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The Average Human Has 60 New Genetic Mutations
mcgrew pointed out a story about a new study that found the average person is born with 60 genetic mutations, very few of which involve weather manipulation or an amazing healing factor. This number was less than expected, leading the researchers to believe human evolution happens more slowly than previously thought. From the article: "Sixty mutations may sound like a lot, but according to the international team of geneticists behind the new research, it is actually fewer than expected. 'We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child,' Philip Awadalla, a geneticist at the University of Montreal who co-led the project, said in a press release. 'Our genetic study, the first of its kind, shows that actually much fewer mistakes, or mutations, are made.'
...before a little girl passes through a wall at the federal reserve!
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Mutations, smutations! Everyone knows that evolution is bunk and that humans were created in their current, perfect form just 6000 years ago.
I would have thought that a geneticist would realize that mutations aren't necessarily mistakes and are key to adaptations and evolution.
My intuition tells me they're missing something. I've always felt that mutation rates among stressed organisms would be a lot higher than among healthy sucessful organisms. Again, intuitively, not scientifically, from a "selfish gene" perspective, an organism that generated more mutations in its offspring when it wasn't doing well would be more likely to have ANY of its genes passed on to future generations, while an organism doing well would mutate less.
From a simpler perspective: more viruses, more bacteria, more cell damage all make mutations of some kind more likely as well. Mutations are copy-errors, and a cell under stress would be less able to error-correct its genes.
None of this has a hypothesis I'd be willing to put out, but I think studying first world humans misses some possible independent variables.
There isn't a big enough flame bait mod point for this one and I've got all 15 sat waiting to be used. :)
I know this is probably going to go down in flames, but exactly how do creationists deal with this sort of finding? Answers from actual creationists preferred...
It's the evolution of intelligent design: iterative design. The X-Men might actually exist had God opted for an Agile design process.
'We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child,'
My parents contributed 1000s of mistakes to me...
Well, you *did*. Best go see another thread now.
... the mistake is you!
No!
The main difference between you and your brother aren't mutations, but which part of your DNA you get from your mother and which part from your father.
(I'm not a biologist/geneticist.)
In terms of a DNA sequence making an exact copy of itself, yes they are mistakes (that is the very definition of a mutation). Whether that mistake turns out to be beneficial to the organism or not is a separate issue.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
If you do a similar comparison to computer coding, your argument is similar to saying that a mature, stable program needs less patches (mutations) and bug fixing to work, while a less mature products will require more patches. However, even for stable programs, that do their thing well, there is always space for subtle improvements (a refined interface, a new feature, support for new architectures). I think the same applies for living organism. Your definition of healthiness may not necessarily include the subtle mutations that further improve on the original. For example, again just as in computer coding, as hardware evolves, you won't need to support old and unused hardware features, and so you remove it. The same for evolved organisms: that's probably why we lost the tail and most of our fur. On the other hand, the needs of the current world to multitask and new uses for hands and brains dictated by technology, may be also influence the mutations that take place. 60 mutations isn't all that much, after all.
"Sixty mutations may sound like a lot, but according to the international team of geneticists behind the new research, it is actually fewer than expected. 'We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child"
Don't worry, most parents are going out of their way to make up the difference and then surpass it.
As i understand it, when two creatures reproduce, its always a crap-shoot as to which traits come thru and which are left behind so to speak. If the father has genes A B and C and the mother has D E F and only three are need to create another human, Than the offspring could have any permeation of those three. ABE or ADF etc... The genes themselves would obviously try to copy themselves as best as possible. So it would be variance in gene selection not evolution or mutation that makes someone different than their sister. A mutation would be something along the lines of the A gene being copied as Ã.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
I think it's woefully premature to generalize the results of this study to the entirety of humanity. These results are based off of the whole genome sequencing of *2* families, and as far as our technology and analytical methods have come, they still leave a lot to be desired. Besides, the key message isn't that we have a conclusive de novo mutation rate for humans (which we don't), but that the rate and mechanism of their creation can vary widely from family to family.
yes, but I got meta flamehooked.
There is a whole lot of variation you could get from the same two parents. Each parent contributes 23 chromosomes, and which chromosome gets contributed is random. The chances of any two children all getting the same set from each parent is extremely low (outside of twins and whatnot, but that's a different mechanism).
