Slashdot Mirror
Earliest Bird Had Feet Like Dinosaur
aychamo writes "A 150-million-year-old fossil of Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird, may put to rest any scientific doubt that theropods gave rise to modern birds. From the article: '[A new fossil] presents important new details of the skull morphology [shape and function] of the earliest known bird, showing also that the skull of Archaeopteryx is much more similar to that of nonavian theropod dinosaurs than previously thought.' In the new fossil, the foot looks more like that of the four-toed foot of Velociraptor and its other nonwinged theropod relatives. The specimen also clearly lacks a reversed toe. Because Archaeopteryx lacked this stabilizing toe, it almost certainly did not habitually perch in trees. This leads scientists to believe that it was a land based predator."
Obviously God is testing our faith.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
Come on, this doesn't prove anything at all. Until we can find fossils for every single stage between this and modern birds, you clearly can't prove anything, and there are still holes. Modern birds could have still popped up independently, intelligently designed and perfect.
Because Archaeopteryx lacked this stabilizing toe, it almost certainly did not habitually perch in trees.
Actually, Archaeopteryx would spin comically around a branch before dizzying and falling on its prey.
Do not turn this into a religious fracas. There has been far too much of this nonsense and frankly all it does is make everyone sound like a bunch of hillbillies.
What did the Earliest Worm have?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Wow. Talk about old news. This happened millions of years ago!
Damn, slashdot is behind these days.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Even the more better to catch the worm!
Well, I saw it on /. so it must be true ;)
LINUX ONLINE POKER: Linux Poker
Obviously, God^H^H^H the Intelligent Designer decided to change the dinosaurs to birds. That was the intelligent thing to do.
It was intelligent because, um....well....dammit, let me get back to you.
that's why I got out of computer science.
irreducible complexity or self-organization?
"...it almost certainly did not habitually perch in trees. This leads scientists to believe that it was a land based predator." ...As opposed to habitually perching in trees and being an open-water based predator?
the chicken came first....
I'd rate this troll 3 out of 10 points. Not believable enough, sorry.
please don't call ID a scientific theory, since it meets none of the criteria. It is not accepted by anyone except fundamentalists. Really, even the catholic church agrees that ID is not science, and that evolution happens. It must be difficult to be that backwards.
While this "bird dinosaur" may appear to be a sort of "missing link" in the evolution of pre-bird species into birds, this in no way indicates that "evolution" exists. It simply shows that God Intelligently Designed dinosaurs to perform foot donation transplants to now extinct bird species. The birds' incescent preening of their natural feet, drove them to the brink of vanity and demanded the more robust dino feet be transplanted. The species is now extinct because vanity is a sin.
-/OK I had a hard time keeping a straight face while typing that, how do ID supporters manage to lay that BS on the rest of us without cracking up?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
There's a fossil gap between you and your parents. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find the "missing link" between you. Therefor, they are not really your parents. You must have come about by spontaneous generation.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
that early birds did not catch the worm?
please don't call ID a scientific theory, since it meets none of the criteria.
So what's the criteria?
It is not accepted by anyone except fundamentalists.
I am a fundamentalist.
Really, even the catholic church agrees that ID is not science, and that evolution happens.
Why do I care for what the catholics say?
It must be difficult to be that backwards.
It must be difficult to be that closed-minded.
"ID supporters say that there is a gap between *species A* and *species B*. But once a species between A and B is found, ID supporters say now there are 2 gaps"
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
While the majority of mutations are indeed bad, there are plenty that are relatively harmless.
For example, have you ever seen a cat (or other creature) with extra toes? That's an example of a minor mutation which, although it does no good that I know of, also does no harm to the creature. There are plenty of others like this as well, as well as mutations that cause only a small amount of harm but provide the mutated creature with some sort of protection against death or disease. In this latter category you get things like sickle cell anemia, which is incredibly common in parts of Africa. This is an unpleasant condition to have if you get the homozygous form, but in the heterozygous form, it increases your chances of surviving malaria, so many of the people who don't have it die, and the mutated gene gets passed on. Incidentally, this mutation occurs in other populations, but to my knowledge, it is only beneficial in places where malaria is or was common, so it is only prevalent in those locations.
Another form of beneficial mutation occurs in bacteria all the time. I assume you've heard of drug resistant bacteria -- do you know how that happens? Basically, if an antibiotic is applied to a colony of millions of bacteria and even one just happens to have randomly mutated in a way that stops the antibiotic, every bacterium will die except for the resistant one. Given how fast bacteria reproduce, it doesn't take long before even a statistically improbable mutation is pretty much guaranteed to happen... and usually, it does. Next thing you know, you have a whole colony of resistant bacteria because any who lack that mutation just die.
Here's another example of beneficial mutations involving bacteria: when scientists test potential mutagens, one way of doing it is to genetically engineer a batch of bacteria that lacks the ability to produce some essential nutrient. Such bacteria can only be grown on a special medium (one which contains the nutrient that they cannot produce) and will immediately die in any other environment. These genetically engineered bacteria are then brought into contact with the potential mutagen, and the colonies are transferred to a normal growth medium. Then the scientists count the number of colonies that survive. They're seeing whether the potential mutagen has the ability to reverse their genetic engineering... and if the tested compound -is- a mutagen, they will almost certainly see bacteria growing happily in their new home.
So yes, it -is- possible to have a mutation specifically where and when you need it because if it doesn't occur, the population may well die out. We only see the lucky ones who were able to mutate in the "right" way... the ones who didn't are dead.
Is that you?
As an intelligent-design believing Creationist Christian, I don't think this proves anything....I'll be flamed for this, but intelligent design is rapidly growing as an accepted scientific theory for the creation of the world.
No offense, but I just don't understand how the belief that life being so "complex" necessitates the need for an assumption of there having been a ${DEITY}-like consciousness to create it. Please stop diluting real science by calling ID a scientific theory.
At least the first dinosaur didn't have bird feet!
I know you're being facetious, but I think the following idea is important. It's 2005, and religion really needs to catch up with humanity and science. I'm agnostic, but if God existed and wanted to communicate a message to us, wouldn't it make sense to embed any sacred truths in the very fabric of reality?
We're discovering more of them all the time, faster and faster, by studying the properties of the atoms we are made of, the electromagnetic fields that permeate space and time, and the rocks under our feet. Life only makes rational sense when understood from the perspective that science allows.
Why would a supreme being rely on a communicating via language dictated to fallible human beings, who would then translate it and allow it to accumulate errors, inaccuracies, and nonsense.
The Bible-thumpers out there are thumping on the wrong bible. If there actually is a bible, it is the universe itself. We are all reading it together in unison as we speak.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
How's this then: what if the chance of the first piece falling into place was incredibly slim, but with each successive correctly-placed piece, the probability of the next piece correctly falling into place became higher? What if there were billions and billions of proto-cars, and the only ones who got to the next step were the ones who already had previous steps right? This changes the probability a fair bit, doesn't it?
The theory of evolution does not suggest that it all happened at once, not does it suggest that nature got it right the first time, or even that it was one simple linear progression from ooze to human being. The fossil record is littered with failures, and even our own bodies show plenty of "false starts".
Nice logical fallacy there. If the theory of evolution maintained that complex life forms like dinosaurs and mammals spontaneously formed out of carbon goo, then you might have a point!
The issue is more like "what's the probability that protien molecules will spontaneously form from simpler molecules?" Here's a hint: its very low. However if you repeatly bring the simpler molecules together at thousands/millions of locations around the globe, and then repeat for a few billion years, then a protien molecule will almost certainly form.
Here's a brief technical look at the theory by the University of California - Berkeley's
Museum of Paleontology : http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html
Of interest are twenty proposed characteristics "the first birds shared [...] with
many coelurosaurian dinosaurs." Take a look and see what you think.
-Shawn
you're absolutely right. by even admitting that there is
a chain of relations between species (the fossil record),
and then saying that its broken because it has holes, there
is no way that person really holds the belief that all
species were independently created.
You see, a theory is created by observing natural phenomena and evidence, forming a hypothesis as to why it happens or acts that way, testing it, then letting the scientific community corroborate your tests, and continue testing whenever new evidence comes along to refine or disprove it.
On the other hand, ID was created by replacing the word 'god' with the term 'intelligent designer'
Evolution has a great deal of evidence supporting it, from fossil records, to DNA similarities in similar species, to the fact that farmers or scientists can selectively breed plants, fruit flies, or anything with a short period between generations to selectively breed certain traits.
On the other hand, creationism has a series of books that are thousands of years old, and some rhetoric about fossil records being put there to trick us.
perhaps you'd like to take a look at the wikipedia pages on scientific theory or scientific method to find out what a theory actually consists of.
If the "big chunk of metal" could reproduce, the odds would jump dramatically.
