Evolution's new wrinkle
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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.
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http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0806/0806.2331v1.pdf[^] Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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Well it continues : "We present experimental evidence and an analytical framework demonstrating how biochemical networks exploit optimal control strategies in their evolutionary dynamics."
[My Blog]
"Visual studio desperately needs some performance improvements. It is sometimes almost as slow as eclipse." - Rüdiger Klaehn
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A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins
themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial
mutations and restored the chain to working order.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!!! Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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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.
David Kentley wrote:
But let me just say that this statement again confirms that you don't understand science, or at least that you pretend not to.
And you have just proven that you that you don't understand the first thing about actual science, which you are falsely conflating for scientism.
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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
John Carson wrote:
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.
Which is, of course, why we routinely encounter physicists saying things like "Einstein's theory is as well established as 'modern evolutionary theory!'" Oddly enough, we actually *observe* what we choose to call 'gravity.'
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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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John Carson wrote:
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.
Which is, of course, why we routinely encounter physicists saying things like "Einstein's theory is as well established as 'modern evolutionary theory!'" Oddly enough, we actually *observe* what we choose to call 'gravity.'
Ilíon wrote:
Which is, of course, why we routinely encounter physicists saying things like "Einstein's theory is as well established as 'modern evolutionary theory!'"
Evolution is controversial for only one reason: that it runs contrary to some people's religious beliefs.
John Carson
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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.
Diego Moita wrote:
if I got it right, it doesn't seem to be a new aspect of the evolution process explained by Darwin
As someone said, you do not understand evolution then!
Diego Moita wrote:
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.
Wow, I thought I was the only one with that observation. Best regards, Paul.
Jesus Christ is LOVE! Please tell somebody.
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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)
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
Hmm, you really are unable to stand outside your own predjudices even a little.
I'm willing to bet anything that you began reading that article assuming that the evolutionary aspect was false. Why? Because you're only willing to believe in things that confirm what you already believe, despite how ludicrous they are.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
I wouldn't interpret evidence using an unproven theory to which that evidence is related.
That statement basically highlights your horrendous grasp of the scientific method. Theories are supported by evidence, not the other way around. Results are results, data is data, and theories are how you explain them. You then use those theories to predict future results, and should these results agree with the prediction, you can be slightly more assured as to the validity of the theory. If you think that there are thousands of staunch anti-religion biologists concocting staunch anti-religion guesses and then pretending that the world agrees with their blind prejudice, then I'm afraid you ARE as stupid as you sound.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
Using a theory, supposed to be dependent on biological evidence, to interpret newly discovered biological evidence prior to evaluation is bad science.
Bearing in mind that you haven't actually read the article, just what spews out of some non-scientist journalist's digestive tract.
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
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.
No, they've shown that there's a mechanism within organisms to direct somewhat the changes going on within them. It demonstrates that complexity can be attained because of purposeful direction. And who the hell says that?
Matthew Faithfull wrote:
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.
Again, you have not r
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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.