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Evolution and God
- Thread starter Mr Spinkles
- Start date
The contradiction in MY thinking? You're entire theology is one huge conglomeration of contradictions and inconsistences!
Please, do you understand the difference between "figure of speech" and "philosophical pondering"? "Go to hell" is an insult. "Life is Hell" is a metaphor for the suffering and burdens inherent in life.
Duh.
Mr Spinkles
Mr
This is simply not true, Linus. DNA can change, and it changes all the time. Otherwise, we would be exact clones of our parents, and I would not have hemophilia.Linus said:
What makes evolution improbable? Is it the same thing that makes a human-authored text that has been translated dozens of times from dozens of different languages 100% probable? Did you read my post in which I cited an observed instance of one species evolving into another distinct species?
Remember, dan, the alternative explaination to evolution is that species popped into existence suddenly at various points in Earth's history. This is not an explaination at all really, just a denial of any attempt to find an explaination.
It would be quite like someone who denies scientific findings on human embryo development simply because "God makes babies! The idea that a single cell can somehow become something as complex as a human is ludicrous...how does a cell become more cells, after all? The probability of a single cell becoming a complete human being with brain, skull, and arteries in such a short time is zero. It would take at least a decade for a single cell to somehow become a trillion cells (not to mention somehow forming a complete heart, cell by cell--by the way, how does the human survive without a heart?)"
Linus
Well-Known Member
Muad'dib said:
This is a common misconception about Christianity. The Bible doesn't contain contradictions. It only contains statement that seem contradictory. But I have refuted this in another thread so I will not go into it here.
Muad'dib said:
Of course I understand. The two are really quite different. Do you understand what commentary is? Because that I made on your post. Nothing more than observation and comentary.
Pah
Uber all member
Linus said:
If there is no evolution then everything must have come from Noah's ark. Tens of thousands of animals and bird and millions of insects. And all the thousands of plants and trees would have had to be aboard the ark as well becuase everything living on the face of the earth would have been killled in the flood.
(Estimates were refined by my wife, a biology teacher).
Don't forget that so many of the animal species were homosexual as well.
Mr Spinkles
Mr
I have already addressed this point in a previous post. DNA can and does change to the point of making a new species, and this has been observed and documented many times.Linus said:
Again, here is one example of the observed evolution of a new species:
I encourage anyone who wants to know more about observed instances of species evolution to visit http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html The part I quoted is under "5.0 Observed Instances of Speciation".
Why are you Creationists so afraid of evolution being true? Why the hostility towards it? Do you not realize that you are acting in a similar fashion to all those who blindly opposed the scientific discovery of a heliocentric universe?
dolly
Member
Linus said:
You contradict yourself. Adaptions usually change the DNA.
Well, obviously. Why? Because humans didn't evolve from monkeys, and because the goal of all species isn't to evolve to humans. That is a common mistake. One evolves to best suit their environment. Humans and monkeys had different environments and thus evolved differently.
No. Every species has a different genetic make up, but this is not because the DNA is different. It is the same DNA, the same proteins, etc just in a different order, a different number, etc. A new species wouldn't need to have two other species mix in order to exist. The only thing that would need to happen is a mutation which alters a significant protein. This usually happens over and over again to create the new species (especially if it is a point mutation), but it can be "sped up" a bit through deletion/addition mutations.
I address this further down.
KBC said:
They aren't unproven, and they don't necessarily use circular logic. They usually are when informing children in biology about it, but that's only because they can't go that deep because no one will know. There are formulas one can use to test how far back the testing can be used. I can't remember one from the top of my head (learned this a while ago), but I'll look through my old notes and see if I can find them. The inaccuracies were mathematical errors or the fact that those particular scientists are too stupid to realize that carbon 14 can only date back so far. The fault of the scientist, not the dating method.
Let me get this straight. You believe that the skeletons which are acknowledged by scientists as human ancestors to really be dead animals which had a mutation which caused it to die?
Look, first of all, one mutation wouldn't create a change that great. Second of all, one wouldn't consider the animal to be an "ancestor" if it had a negative mutation which caused it to die. Why? Because if it was an ancestor, then we would either not exist, or we would have a considerably shorter lifespan.
No, common sense says otherwise. Fossils need to be formed in specific environments - environments which are usually unable to sustain many lifeforms. The environments that can (IE tropical jungles, etc) also have a warm climate that is still cool/moist/etc enough to provide for all lifeforms - including bacteria. And we all should know what bacteria does to corpses.
Of course evolution is selective. Have you studied it at all?
This is true, but blindly putting faith in evolution and science is far better, in my opinion, than placing it in a 2000 year old book that says the first human is made of dirt.
It is called "relative" dating, and it is just a prerequisite for the more accurate dating tests. Seriously, no scientist says that that is foolproof, and it is considered less reliable for a reason.
Irrelevant. Life evolving would't be able to stop death. That has nothing to do with evolution. There is death because there reaches a point where the cells can not regenerate.
Living things have evolved to delay death, but you can not stop the fact that cells stop regenerating at a certain point, and that some cells rarely regenerate at all.