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
but if parent's dna were copied exactly the same, then you wouldn't be much different from your brothers and sisters.
This is actually because of chromosomal crossover. You receive half your DNA from each parent. Without crossover, there'd be only 4 possible children per parent pair. However, during meiosis, sections of chromosomes swap positions, dramatically increasing the number of different possible offspring.
Still, mutation is the source of brand-new genotypes. It's critical to evolution (which is natural selection pressure applied to a population that reproduces with mutations), but it's still mutation.
A strict creationist (6 days, circa 6000 years ago in the Garden of Eden) would quite simply explain that of course mutations occur. They are a result of the first sin. The logic is somewhat complicated (although internally consistent), enough so that I will not attempt to explain the entire thought process here on slashdot.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Creationists avoid all straight answers by just calling it "God's Will" or "God's Plan". It's a very handy catch-all bullshit answer.
That's a very groovy mutation.
Only superpowers and eye colors are groovy mutations. Some mutations are terrible.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
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My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
But... how can mutations occur but not evolution? Do they believe that it's impossible for mutations to be passed down to your offspring?
Most of these mutations are in "junk", or non-coding DNA. Almost all novel mutations to functional DNA are detrimental.
At Skepticon 3, PZ Myers gave an excellent presentation about genetic mutation and adaptation. It's about an hour long, but definitely worth a watch.
The problem is that the human brain really likes to put things into categories. That is an hamster, but that over there is not. Just because that is the way the human brain likes to work doesn't mean that it's a universal truth. Species do not exist as a phenomenon outside of the human brain. Trying to decide where one species starts and another species ends is like picking two points of the visual spectrum at random as new colors and then arguing over where one starts and the other stops. Sure, if you look at one color and then the other, you can tell that they're different, but if how do you decide where the cutoff point is? Any point you choose is going to be arbitrary because your starting points were arbitrary. The same is true for organisms.
There are organisms which are genetically similar enough to allow for viable offspring, and organisms that are not. But even that can't magically create an immutable category, everything inside of which is a hamster and everything outside of which isn't.
Simple. They claim that mutations are always harmful to the organism and it's descendants.
When biologists show them examples of beneficial mutations happening in nature and in the lab, the creationists change their claim to that mutations are statistically speaking almost always harmful and that therefore the sum over time of mutation upon mutation will always be harmful to a population (and by doing so they prove that they don't understand the process of iterated natural selection).
When biologists show them many examples of how species have adapted to changing environmental conditions the creationists agree that populations can mutate and develop in beneficial ways, but claim that the changes are always small and that over really long periods of time the change always gravitates around the God-given species equilibrium. The creationists call this "microevolution".
When biologists show them examples of massive evolutionary change such as the chain of fossils of the transition from a land-living animal to whales, the creationists begin to write sophistry about "irreducible complexity" and information "theory" and claim that there's a science called "intelligent design".
When biologists show them that irreducible complexity is not observed in nature and point out that complexity is observed to arise spontaneously in thermodynamic processes such as for example the formation of snowflakes, the creationists will surely come up with some other dumb crap. This is the stage we're at right now, so I don't know what it'll be, although a stupid idea known as "specified complexity" seems likely to become popular. These guys are completely immune to knowledge, so rest assure that there will be something new.
Yes, but can you imagine the daily Scrums that would have taken place? And what if God plays by Australian Rules?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...mistakes make you! ...as, indeed, they do everywhere else...
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The trolls, don't feed them. You only create an environmental boundary condition that leads to the evolution of more trolls, who thrive in that particular ecological (or in this case memetic) niche. As for the GP, suffice to say that microevolution" - a concept completely made up by the creationist/ID crowd - obviously includes everything obeserved and conclusively proven to the point where you simply can't deny it. Everything outside of that, they call macroevolution. Of course, if anything previously filed under "macro" gets conclusively shown in the lab, it is re-filed under "micro": Gotta keep these goalposts moving after all.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
I also believe the universe and everything in it was created by an omnipotent being with a specific intent a relatively short time ago. I get that from the protestant christian Bible, and my best understanding of it.
I intellectually manage that by remembering three things: 1) We don't know everything about the physical universe. 2) We don't understand everything in the Bible. 3) We don't really know what happens when something is created from nothing, but wouldn't it make sense that whatever is created comes into existence at a specific age? I think it's called the "Ideal Age" theory or something like that in philosophy/theology.