The title should read "...like a dinosaur's". Otherwise each foot looked like a dinosaur.
Either the earliest bird had feet like a dinosaur or one of the dinosaurs had a body like a bird? Decisions, decisions....
those poor ID suporters where tromitized by their priests when they were kids... why, with all the water torture, fingurenail tearing out, poked with red hot iron, and tits torn off ... and on top of that having to confess things weakely!, can you blame them for not cracking up? Well, that, and those damn priests melested people so bad, the poor kids did a self labotomy.
*tear*, those poor ID suporters, dont even have the brian cells left to relise there mass contradictions, that at best state they worship a alien that genetically enginered us, we can call gods race the Goa'uld, all bow before your god!
Okay.. I'm a Christian and I believe man and the Earth was made by God... That said.. The reason ID is not a scientific theory is because it's not science.. This is just something I copied from Wikipedia: "In various sciences, a theory is a logically self-consistent model or framework for describing the behavior of a certain natural or social phenomenon, thus either originating from observable facts or supported by them (see scientific method). In this sense, a theory is a systematic and formalized expression of all previous observations made that is predictive, logical, testable, and has never been falsified." In order for it be a scientific theory it should be based on observations, testable, predictitive, etc... ID is not.... This doesn't say that ID is wrong it's just that it's not a scientific theory. Just like the belief that all life evolved from a single starting point is not a scientific theory.. It's a belief.. There is no way to prove it. Evolution is a theory though.. It can be observed.. I'm not too up on all the science, but just the fact that bacteria evolve to become resistant to drugs seems like a simple example to me..
Hey, it's the creationists who want to impose religion into these sort of issues. I and and practically everyone else would dearly love to keep *religion* seperate from *science*. Unfortunately there are *some* people who don't - to the extent of attempting to redefine the word "science" itself to include astrology and tarot card reading*cough*Kansas*cough*.
catholics also believe and state that the Pope is God's authority on earth...
even though he is elected by "peers"
and apparently was given the authority to change the 4th of the 10 commandments.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
You're either using really subtle humor for a text based medium, or an absolute idiot.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Three words: cat, rabbit and squirrel. Look at the hind legs, the shape of the head and the body THEN tell me they didn't EVOLVE from a common ancestor.
...we have lots of obvious design flaws. The useless appendix, birth canals that struggle to accomodate our ridiculously oversized crania, eyes that can only see three colors with no ultraviolet or infrared or ability to detect polarization of light like some other creatures, we're crappy runners and swimmers. We'd be great walkers, except that we have oddly angled knees that makes them destined to deteriorate. Despite all these obstacles to other means of travel, we get no flight. Perhaps most importantly, no friggin' laser beams.
What's the probability of a perfect God making such a ungainly creature in his image? Absolutely zero, Pangloss.
Maybe it's time we founded the Unintelligent Design movement.
Once again, the Index to Creationist Claims is the greatest resource on the internet for this discussion.
Surprisingly... they tasted just like Chicken too (or KFC, maybe)
/. is good for you.
Funny you should mention that, because you could say the same thing about ANY piece of scientific evidence that's presented to you. Which is exactly why ID is a metaphysical theory, not a scientific one.
But hey, if you don't like the way science is defined by the people who actually do science, make up your own definition. Just don't expect anyone without an agenda to take you seriously.
...the Raptors built that crude suspension bridge to Venezuela, planning to lie low and assume odd-jobs under the name "Mr Pilkington?" Or was that something else.
I do know the theory of evolution and the theory of probability ...
Your argument shows quite clearly that you don't know the theory of evolution. Hint: the dumbed-down, strawman version you present here is standard creationist propaganda.
And for that matter, "I know probability theory" (Keanu says: Whoa!) is a pretty ambitious statement. If you haven't (at least) studied it intensively at the graduate level, you probably don't have the first clue. Very very smart people spend their entire working lives trying to figure out how probability really works.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
...self-congratulatory mockery.
I find it interesting how quickly and easily these sort of threads turn into stone throwing contests with everyone rushing to express there talent for insult and mockery.
Evidentally the masses (here) that believe so strongly in evolution haven't evolved to a greater level of civility, respectfulness and maturity.
Perhaps another billion years or so.
I was under the impression it was a roman emporer, not a pope that switched the sabbath to Sunday. Or were you talking baout something else?
The guy might be a loon, or he might be trying to troll everybody, or he might even be sincere... but he expressed an on-topic opinion and should not have been modded down to Goatseland.
Until the powers-that-be add a "-1, Witless" moderation, none of the other categories are appropriate for that post.
It's probably like building running robots. At first, they tried to do it using statically-stable positions. However, running forms are dynamically stable without usually being statically-stable if snapshots are taken.
I'd guess that evolution is also dynamically-stable, in a sense. I.e. you cannot try and establish all the known species at a given time and then infer all the unknown ones - there will be niches that just opened up and others that have something in mid-evolution to fill them. As our efforts advance, though, surely we could begin to get a fairly accurate view of what the fossil record is missing.
What's more, some of those false starts may just be a future organ that hasn't fully evolved yet, or hasn't yet evolved out of existence because of a replacement organ.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
"The early bird stomps the worm!"
Why is it every bird fossil looks like it was run over by a steamroller?
Well, as it saith flat-out in bigge, bolde tipe at the Museume of the Historie of Nature in Londone,
THE WORLD IS FLAT.
They makest no bones about it. Faith, it gave me chills when I first chanced to see that. They also had a logical and easy to understand rationale for why it be not correcte to say "the world appeareth as though flat" either; that the world is flat. (I recall not juste what it was hither, but I remember they used an analogie nigh similar to "juste as the seas are not 'appearing to be of water', the world is not 'appearing to be flat'. The world is totally flat of its owne, juste as the seas are totally water of their owne.)
From what I've read, this hath been coming to be a popular - if not the prevailing - belief amongst scientistes at the hither and nowe.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Actually, a search on Yahoo for the creature was initiated on the Bell South network millions of years ago and since Yahoo did not pay for the "enhanced service" the results are just coming in now. Should have used MSN Search, but then again the only search result for "dinosaur +'will not fly' +crashes" would have been Internet Explorer.
...and this is where most evolutionists really have no scientific basis for their ideas: there is NO scientific explanation for how non-living matter came to acquire the ability to self-reproduce. Indeed, the best guesses as to what the 'primordial soup' was even made of are just that -- guesses.
I'll leave the question of how the entire Universe even exists -- much less in such perfect order as it is -- for someone else.
And before you claim, 'but evolution doesn't say anything about how life started', just ask your nearest evolutionist. (Yes, I realize that some theists believe that God started life from the primordial soup. This post is not intended to address those persons.)
DISCLAIMER: IANAFundie, either.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."
;).
I believe the importance of that commandment is not in what name you call your sabbath day.
I mean, you could choose the 7th day to be Monday or Vendredi or Rabu and how would that break the commandment? After all what is a week, what is a day, and what is a year? Once the current moment passes, we won't experience it again. Imagine the earth spinning and orbiting the Sun. Even just sitting down on your chair, you'll never be in the same spot again.
They are symbols and concepts, albeit useful ones.
I'm a Christian, and my church holds its main services on Sunday. But Saturday's more like my day of rest, coz I usually have to do a fair bit of stuff for the church on Sunday
Maybe we should add Friday as a non secular work day too... hehe.
Anyway, back to the main point. Nowadays very many people serve Money, and so they don't have a day of rest, nor do they regard requiring their employees or servants to have a day of rest as "sacred".
I believe there is great wisdom in having a day of rest after 6 days, AND treating it as the "sabbath of God".
One reason I think is, without it you might be forced to work every day, and at the end of it, you die, and then you go, was that it? I must have missed something somewhere, I made my Master/boss/shareholders rich, but it was just a continuous treadmill of work work work. And the Master, even though he relaxes because his slaves spend all their lives working, has no sense of something higher, and thinks nothing of it.
Go look up the Jubilee law too. I think it's an interesting law nowadays, given all the new "modern" laws that help the powerful become more powerful.
When did I say that I actually believed the fossil record? I don't. I believe that God created birds and fish on the 5th day, then mankind on the 6th.
The Catholics have, for the most part, accepted evolution. The pope said that science and Christianity can get along just fine, and in most of these disucssions you'll find someone who went to Catholic school, and was taught evolution in science class. No, you can thank Protestants for this one.
And then what's the probability of the proteins combining to form a lifeform. Then what's the probability that it will mutate. And over billions of years we get humans. I have whole books that say why evolution is false. I have evidence from my science teacher, who has a degree etc., that it is false. Now, of course I'm guessing you all believe the big bang theory too. So why do we have colliding galaxies?
Bacteria do become resistant to drugs, I'll concede that.
