Posted on 10/11/2002 9:02:01 PM PDT by gore3000
Please post a link to my strong claim that evolution is impossible.
Please provide a link to my post advocating a global flood(one covering the entire third planet from the star known as Sol, to the depths of the highest mountains--attempting to preempt any more red herrings) causing the death of any creature.
Lastly, I have criticized the Talk-origins alleged horse tree because of its disagreement with other interpretations of the fossil evidence and its own internal inconsistencies. Thus I do not find it compelling to accept the validity of the tree in any form. Your questions are ill-formed and my response to them remains, absolutely not. If you rephrase your original question into -- Is there an "unbent" ancestral chain linking the "eohippus" fossil with the modern horse?, I would answer, I doubt it, but I do not reject it.
From the "Caltech and the Human Genome Project" website, the following article: "DNA is a Reality Beyond Metaphor," was written by David Baltimore, one of the winners of The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1975. I report the Nobel Prize information so as to assure everyone that Dr. Baltimore is, indeed a Gore3000-approved expert. Indeed, Gore3000 him/her/itself cites Dr. Baltimore as one of the noble crusaders against evolution in his "Biology Disproving Evolution" section. But if we read Baltimore's "DNA" article, we find this curious statement as the final paragraph:
Modern biology is a science of information. The sequencing of the genome is a landmark of progress in specifying the information, decoding it into its many coded meanings and learning how it goes wrong in disease. While it is a moment worthy of the attention of every human, we should not mistake progress for a solution. There is yet much hard work to be done–even the genome we have today is a first draft that needs elaboration. It will be the work of at least the next half-century to fully comprehend the magnificence of the DNA edifice buil[t] over 4 billion years of evolution and held in the nucleus of each cell of the body of each organism on earth. [Emphasis mine.]Note: I do not state that Baltimore has "proved" evolution, I merely post his own words, which assume evolution. Perhaps G3K can point out Dr. Baltimore's error for us.
I then clicked on this link, from Gore3000's "Biology Disproving Evolution" section. One of the winners of the 2001 Award was Leland H. Hartwell. I followed links at the Nobel site to this site, where I found Hartwell's own words describing his work:
My laboratory is beginning a new research program aimed at studying how molecular circuits support evolution. Evolution acts through selection of preexisting genetic variation in populations. Three important questions are: 1) How does variation occur? 2)How is variation maintained? 3) How is genetic variation expressed as phenotypic variation? The first question is well studied. We are currently focused on the second. A variety of biochemical mechanisms (including gene redundancy, co-assembly of proteins into macromolecular complexes, positive feedback, robust circuit design, repair processes) minimize the phenotypic consequences of genetic variation and thereby allow cells to tolerate it. These relationships can be revealed by synthetic-phenotypes. That is, if one gene plays a role that buffers the phenotypic expression of variation in another, then loss of the first reveals the phenotypic consequences of variation in the second. Synthetic-lethal relationships have been widely studied in yeast although rarely systematically or comprehensively. Anecdotal results strongly suggest that buffering mechanisms are modular. That is, the cellular circuitry is organized into modules that buffer the expression within their module but do not affect other modules. We are developing methods to be both systematic and comprehensive in the investigation of synthetic phenotypes and are focusing on tolerance of genetic variation in the DNA synthetic apparatus. Since the very mechanisms that permit the maintenance of variation also diminish its phenotypic expression, the third question becomes significant. Phenotypic expression of genetic variation in the DNA synthetic apparatus has additional implications for evolution (and cancer) since this variation can be expressed as mutator phenotypes.[Emphasis mine.]Hartwell's words appear to mean not only that he assumes that evolution happened, he's active in finding evidence that supports it! He does not claim to have "proved" it, nor do I mean to imply that he has. I mean to show he assumes evolution happened and he's working actively in that field.
Two of the Gore3000-approved experts both assume evolution happened! One is, in his very own words, "beginning a new research program aimed at studying how molecular circuits support evolution." Both are Nobel Prize winners, but Gore3000 him/her/itself sayeth that all Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have disproved evolution! How can this possibly be?
Interesting site. The page prior to the one you linked demolished another quote-mining adventure wherein the author had this to say:
The problem is that science is not a process run on authority. Science has no Pope. Arguments are won on their quality-- not the popularity, fame or even quantity (just because you say it over and over again doesn’t make it true).
Sounds a lot like Shapiro.
Mesonychus...
