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Rare example of Darwinism seen in action (Deluded Darwinists alert)
EurekAlert ^ | July 31, 2007

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 ...


TOPICS: Science
KEYWORDS: creation; evolution; placenta; poeciliidae; postedinwrongforum
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To: allmendream

Question #1: Are there any examples of non-functioning Vitamin C synthase genes in strict carnivores?


141 posted on 08/07/2007 10:53:44 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

- I find it strange that The almighty, all powerful, everlasting God would create the universe ... and then spend the rest of his time sitting on his ass for all eternity doing nothing -

“Your insights go way above my paygrade. Would you care to back that up? That is, give positive evidence to back up your assertion.”

Do you mean my implying that after seven days of intense effort, God suddenly calls it quits and becomes a cosmic couch potato? Isn’t that essentially what creationists believe - that after creating the universe, God just ups and calls it quits?

Not much of a God if you ask me.

If you are suggesting that I favor the concept of evolution, which I do, on my part there is nothing to back up since the evidence is already in place.

The fossil record for evolution is backed up not only by empirical observations, but also by the evidence of radiometric dating and stratigraphy, that is, physics. The theory of Natural Selection, which you refer to incorrectly as “Darwinsim,” is considered to be the best explanation for what what impartial, non-biased observers see.

I hope you are aware that the concept of evolution is not Darwin’s. It was an idea that has been debated since the time of ancient Greek philosophers.

You need to also think about the fact that God, as the Creator of the universe, created the laws of physics too. Physics via various scientific disciplines, support the position that life evolves over time.

To deny evolution is to deny the physics that support it, hence denying the existence of God.

Which is why I believe in a vibrant God who is still creating via the process of evolution, both on this planet and throughout the universe, and thereby revealing his majesty to all with the insight to perceive it.


142 posted on 08/07/2007 10:54:28 PM PDT by George - the Other (No Matter How You Look At It, Hate is Hate ...)
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To: GodGunsGuts
I do not believe so. It is an essential vitamin and any carnivore that didn’t synthesize it would be subject to scurvy.
143 posted on 08/07/2007 10:57:17 PM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal.)
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To: GodGunsGuts
Vitamin C synthase would only escapes selective pressure in animals that get enough Vitamin C in the diet so that it wouldn’t make a difference (until they were out at sea and didn’t have Limes or fresh fruit to eat, the Limie bastards! ;) ).
144 posted on 08/07/2007 11:00:10 PM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal.)
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To: allmendream

So if God intended mankind to be omnivorous (after the fall) would it be fair to say that a non-functioning Vitamin C Synthase gene would be a simple means to that end?


145 posted on 08/07/2007 11:06:55 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: allmendream

Still there???


146 posted on 08/07/2007 11:13:35 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts

I don’t quite follow your argument. The Big Bang has been theoretically modeled to 10^-41 sec, the Planck Limit as it’s called. The first 3.75 minutes were the most crucial in the universe’s development, the “zygote phase” so to speak in which inflation smoothed out most of the wrinkles. For some reason matter won out over anti-matter in this early anniilation period. Hawking once told Pope John Paul : you get everything before 10^-41 seconds, we’ll take everything after that.

You imply that the earth is at or near the center of the universe, the church persecutors of Galileo thought the same thing. I characterize it as the Flat Earth mentality : #1 : The earth is FLAT. #2 : We are the most important PEOPLE on this flat earth. #3 : I am the most important person amoung our people(WELL, my MOTHER thinks so). #4 : Therefore I AM GOD.

This of course is pathetic anthropomorphism, ie, childish egotistic self centeredness, Einstein had something to say about LOCAL vs GLOBAL and “common sense”. From VAST amounts of astronomical results, each part of the universe is moving away from other objects like an expanding gas, although some galaxies do collide. With the discovery of “quintessance”(one word for it), that expansion is even FASTER than the Hubble Constant. Appearently photons don’t “die”, they become this little burbling sea of tired photons, building up into the ZPE of dark energy, which is about 2/3rds of the universe now.

