Posted on 06/22/2006 6:49:23 PM PDT by VadeRetro
WASHINGTON - Will you walk into my parlor, said a Cretaceous spider to an ancient fly. The classic spider's web, like Charlotte would have woven, was invented just once, way back in the Cretaceous period some 136 million years ago, scientists report.
Called an orb web, it's the generally circular style spun by two major types of spiders, which had raised the possibility of the two groups evolving this form separately.
But a paper in Friday's issue of the journal Science says a comparison of the spider genes related to web making shows that the orb web developed just once.
Researchers led by Jessica Garb of the University of California, Riverside, compared orb-web building spiders in the genuses Deinopoidea and Araneoidea. Both build orb webs to catch prey and the deinopoids also include net-casting spiders that throw a modified orb web over their prey.
Araneoids include the orb weavers such as golden silk spiders with their traditional spiraling web as well as those that weave sheet webs.
Garb said in a statement that the finding "does not support a double origin for the orb web," but indicates that the unique design evolved only once.
While the two groups probably developed orb-web spinning from a common ancestor, they came up with different ways of making the web catch prey.
Araneoid webs have glue droplets that make prey stick to the web, while deinopoids wrap their threads with a different type of silk fiber that "the spiders comb, until it almost has the appearance of Velcro under a microscope, and they snag insects that way," Garb reported.
Not all spiders make orb webs. The black widow, for example, weaves a web that is a tangle of silk without the circular pattern.
In a separate paper in the same issue, a team of researchers including David A. Grimaldi of the American Museum of Natural History reports the discovery of a Cretaceous-era spider web encased in amber along with some captured insects.
The amber, found in Spain, preserved 26 strands of silk, many of them connected to one another. Glue droplets are visible on the web and prey includes a fly, a mite, a beetle and a wasp.
The amber was dated to about 110 million years ago and is the oldest known example of a web with trapped insects, according to Grimaldi.
This finding confirms that spiders and complex, sticky webs date back early enough to have affected the evolution of the most diverse groups of flying insects, the researchers said.
Garb's research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Army Research Office while that of Grimaldi was supported by the Spanish-French Scientific Research Program and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science.
___
On the Net:
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org
I'm sure this is of NO interest to anyone else, but I was in a stream of conscious frame of mind.
:-D
Then you operate by the theory that every scientific hypothesis is absolute truth. Your welcome to that theory. I don't buy into it.
How in the world did you manage to hallucinate anything that bizarre out of what he actually wrote?
No, actually, they haven't. You have a vivid imagination, though. For giggles, though, feel free to name, say, three examples of times that any creationist has actually "debunked" one of my arguments. We'll wait.
is a write up showing the myriad of eroneous assumptions you have to make to reach your conclusions about what the DNA evidence shows. A Critique of Douglas Theobald’s “29 Evidences for Macroevolution” Part 3 by Ashby Camp Part 4 “Molecular Evidence”
Oh, for pete's sake -- is *that* the kind of twaddle you guys mistake for "debunking"?
First, flinging a random link at me that addresses what someone *else* has written on the topic isn't a very impressive way to try to address what *I've* written.
Second, the many, many errors, fallacies, and downright dishonesties in Ashby Camp's "critique" are such old chestnuts that I've got a link to my rebuttal to it on my Freeper homepage. You really ought to do your homework before you waste any more of my time, and your own, on material that has long since been demolished as the usual anti-evolution hand-waving, misrepresentations, and flawed "arguments".
And I've posted this rebuttal more than a dozen times (including on at least one thread you participated in heavily, so you can't pretend not to have had an opportunity to see it). What's your excuse for continuing to parrot the same old nonsense to me after I've already dealt with it over and over again, and you're unable to come up with anything new and actually *valid*?
Sigh... Look, if you're not going to actually read the material for yourself and understand it -- if you're just going to fling "anti-links" as a talisman protecting you from learning anything -- why should we bother with you, and why do you pretend that you're approaching this intellectually instead of reflexively defending your cherished preconceptions from being challenged?
