Mikey's concerns about mutations and ancestors

I was wondering how we account for the common ancestor of homo genus? Apparently, our genus has all the elements needed to provide the ancestor. Is the common ancestor hypothetical?Is he circular reasoning? That if we have all of a genus, then we apparently have all that was needed genetically - for an ancestor to have existed, and an ancestor existing gave us all of our morphological attributes?Since bones, and various species collected over time, have produced transitionals, is morphology the only basis for the common ancestor based on bone fragments, and various warped anomolous skull scatterings? What other theory are you working on that could explain skull warpage?Are earlier transitionals found in big numbers?This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 01-07-2005 17:02 AM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

Can accumulative mutational morphologies, derive from the chance happening? If the requirement of the biological system - is functioning interacting and needful parts/organs, then can a chance process make up the system immediately?I will attempt to articulate the process of thought pertaining to the relevant information of this problem.By saying that we evolved through natural selection acting upon random mutation, can all the parts of a system be produced in synchronisation with all the other mutations needed to complete the biological structure? If I have a heart system, will I also need the aorta immediately? Or will there be a willy nilly half-knit, half-baked system in place untill all of the mutations arrive? If so, why would the mutations of a future system be kept? Has evolution got a mind?If obfuscative inclinations derive from your immediate vengeful and biased bonce of uncertain inquiry, then I suggest you put it on ice, untill mikey's full question sinks into the wound. I seek a proper answer to this, and have never got one. It seems information that is part of a system requiring the fittest to survive, cannot take up space for any future system in place. Thereby ruling out any beneficial mutations for a future-system, and prioritizing the needs of the present system.Example; If we have some form of light patch upon our skin - at what stage do we obtain the full eye? If a mutation for an eye comes about - would it be immediately beneficial for the present willy nilly, half-baked skin patch? If the allele is kept - why is it kept? Has evolution a mind to keep it? Should it preserve a lense mutation? Or will it be useless in a present case?This has always led me to intelligent design, because ID solves these problems. Only an intelligence could have put what is needed - automatically together. As the saying goes - we can't arrive and get fit - we have to arrive fit. No man turns up at the Tour De France unready for the torture ahead of him.I don't think you fully inquire into these questions of importance because you think you're some kind of chance baramin, an evolved organism, whom has his evidence, and is satisfied. But now you must satisfy the full and weighty attributes of these implicative truths.(man, I own).

First of all, humans are the only living species within the genus Homo. Therefore, there isn't any DNA evidence (except for scant amounts of neanderthal mitochondrial DNA) that can give us a clue about the genetics of the common ancestor of Homo. However, the fossil remains, morphologically, fit into a nested heirarchy (the "branching tree of life"). It is quite difficult to point to a single homo species and claim that they are the common ancestor of all species within the Homo genera. If there was still a another living representative from the genera Homo, such as Homo habilis, we could come up with a pretty good answer because of DNA evidence.However, common ancestory between the genera Pan (chimps and gorillas) and Homo is quite strong in comparison. Due to the time elapsed since this common ancestor, it is a little tougher to nail down a time period, but Australopithicicus aferensis/africanus seem to fit in very well for botht the genetic divergence and morphological divergence.

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Since bones, and various species collected over time, have produced transitionals, is morphology the only basis for the common ancestor based on bone fragments, and various warped anomolous skull scatterings? What other theory are you working on that could explain skull warpage?

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Within Homo, yes, morphology and stratigraphy are the basis for constructing the Homo lineage. I bolded stratigraphy because this gives us a relative age for each of the fossils. This gets to your question about warpage, which is not a problem for reconstructing the Homo lineage. If warping were due to specific conditions found in the location of the fossil, then we would expect the relative ages of the fossils to conflict with the morphological data. That is, these fossils are found at different depths but in specific strata. We would expect more warping the deeper the fossil is, just for the sake of argument. However, these fossils are not related to depth but strata. For instance, a H. habilis skull may be found near the surface our buried under hundreds of feet of sediment. However, the characteristics of H. habilis are not affected by depth, but are instead correlated to the ratio of radioisotopes in the surrounding rocks. Warping can not explain away the transitional nature of these fossils.Just for your information, below is the reconstruction of the Homo lineage and the time periods each species lived. You will notice that no Homo species is listed as being the common ancestor for all Homos.In edit: The pic looked like crap when I transferred it over. Check it out at the source: http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html#chartThis message has been edited by Loudmouth, 01-07-2005 18:37 AM

you mean Chimps and Bonobos. Gorillas have their own genus.

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*not an actual doctor

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Example; If we have some form of light patch upon our skin - at what stage do we obtain the full eye? If a mutation for an eye comes about - would it be immediately beneficial for the present willy nilly, half-baked skin patch? If the allele is kept - why is it kept? Has evolution a mind to keep it? Should it preserve a lense mutation? Or will it be useless in a present case?

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We obtain the full eye when it is a full eye. Every stage in between is useful, and improved. Let's start at the very first improvement. Let's say that there is two photosensitive patches on the skin. This is better, obviously, than being totally blind, so it is kept right away. Next, a mutation causes the patch to become a depression. This means that if light enters at an angle it is only sensed on one side of the depression. This gives directional sight. Immediate improvement that is kept.And why is it kept? Remember the old saw "In a kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king"? This applies in evolution as well. Better sight means that you will likely have more children, and your children, having the same advantage, will have more children as well. After numerous generations the majority of the population has the better eye. This increases the chances of any further helpful mutations occuring in an individual that has "Eye 2.0". (I thought we already went over natural selection decades ago?).

