventually find some evidence to support it.
Evolution is really only a faith-based belief. Without evidence to support it, that's all it can be. It's a fantasy philosophy on the origins of man.
Biology, geology, paleontology, cosmology, astronomy, physics... these are sciences. Evolution is not amoung them.
And my reason for coming here? I'm into technology... you know, building computers, programming, etc... I guess you could call me a geek.
Remember that bionic eye article? Isn't it funny that a machine that we all know is the result of intelligent design will generate a signal that can be interpreted by the human brain which "came about by accident"?
The Ferrari is a better example of intelligent design than it is of evolution. Note that it even takes whole teams of people in every division of the company to bring a Ferrari from the drawing board to the street.
If somebody tried to tell you that Ferraris "evolved" by themselves by accident, you would probably have a good laugh.
Is it really so believable then, that human beings (much more complex than Ferraris) could come into existence by themselves ay accident (much less get better and better with the passage of time?)
I challenge anyone to give this some thought.
Thinking is permited afterall.
Did you know that Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, and Marie Curie are amoung a large number of creationist scientists? Or do you not consider them to be real scientists?
Of all of the Creationist arguments, this has to be the stupidest.
Yes, I am aware that there one has to go back decades to find any examples of people who have made significant contributions to science yet still believed in Creationism. The main way in which science is distinguished from religion is that science progresses. There was a time when Creationism was a respectable scientific theory, although it is worth noting that even the Creationists of Darwin's time had rejected as inconsistent with the data many of the notions that modern Creationists still cling to, such as single creation event just a few thousand years ago. Modern Creationism is actually less consistent with the data than was the Creationism of Darwin's time, back when Creationism was actually a respectable theory instead of being confined solely to crackpots.
BTW, a growing number our top scientists are rejecting evolution.
Really? Name some! As a criterion for a modern "top scientist" I will accept any of the following:
1) Recipients of the Nobel or Lasker prizes in the last 25 years.
2) A refereed research publication in the last 25 years in any of the following top journals: Science, Nature, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Molecular Biology, Cell, Gene, Journal of Neuroscience, Neuron, Molecular Pharmacology, Developmental Biology, Journal of Physiology (note to other biologists: no offense to your field's leading journal; those are off the top of my head).
As a scientist, I've met many of the top biologists. I've yet to meet even one person who has made any significant contribution to biology who believed in Creationism.
Do I need to remind you that each element in the Ferrari was carefully designed?
But you would have to win two identical lotteries in order for anything to be passed on. Their offspring would have to either mate incestuously, or meet up with another indentical lottery winner. (And court properly) Of course, a lot of these lottery winners die randomly in accidents, etc, and the end result is that the odds are horrendously impossible.
Newton - lived well before Darwin's theory of evolution.
Touche on Pastuer... perhaps I as thinking of someone else...
Regardless of when Newton lived, he still was a firm believer in God.
The Evolutionary Method seems to go like this: You make an assumption. You look at the facts for "evidence" to support your assumption. Then you discard everything that doesn't help you. (The second step must be optional since evolution today is taught as "fact" in our schools despite not having any evidence to support it.)
ROTFL. That is the creationist method.
That IS the Evolutionary Method. The creationist has no need for such a method (though I'm sure there some creationists who adopt a belief without researching it a little.) As a creationist I have no problem with science. I have no problem with people exploring their world as there are many wonders to discover in places one might not expect. There are only two reasons I have found for believing evolution.
1. You don't know much about it so you just take people's word for it.
2. You know it's not plausible, but you don't want there to be a God, so you accept something that eliminates your need to be accountable.
MY reason for believing evolution before was probably a little of both. That is, I really did not know much about it so I took people at their word. And I certainly was not interested in God.
Wishful thinking on your part. Virtually no scientist that works in the areas directly related to evolution (such as biology) reject evolution.
No wishful thinking going on here at all. Ever read The Case For A Creator by Lee Strobel? It takes an in depth look at the idea of intelligent design in the areas of all the major sciences- including biology. I recommend for anybody who is truly open-minded to give it a try.
A question for you: Why do major Christian denominations such as the Catholic Church, the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, and others have no problem with the theory of evolution?
A pretty good question actually... but I have never heard such a thing- not on that grand a scale anyway. I attend a fairly large church (happens to be Baptist) and our pastors always speak in favour of the creation story over evolution.
