88 replies to this topic

[Ash]

Along with a variety of other religions and mythologies prior.

Here's some fun reading/viewing. Old news I know, but it's fun to see their circular reasoning and demands for empirical evidence (when they themselves have none), and it's pertinent to the discussion.



http://scienceblogs....reation_mus.php

[oblivionator]

Well, that was an interesting read/view and old news I have never heard of.

I would like to agree from the article that Christianity can make a person better themselves, and provide hope and comfort, whereas science cannot. Someone I know had been really ill these past couple months and felt that the medication the doctor was prescribing him was not working. He then turned to a Christian church for help and attended there quite frequently. After a few weeks, he claimed that he was feeling better, and believed that God was mending his health. I personally just believe his medicine and own body did the wonders, but overall now, I'd say he has become a better person. He kicked a few bad habits, such as drinking. I no longer have to worry about him coming home drunk at night, and have the house explode into a frenzy of quarreling and fighting.

There's my little story of "Religion and Its Importance." Well, at least how it brought some relief and nice pluses to my life. And my dad's.

[Pasidon]

Did this used to be the 'Careful, or you'll get spooned' topic?

[Ash]

I would like to agree from the article that Christianity can make a person better themselves, and provide hope and comfort, whereas science cannot.

I disagree.

Someone I know had been really ill these past couple months and felt that the medication the doctor was prescribing him was not working. He then turned to a Christian church for help and attended there quite frequently. After a few weeks, he claimed that he was feeling better, and believed that God was mending his health. I personally just believe his medicine and own body did the wonders, but overall now, I'd say he has become a better person. He kicked a few bad habits, such as drinking. I no longer have to worry about him coming home drunk at night, and have the house explode into a frenzy of quarreling and fighting.

That's called Psychosomatic medicine. The mind can have an effect upon the body. People are able to change for whatever reason. If his new-found religious belief kept him off the booze, then fair enough. But that is not exactly Christian doctrine, nor can it be attributed as such.

[Allathar]

In fact, 'making a person feel and do better', is present in EVERY religion. So it's more of a pro-religious rather than a pro-christian argument. Therefore, to counter it would be asking 'why would we worship xxx rather than xxx?' to which nobody has an answer, other than that religion xxx is the dominant one in his culture, and people were indoctrinated from their youth to worship said being. But by admitting that, they're counterargumenting themselves. Ehe.

[Bart]

http://knowyourmeme....memes/crocoduck

[Ash]

Well, I'm convinced. Because the nonexistence of the crocoduck of course proves evolution doesn't exist! The duck-billed platypus kinda pwns his argument totally tho. Not to mention species taxonomy.

The 'painter' argument's awful...it just is. I can see why they might think it isn't, but...yeah.
"Creation is proof of a creator"...yea, if we accept that it was indeed intelligent design, and not the case of cosmic trial-and-error (and that's not even the best way to explain it as it implies intent) that is evolution.

[Archon]

Whoever those guys were, I can definitely say they did a very poor job of defending intelligent design. However, I have seen arguments for evolution that are equally stupid.
At the base, evolution is based on faulty assumptions made by Charles Darwin. Darwin was a great scientist, but the conclusions he drew were incomplete and, in many cases, logical fallacies.

[Mathijs]

Prove that.

[Archon]

Darwin made random mutations the engine of evolution. He claimed that many very small mutations are the basis of the “goo to you” hypothesis of evolution. For mutations to be the driver of the massive amount of information there must be two things true of those mutations.

1. The mutations must be positive and allow the organism to procreate and pass them on.
2. The mutations must add information to the genome of the organism.

No such mutation has ever been observed.

[Puppeteer]

Darwin made random mutations the engine of evolution. He claimed that many very small mutations are the basis of the “goo to you” hypothesis of evolution. For mutations to be the driver of the massive amount of information there must be two things true of those mutations.

1. The mutations must be positive and allow the organism to procreate and pass them on.
2. The mutations must add information to the genome of the organism.

No such mutation has ever been observed.

Citation needed.

Edited by Puppeteer, 19 October 2009 - 05:59 PM.

[Ash]

Your understanding of evolutionary mutations is fallacious, Ar-Adûnakhôr.

The mutation needn't be positive; the fact is that the mutation happened. If that mutation happens to be negative, you will see less iterations of it in the next generation. If the mutation is positive, you will, evolutionarily speaking, see more of it in the next generation.

The word 'positive' will, according to Darwinian natural selection, allow an organism to better cope with a selection pressure, e.g. camouflage to avoid a predator. A camouflaged organism will be better adapted to avoid predators, so you'll see more of them than an un-camouflaged organism. Therefore the 'mutated' organism will be more common.