Environment. Some environments damage cells more than others, usually by risk factor. Some animals act in such a way (or are physically designed) to die after performing certain acts (usually sexual). Also, different animals depend on different cells in their bodies. Those who depend on cells which regenerate easily live longer than animals who depend on cells that rarely, if ever, regenerate. It also depends on which survival method is better for that particular niche. For some animals, it is better to produce a large amount of children at one, not take care of them, and/or die sooner than having a few children at once, taking care of them, and/or living longer.
Clearly not.
Do you have any challenging questions?
KBC1963
Active Member
That is not what I said... I said
and this means that the midget that was born at 1 million bc or whatever could have been a mutation that never continued and later was dug up and hey we have and ancestor that was only 4' tall.
the assumption by science that if we dig it up then it must be a natural line of man is not good we have no way of knowing if what we dig up was a true average of the times or not so all science can say is hey we found a 4' human skeleton from what we think is this age. which could be and average of the times or not. I could go to many graveyards today and dig up midgets that are less than 4' or I could go to some other country and talk to living tribes of people that are on average about 4' tall but this doesnt make them an average of human life today rather they are the odddities.
so when I say "where is the conclusive proof that during that time there is evidences from many places in the world that shows that the average human was 4' and no taller" I mean just that, how can science dig up 1 or 2 things and make a conclusion? and then get a whole bandwagon behind them. It seems foolish in the extreme, I am a scientific person at heart and I love nothing better than a good proving but I have read many scientific papers and they try to eek by with only the flimsiest of proofs so I have good reason to question their conclusions.
That is not irrelevant and it does have everything to do with evolution, length of life is also part of the equation of the strong surviving, the most obvious thing is this if we once had a common ancestor with a tree and the tree proves that we should be able to live for 1000 years then that ancestor of ours could have been reproducing for many years longer than anything with a shorter lifespan so by rights it would have an advantage that it should have passed down to us, so why can't we live longer? if you and evolution insists that we all come from 1 parent then we should all have the capabilities that were passed on by that parent to some of the other decendents I see in the world, and if as you say we all have the same genes just in different order then how about you dive in there and say I want my genes resequenced so that I live as long as a tree or, do the resequencing of the part that deals with how long things regenerate in the genes coding before putting the egg and sperm together so that your children could live a thousand years? Since you are saying that it is only a sequence and we all have the same possibility within our own genes then lets get busy and prove it.
So now you say that Living things have evolved longer lifespans (or delay death as you put it) right after saying That is
, I believe that it would be an easy arguement to win if I say that longevity is a factor in the evolutionary concept. So what makes cells stop regenerating? is that not a function of genetics? if it is then why would it not have evolved to longer life spans as it has been proven by existing trees that they can keep regenerating without a problem for a thousand plus years?
I see this when I look at environmental damage, if the tree made it through all of history and it still can live for as long as it does and we and all other things living have lived side by side with those same trees.
Then the question "why can't we live that long" is viable to ask
yup sure do.
1) is it possible for the structure of dna to have formed without intelligent control?
2) do you have any real proofs to back-up your previous statements?
KBC1963
Active Member
SORRY Pah THIS WAS AN OOPS TO ADDRESS TO YOU
Mr Spinkles yes I have been looking at those sites and like any good researcher I have looked at it from many angles so as to get the best understanding as we should all do. I have over the years lost many an arguement and have found that my ego is still able to survive so I don't mind losing when I am wrong and since I am only a man and not GOD I expect to be wrong so if you or anyone brings an evidence to an arguement then it is my pleasure to consider it, how else might I get a better look at that which I havent considered? I never seek to look at something with a bias as this tends to taint the result, so for me I must look at the evidence as tho I were in your shoes. Fortunately I do have a decent ability to separate my feelings from my scientific side.
Here is what I have found from my journey into the "evening primrose"
Most of the variants that de Vries isolated from Oenothera lamarckiana were due to aberrant chromosomal segregations, and not to mutations associated with specific genes.
Translocations occur as a result of the pairing of non-homologous chromosomes during meiosis. The classic example is Oenothera. It has already been said that Oenothera lamarckiana (Evening Primrose) can only survive in its hybrid form.
let us consider the meaning of evolution;
So if I were to scientificly look for something evolving in nature to prove evolution then my goals would be as follows;
1) to find a change in the offspring of any living thing that it didnt have as a prior normal possibility of its genetics
2) to show that the change provided an advantage in any form to it.
3) to show that the change was stable and would continue as the species continued.
So for me the evening primrose does not satisfy the meaning of evolution.
The change that occurs indeed segregates the offspring and they can no longer breed with any other siblings of the original parents but in what way have they improved?
This change points rather to a devolution by making the children less able to populate and as such less adapted to the existing environment.
So I must deny those evidences as proof of evolution based on the fact that it doesn't satisfy the meaning of evolving, but it falls more into the meaning of mutation.
Here are some other peoples outlook on the same subject;
Q. Hasn't Speciation been observed experimentally? The
evolution FAQ in talk.origins lists a dozen or more examples of
speciation. How can you dismiss such evidence?
A. Before commenting on cases of speciation (one species turning into another species) it is first essential to define what constitutes a species. In biology there is a strong definition and a weak definition.
The strong definition (proposed by Dobzhansky) is, "That stage of evolutionary progress at which the once actually or potentially interbreeding array of forms becomes segregated into two or more arrays which are physiologically incapable of interbreeding."