I saw another thread here saying the Pope was accepting evolution... but then again that's the Catholic church and they also believe worshiping (or praying to) Mary and other saints- which is exactly what the Bible says NOT to do "You shall have no gods before Me." So I would say that if the Pope accepted evolution as the truth, then (as nice a person as he might have been) he was in error for doing so- if it's even true that he did accept evolution. I didn't keep up with the Pope. Either way, the Creation Story and the Evolution Idea mix about as well as oil and water.
A little back gound on me: I started out as an evolutionist. When I started hearing what the Bible really says... and all the problems with the Evolutionary Idea (from a Bible teacher who is also a scientist)... I found the Scriptures to be more compelling and more convincing.
Before DNA there was RNA, mRNA, rRna, lots of other flavours of *NA.
3 22 4088.Ev.r.html
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/jun2001/99
"It was discovered in 1981 that ribosomal RNA of the ciliate Tetrahymena
can excise itself from the precursor rRNA without the help of a protein
catalyst. This implied that the very first molecule might have been an
RNA replicase that catalyzed its own replication witout the help of a
protein. Many new RNA molecules have now been shown to possess the catalytic
properties. Enzymatic activity has been attributed to DNA, but only under
extremely controlled conditions. This is perhaps the most powerful argument
that the first replicating nucleic acid was RNA rather than DNA."
Other theories suggest that the RNA replicase must have evolved from some simpler molecule, but DNA certainly didn't turn up by chance, it is a definately an evolved version of a simpler self-replicating molecule.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Do you recognize any of these names?
Jonathon Wells
Stephen C. Meyer, PHD
Michael J Behe, PHD
J.P. Moreland, PHD
As a scientist, I've met many of the top biologists. I've yet to meet even one person who has made any significant contribution to biology who believed in Creationism.
Then as a scientist, you must also see how the idea of evolution does not lend itself to the Scientific Method...
No, you pronounce it "SEHN-tir" (unless you're French, in which case you pronounce it "SAIN-tkkkeh").
So you should spell it that way.
Well, no, you shouldn't spell it "SEHN-tir", but "center" is closer to the way that it's pronounced than "centre" is.
Ihts bad eenuhf that wirdz arnt spehld ehkzaktlee haoo thehee sownd, buht swahping lehtirz for no gud reesuhn shud bee avoeedihd wehnehver pahsihbuhl.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
They were bestowed upon thee by our Lord Enzo, and his cabal of mechanics who hand assembled some of the finest panty removing machinery on 4 wheels.
Thus, the rather simple Pyrimidine molecule could be the mother of all life ...
Pyrimidine
Agreed.
"...change from one type of creature to another..."
Define 'type of creature' well enough for me to take any two creatures, and be able to tell without any ambiguity if they are the same type or different types, and I'll listen. I've never seen one. I've looked. Google for 'ring species' to see some exaples of hard cases.
Be aware that this is not a trivial task. The most common one, 'can they reproduce together' doesn't work for any animal which doesn't use sex to reproduce. As TFA said, there are several kinds. To give a concrete example, dandelions, despite having flowers, nectar and pollen, simply create clones of themselves. No dandelion can polinate another dandelion, or even itself.
'Type of Creature' (or species) is a classification scheme made up by humans to help us classify and deal with life. It is very useful, to a point. But in the end it is entirely artificial. Nature simply doesn't bother with such distinctions.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
A god that dumb (thinkering at such low level to start life) would be dreadful.
So I will go for the safe, logical alternative. We don't know. Yet.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Scientists use the rate of mutation in bacteria or viruses during their study.
The HIV has a well known ancestral history from the first strains known until the current ones. Some mutated to be less lethal in order not to kill the host too fast, thus allowing easier propagation.
That is all for starters, some animals adapted in early Industrial England by changing colour (to black) to make use of the coal coated buildings of the day. In his novel and TV serial "Cosmos", Carl Sagan presents a crab that has developed the likeness of a samurai face on its belly since fishermen have bee sparing crabs with anything resembling human faces since time immemorial.
Finally, how do you know we, as an example, are more complicated or simpler than our ancestors? And how do you measure that in terms that make sense from a thermodynamic point of view?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do you recognize any of these names?
Jonathon Wells
Stephen C. Meyer, PHD
Michael J Behe, PHD
J.P. Moreland, PHD
Only Behe. An obscure biochemist, he has no major publications in any of the refereed journals I listed, and has won no major scientific awards, so he certainly does not qualify as a "top" scientist. I know his name only because he has written a popularized book (non-refereed, of course) which I skimmed through in a bookstore once. His basic argument was obviously statistically invalid, so I didn't bother to buy it.
