Another win for evolution
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In the creation-vs-evolution debate, the evolutionists have been saying that the large existence of "junk DNA" is evidence that our genomes were created through the process of mutation and selection rather than divine fiat. A creator would not create a species with large portions of it's DNA that did nothing at all. "Junk DNA" as it is called, refers to the large sections of DNA which exists between genes and doesn't code for proteins or play a role in promoting genes. It's estimated that something like 98% of human DNA is "junk". Creationists have retorted that maybe we just don't know what the "junk DNA" does - just because we don't know what role it plays doesn't mean it plays no role whatsoever - thus the evolutionists assignment of "junk" is speculative. Looks like someone cooked up an experiment which involved removing large portions of this junk DNA from mice. They removed a large section of the mouse's DNA and checked to see the removal of this "junk DNA" had any effect on the organism. The apparent answer is "no". Which makes it a win for evolutionists who say "junk DNA" really is junk DNA. Through molecular techniques, a total of 2.3 million letters of DNA code from the 2.7-billion-base-pair mouse genome were deleted. To do this, embryonic cells were genetically engineered to contain the newly compact mouse genome. Mice were subsequently generated from these stem cells. The research team then compared the resulting mice with the abridged genome to mice with the full-length version. A variety of features were analyzed, ranging from viability, growth, and longevity to numerous other biochemical and molecular features. Despite the researchers' efforts to detect differences in the mice with the abridged genome, none were found. "By and large, these deletions were tolerated and didn't result in any noticeable changes," said Nóbrega. ... The negligible impact of removing these sequences suggests that the mammalian genome may not be densely encoded. Similar-sized regions have previously been removed from the mouse genome, invariably resulting in mice that did not survive, because the missing sequences contained important genes and their deletion had severe consequences for the animal. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/dgi-mtd101504.php[^] [Edit] I'd also recommend
Perhaps God put the junk DNA in there for later use. Perhaps every ten thousand years or so he activates another little segment and our IQ goes up a point or two. Or perhaps once we have decoded all the junk DNA it will be God's secret recipe for pineapple upsidedown cake or something. "Benedict Arnold was a war hero too."
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brianwelsch wrote: Ooh, maybe it gets used in the afterlife. Interesting idea, Maybe this Junk DNA actually supports reincarnation. :-) eg; it could be used when I come back as a lizard or as a shark etc Regardz Colin J Davies Attention: It's finally arrived, The worlds first DSP.
Does that mean that the long path to Nirvana is just a couple of cuts in the DNA? :) -- Weiter, weiter, ins verderben. Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben.
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Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: So genetics is a way for creationists to play on the same court as scientific minds. Ridiculous. Just goes to show that creationists don't really have a clue what faith and the desire to better man's existance is all about. As Einstein said, "Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind." Marc MyXaml Advanced Unit Testing
Marc Clifton wrote: Ridiculous. Just goes to show that creationists don't really have a clue what faith and the desire to better man's existance is all about. But it's the easy way to do it. You don't have to stay ahead of the competition. As soon as you find something that's not immediately understood, you can claim that it is a miracle of God. When the competition finds some clues as to why it is like it is, creationists invent some new science based on their beliefs. It doesn't matter if it's totally impossible to back it up without the word of the Lord, because it has all been written by the Lord. You just have to believe it. If I was religious, I'd be looking at things at hand, and then try to map it onto my beliefs, and not the other way around. It must be a royal pain having to reevaluate your own beliefs every now and then. But I must say that scientific religionists (in contrast to religious scientists) have come a long way. The duck has been obsoleted in the witch detection process. :-D Marc Clifton wrote: lame Heh, did he really use that word? :-D -- Weiter, weiter, ins verderben. Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben.
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Perhaps God put the junk DNA in there for later use. Perhaps every ten thousand years or so he activates another little segment and our IQ goes up a point or two. Or perhaps once we have decoded all the junk DNA it will be God's secret recipe for pineapple upsidedown cake or something. "Benedict Arnold was a war hero too."
