Intended mutations

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However, I'd be very interested to learn what you believe is the end of evolution of a species, other than extinction of course.

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Being that I don't ascribe to the current, prevailing paradaigm of evolution, it makes no sense for me to answer a question that I believe doesn't exist to begin with.

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Horses used to have multiple toes, for example, but now only have one toe on each leg and vestigial remnants of the tarsal bones from the other digits.

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I assume you are reffering to Protohippus, but if not, do you have a source?

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Why does it suggest that?

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Chameleon employ camouflage by using chromatophores. The chameleon has these highly specialized cells that lie underneath layers of the skin. Underneath this first layer are guanophores. These guanophores reflect light creating the illusion of incandescence. Octopi and some other cephalopods are similar in that they can manipulate chromatophores by contraction and expansion as the result of controlling muscle fibers. They can terminate the color shift at their whim with the use of motor neurons. As a result, under hormonal control, they can change color to conform to their background through the dispersal or aggregation of granules within the cell . If you assert that these instances are the result of a natural progression of evolution, then you are going to have to explain the mechanisms and reasons for this occurrence. Why did these creatures develop this distinct feature and no other, when all organisms could benefit from them as well? I don’t know about you, but I sure would not mind blending in with my environment. If you cannot logically answer this, then you will have to explain how the mantis, chameleon or octopus granted itself these procryptic abilities. We know they are able to manipulate their body, but how would they be able to create this in their offspring’s genetic code? If you cannot answer that either, then you are going to have to admit that nature has a mind and that it exhibits intelligence. If you cannot do that either, then we are, inescapably driven towards an alternate answer. Out of all other options, we would have to concede that something else is the cause of this spectacular feat. Does this verify that God or a Creator of sorts created this? Certainly not, however, we can greatly assume that something cognizant is the cause of these features, because as we’ve seen, there is nothing in nature, that would alone, account for these occurrences. What other choice do we have left?

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The environmental conditions that each population exists within guides evolution.

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And what evolutionary neccesity determined by enviornment does art and music pose towards a relevance to survival in a Darwinian sense?

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It is guided, but it just doesn't appear to be guided by an intelligent entity.

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I guess that is only in the eye of the beholder.

Probably similar to language, as a means of communication which strengthened social bonding. As for art, a picture is worth a thousand words, so it may be considered shorthand language. As for music, it conveys emotion, like facial expression, and sometimes works better than words. Additionally, I believe not all people learn best through words, some are more visually attuned and some more attuned to sounds.

Welcome to EvC NJ.

But my hand was forced. I have merely shown how the anaologies presented to me, are in my opinion, not logically the equivalent of a random-chance evolution, scenario.As far as I can see, they show evolution happening, but they don't prove that it happened completely randomly for the experiment was helped. They PROVE that their experiments were succesful, but they don't prove it's what happened historically.You can't use an example of random chance by using an example of designers showing an experiment of random chance. That defeats the whole purpose of what I am saying; that if chance made us, it's one hell of a good experiment to prove it did. One that should include equivalent substitutions. But I used Mod's analogy of computers, only I said that I would prefer his experiment to have not included humans. This might seem like I'm being unfair, but we're dealing with extraordinary variables.

Hi, welcome.I pretty much agree with your last paragraph. The Hoyle quote is almost a truism to me also.I think it's not unfair for Theists to be convinced by what they see with their eyes, in realtime. It's a grand creation.

Q, maybe another theist can adress this if I don't get back to you soon. Thanks for your input. (I'm not ignoring you, I just want to finish my painting before I go on holiday. Lol. )God bless. (Or, pink unicorn bless )

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define "complexity" in the context you are using the word.

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Alanine, arginine, asparagine, aspartic acid, cysteine, glutamine, glutamic acid, glycine, histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, proline, serine, threonine, tryptophan, tyrosine, and valine. All of these 20 amino acids must be bonded by peptides and in a sequential order just to form one of the four necessary proteins. They each have units and subunits composing of one amino and globulins. None of which can be synthezised in a laboratory. This was demonstrated by Louis Pasteur long ago, but has been attempted by numerous scientists. So, the theory of spontaneous generation is out the window.This is the complexity I speak of, and this just on the molecular level. This delicate balet has to be played out constantly for life to have formed at all and to continue.

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Perhaps you might also explain what you believe to be the "normative biological theory of evolution."