Never heard of the other guys. I did managed to find a web page for Moreland, who also has no publications in major refereed scientific journals. Care to try again? Be sure to list refereed publications in scientific journals.
Then as a scientist, you must also see how the idea of evolution does not lend itself to the Scientific Method
On the contrary, like any scientist who reads the literature, I see applications of the scientific method to evolution all of the time. It is truly amazing that a theory that predated even knowledge of genescontinues to hold up in the modern age molecular genetics. Today, evolution is one of the most extensively tested and confirmed theories in all of science.
Remember that Coppedge says chance requires 10B tries to count to ten.
If you had 10 coins numbered 1-10, and if you could draw and record one coin every 5 seconds, 24 hours per day, it would take more than 1,500 years for chance, on average, to count to ten.
Coppedge continutes to say that if we postulate a primordial sea with every single component necessary, and speeding up the rate of bonding a TRILLION times, "The probability of a single protein molecule being arranged by chance is 1 in 10^161, using all atoms on earth and allowing all the time since the world began.....For a minimum set of the required 239 protien molecules for the smallest theoretical life, the probability is 1 in 10^119,879 It would take 10^119,841 years on the average to get a set of such proteins. That is 10^119,831 TIMES the assumed age of the earth!" (emphasis added by me)
4B years is simply a trivial amount of time by comparison, and that is talking about the smallest possible life form - before we have the 'benefit' of 'favorable mutation' which is in and of itself extremely uncommon.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
But if you have a preconceived notion that natural phenomena is the ONLY way that changes can occur or species could appear, then you could possibly have removed the real way that this happened.
Specifically I believe that the current conventional wisdom about this explanation of origin of species will one day be as outdated thought as the geocentric solar system. Initially the heliocentric model was resisted strongly by the scientific community. The model was the best explanation they had, even though it required retrograde motion in order to make the data add up. Today it is as accepted as daylight.
While small changes over time provides one explanation of the origin of diverse species, it is not the best, and the data points do not add up completely.
My money says that a much simpler model is the likely cause.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Let me provide an example of a biological structure that makes no sense because of irreducible complexity.
"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for correction of spherical and chromatic aberration , could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible" (Origin of Species, Darwin)
The human eye has a lens, a complex retina, cornea, iris, a system to maintain pressure inside the eye, to rotate fluid every four hours, tear glands clean the outside, and an eyelid keeps it moist and eyelashes keep foreign objects out. In addition, there are tuned muscles that surround the eye to help point it and to help focus.
None of these have a distinct advantage without the others being present. In fact, this amazingly complex structure is connected to the optic nerve, which is then connected to a part of the brain that can interpret the signals sent from the retina.
You cannot explain the origin of vision without first accounting for the structure that supports it. You cannot explain that structure without the minimum number of components being present to provide the signals. It's a catch-22. Behe takes 3 pages to describe the biochemistry of vision in humans. To suggest that this type of system evolved because of favorable mutation is.... not merely unlikely, it's so unlikely that it seems slightly separated from impossibility.
Irreducible complexity is not to be discarded without thought. You may disagree, but I submit to you that you should give it thought rather than discard the concept with "meh"
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
"Ihts bad eenuhf that wirdz arnt spehld ehkzaktlee haoo thehee sownd, buht swahping lehtirz for no gud reesuhn shud bee avoeedihd wehnehver pahsihbuhl."
Exactly. So why center, when centre had already been used for hundreds of years?
As for aluminum/aluminium - how on earth can you just lose a syllable?
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
The strangest thing to evolve has got to be these beasts, who actually denounce the process that have created them.
...forex, the co-development of neurons and supporting cogitative power to do something useful with this new information (get the flock out of here when a predator arrives, while not making a target of yourself by leaping about every time some flake of debris gets between you and the light) isn't even mentioned, let alone calculated.
Foranotherex, the step from, for example, a skin-covered depression to a genuinely useful lens is a lot more than 1%.
Forathirdex, even ignoring all other genetic factors to do with viability and such-like, the likelihood of 1829 random mutations in a row all producing the "correct" result tending towards an eye are just stupidly low.
It wouldn't take long to stumble over more problems, but the talkorigins crew never seem to trouble themselves with doing that. Can't imagine why.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Oops.