I thought about that little further. If you'd seen Adam 5 minutes after he was created you'd think, "He's an adult male, probably 20-30 years old." And you'd be right. He's a 20-30 year old male that's only been around for 5 minutes. He'd bear every mark of having been born and matured like any human, because he really was an adult. If you'd look at the universe you'd say, "It's about 13-15 billion years old." And you'd be right. It's a 13-15 billion year old universe that's been around for a few thousand years, bearing every mark of a universe coming from a big bang complete with background radiation, dark matter, rate of expansion, the whole deal. Earth itself bears every mark that a 4.5 billion year old life-bearing planet would have; a fossil record, evidence of cyclic ice ages, etc, because it is a 4.5 billion year old life-bearing planet. It came into existence at that age.
Some Creationists say that God planted the fossils and other geological evidence to "test our faith" and I don't buy that. Doing so wouldn't be consistent with what we can see of God's nature -- consistency and truth (with one or two curious exceptions in the Bible). It's not an illusion or a trick; it's reality. It looks old because it is old. I don't think the age of the universe was ever meant to test anything, except maybe the egos of the people who think they have to be right about everything in the Bible.
But, to more directly answer the parent's post, wouldn't fewer mutations argue against evolution anyway? Don't we need, now, a lot more time for our species to evolve? And are we sure the rate of mutation has been constant, anyway? I still think it's an interesting discovery, anyway.
Apologies for throwing fuel on what will just end up being another flame war....
Christian here. I'm answering on the basis that your question is "If humans were created not evolved into, then how do you explain this obvious evolution in humans?" I'd say... I'm no biologist, mechanical is more my thing. You tell me.
Humans are terrible replicators of Godly things.
It's not possible to be a strict Creationist AND believe in evolution unless you really believe that all this evolution happened in the last 6000 years.
I wonder if the rate of mutations is higher or lower than in the past, and what it's trending.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Define "terrible". For something that is the way it its because their genes ended in something that was and advantage or at least, not an impediment to survive/mate, odds are pretty high that a random change will be damaging. That it look well or bad, thats a social/cultural thing, but what defines if its good or bad is if it survives and spreads for long enough.
Regarding superpowers, if they require not just changing one gene, but a lot to be able to work, probably should be designed instead of happening at random if we want them to ever happen.
Well, not exactly a crap-shoot...
http://anthro.palomar.edu/mendel/mendel_2.htm
hijacking first thread to link the source (subscription/university login req'd), since the posted article doesn't.
No, that empirically does not work on this subject. That is how scientists around the country tried to deal with the problem for 50 years and at the end of that half century there were more people against the teaching of evolution than there were at the beginning of it. The problem is that for every troll, there is an actual creationist out there who believes what they are saying (which, IMO, makes them uneducated, but not a troll). Leaving these people to their own devices just sets them up in an echo chamber of their own misunderstandings until we end up in a situation where decision makers believe this nonsense. Then you have school boards, text book publishers, even presidential nominees who will state proudly that they don't believe in evolution. At the very least, I will voice my disagreement to make it clear that there are those who disagree, those that will hear the proud statement of a candidate's ignorance and irrevocably put them on the 'will not vote for' list.
So please, if you see someone politely, non-aggressively stating their misunderstandings, correct them politely and non-aggressively. If it's a troll, you won't have given them the satisfaction of making you angry because you will have been polite. If it's someone who actually believes what they are saying maybe, just maybe, you'll convince them to take another look at what they believe. Even if they don't believe what they are saying, someone reading it probably does, and if you can convince just a single person to rethink the subject it is, IMO, worth the 2 minutes it took to write out a reasoned, polite response.
Non-genetically speaking, I'm sure the number will be much higher over the kids lifetime, and I'm sure those mistakes will be far more problematic. Hopefully, mistake #1 wasn't forgetting the birth control...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
There was a recent call for the Treasury to audit the gold storage at Ft Knox. The treasury doesn't want to go along with the request.
Have creationists ever denied the existence of mutations?
Actually the most common pop rebuttal of observed evolution does deny mutations. It goes like this: When a population of bacteria are exposed to an antibiotic and most die off and the remaining population reproduces which leads to a population of antibiotic bacteria it is not because of a mutation but because of already existing genetic variation.