I say that because anyone who had actually read and understood the "Evidences for Macroevolution" material, and then actually read Camp's "critique" of it, would have no problem realizing how shoddily and dishonestly it tries (and utterly fails) to hand-wave away the evidence. Clearly you didn't bother to engage your own brain, and instead just went through a process of, "oh my gosh, I can't let myself consider the actual evidence for evolution, so I'm going to have to flail about the internet for an excuse to dismiss it entirely, ah, here we go, a creationist 'critique' which claims that the first link is trash, and even though I haven't bothered to check to see if the author actually addresses the material competently or his rebuttal isn't riddled with flaws, that's good enough for me!"...
If you guys aren't interested in actually thinking for yourselves, why do you even bother participating in these discussions? Why ask to see evidence if you're just going to respond by desperately looking for excuses to ignore it?
If you feel that there remains any portion of Camp's critique which has not yet been shredded, or if you find a flaw in any part of the rebuttal to Mr. Camp, feel free to specifically state it and make your case.
And if that's not enough, here's my own review of Camp's "critique":
Look, Danny -- if you're not able to keep up your end of the conversation, I suggest you go find some other topic to ramble on about. Why don't you guys try to think for yourselves for a change, instead of just parroting the pap spoonfed to you by people who don't know what in the heck they're talking about, but don't mind lying about in order to try to make it look like they have some kind of valid attack against evolutionary biology?which has been thoroughly debunked in A Critique of 29 Evidences for Macroevolution as well as on several threads right here on FreeRepublic.
Oh, puh-leaze... "Frantically denounced" is not the same thing as "thoroughly debunked". Let's take a look at your link, shall we?
Ashby Camp attempts to "debunk" item "4.2 DNA Coding Redundancy", but he screws it up royally. First, he attempts to summarize the argument as:
The alleged prediction and fulfillment are:This COMPLETELY misses the point of the DNA Coding Redundancy argument. In fact, it practically *reverses* the actual argument entirely. It's a downright laughable attempt at summarizing the actual argument, and grossly misrepresents the original point being made.1. If universal common ancestry is true, then ubiquitous genes will have the same or a similar codon sequence in two or more species.
2. Ubiquitous genes have the same or a similar codon sequence in two or more species.
Ashby Camp can hardly "debunk" an argument if he doesn't even understand it to start with.
Instead, the actual argument which Camp is misrepresenting goes like this: If modern life arose through common descent, then the redundancy in the DNA coding (which allows *many* different DNA sequences to produce *identical* protein results) should result in very similar DNA sequences between recently-related species (for the same protein), less similar DNA sequences for less-recently-related species, and very less similar DNA sequences for distantly-related species. For *all* species relationships and *all* coding sequences.
That's *quite* a bit different than Camp's ridiculously oversimplified version, which grossly distorts the above into "some sequences will be found to be similar, somewhere". The *actual* prediction is *far* more specific, and *vastly* less likely to occur by chance or some other method which does not involve common descent. The actual prediction makes testable, narrow predictions about *every* ubiquitous gene sequence in *every* species. It's extremely specific, and leaves no wiggle-room for observations which might violate the prediction.
Camp then uses his own skewed version of the argument to say, "It is not a prediction of the hypothesis of universal common ancestry or the more specific hypothesis of Neo-Darwinism that ubiquitous genes will have the same or a similar codon sequence in two or more species." That's true enough for Camp's distorted version, but *NOT* for the original.
Camp further claims: "If the codon sequence in such a gene was not the same or “similar” in two or more species, evolutionists simply would vary the time of divergence and/or the mutation rate, which is claimed to vary for different genes, to account for the differences." No, absolutely not. What Camp is missing is that this line of evidence applies not to absolute amounts of differences, but *relative* amounts of differences. Yes, the neutral mutation rate for some genes is larger than others. But that's irrelevant to this line of evidence, because whatever the mutation rate for a given gene, what's being compared is larger differences versus smaller differences when examining multiple pairs of species. "Larger" is distinguishable from "smaller" no matter what the absolute sizes might be.