But here is why it is a mutation, and only a mutation, and not evolution.
(This is what my science teacher observed when I did my School Certificate Science exam.)
Bacteria adapts to the antibiotics *before* it sees the drugs. True evolution requires that it sees the drugs first.
Dumbed-down? Creationist propaganda? What I do know is that standard evolutionist propaganda is to present some theory that requires a PhD in biology to understand. The core theory of evolution is very simple: Humans mutated from apes, which mutated from whatever, etc... etc... etc..., which mutated from a single-celled organism that formed because some chemicals found their way together.
I'm not quite sure that this article is really all that informative or new. I thought it was pretty much commonly accepted that the Archaeopteryx was a bird. Forgive me for not believing in evolution (which I guess is why this article was posted), but it seems like it was a bird that existed a long time ago, and then died.
The conclusion of the article is that the archaeopteryx is the ancestor of modern birds. Can someone reasonably explain why the archaeopteryx and modern birds couldn't have just existed at the same time, except the archaeopteryx went extinct?
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
You take the data from a scientific experiment and plot it out on a graph and then derive a curve from those plotted points. Then you try the experiment again and again and again. Eventually, you should be able to predict where on that curve the data will fall.
You don't need to determine every point on that curve. In fact, it is impossible to plot every point on that curve; there will always be gaps.
We have hundreds of millions of data points supporting evolution. This latest discovery, in an analogous way, fits the curve. That it only "plugs one hole" or fills one gap is absolutely irrelevant.
In any case, you're wrong: some mutations are beneficial; this is not controversial in any way, even among "creation scientists". We have seen it happen on shorter time-scales (the Daphnia of Lake Constance, and so forth). If your main objection is that we haven't seen it on a "macroevolutionary" scale, I have two answers for you. First, the article in question describes such an occurrence; we don't have to witness it happening for it to fit the curve. Second, the "macro/micro-evolution" canard is a false dichotomy.
Lastly, ID is not growing as an accepted scientific theory, because it is not a scientific theory. It is not falsifiable; therefore it is not scientific. Period.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
And that's why you are dumb. How life first started on earth and how life evolves are two wholy seperate, unreleated issues. There are multiple hypothesis, but they are all basically untestable because the chance of finding the first microbes, over a billion years old, is somewhat remote.
You science teacher is wrong. "True evolution" requires no such thing.
So do you also believe that bats are birds, and that rabbits chew their cud?
And are you sure that your god created man on the 6th day and not before he created plants and animals as per Genesis 2?
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
You can't possibly intelligently discuss evolution based solely on what your high school science teacher taught you. No, evolution does not require a stimulus to drive mutation. Either your science teacher was wrong, was purposefully dumbing it down for you (my high school chemistry teacher never once discussed pi or sigma bonding, for example) or you have misunderstood what he told you.
Evolution is, simply, the change in allele frequencies in a population from one generation to the next. Natural selection is one of the mechanisms that drives this. The drug-resistant bacteria example is one illustration of natural selection-driven evolution.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Lastly, ID is not growing as an accepted scientific theory, because it is not a scientific theory. It is not falsifiable; therefore it is not scientific. Period.
And that's why it is becoming an accepted scientific theory. Because more people are saying that it is a scientific theory.
It's humor, and if you think it's subtle, you have a very poor sense of humor.
BTW, Creation is in detail in genesis 1. Genesis 2 is after man is created.
In Genesis 2, it says that there were no plants when the world was created. Then god watered them. Then he made man (Gen2:4-7).
Look, all of you use evolution as an excuse: because if you saw the truth, that the world was created, then you would need God. That's called sinful nature. It started in Genesis 3:1.
Because more people are saying that it is a scientific theory.
More people can call it whatever they like; it's still not a scientific theory, because it is not falsifiable. "Those people" do not get to decide that the scientific method is inadequate. The ID theory will never be peer-reviewed science. It is not a scientific theory.
I invite you to read the Wikipedia entry on the scientific method.
Were falsifiability no longer necessary for the scientific method, then "The Universe was created last Tuesday will all matter and energy in situ and all of our memories implanted and illusionary" could be considered a scientific theory.
But falsifiability is not negotiable. No ID theory can be truthfully called a scientific theory. As such, it doesn't matter how many people are calling it such.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Are you interpreting the bible such that your god created plants and animals twice? Once before and once after he created man? Heresy.
In any case, evolution and belief in any god are not incompatible -- unless you believe that the bible is literal truth, which I suspect that you do, which is why you so casually ignored my question as to whether or not bats are birds and if rabbits chew their cud.
Your bible contains contradictions and errors; it cannot be said to be infallible. It must therefore be interpreted by its believers. And most of its believers interpret Genesis as an allegory.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
What I do know is that standard evolutionist propaganda is to present some theory that requires a PhD in biology to understand.
If you consider it "propaganda" that only someone who has actually studied a scientific field extensively can fully understand a theory within that field, you might as well reject all of science.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
If you're going to argue, I suggest you buy a copy of Unnatural Enemies. http://secure.fellowworkers.com/cgi-bin/mmstore/ue .html
I refer you to this primer on how the probability for spontaneous generation of of life only appears to be so high as to be impossible, and why the "airplane parts in a hurricans" analogy is just plain ridiculous.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Wait wait... you have an accepted scientific theory of ID? Please, please tell me. I'd love to hear it, as would any other scientist.
On the other hand, you're probably just full of shit like all the rest of the IDiots. A scientific theory of ID doesn't exist. People much more respected in the "field" of ID than you (ie, Michael Behe) have completely and utterly failed to come up with a scientific theory of ID without changing the meaning of science so drastically that astrology and homeopathy also fall under it. You, and any other moron who says they have a scientific theory of ID, are full of shit.
When did I say that I actually believed the fossil record? I don't. I believe that God created birds and fish on the 5th day, then mankind on the 6th.
Wait, I thought that you said that you accepted Intelligent Design theory. You are aware that common descent is part of ID, right?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
The bacteria is mutating all of the time. Some of the bacteria mutate into drug-resistant forms, some don't. When the drugs are applied, the drug-resistant bacteria survives, the rest die. Now the drug resistant form multiplies and becomes prevalent.
It's called natural selection and is a central tenet of evolution.
And, predictably, the Christian retreats from the fight, bruised and bloodied.
I have read more on science, theology and rhetoric than you have probably read about everything in total. I have invited you to read a very simple encyclopedia on the nature of the scientific method; it isn't a trick, it's an honest attempt to educate you on something about which you have more than adequately shown your ignorance.
Religious faith is not incompatible with the fact of evolution -- and it is a fact. ID is completely incompatible with science. I'm not trying to shake your faith; I have shown that you are wrong in your belief that ID is science.
The moderations of your posts have, I suspect, been accurate. You are displaying all of the characteristics of a troll: hit-and-run, ignoring most of what is being written, and pushing the right buttons to get a flamewar going.
Either debate the issue or take a hike.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Where is common descent part of ID? Yes, I know we all descended from Noah..
The problem with your argument is the scale of the statistics. Chances of being hit by lightning are not "astronomically low", it's about 1 in 600,000, or 1.66 x 10^-6.
Here's the breakdown for random chance of life of a prokaryotic bacterium:
Estimated chances of a cell randomly assembling are something like 10 to the 100 billionth power (10^100,000,000,000). Assumptions 4, 5 and 6 above (statistics based on space, matter and time) together give us a probability of 10^121, or 10^17 * 10^84 * 10^20. So we have 10^121 chances within the realm of possibility (10^100,000,000,000) to randomly make a cell. Overall, this leaves us with a chance of 1 in 10^99,999,999,879. That's a lot smaller of a chance than getting struck by lightning. By the way, any chance smaller than 10-50 is considered 0 by pretty much any mathmetician.
Also, 50,000 * 10^8 should be written 5.0 × 10^12.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
Anytime someone refers to amino acids in an origin-of-life debate, that's a red flag for "Person doesn't know what he/she's talking about". Here's a hint: Take a biochemistry class. Learn about RNA world hypothesis.
Where is common descent part of ID?
Michael Behe, the man who essentially launched the ID movement, accepts common descent of all biological life forms as truth. So does Michael Denton.
Of course, it's not surprising that you would disagree with the authors of ID theory. It's not like creationists are known for ever having a clue as to what they're talking about.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
"A degree," huh? That's one helluva convincing argument. Why, I think my science teacher has a degree, too. In fact, all of my science teachers had degrees. And they taught things a lot more specialized than "science," things like "Fundamental Genetics," "Molecular Genetics," "Evolution," "Developmental Biology," "Bioinformatics" and "Biochemistry." And guess what, all of them taught evolutionary theory. In fact, if you collect all of the Ph.D's who believe in ID and all of the Ph.D's named "Steve" who agree that evolution is well-supported and the best explainer and predictor of our observations, the Ph.D's named "Steve" will outnumber the Ph.D's who believe in ID.