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Well, this isn't something that I could aptly summarize with brevity, but if I had to, it speaks of organisms building off of one another through recombinant of DNA sequences that change one organism into another slowly over time. But even that is at odds with itself when you throw punctuated equilibrium into the mix.

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So, what you are saying is that because you don't believe that complexity can increase evolution never happened?

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I don't believe macroevolution has ever taken place, so I can't even answer the question you posed.

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Again, can you be more specific as to exactly why you believe that increasing complexity is impossible and why it couln't have evolved?

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Nothing is impossible. It could have happened but evidence is scant of such an occurance either in the distant or near past, as well as right now. What I'm suggesting is that is so fiercely complex that it is highly improbable that could have origniated at random in order to get it right long enough to even make life possible. And even supposing that it did, what are the odds that it could continue in such unparalleled harmony?“In each enzyme a number of key positions are occupied by almost invariant amino acids. Let us consider how these enzyme sequences could have been derived from a primordial soup containing equal proportions of the 20 biologically important amino acids. At a conservative estimate, say 15 sites per enzyme must be fixed to be filled by particular amino acids for proper biological function. The number of trial assemblies needed to find this set is easily calculated to be about 10^40,000- a truly enormous, super astronomical number. And the probability of discovering this set by random shuffling is 1 in 10^40,000. This latter number could be taken as a measure of the information content of life as reflected in the enzymes alone. The number of shufflings needed to find life exceeds by many powers of 10 to the number of all atoms in the entire universe.”Dr. Wickramasinghe is neither an evolutionist nor a creationist. He's simply reporting what he knows to be true.

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sometimes go backwards, if I understand your statement.

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They are called "vestigials".

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Vestiges are not an instance of going backward. That would an instance of retaining something that is not necessary any longer. Why aren't we devolving? Why is it that in one breath they say that life isn't progressing, just changing, yet it always seems to be leading upward?That's what I mean.

It is important to note that there is nothing in the evolutionary process of descent with modification and natural selection that requires progress. The increase in complexity and sophistication of life over time is due predominantly, but not exclusively, to two significant factors having nothing directly to do with the mechanisms of evolution:

• Once an improvement is fixed within a population, in the absence of new pressures against it it will remain within that population because of the survival (ability to produce progeny) benefits.
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• "Evolutionary arms race" is the name of the other significant factor. The cheetah evolves greater speed and agility to catch the gazelle, so the gazelle evolves better hearing, speed and agility to evade the cheetah, so the cheetah evolves better smell and more blending coloration, so the gazelle evolves a different smell and better eyesight, so the cheetah evolves greater speed and agility, and so forth and so on.

If by mechanisms and reasons you mean the precise events and occurrences that led to a specific evolutionary change, then in most cases this can never be answered. For example, what caused the deactivation of the human vitamin C gene? We used to be able to synthesize our own vitamin C - we still have the gene, but it is inactive now. How could we ever know how the deactivation of this gene specifically happened? We can't do genetic analyses of creatures that have been extinct for 40 million years.Your question contains an inherent fallacy. There are many things we can simply never know. Pick a random pebble from your backyard and tell me how it came to be there back to the minute of its first formation. You can't do it. And it isn't because a designer put the pebble there. It's because there simply is insufficient available evidence to answer the question. One can always pose unanswerable questions.There's another fallacy inherent in your question that suggests that that which we do not know must be ascribed a supernatural cause. When the caveman Og saw lightning and said to Mork that it must have a natural cause, Mork replied that unless Og could describe the mechanisms and reasons involved that the lightening must be the work of a god or gods.The point here is that the history of ascribing natural phenomena to the supernatural has been one of very consistent failure. Every explained scientific mystery encountered so far, from lightning to quarks, has been explained naturally. There isn't one explained scientific mystery that has been assigned a supernatural explanation. Perhaps one day that will change, but it hasn't happened yet, and in the meantime the lack of success of ascribing things to the supernatural must remain a significant factor in assessing the probability that it will happen in the future.Now, if you meant your question about mechanisms and reasons in the more general sense, then the answer has already been provided for you. The mechanisms are descent with modification through the filter of natural selection. As Jar said early on in his brief reply, the reason camouflage was selected for was because those with lesser or no camouflage "got et" (in case you're like me, it took me a while to realize that "got et" is southern for "got eaten").--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, Sat, 05-06-2006 03:50 PM