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you mean Chimps and Bonobos. Gorillas have their own genus.

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DOH!! Family Pongidae, which includes the great apes, always throws me off. Genera within Pongidae: Pan (bonobo, chimp), Gorilla (gorilla), and Pongo (orang). That, and the double named species (eg Gorilla gorilla) have always thrown me off. Maybe I should send back my Zoology degree.

yeah that image is a gif with a transparent background over a colored template. this is where blockcolor is useful (peek to see what I did).

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

Thanks for your time, and explanations. - You explained well about an eye - each new part being useful from the patch. I suppose millions of years might help aswell in the transition.Back next week, more then.

Hi Loudmouth, I'm back now. To my amazement - I didn't know someone understood what I was talking about, indeed - his thoughts preceded my thoughts on this. In the mousetrap thread - I found my answers concerning this.While I think your answer is good, I think that intelligent design answers this better logically. Maybe evidence is on your side, but hmmmm, well - Behe articulated my points well; IDBut the critical point is that that is exactly the level at which Darwinian evolution would have to work in the cell. Every relevant detail has to fit or the system fails. If an arm is too long or an angle not right or a staple placed incorrectly, the mouse dances free. If you want to get to a certain system, but the road there isn't a series of continual improvements, Darwinism won't take you there. - Michael J.Behe.In brief, an irreducibly complex system is one that needs several well-matched parts, all working together, to perform its function. The reason that such systems are headaches for Darwinism is that it is a gradualistic theory, wherein improvements can only be made step by tiny step,(1) with no thought for their future utility.This also got me thinking, if we take all the necessary parts of a system - are we looking at all the mutations that did - step-by-step, happen? If so, can there be a pathway that shows that parts could work without other parts?

G'day again Mike.Behe is wrong about microbiological systems. His claim is that a complex microbiological pathway requires every part to function, and therefore cannot have evolved.There are many problems with his argument. First, it completely ignores the primary way in which new functions arise in evolution, which is co-option of a system to new purposes. Second, he is wrong about the systems being so brittle. In fact, you can add and remove the kinds of "parts" used in evolution, because evolution often works by adding amino acids to proteins; not usually by adding new proteins entire. So the "parts" could be the fragments of proteins, and Behe does not consider that level, which is where evolution works. Also, he does not consider (or only gives passing mention to) the phenomenon of parts being removed, which were used in a predecessor but which are not longer required given development of other part of the system.When artificial evolutionary systems are set up, it is demonstrated that variation and selection can indeed give rise to so-called irreducibly complex systems. Behe's argument is poorly thought out; falacious and false to fact.Cheers -- Sylas

I don't mean to be rude Mike, but how can you have been posting on this site for nearly 2 years without ever coming across Michael Behe's arguments from irreducible complexity?TTFN,WK

MTW Ah the irreducibly complex mousetrap. To see a thoroughly complete trouncing of this idea check out this site.
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/oldmousetrap.html

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But the critical point is that that is exactly the level at which Darwinian evolution would have to work in the cell. Every relevant detail has to fit or the system fails. If an arm is too long or an angle not right or a staple placed incorrectly, the mouse dances free. If you want to get to a certain system, but the road there isn't a series of continual improvements, Darwinism won't take you there. - Michael J.Behe.

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There is improvement of current function and then there is the production of new function. Using the mousetrap, a simple block of wood is useful as a door stop. Add the spring and it makes a great tie clip. Add the trigger and it is suddenly a mousetrap with gradual changes, all of which are functional.What Behe ignores is that parts of any irreducibly complex system have function elsewhere. For example, the actin used in bacterial flagella are used extensively elsewhere in the bacterial cell. Parts of the flagellum also have function in toxicity, namely the type III secretory system. According to Behe and his mousetrap, the only reason humans started lumbering trees was to produce mousetraps. After all, lumbering, metallurgy, and mouse catching had to all develop at the same time for the mousetrap to come about.

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This also got me thinking, if we take all the necessary parts of a system - are we looking at all the mutations that did - step-by-step, happen? If so, can there be a pathway that shows that parts could work without other parts?

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That is the real problem that Behe faces. Small changes in already existing parts can give rise to new functions. For example, opsins are the photosensitive chemicals that give us sight. These opsins are very closely related to a group of proteins/molecules called flavins which are important in metabolism. Hemoglobin S and C alleles are obviously mutated forms of the more common hemoglobin A. However, the C and S alleles have the added functionality of malarial tolerance and malarial resistance respectively. According to Behe, this malarial resistance had to come about in one fell swoop by the guidance of an intelligence, not through simple random mutation.

Hi guys. Let's assume current function, how can a system produce function if there is always a rudimentary system required? At some stage - isn't there some kind of synchronisation inherently needed? Can there be a mass production of mutations, in sync - via chance?These problems bother me Sylas. It just seems so logical that an intelligence answers these questions.Can the functions of say - the heart system, be shown to be working with less parts, as a useful previous system?

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As for me - I'm a constantly verying potentially undefined diffused mass, intrinsically shape shifting thus forming and re-forming in various gaseous nebulae. To locate my form in the context of energy, as defined by the limited homo sapien brain - one can follow the equation; energy = mike x creo speed² = Thus we now know the relevant nature of my true being to be 90000000000000 omni-mikes ~ mike the wiz ~