I know this is offtopic and everything, but Genesis 2 is a detailed recap of the summary that is Genesis 1. It's the more detailed story of how God created man and woman.
I believe the Bible is truth, whether it's allegorical or literal. Just because something's an allegory doesn't mean it's untrue.
By the way, I'm sure the next of your contradictions was going to be that insects don't have four feet, and snails do not melt. Infidels.org, anyone? Remember, classifications are something modern man has created. Moses and his folks didn't know or care that bats are classified as mammals in a taxonomy created by Carl Linnaeus, who was born at least 5,000 years after Moses died. Also, the hare you refer to is not the same as a rabbit. In Hebrew, the language that verse was written in originally, it's called the arnevet, or arnebet. I have no idea what the heck that was, but I'll bet it chewed the cud like a cow. We have the writers of the King James Version of the Bible for passing that one down. Who made the mistake? The writers of the KJV. Is the Bible wrong? No. Does it matter if the arnevet chews the cud? I could believe in God without knowing the answer to that question.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
I invite you to read this explanation of probability in abiogenetic theory. It pops every one of your bubbles.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
It is not only religious people don't buy the story about dinosaurs being ancestors of birds, some scientists do it too... The generally accepted theory that dinosaurs are the ancestors of modern birds is being challenged. New research published Monday in the Journal of Morphology suggests that what was thought to be "protofeathers" are more likely to be skin-related tissues, according to Dr. Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While these scientists agree that dinosaurs and modern birds share a common reptile ancestor, the theory that dinosaurs are the ancestors of the modern birds is flawed or "..full of holes.." http://research.unc.edu/endeavors/spr97/bird.html http://www.atsnn.com/story/176639.html http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf087/sf087b06.ht m
The cell was most certainly not the first form of life. You, sir, just made a strawman argument. Get yourself a gorram clue before spouting off why don't you.
By the way, I'm sure the next of your contradictions was going to be that insects don't have four feet, and snails do not melt.
You'd be wrong. I don't consider the interpretation of those passages as errors to be compelling. The "bats are birds" and cud-chewing bits, however, are very clearly errors, even in the original language, and provide absolute proof that the bible cannot be considered infallible (your intrpretation of the original Hebrew is incorrect, BTW).
I am not trying to show that the Bible is false or that his or your religion is false (although I do believe that it is false). I am showing that it is not infallible and must therefore be interpreted. Since the Bible is thus open to interpretation, Genesis should be taken allegorically and the timeline of history should not be considered to be mere thousands of years old. If you want to believe that a god created the universe, go for it. But to cite the Bible as evidence as to why evolution is false is utter bullshit, and I will continue to call out that bullshit.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
No, amino acids in the context of attempting to create amino acids from scratch is the red flag you're looking for.
An RNA molecule that could do what the world hypothesis claims would need the information to do both the work of normal RNA, as well as DNA if it's going to replicate at some point. This would be an extremely complex molecule, which would lead to even more overwhelming statistics than I mentioned above. Oh, and let's not forget that RNA is basically dead in the water without the normal protection of a cell.
Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
> It's impossible to have a good mutation *specifically* where and when you need it.
That's why stuff goes extinct.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The basic point is that you're arguing against a position that no biologist holds. No biologist thinks that a modern E. coli appeared one day out of a mix of chemicals. What you're arguing is that simple chemicals gave rise directly to a complex bacterium. From talkorigins.org (referenced earlier in another reply), simple chemicals would lead to polymers, polymers would eventually give rise to replicating polymers, replicating polymers give rise to a hypercyle, which gives rise to a protobiont, etc. Such a protobiont would require polymers only 30-40 monomers in length! Furthermore, the RNA world hypothesis (which is also referenced in the TO article linked) hypothesizes that the self-replicating RNA was surrounded in a lipid layer, protecting it from harmful oxidation.
In a more general sense, this speaks to a problem widespread in ID, namely, if you're trying to disprove something, and you disprove the wrong thing, you haven't disproven anything. ID is a belief system based entirely on tearing down evolutionary theory, with no real positive evidence of a designer whatsoever. Every ID explanation ever proffered begins and ends with the assertion that evolutionary theory is insufficient to explain observations. In order to show that evolutionary theory is insufficient, they often resort to an oversimplified and usually wrong version of evolutionary theory. Disproving this strawman often provokes agreements from the crowds less educated on evolution, but provokes well-deserved scorn and ridicule from those who actually know what they're talking about.
Three words: cat, rabbit and squirrel. Look at the hind legs, the shape of the head and the body THEN tell me they didn't EVOLVE from a common ancestor.
Steve Ballmer, right?
And, oddly enough, an ass like an elephant.
You fools! Can't you see? Clearly, this a case where a late dinosaur had a body like bird, not the other way around!
I know that both sides like to just spew generalities at the other one. But you're distorting the case so much that I feel compelled to post...
"Intelligent Design" does not by definition mean "The creation account in Genesis is 100% literally true", in the same way that "Evolution" does not by definition mean "Belief that natural selection alone provided the diversity of species we see today". Both "camps" contain a wide variety of members, with different nuances.
A large fraction of Intelligent Design supporters are advocating "theistic evolution", that is, that the Creator had some role in directing the process of evolution. There are certainly others who posit direct creation of the existing types of animals by a creator. But don't lump them together, please.
A favorite argument on Slashdot is that "Intelligent Design is not falsifiable, therefore it is not scientific". On the other hand, an intelligent design supporter might ask how evolution is falsifiable. When a gap in the fossil record is pointed to, the evolutionist simply says with great faith, "We will yet find the missing link". Thus it is impossible to disprove evolution as well. Evolutionists mock supporters of Intelligent Design saying that the eyes of squids are much better than those of vertebrates, so why didn't this Intelligent Designer keep with what worked, at the same time failing to explain why natural selection failed to choose the "better" eye form.
Here's an interesting article by an electrical engineer (but published on a Christian site, so leaning towards Intelligent Design): Supernatural Selection
I think if both sides would just listen to each other a bit (perhaps excepting the completely creationist camp and the completely natural selection camp -- if they even exist today), there would be more understanding and possibly even learning from one another.
By the way, as far as official teaching, the Catholic Church has not confirmed or denied either theory, leaving it open to the scientists. Most Catholic scholars (including John Paul II, Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, and the last I read, Benedict XVI) lean toward theistic evolution, though the director of the Vatican Observatory recently made statements more on the lines of what the parent poster said. However, the mechanism of speciation has been explicity placed outside of the realm of faith -- each Catholic may believe as the evidence convinces him, as long as he accepts God as a transcendent creator and the direct creation of the human soul.
early bird gets the dinosaur feet. but does the late worm get a shark fin? does the second mouse get alligator teeth?
Well of course he was spontaneously created! Are you implying that his saintly parents would have taken off their clothes and embraced each other?! They are faithful believers, and they would never stoop down to that level of dirty satanist hippie behaviour.
An INTELLIGENT designer reuses his code base.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
>the earliest known bird
I wonder how many worms it must have caught
How do we know that the gene for sickle cell anemia is a mutation? In other words, do we have absolute proof that at one time in the human gene pool, this gene absolutely did not exist? How can we go back in time and prove that there was not a single human that had this gene?
Similar question for drug-resistant bacteria. Can we prove that at some previous time there was not a single bacteria in the population that had the resistance gene(s)?
Good thing 1 in Million chances come up 9:10 ;)
Life is like untied shoe laces; it always tripping you up and getting in your way.
A favorite argument on Slashdot is that "Intelligent Design is not falsifiable, therefore it is not scientific". On the other hand, an intelligent design supporter might ask how evolution is falsifiable. When a gap in the fossil record is pointed to, the evolutionist simply says with great faith, "We will yet find the missing link". Thus it is impossible to disprove evolution as well.
Standard creationist smear. Evolution is unfalsifiable. Untrue. If you find a bunny fossil in the cambrian then you will have disproved evolution. In fact if you find any fossil that is massively out of place in the fossil record then you will have disproved evolution.
And I'll listen to the IDers the day they tell me what their theory actually is beyond "stuff was designed at an unknowable time by God... sorry by an unknown Intelligent designer using unknown methods". Outline your theories. Preform some damn experiments to test them. Find out the methods used by the designer. Explian why is life is too complex (define tha term) to have evoloved how did a being who could create life come into existance. Then you will have done science. Instead the IDers have hired a PR agency (cos thats what all scientific theories have to do) and pushed to have their "theory" in schools.
I've been reading Clare Tomalin's biography of Samuel Pepys and have enjoyed her description of the beginnings of the Royal Society. Composed of the best scientific minds of the day, non-scientist Pepys headed up the society (twice, if memory serves). His bottomless curiosity about the mysteries in the world around him led him to question and converse with people like, say, Newton without actually quite understanding the details.