How did that ability evolve?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"Well chosen handle" seems to encompass it all. (-:
Replicators aren't standalone. No replicators without life. No life without replicators. Paradox. Thank you for playing. Next!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Abiogensis is a scientific theory, and all which that entails. For no other reason, it's not to be taken lightly. I'm not nearly as familiar with it as I am with evolution, but I feel I can point out what I see as the basic flaw of your line of reasoning.
Huge odds of what? Odds that something alive will crawl out of a lagoon, complete with legs? Certain chemical reactions involving catalysts are able to make copies of certain molecules. This happens by the laws of chemistry; odds don't come into play. I think the odds of a slightly more complex molecule arising from these simple molecules, given the number of reactions which must be taking place every minute, is actually quite good. Once we have that more complex molecule, the odds of a slightly more complex molecule forming are also quite good.
It's "lying with numbers" to look at a lobster and try to calculate the "odds" that it came into being. If we could simulate an entire ancient-planet and see what would evolve, the odds of a lobster evolving in exactly the same are virtually zero, yes, however, consider this: what are the odds that the USA came to be, given all of the wars, treaties, inventions, etc., throughout history? The odds that one nation gradually takes on new religions, or changes it's government, etc., are quite high - and this mechanism is all you need to drastically change a country. But the odds of a specific country coming into being is virtually zero if we had to do it again or could somehow simulate history/politics...yet, here we are.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
DNA and RNA are not alive - it does what it does based on chemical reactions and it can do amazing things, true, however, taken alone, it's not living.
Molecules make copies of themselves; the chemistry would allow grabbing the right chunks of atoms and molecules floating around nearby and making a copy . It's not sex by any means, and I'd hardly call it reproduction. The process might be analogous in some ways to evolution, but evolution deals with life, and we are at a pre-life stage here.
But, if you like, given similar conditions and similar chemicals, yes, I would expect many many "winners" to arise all at once. This sounds silly, since these aren't life forms - think of adding vinigar to baking soda or something - you don't consider each molecule that joins the reaction a "winner", you just say that the whole liquid has changed in a rather large reaction, even if many individual molecules are un-affected. Afterwards, the "soup" is different, and this changes what may or may not happen to all of the individual molecules in this liquid.
Further, in this pre-life soup, since the winners are able to make copies of themselves - the lottery they won is like a "gift that keeps on giving", this also affects the soup as a whole.
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Consider a program on a floppy disk.
;-) ) randomly alters some bits in the process. Each new copy is then tested, unworkable ones are discarded, then more imperfect copies are made from the most efficient ones.
;-) ), the linux kernel, or the complete works of shakespeare scrolling on a nice GUI.
Now consider that the only way of copying (the program is GPL'd, of course
Now make hundreds, thousands, millons, billons of billions of copies, and compare what you get to what you had first. Some copies drag along useless pieces of code that make no sense, until a few million copy later the useless bits of code mutated enough to happen to do something useful.
Give it enough time, and the more you near infinity, the greater the chances of finding on the way MS Office (large floppy
I'll agree that it is a very strange way to write a program, but it seems quite a good way to try every workable combination of bits on that floppy.
What we call evolution is blind, has no purpose, no reason, no target. It just happens and is efficient on the ( very ) long term in creating the improbable working combinations:-)
Why "speak", "tomorrow", etc., when "speake", "to-morrow", etc., had already ("all readie"?) been used for hundreds of years ("yeares")?Actually, you people gained a syllable, as it was first spelled "aluminum".
(To be honest, accounts differ as to which was first used, but, as a practical person, I tend to believe (or, at least, pretend to believe) the version that supports my own position.)
If you want a more valid argument about lost syllables, then you can discuss the way that we pronounce "vacuum" ("VAK-yoom" vs "VAK-yoo-uhm").
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
EOM
Are we not men? .
We are /
Are we not men?
/ . / .
On the contrary, like any scientist who reads the literature, I see applications of the scientific method to evolution all of the time.
Do you know what the Scientific Method is? Isn't it this?
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/Appendi xE/AppendixE.html
Evolution does not make it past step 1. Even if Darwinian evolution where true, the process itself would be unobservable. It is either happening so slowly that it is unobservable, or it it happened in the past which makes it unobservable. I believe the rule is that you can't move on to step 2 until you've satisfied step 1. Right?
