Posted on 08/07/2007 9:30:37 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A research team, including UC Riverside biologists, has found experimental evidence that supports a controversial theory of genetic conflict in the reproduction of those animals that support their developing offspring through a placenta.
The conflict has been likened to a “battle of the sexes” or an “arms race” at the molecular level between mothers and fathers. At stake: the fetus’s growth rate and how much that costs the nutrient-supplying mother.
The new research supports the idea of a genetic “arms race” going on between a live-bearing mother and her offspring, assisted by the growth-promoting genes of the father...
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
==Five evidences do not a good theory make. If you want to topple a scientific paradigm, you have a lot more work to do than that.
I’m pretty sure you know that’s not what I meant. Pick from among your top five evidences for evolution and we will go from there. After I show you how science has demolished one, we will move on to another, and so on down the line.
How about the Lyger Tigon question? Which one do you think would be bigger, and why?
I told you, it’s going to take some time. And besides, I hardly think that’s your best evidence for evolution. For instance, ERV and Vitamin C Synthase are massively swamped by the fossil record. But give me some time, and after I have researched these issues to my satisfaction I will be sure to get back to you. You have my word on that.
Why not start with the ones in post 122?
And once you've 'demolished' them, I'm sure your ideas would be good enough for any leading scientific journal, because nobody else has.
There is no “fossil record” of ERV’s or Vitamin C Synthase, unless you count the ‘fossilized’ insertion of a retrovirus genome into a common ancestor as being part of the ‘fossil record’. I don’t know anyone else that does.
Still, I will give your questions the due dilligence that they deserve. I may come up empty on this one, but I want to know what is known on the subject nonetheless.
BTW, thanks for asking such excellent questions.
As far as the ‘five best evidences for evolution’ I’d first have to figure out what you meant by ‘evolution’.
For example if by ‘evolution’ you mean common descent of living species, then ERV’s are probably the strongest evidence.
If by ‘evolution’you mean “descent with modification” I would point out that DNA synthase has an intrinsic error rate, and that therefore nothing is a ‘perfect replicator’. Even parthinogenic species that produce essentially a female clone of their female self are not immune to descent with modification.
If by ‘evolution’ you mean ‘the idea that the earth and universe are billions of years old’ I would point you to the fact that light denoting old stars 500,000 light years away shine brightly upon the earth, indicating that the universe is at least that old. If the universe itself is only a few thousand years old then that star never actually existed which is inconsistent with God being TRUTH and the heavens proclaiming his GLORY.
If by ‘evolution’ you mean ‘fish becoming amphibians, amphibians becoming reptiles, reptiles becoming mammals, etc’ then I can only point you to FR’s resident paleontologist. I do molecules not bones.
If by ‘evolution’ you mean ‘a random process that precludes God’ I would tell you that although mutation is random, natural selection is not. And randomness in the biological sciences no more discounts the existence of God than randomness in quantum physics.
If by ‘evolution’ you mean ‘the theory of natural selection’ I would point out how powerful selection has been shown to be in the domestication of the wolf into the many breeds of dogs, and how well selective pressure works on populations of experimental animals in the lab.
But I think your plate is full with ERV’s and Vitamin C Synthase; let alone the Lyger Tigon question.
Any takers on the Lyger Tigon question? Which would you predict would be bigger and based upon what concept?
This is fundamental to the topic of the article (is it OK to talk about the article this many posts in???).
I know full well that GOD created the universe, the supreme architect as we masons say(I’m a retired architect so I recognize the architectural “hand”). And yet these creationists sound more like pompous pharisees, snide liberals than “truthers”. It’s these hard working scientists out on the frontiers of knowledge whereby we progress, not by some arm chair know-it-alls hiding behind an irish bishop named ussher.
God’s glory is manifest in this singularly complex, immense, and ancient universe that works in accordance with very simple rules (perhaps only one rule), and in creating in his own image (spiritually and intellectually) a creature capable of learning about this universe, but never able to plumb its true depths. It is not only grander than we imagine, it is grander than we are capable of imagining.
The attempt to shove all this into a 6,000 year old box created by magic seems cartoonish to me.
From the Article.
But while the father may not be present, the genetic material he provided is hard-wired to provide fast fetal growth, so that his offspring will be the hardiest, best survivors and the ones who demand the most of the mother’s placental nutrients.
The mother, on the other hand, provides genetic material that promotes the same growth level for all of her offspring, so that her nutrients will be available to support her and the offspring from all her matings.
