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Resurrection Ecology Gives Life to Old Eggs
Ant writes "ABC News reports that scientists are bringing the past to life by hatching eggs once thought to be dead and producing colonies of animals as they existed decades ago. They are calling it 'resurrection ecology,' and it's a whole new field that quite literally allows scientists to observe evolution as it occurred, using animals that were quite different than their kinfolk today."
Resurrection Ecology Gives Life to Old Eggs
;-)
Maybe this will put an end to those viagra emails I keep getting too.
What? Is this Jurasic Park or something?
They call it 'resurrection ecology', I call it RePet. This goes along well with the last story about SimPal Cindy.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Jurassic Park anyone?
All your Sybase are belong to us.
Can this possibly be used as an argument for evolution?
if the Pope hadn't passed away.
I say we just grow up, be adults and die.
How does this demonstrate evolution? Don't they know the eggs were planted there just to fool them???
Oh? Those don't come from eggs?
Damn. Hmm... what comes from eggs that'd be interesting...
Starts with a D? Dinosaurs? Nahhhh, nobody would find eggs that old....
Wait, why's the ground shaking like that? and what's that crashing noise over there? Hmm, let me go and take a look.
NO CARRIER
Can this possibly be used as an argument for evolution?
This should probably be phrased as: "Can this possibly be used to show that evolution is more than just a theory?"
Just KNOWING that creatures an be a hatched after that long stalled period makes you wonder about what life really is.. Offtopic, but this seems to help imply that death and birth don't really have beginnings or ends. Kind of scary to me at least.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
More SEA MONKEYS!
http://ut.water.usgs.gov/shrimp/ "The life cycle of Artemia begins from a dormant cyst that contains an embryo in a suspended state of metabolism (known as diapause). The cysts are very hardy and may remain viable for many years if kept dry."
As the article says (in the headline, at least), scientists made dormant eggs hatch by putting them under the right conditions. "They found that eggs that had been trapped beneath the sediment years ago had never hatched, but miraculously, were still alive."
It may be a landmark - I have no idea - but it's not resurrection.
You're using the popular definition of theory. Evolution will *never* be more than a /scientific/ theory. Gravity is "just" a theory, and will never become more than that.
Ultimately, this "new" branch of science can bring a wealth of information about the process of evolution. Think of it... these eggs are possibly hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. They have not gone through the same evolution patterns as their counterpart species; therefore, scientists can examine what they evolved and possibly identify why they evolved in that way.
I did not RTFA, but this is definately something that should be looked into.
This is freaking awesome. Jurassic park, except less Jurassic and more like last week, but I think anything that aids with understanding how evolution occurs is good for our possible survival as a species. We should make entire ecosystems of our own private galapagos, with different generations of creatures, to see if survival mutations end up being the same. I think it's an interesting idea, to really think of species as more as a temporal thing than just genetically different from others of their kind, they are different from others of their own family minus generations.
Human beings of eighty years ago would have been able to deal with this impending crisis much more efficiently, let's bring some of that natural genetic drift back, for example. Sort of gets away from another accidentally arbitrary classifications.
We've seen entire ecosystems of one region incredibly damaged by introducing species from another, I can only imagine the damage that will be done by species being introduced from one _time_ to another.
I thought "de-volving" DNA was a 50's sci-fi movie myth. I understand that it is sometimes possible, at least in theory, to "turn on" suppressed DNA, and that one could mutate and selectively breed modern species into creatures with traits resembling extinct species, but without the full genome of the extinct species to "rewrite" your modern genome into a copy of, you would just end up with a vaguely dinosuar-like modified bird, which would exhibit any mistaken assumptions of the breeders.
Simply put, a bird would not "revert" into a real dinosaur, it would evolve into an immitation dinosaur. As far as frozen mammoth thread goes, I think it should be possible to reconstruct the mammoth genome from frozen DNA, as I understand that DNA is much more stable than most other organic structures. Once you had your genome to work from, if you had the time and money to devote vast biotech rescources I suppose a mammoth zygote could be synthesized, but it would be immpossible to guess the cost or time involved anywhere within several orders of magnitude. I have no proffesional training in any of this, I'm just an informed interested person throwing in my $0.02 worth in. However, if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the mammoth resurrection group over the bird devolution group without a second thought!
Iran captures three CIA agents
it sounds like a plot for a good movie...I wonder if hollywood would be interested... quick to the batmobile.....
Most eggcellent!
Physicist, consultant, science communicator
Life when considered in the form of a spore is structure, which when energy (food) is added, becomes life. Life is structure and energy.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Let's hear it for the Dodo Bird!!!
Those things must have been tasty if they went so extinct.
Maybe I'll get to taste one in my lifetime...
Poached or Bulls Eye? Over easy?
Nope, I like 'em alive and kicking.
Jokes aside, this is cool - but wasn't it already known that only the fittest survive? How is the Red Queen Hypothesis any different?
Or are they both saying the same thing, and the resurrection ecology is merely confirming it?
The startling point is that we're talking about only 100 years. Given the number of generations the Daphnia can manage in that time, I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.
But think: if you can get that much useful change in such a short amount of time, how much more can occur over hundreds of thousands of years?
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Already, scientists have made huge strides in their research using this technique. Thanks to new technology and innovation, more and more creatures are able to be 'reanimated' in this way.