III. Common Mistakes in Applying the Scientific Method
As stated earlier, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of the scientist's bias on the outcome of an experiment. That is, when testing an hypothesis or a theory, the scientist may have a preference for one outcome or another, and it is important that this preference not bias the results or their interpretation. The most fundamental error is to mistake the hypothesis for an explanation of a phenomenon, without performing experimental tests. Sometimes "common sense" and "logic" tempt us into believing that no test is needed. There are numerous examples of this, dating from the Greek philosophers to the present day.
Another common mistake is to ignore or rule out data which do not support the hypothesis. Ideally, the experimenter is open to the possibility that the hypothesis is correct or incorrect. Sometimes, however, a scientist may have a strong belief that the hypothesis is true (or false), or feels internal or external pressure to get a specific result. In that case, there may be a psychological tendency to find "something wrong", such as systematic effects, with data which do not support the scientist's expectations, while data which do agree with those expectations may not be checked as carefully. The lesson is that all data must be handled in the same way.
Another common mistake arises from the failure to estimate quantitatively systematic errors (and all errors). There are many examples of discoveries which were missed by experimenters whose data contained a new phenomenon, but who explained it away as a systematic background. Conversely, there are many examples of alleged "new discoveries" which later proved to be due to systematic errors not accounted for by the "discoverers."
In a field where there is active experimentation and open communication among members of the scientific community, the biases of individuals or groups may cancel out, because experimental tests are repeated by different scientists who may have different biases. In addition, different types of experimental setups have different sources of systematic errors. Over a period spanning a variety of experimental tests (usually at least several years), a consensus develops in the community as to which experimental results have stood the test of time.
http://teacher.nsrl.rochester.edu/phy_labs/Appendi xE/AppendixE.html
Darwin not only observed and took notes during his voyage, but he also studied the practice of artificial selection and read the works of other naturalists to form his Theory of Evolution.
The italian writer Italo Calvino has an excelent tale, "The Spiral", about the origin of the image, the vision and the eye, in his book "Cosmicomics".
Why do you think the Catholic Church(incidentally, the richest organization in the entire world, aside from Harvard University, which just took the #1 spot) has banned all forms of birth control?
On a less dramatic note- look at most religious edicts on subjects of how the house should be kept, how food is prepared, etc. In a way religion, science, and public safety did kind of end up in bed together, and if you think about it, back in the day, "because God said so" was a lot more understandable to the Unwashed Masses than "because we think these tiny little things you can't see can be living inside and will make you sick..."
Please help metamoderate.
I overstated the case. I agree that your description of irreducible complexity is more accurate than mine. I apologize for the error.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Philosophically and intellectually. Typically abiogenesis is assumed by those who have an a priori commitment to naturalism.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
you said "you are proposing an incredibly complex entity that nobody can show exists (let alone describe properties of)"
I'd like to ask "What evidence would be sufficient to demonstrate that a designer/creator exists?" but it looks from your sentence above that there is no evidence which could convince you.
Please tell me that I'm misunderstanding your position, and please answer my question, or I'll be forced to assume that your philosophy precludes your searching for truth if it conflicts with your philosophy.
I hope that I'm incorrect about that.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
How about information and knowledge? Where did they come from?
Language, living organisms, eyes and other sense organs, sex and reproduction, survival instinct, harmony, they are just lower structural elements necessary to sense information and propagate knowledge.
All we are, are just vessels to tranmit an ever-present knowledge, or the "Word of God".
Without the "Word", all our lower elemental existence is just a shell of no use, in a world of chaos solely running for survival due to the mechanism of death.
Think about it. Do you want to live in a world without a higher purpose to propagate the knowledge of the Creator, or just shells in a doomed state of survival against death or decay, of which no living or non-living matter has ever surpassed?
The purpose of death is not to limit population growth. It is intended for total destruction. It just so happens that we have an instinct for survival, trying out best to circumvent it our own way (reproduction, survival of the "fittest" in our own definition, etc.)
That doesn't mean it was meant to be. We just chose to act that way because we decided to not act the way we were designed for.
Don't be fooled. Evolution didn't design them. Evolution is just a phenomenon we detect from living samples, nothing more than side-effects of instinctual survival mechanism.
If Creationism is a valid scientific theory Creation is not a scientific theory, it is a historical event. That places it outside of the realm of science. Creation is also a supernatural event. This also places it outside of the realm of science. Science has do with seeing what is there and finding out how it works. Biology is a science. This is correct, biology is a science. Specifically it is the study of life. Evolution is a scientific theory, as there are simple tests one could devise to disprove it. This is not correct if you are refering to Darwinian Macroevolution. It is not something that can be observed and therefore does not pass the first step of the Scientific Method.
