Evolution's new wrinkle
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John Carson wrote:
Creationists think that Evolutionists are busily at work trying to prove that evolution is true and thus everything Evolutionists do is considered by Creationists to be intended as an argument in favour of evolution.
"The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists
since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if
evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'?" said
ChakrabartiWith age-old questions unanswered, you have proved something and won :confused:
John Carson wrote:
That is why breakthroughs in biological understanding never come from Creationists.
Do you have any database to prove this? Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
Hey Paul! There is no God. Jesus was just a carpenter.
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I'm not going to bite, sorry. The web contains many explanations if you choose to look.
Steve_Harris wrote:
I'm not going to bite, sorry.
I accept that it is too difficult for you to explain. So, you will even accept what should be "Repairing damaged DNA" as explanation to evolution. Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Hey Paul! There is no God. Jesus was just a carpenter.
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I hope you have seen the actual paper? This is how the abstract begins "Elucidating the fitness measures optimized during the evolution of complex biological systems is a major challenge in evolutionary theory." You have enough challenges, I will not add more. ;P Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Steve_Harris wrote:
I'm not going to bite, sorry.
I accept that it is too difficult for you to explain. So, you will even accept what should be "Repairing damaged DNA" as explanation to evolution. Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
It's not "too difficult" for me to explain evolution, I just have neither time nor inclination to do so, especially when there are plenty of coherently-worded explanations on the web.
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Paul Selormey wrote:
Funny how we interpret events to fit into something we could not explain. A child was born with no arms, he/she learned to use his/her leg - Oh! that is evolution proved right!!!
I don't follow your analogy, but I think you are missing the point (and, incidentally, providing an example by your own behaviour of the characteristic you think you see in others). Creationists think that Evolutionists are busily at work trying to prove that evolution is true and thus everything Evolutionists do is considered by Creationists to be intended as an argument in favour of evolution. In reality, that ship has sailed. Evolutionists consider that the Creation vs Evolution debate is over. The Evolutionists won. Accordingly, Evolutionists are not primarily engaged in trying to prove evolution, just as physicists are not engaged in trying to prove gravity. What Evolutionists are busy doing is developing their understanding of how nature works. The research reported in the article is about understanding how genetic mechanisms work. If the research is accepted, then the researchers have identified a particular aspect of genetic behaviour. The next step is to clarify the mechanism underlying this behaviour. Real scientists are perpetually restless, always seeking new information and new understanding, unafraid of where their researches will lead. Creationists, by contrast, have already reached the only conclusion they care about --- "God did it" --- and have little interest in pursuing knowledge or understanding. Their principal agenda is to defend their original conclusion by spinning whatever the real scientists come up with. That is why breakthroughs in biological understanding never come from Creationists.
John Carson
Very well put.
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Some interesting new research. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/60/95O56/index.xml?section=topstories[^]
John Carson
The drive-by univoter has a penta-voter riding shotgun today.
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Some interesting new research. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/60/95O56/index.xml?section=topstories[^]
John Carson
Fascinating....
Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.
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The drive-by univoter has a penta-voter riding shotgun today.
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John Carson wrote:
Creationists think that Evolutionists are busily at work trying to prove that evolution is true and thus everything Evolutionists do is considered by Creationists to be intended as an argument in favour of evolution.
"The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists
since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if
evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'?" said
ChakrabartiWith age-old questions unanswered, you have proved something and won :confused:
John Carson wrote:
That is why breakthroughs in biological understanding never come from Creationists.
Do you have any database to prove this? Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
Paul Selormey wrote:
With age-old questions unanswered, you have proved something and won :confused:
These debates have taken place endlessly over the years, and I have taken part in too many of them. But let me just say that this statement again confirms that you don't understand science, or at least that you pretend not to. Of COURSE there are age old questions that are unanswered, scientists don't pretend to understand everything. It is not actually a threat to them to admit there are things they may not know. This is yet another area where science (thankfully) differs from religion.
He said, "Boy I'm just old and lonely, But thank you for your concern, Here's wishing you a Happy New Year." I wished him one back in return.
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John Carson wrote:
Creationists think that Evolutionists are busily at work trying to prove that evolution is true and thus everything Evolutionists do is considered by Creationists to be intended as an argument in favour of evolution.