Camp reveals his further misunderstandings when he writes: "Once again, the real argument being made is theological, not scientific. The claim is that, since God could make a gene for a protein with many different codon sequences, he would not have used an identical or similar series of codons in the cytochrome c gene of separately created species." No, Camp blows it again. There is, in fact, absolutely no argument of any sort in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution about what God might or might not choose to do. That's Camp's own hallucination. What's worse, he obviously entirely misunderstands the *evidenciary* arguments being made in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. What makes this even more unforgiveable is that the points that Camp misses are spelled out explicitly in one of the "29+ Evidences" pages (this one).
What Camp entirely misses is that the 29+ lines of evidence for macroevolution are *not* given as "proofs". Nowhere is the argument made that there could be no other possible explanation for a particular type of observation, or that any given observation might not match the predictions of some other theory as well. That's *always* a "given" in science, because there's *always* some other theor(ies) which could likewise explain the evidence (if nothing else, some sort of unrecognized variation on the current theory, or even something radically different that no one's thought of).
What Camp misses entirely, because he's not a scientist (he's a lawyer) is that you don't "prove" a given theory by allegedly presenting something which can't be explained any *other* way (because this is almost always impossible to do even in principle), instead you *support* a theory by working out as many of its implications (i.e. predictions) as you can, and then check to see (via examination of known evidence, and experiment, and other methods) whether all observations you can manage to do actually "fit" the theory (and more importantly, whether any are found which *don't*). For details on how exactly this works and why it is an extremely strong method of validation, see my Explaining the Scientific Method.
The more evidence which falls into line to match the expectations of the theory, the more the theory is strengthened. Any evidence which appears to be a blatant violation of the expectations of the theory weighs *very* heavily against it. Furthermore, a theory is very much strengthened if the evidence which matches its predictions are from not just one type of prediction or line of argument, but from many. In the 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution page, there are over *29* independent lines of evidence, all of which beautifully match the predictions of the theories of common descent and macroevolution. And each line of evidence is supported by *thousands*, and in some cases *millions*, of individual pieces of evidence.
In short, evolution has an enormous amount of evidence supporting it.
I strongly invite readers to ignore Gore3000's "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" attempt, and actually go *read* 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution for yourself (yes, all several pages). It'll take a couple hours, but it's well worth the time. After you read it, you'll understand why creationists are being hugely dishonest when they claim that there is "no" evidence supporting evolution, or that evolution is not a "scientific" or "predictive" theory. The pages at that link show in great detail how empty those claims are, even if you choose argue with a few particular points or disagree with its conclusion. There's an enormous amount of meticulous, well-researched evidence for evolution, and that page gives a large taste. Don't let anyone tell you there's not. And I trust any reader with an open mind will see for themselves how strong the evolutionary foundation truly is, contrary to hte "house of cards" declarations by its opponents. Again, even if you disagree with the conclusion, at least be honest enough to admit there's a lot of good evidence behind it -- if you take the time to look.
Camp blusters in several sections about how "well, maybe God chose to make things the way that the evidence indicates". Fine, maybe he did. Feel free to go off and develop a "scientific theory of creationism" (or "theory of ID"). But note that you can't just say (as Camp does), "maybe God wanted to do it in a way that only *appears* to match the expected results of evolution, we don't know why", because that's *not* a *scientific* prediction, because it doesn't let you predict *ahead* of your observations what you think you're going to find and why. As soon as you develop a "scientific theory of creationism" which *does* claim to grasp enough of God's processes and reasons to be able to predict (repeat: *predict*) enough of the details of His works that you'll be able to test your theory against the evidence (and also honestly deal with it if your predictions are falsified), *then* you'll have something that can truly be called "scientific". So far, no one has offered such a theory. "God could make it any way at all if he wanted to for His own mysterious reasons" does *not* qualify, because it is neither predictive nor falsifiable. It is, in fact, a declaration of *lack* of knowledge rather than a contribution to science (which is the *accumulation* of what we know and can confidently count on and predict about the world).