They just have yet to see the existence of anything unnatural. The fact remains though, you can have evolution without abiogenesis (and vice versa, I suppose).
Coppedge's calculations make more sense now that I see my misunderstanding. I'll look up the assumptions he's used, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.
Even if true, the figures don't support ID any more than they support spontaneous generation.You just invented the meme.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
As for being taught in history classrooms, I suspect creationists will have to find some more archelogical evidence to suppose their hypothesis that the Universe was created 4000 years ago. Doubtless those historians studying societies older thand 4000 years will find themselves quite put out to be shown wrong.
I have no problem with creationism being taught as a religious idea. Or being taught apart from government-funded education. However, it seems odd to teach it along with evolution as a science, when it is not. And it seems odd to mention it in history classes, when the vast majority of historians will tell you that the bible really isn't all that accurate.
That said, I always find philosophical debates on God fascinating, and I would encourage any school to have such discussions upon God. So long as both sides of the divide are represented.
Off the top of my head, I can think of several simple tests that could disprove the theory that life evolved on earth from simple beginnings. Here's just one of them:
Test the distance of the stars and galaxies in the sky using parallax. If none of these stellar objects are further than, say, 10'000 lightyears from us, then we can conclude that the Universe is not old enough for species to have evolved through evolution.
Of course, people have tried this experiment, and found it in evolution's favour. And, indeed, any experiment I suggest that could disprove evolution as a means of creation on our planet, has probably already been done and come out in evolution's favour.
The other thing we should differentiate between is the evolution, which is an observed fact, and the theory that life on this planet was created solely through evolution, which is theory (much like the theory gravity holds us in orbit around the sun). Viruses and bacteria evolve into new species all the time, which is really quite the problem! Doubtless we'd have a much easier time if they didn't.
The idea that you can separate 'macroevolution' from 'microevolution' always struck me as somewhat odd. That's believing in ponds but not believing in seas. However, since an omnipotent being could easily falsify any evidence that we find, so I do suppose it's academic arguing creationism from a rational point of view.
Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. - Dr Scott Todd (Nature 410(6752):423)
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." - Richard Lewontin (New York Review (9 January 1997))
I'm not going to ask you to accept it at face value, but the Bible says "The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands"
It seems to me that the universe itself is a solid apologetic for a designer/creator.
Let's talk about this, for a moment, laying aside the Bible. If we were to find an obelisk on Mars or on the moon, what would we surmise?
a) either it was an extremely unusual natural formation, or,
b) if the markings were too unnatural, that someone must have put it there!
If you are walking along a beach and find a watch, I'm pretty sure that you'd assume someone lost it.
There are also a great number of aspects of the known universe that seem consistent with design. The very idea that there is a 'natural order of things' that our minds can comprehend indicates to me that science is possible because of the order. The order, in my mind, implies the designer. I'd be glad to elaborate, if you are interested.
There are a number of philosophical and historical things that support my faith in the Hebrew scriptures (aka the Old Testament, and the Christian Gospel - the New Testament.)
Let me be clear. The Bible is NOT a science or history textbook. It contains things consistent with science, and some parts are historical. It is complex literature, and must be interpreted wisely. Based on considerable study, I am convinced that the Bible is trustworthy. This lends credence to my belief in a designer.
Speaking of following the evidence, have you ever read the Bible? Have you ever read literature from Intelligent design proponents to see if their claims make sense? To see if they provide evidence that you consider valid?
I think that a great deal of evidence is already available, but most 'science types' reject it because it does not fit their model of the universe.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
As for being taught in history classrooms, I suspect creationists will have to find some more archelogical evidence to suppose their hypothesis that the Universe was created 4000 years ago. Doubtless those historians studying societies older thand 4000 years will find themselves quite put out to be shown wrong.
;^)
I thought recorded history went back at least 6000 years. Some even believe the Earth to be closer to 10,000 years old. I'm not so sure that archaelogical evidence is useful in figuring out the age of the Earth- that has more to with finding out about about ancient civilizations and how they lived regardless of how many years ago they exisited. Finding the age of the Earth seems to bring us back into the realm of science.
I have no problem with creationism being taught as a religious idea. Or being taught apart from government-funded education. However, it seems odd to teach it along with evolution as a science, when it is not.
It seems odd to me to teach Darwinian macroevolution as a science when it has never been observed.
