Psuedogenes are good for Creationism!

Evolutionist often say that creationism doesn't make any predictions. That there is no way to potentially falsify it. Well, I think that if a Creationist theory includes the Ark and Mankind's fall from Eden there is a nifty prediction that it makes. In fact, it's so nifty that if it's right it could mean that we could solve all sorts of age related diseases.Here's how it goes:So most people know of psuedogenes and how evolutionist say they prove evolution. Creationists then reply that psuedogenes might yet have a purpose that we don't know about. I don't think they need to say that. Creationist should embrace psuedogenes, because they show what creationists have been saying all along. In fact, according to creationism, there should be LOTS of psuedogenes.After all, when all the animals went onto the Ark, there were for the most part only 2 of each kind. Since then, the kinds have undergoing rapid speciation, losing qualities that thier Ark kind must have had. Those qualities should be located in their DNA as psuedogenes! This should even allow the exact discovery of where on the classification ladder you should put the term "kinds."But that's not even the best part. Remember how after the Fall people started aging and dying? Well, presumably God took away some of his sustaining power right away. But that couldn't have been the whole story because it took quite a few generations for people to reach thier currently short maximum life span. Noah lived to about 600 right? Well, presumably God wasn't using his mystical power to keep him alive that long. He must have had mechanisms in his DNA to let him get that elderly. And eventually mutations destroyed enough of them to make his decendents have a maximum life time of about 120. But those beneficial genes would still reside in all of us as psuedogenes!So what do you think? Does that sound like a great research project for creationists or what? If someone was to find those psuedogenes and figure out how to turn them back on, they could prove the bible true and elimiate untold suffering by extending life by hundereds of years!Any takers?

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Does this hypothesis have any other evidence besides biblical accounts?Also, even if we assume that the flood happened 5 thousand years ago, there would still be not nearly enough time for such genetic diversity to occur within individual species. In other words, all the different species of tarantulas could not have arisen from 2 individual tarantulas in such a short time.[This message has been edited by Lam, 04-18-2004]

I'm not sure this is exactly on topic, but you seem to be under the impression that biologists consider the existence of pseudogenes to be evidence of the common descent of organisms.This isn't exactly true. It's not (for instance) the fact that both apes and humans have pseudogenes that suggests common descent. It's the fact that they have a lot of the same pseudogenes. For instance apes and humans both have a broken gene that could synthesize Vitamin C if it worked. In both humans and apes, the gene is broken in the same place.What process would break the gene in the same way, twice, in a number of seperate species? The obvious conclusion is that apes and humans share heredity to some degree. Or they could kill someone. Even if what you say is true, humans have adapted to the absence of the protiens those pseudogenes code for. Re-introducing them could be fatal. I'd be worried that someone would take your idea so seriously - based on a faith in the Bible that supercedes any conclusion based on evidence in nature - that they would rush ahead to do just what you suggest. They'd be so certain that it would work that they wouldn't stop to consider how to protect the subject in case it didn't.

Why do you think that qualities must have been lost to produce speciation? I won't even bother to comment on the enormous rate of speciation which would have had to occur over a couple of thousand years for the ark-saved pairs to produce the current number of extant species. Don't you find it strange that there is no comment on the rapid rate of speciation in any historical material, including the bible? When did this hyperspeciation period finish? Well, if your god used the mutation of functional genes into pseudogenes to produce this reduced lifespan, I assume that he disabled the normal mammalian GLO gene to produce the GLO pseudogene in humans. So, why did he also disable the GLO pseduogene in almost all other primates? And using an identical mutation? Were they somehow involved in the "Fall" story or were they merely collateral damage? Why didn't your god disable the GLO gene in all mammals? I understand that all other mammals are also subject to the curse of death whilst still retaining functional GLO genes. Humans share at least 2 pseudogenes that I know of with other primates. Are humans and primates of the same kind?

I presume you're thinking of GLO and urate oxidase, wj. There are also a whole crop of pseudogenes in apes, humans, and Old World monkeys that are related to smell or to the closely related function of the vomeronasal organ (VNO). Lemurs and New World monkeys have functional versions of these genes. So maybe we're the same "created kind" with baboons and green monkeys, but not howlers or spider monkeys.

Hmmmm. According to Raymon's logic, howlers and spider monkeys having functional genes rather than pseudogenes and therefore should have longer lives than humans. But I don't think this is the case.

Exactly! Humans have the longest lifespan among mammals on this Earth.

And our long lives may be due, in part, to having a broken urate oxidase gene. That means we build up uric acid, a pretty good antioxidant, in our systems - it may help prevent some cancers. Of course, we can get gout from it and spider monkeys can't.

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Exactly! Humans have the longest lifespan among mammals on this Earth.

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This is only due to our technology. Strip this away and I am sure there are some larger mammals, such as whales or elephants, that would outlive us. Only 200 years ago the average life expectancy was almost half of what it is today. Without methodological naturalism it might still be around 45 years.

I don't think so. Even domesticated elephants, which is probably the mammal that has the 2nd longest life span, can't live anywhere near as long as humans. It's not just the average life expectancy. It's how long can something possibly live, and as far as I know humans are the only mammal that can live up to 100 years or so.

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The Laminator

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Good point about the danger of reactivating psuedogenes. I suppose the normal way of testing the function of psuedogenes is by finding corrisponding DNA structure in other animals and reactivating it there. Or probably an easier way would be to just look for a working example of such a gene in the animal kindom.But a creationist might think such immortal psuedogenes are unique to humans and therefor activating them in a human is the only way. I certainly wouldn't want anyone to do this because of my mockery of creationism.Of course, I don't think such a senario happened. But I'm trying to predict where creationism is going with it's next "arguement". They went from Thermodynamics to information theory to the latest arguement of Specified Complexity. I think this last one is going to be short lived because of two things. One is of course the very idea SC information is contradictory. The other is that it's too theoretical for most creationist to wrap their head around.I've been wondering when I'm going to see creationists try to use psuedogenes for creationism since all animals that belong to the same 'kind' must have had the same DNA on the Ark. Of course, human psuedogenes' similarity to other animals will still present them with a problem, but I've seen them gloss over worse.Lam, I realize there's not enough time for normal evolution to occure. Creationists seem to relaize this as well and say that the Ark creatures were some type of super beasts that had a lot more traits(DNA) then animals do now. Then every new species that de-volved lost some of this super DNA until present day when they can't lose anymore because thier current DNA is so crappy. (I guess the super-DNA had a lot of redundancy) I'm simply waiting for creationists to link this idea with psuedogenes and say that they are evidence for the bible.

Saying humans are the best at anything always strikes me as fishy. (Except for language, abstract reasoning, etc) After all, with humans we have a sample size of 6 billion individuals and we have a much better idea of when people were born. These two facts alone mean that we know the upper bound of our age with high percision. We have no such advantages when trying to determine the longest lifespan of other mammals. Add to that the fact that our technology is aimed at helping people live the longest. With domesticated animals our tech is aimed at getting the most use out of them.But these objections are based purely on theoretical ground. If you actually know of research that's looked into this, I'll of course bow to the evidence.

so you are saying that only two kinds of taratulas entered the ark?
Wow,I did not know you could be there.
learning new stuff all the time.
If you could ever find faith in God,maybe some of your
questions would be answered?
It's worth a try.
So which science teachers are telling the truth and which ones,
are liars?

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Desdamona

The ones who make statements they know aren't supported by the evidence are the liars. The problem is that you have to be ready to assess the evidence yourself. Just taking the word of whoever you like best just isn't going to cut it.