Yes, your Darwinian nonsense. First of all Darwin never cited the 'Darwin Finches' as proof of evolution. Second Darwin did a terrible job of examining them. Thirdly, an evolutionist in the 20th Century started the nonsense about the finches proving evolution. He said that they were separate species and had evolved. Being an evolutionist fraud, not a scientist, he was disproved in a famous book called "The Beak of the Finch". The finches do mate and produce progeny and the ones of 'mixed species' are much more viable than those that are not. In addition, it has also been shown that the finches's beaks have not evolved. They shorten and lengthen back and forth according to rainfall. Of course even though this research has been published in a Pulitzer Prize winning book, the evolutionists keep on lying about the finches being proof of evolution. They are the opposite, they disprove evolution.
Would that be Lucille, Sandor, Linda, Joan, Steven, James, Leo, or Paul?
He'll just chalk it up to our misinterpreting the good doctor's words, much like we misinterpret the Pope's fairly clear statement on evolution and the church.
You must remember that in gore3000's world, "evidence" morphs into "absolute proof," a circle is not an ellipse and 1720 is a really big number.
Another review ."Darwin's finches are not like Michelangelo's Adam, who raises his finger languidly to meet the down-stretched finger of God: the first man, molded of clay, half-raised from earth, created in an instant. These birds are more like Michelangelo's Prisoners, the famous statues he left half in and half out of the marble, so that looking at them today we can almost see and hear the sculptor's chisel at work. The birds are alive and breathing, but they are unfinished; in the Galapagos the sculptor is still at work, measurably and demonstrably... The chisel is hard at work daily and hourly in every landscape on the planet." (p. 206-7)This winner of the Pulitzer Prize does not disappoint. Whether you are a beginner or expert when it comes to the subject of evolution will make no difference. There is something for everyone in this book even if the reader isn't all that interested in science or evolution prior to reading.Weiner compares and contrasts what researchers Rosemary and Peter Grant and those who worked on the Galapagos islands see and find with what Darwin saw and found. Although the Grants' view is very different from Darwin's view in many, if not most, cases, they both support natural selection. For instance, Darwin believed evolution occurred over very long periods of time and generally moved in a set direction toward fitness in the same direction the environment was heading. The Grants found that the environment fluctuates much quicker and is, for the most part, less headed in a particular direction (with the exception of global warming which is fairly consistent in mean temperature movement but not so consistent in its effects on El Niños and La Niñas). Because of the ebbs and flows of evolution, due in large part to the environment, it can be more easily witnessed and documented in real time, in some cases, than it can be through looking at the infrequently fossilizing instances of a given species over thousands or millions of years. As Weiner puts it on page 111
The closer you look at life, the more rapid and intense the rate of evolutionary change. The farther back in time you stand, the less you see.By making detailed measurements of the various finch species (and individuals) year after year, breeding pair after breeding pair, and generation after generation the Grants are able to see the species wax and wane between becoming more alike and more different. The differentiation episodes come about due to changes in the ecological factors that are ever changing.If you are interested in the topic of speciation, this book (especially beginning on page 162) and Mayr's are must reads.
I was a bit surprised by how much of the book didn't speak of Darwin's finches. Many other "evolution in action" observed events and experiments are discussed. Those include Drosophila (fruit flies), crossbills, sticklebacks, sparrows, soapberry bugs, and more. Sexual selection is also covered as is evolution at the DNA level and co-evolution.
Don't pass up the chance to read this book. It will educate you; it will change you and the way you think about life. The Beak of the Finch should be at, or near, the top of everyone's reading list.
"All times seem special to those who live in them. But it is neither parochial pride nor shortsighted despair to say that our time is more special than others. According to the fossil record, only five times in the past six hundred million years has there been such abrupt havoc in the biosphere. Only five times have so many twigs and branches been lopped from the tree of life at once... We are altering the terms of the struggle for existence: changing the conditions of life for every species that is coeval with our own.from the publisher:Never before was such havoc caused by the expansion of a single species. Never before was the leading actor aware of the action, concerned about the consequences, conscious of guilt. For better and for worse, this may be one of the most dramatic moments to observe evolution in action since evolution began." (p. 276-7)
Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend twenty years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are four hundred at the time of the author's visit, or when there are over a thousand. They have continuously observed about twenty generations of finches. Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
On the Galapagos Islands Charles Darwin gave his first hint at his theory of natural selection, writing about the finches he studied there. In Darwin's time there was no proof of this theoretical mechanism for evolution. Indeed it would have been thought absurd to imagine observing it actually happen; the process was thought to take geological time spans.
Weiner, an outstanding science journalist, details research done in the last 20 years that proves otherwise. Biologists Peter and Rosemary Grant have documented the evolution of Darwin's Galapagos finches, demonstrating that it is neither rare nor slow, but can be watched by the hour. Weiner's superb account reads like a thriller and won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.
On a remote outpost of the Galapagos, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, they prove that Darwin did not know the strength of this own theory. We watch as nature alters the beaks of finches from generation to generation to help them survive.