"The discovery answers an age-old question that has puzzled biologists
since the time of Darwin: How can organisms be so exquisitely complex, if
evolution is completely random, operating like a 'blind watchmaker'?" said
ChakrabartiWith age-old questions unanswered, you have proved something and won :confused:
John Carson wrote:
That is why breakthroughs in biological understanding never come from Creationists.
Do you have any database to prove this? Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
Paul Selormey wrote:
With age-old questions unanswered, you have proved something and won
What is in doubt is not evolution, but the details of how evolution operates. On some level, we don't know how gravity works, but that doesn't mean that gravity is in doubt.
Paul Selormey wrote:
Do you have any database to prove this?
No, but in many years of reading reports of scientific breakthroughs, I can't recall a single instance in which the scientists concerned described themselves as Creationists. A number have described themselves as Christians, but that is not the same thing and even these are rare. A survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences in the US found that roughly 95% of the biologist members were either agnostic or atheist.
John Carson
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Some interesting new research. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/60/95O56/index.xml?section=topstories[^]
John Carson
The first thing the article does is admit that the results of this experiment are being interpretted through the lense of evolution. The second thing the article does is make a false claim that this provides an explanation for the level of complexity in exisitng organisms. It does not, it provides an example of the level of complexity but no indication of how it could arise. The discovery is fascinating ( and like all other discoveries consistent with creation ), the article X|
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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The first thing the article does is admit that the results of this experiment are being interpretted through the lense of evolution. The second thing the article does is make a false claim that this provides an explanation for the level of complexity in exisitng organisms. It does not, it provides an example of the level of complexity but no indication of how it could arise. The discovery is fascinating ( and like all other discoveries consistent with creation ), the article X|
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The first thing the article does is admit that the results of this experiment are being interpretted through the lense of evolution.
I'm sure that that sounds very impressive in your mind, but I'm betting you don't really know what it means. Also, why would you interpret it in a way that doesn't make sense? :confused:
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The second thing the article does is make a false claim that this provides an explanation for the level of complexity in exisitng organisms.
How is that false?
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
It does not, it provides an example of the level of complexity but no indication of how it could arise.
Elucidate. I got a headache just trying to figure out what that meant.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The discovery is fascinating ( and like all other discoveries consistent with creation )
I see, the discovery of a new mechanism of evolution is consistent with the 'theory' of Creationism. You know another fascinating discovery? Scientists managed to change mercury into gold. Do you know what that means? It means that the Philosopher's Stone theory was correct all along.
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Hey Paul! There is no God. Jesus was just a carpenter.
The fact that Jesus was a carpenter does not prove there is no god (although I tend to believe there is no god).
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Steve_Harris wrote:
I think you've totally misunderstood how evolution works.
Please explain how it works. Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
The theories and concepts are way too deep to get into detail on a message board. But I can provide some resources. A good place to start might be Berkeley's Understanding Evolution[^]. Or actually, you might want to start with something a little lighter, like Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution[^], and 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense[^]. The first conceptual hurdle you need to get past is that evolution only happens over many generations, not just a few, and certainly not in a single organism. It's the cumulative compilation of tiny changes over a long period of time past on from one generation to another, driven primarily by natural selection and environmental controls. However, if after some research you still feel the need to argue against evolution, you might want to first look at the Index of Creationist Claims[^] which has a wealth of information on evolution and addresses specific creationist claims. And if all else fails, the Answers In Genesis site has a listing of Arguments they think creationists should NOT use[^]. And finally, my personal opinion, is that accepting what science suggests as a plausible explaination, backed by tons and tons of evidence, doesn't need to negate your faith. Believing, as we Christians do, that the Bible was written by divinely inspired people, it might help to recognize that people of that time could not have been more specific about some things. Maybe Genesis wasn't meant to be taken completely literally. I personally don't see science and religion at odds, just their proponents. Who's to say Adam wasn't a little hairy? And who's to say that evolution wasn't the method by which God chose to make man? Wouldn't that qualify for working in myst
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:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I hope you have seen the actual paper? This is how the abstract begins "Elucidating the fitness measures optimized during the evolution of complex biological systems is a major challenge in evolutionary theory." You have enough challenges, I will not add more. ;P Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The first thing the article does is admit that the results of this experiment are being interpretted through the lense of evolution.