As to dark matter, about 20% of the universe, it may be hydrinos(shrunken hydrogen atoms)that are building up as “cosmic smog”. Hydrinos are naturally created in stars and emitted with the solar wind. Once formed they combine with practically nothing(5 million deg F dissociation temp). Hydrino emission lines have been found in previously mysterious solar spectrographic lines, helium was first discovered in just this way.

Of course light from billions of light years away is seen. That was billions of years AGO, current estimate : 13.7 B for the origin of the universe. The earth/solar system came along about 4.5 B years ago, made from a collapsing fragment of a mother molecular birth cloud in one of our galaxy’s spiral arms.

All this is quite well known, esp the matter/radiation decoupling era 300,000 years after the Big Bang wherein this expanding cloud of gas had cooled enough for fermions and bosons to become distinct entities. The COBE satellite teased out the minute differences from the background radiation at 2.73 deg K to show those first clouds.

And yet there is a GAP between the COBE/300,000 year point and the first galaxies with their developing quasars/black holes point(plus the “soap bubble” texture of galactic structure). In the book of JOB(I think)we find the phrase : “And the morning stars sang together”. The very cutting edge of deep astronomy is looking for just those “morning stars” : massive stars, perhaps 100 solar masses or even larger, that all formed after the 300,000 year point and quickly went supernova all at once.

Thus the supernova shock waves of these “morning stars” compressed the H and He gas into the soap bubble texture we see today. If you read astronomy literature you may want to be looking for just that item ; most distant objects at 13.6 B years(highest Z shift)seem to be supernovas, the most powerful ever seen.

As to a 6,000 year old earth, no amount of mental contortion is going to convince serious scientists of THAT. We know it comes from your bishop ussher and his half-***ed SCIENTIFIC study using only the bible as his sole data set, and making WHOOPING assumptions.

On the other side is CENTURIES of astronomical work finding out the real truth of the universe in all its complexity. Already some 200 extra-solar planets have been found orbiting other stars. Jesus told you : in my father’s house are many mansions, you may not get it, but WE do.


147 posted on 08/08/2007 2:03:22 AM PDT by timer (n/0=n=nx0)
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To: allmendream
What does the sex determining “gene” (it is actually a chromosome in mammals, it is called the Y chromosome)

Yes, I know. But I used the sufficient description of "tied" since I leave open the possibility of other mechanisms such as the one used by crocs. Anyway, scurvy is due to not eating the right kind of food, just as not eating at all is called starvation. Again if you can't understand that a common circumstance can cause the break in exactly the same position no amount of my words can illuminate it to you. I don't say it is the cause, I just admit to the possibility. Darwinians have no difficulty in proclaiming the evolution of complex organs multiple times in creatures not closely related.

What evidence? I only saw a statement in the article.

I sincerely doubt that the people who crossed the lion and tiger predicted the outcome. They saw that the Lion father caused a larger offspring and then explained it. That is not prediction to me.

Tell me which protein does chrysene work on?

148 posted on 08/08/2007 2:06:39 AM PDT by AndrewC
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To: allmendream
It is blasphemous and unethical to think of doing such things as a human/animal cross

Not for Darwinists, chimps are our cousins.

It IS the topic of the article.

The topic of the article is Darwinism. Anyway, even in non-placental creatures, it is the female that provides the nutrients for the offspring.

149 posted on 08/08/2007 2:26:58 AM PDT by AndrewC
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To: AndrewC
Not for Darwinists, chimps are our cousins.

Kind of a cheap shot isn't it? Kind of like saying burning a person at the stake for their ideas comes naturally to a religionist.

150 posted on 08/08/2007 2:40:32 AM PDT by js1138
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To: GodGunsGuts
Just as I knew you would. Make a baseless claim....then...when pushed for proof...go off on the expected tangent and make an assumption as to what you think I know or do not know (of which you are completely wrong on). Great tactic.

Hint: anyone that's taken a single developmental bio class knows about epigenetics....but then you couldn't have your pathetic and incorrect snipe of what you think I know or do not.