Or perhaps it's the junk DNA which makes some people religious. :rolleyes: -- Weiter, weiter, ins verderben. Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben.
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Shog9 wrote: My point is that it is wise to be a skeptical of conclusions drawn from observation, as observation is often flawed or incomplete. I guess I see your comment as an appeal to uncertainty - a rhetorical method to minimize the impact when evidence points to conclusions we don't want to accept. Are there situations where we can use observation - for example, to know that the earth moves around the sun rather than the opposite? Or what if we observe that the gravity of the sun bends light - in confirmation of Einstein's theory of relativity? Or is observation bad for that too? Shog9 wrote: In the absence of an application, such knowledge seems worthless. I guess I don't see it that way. When people discovered that the earth travels around the sun there was no application for this knowledge. There is an application now, however, when we calcalate spaceship trajectories. As far as their application of this data, Marcelo Nóbrega (the lead author of the article) studies "junk DNA" for uses. He does work with comparitive DNA sequences to determine which DNA sequences are preserved across species. Based on evolutionary assumption, these conserved sequences play some sort of role in the species otherwise they wouldn't be preserved. This technique can be used to find things like gene promoters. But when a section of DNA sequence shows very little preservation (i.e. it appears to accept any and all random mutations) it is assumed that the code plays no role in the species biology. Most junk DNA falls into the category of accepting any and all mutations with no apparent effect. Now he's gone and deleted a whole section of junk DNA and it confirms what other evidence is saying: most of it plays no role in the species biology. http://pga.lbl.gov/Workshop/May2003/lectures/Nobrega.pdf[^] ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
Brit wrote: When people discovered that the earth travels around the sun there was no application for this knowledge. There is an application now, however, when we calcalate spaceship trajectories. An application for astronomy then may well be the same as an application for space travel now - to fulfill a desire for knowledge, to better understand the world in which we live. Danger lies with those who would take such observations and install them as proof of their own conclusions. Consider the Catholic Church in the days of Copernicus and Galileo: they had taken conclusions drawn based on previous observations (that of a geocentric universe) and based portions of their doctrine on it. When such observations proved faulty, they had a fight on their hands. Why build your beliefs on such an unsteady foundation? Many have believed in a Creator prior to the existence of any knowledge regarding DNA, and many have not - why look for proof, here, now? It is not useful.
bUMBLES bOUNCE! -
See? We need .NET more than we thought! Microsoft has already dabbled with this before, and I'm sure they have a lightweight CLI ready to be injected into anyone by now. Remember Microsoft DNA? :suss: -- Weiter, weiter, ins verderben. Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben.
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Brit wrote: ... If junk DNA were arriving post-creation there would be enormous amounts of variation. That's an interesting assertion, but you haven't given any basis for it. That statement also goes directly against the possible explanations I mentioned. Brit wrote: Junk DNA accounts for 98% of our genome. Ok, that's off topic, and less supportable that the intention of hte article. The research took 2.3 Million out of 2.7 Billion. That sure isn't 98%. (Yes, I saw that you mentioned a 98% estimate for junk DNA, but the estimate was unsupported by the research.) Brit wrote: (1) It is a win for evolutionists because they predicted it beforehand. (2) Saying that "this is not conclusive proof" isn't really the point. It is evidence. It is weight for evolution. Though creationists want to throw around the "isn't conclusive proof" phrase to avoid acknowledging the weight of this evidence. I guess the question, then is "What did you win?". If it doesn't prove anything, how can it be a win in a contest for proof? John