[sigh]Yes yes I know that argument is so flawed it isn't funny, I'm not making that argument. I'm just saying that yes some creationists do deny the existence of mutations.[/sigh]
-- QED
I was just trying to get the gist across... it was easier to say crap-shoot than go into recessive vs non-recessive gene description. Especially when Biology inst my field of study.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
'We had previously estimated that parents would contribute an average of 100 to 200 mistakes to their child,'
My parents contributed far more than 200 mistakes to this child... =)
of course, i'm not educated in the field, but if parent's dna were copied exactly the same, then you wouldn't be much different from your brothers and sisters.
Yikes. You don't have to be a geneticist to understand the very most basic things about genetics - things that affect your daily life, things like "Do I share all the same genes as my brothers and sisters?"
I remember learning about Mendel and the principles of segregation and independent assortment in 7th grade science class.
Are you 12, or did you just sleep through that class, or has the public education system really gotten that much worse?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Could there be some attrition bias here? Maybe the average number of mutations is actually higher, but those with more mutations are more likely to miscarry or die in childhood?
You have a more open-minded approach but it doesn't jive with the Old Testament or current church teachings. You basically are just questioning the big bang vs some third party saying "go" and then walking away.
And God creating something has been scientifically observed? Did I miss that on the news? You are asking to scientifically observe something that takes thousands/millions of years to happen.
They will probably go with flaws in the testing... Or part of Gods Intelligent Design. The Scientist are just flat out lying. Some would say this is a new phenomena due to environmental effects. That these changes are too small to be passed from generation to generations and our non-mutated cells will be dominate.
Never underestimate the ingenuity of backpedaling an argument.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
That is why Intelligent Design is popular. It allows for science to show its numbers add up without having to doubt your faith.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"I thought about that little further. If you'd seen Adam 5 minutes after he was created you'd think, "He's an adult male, probably 20-30 years old."
Exactly. And he'd have retrovirusses in his DNA, at exactly the same positions that chimps and bonobo's had.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI
And he'd have a fused chromosome, just so that it would lead big-brained people a couple of millennia later to believe that we'd actually share a common origin, because even the location where strands of DNA meet to form the familiar X-shape of chromosomes is present in his chromosome number 2. (Google for it).
It is just in one thing you're wrong. I'm god, I created you just 5 minutes ago with all the thoughts you have. And because I'm omnipotent I took my own powers away and gave myself a bad memory (so forgive that I can't provide you with details how I did stuff, how things were and how they'll be). I thought I'd enjoy mingling with a couple of earthlings here. But I'm having second thoughts already.
Bert
"(that is: true according to the best of our knowledge today, and may be altered tomorrow based on new evidence)"
Yes, altered. With science, we're moving (roughly) asymptotically to the truth. With religion, you'd never get there. Hope you didn't pick the wrong god to worship. Yesterday was Thor's day. Did you pay tribute? A tip: Today it is Freya's day.
Well, I'm a "creationist" in that I believe God created the universe (as Aquinas' "Uncaused First Cause"), but I also happen to have no problem with the idea that He did it 14 billion years ago, may have done it or is doing it more than once, and in doing so created the means to allow evolution to happen.
I also acknowledge that given the nature of the God it only makes sense that it is entirely possible He could have formed everything out of whole cloth 6000 years ago (on a Saturday evening in October according to Ussher), I see no reason nor evidence to believe this. In fact I would find it particularly cruel that the Almighty would endow us with such great intellect if its use only resulted in deception. In fact, I find it interesting that the so-called "creationists" aren't mired in an endless swamp of existential futility since it seems they cannot know anything because their very beliefs unequivocally infer that their senses and thought processes mercilessly lie to them.
I know I'm not really making much of a relevant point here, I just never understood why so many people insist evolution and divine creation are considered mutually exclusive, or why so many people seem to hold the idea that God cannot and did not create a world that can be understood with our senses and intellect.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Intelligent Design is a branded version of Creationism with certain things obfuscated (like who the creator was) in order to try and fool people into believing it is science. It is the lowest of the low, sleazy backhanded way of trying to trick people.
Creationists accept that DNA mutates but reject the idea that this can lead to meaningful speciation. They distinguish between microevolution* (small inter-species changes) and macroevolution (the idea that one species can turn into another). They would see this finding as lending weight against evolution because the mutation rate is slower than what previous estimates presumably** needed to fit a certain timeline.