Camp even unwittingly admits this when he writes, "But even if there were no unknown design constraints on the gene for cytochrome c, how could one be sure that God would not conserve codon sequences when creating cytochrome c gene in separate species?" Yes, exactly. If one "can't be sure" -- if there's no way to test the unknowability of God's whims or predict what they will be in a given case -- then it's a philosophical issue, but it's not a scientific theory.
Camp's concluding paragraph for this section of his "debunking" only further reveals his misunderstandings:
Thus, the similarity of codon sequences in the cytochrome c gene of humans and chimps does not “make it look exactly like we are genealogically related.”This quote appears nowhere in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. Camp is either summarizing, or was working off an older version of the web page. In any case, he misunderstands it. The meaning is that the gene similarities and differences between man/chimp are exactly the type we would expect to see if we were genealogically related, and closely so. It's not a claim that the gene sequences by themselves are some sort of irrefutable proof that we are.That conclusion only follows if one ignores the possibility of unknown design constraints, insists that God introduce novelty for novelty’s sake, and denies that there could be other divine purposes, such as sending a biotic message, for the pattern of similarity.See above. Camp repeatedly misunderstands the argument(s) which are actually being made in 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, and thus his "debunking" misses the mark entirely.Similar major flaws are present in the rest of his alleged "debunking" article. And you have "forgotten" to mention that talk.origins itself posts a lengthy rebuttal to Camp's sloppy 'critique'. In it, they describe his attempts to critique their material (and quite fairly, in my opinion), as:
Mr. Camp's critique is error-ridden in various ways, and is primarily characterized by:...and then they go on to very thoroughly document those errors in Camp's critique.
- Straw man arguments
- Red herrings
- Self-contradictions
- Equivocation
- Two wrongs make a right
- Fallacies of accident and converse accident
- Ignoratio elenchi
- Naive theological assumptions
- Insufficient knowledge of basic biology, molecular biology, biochemistry and genetics
- Misunderstanding of the scientific method
- Forwarding of untestable competing "hypotheses"
- Mischaracterization of evolutionary theory
- Misleading mis-quotes
- Fallacies of accent
- Distortion of scientific controversies
- Arguments from authority
- False analogies
The repeated use of these errors and others in Camp's "Critique" will be abundantly clear in the following rebuttal.
You guys aren't capable of critiquing the evidence on your own, and aren't capable of telling s*** from Shinola when someone else with a similar science-hating mindset doesn't either, so you juse keep swallowing their bilge and puking it back at those of us who actually understand the science. It gets *really* old, son.
Prediction: DannyTN will be unable to deal with the fact that his anti-evolution hero has been exposed as a fraud, and will go back to petulantly claiming to be "ignoring" me again (you know, like he "ignored" my last post by responding to it and making the mistake of mounting a grossly flawed attack on it).