Imagine that......prenatal conditions actually affect the development of the offspring...even to the affect that such affects can be passed on to further offspring.

Whodathunkit?

YOU made the claim concerning MDRTB

The best evidence suggests that they were pre-programmed to adapt to a changing environment. What we are seeing is directed, non-random mutation

PROVE it. Show this "best evidence" you claim.

(crickets)

151 posted on 08/08/2007 5:29:51 AM PDT by ElectricStrawberry (1/27 Wolfhounds...cut in half during the Clinton years.)
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To: GodGunsGuts
Not really. If we were vegetarians before the fall and moved to a more carnivorous lifestyle after; this would be moving away from a dependence upon nutritional Vitamin C not towards it.
152 posted on 08/08/2007 6:25:07 AM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal.)
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To: AndrewC
What do you think sex determination has to do with the topic of discussion? It is about the males genetic contribution calling for more maternal resources. This is done in both his male and female offspring. This is the basics of the topic under discussion. Please “illuminate” to me what sex determination has to do with it.

Scurvy is due to lack of Vitamin C.

Common circumstance has not EVER been shown to cause identical mutations. What mechanism do you think accounts for the mutation? Was it an error in DNA replication, an intercalating agent, radiation? It doesn’t matter what CAUSED the mutation, any of all of these causes have been shown to mutate DNA at RANDOM locations. There is nothing in the specific base pair that says “HIT ME WITH RADIATION, NOT MY NEIGHBOR.” Yes, no amount of words can “illuminate” it for me because I know the mechanism and I know the data.

153 posted on 08/08/2007 6:33:49 AM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal.)
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To: allmendream

==Not really. If we were vegetarians before the fall and moved to a more carnivorous lifestyle after; this would be moving away from a dependence upon nutritional Vitamin C not towards it.

You are quite right, and that’s what I get for staring at a computer screen all day and all night. Let me put the question to you the correct way. If God had originally intended for us to eat fruits and veggies, then would it be fair to say that creating us with a non-functioning Vitamin C Synthase gene would be a simple means to that end?


154 posted on 08/08/2007 2:02:48 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: ElectricStrawberry

==Imagine that......prenatal conditions actually affect the development of the offspring...even to the affect that such affects can be passed on to further offspring.

Then Darwin (RM+NS) is refuted.

==YOU made the claim concerning MDRTB

My point was not meant to single out MDRTB in particlular (you did that), but to point out that the best evidence suggests that ALL organism are preprogrammed to survive, and that said survival is much more dependent on non-random, directed mutation than on the neo-Darwinian mechanism. For whatever reason, it is you who are hung up on MDRTB. If you want evidence of directed mutation, there’s plenty of it out there...one of which I already sent you.


155 posted on 08/08/2007 2:12:51 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts
A more simple means, if we were the product of de-novo design, would be to not have the pseudogene for Vitamin C Synthase there at all. If it wasn’t needed before the fall, and wasn’t needed after the fall; why is it there at all?

There are many reasons why humans are omnivorous. Lack of the ability to synthesize Vitamin C is one of the lesser ones. We are assured of being omnivorous because it is what our body tells us to eat.

Moreover there is not just this one curious data point to consider, there is the entirety of the genome of humans, chimpanzees,gorillas and orangutans. There are numerous pseudogenes and ERV’s that are shared between all four species. If one takes the sequence of all four and matches them, the two most similar (or identical) will almost always be found to be the human and chimp sequences, the one that is most different would be the orangatang and the one in the middle would be the gorilla.

Why would we have retroviral insertions in exactly the same spots and identical pseudogenes with these animals that are our closest anatomic relations if not for common descent? Why would the difference in sequence always be less (or nonexistent)when comparing chimps and humans than when comparing humans and orangs? Common descent makes sense of ALL these thousands of data points. De-novo design cannot give a satisfactory explanation for their existence in the first place.

156 posted on 08/08/2007 4:45:40 PM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal.)
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To: allmendream
==A more simple means, if we were the product of de-novo design, would be to not have the pseudogene for Vitamin C Synthase there at all. If it wasn’t needed before the fall, and wasn’t needed after the fall; why is it there at all?