Reminds me of the best conversations on Slashdot - a collection of exceedingly bright - or at the very least, exceedingly curious - people verbally jousting, having fun, being fools and occasionally sharing some really brilliant insights.
I suppose every generation and every age thinks it knows the deepest secrets of the universe only to find that their theories need the occasional tweak as our understand expands year after year. I find it all quite amazing.
That said, why is it that the ID people's approach to science remind me of Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes? Hmmm ...
I wasn't aware that ID people had approached science. Presumably they were turned down.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Someone posted this site on a mailing list i frequent. I imagine they will be getting a shitload of funding from Kansas
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
An arnevet is a rabbit.
k k?
Silly slashdot, it removed my hebrew text.
Anyhow, an arnevet is a rabbit - and a rabbit does not "maale geira" or whatever. It's not a cow.
Yes, there are gaps and there always will be, unless we're able to account for every single mutation in the evolution of a species. You will be able to flash this argument forever, but these gaps are not proof of anything, they're non-info. This finding is information, and guess what, it fits with current theories on evolution, as have many other findings before it.
A mechanism has been found in bacteria that causes the rate of mutation to go up when in a hostile environment. This is observable. This causes resistent bacteria to evolve from non-resistant bacteria at a high rate. In fact, these researches found a way to turn of evolution in bacteria! Turning of evolution... sounds like an IDiots wet dream doesn't it? However, if evolution does not occur, what exactly did they turn of? Here's a link for you - At the bottom of that page is a link to the published article.
- thorsten
Reminds me of the best conversations on Slashdot - a collection of exceedingly bright - or at the very least, exceedingly curious - people verbally jousting, having fun, being fools and occasionally sharing some really brilliant insights.
Welcome, stranger from an alternate universe!
Good thing there's only one proper way to view the evidence of creation, eh? To say nothing of the life of a charismatic Jewish carpenter who never stopped being Jewish. Any theory that doesn't conform to ancient texts written when men believed in animal sacrifice and the sun revolved around the earth just can't possibly be true, right?
The fact is we can observe evolution. It's a theory like gravity is a theory, and nothing in it says "God" couldn't have arranged it all if that's what you prefer to believe. Others have picked Zeus or Odin instead. If you want to be "mainstream", consider something like two thirds of the people on the planet don't believe Jesus is God. The names and stories of various creation theories are simply cultural artifacts - else surely you would know it was the big Hindi elephant god, Lord Ganesh who created it all. Because, um, somebody said so long ago, eh?
So if it's all the same to you, I'll stick with "mainstream" observable reality and do the best we can with what it tells us, until we learn better.
Personally, I'd prefer a physician that works from science first. I'll get a witch doctor if the meds don't work.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
What the science camp has faith in is simply that the universe operates according to consistent and predictable rules. Unfortunately for ID, there's no "there" there. Most of the scientists who support ID don't actually do research about ID. Michael Behe wrote Darwin's Black Box almost ten years ago. There's a couple of philosophy books by William Dembski. There's a bunch of books attacking evolution by folks like law professor Phil Johnson or Jonathon Wells. Yet none of these people have any experiments about ID. Strip away the attacks against evolution, and there's nothing to the ID movement. BTW, evolution is most certainly falsifiable. However, "missing links" won't do it. Why not? The fossil record is not complete, and will never be complete. For instance, bats are a very diverse group today, yet not many bats are found in the fossil record period. They just don't preserve well. One way to falsify evolution would be to show that the DNA evidence is not consistent with evidence obtained from the fossil record and elsewhere in biology. For instance, suppose that the DNA of humans, chimps and the other primates were completely different. Forget about evolution. Or suppose that the evidence showed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. This also throws evolution out the window. The thing is, you'd have to toss out a lot of geology and physics to prove this. Oh, and that squid eye thing? The vertebrate eye is good enough. I personally don't think this is much of an objection against ID, since a designer could have given us compound eyes like a fly. A designer can mix and match, after all.
...and unfortunately for me I forgot to preview. User error...
You just confirmed the post you responded to. I don't think you've actually read anything about the theory of evolution. Otherwise you wouldn't assume that science is saying that a single random mutation could convert base molecules into complex organisms, as your analogy seems to state. Yes most mutations are probably bad, and tend to cause the organism not to reproduce. What about a mutation, for instance, that increases the number of rods in the retina? All IDers like to say that such and such is "impossible", out of hand. There are a lot of books that explain this stuff quite clearly. Do some homework.
I have to say this is cool stuff. Any doubts that God's method of making new species is NOT evoluition is slowly being squashed. God made evolution. It works for him, he leaves it alone and lets it do it's job.
How life first started on earth and how life evolves are two wholy seperate, unreleated issues.
What was Darwin's book called again?
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
The parent post is factually incorrect but it isn't flamebait. It should not be modded down so far.
The theory of evolution does not try to explain how life arose.
Only how life changed onced it did arise.
Evolutionary principles can be tested on a simulation on a computer without trying to work in the simulation the programmer writing the simulation.
Read a book other than the bible for once.
Shove your straw man, the origin of life is not included in the theory of evolution.
There is no such thing as an "evolutionist" except in the perverted mind of a christo-facist.
You ARE a fundie. You talk, think and act like one. I call em like I see em.
Indeed, I would have modded it "+1, Funny".
"So why do we have colliding galaxies?"
Simple answer: Gravity.
Gravity causes masses to mutually attract. It is the main reason stars and galaxies form in the first place, and galaxies attract each other and interact largely due to gravity too. The peculiar shapes of colliding galaxies are pretty consistent with the expectations from gravity (though there are still some puzzles about the details, of course).
You may as well ask why, if the unverse is expanding since the Big Bang, the Earth and Sun are not getting much further apart. The question does not make much sense given that other processes are in operation, and locally dominate the system, even if, at a much broader scale, the universe is thought to be expanding.
Don't be so impressed by books or science teachers with a degree that you do not think for yourself and be skeptical of what they say. This applies as much to *criticisms* of evolutionary theory or other scientific theories as it does to the ideas themselves. I've seen some pretty awful criticisms out there, put out by people that are highly motivated by issues other than scientific interest. Look as hard at the claims made in the criticisms before accepting any of them at face value.
The answer to your question at the end is not that hard. If people offered it as a criticism of conventional astronomy, it is an example of a pretty weak criticism. There are ample detailed explanations out there if you go looking for them. There are whole books and papers written *only* on the subject of galaxy collisions.
Degrees and training do not prevent the possibility of being in error. And I say this *as* a science teacher with degrees, because I've made plenty of mistakes and misunderstood things myself. It happens. I learn from the experience.
Keep asking questions.
The great thing about science is that bad ideas get tossed out as fresh evidence comes to light. Happily, evolutionary theory just gets stronger and stronger as time goes on.
Let me guess: you're religious, right? You seem to think that an idea, once stated, must last forever and ever, amen.
What was Darwin's book called again?
... as in how we ended up with all the different species of animals and plants we now have. It was not called "Origin of Life" and did not try to explain how life began.
Origin of Species
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
There's you flame. Satisfied?
Well guess what, none of those probablitlities are zero, which shows that it can happen, though that's unnecessary because we know that it can happen because it did happen.
I'm going out on a limb and assuming you fall into one of those camps based on your replies elsewhere in this thread, but I feel like some futility this lovely afternoon. If you want some additional reading material, here's a more-or-less comprehensive refutation of all creationist arguments.
("Propaganda," by the way? To what end? Can't have propaganda without a Nefarious Goal, remember!)
is to present some theory that requires a PhD in biology to understand
And yet, strangely enough, I had a decent grasp of it well before earning my undergraduate degree in history. The whole "reading" thing is highly underrated.
The core theory of evolution is very simple: Humans mutated from apes, which mutated from whatever, etc... etc... etc..., which mutated from a single-celled organism that formed because some chemicals found their way together.
A few problems here.
First, evolutionary science does not address biogenesis at all, any more than computer science or architecture or basket weaving or calligraphy do. The reason for this is simple: it is not and never was intended to explore that question. There's whole other areas which study biogenesis seperately - which they should, because it's a far more theoretical topic. Anybody who says that evolution somehow explains biogenesis, or is "flawed" because it doesn't explain biogenesis, has demonstrably failed to understand evolution.