Hatching long dormant eggs is interesting, I wish the article had more about that in it. I have always been fascinated by the fact that wheat from Pharoh's tombs in Egypt has been sprouted.
However, this article merely takes that interesting subject and attempts yet again to twist it into another prove of the theory of evolution. The mass media does that with any major story in the life sciences area.
This should probably be phrased as: "Can this possibly be used to show that evolution is more than just a theory?"
What more is there to be than "just" a theory?
Evolution is "just" a theory because, although a theory is a statement of what we think something to be like, that includes in itself an inherent understanding that we can't know more than that, that we could always possibly be wrong . . . so evolution has trouble standing up to things like Creationism and it's masquerade/reinvention as "Intelligent Design", which offer eternal and proclaimed truths at their core. They have the gift of certainty; and unreal concreteness is often more persuasive than truthful equivocation.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Those would be old eggs. The Gauntlet has been dropped!
"Doesn't it bother anyone else, the idea that God...is fucking with our heads? 'Huhuh, I'm a prankster God! Huhuh...I kill me. We'll see who believes in me now!'"
- Bill Hicks
Was this the finding of the research or the reporter's opinion? Sounds to me like they have observed adaptation in the act, which is not news at all. I didn't see anything in the article about these creatures turing into new species.
Regenerate, brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation.
welcome our new extinct avian overlords.
Slashdot poster brings back memes thought to be dead and produces jokes as they existed decades ago. He calls it "resurrection karma".
Unfortunately, no good can come of it, as those memes are the same ones we have today.
The scientists exposed the eggs to sunlight and warmth, about what they would expect in the spring, and the eggs hatched. As they grew to maturity in tightly controlled experiments, they changed over the years, particularly in the length of their spines and the size of their helmets.
By examining the fossil record, the researchers found that fish that prey on the small animals also changed significantly over the years, at least in terms of abundance.
About 80 years ago, when the predators were all over the place, the Daphnia retrocurva extended the size of its helmet and spines to make itself less appetizing. Later, when the number of predators shrank, the animal reduced the size of those features, thus conserving its energy for other uses.
The researchers had hit pay dirt. The changes in Daphnia retrocurva were precisely what would have been expected as part of the predator-prey interaction.
Furthermore, DNA analysis shows that the changes were passed on genetically from one generation to the next, until they were no longer needed, thus confirming that the researchers had caught evolution in the act.
I can accept life adapting to its environment, but adaptation does not prove or disprove evolution.
There: Something at a specific location.
Their: Owned by someone.
Please make sure your english compiles.
Billy and the Clone-a-saurus
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Just wait till researchers bring back a disease that that has been laying dormant for millions of years that wipes the entire human race out.. lol, but i do think what they are doing is cool. I'm sure alot will be learned.
Only if you're a racist and ignore the two black ones.
If you guys had taken the time to read the article prior to posting a response, you would have realized the article talks about evolution throughout its entire contents. It then goes on to explain that "sunlight and warmth" (page 3, website) were given to the eggs, and they hatched. This, is NOTHING like Jurassic Park. This is basically just preservation of eggs from long ago which were able to be warmed and hatched many years later. It then talks about how they could see evolution take place within these new life forms. Hopefully, in the future, you guys can appreciate the fact that a submission was made and accepted because it was a genuinely interesting article/topic, rather than another attempt for someone to be the 'first post'. You guys are not trolls, nor do you have to be. That isn't how you get on in life. Being a troll will get you nowhere. If you can troll, then you probably have enough skill to get a job making $10/hour at minimum. Go out there and get that job. If you are a troll making more than that, however, then I look at you in disgust.
This new-fangled 'resurrection ecology' has "bio-hazard" written all over it.
While in our Politically Correct Era the focus is on how mankind has exploited the eco-system - let's not be too quick to jump on the band wagon of thinking this is a wonderfull way to bring back the Do-do and other species that came to an abrubt end in modern history.
Exploitation of wildlife resources is only one of many reasons.
Another reason is because ecology changes and those species not well suited to adapt to the new environment naturally die out. And one major change to environment is DISEASE. Entire species can succumb to a communicable virus in rapid succession and those whose immune systems can not adapt or physically migrate to another suitable habitat will die and continue to die untill the disease either mutates or all the suitable hosts are dead.
You see -- it's called NATURAL SELECTION for a reason.
And while I'm not entirely against this use of technology, I'm highly wary of it's uncontrolled use.
By what standards are we to determine which species to attempt to cultivate and let loose into the wild or one ofour many splended zoos/aquariums? And how can we accurately model and predict the ecological impact these actions would have? Is it possible that the introduction of these since extinct animals immune systems back into a modern ecology cause viruses to mutate into potentially deadly forms for us and other modern animals? Or would we see entire colonies of animals brought back only to die off in short order as they once again prove themselves unable to cope?
Personally, I think this technique should be left in the realm of advanced research for decades to come untill a time comes where we are capable of knowing whether or not a reintroduction of specie posses a threat to modern organisms or to the potential resurrectee.
