Evolution in pieces.

crashfrog:
Ah, but engineering is science, right? So you'd accept the fact that engineers use natural selection + random mutation to design circuits and jet-planes far superior than anything humans could develop unaided as evidence of the creative power of RM + NS? I mean, you wouldn't want to be inconsistent, right? Or accused of ignoring evidence contrary to your position?Right?John Paul:
Really? What is the evidence to support your assertion? What circuits were designed that were far superior to anything humans could? I have seen one alleged circuit however it was never shown that humans couldn't have done the same. As for jets, they did start with a jet and a jet was the result, so what's your point?What advancements required the belief that all of life's diversity owes its collective common ancestry to some unknown population(s) of single-celled organisms that just happened to have the ability to reproduce?Random m utations culled by natural selection have never been observed to anything that the ToE requires. It can't be tested objectively. It is only a belief.Simplest natural explanation? What is the evidence that random mutations can give any organism any benefit? How do you know they are random? Something besides ignorance will do.

For instance: No webpage found at provided URL: http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/nicholson00evolution.htmlYou'll notice: and And that's from 10 seconds at Google. There was a great Scientific American article some months back. Circuit design using evolutionary algorythims - aka "genetic programming" is pretty well-documented in the fields of computer science and electircal engineering. With an ignorance of the mechanisms by which organisms adapt to changes in their environment, you wouldn't be able to predict how bacteria might react to misuse of antibiotics.There's an entire thread on the benefits of evolution to science. I suggest you join it. The vast number of observed beneficial mutations, of course. No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.htmlWhat else would they be? Again, it's the simplest explanation. If you want to say that they're directed you'll need to propose whatever agency is directing them, and by what mechanism they are directed. And you'll have to have independant evidence for both the director and the directing mechanism.Now, for my part, random things do happen. Including mutations. There's no reason to believe that a given mutation isn't random unless you have specific evidence for that specific mutation's purposefulness.I mean, how else would you prove that something was random?

BUMP[This message has been edited by NoBody, 12-16-2003]

A story.Most evolutionist say that the chance of evolution is about 10000000/1 or higher, I agree, the chance of evolution is very high, and perhaps higher then 100000000/1 but a high chance does not mean that evolution happend, the fact is evolution is still a chance. For example: Lets say you are walking down a street one day and you find a Pistol, and you pick up the Pistol then you go home. Then about 12 hrs later you are watching the news, you hear about a young kid getting shot with a Pistol, you also hear that the young kid who got shot was found dead around the same area you had found the Pistol (not that the reports would know about the location of the Pistol you found, but you know where you found it, and you now know where the body was found, making it apparent that they where found in the same area),anyways, you call the police and tell them you where walking near that area and you found a Pistol so you picked it up, but now you see the problem is your finger-prints are on the Pistol and when you turn the Pistol in the police report that your finger-prints are on the Pistol, so the police question you, and you are found to be telling the truth, that you did find the Pistol and you don't own it, and that you could not have shot the kid. So then the police start to do some research, and eventually some new evidence shows up on the pistol. The finger-prints of the person who owns the Pistol: according to other reports, and registration information, but then also the bullet in the body of the dead kid show to have been fired from the pistol which "you" found and dilevered to the police, so now the police have a connection of that pistol and that dead kid, anyways they find the registered user of the Pistol and they take him to court they have these evidences in court:1.)Pistol.
2.)Foot-prints of the registerd user around the scene.
3.)registerd user finger-prints on Pistol.
4.)Bullet matching your Pistol found inside the body.
5.)A witness "saying" they saw the registered user running away from that area that the body was found.-also previous records6.)Violent history
7.)Anger managment
8.)Gang recruitmentSo then what happends is the court asks the registerd user what happend, user explain, that he lost his pistol, he has a license for the gun, he was looking for the gun but he found the body so he ran quickly to a phone and called the police to report the occurence, and he left the scene because he didn't want the police to think he was involved and he is pleading not guilty.So now we understand sometime during this period "when you found the gun" the kid was killed, but the problem is this, all the evidences point out that the owner of the gun killed the person because there is no other way the person could have been killed by anyone else but the owner of the gun because there are no other finger-prints on the gun and no more foot-prints eather.So the idea is that we have a 8/1 chance that the owner killed the kid. So he is sent to jail for life. The question in this story would be, is it possible that a person unknown found the gun, had some black gloves on and shot the young kid from a distance and then through the gun where it was found and walked away? I would say yes. The chance is 1/8 but still the chance is possible.Yes, God the creator created everything with black gloves (i.e. metaphoricaly speaking).NoBody[This message has been edited by NoBody, 12-16-2003]

Rubbish. DNA similarities are compatible with a common creator, but not evidence for one. And therein lies one of the most fundemental problems with Creationism; it makes no real predictions.Incidently how does a Common Creator differ from a common designer? Horses? Whales? Humans? Etc? Seems to me you're really not familiar with the fossil record. And how does surviving to reproduce have nothing to do with health or any other benefits? I'd say it was directly linked to it.