There has to be a path, even without foresight. Its like the old flipping 100 coins one after the other. You could chart a trajectory through all the possibilities, but it doesn't indicate that there was anything directing it through the path. So we have a mutation that is required in the future that spreads arounda bit. The bat population has lots of these potentials in their genome. A mutation can spread around if it has no immediate effect, so natural selection would not be a factor. If the gene has no effect on reproductive success then NS doesn't happen to it.The way evolution works is not to build a foundation for the future. A gene pool exists and certain combinations of those genes are better at surviving than others. Occasionally a gene arrives that spreads around (drift), and in combination with some other genes means that the bats embryo develops in a way that increases reproductive success. In our case, it is an ability to fly a little.Once these genes come together, they are likely to spread since that bat is likely to make offspring which also posess this combination, and those offspring are also likely to posess that combination. The gene's frequency in the population increases. This is happening every generation in general, and most of the time it remains in a stable state. Occasionally this stable state shifts, perhaps by an introduction of new genes (a new population or the 'invasion' of a significant mutation) and the population has to find its new stable position after a period of relatively significant change.It is tempting to think of some kind of intent behind it, I agree, but we can do the same with our own evolutionary programs. Look back and say 'if it wasn't for this mutation at just the right time, it would not have produced this result'. However with large population size (including the time dimension ), we would expect to see some mutations causing change and it would be jumping the gun to assume intent just because they happen. As has been mentioned - if there was a trajectory where an unsuccessful reproductive machine was produced, it would be selected out and that trajectory would not be possible. If it could be shown that such a trajectory had to have happened for a certain result we see today, then that would be evidence for intentional mutations. This is the kind of test I proposed to you in my first post. I understand your objections. Yes, some programmers programmed the environment (actually in the 80 byte program one it was an already existing environment - the computer's RAM). However, the programmers did not design the final outcome. The radio, the aeriel, or the
17 byte program. Indeed - human programmers and designers could not design these things, the radio defied understanding.Evolution is a theory about populations existing in an evironment struggling for the resources of that environment. It is not a theory that explains the origins of environments, just how its populations change over generations.My point was nothing to do with random processes per se. These evolutionary processes did involve non-directed 'mutations'.And yes, there was a 'trajectory', if I chose I could trace a trajectory down the generations. If you follow my link, you can do the same thing, at your leisure. Yes, every single mutation that occurred in the ancestry of every currently existing living thing was succesful - by definition! However, there are many many many many many many many more that did not make it. Well for the program to come into existence by itself would be abiogenesis something we cannot do. However, we can explain what happens once a population of replicators does exist (where there is differential reproductive success), its called the theory of evolution, and its dead good

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Probably similar to language, as a means of communication which strengthened social bonding. As for art, a picture is worth a thousand words, so it may be considered shorthand language. As for music, it conveys emotion, like facial expression, and sometimes works better than words. Additionally, I believe not all people learn best through words, some are more visually attuned and some more attuned to sounds.

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I don't see how playing music or painting is going to help you survive 'out in the wild.' It bears no relevance to any survival mechanism in a Darwinian sense. In any case, its unquestionable that humans are radically different from animals. Why do suppose this gulf affixed between us is so great?

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Welcome to EvC NJ

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Thank you. This message has been edited by nemesis_juggernaut, 05-06-2006 04:24 PM

I don't want to shift the discussion from mutations to abiogenesis, but no one working in the abiogenesis field endorses a scenario for the origin of life that includes the step Dr. Wickramasinghe is talking about. All agree that complex molecules coming together spontaneously through a series of successive trials is wildly unlikely, and no such possibility has ever been seriously proposed within the abiogenesis community. Why Dr. Wickramasinghe (and his collaborator Fred Hoyle) felt the need to rebut a ridiculous scenario not under serious consideration is hard to fathom. We are devolving, in a sense, but only as individual acts of reproduction. A large percentage of human fertilized eggs have sufficient genetic problems that they spontaneously abort within the first few weeks (there are, of course, other causes in addition to the genetic ones). Often the women have no knowledge that they were ever pregnant.Those who succeed in being born with serious genetic defects are less likely to survive to reproduce. Consider such genetic diseases as cystic fibrosis, Down's syndrome and hemophilia - all these dramatically reduce the chances of reproducing and passing on their genes to the next generation.On the flip side of the coin, those with a mix of alleles and/or new mutations that bring with them greater likelihood of producing progeny, perhaps something psychological like a way with the opposit sex (we don't have to consider non-heterosexual scenarios, of course), or perhaps something physical like strength and athleticism that provides success on the athletic fields and therefore the increased attention of many of the opposite sex. These genetic changes that increase the opportunity to reproduce are more likely to be passed on to the next generation. My previous post should have answered this question, but let me say a bit more just to be clear. People are not saying that life isn't progressing (or if they are, they shouldn't be). They're saying that there is nothing inherent in evolutionary processes that causes increasing complexity. But life is a competition, and each advance by one species in an ecological niche has to be met by corresponding advances by other species threatened by that advance, otherwise they'll become less successful over time, perhaps even extinct.--Percy Correct spelling of Wikcmarahisnhe's name --PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, Sat, 05-06-2006 04:27 PM