The weak definition (proposed by Ernst Mayr) is, "Groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups."
Notice that the strong definition is strong because it makes it unambiguously clear that one species cannot breed with another.
The weak definition is weak because it does not spell out the meaning of "reproductively isolated". Does it mean "the two groups might mate if they had the chance but unfortunately are on opposites sides of the lake without a rowing boat"?
Darwinists protest that applying the strong definition, showing by lab experiment that reproduction is physiologically or genetically impossible --in for example fruit fly breeding experiments -- is too difficult or time consuming to be practical. These objections are bogus since it is a relatively straightforward procedure to artificially inseminate females with sperm from a male of the claimed 'new species' and see what happens.
Virtually all the so-called examples of speciation (one species turning into another species) offered by Darwinists are in reality examples of them exploiting the ambiguity of the weak definition of species to suggest that what are no more than subspecific varieties are actually different species.
For example, an old favourite that Darwinists often try to slip in by the back door is the idea that all the different breeds of dog are different species, when in fact all breeds of dog, from the tiny Chihuahua to the Great Dane, are all members of a single species, Canis familiaris, and are capable of interbreeding.
The remaining examples of "speciation" offered by Darwinists are cases in the plant world where the number of chromosomes in a seedling spontaneously doubles (called polyploidy). This often produces a plant which looks different from its parents and is incapable of breeding with its parent stock. It was this process that botanist Hugo de Vries observed in the evening primrose and that he dubbed "mutation".
This process passes the strict test of "speciation" because the parent and offspring are physiologically incapable of interbreeding. But even the most enthusiastic Darwinist would not try to suggest that the process of polyploidy can be cited as the engine of evolution and would acknowledge that it is incapable of producing anything other than the odd freak.
"Speciation" in the Darwinian sense of one species gradually changing by selection into another has not been observed and no examples are known.
Well Mr Spinkles I do applaud your attempt at proving evolution and I must say that I was in some ways excited to possibly be looking into evolution as a viable reasoning for our becoming what we are now, but unfortunately you didn't check the evidence against the true meaning of the term evolution, had you done that it would have been painfully clear that it falls short by definition alone.
KBC1963
Active Member
Pah sorry again 'GUESS I SHOULDNT WORK 7 DAYS A WEEK HUH?"
Mr Spinkles Here are a few other things I thought might have bearing on our discussion;
SPECIATION CHALLENGE: A new challenger, Alan Carroll, steps forward. His comments, in their entirety, follow, with my comments in brackets and italics.
I'd like to make a couple of points
First, that speciation does not mean species X becoming species Y,
but some sub-population of X becoming Y. Note that the implication of this
is that the number of species will tend to increase (counter-acted by
extinction).
The sort of Darwinist I deal with wants only their version of the truth taught in schools, supresses or hijacks contradictory evidence, and ridicules those who oppose them. In short, I deal with the average Darwinist. As for the "big picture" argument, exactly which big picture did Darwin get right? He predicted smooth transitions in abundant supply in the fossil record, yet more than a century later that prediction remains unfulfilled. Darwinism can't answer the pre-Cambrian explosion, and can't explain the complex world of microbiology to anyone's real satisfaction. And as this web page demonstrates, even the simple task of proving that speciation has been observed to occur in Darwinian fashion, is thus far beyond reach.
Finally, one might offer a "proof by existence". This is the theory
that since we see lots of species, there must be some mechanism for
speciation. Consider that 500 million years ago (MYA) there were no species that lived on land. Now there are.
Where did those species come from?
While one may harbor doubts that morphologists can accurately determine if similar creatures are distinct species, I have no problem accepting prima facie that a land dwelling creature and a water dwelling creature are distinct species.
There are also the big die-offs, such as those 235 MYA and 56 MYA. These
reduced the total number of species by 75-90%. Without speciation we should see many fewer species now than before the die-offs. But that's not the case. Given this, I don't find it credible to deny that speciation occurs.
[The heart of the matter--the speciation mechanism. It is the make-or-break part of Darwinism, and the least understood. According to microbiologist Michael Behe, as of a few years ago not a single scholarly paper had been written that demonstrated the speciation mechanism. Not one. When scientists, even in their peer-reviewed work, come to the part about a given species evolving into another, the hand-waving that indicates a lack of proof commences--a flipper "becomes a leg," an eye that sees well at night "develops," etc. Such speculation masks a gap in the knowledge. There's nothing wrong with having gaps--no science is complete--but there is something wrong with papering over the gaps and pretending that they aren't there. Darwinism is full of gaps and holes and contradictory evidence, and isn't the solidly proven immutable law that many would like to believe.]
here is another page I will excerpt from: http://www.gennet.org/facts/metro16.html
Using the Biblical concept of classification, it would seem appropriate to include all true cattle of the genus Bos (seven different species) in one min since they all can interbreed. The Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle, for example, was developed by crossing Brahman bulls (Bos indicus) with shorthorn cows (Bos taurus). Even the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer), can be crossed with the American bison (Bison bison) and with other true cattle, suggesting that all of these animals, though representing different genus and species, could be considered to be of the "cattle kind" or min.