Hello John Paul, mind if I butt in?I know that this has already been pointed out to you, but I thought I'd add my twopenneth in as well.Have you actually had a really good look at the evidence provided by DNA? If it is evidence for a creator it seems to be one who started out simple, added bits, slowly changed others, kept retroviruses in swapped bits of DNA around and duplicated genes like crazy. It is not simply that the DNA is similar, it is that (for example) we are VERY similar in our genetic make-up to Chimps (and Bonobos), slightly more different than Gorillas, then Orangutans ... Old world apes/monkeys... new world monkeys.....prosimians etc etc etcIt seems to me that this creator is doing a very good impression of descent by modification that matches the progression suggested by the fossil record.

Have you ever heard of the Nylon Bug (found here). A flavobacterium acquired the ability to live on nylon derivatives alone due to a frameshift mutation on one of its plasmids. This allowed it to take over a niche that was previously devoid of life. This is exactly what random mutations plus natural selection predicts and it has been observed. It later lost the ability to live on sugars, which is quite amazing. This is another prediction of natural selection, those genes not needed for survival are more susceptible to negative mutations.

Another argument from an irreducibly complex system. This one seems to be making the rounds lately. You might ask yourself if you think that bacteria have always had this particular flagella, what proof do you have that the flagella has always been arranged in this particular way? You can't know, flagella are not fossilized so we have no history of them. Now, take the example of your middle ear. There are three bones lined up in a precise arrangement so that if any of those bones are out of place you will be deaf. Evolutionary theory states that mammals are descendents of reptiles. Reptiles only have one bone in their middle ear. So, since middle ear bones fossilize there should be a record of the transition between reptiles with one middle ear bone and mammals with three middle ear bones. Lo and behold, we do have those transitional fossils. You can reference these fossils here (jumps to another topic on this site, trying to keep bandwidth down).So, is it fair for you to demand a specific evolutionary pathway for the flagella which doesn't fossilize when pathways that do fossilize seem to be strongly evolutionary in nature? You will also notice that the ages for each fossil are given and they are placed in descending order chronologically from top to bottom. Another interesting fact is that during human embrylogical development, jawbones in the fetus move up and become middle ear bones, just as is seen with the fossil record.

quote:

---

Well even if that is correct then you still believe that it just happend with absoulutly no disign?? Purely chance

---

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:

---

and furthermore almost all mutations are harmful. And your saying that all those mutations happend and didn't miss once?

---

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."

Hi crashfrog. I read the SA article. Nowhere does it say that humans couldn't do a better job. However humans did design the components used, the program that was run and the super-computers that ran it.By what mechanism would a mutaion be directed? Design.Ever notice that as with all mutations a bacteria is still a bacteria, a virus is still a virus, yeast is still yeast, a fruit fly is still a fruit fly etc., etc., etc.Knowing that change occurs may be beneficial to science. My point is that it is not necessary to believe that all of life's diversity owing its collective common ancestry to some unknown population(s) of single-celled organisms is not beneficial at all. But I will look for this thread and join in.

quote:

---

Hi crashfrog. I read the SA article. Nowhere does it say that humans couldn't do a better job.

---

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:

---

However humans did design the components used, the program that was run and the super-computers that ran it. By what mechanism would a mutaion be directed?

---

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:

---

Ever notice that as with all mutations a bacteria is still a bacteria

---

Nope - we've seen bacteria become colonial organisms.

quote:

---

a virus is still a virus, yeast is still yeast, a fruit fly is still a fruit fly etc., etc., etc.

---

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."

quote:

---

By what mechanism would a mutaion be directed? Design.

---

You seem to be taking other people to task asking for evidence instead of bald assertion but feel it is adequate to do so yourself. Could you show the design mechanism that created the mutation giving flavobacterium the ability to digest nylon derivatives? See my post above for more information (post #37).

Not theistic evolution- Design. Theistic evolution is in contrast with the current theory. If you would allow theistic evolution into the classroom you are half-way there.Any evidence that those colonies became such via random mutations culled by NS? But anyway even those colonies still reproduce single-celled organisms. Most, if not all, colonies become so as a defensive/ survival mechanism.HOX genes? I wonder if evolutionists will ever tell us how those evolved. Pidgeons are still pidgeons....

Design IS the mechanism. IOW the bacteria were designed to respond to external pressures. In this case nylon. Do you have any evidence that the change that allowed the digestion, was random?

quote:

---

Not theistic evolution- Design. Theistic evolution is in contrast with the current theory. If you would allow theistic evolution into the classroom you are half-way there.

---

Theistic evolution is allowed. Nobody is telling kids they can't believe in God, nobody is telling them they have to. Nobody says we know abiogenesis started the process, which means theistic evolution is never contradicted. Do you think it should be different?

quote:

---

Any evidence that those colonies became such via random mutations culled by NS? But anyway even those colonies still reproduce single-celled organisms. Most, if not all, colonies become so as a defensive/ survival mechanism.

---

Well, they produce single-celled organisms which, as Rei pointed out in the other thread, live exclusively in attached groups and have varying degrees of specialized function... which makes them almost the same as you and all the other multi-celled life around. This doesn't really help your case.Life is fluid. It overcomes boundaries and fills holes, divides and varies and competes with itself - and the blurred continuum from single-celled to multi-celled is just one good example.