So now what? :P
There is a size limitation of about 14 micrometers beyond which scientists are unable to resurrect dormant eggs, or so a biologist uncle of mine explained. They hope to break that barrier by first reanimating the constituent cells of the eggs as opposed to merely attempting to reanimate the entire egg. He also stated that this latent capability is singular to oceanic life forms, and even in theory does not extend beyond oceanic life forms, because only oceanic eggs are inherently anhydrous, even completely immersed in water, which contributes remarkably to their longevity. I don't see what practical purpose any of this information serves, but if it eventually makes lobster cheaper, then I'm game. Also, all the aforementioned is completely made-up.
for samples of microorganisms from Lake Vostok
From the article: Daphnia retrocurva are zooplankton that live in lake waters for one summer and then die, leaving eggs behind. Scientists have found eggs that didn't hatch for years -- and are hatching them to see how the animal has adapted over time. (University of New Hampshire)
We're not talking about bringing back Dodos!
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
That was truly eggregious! You, sir, should be made an eggsample of.
This reminds me of an idea I had for the Great American Novel.
:(
I was going to call it "Billy and the Clonosaurus". That is, until a convenience store clerk shattered my dreams
I've had a few dates that had big helmets, big spines. And, really, they weren't appetizing!! :-P
The researchers had hi
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Originally, the scientists thought that they changed to become less apealing to predators, then when predator population died out, they changed back.
The researchers found that the specimens in the lab changed and then later changed back, just as fossil records had shown.
If anything this disproves evolution as the cause.
Did they have predators and competition in the lab? It wasn't mentioned and I highly doubt they recreated the lake.
They removed the predators and the same thing still happened. This disproves their theory.
So why is it so hard to say that the DNA of the specimen was programmed to change in this way over time which had the nice side effect that the predators didn't like the change?
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
organisms that *can* mate and produce offspring capable of same.
This does sound as close as any evidence so far however, since unwilling and unable produce the same end result - extinct. Can you point in the direction of more information?
I know i'm splitting hairs here, but it would be nice to have undeniable evidence, non? The point is that we haven't, with the possible exception of the example you cited, any direct observation of evolution (in higher species). A counterexample by analogy would be the possibility that social pressures would cause two human races to avoid mating together, even though they are capable of it.
I haven't read any articles on this project however so if this example is real speciation, then we know that it can occur since it did at least once.
Creationists will still be able to hang their hat on one point though: Just because it has happened once to one species does not prove that it has happened to us specifically. It is probably not possible to devise an experiment to show this either way.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
These eggs taste like they're 30 years old.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
As for the difference between unwilling and unable, give it time. Any reasonable estimate as to how long such an event would take runs into hundred(s) of generations. We simply haven't had enough time for one to take place. Now, you can prove that it has taken place, but you have to accept genetic evidence for it. There is tons of genetic evidence for 'speciation' that has resulted in 'unable' but creationists don't seem to be willing to accept such genetic evidence.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Where does this come from? The ONLY reason this MAY be true is if you remember that the average person used to be ignorant of 99% of their world, think american citizen but without the TV... and therefore calm as calamity occured, but now we are taught "how to respond" to a whole bunch of stuff and kept informed about risks - this means MORE PANIC and MORE ARSEHOLES WHO THINK THEY KNOW HOW TO EVAC A BUILDING IN A FIRE...
neither of which help...
Could this, in the extension, become Jurassic Park IRL?
Even if (initially!) only for a few decades old eggs; for animals the humanity has destroyed, I welcome this opportunity - to perhaps be able to in a small, very very small way be able to bring back even if just a very small number of all the thousand upon thousands of spieces destroyed by humanity.
However, one phrase from the Jurrasic Park movie scares me: "Life will find a way". What if just one or a few of potential experimentally revived organisms that has been extinct for a bit longer than a few decades escapes into the wild, and manages to grow and breed. What if these animals, even if not directly dangerous to any of the organisms we know today, turns out to be a good host for a virus? Imagine an animal immune to, but able to host, e.g. ebola.
I mean, you have heard of Albert Einstein and the general theory of relativity? Gravity doesn't exist. It's not a force. It's a pseudo- or false force.
Timespace is curved, and it's that curvature that gives the acceleration. There is no such thing as gravity, just as there is no such thing as centrifugal force.
So there is a consensus on gravity - and that is that it isn't a valid theory.
I'd like to point out that there is no real discussion between evolution vs. creationism, except in the minds of people who misunderstand science. Evolution is a really great theory, just like the General Theory of Relativity is a really great theory. You do know that physicists do not accept it as gospel truth and in fact are looking for a better theory to replace it, right? Aren't biologists looking for a better theory than evolution to replace it one day, or have they accepted it as a religion and begun treating it like a faith?
Creationism is a completely different concept. It doesn't try to explain the origin of the diverse creatures. Believers of creationism instead look towards all things in the world around them and accept it as testament of the glory and intelligence of God. They also accept themselves as created in the image of God as children of God. Many scientists are creationists. That isn't contradictory. They treat science the same way as people did from previous generations: By understanding the natural world around us, we will understand the nature of God, and thus ourselves, better. In fact, for many of these scientist, it was a sort of divine inspiration to discover new intelligence or knowledge. Each point of science, each bit of evidence, each theory that seemed to work, was treated as a gift from God.
Do you see how evolution doesn't even really enter the argument for creationists?
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The interesting thing about these small little varients that happen during periods of less drastic survival is that they are not selected by necessity; rather they are the normal drift that comes from the melting pot of dna alteration and intermingling. Because of random variance and chance, the genetic makeup of a different times will be different.