But, I wouldn't suggest teaching either creation or evolution as science since history and science are really not the same.
And it seems odd to mention it in history classes, when the vast majority of historians will tell you that the bible really isn't all that accurate.
The Bible is the most historically authenticated ancient set of documents we have. That's pretty miraculuous considering the majority of the world hates it and would like to see it completely go away.
That said, I always find philosophical debates on God fascinating, and I would encourage any school to have such discussions upon God. So long as both sides of the divide are represented.
Wouldn't be much of a debate if both sides were not well represented, would it?
Viruses and bacteria evolve into new species all the time, which is really quite the problem!
It is quite a problem in the world of medicine so I agree.
A virus "evolving" into a new type of virus is still a virus. I doubt the "new" species of virus has anything the previous one did not have.
Here is the real question: Has anybody ever observed a virus evolving into a bacteria or vice versa? That's what Darwinian Macroevolutiuon claims and that's wht needs to happen in order for it to have been observed.
The idea that you can separate 'macroevolution' from 'microevolution' always struck me as somewhat odd.
The idea that you can combine something observable with something unobservable seems odd to me.
That's believing in ponds but not believing in seas. However, since an omnipotent being could easily falsify any evidence that we find, so I do suppose it's academic arguing creationism from a rational point of view
Any real evidence that is found is part of God's creation, so of course He does not falsify it. The only thing that falsifies anything is if it was never true to begin with.
Evolution does not make it past step 1. Even if Darwinian evolution where true, the process itself would be unobservable.
Dude, there are more interesting things going on in the world than you imagine. Go look for yourself, quite a bit of this is easily observable with no better instruments than your two eyes.
Play Command HQ online
I saw this documentary where a guy used special glasses to invert the image to his eyes. After a week or two of stumbling around, his brain was able to flip the image, and he couldn't get around without the glasses.
Play Command HQ online
Sorry I haven't been able to repond before this - my wife has claimed the computer the last few days for writing her sunday school lessons, so my time online has been limited.
.... nothing, no disagreement or debate. As an example, go to the library, and go through issues of the journal Science. You will see no debate there.
If the "Evolutionary Method" that you claim was the method used for the theory of evolution was true, the entire scientific community would be up in arms against the theory of evolution. You could find articles in peer reviewed scienfic journals that would be arguing the theory. But you would find
What little debate on evolution in the scientific community is on minor issues, sort of like arguing about the differences between the Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church.
from a Bible teacher who is also a scientist
Many people who are expert in one field, have only a laymans knowledge (or less) of other fields. Now, if you tried you argue creationism with my wife, you would be out of luck, because she is a biologist who does biological research, went to a methodist college, and teaches sunday school.
Yep. For one, it raises the obvious question as to whether Chthulu is the one true God.
Be afraid. Very afraid.
Well, we could see ultraviolet if we didn't have a pigments in the lens to filter it out. In fact, patients who have just had cataracts removed have been able to read by ultraviolet light.
The UV filtering is a protective mechanism that seems fairly well conserved across mammalian species.
As for the polarised light - we can see a little. It requires training though. Just google for Haidinger's Brushes. And it really isn't that useful -not like other animals and insects have.
Not believing in something is not the same as hating it.
It is pretty miraculous, in the way that 66 separate accounts tainted by human influence and church bureaocracy represent the truth of all things. Funny how those in the early church kept all the right writings and threw away all the writings that were incorrect or irrelevant. Of course, no-one had an agenda. Hypothetically, uf there was an account of Jesus saying "Organised religion is inherently evil and misleading", would the early Christian church include it in the bible, or would it be conviniently left to one side?
The bible is not used often by historians. It sometimes contradicts with archelogical evidence, and the records of other civilisations. It is awash with contradictions.
Personally, I've always been confused by Gods seeming lack of morality. Thou shalt not kill, but it's perfectly alright for God to commit genocide, then commit his victims to an eternity of suffering. This does not fit my definition of a loving God.
What about immunity to a particular drug? Viruses and bacteria in particular mutate and share DNA like we share ideas.
If you mean "observed" by "watch it happening right this instant with one's own eyes", then no. Instead, as with sciences such as astronomy and geology, evidence is gathered through finding patterns in past events.
The distinction between 'macroevolution' and 'microevolution' I've never understood. It seems to be that it's a belief that small changes in the short term cannot add up to large changes in the long term. And that's the thing that seems rather odd to me. It's like saying, well, perhaps gravity keeps this solar system together, but how can it possibly keep whole galaxies together?
