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New Findings Confirm Darwin's Theory — Evolution Not Random
ScienceDaily is reporting a team of biologists has demonstrated that evolution is a deterministic process, rather than a random selection as some competing theories suggested. "When the researchers measured changes in 40 defined characteristics of the nematodes' sexual organs (including cell division patterns and the formation of specific cells), they found that most were uniform in direction, with the main mechanism for the development favoring a natural selection of successful traits, the researchers said."
Hmm... I don't understand...
From what I picked up in bio, it was known to work as such:
Assume Mutation
(1) If mutation not hindrance, animal likely to live and likely makes babies.
(2) If mutation is boon, animal more likely to live and more likely makes babies.
(3) If mutation is hindrance, animal less likely to live and less likely to make babies
From there, you consider whether or not the mutation is recessive/dominant which determines if the babies get the mutation (then referred to as a trait).
Repeat many many times and you get a separation of a special line.
The proper combination of factors being: mutation = beneficial, mutation dominant, mutated animals screw like proverbial rabbits.
How is this different from the new findings?
The theory of evolution includes the theory of the selection of advantageous traits, plus methods for the acquisition of new traits, like mutation.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You are correct in describing facts and theories, but "evolution" can refer to both. This article explains it well I think - Evolution is a Fact and a Theory.
This is a link to the paper cited in the article:
http://www.current-biology.com/content/article/fulltext?uid=PIIS0960982207021938
Yes they are, at least for the standard dictionary definition of creationism:
creationism:
1. the doctrine that matter and all things were created, substantially as they now exist, by an omnipotent Creator, and not gradually evolved or developed.
2. the doctrine that the true story of the creation of the universe is as it is recounted in the Bible, esp. in the first chapter of Genesis.
Keep in mind, "Creationism" != "Religious faith". There are plenty of people who believe in God and who accept the scientific theory of evolution. But they are not creationists.
A hypothesis doesn't get called a theory until it has demonstrated substantial predictive power, and so is almost never found to be "incorrect" later. Instead conditions are discovered under which the old theory doesn't make useful predictions, and the new theory is "more general", or accurate to more decimal places, etc.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Just to be clear, so we don't assume any misconceptions here about Einstein and religion:
I believe in Spinoza's God, Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. -- Einstein
It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. -- Einstein
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
But the sources for relevant Wikipedia articles are credible primary sources. (Brian, Dennis (1996), Einstein: A Life, New York: John Wiley & Sons, p. 127, ISBN 0-471-11459-6) To save you some time, I've added some line breaks but retained the context.
Now for the second quote:
Wow, this is a triple convergence of a bad and confusing title, summary and article (which is a summary of the actual journal article) which is unusual even for slashdot.
This really isn't about Darwinian evolution which involves random mutations and selection of the favorable ones. However, there are some characteristics which are neither advantageous or disadvantageous. There is a debate about how many characteristics are "neutral". For example, did large noses appear because they are advantageous (for warming air perhaps) or because they just worked out that way by chance. So the original paper asked this question about worm vulvas and found that nearly all the characteristics that they looked at did NOT arrive by chance but were selected for (i.e. were advantageous in some way).
It is important to note both possible results would be consistent with Darwinian evolution. The only questions being addressed are the mechanism (does evolution go through mostly neutral phenotypes before a favorable phenotype is selected) and the extent that characteristics are neutral. For worm vulvas, it appears that the vulvas that form are biased towards the most favorable ones.