"You said a whole sentence with no words in it, and I understood you!" -- my wife as she cries about slowly becoming a geek.John Fisher wrote: That statement also goes directly against the possible explanations I mentioned. I was trying to cover all bases. So, your explanation is that "it is easy to imagine how some DNA could become unused after a few thousand years"? What does that mean exactly? That the genome has mutated in the past few thousand years to the point that it can no longer do the job that it used to do thousands of years ago? John Fisher wrote: I guess the question, then is "What did you win?". If it doesn't prove anything, how can it be a win in a contest for proof? Einstein's theory of relativity said that gravity bends light. Newtonian physics didn't. In 1919, scientists confirmed that the sun's gravity does in fact bend light (http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/EinsteinTest.html[^]). Does this prove that relativity is correct? No, because there are other possible explanations for this phenomena which might not rely on relativity. So, "how can it be a win in a contest for proof?" Easy, it's a win because it is more evidence, just like the sun's bending of light was another win for relativity even though it wasn't definitive proof. (You might also note by looking at that website that relativity is not "proved" - it just has a lot of little confirmations.) ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
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Marc Clifton wrote: Ridiculous. Just goes to show that creationists don't really have a clue what faith and the desire to better man's existance is all about. But it's the easy way to do it. You don't have to stay ahead of the competition. As soon as you find something that's not immediately understood, you can claim that it is a miracle of God. When the competition finds some clues as to why it is like it is, creationists invent some new science based on their beliefs. It doesn't matter if it's totally impossible to back it up without the word of the Lord, because it has all been written by the Lord. You just have to believe it. If I was religious, I'd be looking at things at hand, and then try to map it onto my beliefs, and not the other way around. It must be a royal pain having to reevaluate your own beliefs every now and then. But I must say that scientific religionists (in contrast to religious scientists) have come a long way. The duck has been obsoleted in the witch detection process. :-D Marc Clifton wrote: lame Heh, did he really use that word? :-D -- Weiter, weiter, ins verderben. Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben.
Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: Heh, did he really use that word? Yes, but the word used to mean "crippled" instead of "stupid". Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: As soon as you find something that's not immediately understood, you can claim that it is a miracle of God. Hehe. That's the definition for "magic". :-D Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: I'd be looking at things at hand, and then try to map it onto my beliefs Exactly. If nothing else, the things science discovers keeps adding awe and wonder to how I view the universe, life, etc. Marc MyXaml Advanced Unit Testing
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Does that mean that the long path to Nirvana is just a couple of cuts in the DNA? :) -- Weiter, weiter, ins verderben. Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben.
I guess so :-) Regardz Colin J Davies Attention: It's finally arrived, The worlds first DSP.
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brianwelsch wrote: Ooh, maybe it gets used in the afterlife. Interesting idea, Maybe this Junk DNA actually supports reincarnation. :-) eg; it could be used when I come back as a lizard or as a shark etc Regardz Colin J Davies Attention: It's finally arrived, The worlds first DSP.
I think you'll come back a little higher on the food chain than that, Colin. ;) BW The Biggest Loser
"Farm Donkey makes us laugh.
Farm Donkey hauls some ass."
-The Stoves -
brianwelsch wrote: Ooh, maybe it gets used in the afterlife. We take our DNA with us into the afterlife? brianwelsch wrote: or, maybe we should have learned by now not to jump to conclusions, as though we had a freaking clue. And yet I'm willing to bet that you believe some things are true and some things are false in this world. Should I remind you of this comment anytime you say something? Because I'm at a loss to figure out when this comment can't be used push someone towards uncertainty. ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
I have to admit my entire response earlier was off the cuff, and not thought out, (not unusual :-O ) But my point was only that it is difficult to say the DNA is junk or it isn't. Maybe it's like taking out white space in a book, and not whole pages. You can still read the book, it's just more difficult and perhaps not as enjoyable. (however that translates when discussing genes):~ We are only beginning to really understand anything about the genome. I mean, look at how long we've been studying the human body at all and there are continuously changing opinions on what we should eat, or whether herbs have positive effects, effects of drugs , psychology and on and on. I don't think we have a firm grasp of many complexities. Of course, we need to create theories to further discussions and experiments, but it seems to me (and I don't claim any expertise in the field wharsoever) premature to say some things are simply not even used or important. BW The Biggest Loser
"Farm Donkey makes us laugh.
Farm Donkey hauls some ass."