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Hi, welcome.

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Thank you. This is a very polite forum, which I'm not used to. I'm more accustomed to ad hominem attacks. This is quite nice. I like here WAY better.

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For example, what caused the deactivation of the human vitamin C gene? We used to be able to synthesize our own vitamin C - we still have the gene, but it is inactive now. How could we ever know how the deactivation of this gene specifically happened? We can't do genetic analyses of creatures that have been extinct for 40 million years.

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Who is the 'we' you are reffering to? Humans or mammalia?

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Your question contains an inherent fallacy. There are many things we can simply never know. Pick a random pebble from your backyard and tell me how it came to be there back to the minute of its first formation. You can't do it. And it isn't because a designer put the pebble there. It's because there simply is insufficient available evidence to answer the question. One can always pose unanswerable questions.

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Your point is taken, however, there should at least be some reason that would lead us to believe in this or that. I feel that the current and former evolutionary model is insufficient in answering these questions outside of some abstract reason why it should have happened.

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There's another fallacy inherent in your question that suggests that that which we do not know must be ascribed a supernatural cause. When the caveman Og saw lightning and said to Mork that it must have a natural cause, Mork replied that unless Og could describe the mechanisms and reasons involved that the lightening must be the work of a god or gods.

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I think that God is the platform by which all things emerge. But for however much Og and Mork came to some bad conclusions, I think its equaly egregious to invent some imagined dialogue about dinosaurs and 'cavemen' simply by looking at bones. Yet, this is what we see on shows featureed by Discovery or National Geographic. Take for example, T-Rex. T-Rex is imagined as having these deep, gutteral bellows and ferocious roars. Based soley on the inferences of what we know about reptiles currently, T-Rex conceivably would have hissed, not growled. Being that we only have the frame of a dinosaur only, and even of that most skeletons are incomplete, what compelled anyone to think this? They concoted a large assumption, IMO. Looking at the chest cavity w/o any inward components available, what scientific methodology was used in ascertaining the sounds made by T-Rex? But this typifies what I'm talking about. Speculation becomes theory, and theory becomes truth, but so much of it is based on, what?

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The point here is that the history of ascribing natural phenomena to the supernatural has been one of very consistent failure. Every explained scientific mystery encountered so far, from lightning to quarks, has been explained naturally.

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If the nature of the supernatural is true, then it can't be detected by the senses of the body simply because it exceeds our ephemeral bodies. What's important to remember is, no one can prove the existance of God. Anyone that claims that they can is in for a heartache. At the same time, I believe that we can greatly infer that something beyond the realm of the physical, beyond space-time created all that is, or at least allowed for the platform or the vehicle for which it would emerge. But I don't claim it to be a fact. Evolution on the other hand is strictly natural, and therefore, is limited to explaining things from a naturalistic point of view only.

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I don't see how playing music or painting is going to help you survive 'out in the wild.' It bears no relevance to any survival mechanism in a Darwinian sense.

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You don't think that group identity and cohesiveness was important to the survival of early humans? We are extremely emotional and social creatures and connecting on an emotional level with others through art and music, and also religion, would seem to me to be a large part of how we became the dominant species on the planet. If you are in a group of people who share common emotionally-engaging rituals such as religion, dance and art then you are likely to want to work together as a group, to care for each other's children, and to come together to defend against dangers.In the deserts of the US southwest, there exist quite a few spots of great concentration of ancient American Indian pictographs which are called "newspaper rocks".The reason they are called this is that they were used by these nomadic people to communicate important events and seasonal messages.

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In any case, its unquestionable that humans are radically different from animals. Why do suppose this gulf affixed between us is so great?

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We are not so radically different from animals except for one thing:GreatBigBrains