What you are also not accounting for is the environment (and therefore its selection pressures) also changing.

This gives us positive evidence for mutation and selection pressures, and I can present it in the form of a single animal too. The grey peppered moth, Biston betularia typica. A common moth in Europe and North America, its colourations were predominantly light grey, with 'peppery' spots. Quite well camouflaged against tree bark and lichen, it is quite difficult to spot. The black morph of the species, called Biston betularia carbonaria, is, as its lesser name might suggest, is predominantly black, making it stand out more. As a result, birds were more likely to predate the carbonaria than the typica.

In the 19th century, heavy coal-burning industry blackened trees with soot, inverting this. As a result, carbonaria ended up the better-adapted in certain areas. This isn't evolution per se, but it illustrates my point of a certain morph being more adapted to a certain environmental change. Therefore, you're wrong; 'positive' adaptation has been shown to occur, even within a species. Source 1. Source 2.

Want another example? Look at black people. Far, far, far better adapted for hot climates than white people. That's why you find so many black people in places like Africa, and relatively few white people. This, of course, was the case before human migration really affected it. White people, by contrast, tend to be bigger and stockier and hardier against the cold. It is fallacious, however, to call the change in colour from black to white (one would assume we were darker-skinned originally since we originated in Ethiopia) an adaptation. Notice how even white people have patches of brown on our skins. We usually call them freckles or beauty spots or something; it's actually a mutation causing the majority of our melanocytes to be defective. But, without the selection pressure of ridiculous sun, it didn't matter, so the change propagated over generations.


Additionally, you're wrong in that mutations must add information to the genome. Mutations can add, but they can also alter the genome, or delete an entry from it. The genome itself is quite senstive. For example, changing even one codon is responsible for cystic fibrosis.

The other fallacy in your argument is that the phenotypical expression of a mutation is visible overnight. It isn't. Otherwise we'd have radically different morphism from one generation to the next. It takes generations for a trait to 'breed itself into' the population and embed there, because of course the original organism will still be breeding, albeit with less success, alongside it.

It isn't necessarily the case that the 'unadapted' organism will die out; it may just result in two divergent species. Because the process is so very slow, it's easiest to spot where mutations are maladaptive (i.e., decrease the likelihood of reproduction). For example: Down's syndrome, cystic fibrosis, haemophilia. All mutations that are weeded out by their very expression, or even by other alleles (the reason they propagate into the next generation is because they can be 'carried' by females in the X chromosome but not expressed because they have the 'good' form of the gene, whereas the Y chromosome doesn't carry a 'good' form of the gene so it is expressed in males).

[Archon]

Your understanding of evolutionary mutations is fallacious, Ar-Adûnakhôr.
The mutation needn't be positive; the fact is that the mutation happened. If that mutation happens to be negative, you will see less iterations of it in the next generation. If the mutation is positive, you will, evolutionarily speaking, see more of it in the next generation.

The word 'positive' will, according to Darwinian natural selection, allow an organism to better cope with a selection pressure, e.g. camouflage to avoid a predator. A camouflaged organism will be better adapted to avoid predators, so you'll see more of them than an un-camouflaged organism. Therefore the 'mutated' organism will be more common.

True; but for the theory of evolution to be correct, many positive mutations must happen. To the contrary, mutations are generally negative or neutral (have no real effect) and almost all result in the offspring's sterility (through a few generations.)

Therefore, you're wrong; 'positive' adaptation has been shown to occur, even within a species.

I didn't say anything about positive adaptation being nonexistent, simply mutations.

Want another example? Look at black people. Far, far, far better adapted for hot climates than white people. That's why you find so many black people in places like Africa, and relatively few white people. This, of course, was the case before human migration really affected it. White people, by contrast, tend to be bigger and stockier and hardier against the cold. It is fallacious, however, to call the change in colour from black to white (one would assume we were darker-skinned originally since we originated in Ethiopia) an adaptation. Notice how even white people have patches of brown on our skins. We usually call them freckles or beauty spots or something; it's actually a mutation causing the majority of our melanocytes to be defective. But, without the selection pressure of ridiculous sun, it didn't matter, so the change propagated over generations.

However, that's not new information. There were light-skinned people thousands of years ago, and there were dark-skinned people thousands of years ago. Today the differences are much more pronounced, but that doesn't prove the existence of new genetic information.

Additionally, you're wrong in that mutations must add information to the genome. Mutations can add, but they can also alter the genome, or delete an entry from it. The genome itself is quite senstive. For example, changing even one codon is responsible for cystic fibrosis.