What you were babbling on about is learned phenomena which is not at all genetic and therefore has no place in a discussion regarding offspring. The interesting thing about separate but recent generational stratification is the genetic differences; these differences have nothing, nothing to do with learned behavior.
as any experiment run to 'proove' relativity or gravity.
Obviously we don't orbit a Moon in the lab to proove that gravity affects very large objects the same way it affects small ones, nor do we need to demonstrate more than a few microseconds time difference due to velocity to demonstrate relativity.
Adaptation is the mechanism of evolution, and it can be demonstrated in the lab. As soon as you can demonstrate a supernatural force creating a new kind (in a controlled experiment), you'll have something 'scientific' to crow about.
The fact that closely related species can interbreed and produce offspring (sometimes sterile--Liger, sometimes fertile--Wolf-Coyote) is another clear demonstration of evolution, as is it when these offspring are sterile. If all kinds were created, there would be no (scientific) reason why this pattern would be there.
Also, show me a mutation that was for the better of the species.
Pesticide/herbicide resistence, happens with increasing frequency. Predicted by evolution: change the environment and a mutation that confers an advantage in dealing with the new environment will rapidly spread through the population.
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/
Them pesky biologists! Cut their funding, that'll teach 'em to contradict your gut feelings about the world!
Did anyone else read that "Resurrection THEOlogy"?
it's like "microgravity" or "microrelativity", a construct of our minds, a false category.
"Microevolution" is the same thing as "Macroevolution", just that microevolution is what we 'see' in a few (human) generations, just like we don't get to 'see' what happens if we drop the Moon or accelerate to lightspeed.
We can study how much they've evolved over DECADES. How they were "quite different."
Yes I remember how the world was populated by completely different animals decades ago. Remember how dogs only had three legs in the 1970s? And now they've evolved to have four?
Seriously, how much can any normal animal (bacteria and viruses and other things with very, very short lifespans excluded) have evolved that much over decades?
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
.. You're all going to die down here?
Just an interesting point - but did you notice the image in the article, upright and resembeling a seahorse with an extended jaw?
Well, this is a plankton, an organism with only a few cells and certainly without an elongated jaw! It's just interesting the way the media manipulates the image to make an article say "it's an animal" rather than "it's a simple multicellular organism" to sensationalise the story a little.
They've been doing this with 'Sea Monkeys' for years, it's much the same thing.
Hi, First, YIIAS, and a mathematician. But I have a big problem with evolution since I have yet to see a definition of species that works for the theory. IMHO, if you can't define after >100 years one of your key concepts, your "theory" is junk. Before you jump the guns, ask yourself- is your definition transitive? Let == mean "the same species as". Now, if A==B and B==C, does A==C? Now assume that every child is the same species as its mother. Then by transitivity, we can go right back up the family tree and show that you are the same species as that first mammal who shared the earth with the dinosaurs. Now as for this "slow genetic drift" thing, via random mutation. Odd type of randomness, if it does not revert to the mean, isn't it? Oh, ok, the mean is time- and space-varying. Still, does it vary enough to drift from one "species" to another? Oops, forgot, can't answer that because we haven't defined "species"! Do keep in mind that most "species" as understood in the vernacular, have tremendous variation in phenotype, often a full order of magnitude or more (obviously true for dogs (chiwawa to great dane) horses (japanese toy pony to draft horse) humans (pigmy to basketball player)). The swedish dairy cow, the american bison, and the indian buffalo all can interbreed and produce viable offspring. By the way, so do ALL the finches on the Galapagos islands. These supposed different species interbreed quite happily, and their offspring generally do better than the parents. Are these different species? Think how they vary. So, given this level of variation, exactly HOW FAR does the random distibution need to vary to produce a new species? Oh, do remember that the more extreme a breed gets, the less fit it is. Have you every considered the health problems faced by purebred dogs vs muts? bulldogs with eyeballs that fall out, hips that give way early, etc. Yea gods, I've been caught up in a rant! Stop me! Stop me!!
Fully grown daphnia and other small animals have been re-hydrated and brought to life before. That works even for ones that were on the shelf for over a century. But they die right away. The longer the dry period, the shorter the life after re-hydration. Apparently, the cause is thought to be free radicals which accumulate during the dry period and kill the organisms within minutes.
The title was a bit misleading, I was naïvely hoping for an article about bringing back the passenger pidgeon, dodo or blue pike.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Adaption + billions of years = Evolution.
Why do you think it's so important to the Religious Right to have a 6,000 year old Earth? Not enough time on a 6,000 year old planet for the diversity present.
I often wondered if there were some type of feedback loop in evolution. I'm not a biologist and would know how such a loop would function, but I am a systems engineer and a feedback loop would seem "necessary" for evolution to function properly.
And yes, in school I was taught natural selection--but that loop seems awefully slow and tedious. I'm thinking one quicker. Maybe a way environmental changes are "written" back into the genome somehow.
"producing colonies of animals as they existed decades ago"
Not so. They are producing colonies of animals hatched from eggs that failed to hatch decades ago. The resurrected colonies could be drastically different from those that did hatch and were active in the past. Unfortunately there is no way to tell how different/divergent the resurrected sample is.