Second, you're claiming that evolution's progressive, that it's defined in terms of the blob becoming the fish crawling out of the sea to become (etc etc etc) which becomes a shrew which becomes an ape which becomes a human, as though the whole thing was meant to arrive at that point. That idea's "true" enough in intelligent design, and was at some past point standard among "evolutionists" as you call them, but folks know better. Evolution is a reactive process; it responds to pressure from the environment (different climates, new predators on the block, etc) and is not some internally-driven debugging program coaxing life towards a specific point. If you cleaned off the Earth and tried things again, the broad strokes would be the same (Australia once had an ecosystem of creatures about as varied as any in Afroeurasia or the Americas, with marsupials filling almost every niche!), but the end points would probably be considerably different.
Third, evolutionary theory is not as concerned with whether this happened - that is absolute fact, verifiable in myriads of different ways - as it is with how it happened. Mutation and speciation rates, effects of various pressures, tendencies towards certain changes (eyes evolved independently dozens of times, for instance, and true flight at least four), etc. The system has been directly observed working by now; the interesting (and useful) part is determining what makes it tick.
-PS
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
In fact, if you collect all of the Ph.D's who believe in ID and all of the Ph.D's named "Steve" who agree that evolution is well-supported and the best explainer and predictor of our observations, the Ph.D's named "Steve" will outnumber the Ph.D's who believe in ID.
Ain't that the truth!
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
...stays in China.
This message brought to you by the Chinese Tourist Board.
-Shawn
I'm not so sure about that, seeing as how most finds are spun by scientists/media to support the life from nothing idea.
Besides, how different is the idea of life arising from primordial crap from the idea of super-complex life arising from super simple life?
You'll find that most evolutionists (whom I referenced in my earlier post) think of both ideas as one and the same, or at least, different manifestations of the same.
And that's why you are dumb.
You just make yourself look dumb by resorting to such immaturity. But, maybe I'm being trolled, and if I'm responding to a troll, I guess that might make me not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
You'll find that many (most?) evolutionists think Darwin's ideas as a really rough alpha release, at best; modern evolutionism is generally considered to be version 5 or 6 by now. People hear about Darwin and think 'how quaint! We're so much more enlightened now!'
And, by the way, the origin of life is taken by most of them as a given, as in "these dogs all came from central dog ancestor, so all life must have come from common life ancestor, so life could only have come from non-living matter. POOF! Life came from nothing all by itself!" Most won't talk about the origin of life, but everyone knows that's the basic idea; few are even willing to discuss it, much less give 'alternative ideas', even when the evidence is clearly in favor of them.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Actually, they don't always. In today's corrupt society (you don't really believe the scientific community is immune, do you?), bad (though profitable) ideas get tossed only when it is (a) in one's financial interests to do so; (b) absolutely impossible not just to ignore the evidence but also to keep it secret.
Remember, scientists don't get money by saying things the scientific community doesn't like, whether true or not (how ya gonna get published, son?).
Remember, also, that most scientists get their money from governments and corporations, and we all know how *they* feel about always telling the truth, even if you don't like what it says.
you're religious, right? You seem to think that an idea, once stated, must last forever and ever, amen.
Religious or not, surely you agree that the truth is the truth, and it doesn't cease to be true just because someone who makes a lot of money says so (witness firstly all the conflicting religious teachings floating about, some of them completely contradicting one another; witness secondly all the conflicting scientific findings floating about (hoaxes, too!), with the scientific community in general keeping hushed those findings that contradict the Ideas Favored by Those with Credentials). Most fundamentalists seem to think that a Certain Weekly Idea, once stated, must last forever and ever, amen. On the other hand, most scientists seem to think that a Certain Secularist Idea, once stated, must last forever and ever, amen.
I can't stand people of either group.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
How do we know these are mutations? Well, it's actually quite simple: we have seen them arise from parents (or a single parent cell in the case of bacteria) who do NOT possess the mutation. In my second bacterial example in particular, where the bacteria are induced to undo a man-made mutation, we KNOW that every bacterium has a broken version of a gene, and the suspected mutagen's job is to mutate it back the way it was.
We also know the sequences of many mutated and non-mutated genes. We know what mutations are likely (based on extensive observation and experimentation), and sure enough, they can and do occur.
There are actually three varieties of commonly recognized mutations: nonsense, missense, and silent. In a silent mutation, there is no observable change. The gene sequence is modified slightly, but the modified section still codes for the same amino acid. In missense, the amino acid changes, but the protein produced still mostly works. In nonsense, the modified nucleotide changes a codon to a STOP codon, truncating the amino acid and greatly reducing its chances of functioning correctly.
Sickle Cell Anemia is a missense mutation -- according to this site, "the replacement of A by T at the 17th nucleotide of the gene for the beta chain of hemoglobin changes the codon GAG (for glutamic acid) to GTG (which encodes valine). Thus the 6th amino acid in the chain becomes valine instead of glutamic acid."
Yep, that's right, ONE replacement is the cause of this genetic disease, and replacements really ain't that rare. There are plenty of commonly-found mutagens in our environment that do that kind of thing, in addition to good old radiation from the sun. So yes, we know it's a mutation, we even know what KIND of mutation it is and what mutated, we can prove that it's possible, and we know that it is indeed likely that it has arisen in at least a few people whose parents did not carry the gene. Of course, it probably entered the human race very early on, given how simple a change it requires, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a mutation.
Like it or not, these are two logically distinct ideas. The theory of evolution and the evidence for it is entirely independent of the origin of life. It doesn't matter to the theory of evolution whether life came into existence from:
Evolution doesn't start until there's life for it to act upon.
The geological evidence certainly supports the idea that there was an origin of life (at least on earth). The earliest evidence shows that there was no life, followed by a long period where there was only very simple life, followed by a period where more complext life began to appear.
To avoid unnecessary duplication, I'll just provide you with links to my earlier posts.
the origin of life is not included in the theory of evolution.
Never said it was. Next!
There is no such thing as an "evolutionist" except in the perverted mind of a christo-facist.
Why, I think that's just a *dandy* name for you! Opposite of creationist == evolutionist. I don't know why you'd think it insulting, as it is just about as far as you can get from creationist.
As for those christo-facists, I have no idea what they think. They're always going on about Christ's face, and they just give me funny looks when I walk by.
Read a book other than the bible for once.
I've read a great many books other than the bible, which of course why I can discuss these things. Your highly defensive reaction shows I must have said something you know to be true in the back of your mind, but don't want to face, much less admit.
You ARE a fundie. You talk, think and act like one. I call em like I see em.
*/me rereads parent to your post*
Nope, that looks just like scientific commentary on a scientific subject for which there is no scientific evidence. I made no commentary on 'how life changed once it got here'. You'll be hard pressed to find fundies that speak as I have. As for thinking and acting like one, I can only conclude that you used spiritistic methods to find my thoughts and actions, since we've never met in person. And yes, I'd definitely know if I'd met you. */me stifles giggle*
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Like it or not, these are two logically distinct ideas.
Absolutely. If you read the post through, you'd see that I was trying to make the point that
most evolutionists (whom I referenced in my earlier post) think of both ideas as one and the same, or at least, different manifestations of the same.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
How'd you guess?
Evolutionary theory clearly has mechanisms to deal with these flaws, "evolution is in progress" is not nearly as compelling as "these flaws balance out greater related benefits" (small birth canals and knee angles are directly related to our gargantuan crania and the way we evolved our hips for walking prior). Meanwhile, Intelligent Design requires all species are perfect (or at least the ones conceived in the perfect creator's image).
Therefore,
ID is testable (and demonstrably false).
Please explain how that serves as the "scientific basis for their ideas". I shouldn't need to ask my "nearest evolutionist" to explain your comments. How would I even know he would represent "most evolutionists", anyway? And why use that qualifier, which suggests that some evolutionists do have a scientific basis for their ideas? Why not address those ideas instead?
How are we supposed to read that, as sarcasm, as an argument proving something?
Is there some peak lately in observations on dinosaur fossiles in relation to birds?
Whatever is causing this?
- suddenly more fossiles appear of ancient birds?
- was there some sudden insight?
- is the press more interested in this subject?
- is it a hype in researchers land?
Or is it me being more focused on it?
We didn't mutate from modern apes, we just have a common ancestor with them. That common ancestor mutated (evolved) into both humans and modern apes. And we also have a common ancestor with modern fish, and modern plants. It's a tree of life, it's beautiful. Peace.
The world is everything that is the case
You can disbelieve evolution all you want, but you'll be sorry when the apes keep us chained and in cages, and the statue of liberty is in shambles on the beach.