-The Stoves -
Marc Clifton wrote: Ridiculous. Just goes to show that creationists don't really have a clue what faith and the desire to better man's existance is all about. But it's the easy way to do it. You don't have to stay ahead of the competition. As soon as you find something that's not immediately understood, you can claim that it is a miracle of God. When the competition finds some clues as to why it is like it is, creationists invent some new science based on their beliefs. It doesn't matter if it's totally impossible to back it up without the word of the Lord, because it has all been written by the Lord. You just have to believe it. If I was religious, I'd be looking at things at hand, and then try to map it onto my beliefs, and not the other way around. It must be a royal pain having to reevaluate your own beliefs every now and then. But I must say that scientific religionists (in contrast to religious scientists) have come a long way. The duck has been obsoleted in the witch detection process. :-D Marc Clifton wrote: lame Heh, did he really use that word? :-D -- Weiter, weiter, ins verderben. Wir müssen leben bis wir sterben.
Jörgen Sigvardsson wrote: The duck has been obsoleted in the witch detection process. Who are you who is so wise in the ways of science? :-D BW The Biggest Loser
"Farm Donkey makes us laugh.
Farm Donkey hauls some ass."
-The Stoves -
I think you'll come back a little higher on the food chain than that, Colin. ;) BW The Biggest Loser
"Farm Donkey makes us laugh.
Farm Donkey hauls some ass."
-The Stovesbrianwelsch wrote: I think you'll come back a little higher on the food chain than that, Colin. As long as I don't come back as a VB programmer, I don't care. :-) Regardz Colin J Davies Attention: It's finally arrived, The worlds first DSP.
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I have to admit my entire response earlier was off the cuff, and not thought out, (not unusual :-O ) But my point was only that it is difficult to say the DNA is junk or it isn't. Maybe it's like taking out white space in a book, and not whole pages. You can still read the book, it's just more difficult and perhaps not as enjoyable. (however that translates when discussing genes):~ We are only beginning to really understand anything about the genome. I mean, look at how long we've been studying the human body at all and there are continuously changing opinions on what we should eat, or whether herbs have positive effects, effects of drugs , psychology and on and on. I don't think we have a firm grasp of many complexities. Of course, we need to create theories to further discussions and experiments, but it seems to me (and I don't claim any expertise in the field wharsoever) premature to say some things are simply not even used or important. BW The Biggest Loser
"Farm Donkey makes us laugh.
Farm Donkey hauls some ass."
-The Stovesgood post !! You get my coveted 5 for the day. Regardz Colin J Davies Attention: It's finally arrived, The worlds first DSP.
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Brit wrote: When people discovered that the earth travels around the sun there was no application for this knowledge. There is an application now, however, when we calcalate spaceship trajectories. An application for astronomy then may well be the same as an application for space travel now - to fulfill a desire for knowledge, to better understand the world in which we live. Danger lies with those who would take such observations and install them as proof of their own conclusions. Consider the Catholic Church in the days of Copernicus and Galileo: they had taken conclusions drawn based on previous observations (that of a geocentric universe) and based portions of their doctrine on it. When such observations proved faulty, they had a fight on their hands. Why build your beliefs on such an unsteady foundation? Many have believed in a Creator prior to the existence of any knowledge regarding DNA, and many have not - why look for proof, here, now? It is not useful.