Not to me. For instance, Hawking Radiation is a theory derived from direct observations about relativity and quantum mechanics. It says that black holes will emit radiation, inversely proportionate to their size. This has never been observed, because the radiation involved would be too small, and our only hope of observing it is to find miniture black holes created at the beginning of the Universe. Yet despite this lack of observable events, it does provide a rational explanation as to why small black-holes would evaporate into thin air, explaining a lack of small black holes. Scientists accept it as probably true, because it combines observable events to predict unobservable pheonomenon.
Then I'm curious about your take on distance of stars. We can see that a particular star or galaxy is so many millions of light-years away, using basic triangulation. We have observed that light travels at a constant rate. Therefore, the light would take millions of years to reach us, implying the the Universe has to be at least this old.
The only explanation to this, if you believe in Creationism and a young Universe, is that God created the light in place, The star may not even be real; God could have created the light without bothering to construct a star -
>Replicators aren't standalone.
Proof by forceful assertion? We've already created simple self-replicating molecules. If you have some magical theory of why such things couldn't form in nature, I'd love to hear it.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
first of all, we aren't really clear on what event we are estimating the odds for, let alone what those odds are. Just saying "nuh uh, the odds are way bigger than the atoms" isn't going to cut it. And we're not talking about "numbers like billions".. We are talking about billions times billions times billions times billions. Time also plays a factor, and there are billions upon billions of moments for reactions to take place. All it takes is a simple self replicating molecule to happen. Selection takes it from there.
It's "I AM THAT I AM". Apparantly, this is a really big distinction. I'm not sure why, but I suspect the difference makes sense in another language.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yes, do RTFA.
Then consider the application of the same ideas about evolving organisms (eyes, parasites, etc.) to human societies or groups of humans.
I don't know if it was Guns, Germs & Steel or another book along the same topic that enlightened me to the whole concept that many human organizational power structures and governments in particular could be thought of in terms of parasites (get past the bad connotation of parasite and think purely of their functionality.) People in positions of power feed off the labors of people in positions of subjugation. Probably the relationship is somewhat symbiotic, where govt provides protection against violent individuals at the subjects provide taxes.
Someone else (Crichton, perhaps?) suggested that the human brain itself qualified as a successful parasite operating on the human species (maybe that accounts for ending in the cult movie Pi).
"Provided by the management for your protection."
HTH, chl
Bzzt! If you ask me, DNA's got plent of carbon in it.
Well, if you are sharing...your choices between god and "random" are limited. There are others:
/.
My opinion is that the perceived "orderliness" of anything in nature, from the macro to micro level, is superimposed by us as observers.
If you model any limited "universe" using technology, or even just your imagination, you can decide on the base level rules and relationships, constants and affinities. Tweaking any of them causes a whole new model universe to exist. Each one of these universes has a beauty and mystery to it. Some sets of rules cause the model to collapse, but of course we as observer wouldn't be able to count them in our list, since we don't know they're possible.
But of the existing possibilities, there are many concepts that appear so complex and "architected" as to suggest purposeful design (or "intelligence"), when really, the math just makes it appear that way.
If you read Wolfram's "A New Kind Of Science" you'll find that even in his simple building blocks, by simply changing miniscule details, a whole "realm" is devised. Then, within a single realm, further tweaking of the relationships makes for amazing complexities and so on.
And so in our universe, if subatomic particles, quantum nuiances and other yet-to-be-known building blocks all have stable states and instable states, they are leaning towards forming the very universe we have at the moment. But changing just one of those rules makes for a vastly different Other universe.
Now I know one from your opinion may object, saying "but who has decided those states, and which are stable?" but again physics, or a should say math, comes into play again. All states which are not self-contradictory are possible, and affinities towards states which make for the longest existance of this collective as a whole are the trend. Within alllll those possibilities, many collapse to the building blocks we have, and their higher-level properties. Rush up the big chain to matter/energy behaviors we observe in the Newtonian world, and voila! Some sort of "design" seems apparent. But really, we're just terming it such.
Really, it's simply because we have an opinion at all that we see the "ghost in the machine". The observer has not only influenced the reality, he's termed it. But to term it "from an intelligence" brushes over math we already know and rely on. Remember, this math is reliable and comprises many of the things you use every day. Subatomic/Atomic/Molecular patterns for the most part, are now quite predictable. They combine to, say, let you post here on