The artical says that in the test tube without environmental influce the creatures showed the same changes as would occur in nature. This is completly counter to evolutionary theory. For the same adapations to occur the same stimuli would be required. It seems they proved that the animals changes were geneticly pre programmed some how
You motivation has little baring on the facts and the logic of what you say, but it is the kind of motivation that the truth-seeker should be weary of, and possibly even deliberately compensate for.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I wonder what new and unknown diseases will be discovered thanks to resurrecting (or rather, ERECTING) old eggs that haven't hatched?
Doesn't it make sense that these animals have been extinct due to thier not being able to adapt to thier environment and thus should be left in history and not be born in a later time where they may not survive?
This kind of research seems wasteful and unnecessary. I'd much rather see this money earmarked for raising the homeless and jobless off of the streets of America rather then raising the dead.
BROOKLYN - The Non Anon
not that I'm not excited as the next dinosaur freak...but they want to witness evolution? So while thier hatching dino eggs thier also going to train them to find the foutain of youth i guess cause last time i checked evolution TOOK MILLIONS OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS!!!
Also, I'd suggest an experiment...
Dear creationist, inject yourself with some dangerous bacteria. Take half a pencillin cure, wait a while and take the other half. If the bacteria hasn't evolved protection from the antibiotics, you'll live.
Repeat a few times.
We others will think of it as evolution in action -- and as a creationist you should be happy to receive a Darwin award.
Enough humor.
I also have a belief that I'd like to share with you, since you have wasted my time by posting your ignorant beliefs onto a (more or less) serious web page.
The human mind's ability to filter out facts and believe whatever it has emotional needs to believe, is the main reason I classify myself as a misanthrope.
I see true believers like you as worse than psychopats. You are the main problem with humanity that destroys discussions about society and everything else.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Add something about evaluation of fitness functions.
Or write about neutral mutations (genetic drift). Then it becomes obvious how isolated populations can speciate from that.
Consider a career in education.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
However, you can observe genetic drift, and human selection has been relied upon for centuries. Natural selection has been observed, although the Google obscures the result with copious quantities of debate, and there's plenty of evidence for macroevolution.
Proof by forcing artifical categories and finding that they don't work doesn't get you very far :o)
Wikileaks, no DNS
A little bit off topic pehaps, but anyway, is it just me or they are reviving the ducks... ops, dragons from the atari 2600 adventure game? I woundn't like to be a square near that thing, at least not without my slaying-duck arrow. :-D
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
It's "different from." It is never correct to say "different than."
well, i must say that when I saw the title for this article, i was very excited.. but disappointed when I read everything..
i was hoping to read a bit more technical information, and not just silly alice and wonderland theory.. did i miss anything?
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
Satan, the Devil, has no Power but if you are of weak Faith He does.
The Good Lord bade Satan to put the dinosaur fossils in the ground to tempt and corrupt the wek-minded (scientists, athiests, liberals and "reasonable men").
Dinosaurs are the work of Satan, and meddling in Satanic affairs will bring no Good, only Hellish Torment(TM) and terror upon those foolish enough to dabble in the Occult.
By playing with Dinosaurs' eggs, the Occult is being dabbled with, and Bad Men will unleash a thousand years of Darkness upon the face of the Earth, just like in liberal socialist Europe where they're all athiests, muslims and catholics anyway.
Pay heed, my children and shun the Work of the Devil. Do not dabble in the occult. Do not fiddle with the eggs of Dinosaurs lest ye should unleash Satan's unholy demonic army of plague, death, pestilence and Heavy Metal.
Stick Men
Where the hell do you people get this stuff?!! You can't see evolution happen?
Try bacteria. If you add, say, a poison to a colony, most of the bacteria die off...some don't. Those which don't - and have a specific set of traits - continue to populate. You end up with a new colony of bacteria which have a specific trait.
That's not enough for most creationists. They want to see the bacteria change into a higher life form or something. If you repeated the process of selective breeding over and over, that's exactly what begins to happen. Dogs seems to have a common ancestor, but different breeds today vary wildly.
What creationists really want, I think, is proof of spontaneous evolution...and even that 'ridiculous' idea has some merit. How about species of frogs which can spontaneously change gender, so that a breeding population can be maintained, etc?
Any sort of religious belief cannot be accepted as undenyable truth by a scientist, because doing so requires him (or her) to accept the core hypotheses on faith. That is antithetical to the scientific process. So while a scientist can certainly have a spiritual bent, he must accept his scientific findings on face value only; e.g. the Theory of Evolution seems to be the best explanation we have, even if he believes that something else is true.
Would egg revitalization technology work on long-dead female mummies or bog people, assuming one could actually find ova in them?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They've been doing this for years, taking old eggs and creating life from them.. they are called Sea Monkeys
:-)
The Technomancer
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."-
"Cogito ergo sum" -- René Descartes
you see that there was no "changing back", there was a change to a new morphology with smaller spines and helmets when the predator's numbers fell. Which is predicted by evolution: change the selection pressure on an organism and the organism adapts (or goes extinct if it can't adapt fast enough). When enough adaptations add up, you have a new species (which is just an intellectual construct to descibe a certain amount of observed differences).
This would give proof of evolution?
How long until the Bush administration puts an end to their research?