bUMBLES bOUNCE!I guess I don't quite follow your line of logic. You are comparing my views to the Catholic Church's dogmatic insistence of a geo-centric solar system. Yet, I'm the one arguing for observation over dogma, which puts me much closer to Galileo. You respond that, "observation is often flawed or incomplete", which is something you can easily imagine the Catholic Church saying to Galileo. I'm actually quite surprised by the role reversal you've done here. Shog9 wrote: Why build your beliefs on such an unsteady foundation? Unsteady foundation? I'm not sure what you mean. Perhaps you should read this article[^]. I've had it sitting around on my computer for months. I finally got around to publishing it. Sorry if there are broken links or mistakes. I'm not sure if everything is exactly right. Shog9 wrote: Many have believed in a Creator prior to the existence of any knowledge regarding DNA, and many have not - why look for proof, here, now? It is not useful. Not useful? I shouldn't change my views based on new information? For some reason your words sound an awful lot like, "Many have believed in a [geocentric solar system] prior to the existence of any knowledge regarding [apparent motions of the planets], and many have not - why look for proof, here, now? It is not useful." ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
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Perhaps God put the junk DNA in there for later use. Perhaps every ten thousand years or so he activates another little segment and our IQ goes up a point or two. Or perhaps once we have decoded all the junk DNA it will be God's secret recipe for pineapple upsidedown cake or something. "Benedict Arnold was a war hero too."
Stan Shannon wrote: Perhaps God put the junk DNA in there for later use. Perhaps every ten thousand years or so he activates another little segment and our IQ goes up a point or two. Or perhaps once we have decoded all the junk DNA it will be God's secret recipe for pineapple upsidedown cake or something. Seriously. We're talking about God -- with God-like powers. He doesn't need to insert junk DNA for later use. That's something that humans - with limited capabilities - would do. ----------------------------------------------------- Empires Of Steel[^]
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Perhaps this "junk DNA" is just FILLER inside a fixed length record. Maybe it'll be used on the next release. Which I understand will be available sometime this millenium. Ooh, maybe it gets used in the afterlife. or, maybe we should have learned by now not to jump to conclusions, as though we had a freaking clue. BW The Biggest Loser
"Farm Donkey makes us laugh.
Farm Donkey hauls some ass."
-The Stovesbrianwelsch wrote: Perhaps this "junk DNA" is just FILLER inside a fixed length record. Not sure how seriously this was intended, but: If you remove the filler from computer memory (i.e., don't allocate memory for filler), then the program will malfunction. Thus, using your analogy, the removal of junk DNA should cause damage, precisely the opposite of what was found (I agree that we should be cautious before accepting the conclusion that the removal of the DNA had no effect; some bugs only manifest themselves in very specific contexts). John Carson
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In the creation-vs-evolution debate, the evolutionists have been saying that the large existence of "junk DNA" is evidence that our genomes were created through the process of mutation and selection rather than divine fiat. A creator would not create a species with large portions of it's DNA that did nothing at all. "Junk DNA" as it is called, refers to the large sections of DNA which exists between genes and doesn't code for proteins or play a role in promoting genes. It's estimated that something like 98% of human DNA is "junk". Creationists have retorted that maybe we just don't know what the "junk DNA" does - just because we don't know what role it plays doesn't mean it plays no role whatsoever - thus the evolutionists assignment of "junk" is speculative. Looks like someone cooked up an experiment which involved removing large portions of this junk DNA from mice. They removed a large section of the mouse's DNA and checked to see the removal of this "junk DNA" had any effect on the organism. The apparent answer is "no". Which makes it a win for evolutionists who say "junk DNA" really is junk DNA. Through molecular techniques, a total of 2.3 million letters of DNA code from the 2.7-billion-base-pair mouse genome were deleted. To do this, embryonic cells were genetically engineered to contain the newly compact mouse genome. Mice were subsequently generated from these stem cells. The research team then compared the resulting mice with the abridged genome to mice with the full-length version. A variety of features were analyzed, ranging from viability, growth, and longevity to numerous other biochemical and molecular features. Despite the researchers' efforts to detect differences in the mice with the abridged genome, none were found. "By and large, these deletions were tolerated and didn't result in any noticeable changes," said Nóbrega. ... The negligible impact of removing these sequences suggests that the mammalian genome may not be densely encoded. Similar-sized regions have previously been removed from the mouse genome, invariably resulting in mice that did not survive, because the missing sequences contained important genes and their deletion had severe consequences for the animal. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-10/dgi-mtd101504.php[^] [Edit] I'd also recommend
