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Member Posts: 3514 From: Immigrant in the land of Deutsch Joined: Member Rating: 9.2 |
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Author | Topic: Evolution in pieces. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: The reason that you're alive is that your parents had sex. It has nothing to do with an invisible friend in the sky. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: But you had parents. They had unprotected sex, and that's why you exist. It has nothing to do with a (formerly) Caananite deity.
quote: Do you have any reference for this apart from the transcribed millenia-old oral traditions and legends of a particular nomadic desert shepherd tribe, assembled and ironed out in committee (sometimes through voting), then usurped by followers someone who doesn't exist in contemporary records, and reassembled by yet another committee and yet more voting? Mm.... committee-developed religion... I can just picture that now. "I think this text is holy!" "Well, I don't think it's holy at all. But this text! This is holy!" "But that one says the opposite of mine, you blasphemer!". That must have been a fun weekend.
quote: I didn't even know he was lost. Can't you even keep track of your own savior? ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: "Give me evidence that there isn't an all-powerful invisible pink unicorn ruling the universe." ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: I don't doubt that your parents loved you. And I know you would love to believe in God - we all would. But wanting something to be real doesn't make it real. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: If you took a million people and reverted them to pre-civilization savagery, and gave them the goal of building a computer chip, could they do it? Of course not...right away, at least. However, the people will probably want to hunt for food, and will develop weapons. Developing tools will help them develop weapons. They'll find that their wood and metalworking skills allow them to be better in combat - they will take advantage of a skill that developed for a different purpose, and put it to a different use. They'll then find it advantageous to get better at metalworking and tools. Some people will end up accidentally or purposefully running into the properties of chemistry; others will learn how to harness energy for production. Each step plays on the advantages of others, until eventually you have an atomic-age civilization with computer chips. The same holds true with a bacterium. One step plays on the next; even if the original use of the original parts wasn't at all related to locomotion, their initial purposes can be used for other uses. For example, you could have a surface receptor protein; a new mutation creates a protein that encourages the surface protein to stab outwards and damage an attacking cell. It might eventually serve to function more like a syringe. On top of that, any change that increases the length or maneuverability of the syringe is an advantage. However, at this point, the "syringe"'s motion actually has gotten to the point where it moves the cell slightly. Natural selection takes over from there. Just a sample possible evolutionary route.
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: It's biased chance, because only the ones that do well survive to reproduce. Bad genes get passed on at a much lower rate than good ones,and so good genes "fixate" into the population.
quote: They probably missed millions of times. The misses died out; only the successes lived on. To read/discuss more about genetic fixation, and a demostration of the fact that it works, visit here. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: Actually, the chip took advantage of all sorts of things that humans have never used before - in fact, it took advantage of things that are normally considered a "problem" by humans. It did a truly incredible job.
quote: Theistic evolution. Duh. The people simply created the "universe" that it runs in - they didn't tell it how to change or anything of the sort. The changes are random. Humans, however, *did* "design" the "universe" that it exists in. If you believe in theistic evolution, you're halfway there.
quote: Nope - we've seen bacteria become colonial organisms.
quote: I don't know much about virii and yeast, but it's obvious that you've never read anything about HOX gene studies in drosophila. Heck, why don't we just look at something a big while we're at it, such as pigeons? ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: Wrong. Your argument was for theistic evolution, because it describes an evolutionary process, where the process was started by a designer.
quote: Theistic evolution is allowed in the classroom. Evolutionary theory doesn't cover origins.
quote: Well, we've seen a single celled organism become colonial - what more do you need?
quote: Yes. As I've stated several times, they alternate between living as single celled and multicellular, which makes them an intermediary form.
quote: Yep! Welcome to the wonderful world of evolution, John!
quote: They already have. It's a receptor protein feedback loop with mitosis. Chemically altering when mitosis is stimuated is no challenge at all, and something that can easily occur naturally. Receptor proteins mutate readily as well. Transcriptases can be enabled and disabled easily, and can mutate, as can what activates them. What more do you need?