The father's genetic material applies to offspring from all his matings. Unless the gene that controls the placenta is tied to the sex determining gene, I see no warfare.
Well, let evolution predict the characteristics of human/chimp offspring if it is so predictively powerful.(The answer is not ... "my brother")
What does the sex determining “gene” (it is actually a chromosome in mammals, it is called the Y chromosome) have to do with the genetic contribution of the father calling for greater resource expenditure from the mother? If this signal is muted by the genetic contribution of the female why would there be evidence of this evolutionary “tug of war” evident in the species at all?
The evidence of this type of “warfare” is only really evident when one does a reciprocal cross between a polyandrous species and a non polyandrous species. This is the case in a Lyger and a Tigon. Which do you think would be bigger and why?
As to why we test mice with chemicals and expect the results to apply to humans; it is because the relevant proteins (coded for by the genes) are almost identical in their active domains in both mice and humans. Studies in mice and rats and then confirmed in NHP’s (non-Human Primates), then in small FIH studies (First in Human). If you know what protein your chemical acts upon you can actually look at the genomes and get an exact figure on how similar the two proteins are.
It is blasphemous and unethical to think of doing such things as a human/animal cross. And seeings as how such a cross will not be performed the predictive power of evolutionary theory cannot be demonstrated. Why go to that extreme except for shock value? Why not answer the question as asked?
Lion father and Tiger mother = Lyger
Tiger father and Lion mother= Tigon
Which would be larger? What theory helped you make your prediction?
It IS the topic of the article.
Totally agree. I picture science as a growing moss bed on a huge rock on the seashore. We can’t SEE the rock in its totality, we can only FEEL bumps here, cracks there, occasionaly washed by seaspray. All the mat is inte-connected by branches with roots, feelers tentatively reaching out at the edges, some parts basking in the sun some days, then pounded by surf and wind other days....
Every now and then parts of this moss bed are blown away(old theories die)but new growth then fills in the blank spots(better theories). And so it goes, and grows...
Every now and then a ignorant seagull pecks at it or dumps on it. That’s the holier-than-thou creationists doing their thing but they’ll never admit that the 6,000 year old earth number came from an irish bishop named ussher who did a half-***ed SCIENTIFIC study using the bible as his only data set.
Anyway, in a private reply I’ll tell you how you can REALLY nail them(the noah myth), and some real truths in the bible. It isn’t just a grab bag of children’s fairy tales. Much of it refers to cutting nanotech going on right now.
==The attempt to shove all this into a 6,000 year old box created by magic seems cartoonish to me.
As I previously posted to someone else, you are probably assuming the universe has no center. However, if the universe is bounded there is a net gravitational force towards the center. Moreover, observations of the universe tell us it is expanding away from our solar system, which suggests that if there is a center we are at or near the center of the universe. And since the universe is expanding that indicates that it is not in a black hole, for if it was the universe would be infilling, which, as mentioned above, is not indicated by the evidence. That means, according to Einstein’s theory of Gen. Rel., the universe must have expanded out of a white hole. According to Gen. Rel., time virtually stands still at the event horizon of the same, whereas distant objects in the universe could age billions of years. Thus, it is easily possible for the earth to be thousands of years old and distant objects of the observable universe to be billions of years old (relatively speaking), and yet both be the product of the same Big Bang event. Hence, it is theoretically possible for light from stars billions of lightyears away to reach the earth.
You still there, Allmendream? If you are, I have a few comments and questions re: Vitamin C Synthase and ERVs.
Wrong. The red shift is universal. Virtually EVERYTHING is moving further apart. There is no center of the universe. It's admittedly hard for laymen to fathom, but that's a fact.
==Wrong. The red shift is universal. Virtually EVERYTHING is moving further apart. There is no center of the universe. It’s admittedly hard for laymen to fathom, but that’s a fact.
No you are wrong. In “The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time”, Stephen Hawking and George Ellis admit that current Big Bang cosmology is based on the ASSUMPTION that the universe has no center:
“However we are not able to make cosmological
models without some admixture of ideology. In the
earliest cosmologies, man placed himself in a
commanding position at the centre of the universe.
Since the time of Copernicus we have been steadily
demoted to a medium sized planet going round a
medium sized star on the outer edge of a fairly average
galaxy, which is itself simply one of a local group of
galaxies. Indeed we are now so democratic that we
would not claim that our position in space is specially
distinguished in any way. We shall, following Bondi
(1960), call this assumption the Copernican principle”
—Hawking, S.W. and Ellis, G.F.R., The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 134, 1973.
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