While animal species have never been observed to evolve into distinctively different species, new species have been produced in plants through the process of hybridization. In 1881, for example, Judge J. L. Logan of California crossed a raspberry (Rubus idaeus) with a blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis) to produce the loganberry (Rubus loganobaccus). The loganberry breeds true, with no tendency to revert back to either parent and is one of many examples of a true modern hybrid in plants. Hybridization among animals is much more restricted than in plants because of their more specialized mode of sexual reproduction.
It has long been hoped by evolutionists that the science of genetics would provide an explanation of how fundamentally new species are formed, but this has not been the case. Attempts to explain evolution by "macromutations" have failed, as have the attempts to equate evolution with mere changes in the gene frequencies in populations (population genetics).
The evolutionist Richard Lewontin said that:
"It is an irony of evolutionary genetics that, although it is a fusion of Mendelism and Darwinism, it has made no direct contribution to what Darwin obviously saw as the fundamental problem: the origin of species." (The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1974, p. 159).
We may safely conclude that there has never been an exception to the simple words of Genesis 1:24: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so".
Mr Spinkles Here are a few other things I thought might have bearing on our discussion;
SPECIATION CHALLENGE: A new challenger, Alan Carroll, steps forward. His comments, in their entirety, follow, with my comments in brackets and italics.
I'd like to make a couple of points
First, that speciation does not mean species X becoming species Y,
but some sub-population of X becoming Y. Note that the implication of this
is that the number of species will tend to increase (counter-acted by
extinction).
The sort of Darwinist I deal with wants only their version of the truth taught in schools, supresses or hijacks contradictory evidence, and ridicules those who oppose them. In short, I deal with the average Darwinist. As for the "big picture" argument, exactly which big picture did Darwin get right? He predicted smooth transitions in abundant supply in the fossil record, yet more than a century later that prediction remains unfulfilled. Darwinism can't answer the pre-Cambrian explosion, and can't explain the complex world of microbiology to anyone's real satisfaction. And as this web page demonstrates, even the simple task of proving that speciation has been observed to occur in Darwinian fashion, is thus far beyond reach.
Finally, one might offer a "proof by existence". This is the theory
that since we see lots of species, there must be some mechanism for
speciation. Consider that 500 million years ago (MYA) there were no species that lived on land. Now there are.
Where did those species come from?
While one may harbor doubts that morphologists can accurately determine if similar creatures are distinct species, I have no problem accepting prima facie that a land dwelling creature and a water dwelling creature are distinct species.
There are also the big die-offs, such as those 235 MYA and 56 MYA. These
reduced the total number of species by 75-90%. Without speciation we should see many fewer species now than before the die-offs. But that's not the case. Given this, I don't find it credible to deny that speciation occurs.
[The heart of the matter--the speciation mechanism. It is the make-or-break part of Darwinism, and the least understood. According to microbiologist Michael Behe, as of a few years ago not a single scholarly paper had been written that demonstrated the speciation mechanism. Not one. When scientists, even in their peer-reviewed work, come to the part about a given species evolving into another, the hand-waving that indicates a lack of proof commences--a flipper "becomes a leg," an eye that sees well at night "develops," etc. Such speculation masks a gap in the knowledge. There's nothing wrong with having gaps--no science is complete--but there is something wrong with papering over the gaps and pretending that they aren't there. Darwinism is full of gaps and holes and contradictory evidence, and isn't the solidly proven immutable law that many would like to believe.]
here is another page I will excerpt from: http://www.gennet.org/facts/metro16.html
Using the Biblical concept of classification, it would seem appropriate to include all true cattle of the genus Bos (seven different species) in one min since they all can interbreed. The Santa Gertrudis breed of cattle, for example, was developed by crossing Brahman bulls (Bos indicus) with shorthorn cows (Bos taurus). Even the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer), can be crossed with the American bison (Bison bison) and with other true cattle, suggesting that all of these animals, though representing different genus and species, could be considered to be of the "cattle kind" or min.
While animal species have never been observed to evolve into distinctively different species, new species have been produced in plants through the process of hybridization. In 1881, for example, Judge J. L. Logan of California crossed a raspberry (Rubus idaeus) with a blackberry (Rubus allegheniensis) to produce the loganberry (Rubus loganobaccus). The loganberry breeds true, with no tendency to revert back to either parent and is one of many examples of a true modern hybrid in plants. Hybridization among animals is much more restricted than in plants because of their more specialized mode of sexual reproduction.
It has long been hoped by evolutionists that the science of genetics would provide an explanation of how fundamentally new species are formed, but this has not been the case. Attempts to explain evolution by "macromutations" have failed, as have the attempts to equate evolution with mere changes in the gene frequencies in populations (population genetics).
The evolutionist Richard Lewontin said that:
"It is an irony of evolutionary genetics that, although it is a fusion of Mendelism and Darwinism, it has made no direct contribution to what Darwin obviously saw as the fundamental problem: the origin of species." (The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change, 1974, p. 159).
We may safely conclude that there has never been an exception to the simple words of Genesis 1:24: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so".
dolly
Member
KBC1963 said:
This is always a possibility, but highly unlikely because most of the fossils are not from only one skeleton. This would mean that they would have to be a group of people in the same area with the exact same mutation. Also, if this was a recent (for that time) mutation that wasn't an adaption, most of the population of that species wouldn't have that mutation. Why then would we not find any remains of the majority of that population in that area?