Footnotes
* The creationist use of the microevolution/macroevolution distinction is quite different from the traditional use of those terms. For creationist, the terms refer to the amount of speciation being proposed; for an evolutionist, the terms refer to the timescale or resolution being used by various approaches to studying evolution.
** I have no idea how the previous mutation rate was estimated, but the idea that evolutionist have to jump through hoops to adjust timelines is well embedded in young-earth creationist thinking.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
The creationist tenet that there is no speciation has recently been demonstrated false in fruitflies. Genetic mutations occurred that rendered two different strains unable to interbreed and produce viable offspring. On this basis, they are now two species. Since they cannot share DNA, they are bound to continue diverge significantly after enough generations have passed.
It seems Creationists do believe that God opted for an Agile design process, whereas I believe He chose the waterfall method and had everything designed and planned out before the project was undertaken.
If the Creationists are correct, I cannot understand what purpose He would find by making a world in which every possible bit of empirical evidence points to a history of reality which is entirely false.
I guess that's why I could never see the point of faith without reason because creationism means His greatest and most potent endowment of human beings (our powerful intellect) serves no purpose in our knowing and serving Him. Of course, I also cannot understand how these folks, who strictly adhere to the concept of "sola scriptura," can reconcile the fact that for most of the first four centuries of Christianity there was no universally-agreed upon "scriptura" to be "sola" (and in many ways there still isn't).
After all, if Scripture is your only basis for truth, how can you decide what is truly Scripture and what isn't? Professor Godel, call your office.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Are they also saying that every child is an independent act of God, not derived from either of its parents?
If not, then they must accept that (some of) those variations--regardless of their origin--are propagated from parent to child.
In other words, that evolution (in the strictest sense of the word) occurs.
I don't think creationists deny evolution per se, it's the origin of new kinds of plants and animals via evolution that is denied, or more specifically, that the variety of plants and animals we see around us now came into existence solely via evolution in the past.
TFA is, unfortunately, very brief and doesn't talk about this distinction but not all conceptions result in births. Embryos are often reabsorbed without the mother even being aware. I would expect the number of mutations at birth to be lower than the number at conception because those with more and more serious mutations are never born.
Simple. They claim that mutations are always harmful to the organism and it's descendants.
Actually I know quite a few creationists and none of them outright deny that evolution happens, rather they do not believe that the variety of plants and animals we see around us now came into existence via the process of evolution.
Compare this of urban to poor rural. You will find that poor rural will have a LOT more mutations and BIGGER. Why? More mosquitoes. The fact is that most mutations are caused by virus and most virus probably transmit via arthopod-bourne than any other reason.
Sadly, these guys probably looked at fairly well to do ppl who are not just not exposed, but not around a whole lot of ppl or animals. Once they are closer to life, they will have more, faster, and bigger mutations (as in whole genes being transfered).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Fair enough. It's not mine either. :)
There is a whole lot of variation you could get from the same two parents. Each parent contributes 23 chromosomes, and which chromosome gets contributed is random.
Sort of, but the arbitrary "chromosome borders" we have put up are not respected, so in fact the number of permutations is a lot higher than what the number of chromosomes would suggest.
Well, I would consider myself an anti-creationist scientist, but what you wrote is not annoying or anything to me.
What you wrote about is you accept reality and science and scientific process. After all, God gave us reason, so it would be a shame to spit at that creation.
"Bible-thumpers" and religion in general will never have a problem with science and vice-versa if they don't try to contradict each other. The keyword for religion is Faith, not reality. Ideas like "afterlife" and "soul" are things that science will never touch as these ideas are based in Faith, not the scientific world.
"He's an adult male, probably 20-30 years old." And you'd be right. He's a 20-30 year old male that's only been around for 5 minutes.
This is a common philosophical argument about existence. It is similar to the old "tree in the forest". Another one is I perceive the world through my eyes. When I became aware, the universe was created around me. When I die, the universe dies with me. And hence each and everyone of us is the center of their own universe.
These things are not science because they are not testable, so no problem until someone tries to say it is science. :)
But, to more directly answer the parent's post, wouldn't fewer mutations argue against evolution anyway? Don't we need, now, a lot more time for our species to evolve? And are we sure the rate of mutation has been constant, anyway? I still think it's an interesting discovery, anyway.