They explore evolution not as it occurred centuries ago, but as it's happening right now. Evolution in our time is charted in chapters which recount observations of evolutionary processes speeded by human intervention. A fascinating, revealing study. Includes 50 illustrations and a map.
Winner of the Pulitzer PrizeBook Description
On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: it is taking place by the hour, and we can watch.
In this dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research, Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself. The Beak of the Finch is an elegantly written and compelling masterpiece of theory and explication in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould.
Page 15, plus Jack Benny's age.
Yellow-dello tomorrow at noon.
(Liked the review, BTW. Odd how it didn't seem to say what he seemed to think it said.)
Because you are disgusting, lying slime!
</creationism mode>
James A. Shapiro
University of Chicago, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Cummings Life Sciences
Center, 920 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637-4931, USA (Phone: 773-702-1625; Fax: 773-702-0439;
E-mail: jsha@midway.uchicago.edu)
Accepted 18 January 2000
Key words: evolutionary feedback, natural genetic engineering, genomic systems, genome-wide transposition,
transcriptional regulatory circuits
Abstract
Cells are capable of sophisticated information processing. Cellular signal transduction networks serve to compute
data from multiple inputs and make decisions about cellular behavior. Genomes are organized like integrated
computer programs as systems of routines and subroutines, not as a collection of independent genetic ‘units’.
DNA sequences which do not code for protein structure determine the system architecture of the genome. Re-petititve
DNA elements serve as tags to mark and integrate different protein coding sequences into coordinately
functioning groups, to build up systems for genome replication and distribution to daughter cells, and to organize
chromatin. Genomes can be reorganized through the action of cellular systems for cutting, splicing and rearranging
DNA molecules. Natural genetic engineering systems (including transposable elements) are capable of acting
genome-wide and not just one site at a time. Transposable elements are subject to regulation by cellular signal
transduction/computing networks. This regulation acts on both the timing and extent of DNA rearrangements and
(in a few documented cases so far) on the location of changes in the genomes. By connecting transcriptional
regulatory circuits to the action of natural genetic engineering systems, there is a plausible molecular basis for
coordinated changes in the genome subject to biologically meaningful feedback.
First, I did not write that you claimed it strongly or intemperately, or wrote the exact words “evolution is impossible.” I am saying that your arguments against evolution often amount to the claim that evolution is impossible, and that that is a strong claim in the sense that atheism and Catholicism make “strong” claims, while agnosticism and Unitarianism make “weak” claims.
You have certainly claimed that a natural origin of life is impossible, or at any rate, would take about E+44 times longer than the age of the universe (e.g., post 142, no doubt your math is impeccable, your central assumption that the simplest self-replicating chemical structure must have DNA, and indeed a specific chain of 125 DNA base pairs, is not).
It’s clear you believe abiogenesis is impossible, and that evolution is impossible for that reason, and I inferred from other comments of yours that that’s not your only reason for believing that evolution is impossible. (e.g., in answer to AntiGuv’s observation that “Your argument is with abiogenesis, not evolution.” you say:
That's the beginning, yes, but evolution is touted as beginning with the first self-replicating system and includes aspects of randomness which are clearly also dependant on numbers.
So I have concluded, I think reasonably, that your position is that evolution is impossible.
If in fact you do believe that evolution is possible, say so here, and I will apologize for mischaracterizing your beliefs.
Then your wrote: Please provide a link to my post advocating a global flood.
Obviously, I was making a joke intended to ridicule your position -- or lack thereof. You do explicitly deny that there is an unbroken chain between eohippus and the horse. Fine.
But you refuse to say that eohippus never grew and became more horse-like (because the fossil record clearly shows that it did), and you refuse to say that eohippus did grow and become more horse-like (because that would mean conceding one example of evolution).
And the only way that eohippus did not evolve larger is if there were at one time eohippi of many sizes (perhaps babies and adults), but that during the Flood the little ones drowned first and ended up in the bottom layers. This is of course an absurd view, although it's one that people took seriously before Darwin.
Reading the abstract you provided has left me in slack-jawed astonishment at what science has achieved in my lifetime alone.
Bravo, James A. Shapiro ... and all the other Shapiros, too.
Joan ... (Sorry. This one's just a newspaper report).
and, of course, James A.!
Yes, I do, as I have cited the llama/camel breeding. But I do not believe the Darwinian random mutation/natural selection version of it. No apology necessary.
As to the calculations, I merely used the numbers presented and made calculations from them. It is likely that the odds of something "useful" forming randomly are even less than the calculations show. This could happen if the tendancy is for the nucleic acids to form monotonic chains, or some other "non-random" minimum energy configuration.
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