I'm sure that that sounds very impressive in your mind, but I'm betting you don't really know what it means. Also, why would you interpret it in a way that doesn't make sense? :confused:
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The second thing the article does is make a false claim that this provides an explanation for the level of complexity in exisitng organisms.
How is that false?
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
It does not, it provides an example of the level of complexity but no indication of how it could arise.
Elucidate. I got a headache just trying to figure out what that meant.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
The discovery is fascinating ( and like all other discoveries consistent with creation )
I see, the discovery of a new mechanism of evolution is consistent with the 'theory' of Creationism. You know another fascinating discovery? Scientists managed to change mercury into gold. Do you know what that means? It means that the Philosopher's Stone theory was correct all along.
Hmm, you really are unable to stand outside your own predjudices even a little.
Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
would you interpret it in a way that doesn't make sense?
I wouldn't. I wouldn't interpret evidence using an unproven theory to which that evidence is related. I might might miss a case where the evidence showed the theory was false. Using a theory, supposed to be dependent on biological evidence, to interpret newly discovered biological evidence prior to evaluation is bad science.
Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
How is that false?
They've shown a complex mechanism maintining itself. This does not say anything about the origin of the complex system, except to the kind of moron who says 'man created man' as some radical neo-Darwinians do.
Ravel H. Joyce wrote:
the discovery of a new mechanism of evolution
It's a new mechanism, not a new mechanism of evolution. Now perhaps you see the point about interpreting such evidence before evaluation. By labeling this discovery as 'evolutionary' before analysis anything discovered is invalidated or at least misrepresented. Yet another example of Evolutionism being bad for science. Far from being evidence or a mechanism for evolution this kind of strange-attractor, feedback control mechanism which maintains a virtual equilibrium in a system makes any macro evolutionary change in such a system even less likely than it already was. Potentially functional small variations will be removed by the feedback mechanism before they can accrue to produce any significant change. In reality they wouldn't accumulate anyway even without the mechanism as they'd be overwhelmed by destructive variations but we've been round this before and I know you won't accept the obvious logic of, A is orders of magnitude more likely than B, wait for A's and B's to accumulate over time. You can't get a pile of A's with very few B's because that's just not the way the universe works.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage." Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Some interesting new research. http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/60/95O56/index.xml?section=topstories[^]
John Carson
It is very interesting, but, if I got it right, it doesn't seem to be a new aspect of the evolution process explained by Darwin, but rather a product of that process. Darwin's evolution is essentially an inter-generational process. This thing isn't. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what the article explains is that the researchers discovered that some proteins have a kind of self-healing mechanism based on feedback. It is very interesting and may have similarities with the evolutionary process but I don't think it is evolution. I don't see on this mechanism the generation of new, unexpected traits and adaptation to changing environments, for instance. We already know about other healing biochemical mechanisms, in particular the ones related to fixing errors in DNA duplication. This one seems to be more related to that. One of the scientists says that it explains why something "completely random" generates such complex organisms. Well, the appearance of new mutations is random, but several layers of control systems (and this might be one of them) prune out lots of this randomness. Is natural selection and these repairing mechanisms that make evolution not entirely random.
Of all forms of sexual aberration, the most unnatural is abstinence.
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The fact that Jesus was a carpenter does not prove there is no god (although I tend to believe there is no god).
The point was that Jesus was just a carpenter, and not God in one of three personas.
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The point was that Jesus was just a carpenter, and not God in one of three personas.
Ok, I wasn't clear enough. Jesus is just a carpenter and not God or the son of God. But that is no proof whatsoever there is no God.
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Paul Selormey wrote:
With age-old questions unanswered, you have proved something and won :confused:
These debates have taken place endlessly over the years, and I have taken part in too many of them. But let me just say that this statement again confirms that you don't understand science, or at least that you pretend not to. Of COURSE there are age old questions that are unanswered, scientists don't pretend to understand everything. It is not actually a threat to them to admit there are things they may not know. This is yet another area where science (thankfully) differs from religion.
He said, "Boy I'm just old and lonely, But thank you for your concern, Here's wishing you a Happy New Year." I wished him one back in return.