Rate of mutation is not constant because environmental pressures are not constant. For example, toxins (natural or not) or radiation ("natural" or not), or a virus, or even simply aging or breathing (or not) or lack of food all produce stress on our cells. On average you can say a large population is expected to have X amount of mutations per individual, but statistics do not apply to individuals!
Rate of mutations is not evolution. It is part of the process, but for evolution to actually take place, a given mutation must improve or impede the survival of the organism for at least the age until they can reproduce. This selection and passing on these specific mutations is what is referred to as evolution. Most mutations are basically benign.
There are many examples of this in nature. For example, the antibiotic resistance bacteria is one case. Antibiotic is the toxin that selects for any mutations in bacteria that cause the resistant bacteria (if it survives) to become the dominant species. Resistance is brought through mutations. These mutations are not completely random either ;) A highly stressed cell (like bacteria) will try to "activate" its "unused" DNA strands and also absorb "external DNA" into its own in hopes of finding a process to deal with the stress. This is close to its death and in vast majority of the time, it fails and dies. Sometimes it succeeds though.
For larger animals, there are examples with Chernobyl mice living in the Red Forest (most contaminated area close to reactor). There is still large background radiation dose (from contamination) and mice were discovered living quite happily in that environment. To test if same species of mice from "outside the zone" would survive, some mice were trapped from Chernobyl and regular mice were placed in a cage close to them for a few weeks in the Red Forest. The "imported" mice did not do very well. The local mice were quite happy, as expected. Later it was determined that the Chernobyl mice have mutated to drastically increase their DNA repair mechanisms to cope with much higher radiation levels.
This is how evolution works. Mutation + natural selection leads to evolution. Mutation alone does nothing. This is why evolution is not survival of the fittest. Evolution is survival of most adaptable to changing conditions.
I would like to add that humans, as a species, have almost stopped evolving because natural selection no
Yes and no.
I'd say the main difference is in which parts came from each grandparent. You inherit one of each chromosome from both mom and dad, but the chromosome is a random(ish) combination of their parents. The recombination of DNA doesn't occur until the sperm/egg are created.
Last post!
Nager's Syndrome. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
It's not quite that simple. See ring species for one example where that categorization breaks down.
Well, I suppose they would agree with that, if you define evolution as creatures gradually becoming worse. I do not know of any creationists who deny that species change over time. What most creationists deny is that speciation (the development of new species from old) occurs.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Who in the world talks about Darwinism anymore? What century are you living in? Contrary to religion - science adapts and changes based on the latest and greatest information.
I'm not a creationist but when I debated this point with one, he started to divide things into "micro-evolution" (a few minor changes) and "macro-evolution" (the collective effect of many mutations that would lead to changes as significant as a species change), and said that "micro-evolution" had been observed while "macro-evolution" hadn't (please ignore all fossil records, every single minor change in every species hasn't been documented after all!), and therefore GAAWWD could have intervened in cases of "macro-evolution."
They'll just keep jamming God into the bigger gaps as the smaller ones are closed.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You can't use scientific evidence that Creationists believe is false and made up to prove a point about Creationism. Either you accept science or you don't.
It's not that the public education system doesn't teach these things. It's that it's incredibly boring to most people so they don't remember it. I'm sure there's plenty of things you learned in school that bored you that you don't remember. A trivial example for me is that I cannot confidently name all the states and capitals in the U.S. even though I memorized that for tests in school. That's just a piece of trivia that I found boring and useless so it's not something I can recall easily.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Good to know! I'll have to find a scientific paper on this and show it to a creationist to see what they come up with next.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Quote: '... actually much fewer mistakes, or mutations, are made.'
This is a very wrong statement. Mutation is a basic natural process, a normal occurrence during reproduction. That's how DNA works! To call it a "mistake" is idiotic and implies some entity somehow "preferred" no mutation ever.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." -- Tennyson
The only mutant powers I really want is the one from Philip K. Dick's "The Golden Man". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Man
"Also, for you developers out there...can you imagine what would happen to your code if someone started randomly flipping bits in your machine's memory? Would it produce new, useful features? Of course not!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_(genetic_algorithm)
Cool. Learn something new every day, I guess.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
1) We don't know everything about the physical universe. 2) We don't understand everything in the Bible. 3) We don't really know what happens when something is created from nothing,
1) So? not nowing everythign does not mean anything is possible. Every tst for God has come up negative.