Variations on a common design template. Aren’t genes, at least in part, a series of on off switches that control certain aspects of our overall design? All living things were potential nutrients, so what prevented us from eating all living things. I submit that this can probably be explained (at least in part) by turning off our Vitamin C Synthase gene. On a grander scale, I’m starting to wonder if our first parents became (among other things) earth’s first victims of bioterror when they bit into the forbidden fruit. And by the same token, they may have unwittingly become the very first (and universal) typhoid Mary. Hope you don't mind, just mulling things around out loud--GGG

PS Don’t think I have forgotten your questions re: Vitamin C Synthase and ERVs. I think I have learned enough to at least venture a preliminary answer against the common descent interpretation...that is, once I find a little spare time to think about a more details.

157 posted on 08/08/2007 6:22:43 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: GodGunsGuts
What design purpose does a nonfunctional pseudogene or a endogenous retroviral insertion serve? These are not variations on a design template, they are artifacts of an attempted viral infection or the remnants of a formerly useful gene that no longer makes a functioning product or is no longer expressed.

We CAN eat almost all living things. Cellulose is indigestible to us, and it is one of the most prevalent bio-polymers; but almost everything else is fair game. The inability to synthesize our own Vitamin C doesn’t prevent us from eating anything; it just ensures that we get scurvy if we don't eat enough fruit.

Also I wouldn’t go around saying God was a bioterrorist.

158 posted on 08/08/2007 6:40:43 PM PDT by allmendream (A Lyger is pretty much my favorite animal.)
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To: allmendream

==What design purpose does a nonfunctional pseudogene or a endogenous retroviral insertion serve? These are not variations on a design template, they are artifacts of an attempted viral infection or the remnants of a formerly useful gene that no longer makes a functioning product or is no longer expressed.

I don’t buy that. I could be wrong, but the most likely answer is that that particular gene was turned off for a particular purpose (probably turned off in combination with numerous other gene on/off settings when we were all vegitarians).

==We CAN eat almost all living things. Cellulose is indigestible to us, and it is one of the most prevalent bio-polymers; but almost everything else is fair game. The inability to synthesize our own Vitamin C doesn’t prevent us from eating anything; it just ensures that we get scurvy if we don’t eat enough fruit.

Very true. But it does force us to eat fruit. And there are probably other genes that contribute to our desire to eat vegitables as well. If you go back and read Genesis 3:17-19, by eating the forbidden fruit we were condemed to eating fruit “with pain” and “the grasses of the fields” by the sweat of our brow. It seems to me that turning certain genes on or off (whether by bioterrorism via the apple, or via a direct curse by God) is a good explanation for how that was, at least in part, accomplished.

==Also I wouldn’t go around saying God was a bioterrorist.

Who said God was a bioterrorist? Certainly not me! I was thinking of Satan. God specifically forbade Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, saying that if “you eat of it you shall surely die.” Satan duped and/or manipulated them into eating it, which, according to my speculation, would make Satan earth’s first bio-terrorist.


159 posted on 08/08/2007 7:10:58 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
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To: js1138
Kind of a cheap shot isn't it? Kind of like saying burning a person at the stake for their ideas comes naturally to a religionist.

Nope. Find a Darwinian that denies humans and chimps are cousins.

See definition 2

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source

cous·in     (kŭz'ĭn) Pronunciation Key 
n.  
  1. A child of one's aunt or uncle. Also called first cousin.
  2. A relative descended from a common ancestor, such as a grandparent, by two or more steps in a diverging line.
  3. A relative by blood or marriage; a kinsman or kinswoman.
  4. A member of a kindred group or country: our Canadian cousins.
  5. Something similar in quality or character: "There's no mistaking soca for its distant Jamaican cousin, reggae" (Michael Saunders).
  6. Used as a form of address by a sovereign in addressing another sovereign or a high-ranking member of the nobility.

160 posted on 08/08/2007 7:19:39 PM PDT by AndrewC
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