Viva La Evolucion!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
New Scientist has a better picture of the foot detail.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
birds are highly evolved dinosaurs
That just says they are greatly changed from dinosaurs. We (humans and avians) are "highly evolved fish" from another perspective.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
Yeah, I should probably have been more specific: the 'ideas' I was talking about pretty much boils down to one idea -- the idea that life spontaneously arose, which of course has no scientific basis at all (and which a minority of scientists actually do not believe). By extension, I was referring to the idea that one kind of life form could spontaneously (and without any sort of direction at all) acquire the ability to change, not just into a completely different life form (the DNA instructions for which it did not possess), but a much more complex one. (As you surely know, if you've taken biology, there is a gaping gulf between even the most complex single-celled organism and the simplest multi-celled organism.) This idea, contrary to popular belief, actually has a very small amount (possibly none, after hoaxes) of hard evidence supporting it, and again, a number of scientists who therefore refuse to take it as fact.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Seriously, how we classify these animals is very much a political game. We can do things like figure out which animals had common ancestors and guess at how far back, but to say "X is a Q" is merely a labelling convenience. I'm not entirely sure where the religion came into this thread. I guess people can get pretty dogmatic about the labelling on both sides, but FSMs aren't directly involved.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
But if by "in common" you mean that pigs or rats are unexpectedly close to us in some genetic traits: no. Nope. Not at all. They are useful in the lab because of physiological traits not held in common. For example, humans live decades long and only have one, rarely two offspring per pregnancy, with years between pregnancies. Ditto the other great apes which share the high-90's percent of our DNA, (including sharing the same broken gene for making vitamin C. Rats- all other non-primate mammals- can make C (except guinea pigs, but their C gene is broken in an entirely different place)). Ditto much the same for monkeys, and even ditto the bats (the closest non-primate mammal group). Rats only share 90% of our DNA, but they reproduce early and often. The only reason we've got rats with the same diseases as human diseases is that we've made them that way.
Check out the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution, especially the nested hierarchy section. If there were traits that rats and humans shared more closely than chimps and humans (like the false chickens and humans, or bananas and humans claims that creationist keep on using), then that would falsify evolution. Hasn't happened yet.
Why is it that people like you need to attempt so hard to prove your point of view by slaughtering reason and logic?
"Look, all of you use evolution as an excuse, because if you saw the truth, that the world was created, then you would need God."
Ever occurred that this sentence is equally valid as: "All of you use Creation as an excuse, because if you saw the truth, that the world was not created, then you would not need God"?
Sigh.
What's your point? "Pointless assertions get you nowhere"? Couldn't you have just summarised in the first place?
Oh, and ps. Watch out who you're calling sinful, eh? Twerp.
no explanation of origin of life = no explanation of origin of species, because species are alive.
It's like saying you will discuss "Origin of timber" but refusing to admit that trees have any relevance. Sure, you may be talking about which lumber yard it was bought from, but trees are still essential to the end result.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
I believe it was "The Origin of Species", NOT "The Origin of Life".
Is it news? Archaeopteryx had teeth, a sternum and a tail like those of dinosaurs too. That doesn't mean it isn't a bird.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
I'm no supporter of "intelligent design" (unless it refers to steps taken by humans in engineering), but aren't a lot of the skeletons of dinosaurs actually castings of (parts of) the real thing but presented to kids as "the real whole thing"?
If it is not explained to them that Velociraptors were not 7 feet tall, actually had feathers, never existed in Chicago and the example they see is a replica...well, it's all Santa Claus again isn't it.
There seems to be equivocation in your use of the term "spontaneous". It would of course be an essential idea behind evolution if the meaning is stipulated as "natural", or as you put it, "without any sort of direction at all". And I assume by that you mean intelligent direction or "design", rather than what we may term "natural forces", chemical processes and the like, or (later) self-direction and other selective pressures. This is very different from "spontaneous" interpreted as abrupt or without cause. Natural processes are frequently incremental (instead of one great leap from state A to state Z, moving through a gradual series of smaller steps) and causal, where a set of conditions will lead to A, which together can lead to B, to C, etc. That we are not certain of the first conditions, and that there are gaps in our current knowledge of details between certain steps, however, doesn't invalidate the steps we can describe, and certainly doesn't support replacing those explanations with an appeal to ID, for which there is no evidence of any kind.
As for a leap between unicellular and multicellular organisms, just look at Protista and the volvocine algae for an example of how that can progress.
Well, as it saith flat-out in bigge, bolde tipe at the Museume of the Historie of Nature in Londone,
THE WORLD IS FLAT.
Then there was the study a couple years ago, in which it was shown by actual measurements that Kansas is about an order of magnitude flatter than a pancake.
Some parts of the world are very flat.
Of course, "flat" in this case refers to surface roughness, not curvature. There are many places in Kansas where one can easily see that there's a horizon, implying that the surface does have a slight curvature.
Those researchers got an IgNobel Prize for their study. As I recall, they were among the few recipients who were quite pleased by the award.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Actually, it's possible. All you need is lots and lots of offspring, and a bit of luck. Bacteria are very good at this strategy. When you can produce offspring every 15 or 20 minutes, this is a workable strategy. Calculate the number of offspring after 24 hours for a doubling time of 20 minutes. You'll be impressed by how many digits the number requires. The chances that someone in that population will have the needed mutation are actually pretty good.
Of course, most of them still go extinct. We only see the winners in the lottery.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
one can easily see that there's a horizon, implying that the surface does have a slight curvature.
Or, as Guy Clark once said: "it's so flat you can see the curvature of the earth."
Prairie Home Companion -- Country for intelligent people.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
I assume by that you mean intelligent direction or "design"
Indeed; however, I have grown a great disdain for the mainstream idea of ID(tm), as it shows incredible disrespect not only for scientific evidence, but also for the very bible its followers claim to believe in. (Email me if you want to know more.)
Natural processes are frequently incremental (instead of one great leap from state A to state Z...)
And therein lies the problem. You see, contrary to popular opinion, the evidence (yes, the fossil record) does not show creatures changing gradually from one kind into another. We find fossils of this kind, and of that kind, and of many hundreds and thousands of kinds, but we don't see them changing into other kinds. We even see fake fossils that still don't show that. (And don't even get me started on punctuated equilibrium. About like ID(tm), that one is.)
For the record, I looked at Protista and Volvocines. Volvocines form slightly fancy colonies, it seems. Nothing really resembling a true multi-celled individual. And Protista is not even a species, but a whole "junk drawer" (their name for it, not mine) of things. Heck, it's a whole kingdom, for crying out loud. That sweeping category is comprised of critters so different from one another, it's a real stretch to believe they came from the same common ancestor even for evolutionists that know much about them. Further, they couldn't have come from the same ancestors as anyone from the other kingdoms, even if you believe that life started up without intelligent help. Face it, if you believe that (no offense), you also must believe that life started up by itself several times independently of one another. If you ever sat down and looked at the astronomical odds (I've got some very interesting scientific references for you on that) against even one protocell's ever forming from non-living matter, now you must contemplate the odds of repeating the same process at least three more times, with each one sufficiently different that they are all incompatible with one another, but at the same time close enough that each one could serve as food for all the others. I could go on and on. And by the way, the Protista that are multi-celled are also basically nothing more than fancy colonies, are not all that similar to the single-celled models, and, debatably, are not multi-celled individuals.
we are not certain of the first conditions...there are gaps in our current knowledge of details between certain steps
And that is why I want to puke whenever I hear evolution 'fundie-types' talk about their beliefs as though they were Gospel Fact.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Or, as Guy Clark once said: "it's so flat you can see the curvature of the earth."
Yup. And, as lots of historians have observed, the shape of the Earth has always been known to sailors.
This is because, as you sail away from on a large body of water, you see things disappear from the bottom up. First the low buildings disappear, then the tall buildings and spires, so only the hills are visible. Then the hills shrink until you only see their tips. And as you approach land, you see the opposite sequence, with first the hilltops, then the tall buildings and trees, and then finally the short buildings and people appearing. After a while, you "see" the shape of the water's surface. It's only those stupid landlubbers who can't see the shape of the world that they live on.
This is part of why historians like to point out that when Columbus sailed, everyone but a few religious nuts knew quite well the Earth's shape. The dispute was how big it was. It seems that Columbus was wrong. He thought the planet was about 60% of its actual size. Apparently he was never convinced that he hadn't reached eastern Asia, though others at the time understood that he had found unknown land out in the middle of the ocean. If that land hadn't been there, Columbus and his crew would have probably starved to death and never been heard from again.
But the idea that he was trying to show that the world was round turns out to be completely bogus. Columbus and all his men knew quite well the Earth's shape. They saw the evidence every time they sailed over the horizon.
I saw a cute puzzle about this a few years ago. We know that people had measured the Earth long before Columbus. As far back as 2500 years ago the Greeks had a good estimate. But the textbook explanations require some north-south travel. Describe a way to measure the Earth's size (diameter or circumference) while standing in one spot. Use only technology available to Columbus.