They don't assume - or at least the good scientists don't assume. There is always a percentage of error. Evolution just happens to have a considerably less chance of error than the other theories. It can never be proven as a fact because we can't travel back in time to observe all the levels, but it can be proven beyond reasonable doubt.
It is true that we can't know for sure, but based on the other skeletons found in the area of the same species, we can reasonably decide whether it was an uncommon or a common trait.
Scientists (and when I say this I am referring to the honest, logical, etc ones - there are always bad people in every group) will not make an assumption based on so little evidence. They might say, "I think..." but they will not label it as a fact until they have considerably more fossils/etc and then consider the amount, or lackthereof, for that group.
You clearly need to study abiogensis better. We all come from one source, yes, but it is not a plant with a 10,000 year lifespan. It was a prokaryotic cell.
No, because that one parent didn't "give off" lifespans. First of all, there are too many other things which affect one's lifespan besides the genetics, and also because each mutation has the potential to seriously decrease or increase one's lifespan.
We don't have the same alleles; we don't have the same genes; we do have the same DNA in the fact that it is made of the same things. I won't have the same proteins as the next animal, but the same kinds proteins which create that creature have created me (I might not have all the ones a plant has in me, but I will have most of them, etc). The nucleotides in my DNA are the same nucleotides in a giraffe's DNA.
You can't change how the cell regenerates without changing it's niche (of sorts). And you can't change your lifespan into being that of a tree because you are not structurely built as a tree.
Mr Spinkles
Mr
KBC-- To respond to your question about evolution overcoming death: Evolution is not about making an individual organism live forever, it's about preserving/spreading an organism's genes. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think I remember learning in biology that the spindle fibers on DNA eventually unravel because of its structure, and this causes the cell to stop reproducing. This causes old age and eventual death. I am not an expert on this subject, so please correct me if I am wrong.
However, living things overcame this problem a long time ago through reproduction, which creates a brand new organism with brand new spindle fibers. Reproduction allows for variety (slight changes in the DNA) which is crucial for a species to survive and adapt as the environment changes over time.
Still, there are many possible ways a mutation could give a new species an advantage. It's cells could have slightly different chemical makeup which make them less vulnerable to diseases that specialize in attacking its predecessor; or the mutated plant could be taller, giving it a slight advantage as smaller animals can't get at its leaves. Whatever advantage a DNA mutation gives, it is probably so slight that it would be difficult for us to observe this advantage unless we had a long time....also, the new species might not have an advantage now, but might have one in the future as the environment changes. Finally, one mutation alone might not help OR hurt a new species, but this single mutation could be a stepping stone to other mutations which do help a new species.
Either way, it is not fair to call O. gigas "devolution" because it is not a freak accident that quickly died out because of its fragility....it is a new species that is alive and well in botanical gardens all over, and survives fine in the same environment as O. lamarckiana does. Just ask yourself: how many different types of evening primrose do you think might have "devolved" from other types (like the O. gigas did)? How many insects?
Anyway: we agree that genes can mutate, causing a new and physically different species to form from an old species. Is it difficult to concede that the new species can have a (very tiny) advantage over the old species? Could a new "freakishly" tall, or "freakishly sturdy" species of plant have an advantage, you think? Could this advantage make a noticeable difference after a million years of competition?
We have already established that a new species can come from an old species due to genetic mutation. Now you only need to take the next logical step and realize that if a species is seperated (geographically, for example) over time naturally occurring mutations/variety in the DNA can cause the seperated groups to become different species. These new species will no longer be able to interbreed with each other, just like O. gigas and O. lamarckiana. They may even look strikingly different (O. gigas and O. lamarckiana look very different, and that's only after ONE mutation.)
Ok, so to sum up: 1)genetic mutation/variation can cause new species to form, 2)mutations/variations can sometimes be beneficial
If you can accept these simple hypotheses, you agree with evolution in principle. (Actually, as long as you accept that all complex organisms have living parents, you accept evolution in principle.) I find it amusing that the website you quoted says that the example of the evening primrose can produce nothing other than "the odd freak". Interestingly, the natural world is filled with "odd freaks", from walkingsticks to kangaroos.
I mean, are people with sickled-cell anemia "odd freaks"? Perhaps....and yet, this unique genetic mutation makes the Africans who have it less vulnerable to malaria.
However, living things overcame this problem a long time ago through reproduction, which creates a brand new organism with brand new spindle fibers. Reproduction allows for variety (slight changes in the DNA) which is crucial for a species to survive and adapt as the environment changes over time.
It could take thousands of years before we would be able to see how successful the O. gigas is in comparison to the species from which it evolved (O. lamarckiana), even if an experiment was set up growing O. gigas and O. lamarckiana together.
Still, there are many possible ways a mutation could give a new species an advantage. It's cells could have slightly different chemical makeup which make them less vulnerable to diseases that specialize in attacking its predecessor; or the mutated plant could be taller, giving it a slight advantage as smaller animals can't get at its leaves. Whatever advantage a DNA mutation gives, it is probably so slight that it would be difficult for us to observe this advantage unless we had a long time....also, the new species might not have an advantage now, but might have one in the future as the environment changes. Finally, one mutation alone might not help OR hurt a new species, but this single mutation could be a stepping stone to other mutations which do help a new species.