Of course mutations can do all those things. But for the theory of evolution to be true, mutations must add information, otherwise evolution has no case.

The other fallacy in your argument is that the phenotypical expression of a mutation is visible overnight. It isn't. Otherwise we'd have radically different morphism from one generation to the next. It takes generations for a trait to 'breed itself into' the population and embed there, because of course the original organism will still be breeding, albeit with less success, alongside it.

The amazing thing is that it's not true. Take, for example, experiments with fruit flies. A fruit fly takes only days to reach maturity, then reproduces steadily for the next short span of its life cycle. People have been studying fruit flies for decades, LONGER generationally then the time man has been on the Earth.

Another amazing thing about fruit flies is that scientists have been able to increase, using X-Rays, the rate of mutation by over 15,000%. However, the fruit flies have ALWAYS remained fruit flies. The thousands of mutations have not been able to change a fruit fly to anything other than a fruit fly.

[Allathar]

However, that's not new information. There were light-skinned people thousands of years ago, and there were dark-skinned people thousands of years ago. Today the differences are much more pronounced, but that doesn't prove the existence of new genetic information.

Appearantly it does.

Of course mutations can do all those things. But for the theory of evolution to be true, mutations must add information, otherwise evolution has no case.

Mutations DO add information, through your DNA. Different DNA = mutation. Positive mutation means more mutated DNA gets passed on. Can I prove DNA gets passed on? How about how your relatives kind of look the same?

The amazing thing is that it's not true. Take, for example, experiments with fruit flies. A fruit fly takes only days to reach maturity, then reproduces steadily for the next short span of its life cycle. People have been studying fruit flies for decades, LONGER generationally then the time man has been on the Earth.

Another amazing thing about fruit flies is that scientists have been able to increase, using X-Rays, the rate of mutation by over 15,000%. However, the fruit flies have ALWAYS remained fruit flies. The thousands of mutations have not been able to change a fruit fly to anything other than a fruit fly.

As a matter of fact, the results were quite the opposite. Scientists have succesfully been able to change the type of the wings, the colour, and such.

[Archon]

Appearantly it does.

It doesn't. Nothing new was created, simply variations within a species (Homo Sapiens). True macro-evolution is much more than that.

Mutations DO add information, through your DNA. Different DNA = mutation. Positive mutation means more mutated DNA gets passed on. Can I prove DNA gets passed on? How about how your relatives kind of look the same?

They do not add information. They can CHANGE, not ADD. For example in the fruit flies, you can change current features/adaptations of the fly, but you cannot add a new adaptation (i.e., fins). Mutations just don't do that.

As a matter of fact, the results were quite the opposite. Scientists have succesfully been able to change the type of the wings, the colour, and such.

I didn't say they were not able to effect mutations; on the contrary, they were able to increase them. However, the changes were insignificant on a macro-evolutionary scale. They DID NOT change the fact that it was a fruit fly of the same species they had started out with.
If macro-evolution is true, and the fruit flies have been studied for the generational equivalent of millions of human years, the mutations should have been able to change more than just the wings and the color. Also, the mutations should have been positive and not in many cases result in the sterility of the mutated organism.

[Allathar]

Tiny changes over several million years can have quite some effects, and even add some things, you know... One tiny change in a hundred years means 100,000 tiny changes over ten million years. Odds are, that if you take a population, split them in two groups and isolate those two groups, the two groups will be very different from eachother after ten million years. That's evolution.

[Ash]

True; but for the theory of evolution to be correct, many positive mutations must happen. To the contrary, mutations are generally negative or neutral (have no real effect) and almost all result in the offspring's sterility (through a few generations.)

The latter point is not at all true. Most mutations indeed have no real effect, or indeed result in an unviable offspring or one which will not successfully pass on its genes. You still assume that evolution is in some way a process geared towards advantageous mutation. It isn't. The way that humanity is now probably afforded us an evolutionary advantage some circa 32,000 years ago when the modern human species first appeared, however whatever advantage was conferred then may not actually be conferred now in the modern environment, because that environment is very different.
It is true that positive mutations do happen, however. But they don't appear or manifest in quite the way you claim; I was watching a nightline debate from 2007 on the existence of God (2play recently posted a knowyourmeme link to an abridged version, I went and watched the full thing). The evolutionist put it better than I ever could, so I quote:
"You cannot walk a mile without taking one step at a time."
The reason you won't find a transitional form that moves between a species is because everything is transitioning somehow. That process is just remarkably slow. I mean, we're talking glacier-level slowness. Teeny tiny mutations occur between each and every generation. Some beneficial, some conferring no advantage, some conferring a disadvantage, some not even manifesting in that generation. The only way for that to emerge as a species is for the population with its adaptation to be isolated, either physically or by some selection pressure, from the original organism without the adaptation, otherwise it will simply breed itself amongst the population but never become dominant or separate.