quote: Join in the thread, then, and explain how morphological changes as dramatic as that can occur, but how there's supposedly some sort of barrier elsewhere that prevents evolution from going further. I'm still awaiting whether you are of the opinion that a change in the number of chromosomes is possible. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: Many smaller primates are bipedal on the ground. Have you ever watched a spider monkey walk? Besides, what sort of barrier is there that you think prevents gradualistic change from switching from a quadroped pelvis to a biped? I can give you tons of intermediates, past and present.
quote: Evolution is not a God - it is subject to the limitation of physics (notice that plants *do* continue to grow higher up, they just can't be in the "tree" shape). ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me." [This message has been edited by Rei, 12-16-2003]
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: It's an example of how common bipedality is.
quote: Wrong. You see, given the absense of a barrier, unless you don't believe that advantageous mutations fixate, evolution is guaranteed.
quote: Chimpanzees are partway between bipeds and quadropeds; they can walk on two legs, but tire easily and need to return to four. Please indicate whether you want another intermediary possibility which is less bipedal or more bipedal than chimpanzees (or let me know when you've had enough examples).
quote:quote: Yes it does. Receptor proteins and mitosis-related transcripases. Please read better.
quote:quote:quote: No. You can't use it for either, because it is predicted by both (well, actually, such adaptation didn't use to be predicted by creationists, but they've pretty much been forced to accept it, so now it suddenly becomes predicted by them also).
quote: You don't know anything about the TOE, do you? That's probably the worst straw man I have ever had the misfortune to encounter on this board. Don't take that as a compliment; you should be ashamed by it. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Past or present?
There are lots of intermediates in the present. The past for homonids is more fragmentary, but we have skeletons like Sahelanthropus tchadensis which shares a number of characteristics with habitual bipeds, such as the position of the nuchal crest (the bone that allows the nuchal muscle in the back of the neck to attach to the skull); however, the foramen magnum (the hole that the spinal cord leaves through) is positioned in the back of the skull instead of the base, indicating to an extent life as a quadraped. In short, it shares characteristics of both. A good example of species that alternate in the present day are chimpanzees and bonobos. I can give a number of other examples that are either more or less inclined to upright walking - your call as to which you would like to see. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
Unfortunately, we don't have the pelvises for many of the older hominids, just the skulls and some leg bones; however, you can learn a lot from them as well. For example, the angle that the skull is mounted to the spine and how the muscles attach to it are strong indicators to how the body carried its head - perpendicular or parallel to the spine. S. tchadensis's skull clearly shows a mix of features, as I talked about above. In next more recent species, O. tugenesis, we have a femur that indicates that it was likely that this species spent most of its time upright. So the main turning point seems to be around tchadensis.
Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting the next batch of fossil finds from the time period of tchadensis and earlier; there's been so much progress recently in this previously fossil-limited time period, I'm excited to see what we find next. I hope it will help clear up some of the current questions (the exact degree of bipedality, whether it's a sister species or a direct ancestor, etc). ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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Rei Member (Idle past 7043 days) Posts: 1546 From: Iowa City, IA Joined: |
quote: Evidence this, please - you keep asserting it.
quote: Your point? I was demonstrating that species of all degrees of dependence on two and four legs exist, and that there is no barrier for gradualism. We didn't evolve from *any* species alive today.
quote: We didn't descend from chimps - you don't seem to be getting the point. The point here is that there is no barrier between being a biped and being a quadraped. Apparently you think that chimpanzees are too toward being a quadraped. Ok then, next species: Spider monkeys. (I'll keep going along the gradualistic path if you want)
quote: What??? You're trying to claim that there *is* a limit here, but then saying that it's my job to prove that it's not there. What you're doing is the equivalent of me stating that I have a pet pink unicorn, you asking for some sort of evidence, and me stating that it is your job to prove that I don't have a pet pink unicorn. If you think there is a barrier, state what it is. If you can't even postulate a single possible barrier, I'm not going to help you do it, because I see no barrier. It's unfair to ask someone to prove a negative. ------------------"Illuminant light, illuminate me."
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