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
at the extreme...
life is self replication.
any chemical reaction which is precipitated by the introduction of one of the reactants and results in a greater quantity of that reactant is, by this definition, life. When anthropromorphized, it's a simple act of pattern recognition and action leading to an increase in number of the preciitating reactant.
the fact that these sorts of reactions occur naturally and that in some cases reaction products are produced which are capable of initiating different reactions resulting in increased numbers of those initiators is a physical fact. It's observed, it happens the same way every time. It does not 'care' if these conditions occured naturally or were assembled in a laboratory,
But it is, in the most simple sense, life. It's 'evolved' from non-life. It's done this all on it's own, without some devine shove. I'll not argue whether or not the pieces weren't put there with the characteristics they have, as part of some devine plan. This can never be argued without knowing where the first 'stuff' came from AND what caused it to come.
But, it is a good argument against higher level intereference with the snowball as it rolls down the hill.
I'm not sure which I like best about this argument: that it is respectful of the opposing viewpoints or that it is simply well constructed.
Wish I had moderator points today...
Amen.
if a truck mechanic calls himself a baker because he always finds loaves in the back of the bread truck when it comes in for service, he might think this would give him some credibility in denying the observations of generations of 'real' bakers in the study of yeast, flour, water, and heat...
a true baker, when confronted with the arguments in favor of the magic truck, "see it says loaves right there on the side", understands that some devine corpoation may have directed that the loaves be baked, the truck painted, and then serviced weekly at the mechanics place...
but he'll never get past the devine word on the side of the truck when it comes to convincing the mechanic that there is a bit more to the evolution of his loaves.
likewise the mechanic will never convince those who have SEEN THE BREAD BAKE that bread is created and put in big rolling boxes by some higher power.
Sure, he can count lug nuts, measure tire size, detail oil consumption, and CALL himself a baker to bolster his position...but he's stuck in a reality cul-de-sac.
what's so funny about this is that they are both right. one just has a bit broader view of the world because he was willing to look beyond the wonder of bread printed on the side of a truck...
Congratulations, that is exactly what evolution is. Um.. no. The process described is called natural selection. Natural Selection != Evolution. While a change appeared to take place, it was still the same basic species. No change of species was observed.
It's zooplankton eggs, so it's more like...
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Thank you for a very good description of natural selection. Natural Selection != Evolution. While a change appeared to take place, it was still the same basic species. No change of species was observed; instead, a subset of the species showed predominance due to external factors. In all cases, it was still the same bug.
They're not bad scientists because of their beliefs I think.
Actually, I suspect they are "bad scientists": the odds are against them. In at least one specific area of their lives, they've chosen to practice "bad science", or rather, not practice it at all.
As the nobel winning scientist Richard Feynmann said, scientists need to be intellectually honest people, in a way that goes beyond just telling the truth. They need eliminate personal bias and preconceptions, and search for the truth as it exists, not as they want it to be, or expect it to be.
Creationism, or any retreat to mysticism or religion, flies in the face of this basic principle of objectivity. Faith isn't rational: by definition. Faith says: "Believe what you want; external truth is irrelevant."
How can you trust someone to be an objective and carefully rational seeker of scientific truth in one area,when you know that person has chosen to abandon reason in favour of self-indulgent dogma elsewhere?
It's a serious contradiction of position, like an someone claiming to be a serious excercise buff, when you know they only eat poundcake. It's not completely impossible that they really are good at excercise; just, well, suspicious. They're certainly not as good at it as they would be if they didn't eat poundcake all the time.
--
AC
The meat was bad for human consumption.
....
But the pigs and other domestic animals eat the eggs which the dodo lied on the ground because there were no animals predating on them in their natural habitat.
But big GM companies will make you believe they know all the unintended consequences of introducing new species in the ecosystem
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The bugs that are uglier are like that because a few genes here and there changed.
i.e. DNA changed.
Duh!
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... Evolution needs Natural Selction. It is the meachnism it uses.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Creationists and idiots (sorry) are always demanding proof.
When they get one, they shoose to ignore it, for unfathomable reasons.
I all honesty I admire people trying to put them straight.
It is a hopeless, thankless task of which they will reap no benefits.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
> colonies of animals as they existed decades ago
> literally allows scientists to observe evolution as it occurred
I don't think that word, 'evolution', means what you think it means.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
There is no "scientific/faith union" as long as the "science" part is missing in that mix.
See, science is _not_ about just having a set of truths, so you can't just take any set of truths dressed in pseudo-science babble and call it science. In fact science has _no_ truths. It's all about doubting everything, or trying to improve it.
Every scientific theory has to have not just a list of experiments that prove it, but also some very clear conditions that would _disprove_ it, or at least show its limitations.
Science makes clear predictions. If they don't happen, you've just found a limit of that theory. Any law of physics that comes with a formula, also contains the way to test its validity: you just need to find find a situation where that formula doesn't hold true.
E.g., we have quantum mechanics or relativity precisely because the newtonian mechanics were possible to disprove. So someone did find ranges where they're no longer a good approximation. That's how scientiffic progress happens.
"Intelligent Design" is not science, no matter what pseudo-scientific babble it's dressed in, because it lacks that. It's based on something that can't possibly be tested, disproved or improved. Unlike science, it has its set of immutable "truths", and that's that.
There is no clear prediction that can be made based on some supernatural creator's will. Much less a prediction that can be _tested_.
