Some problems with Evolution

painted wolf said:

The chromosomes determine the way the body forms. Thus to have longer arms due to a microevolution you would have to have a similer change in the DNA.

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Wat exactly are you saying here?

painted wolf said:

And yes within a species the number of chromosomes can change. Usually this is a bad thing (Downs syndrom) sometimes not (xxy syndrome)
That is mutation.

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Agreed. But mutations are hardly helpful for the evolutionary process. Any such changes would most certainly die out and not be passed on to succeeding generations. In which case, you are putting all faith in this theory on the event that is far less likely to occur.

DNA determines how you form. Thus a mutation that would cause longer arms would be due to a change in the DNA. The DNA is held in the Cromosomes, thus the mutation would change the Chromosome.

Mutations are the heart of the evolutionary process. They can also be bennifical. The mutation on the Hox gene that increases resisitance to heart disease for instance. If the change was bennifical it would get passed on. XXY for instance is not harmful and can and does get passed down to new generations.

Yes, many mutations are weeded out. But not ALL mutations.

DNA has a helical structure that looks like a twisted ladder. The sides of the ladder are formed by alternating deoxyribose and phosphate molecules, and the rungs of the ladder consist of a "specific order" of 4 nitrogen bases, commonly represented by the letters A,T,C, and G. This is the 4 letter genetic alphabet. This alphabet is identical to our English alphabet in it's ability to communicate a message (except we use 26 letters instead).

The message found in the DNA of a one-celled amoeba, if written out, would have as much information in it's DNA as 1,000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica (info from the book "The Blind Watchmaker' by Richard Dawkins).

Now these 1000 sets of encyclopedias would not consist of random letters, but letters in a very specific order, just like real encyclopedias. So here's the question for Darwinists. If simple messages such as "Take out the Garbage", "Mary Loves Scott", and "Drink Coke" require an intelligent being, than why doesn't a message 1000 encyclopedias long require one??

Remember that bit off the simpson's when mr. burns gives homer a tour of his house, they come to a room containing 1000 monkeys at 1000 type writers, given enough time they will complete the greatest novel ever written (or something like that). Its the same with DNA, although the monkeys are hitting letters randomly, occasionally they type something that makes sense, you keep the bit that makes sense and discard the gibberish, the same thing has been happening over the last 3.5 billion years with DNA, it gives the illusion of creation where in fact its natural selection.

Because it isn't a message its a set of biological commands.
and No it isn't exactly like our alphabet. A can only match to G and T can only match to C.
It doesn't communicate a message like our alphabet does. It is the way four nucleotides attach to each other to form longer molicules and protiens.

wa:do

I'd also like to point out that natural selection is anything but random. >> yeah.

I'd also like to point out that natural selection is anything but random. >> yeah.

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No, but the reason it occurs, mutations, are.

The reasons it happens are not random. Mutations are random, yes, but from the way I see natural selection, they compose a very small amount of evolution. Some people will disagree with me, but that's their belief :}.

Um, mutation is the driving force of evolution, without mutation there would be no evolution! Natural selection is how the detrimental mutations are removed from the gene pool.

That's one theory of it, yes.
That's like saying I'm taller than my parents because of a mutation. Which is not correct :}~.

painted wolf said:

DNA determines how you form. Thus a mutation that would cause longer arms would be due to a change in the DNA. The DNA is held in the Cromosomes, thus the mutation would change the Chromosome.

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Each individual chromosome may change , but will the number of chromosomes change? None of the mutations or changes you have listed would cause a change like that.

painted wolf said:

Mutations are the heart of the evolutionary process. They can also be bennifical. The mutation on the Hox gene that increases resisitance to heart disease for instance. If the change was bennifical it would get passed on. XXY for instance is not harmful and can and does get passed down to new generations.

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But how many of these changes are actually helpful? It would seem that a loss of the tail of one monkey would be a very harmful change among the other monkeys that still have theirs. None of the other monkeys would want to mate with that one, causeing that trait to die out. What am I missing here?

downs syndrom and xxy, xyy syndromes... an additional chromosome. It can happin. It isn't always 'bad' sometimes it just happins and you survive just fine with it.

As for how many changes are helpful... in the long run fewer than are harmful... but when that bennifical ones comes allong it can spread quickly as new generations out perform older ones. The tail-less mutation on our monkey that doesn't need his tail anyway is not a deterant, it has no loss of survivalility. If the monkey was successful he would get mates, if the loss of the tail proved to be bennifical. Say stronger leg muscles due to larger attachment area, then it would help him get mates. Females like males that are successful, males like females that are likewise.

Looks aren't everything.... just look a cocapoo (cocerspaniel/poodle mix)
Eaven Hybrids that have no hope of continuing the species happin in the wild if the timing and the mood of the parents are right.

What I think you are missing is that most changes are little ones, big ones yes are often harmful, but little ones often are bennifical. Keep adding little changes up and soon you have one big change.

wa:do

Linus said:

Here are some problems I have with accepting evolution as fact:

1. Extrapolation from Micro to Macroevolution
2. The mind problem
3. The fact that natural selection does not create new genetic information

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I think your problem is that you don't have your facts straight. I see that you have continued to participate in this thread and are interested in learning. Unfortunately the same can't be said for the people who came up with what you give as problems #1 and #3.

