How All Species Are Related Grows More Precise, Complex [Evolution]

Wall Street Journal (subscription required) ^ | 13 June 2002 | Sharon Begley

[PatrickHenry]

Family resemblance can indeed be elusive, or we wouldn't have "check the mailman" jokes. Scientists who try to infer who's related to whom among all creatures past and present can therefore be forgiven for taking 150 years to figure out this one: slime molds, mushrooms and other fungi are more closely related to you, me and other animals than they are to plants.

[js1138]

I thought the Baldwin Boys were bombed in the South Park movie. Guess they survived in an underground bunker.

Celebrity readers give me the creeps. I think of Arthur Clarke or Leonard Nimoy peddling junk science, and want to weep.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Has anybody ever spotted an evolutionary creationist on these threads? (Maybe I could become one with a little work??) ;^)

[js1138]

Has anybody ever spotted an evolutionary creationist...

What do you mean, specifically?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

I was looking at PH's link to the crevo spectrum and it listed an evolutionary creationist. I wasn't sure what that would look like and wondered if anybody had ever seen one? Just seemed like an interesting concept and I wondered if it was workable.

[laredo44]

Working first with anatomical and fossil evidence and lately with genetic clues, they have moved from the original division of life into plants and animals (a tree with two main trunks) to a scheme with three, then five, then back to three major trunks.

Oh my. Somewhere along the line, somebody made an error. I guess there's nothing we can do but throw the baby out with the bath water.

[js1138]

Prior to Darwin, most scientists were what I would call evolutionary creationists. The classification of plants and animals suggested an "upward" trend, and this trend was ascribed to God, who had individually created each species, allowing some to die out.

Another possible interpretation is the Alamo-Girl interpretation (forgive me if I get this wrong). This suggests that biological evolution has occurred as the unfolding of a program, and that the program was embedded in the structure of the universe at creation.

[laredo44]

Either way, all the new genetic data are clearly saying that the last common ancestor of everything "was a far more complex organism than previously envisioned," she says. There is no fossil evidence of what it was, but the emerging theory is that life got complex fast.

Holymoly. Silly me. I think I just deleted my link to the ID site. I'm screwed.

[Condorman]

seems that they still cannot give up their crayons

Ironic bookmark

[f.Christian]

SCHLOCKOLOGY

Denigrating God - Truth -Science to prove a falsehood !

Main Entry: false·hood
Pronunciation: 'fols-"hud
Function: noun
Date: 13th century
1 : an untrue statement : LIE
2 : absence of truth or accuracy
3 : the practice of lying : MENDACITY

[MattAMiller]

I think you've misunderstood me. Gore3000 is trying to claim that traceing relationships between species requires the assumption that the parent species become stagnant after the split. I was drawing an analogy to linguistics which uses somewhat similar means to trace relationships between languages yet has no such assumption.

[PatrickHenry]

I see we got moved to the Smokey Backroom. I wonder how that happened?

[Junior]

This suggests that biological evolution has occurred as the unfolding of a program, and that the program was embedded in the structure of the universe at creation.

This is precisely what quite a few of us believe. It has the advantage of not contradicting the available evidence, and posits a perfect God -- one that doesn't need to pop in every so often to tweak His creation.

[js1138]

Holymoly. Silly me. I think I just deleted my link to the ID site. I'm screwed.

Google is our friend.

[js1138]

...trying to claim that traceing relationships between species requires the assumption that the parent species become stagnant after the split...

But your analogy requires all the embodiments of evolution to have similar characteristics and attributes, such as a tree structure. Languages as well as living things can be diagrammed as a tree. So can inventions and philosophical ideas.

[MattAMiller]

But your analogy requires all the embodiments of evolution to have similar characteristics and attributes, such as a tree structure. Languages as well as living things can be diagrammed as a tree. So can inventions and philosophical ideas.

You seem to have gotten a hold of the idea that I'm a creationist. I'm not. I'm pointing out that these trees are drawn in many other feilds with no controversy.

[js1138]

I'm not trying to label you in any way. I was just pointing out that several creationist posters have ridiculed the application of evolutionary principles to other fields, and that most evolutionists on these threads try to stick to biology.

Personally, I think evolution is one of those grand concepts that bears fruit in all sorts of domains. I have argued that even human designed objects evolve, and that design is, in principal, an evolutionary process.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

This suggests that biological evolution has occurred as the unfolding of a program, and that the program was embedded in the structure of the universe at creation.

Thanks. I'll have to keep an eye on her posts.

[js1138]

Try this one:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/929494/posts

I don't think I phrased things the way she would.

[Aric2000]

Smokey Backroom placemarker.

[PatrickHenry]

As evolution threads go, this one was quite well-behaved. Yet the mods moved it to the ghetto of FreeRepublic. Musta been a lotta stuff going on behind the scenes.