2) Yes actually, we pretty much do. Well, those of us who have studied it's history. There are a few minor interpetation points based on culture, but like I said, they are inor differences regardless.
3) That's impossible. No one says something was created from nothing except people who believe in magic.
" I don't think the age of the universe was ever meant to test anything, except maybe the egos of the people who think they have to be right about everything in the Bible."
The bible in no way indicates the age of the earth. It's a complete fallacy and biblical ignorance to say so.
According to the myth Adam and Eve descendants where marked so they would be different then the others..what others? Wait, it's an allegory so it doesn't matter.
Creating a myth specifically to be non provable means it's not science, so it should stay the hell out of science discussions and stick with philosophy.
"st, wouldn't fewer mutations argue against evolution anyway?"
A) there is no argument. Evolution is real and a fact. Just as solid as gravity or germs.
B) We didn't know how many, now we know. There could have been 1 mutation and that still wouldn't have 'disproved' evolution, simple a refinement on what we know.
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Germ cells are the sperm and eggs which are pretty hardwired in sperm stem cells or ovaries by birth. The non-germ somatic cells which make up the vast majority of your body continue to mutate through your pre-birth development and post-birth life. Cancer is thought to be the accumulation of 5 to 20 such mutations or expression changes in somatic stem cells. This cancer hypothesis should be better known in next decade or two as researchers are furiously sequencing cancer cells to see how they have changed.
Because people are screwing with science to force there incorrect belief down everyone's throat, that's why.
IF God created the world, then he is outside nature. So science doesn't apply. When people start making stuff up that there God impacts the real world, it can be tested and evaluated. IN those case it has always been found false.
SO keep your God, but stop trying to dictate science.
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(I'm not a biologist/geneticist.)
I gathered that from your post.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're right that science and religion can coexist so long as religion agrees to move out of they way when it comes into conflict with science and science has evidence and religion doesn't. That does make your God a bit of a God of the gap, but maybe that is not a problem. Things like "how can we make nature do our bidding?" are by their nature answered by science. Any God worth his salt should be able to answer them, but there's no reason why he should give us the answers on a silver platter.
The reason why I'm not religious is not so much due to the success of science in answering questions about nature as due to the failure of religion to answer questions about ethics and aesthetics and yes - the failure to explain the beginning of the universe/multiverse/cosmos (if it had a beginning). The God hypothesis does not seem to explain anything.
But... how can mutations occur but not evolution? Do they believe that it's impossible for mutations to be passed down to your offspring?
The two most common rationalizations are:
1) mutations happen, but not beneficial ones.
2) microevolution happens, but no amount of it adds up to macroevolution.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Some Creationists say that God planted the fossils and other geological evidence to "test our faith" and I don't buy that.
It's funny that those people who think fossils are a prank God is pulling on them won't consider for a moment that Genesis is a prank that God is pulling on them.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Then a question occurred to me. If a god created the universe, who created the god?
God's God.
It's Gods all the way up, you know.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You receive half your DNA from each parent. Without crossover, there'd be only 4 possible children per parent pair.
That "4 possibilities" applies for each chromosome-pair that is inherited. Humans inherit 23 chromosome-pairs, each of which multiplies the number of combinations by 4. So even without considering the possibility for crossover, the number of different possible children works out to over 70 trillion.
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But the purpose of religion is not tell us the whats and hows of the working of the world, so as a believer _and_ a big fan of science, I have no problems with that. It's not that religion fails to do what science does, but that religion answers a different set of questions. Science has also failed to answer the questions that religion addresses.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Yeah, but people are screwing with science for other reasons all the time, too (like politics). Science will survive that as well.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Maybe that's why He's a Trinity... so the meetings aren't so boring. ;-)
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I understand that country western music listeners have an average of 65 mutations...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
It's not that the public education system doesn't teach these things.
Actually anything related to biology and evolution is a bit of a special case in that most high schools in the United States fail to teach a decent basic understanding of the subject. It's a very regional thing. Some parts of the country on usually do teach it, and other parts are abysmal. In some cases school boards, principals, and "science" teachers actively subvert the subject pushing anti-science creationist misunderstanding. And in all too many other cases, school boards, principals, and individual teachers gloss over biology or avoid it entirely to avoid the problem of irate clueless parents who come in screaming against it.