The astute reader will also note that he has utterly failed to deal with the specific answers I gave him to his questions earlier in this thread, and instead has just tried flinging a link from an incompetent anti-evolutionist at me in the hopes it might have some chance of looking like it actually addresses my answers, which it doesn't. Hey, DannyTN, these are the kinds of studies I base my answer on -- good luck finding one of your anti-evolution fanatics who can actually refute them:
Human-specific integrations of the HERV-K endogenous retrovirus family
Endogenous retroviruses in the human genome sequence
Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences
Human L1 Retrotransposition: cis Preference versus trans Complementation
Identification, Phylogeny, and Evolution of Retroviral Elements Based on Their Envelope Genes
HERVd: database of human endogenous retroviruses
Long-term reinfection of the human genome by endogenous retroviruses
Insertional polymorphisms of full-length endogenous retroviruses in humans
Many human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) proviruses are unique to humans
The distribution of the endogenous retroviruses HERV-K113 and HERV-K115 in health and disease
A rare event of insertion polymorphism of a HERV-K LTR in the human genome
Demystified . . . Human endogenous retroviruses
Retroviral Diversity and Distribution in Vertebrates
Drosophila germline invasion by the endogenous retrovirus gypsy: involvement of the viral env gene
Genomic Organization of the Human Endogenous Retrovirus HERV-K(HML-2.HOM) (ERVK6) on Chromosome 7
Sequence variability, gene structure, and expression of full-length human endogenous retrovirus H
Ignored.
Let's have a show of hands: Is anyone surprised that DannyTN goes out of his way to proudly announce that he's ignoring explanations of why the anti-evolution link he had so much faith in is deeply flawed, and ignoring my challenge that he attempts to support his fantasy about how often my material has been "debunked" by his buddies?
Again, DannyTN, enjoy your blinders. But now that you've admitted your preferred method of dealing with material that contradicts what you'd like to believe, don't ever again try to claim that you're open-minded, interested in learning, or desire to follow the truth wherever it leads. You've made your methods clear.
The world is a mystery.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous your comments are?
PWNED!!
I am sure you have wanted to be on the receiving end of this. You prattle and when given a point by point refutation, you put your fingers in your ears and say "Lalalalalala I can't hear you."
Man what a drag it must be to be you.
Ichneumon, an animal of the weasel tribe...
If excited, H. ichneumon can bristle its hair and arch its back to appear two times its ...
ICHNEUMON FLY [ichneumon fly] , common name for a family of insects , related to the wasps , whose larvae are parasitic on many other insects...
Your smug denial of the mystery of the universe makes me feel sorry for you.
Yes it is. And mysteries are to be solved.
Do you have any idea how ridiculous your comments are?
Well, I know how ridiculous and inadequate your response is. If you had the ability to actually deal with anything specific that I had written, you probably would have done so. Instead you went with a response worthy of a third-grade playground, so I'm going to have to assume that's the best of which you are capable. That's pretty high on the ridiculous scale, in my book.
Your smug false presumption that I have said anything that "denies the mystery of the universe" makes me sorry for your ability to achieve an adequate level of reading comprehension. Really, if this sort of bizarre non sequitur is the best you can manage, why even bother?
Never mind, I know the answer.
Pwned indeed!
This has probably been the lowest point I have seen a poster fall to in my history of wandering the Internet. I actually feel a little depressed.
Placemarker, which I'm just going to fling as a talisman.
I ignore Ichneumon because he's rude and he posts page after page after page from talk origins without ever acknowledging the valid arguments made against him. His refutation amounts to 3 pages of "is not".
It's not a point by point refutation at all. Ashby Camp made some excellent points. And rebuttal to Ashby Camp mostly used the same tired arguments that the original 29 non-proofs used in the first place. They aren't 29 proofs. Most of the 29 evidences could be evidence of common descent or common design. It depends on what assumptions you make.
I posted a link that refutes Ichneumon's claims. That's all the time he's worth.
No it's just you.
I don't have time for your 3 pages of "is not". Ashby Camps arguments are very valid. If you don't want to see it, I'm not going to waste the time to explain it to you. You see what you want to see.
I'll ignore who I want to ignore. So far that's only you.
LOL
"I ignore Ichneumon because...."
'...I'm too scared to address his well written posts, which he writes himself.'
"They aren't 29 proofs."
That's why they are not called *proofs*. They are called *evidences*. Basic reading comp...
"Most of the 29 evidences could be evidence of common descent or common design. It depends on what assumptions you make. "
Or whether your brain is functioning.
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