3. The fact that natural selection does not create new genetic information

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This isn't a fact at all. It's not even a hypothesis. It's a dishonest attempt to use terminology from information theory to make a claim about genetics, a claim which can and has been disproved.

If you stretch the definition of "information" to include DNA, you find that new genetic information is created all the time. Mutations "add" information by changing a DNA sequences and increasing and decreasing the number of chromosomes. And, contrary to what you may have been told, mutations can and do introduce traits which can give an organism a reproductive advantage.

1. Extrapolation from Micro to Macroevolution

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It is much more than extraplotation; it is a conclusion based on observing the evidence. There is quite a bit of fossil evidence of "macro" evolution. One good example is the evolution of land animals to whales.

Back to the problem of consciousness, self-aware states, and morality:

Evolution can account for these. It is difficult for us to imagine a state of non-sentience (one in which we make decisions that have no basis in cause-effect relationships, one in which we roam the environment as relatively dumb creatures). However, we can observe such a state from our own babies. They have several instincts that evolved within humans to keep us alive; they have to feed, they have to respond to perceived danger (such as the absence of the mother). However, can you remember being a baby? The mind of a baby is not developed - it cannot hold rational debate, cannot understand large sentences, cannot understand a causal relationship. Most other animals on Earth are like this - they move around, eat, and breed according to their instincts, developed over millions of years.

As humanity evolved over eons, it is conceivable that their brains grew into more complex parts and began performing more complex tasks. This developing brain grew an increasing awareness of itself; as humanoid species evolved, the ones better suited to use their brain in rational ways won the natural selection game. Self-awareness and consciousness grew out of this.

Every other thing that you might associate with sentience can be attributed to our tendency to live in packs. As these packs grew, the need for modes of communication between us grew as well. Vocalization was the primary means for communicating; written language was developed as another way to preserve our ideas. Morality? I believe the human concept of morality comes from our rationalization and actualization of many natural concepts and instincts. THOUS SHALT NOT KILL is humanity verbalizing its own evolved instinct to preserve itself and its race. As for the complexity of many of our moral systems, they can be explained by increasing demands and pressures from our ever-growing societies.

I apologize for the tardiness of my response, but spring break came upon me faster than I could have prepared for. But I had my fun and now I'm back. At any rate, I think I see what you are saying about all the little changes adding up. I think I can see how you can get from one species to another within a kind like that.

But I think the real problem that I have is just that. It happens within a kind. I can see now, thanks to painted wolf, how a new species can arise from an old one to a degree (such as the primates we discussed, or the sand dollars menioned earlier). But how can you begin with a few simple, primitive life forms and have them evolve one way and get something like an elephant, and then evolve in an other direction and end up with a pine tree, while still pulling from the same gene pool? Maybe that is what I'm really missing. Does my question make sense?

Because mutations add to the gene pool; the gene pool is unlimited.

The real problem may be with the way you perceive the world: you look at everything around us and how complex it is, then ask how things could have been just right to get us here, as though the modern world is the culmination of evolution. Evolution has no endpoint, except for the death of all life on the planet. Don't look at the very slight chances of us having gotten exactly to HERE using evolution - instead, focus on how evolution works in general. It's been explained, you just have a hard time grasping it because you are perceiving the world in a way that does not allow you to fully accept the explanations.

I think your question makes perfect sence Linus.
Ok, we have established that change within groups is fact. Lets look at the group that gave rise to everything elce... the humble single celled organism.

Now we have our single celled organism most are distinctly 'animal' like in that they don't photosynthasize... however somewhere allong the line there came into things that bridge the gap between plant and animal these are the Euglenophyta. Euglenophyta are single celled organisms that have both the traits of animals and plants. They move and have 'eye-spots' like 'animals' but they have Chlorophyll like plants, some can eaven catch and eat food as well as photosynthasize.

Somewhere allong the line a small mutation or group of mutations happined where the single celled Protist like the Euglenophyta stoped acting so animal like and started to settle down. After all you don't really need to chase the sun in a treeless world. The sky is open for everyone.
Our early plants started to group together, you have better opportunities in a colony. Thus we get to the simplest of the Green Alge, wich are just that, colonies of single celled plants. From there the tree is just a few hundred million years of baby-steps in evolution down the road.

To get to animals you have the early protists, one group mutated into our Euglenophyta another stayed all 'animal'. Our animal protist also learned at some point that keeping in a colony was a good idea. Again you have some different and 'better' opporttunities in a colony than you do alone. (such as ready supply of mates for gene swaping) Eventually cells begin to depend on one another for survival and begin to take on roles that benifit the entire colony, thus you end up with something like the wierd and all to little studied Placozoa. The Placozoa are the simplest of the multi-cellular animals. They only have 4 'types' of cells compaired to the 10-20 'types' of cells found in Sponges and the 200+ types of cells found in mammals.
From the Placozoa its only a few hundreds of millions of years of 'baby-steps' to get to the elephant :jam:

Remember that just because one population of x mutates into y it doesn't mean that all the x will die out. Mutation happins to individuals not accross the bord with everyone. One individual with a successful mutation will pass that on to most (if not all) its offspring. And so on untill the changes add up enough to make a new 'something'.

hope this helps

wa:do