Either way, it is not fair to call O. gigas "devolution" because it is not a freak accident that quickly died out because of its fragility....it is a new species that is alive and well in botanical gardens all over, and survives fine in the same environment as O. lamarckiana does. Just ask yourself: how many different types of evening primrose do you think might have "devolved" from other types (like the O. gigas did)? How many insects?
Anyway: we agree that genes can mutate, causing a new and physically different species to form from an old species. Is it difficult to concede that the new species can have a (very tiny) advantage over the old species? Could a new "freakishly" tall, or "freakishly sturdy" species of plant have an advantage, you think? Could this advantage make a noticeable difference after a million years of competition?
We have already established that a new species can come from an old species due to genetic mutation. Now you only need to take the next logical step and realize that if a species is seperated (geographically, for example) over time naturally occurring mutations/variety in the DNA can cause the seperated groups to become different species. These new species will no longer be able to interbreed with each other, just like O. gigas and O. lamarckiana. They may even look strikingly different (O. gigas and O. lamarckiana look very different, and that's only after ONE mutation.)
Ok, so to sum up: 1)genetic mutation/variation can cause new species to form, 2)mutations/variations can sometimes be beneficial
If you can accept these simple hypotheses, you agree with evolution in principle. (Actually, as long as you accept that all complex organisms have living parents, you accept evolution in principle.) I find it amusing that the website you quoted says that the example of the evening primrose can produce nothing other than "the odd freak". Interestingly, the natural world is filled with "odd freaks", from walkingsticks to kangaroos.
I mean, are people with sickled-cell anemia "odd freaks"? Perhaps....and yet, this unique genetic mutation makes the Africans who have it less vulnerable to malaria.
KBC1963
Active Member
Dolly your arguementative skill are very good indeed, but I will now bring in the "heavy guns" so to speak hehehe
I agree that it is possible that it may not be as I have said but it is also possible that the skeletons could be from those same tribes of very short people I alluded to before that all may have lived in that area, the gist of my arguement is to say that we would need skeletons from many diverse regions all from the aproximate same time to gain conclusive proof of an average and from what I have seen the evidences are not enough yet.
My statement was that we all had one parent, not that it was a plant, my arguement is that if everything came from one parent whatever that may truley be then we should all have the capabiliyies of that original dna set, so a common ancestor between plant and man may indeed be a prokaryotic cell. Now as for studying more about abiogensis you probably have a better understanding of it than I, however I do try to keep up with the evidences as much as possible and I do have a decent understanding of the current sciences as it is taught in the schools all I lack is the masters degree of understanding of the more intricate matters of the subject.
My arguement on lifespan infers that genetics control lifespan and the time that everything falls apart for our dna must have a controller and I base this on the fact that if a plant can reproduce its cells without everything falling apart for at least a thousand years then our genetics/dna should have the same capability.
How can you make these assumptions if you don't know how lifespan is controlled? you would have to know that the niche is the main control or that structural build was a major controller, it does make sense that they do have some input over time but how much is assumptive and you should not assume beyond that which is proveable.
It is my understanding that at this point scientists have been able to manipulate our dna to cause many of our possible attributes to be selectable before birth and I understand that there is a gene therapy in progress that somehow exchanges or repairs errant dna of existing humans, I believe that what we are discussing however does not fall into those areas of manipulation in quite the way I am thinking but there may be research working on it as we speak.
without knowing just how much of a role genetics play in lifespan then you are assuming.
I think i am not stupid to ask the question since it is one of the hottest types of topics today namely "how can we live longer". How many scientific studies are researching the same question? i believe that if we can figure out what controls the breakdown of our cells dna then science will try to control that and I believe that the control is within our dna somewhere so if you would like to give me a dunce cap so be it.
Ahhh yes the old infinity arguement. This I am well versed in, You do not infact have infinity to back you up here. I am by trade a mechanical engineer and I have looked at the mechanical things with a background that spans 25 years of actual use. So let us look again at the possibility of infinity:
1) the exact conditions needed for living things to survive could not always have existed:
a) the size of the sun is constantly getting smaller so it is probable that at one time the earth was too hot for life to exist
b) the moon does not hold a perfect orbit around the earth but is in fact moving away from the earth at a rate of 1.5 inches per year, how long that amout has been stable is a guess as it may have changed over time, so you may want to try some math on this to see what you get for a time that it would be possible for the moon to have reached a point of stability with the earth that allowed for life to exist.
c) the earth is cooling and there is a definite point when no life could have existed because of internal temperatures.
d) the magnetic field of the earth appears to be lessening and may also have an inpact on life as we know it
Here are some more things that must be considered
e) the odds of life just spontaneously occuring....
One chemist has calculated the immense odds against amino acids ever combining to form the necessary proteins by undirected means. He estimated the probability to be more than 10 to the 67th to 1 (1067:1) against even a small protein forming by time and chance, in an ideal mixture of chemicals, in an ideal atmosphere, and given up to 100 billion years (an age 10 to 20 times greater than the supposed age of the Earth).Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically, any odds beyond 1 in 10 to the 50th (1:1050) have a zero probability of ever happening ("and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!").
also...