I consider myself as an evolutionist, and I also don't believe this concept is opposed to the one of a Divine Creator. Evolution can be part of the process, after all. If some evolutionists say "A creator would not create a species with large portions of it's DNA that did nothing at all", I think to myself "what do they fucking know what a creator would do?". Taking the Bible literally seems also to be an enormous mistake to me. Just the concept of the whole humanity coming from Adam and Eve only is totally incompatible with all the knowledge we have about genetics! I don't think we have such a debate on this side of the big pool. Creationist are a species in the process of disappearance there :-D
Fold With Us! "A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances - Georges S. Patton, 1885–1945"
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I consider myself as an evolutionist, and I also don't believe this concept is opposed to the one of a Divine Creator. Evolution can be part of the process, after all. If some evolutionists say "A creator would not create a species with large portions of it's DNA that did nothing at all", I think to myself "what do they fucking know what a creator would do?". Taking the Bible literally seems also to be an enormous mistake to me. Just the concept of the whole humanity coming from Adam and Eve only is totally incompatible with all the knowledge we have about genetics! I don't think we have such a debate on this side of the big pool. Creationist are a species in the process of disappearance there :-D
Fold With Us! "A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances - Georges S. Patton, 1885–1945"
K(arl) wrote: If some evolutionists say "A creator would not create a species with large portions of it's DNA that did nothing at all", I think to myself "what do they f***ing know what a creator would do?". If people speculated on what a Creator would do with just a single feature, then you might have a point. However, the real evolutionary argument is that there is a mountain of evidence that 1. fits the evolutionary framework, when it could easily have not done so if evolution was false 2. has no apparent rationale if the world was created by God. Now, if the world looks like it is the product of purely naturalistic processes, you can always say "God made it look that way". Indeed, whatever the world looks like, you can always say "God made it look that way". However, by adopting this approach, you are making belief in a Creator immune from evidence. Belief in evolution, by contrast, depends on the evidence matching the theory and could be disproved if the evidence failed to match the theory. If Creationists simply said that evidence is irrelevant, then they would at least have the virtue of consistency. Instead, most argue that apparent design in nature is evidence for the existence of a divine Creator. You can't argue that and then claim that an apparent lack of design is irrelevant to the issue of the existence of a divine Creator. John Carson
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K(arl) wrote: If some evolutionists say "A creator would not create a species with large portions of it's DNA that did nothing at all", I think to myself "what do they f***ing know what a creator would do?". If people speculated on what a Creator would do with just a single feature, then you might have a point. However, the real evolutionary argument is that there is a mountain of evidence that 1. fits the evolutionary framework, when it could easily have not done so if evolution was false 2. has no apparent rationale if the world was created by God. Now, if the world looks like it is the product of purely naturalistic processes, you can always say "God made it look that way". Indeed, whatever the world looks like, you can always say "God made it look that way". However, by adopting this approach, you are making belief in a Creator immune from evidence. Belief in evolution, by contrast, depends on the evidence matching the theory and could be disproved if the evidence failed to match the theory. If Creationists simply said that evidence is irrelevant, then they would at least have the virtue of consistency. Instead, most argue that apparent design in nature is evidence for the existence of a divine Creator. You can't argue that and then claim that an apparent lack of design is irrelevant to the issue of the existence of a divine Creator. John Carson
You seem to connect the evolutionnary theory with the belief in God. I don't see where there's a relation in between. As for your point #2, I don't understand what it has to do with the theory of evolution. Also, the concept of "apparent rationale" seems very disputable to me, it's like saying there's only one way to make a program to do a task. IMHO, according to the point of view, there may be many ways to program something fulfilling the task asked. John Carson wrote: Belief in evolution Belief?? Evolutionnism isn't a religion, right? As you say, it's a scientific theory, so it isn't a matter of believing in it or not. Believing in God is a matter of Faith, but science is about facts and demonstrations. Claiming Faith is Science is IMHO as stupid as claiming Science is Faith: both are unrelated.
Fold With Us! "A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances - Georges S. Patton, 1885–1945"