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Yes, that's what I'm trying to say. I don't want religion to try to explain science (I mean, I suppose I would be okay with it if God wanted to explain everything). I want religion to explain things that aren't explained by science and the non-religious parts of philosophy. If religion can sort of uniquely explain anything then I will be satisfied and I will probably join it, but I don't think it does.
Religion addresses ethics, but it fails to arrive at answers. The failure goes back to the age-old question about whether or not God has the power to decide what's good and what's bad. If the answer is no, God is not really God. If the answer is yes, God is asking you to basically follow his whims.
Why would you follow the whims of God? I mean I think we need rewards and punishments in place if we're going to follow orders. I think that's why religion needs heaven and hell (and similar ideas like rebirth and nirvana and whatnot) to make sense of ethics. You can decide to not follow God, but that's going to suck for you. A believer in a savior God could paraphrase "science - it works, bitches" with "savior God - it works, bitches... You'll have to wait until you die, but it really works. Promise."
The problem with that is that if the mind is the brain, then God would have to make a copy of the information in the brain to transfer it to your new avatar in heaven or hell. Then we would expect there to be a physical copying event of the mind-state right before a person dies. But we don't see that. It could be we're not smart enough to see it. Could be that the mind isn't really the brain, except it looks like it is.
I tend to think that religion has evolved in a Darwinian process that selects for beliefs that maintain social cohesion and strengthen societies.
I'm not telling anyone to quit religion. There is evidence that religion can be a good way to keep in touch with your community and your extended family. There are lots of nice traditions, some of which I follow myself, just because I like to. I think that telling someone to quit religion cold turkey and replace it with science is a bit like telling someone to quit Facebook and replace it with Wikipedia.
Ask them what Adam's hair, skin and eye colors were. Ask them where all the other variants among humans come from.
You've posted in this discussion so your mod points are no good here.
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The answer is simple. A recent study (did I see it here?) showed that bible literalists and athiests have smaller hippocampuses than agnostics, protestants, and Catholics. There's no point in arguing with someone who has a shrunken hippocampus.
Unless God has evidenced himself to you, the only logical choice is agnosticism, since there can be no proof one way or the other. Keep in mind that once you've seen an elephant you can't disbelieve elephants existance. "You're crazy, you just hallucinated that elephant! Was it pink?"
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I think where your analogy falls down is that all genetic mutations are coding errors, whether beneficial or not. It would be more like a computer bug caused by a typo in the programmer's code that made the program calculate faster. I don't, however, remember ever personally running across a bug like this in my own code...
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Not always. Recessive genes are passed on but don't express themselves. If you have one gene for blue eyes and one for brown eyes your eyes will be brown. Two brown eyed people can produce a blue eyed child, since each parent could carry one blue and one brown. If both your parents have blue eyes and you have brown eyes, your father is not your biological father.
Gene selection doesn't cause evolution, except when a genome dies out. Evolution is caused by a beneficial mutation. Humans didn't get their big brains from a random shuffling of genes, there was a mutation in one or probably more pre-humans that made staying alive and reproducing more likely.
Look at it this way -- if your mother has two genes for normal sized genitalia and your biological father has genes for small genitalia, the only way you;ll have a twelve inch dick is a genetic mutation. You can't mix salt and water and get chlorine.
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Sure it is, but it's a crap shoot with huge dice with billions of faces, some of which can spontaneously change the number of spots (mutation).
I actually was as surprised as the researchers that there weren't more mutations, considering all the mutagens in the environment, from chemicals to solar radiation.
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That's what I come to /. for. Well, that and the nerdy jokes.
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I was bored in school because everything they tried to teach I'd already read. I'm sure I'm not the only slashdotter like that. College was different, though, I actually learned in college.
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Note that my submission was completely changed; the only thing that stayed the same was the link.
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Part of the problem is science majors teaching math and math majors teaching literature.
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Odd that I got modded down for "flamebait." This was an early post in the discussion, and it utterly failed at actually attracting any flames. In fact of the two replies one was a clever joke and the other was a furtherance of my argument. Perhaps the modder made a slip of his mouse and accidentally selected "flamebait" when he was trying to select "I disagree."
Unfortunately I find this to be typical of Christians engaged in debate. When rhetorically cornered they resort quickly to one of three canned responses: "it's a matter of faith," "you must have so much pain inside to be so resistant to seeing the light," and yelling to drown you out. I think this falls into the yelling category.
-- QED