So, no, sorry, "scientific/faith union" it ain't. It's just faith dressed in pseudo-science nonsense babble. But at the end of the day, it remains just that: "faith". No more. There is _no_ science in it.
What makes it even more hillarious is that science the sworn enemy of that "mix", and constantly attacked. So it's like saying that Operation Barbarosa (WW2 invasion of USSR by Germany) was a "welcome union between Germany and the USSR". It's so much bullshit it could fertilize a few acres.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Many egg forms as well as bacteria can exist intact in a cysted state for a very long time under surprisingly harsh conditions. From a USDA anthrax fact sheet: "When cells of B. anthracis escape from the animal's body through bloody discharges from the natural openings of the body after death, and are exposed to oxygen, they form spores. These spores are highly resistant to heat, cold, chemical disinfectants, and long dry periods. B. anthracis spores are reported to survive for years in the environment."
m
More here http://www.usda.gov/homelandsecurity/anthraxfs.ht
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
One must constantly evolve to keep abreast, or ahead, of predators.
This is not true. If Daphnia had not been able to evolve, it could probably have survived this period just as well.
However, because of the nature of reproduction, evolution just happens to happen, which is not the same thing at all.
What these scientists are discovering is that Daphnia did evolve, and that it was pushed into evolving by the predators, not that it had to evolve to survive.
It's as if I try to push a big stone. If it moves, it moves. But if it is too big to move, it doesn't die out!
Noone has a problem with your faith. Sure, you can believe in the Great Game Designer in the sky, flying giraffes, or whatever floats your boat. Go ahead.
The problem is that creationism and ID actively attack science. Not just via the anti-science lobbies. What irks me even more is the more perverse propaganda of trying to distort what "science" even means. The whole shameless propaganda assault that science is just another faith, or that any pseudo-scientific-sounding bullshit is just another science.
No, it's not. Science is that-a-way, faith is in that other direction. Saying that ID is anywhere near science, is like saying that deer is a mushroom, or that fish is a herb.
So here's the deal: the moment you guys stop the anti-science propaganda, including the actively trying to pervert and distort what "science" means, you'll find that most of us science meanies will be more than happy to leave you alone.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
in expressed traits due to environmental conditions? In other words, is there really new information in the genes that never existed before in parents? Maybe these observed differences are nothing more than say the way some bird's plumage has brillant colors when in hot climates but dull colors if in cold climates.
I'm asking for the flames here but I feel I should point out the laziness of creationists. All creationists I've met are lazy Christians.
Jews learn Hebrew (regardless of their home language) because its the laguage of their holy texts.
Muslims learn Arabic (regardless of their home language) because its the laguage of their holy texts.
Cristians seem to be content to let other people interpret their holy texts for them because learning a language is too hard.
If these people are too lazy to learn what their own bible *really* says (while talking about their faith), how can they be expected to learn anything about the universe they are inhabiting. They choose to be ignorant (about their religion and their world), and thus choose to be easy to manipulate.
Big surprise, other people manipulate them.
Ignorant people believe what the people around them tell them. If they grow up hearing the world is flat, they will not believe a stranger telling them its round. If they grow up being educated and skepical, then they will challenge what a stranger says and accept or reject based on its merits.
The majority of us who believe in evolution have neither studied or experienced it. We have read and studied the works of those who have. We can also challenge it. We can compare different theories. We can look at many sources of physical evidence.
Creationists have not experienced creation, they believe the people who tell them it happened (3rd or 4th person). They have but one source of data. They have no physical evidence.
Evolutionists, say the "theory of evolution". This means it should be challenged and changed as our knowledge increases. Just calling evolution a theory by its nature asks you to question it. This creates the mental state of a free thinker.
Creationist say creation is a fact that can not and should not be challenged. This neither begets understanding or growth. Blind acceptance creates a mental state more accepting of a slave.
It is sad that people who claim to be religious love their god so little as to not even try to learn Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic? The majority of people living in first and second world countries (except one) speak more than one language.
It is sad that they love their world so little to want to learn a little bit about how it functions.
It is even sadder that they will raise children to be ignorant as they are.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
It's evolution in action.
Everything that exists is evolution in action.
What?
Everything around you is evidence of the creation.
QED.
PS. You yourself are also evidence of the creation.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
People who claim that religion and reason are mutually exclusive are themselves ignorant about what religion is.
The people most likely to do this are the religious themselves, typified by creationist groups that seek to get their 'theory' into textbooks as a direct contrast to evolution. If the religious stuck to religion and stopped trying to interfere with or invalidate science we wouldn't even be having this debate.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I'm not saying that they are mutually exclusive, I'm saying they need to be mutually exclusive. Why, you may ask?
... that is human nature].
Well it's quite simple, the current system isn't working. You are right, that is how religion operates in the world but religion is tearing our world apart. Something needs to change and religions need to become less dogmatic. Why does a religion have to prove that their God is the one and only God? Because the dogma told them, which is fucking bullshit and I'm sick of people defending this mindset. I'm all for Muslims believing in Allah, I'm all for Catholics beliving that Jesus was the son of God, I'm all for all of that stuff as long as it is relegated to a personal set of beliefs that is not forced upon other people and accepts the possiblity that some other way could also be correct.
