Gene variant activity is surprisingly variable between tissues
Every gene in (almost) every cell of the body is present in two variants -- so called alleles: one is deriving from the mother, the other one from the father. In most cases both alleles are active and transcribed by the cells into an RNA message. However, for a few genes, only one allele is expressed, while the other one is silenced. The decision whether the maternal or the paternal version is shut down occurs early in embryonic development -- one reason, why for long it was thought that the pattern of active alleles is nearly homogeneous in the various tissues of the organism.
The new study (DOI:10.7554/eLife.25125), where CeMM PhD Student Daniel Andergassen is first author (now a PostDoc at Harvard University), uncovers a different picture. By performing the first comprehensive analysis of all active alleles in 23 different tissues and developmental stages of mice, the team of scientists revealed that each tissue showed a specific distribution of active alleles. https://www.sciencedaily.com/...ses/2017/08/170818092138.htm
A forthcoming book by biologist J. Scott Turner, Purpose & Desire: What Makes Something Alive and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It, is a real shot across the bow of modern evolutionary biology.
"....writing his third book, currently titled "Biology's Second Law: Evolution, Purpose and Desire", which builds the case that evolution operates through the complementary principles of Darwinian natural selection (biology’s "First Law") coupled to homeostasis (biology’s "Second Law")."
He at least seems like a real scientist but he's funded by the Templeton Foundation which is a very large flashing red light.
Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed. Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
This is a series of 12 short videos, each a couple/few minutes long and which briefly answer some common questions about and objections to evolution.
The titles are:
#1 What Is Evolution, Anyway? #2 Is Evolution Random? #3 Have We Ever Seen Evolution Happen? #4 Can Evolution Make an Eye? #5 Have We Ever Seen A New Species Arise? #6 Evolution Is Dumb #7 Why Do Men Have Nipples? #8 Does Evolution Violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? #9 Can Evolution Create Information? #10 Why Are There Still Monkeys? #11 Are Humans Still Evolving? #12 Does Evolution Have a Point?
In the comments section of the last video, I found this little ditty:
quote:
On the 12th day of Evolution, Darwin's Beard gave to me: 12 evolutionary potentials , 11 "yes we're changing"s, 10 evolutionary branches, 9 duplicate genes, 8 thanks to entropy, 7 looks at nipples, 6 good enough traits, 5! Isolated Mosquitos! 4 light sensitive organelles, 3 silent crickets, 2 DNA blue prints, & an explanation of evolution.
BTW, the title screen is a sketch of Darwin with an extra-long beard in which we see 12 finches nesting. I didn't try it, but apparently you can choose any of the 12 videos by clicking on the appropriate finch.
YouTube video, part of a series. This one is an interesting examination/explanation of natural selection using an a-life simulation. A population with a few defined traits (eg, speed, size, sensing range) are run through many generations and the results are graphed out and discussed. Basically, what we would assume to be more advantageous traits (us playing "intelligent designer") doesn't always match what prevails in an actual system.
quote:Yet unanswered questions piled up. In the film, Ken Ham, founder of the Ark Encounter, remarks that his followers should listen to young-Earth “experts,” even though they are too smart for most people to understand. For a while, that was enough for me. Even when I went to college as a physics major, I was expecting to learn the skills I needed to prove the young-Earth doctrine. As I began doing real academic research, though, I saw over and over that deep time and evolutionary biology have real, demonstrable applications. My trained skepticism of mainstream science weakened.
When I was finally able to accept the truth about the world”””that creation is much bigger and older and more complex than I could have ever imagined”””everything changed. I still had the same fascination with the world, but I was seeing so much more than ever before.
And concluding:
quote:Yet, even now, I still think in the language and framework of creationism. When I read about a new discovery from an ancient civilization, my first instinct is to wonder what part of the Old Testament it fits into. Medical research that depends on evolution seems suspicious to me. I still assume exposed rock layers on a cliff face represent a global, cataclysmic flood. When I look up at the night sky, I catch myself again wondering how God managed to make starlight traverse billions of light-years in mere centuries.
But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Every time I catch myself thinking in creationism, I experience the same thrill at rediscovering how vast and beautiful the cosmos really is. God became much bigger to me when I accepted the truth about the cosmos.
I no longer have to know all the answers; I don’t have to struggle to cram creation into a 6,000-year box. I’m not afraid of losing my whole worldview over a difficult question. I get to learn, rather than endlessly debate. Every day is a brave new world.
Another poor creationist succumbs to the spell of sophisticated word magic. Even though he supposedly retains much of his creationist mindset, in reality he lost it in the classroom.
As I began doing real academic research, though, I saw over and over that deep time and evolutionary biology have real, demonstrable applications.
But they don't, that is an illusion created by the word magic.
Medical research that depends on evolution seems suspicious to me.
As well it should because there is no medical research that depends on evolution. Typically this kind of mistake comes from the habit of treating microevolution as part of evolutionary theory, and that's probably because creationists don't make enough of the fact that microevolution is really just the built in variations that belong to the genome of each Kind and that macroevolution cannot possibly follow from it.
I still assume exposed rock layers on a cliff face represent a global, cataclysmic flood.
And they do. Too bad evo word magic talked him out of that one too.