Actually, ancient Greek sailors had the technology to do this to within a few percent. In Columbus's time, they had more accurate navigation equipment and could get the correct value to better than two places accuracy. It's a bit bizarre that Columbus believe a smaller figure. He might have been a good fundraiser and commander, but he couldn't have been much of a navigator.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
For the record, I looked at Protista and Volvocines. Volvocines form slightly fancy colonies, it seems. Nothing really resembling a true multi-celled individual.
Protista and the volvocine algae are categories (the latter a subsection of the former) that contain the examples to look at, from the unicellular, to the colonial, to the multicellular, not a claim that they are all closely related. Some scientists even consider a volvox colony, for instance, to actually be a multicellular organism. (The "No True Scotsman" argument is unfortunate.) And while yes, I do believe that it is possible life could form independently numerous times, couldn't and must are not terms that apply to probabilities.
Regarding the "astronomical odds": if we look at one point in time and space, and attempt to calculate the odds that life, even at its most primitive, would develop at that time and in that place, the probability is infinitesimal, sure. But if we take into consideration the time and space available, at a minimum, then it would be the lack of such development which would then seem improbable. Once that step successfully occurs -- and given a set of conditions that would facilitate it in the first place, a repetition wouldn't be surprising -- the rest is gravy. Compare this to a state lottery: it's highly unlikely that any given individual will win, but it is even more unlikely that no one at all will win over time.
And that is why I want to puke whenever I hear evolution 'fundie-types' talk about their beliefs as though they were Gospel Fact.
Facts are contingent on what is or is not the case in the material world, not what someone would like to believe *must* be true, and thus can't be 100% certain. Observations, after all, could be mistaken, data may be incomplete, and conditions can change, no matter how remote that possibility may seem. Confusing improbable and impossible is an error, as is moving the goalposts, which makes discussion difficult. I appreciate your having taken the time to respond, though.
if we take into consideration the time and space available, at a minimum, then it would be the lack of such development which would then seem improbable...Confusing improbable and impossible is an error
Interesting point. How about obstacles? Let's examine one: the formation of amino acids. Firstly, as Stanley Miller and a co-worker noted (and they should know), "The synthesis of compounds of biological interest [including amino acids] takes place only under reducing conditions", that is to say, conditions without any free oxygen present. Other evolutionists theorize that oxygen was present. So, you have the dilemma expressed by Francis Hitching: "With oxygen in the air, the first amino acids would never have got started; without oxygen, it would have been wiped out by cosmic rays" and/or UV. As you correctly state, there's improbable, and then there's impossible. Nature doesn't care how long you leave it there, amino acids won't form. Compare this to trying to walk to space: it's highly unlikely that you can get enough speed to run up a mountain into space, but it's even more unlikely that you'll walk up to space over time.
Once that step successfully occurs...
...then you've only got, what, about umpteen-forty-leven-hunderd more obstacles like that in the way? For example, say you intentionally put a bunch of amino acids into the primitive ocean, where they'll be protected from the destructive radiation. Now you've got another problem. As Hitching further explains: "Beneath the surface of the water there would not be enough energy to activate further chemical reactions; water in any case inhibits the growth of more complex molecules." (emphasis mine)
So, then, once amino acids are in the water, they must get out of it. But if they do, they again face destructive radiation in the atmosphere just waiting to disassemble them. Now let's talk about odds!
Remember, there are over 100 different amino acids, but only 20 are needed for life. Remember also that amino acids can be left-handed or right-handed (this refers to the actual structure of the molecules). If they just form at random, as in a theoretical organic soup, they tend to form in roughly equal parts lefties and righties. There is no known reason why either shape should be preferred in living things. Still, out of those 20 amino acids used in life's proteins, all of them are left-handed. We could liken it to having a huge, well-mixed pile of red beans and white beans. There are over 100 kinds of beans, in each color. Now, if you grab a scoop of beans, what do you think you'd get? To get the basic components of a protein, you have to get only red beans. Your scoop must contain only 20 varieties of red beans, and each one must be in a specific, preassigned place in the scoop. In the world of proteins, one mistake in any of these requirements nets you a protein that won't function properly. Would any amount of stirring and scooping in our hypothetical pile give us the right combination? No. So how would it be possible in the hypothetical organic soup?
The proteins required for life are extremely complex proteins indeed. What are the odds of having even a simple protein form at random in an organic soup? Evolutionists (not I) estimate it to be 1 in 10^113. That's one in 10...trillion...googols!!! Anything that has one chance in 10^50 is dismissed by mathematicians as never happening. To give you an idea of the odds we're talking about here: 10^113 is more than the estimated number of atoms in the entire universe.
So, then, we can certainly see that a non-infinite negative probability can be so high as to be impossible, even over long periods of time.
Facts are contingent on what is or is not the case in the material world, not what someone would like to believe *must* be true
And that is why evolutionism is considered, even by many evolutionists, a faith like any other. You can't just say that it happened. You have to have faith that, somehow, life overcame the impossibilities and came into existence.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Columbus and all his men knew quite well the Earth's shape.
I beg to differ. As I recall, historical accounts of what happened say that his ships were within an inch of mutiny because his sailors were afraid of falling off the edge of the earth. Thus, If that land hadn't been there, Columbus and his crew would have turned back and headed for home. It is said that Chris actually made a deal at one point that if they didn't see land in X more days, they would turn back; they were within one or two days of that deadline when land was spotted.
It's a bit bizarre that Columbus [believed the earth was smaller.]
He refused, not necessarily to believe he hadn't reached the West Indies, but to let on that he hadn't reached it. Whatever he actually believed, all the money and ships he had managed to get (his reputation and career, even) was dependent on finding another way to the West Indies; if anybody was to find out he hadn't, his idea about the earth's shape might have been shown to be true, but he'd be ruined financially. Incidentally, that's why bell, jalapeno, and cayenne peppers are called peppers. They're not at all related to the true pepper (basically the chief reason for going over there in the first place), but he couldn't let on that he hadn't found any pepper, or, again, he'd be ruined.
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
Your argument is nullified by the fact that humans plan and execute the reproduction of these chickens, thus any selection that is going on is artificial, not natural.
Since when were humans not considered natural? Are you going to start trying to argue that man did not descend from apes as well?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
ya might dig a little deeper and find it was the Catholic Church.
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
It was partly a joke (particularly the latter line about man descending from apes) and part a bit of annoyance in that humanity seems to be considered the only species who can't engage in an action without it being considered "unnatural." I guess it's a consequence of forming sentience. One of the examples I like to use (as contrived as it is) is the Blondie strip where her catering business was nearly forced to close because a rare and nearly extinct species of mice was sighted nearby. Cue in very satisfied looking cat walking out of the alleyway, licking its chops...
Humans are part of the evolutionary process, albeit a group with a fairly disproportionate impact due to the combination of our intelligence in figuring out exactly how to meddle, and our ego that leads us to meddle for the sake of meddling.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
"And I would also like to add that I can't spell very well"
We noticed.
"The simple fact is that everybody in the entire history of the world was born an atheist."
That would be interesting, if it were a fact, or if you even had evidence to suggest it.
"the vast majority of the time because their parents drum into their heads from birth that if they don't, they'll burn."
Support for this assumption would also be welcome.
I would not suggest that you can't believe what you choose. But you seem to be suffering from what you're accusing others of, namely; blind belief in things that are unprovable. Of course, if you have evidence of the "facts" that you presented, I apologize and withdraw my criticism.
I do have evidence to the contrary for both of the above quotes, but it is too personal to share in this forum, so I'll understand if you don't want to share evidence that you may have. If you do have evidence, but you choose not to share it, my apology still stands.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Look at his signature. He believes that there is some objective morality. Something so universal that someone who violates it is not worthy of any esteem whatsoever.
If we are born atheists, why are we not born amoral as well? Perhaps the parents (and society) drum into our heads from birth that if we don't behave "morally" we are flawed somehow, or maybe sick.
So if it's okay for someone to believe that there is no God, why is it not okay for someone to believe that mass murder is good and love is bad?
I am not suggesting that mass murder is good, nor that love is bad.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
> Evolutionists (not I) estimate it to be 1 in 10^113. That's one in 10...trillion...googols!!!
5 Q2K
> Anything that has one chance in 10^50 is dismissed by mathematicians as never happening.
> To give you an idea of the odds we're talking about here: 10^113 is more than the estimated
> number of atoms in the entire universe.
Hey, guess what! I just drew 51 cards and got the following result:
24JTQ7836T73A23K52797T3A66A4K5898A6JJJ98KQ54Q4K9T
That result has a 10^51 probability of occurring, yet I just drew it? How??? It's impossible!
The fact is that highly improbable things happen constantly, all day, every day. The likelyhood of me getting that hand AGAIN can be dismissed as effectively impossible. Why don't you tornado-in-a-junkyard guys just admit that you're doing the wrong calculations? The probability of a single event occurring is not measurable, and if it actually happened already then its probability is 1.