Darwin's finches from the Galapagos are a great example of what I'm talking about. Another is antibiotic-resistant bacteria. A normal bacterial culture exists, but there's no antibiotic and so everyone's on a level playing field. Those with the resistance don't really have any advantage. They are all competing for the same resources, and nobody's doing better than anyone else. Now, you add penicillin as a selection pressure, and the antibiotic-resistant bacteria has a sudden advantage in this new environment over any other bacteria in that culture. They'll propagate, the others'll die off. If the antibiotic-resistant population was maybe 10% of the total, it's suddenly gone up to 100% of it. The only disadvantage to this example is that bacteria reproduce asexually, but the point remains; many mutations that happen at a genetic level may not manifest specifically because the environment they live in does not require that they do. It's only when a selection pressure is applied that the mutation can be identified as positive.

A further example is sickle-cell disease in humans. An abnormal code for haemoglobin results in irregular-shaped red blood cells. Normally this would be a negative thing (particularly when both alleles are the recessive 'sickle-cell' allele), as it results in poor oxygen circulation through the body. In malaria-ridden sub-Saharan Africa it is actually a benefit, because it confers a resistance to the illness and to the organism that causes it. This is why prevalence of sickle-cell disease is much more prevalent there, because in that environment it confers a benefit. The rest of the world has a more statistically 'normal' minority distribution of it.

I didn't say anything about positive adaptation being nonexistent, simply mutations.

Without the latter, there cannot be the former. And there are going to be some eggs broken in nature's scattergun approach to make the perfect omelette.

However, that's not new information. There were light-skinned people thousands of years ago, and there were dark-skinned people thousands of years ago. Today the differences are much more pronounced, but that doesn't prove the existence of new genetic information.

Yes it does; if we all possessed the same genetic coding for skin colour, we'd all have the same skin colour. It just so happens that the white person's gene for melanocytes in the skin is defective. That fact is proof of 'new' genetic information, because something must have changed in the information somewhere down the line.

Of course mutations can do all those things. But for the theory of evolution to be true, mutations must add information, otherwise evolution has no case.

Not entirely true. A mutation doesn't have to add information for evolution to be true. It could get by by simply changing the information already there. Genes merely code for a protein. If, say, AGGCTG codes for, say, the protein that makes human skin the way it is, yet AGTCTG codes for the protein that makes a fish scale the way it is (it isn't, obviously, I'm just using a wild example), then if you have a human who's mutated to have AGTCTG would be born with scaly skin. I'm speaking wildly hypothetically as I said, but it needn't be the case that something new is always added. If that is the case, why is it that so many animals get by with significantly fewer or more chromosomes than other, more fundamentally complex ones?
For an example, the amoeba (Dicytostelium discoideum), a single-celled organism, has twelve pairs of chromosomes. The thale cress plant (Arabidopsis thaliana) has ten. A chimp has more than twice the amount of chromosomes that a human has, and a carp has five times as many. It therefore doesn't really stand to reason that an evolved organism has more information than a 'less-evolved' organism.

The amazing thing is that it's not true. Take, for example, experiments with fruit flies. A fruit fly takes only days to reach maturity, then reproduces steadily for the next short span of its life cycle. People have been studying fruit flies for decades, LONGER generationally then the time man has been on the Earth.

This is rather fallacious as well. Coelocanths have existed in more or less the same state they exist now since the Devonian period, 365 million years ago. Crocodiles have been around almost as long. Insects have diversified to fill more niches and become more species than every other classification of animal combined. If those niches and those environments remain stable, it stands to reason that the animal won't change very much either. I can scarcely think of a more stable environment than a laboratory, which is the entire point of laboratory environments (reduction of variables).

In addition, your evidence is flawed. Artificial speciation is very possible in fruit flies, happening in as few as eight generations. Sure, those 'species' will have been genetically compatible, but give it another 20 or 30 generations and you might well produce another type of fruit fly. What you're expecting to see is a fruit fly breeding a praying mantis, whereas what will actually happen is similar environments affecting mate preference (just as it does in humans; although mixed-race pairings do happen, same-race pairings are massively more common because we tend to have preference for those more similar to ourselves) and therefore distilling of a gene pool as a result.