"The chance that useful DNA molecules would develop without a Designer are approximately zero. the DNA (which is essential for the synthesis of proteins) cannot exist without the protein enzyme (DNA-polymerase). there is virtually no chance that chemical 'letters' would spontaneously produce coherent DNA and protein 'words'." (George Howe, expert in biological sciences and Creation/Evolution issues)
f) It is also important to note that the information written on DNA molecules is not produced by any known natural interaction of matter. Matter and molecules have no innate intelligence, allowing self organization into codes. There are no known physical laws which give molecules a natural tendency to arrange themselves into such coded structures.
Here is some other backing for my side;
Dr. Stanley Miller and Dr. Sidney Fox were two of the first scientists to attempt laboratory experiments aimed at trying to prove that life could arise spontaneously. They designed a Pyrex apparatus containing methane, ammonia, and water vapor, but no oxygen. Through this mixture they passed electric sparks to simulate lightning strikes. What was the result? No life was produced, of course, but the electricity did combine some atoms to form amino acids.
amino acids: compounds that are the simplest units out of which proteins can be assembled.
Did the Miller/Fox experiment prove that life could eventually have arisen in some ancient sea struck by lightning? No, their results actually weakened the case. The mixture of amino acids and other simple chemicals produced is not correct for producing life. All known life uses amino acids which are exclusively of the "left-handed" form.
left-handed molecules: a term used to refer to the "stereochemistry" of a molecule's construction; An amino acid can be chemically "left-handed" or "right-handed" in its orientation. These two forms are identical in their atoms, but opposite in their 3-dimensional arrangement. They are mirror images of each other. No known life can use any combination of both "right-handed" and "left-handed" amino acids. Adding even one "right-handed" amino acid to a chain of "left-handed" amino acids can destroy the entire chain! When amino acids are synthesized in the laboratory, there is always a 50% mixture of the two forms. Only through highly advanced, intelligently controlled processes can these two forms be separated.
Even if this overwhelming obstacle did not exist, far greater problems remain for the production of life.
There are numerous reasons why the amino acids would disintegrate or never form in the first place;
" in the atmosphere and in the various water basins of the primitive earth, many destructive interactions would have so vastly diminished, if not altogether consumed, essential precursor chemicals, that chemical evolution rates would have been negligible. The soup would have been too dilute for direct polymerization to occur. Even local ponds for concentrating soup ingredients would have met with the same problem. Furthermore, no geological evidence indicates an organic soup, even a small organic pond, ever existed on this planet. It is becoming clear that however life began on earth, the usually conceived notion that life emerged from an oceanic soup of organic chemicals is a most implausible hypothesis. We may therefore with fairness call this scenario `the myth of the prebiotic soup."
[Charles B. Thaxton, et al, The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984), p.66
Famed researcher Sir Fred Hoyle is in agreement with Creationists on this point. He said that supposing the first cell originated by chance is like believing "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."
The above reasons that I have given against your arguements are the basis of my belief in GOD, because once you rule out all other probabilities then then the truth is that which is left, namely intelligent beginning of life.
I agree that it is possible that it may not be as I have said but it is also possible that the skeletons could be from those same tribes of very short people I alluded to before that all may have lived in that area, the gist of my arguement is to say that we would need skeletons from many diverse regions all from the aproximate same time to gain conclusive proof of an average and from what I have seen the evidences are not enough yet.
My statement was that we all had one parent, not that it was a plant, my arguement is that if everything came from one parent whatever that may truley be then we should all have the capabiliyies of that original dna set, so a common ancestor between plant and man may indeed be a prokaryotic cell. Now as for studying more about abiogensis you probably have a better understanding of it than I, however I do try to keep up with the evidences as much as possible and I do have a decent understanding of the current sciences as it is taught in the schools all I lack is the masters degree of understanding of the more intricate matters of the subject.
My arguement on lifespan infers that genetics control lifespan and the time that everything falls apart for our dna must have a controller and I base this on the fact that if a plant can reproduce its cells without everything falling apart for at least a thousand years then our genetics/dna should have the same capability.
How can you make these assumptions if you don't know how lifespan is controlled? you would have to know that the niche is the main control or that structural build was a major controller, it does make sense that they do have some input over time but how much is assumptive and you should not assume beyond that which is proveable.
It is my understanding that at this point scientists have been able to manipulate our dna to cause many of our possible attributes to be selectable before birth and I understand that there is a gene therapy in progress that somehow exchanges or repairs errant dna of existing humans, I believe that what we are discussing however does not fall into those areas of manipulation in quite the way I am thinking but there may be research working on it as we speak.
without knowing just how much of a role genetics play in lifespan then you are assuming.
I think i am not stupid to ask the question since it is one of the hottest types of topics today namely "how can we live longer". How many scientific studies are researching the same question? i believe that if we can figure out what controls the breakdown of our cells dna then science will try to control that and I believe that the control is within our dna somewhere so if you would like to give me a dunce cap so be it.