Your critique holds because semantically I have not been clear enough, when I say "reason" what I really mean is a theory that explains the world concretely. I do not mean the use of logic to build a position; this is my fault because I was not clear. What I have been attempting to express though is the idea that no one religion will ever encompass the beliefs of every person in this world, nor should it. Our religions need to be accepting of this difference and stop using it as a means to gain economic power over each other [let's face it, even if a war is religious someone started it to get rich
From my experiance the true evangeical is convinced that translaters who translated the king james bible were inspired by god. No need to learn a new language, because the king james bible is more accurate than the original text it was translated from.
Like Heinlein said if you can worship a trinity and convince yourself you are a monotheist any stretch of logic is not too difficult.
Dear editors of Slashdot:
As a God-fearing member of the Southern Baptist Convention, I must disagree with your decision to post this article on the frontpage of Slashdot. In the book of Genesis, it says God created the world in seven days; this article clearly contradicts the Christian Bible with its atheistic pseudo-science. I suggest, in the interesting of fairness, posting an article on creation science, which is equally valid to evolutionary theory, which is, after all, only theory.
Aye aye. Well put.
"I reject your reality and substitute my own."
Vincent Price, is that you?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
evolution's lack of direct observation
This is false. Evolution has been observed in bacteria adapting to poisons, in white/brown moths during the industrial revolution, and in insects adapting to pesticides.
That falls right under the heading of "evolution". So please elaborate on what you were trying to say.
Last post!
The fact that intelligent design is possible in no way suggests that it must be responsible for our existence.
Oh the irony. Just because evolution is possible doesn't mean it's responsible for our existence. Or at least existence of every spieces on Earth.
I'm getting really sick of this. You get a decent post on evolution, and someone latches onto a single statment, misses the point, and acts as if they won the argument. Of course evolution "is possible, but didn't necessarily happen" - that's the bloody definition of a theory! It's not "ironic" to define the very thing you're railing against.
This is not a game, this is not a fight, this is not a war. There is no "winner". Those who support evolution are simply looking for the most plausible explanation as to the origins of species. There has been no other reasonable theory put forth that is based on observable mechanisms. Until there is, we'll stick with evolution, thank you very much.
Last post!
When you let go of something, God flips a coin to decide whether it falls up or down. At some time in the past, Satan switched the coin for a two-headed one and that's why things always fall down and not up.
The evidence for it is all around you. In your heart, you know its true!
Now, I must be off. I have an appointment with the Texas State Education Board Textbook Selection Committee to explain my scientific theory to them and make sure it is given equal time in all school textbooks.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
'It may be different in the U.S., though.' no, in the us, the scientists aren't less logical, it's the senators: the need to posses som - ah - 'faith sympathetic viewpoints' to be elected in certain states. thus, their votes lead to funding for some less-than-objective scientific studies.
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
A root premise of science is that logic works.
It's not much of a leap of faith. You can look around you and see that logic and reasoning works. It *is* a leap of faith to believe that *everything* has a logical explanation, but you don't need to make that leap to be a good scientist.
Play Command HQ online
because faith is absolute and immutable, even in the face of the strongest evidence.
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
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Variation != Evolution
I don't think this is evolution but rather variation. first off, none of these critters has evolved into anything else, and If it evolved a bigger helmet... then it devolved back? WTF?
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.... I'll just talk to my friend, the Nigerian prince, and have him wire the money over to you so we can start distributing this thing!
He's right
Last post!
Sounds like some people need to read 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.
-Valiss
My goodness, did you get a yummy? What I've been 'fed' comes from graduate work in genetics, which included hundreds of 'on topic' peer reviewed journal articles. Which article showed daphnia "changing back" to a previous genome? How did they know what genome to "change back" too? How do you know it was reversion rather than convergence?
Boring! Have they cloned a mammoth yet?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The question was: What evidence is there of the creation?
The answer is: The universe and everything in it.
If someone posed the question: What evidence is there that the creation occured according to the Bible and not some other method, such as science or other religions teach?
That is a more complicated question.
About circular logic: It isn't bad. Circular logic is merely a set of steps that gets you back to where you started. Being able to do such a thing doesn't show that the starting point (and thus the ending point) are incorrect. It only shows that you haven't made any progress.
There is a God because there is a God. Then you build on top of that, and you eventually reach the logical conclusion that the universe was created by a God. Sure, there is circular logic there, but just because it has circular logic doesn't mean it is incorrect.
Let's look at Quantum Mechanics. (I am a physicist by training, BTW.) The Schrodinger equation is the equation that determines the behavior of particles because it is the equation that determines the behavior of particles. (Circular logic!) The repercussions of this equation are the wave-particle duality of matter, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and so on. We know that Quantum Mechanics, for the most part, is very correct, because it happens to correlate well with reality. Circular logic doesn't mean QM is wrong. Instead, we turn to how the theory of QM maps to reality.
The same can be said for the argument I made above. There is a God because there is a God. God created the universe. The universe is here, so so far, everything makes a heck of a lot of sense. So we know that so far, everything is fine with this theory.
Now, I can build on this theory of God, incorporating pieces of information based on observations by myself or other people. We can come to a pretty reasonable view of the universe by tweaking parts of the theory, identifying weak and contradictory areas, and trying to resolve those areas with more solid foundations to build on.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.