Another amazing thing about fruit flies is that scientists have been able to increase, using X-Rays, the rate of mutation by over 15,000%. However, the fruit flies have ALWAYS remained fruit flies. The thousands of mutations have not been able to change a fruit fly to anything other than a fruit fly.

I admit I have looked and not found any evidence for such experiments, but in any case some aspects of the genetic makeup are rather robust. In coding for specific proteins, there is a lot of redundancy. ATG, AGC, ACC and ACG, for example, might all code for the exact same thing. This means that if minor changes happen it isn't going to be catastrophic, and it's going to change back again probably next generation.

You can bombard any animal you want with stupid amounts of radiation, and every once in a mile you might strike gold but chances are the damage you've done elsewhere in their genetic makeup has undone your lucky strike. And you'll also have to take into account whatever else that fruit fly is going to breed with is going to be another fruit fly. That change to the irradiated fruit fly's coding is not going to make it not produce fruit flies, because that isn't how speciation works. It takes many generations with that changed genetic code altering the mate preferences of the population (or the available mates within the population) to make anything like a new species. You're only going to end up with a different type of fruit fly at the very best.

The only time a species that looks or acts or behaves different will emerge is if there is some benefit conferred by that difference. Going back to Darwin's finches, one type has a big, hard beak for cracking nuts. The other has a thinner flatter beak for eating seeds. Mate preferences between more similar types (possibly based on other random changes such as feather colour, beak shape, or the smell given off by those who eat similar food) will have eventually resulted in their dimorphism. By the same token, you're more likely to see a chihuahua mate with another small dog as opposed to a great dane, unless they're all that's available to mate with. Eventually they'll become separate species but these things take far, far longer than those two breeds have existed.

Since evolution is so damn slow it's a lot easier to observe its effects than its actual action. Hence the coccyx bone, the appendix, the pinky-toe, the stumpy leg-bones in snakes and whales, archaeopteryx's teeth (and velociraptor's feathers), the similarity between the now-extinct ammonite and the still-alive nautilus, etc.

[Archon]

I'm not quite clear on what you're trying to say, Ash. It seems to me that evolution has to be geared toward advantageous mutation, since species can only change due to mutations. If mutations are negative, natural selection will weed them out.

The only way for that to emerge as a species is for the population with its adaptation to be isolated, either physically or by some selection pressure, from the original organism without the adaptation, otherwise it will simply breed itself amongst the population but never become dominant or separate.

How then do you explain the similar species that exist in different parts of the world? In China, you have pandas. Admittedly, they are a different type of bear, but they are still a bear, remarkably similar to those in North America or Europe. According to your reasoning, vastly different organisms should emerge following isolation. Yet all you get is relatively minor variations.

[Bart]

It seems to me that evolution has to be geared toward advantageous mutation, since species can only change due to mutations. If mutations are negative, natural selection will weed them out.

True, your point being? (Read: So?)

In China, you have pandas. Admittedly, they are a different type of bear, but they are still a bear, remarkably similar to those in North America or Europe. According to your reasoning, vastly different organisms should emerge following isolation.

Obviously, some time in the past a bear decided to take a trip. The same way humans all came from Africa. Did you know that some people walked from Northeast Asia (Russia) to Northwest America (Alaska) and then came to be the native Americans?

[Ash]

m not quite clear on what you're trying to say, Ash. It seems to me that evolution has to be geared toward advantageous mutation, since species can only change due to mutations. If mutations are negative, natural selection will weed them out.

Yeap. I never said that no mutations were positive. Only that most weren't. If they do confer some advantage, they'll remain. If they confer an advantage over the old way, they'll stay in the gene pool and perhaps even come to dominate it. Eventually they'll become sufficiently different to become a new species.

How then do you explain the similar species that exist in different parts of the world? In China, you have pandas. Admittedly, they are a different type of bear, but they are still a bear, remarkably similar to those in North America or Europe. According to your reasoning, vastly different organisms should emerge following isolation. Yet all you get is relatively minor variations.

Not necessarily vastly different. Note my Darwin's finches example. Nonetheless these animals are still unlikely to produce a hybrid that will be fertile (example: mule). A species of bear will remain a species of bear despite millions of years of separation. It'll still be recognisable as a bear, and may even retain the same habits, particularly if the niches are similar. Just over time they'll stop being genetically compatible and may be different based on the morphology of the originally-isolated population. So, if there were a lot of small, runty spotty-coloured bears in the originally-isolated lot, then they might become the spectacled bear as opposd to grizzly you might get elsewhere.