Ahhh yes the old infinity arguement. This I am well versed in, You do not infact have infinity to back you up here. I am by trade a mechanical engineer and I have looked at the mechanical things with a background that spans 25 years of actual use. So let us look again at the possibility of infinity:
1) the exact conditions needed for living things to survive could not always have existed:
a) the size of the sun is constantly getting smaller so it is probable that at one time the earth was too hot for life to exist
b) the moon does not hold a perfect orbit around the earth but is in fact moving away from the earth at a rate of 1.5 inches per year, how long that amout has been stable is a guess as it may have changed over time, so you may want to try some math on this to see what you get for a time that it would be possible for the moon to have reached a point of stability with the earth that allowed for life to exist.
c) the earth is cooling and there is a definite point when no life could have existed because of internal temperatures.
d) the magnetic field of the earth appears to be lessening and may also have an inpact on life as we know it
Here are some more things that must be considered
e) the odds of life just spontaneously occuring....
One chemist has calculated the immense odds against amino acids ever combining to form the necessary proteins by undirected means. He estimated the probability to be more than 10 to the 67th to 1 (1067:1) against even a small protein forming by time and chance, in an ideal mixture of chemicals, in an ideal atmosphere, and given up to 100 billion years (an age 10 to 20 times greater than the supposed age of the Earth).Mathematicians generally agree that, statistically, any odds beyond 1 in 10 to the 50th (1:1050) have a zero probability of ever happening ("and even that gives it the benefit of the doubt!").
also...
"The chance that useful DNA molecules would develop without a Designer are approximately zero. the DNA (which is essential for the synthesis of proteins) cannot exist without the protein enzyme (DNA-polymerase). there is virtually no chance that chemical 'letters' would spontaneously produce coherent DNA and protein 'words'." (George Howe, expert in biological sciences and Creation/Evolution issues)
f) It is also important to note that the information written on DNA molecules is not produced by any known natural interaction of matter. Matter and molecules have no innate intelligence, allowing self organization into codes. There are no known physical laws which give molecules a natural tendency to arrange themselves into such coded structures.
Here is some other backing for my side;
Dr. Stanley Miller and Dr. Sidney Fox were two of the first scientists to attempt laboratory experiments aimed at trying to prove that life could arise spontaneously. They designed a Pyrex apparatus containing methane, ammonia, and water vapor, but no oxygen. Through this mixture they passed electric sparks to simulate lightning strikes. What was the result? No life was produced, of course, but the electricity did combine some atoms to form amino acids.
amino acids: compounds that are the simplest units out of which proteins can be assembled.
Did the Miller/Fox experiment prove that life could eventually have arisen in some ancient sea struck by lightning? No, their results actually weakened the case. The mixture of amino acids and other simple chemicals produced is not correct for producing life. All known life uses amino acids which are exclusively of the "left-handed" form.
left-handed molecules: a term used to refer to the "stereochemistry" of a molecule's construction; An amino acid can be chemically "left-handed" or "right-handed" in its orientation. These two forms are identical in their atoms, but opposite in their 3-dimensional arrangement. They are mirror images of each other. No known life can use any combination of both "right-handed" and "left-handed" amino acids. Adding even one "right-handed" amino acid to a chain of "left-handed" amino acids can destroy the entire chain! When amino acids are synthesized in the laboratory, there is always a 50% mixture of the two forms. Only through highly advanced, intelligently controlled processes can these two forms be separated.
Even if this overwhelming obstacle did not exist, far greater problems remain for the production of life.
There are numerous reasons why the amino acids would disintegrate or never form in the first place;
" in the atmosphere and in the various water basins of the primitive earth, many destructive interactions would have so vastly diminished, if not altogether consumed, essential precursor chemicals, that chemical evolution rates would have been negligible. The soup would have been too dilute for direct polymerization to occur. Even local ponds for concentrating soup ingredients would have met with the same problem. Furthermore, no geological evidence indicates an organic soup, even a small organic pond, ever existed on this planet. It is becoming clear that however life began on earth, the usually conceived notion that life emerged from an oceanic soup of organic chemicals is a most implausible hypothesis. We may therefore with fairness call this scenario `the myth of the prebiotic soup."
[Charles B. Thaxton, et al, The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984), p.66
Famed researcher Sir Fred Hoyle is in agreement with Creationists on this point. He said that supposing the first cell originated by chance is like believing "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein."
The above reasons that I have given against your arguements are the basis of my belief in GOD, because once you rule out all other probabilities then then the truth is that which is left, namely intelligent beginning of life.
KBC1963
Active Member
This is all conjecture, you cant back an arguement with conjecture.
There are many possibilities in either direction but it is still not proof of evolution
I do agree with your probabilities but my eternal life will require more than a belief in that manner
your logic is impeccable
your logic on the subject would be correct and yet there is almost no real proof to back it up which seems strange since it is a very plausible train of thought, and tho I agree with your thought process dealing with probabilities the lack of proof in the world as it is, denies you a decent backup
We have achieved a stalemate dealing with this part of the evolution subject so I will refer you to my post to dolly and see what you think of my proofs as pertains to the inception of life itself since than is the logical step from where we are now.
My life as an athiest ended abruptly after I began to apply my mechanical engineering skills to consider the items that I show in that post and as yet I have been unable to bring a sane stable arguement that will overcome them, so in GOD I trust and in GOD I will continue just as he has written to us.