So then yet again you did not read the source, but rather you "reply" out of ignorance. That has never worked for you before, so why would you think that it would work for you here?
quote:Growing up as a creationist, I always knew that the time it takes for light to travel to us from distant stars and galaxies was a huge problem. We believed that both the Earth and the whole universe were created instantly just sixty centuries ago, rejecting the scientific consensus about the Big Bang. With only 6,000 years for light to travel toward us, the problem of distant starlight is one of the oldest and most obvious challenges to the young-earth framework. It was one of the reasons I was motivated to pursue physics, and pursuit of this question ultimately helped provide the final straw that broke down my faith in creation science after years of questioning.
As with virtually every obvious challenge to their beliefs, creationists have developed numerous explanations to avoid plain conclusions. . . .
...
The cycle proceeds like a cosmic game of whack-a-mole, with each new explanation more creative than the last. This is all most creationists need. In We Believe In Dinosaurs, Ken Ham is caught on film saying, “You should listen to our PhD experts talk, even though you won’t be able to understand anything they say,” and his slip keenly illustrates the underlying strategy of the movement. Creationism doesn’t have to prove anything; it only has to maintain a veneer of scientific respectability. Their goal is control, abusing science to safeguard their authority. As long as they can maintain that their pseudoscience is “just as plausible” as the mainstream alternative, their power to interpret Scripture unchallenged remains protected.
But plausibility wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to know the truth, to figure out explanations that would get stronger over time, not weaker. I wanted young-earth creationist models that could make real, testable predictions about reality. Scientific advancements don’t happen just because a new theory springs up; they happen when a new theory is able to explain both the failures and successes of the previous one. I decided to major in physics so I could understand every theory for myself.
As the years passed, I spent more and more time reading everything I could about geology, biology, and astrophysics. My limit for inter-library loans was always full. I was looking for a pattern, a reason why astronomy and geology and evolutionary biology seemed to be so good at making predictions and lined up so well with other areas of science.
No matter how much I learned, the problem of starlight and time never seemed to get any easier to solve.
. . .
The universe simply could not be young, and my whole edifice crumbled.
If I had seen the same image even a year earlier, I don’t think it would have had the same effect on me. My deconversion from creationism was the result of years of learning new information and exposing myself to different ideas. It just happened to reach the breaking point at the right time.
Over the decades I've been collecting testimonials from ex-creationists; David MacMillan's is just the most recent. The first I heard of were the ICR-trained creationist geologists doing petroleum exploration field work who suffered severe crises of faith when faced with rock-hard geological evidence that the ICR had told them did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning. It wasn't any your phony "word magic", but rather a massive dose of reality in the form of actual evidence. In all the other testimonials, what led them away from creationism was learning what the science actually is and says and what the evidence actually is.
In contrast, creationism relies and very heavily depends on misrepresenting the science and the evidence to create a fabric of lies and deception to feed its audience. The only way for that to work is for their audience to be ignorant and to remain ignorant. The last thing that they want is for their audience to go and learn the actual science, even when the motivation is like David MacMillan's: to prove creationism to be true. Instead, the outcome is always to expose creationism's falsehood and deceptions.
Creationists are the ones who deal in "word magic", with you as a prime example in how you continually redefine the meanings of words in your desperate attempts to change reality. Creationists use words and definitions to deceive and confuse and convince, like the worst kinds of shyster lawyers.
In contrast, science uses words and definition to describe their observations as clearly as possible. Furthermore, science does not simply proclaim its conclusions and expect you to accept them unquestioningly, but rather it demonstrates how it arrived at its conclusions, including starting from the most basic physical/chemical/biological processes and building upon those to develop all levels of scientific thought.
Given a scientific explanation, you can analyze all the physics et al. that went into it and you can test it. Most scientific explanations can stand up to and survive such verification and testing -- indeed such verification and testing is SOP in science. Given a creationist explanation, it almost immediately falls completely apart when you attempt to verify or test it.
Those experiences are not lost on creationists who bother to learn the science, nor was it lost on David MacMillan. That was the point in providing these links here. Your nonsensical complaints of non-existent "evo word magic" are worse than useless, serving only to expose how intellectually and morally bankrupt creationism and those religions that depend on it are.
If you want to continue with this, then please start a topic.
Upon review, I see that this was indeed not intended to be a debate topic. Closing for now....anyone who feels the need can start a new topic on the matters which they wish to discuss. This includes restarting this topic itself with the same title.
Please stay on topic for a thread. Open a new thread for new topics.
Points should be supported with evidence and reasoned argumentation.
The sincerely held beliefs of other members deserve your respect. Please keep discussion civil. Argue the position, not the person.
5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.
Some added commentary is OK, but if you want it to be a debate topic, propose a topic to be placed into one of the debate forums (not an individual "Links" topic).
Adminnemooseus
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Change to admin ID.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fix quote box code (d'oh).
Now it's more concise and hopefully more readable. I've adopted an approach of telling the story of how the site had come about and how my experience with creationism had grown and had developed my attitudes towards "creation science" and creationists. I also offer some basic facts (http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/index.html#FACTS) and some advice for creationists and non-creationists (http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/index.html#ADVICE).
Share and enjoy!
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Fixed link per message 136.
™ Version 4.2
(1)
