Posted on 03/16/2014 3:02:10 PM PDT by EveningStar
"Cosmos- A SpaceTime Odessey" --Tonight in 'Rivers of Life' Neil deGrasse Tyson Covers Evolution and Mass Extinction Events
Tonight, the second of 13 episodes of "Cosmos- A SpaceTime Odessey" hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson airs at 9 pm tonight on Fox and at 10 pm Sunday night on the National Geographic channel. Tonight's episode is "The Rivers of Life" and covers evolution and natural selection processes that have made life on Earth as we know it today, and also covers mass extinction events such as asteroid impacts with our planet that have drastically altered the course and progress of life.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailygalaxy.com ...
Ooooooooooooooo! EE-Voh-lu-shun!! Ooooo!
We got here somehow, maybe your explanation isn’t the same as the other guy. Maybe my explanation sounds strange to you.
That’s great!
It doesn’t break my bones, deafens my ears, or saddens my heart, what or why you think on the subject.
BUT, for ‘you’, to start screaming at ME, that “Dis iz dah way d’at it dun iz, an’ nobody nohow ain’ta gonna think difrent!”, is childish and stupid, and disrespectful of another human being’s intellect.
I thought Odessey was a town in west Texas, near Midland.
Or as Eric Cartman would say it, “Odessah.”
WALL-E..... : )
Just watched it, and I thought I heard a definite note of the forensic - that is, it was seeking to convince by argument. I think you may consider this a nod in your direction, if I'm not putting too much on it.
Very close to Iran’s Twelver movement (the Iranian leadership), except they are going for 100%. Bringing everyone to Pair of Dice, you know.
I watched most of it last night.
What bugs me about evolution is DNA.
If I understand it correctly, the very first life on this planet had DNA and that DNA was inherently capable of creating every creature that has evolved since - all that had to be done was turn on the right switches.
Seems pretty incomprehensible to me that DNA just popped into existence, fully capable of building complex lifeforms, but none of that got turned on initially.
About the only thing that explains it, short of a designer, is possibly seeding of bacteria from space. Might not explain where DNA came from, but it would explain how it got here with all the necessary complexity pre-installed.
DNA/RNA is a complex information code like XML and cell biology contains the means to act on information in that code i.e. DNA/RNA info is actionable info like computer software. That kind of stuff does not just sort of happen when dust particles get blown around in wind storms.....
If species are capable of evolving due to changes in the DNA, then the DNA, and the rest of the systems, are already capable of that evolution. Seems to me that, if it's all random mutations, then a lot of those mutations aren't going to just be interesting characteristics that might or might not be useful, but, more often than not, cause serious problems. I would think it would almost rule out diversity.
To use the compute code analogy, it's one thing to access embedded functions that haven't been used before, but it's quite another to access functions that don't exist. Evolution would seem to require that functions be pre-encoded prior to the mutation, and then the mutation has to occur, and then the mutation has to be beneficial to the species in the particular environment it finds itself.
Even if, for example, some scientists took a single cell organism, and manipulated the existing DNA and turned it into a rhinoceros, that still doesn't explain how the single cell DNA acquired the complexity in the first place. Wouldn't it be evolutionary more efficient for creatures to only have the DNA necessary for that creature? Why spend the energy copying and replicating large strands of DNA that serve no useful purpose so that, in a few million years, some other creature it evolves into will be able to use it?
It might help to think of DNA like the alphabet. The alphabet is capable of creating every sentence that's ever been written as well as every sentence that ever will be written. But that doesn't mean the alphabet somehow has all sentences pre-encoded in it or that the scribes copying the Bible were somehow wasting energy because they were copying letters, words, even phrases that later writers would also use.
That makes some sense.
OTOH, if you randomly mutate those letters, most of the time you don’t get words. It would seem that random mutations would give you a dictionary of gibberish rather than a dictionary filled with a vocabulary of useful, varied words.
If you take all the combinations possible and compare them with all the combinations of valid words, it would seem there would be far more gibberish cranking out from random mutations. The gibberish would continue to be replicated and eventually, you would not have enough words left to build a viable creature.
dr_lew wrote:
re:
“BUT, for ‘you’, to start screaming at ME, that “Dis iz dah way d’at it dun iz, an’ nobody nohow ain’ta gonna think difrent!”, is childish and stupid, and disrespectful of another human being’s intellect.
Just watched it, and I thought I heard a definite note of the forensic - that is, it was seeking to convince by argument. I think you may consider this a nod in your direction, if I’m not putting too much on it.
Why? If it's harmful gibberish, the organism with that mutation won't survive. If it's neutral gibberish, it might or might not, but who cares? When that organism mates with one of the more numerous of its species that don't have the mutation, the offspring might get the original version rather than the mutated copy.
But then there's the case where the gibberish is actually a useful new word. In last night's Cosmos, they used the example of an arctic bear that had the mutation for white fur. This is obviously not that rare a mutation--white tigers are born on occasion. Where tigers live, white fur would be a disadvantage; but where arctic bears live, it would be very useful. So the white bear is a more successful hunter, lives longer, mates more often. Some of its offspring have the brown fur of its other parent, but some have the white fur because the new word gets copied. The white ones are more successful, mate more often, etc. etc. and presto: polar bears, a new species.
I don’t know if hair color is the greatest example. That would seem to be a case of turning off an existing gene for the pigment.
How did the gene sequence that causes hair to grow get their in the first place? Presumably there was a hairless creature that had the DNA necessary to produce hair, but it wasn’t turned on. Through a mutation, it gets turned on and hair turns out to be useful.
How did evolution know that hair would one day be required so the genes could be turned on? How many generations of creature had to carry this genetic code intact so it could be activated?
I believe the theory is that hair evolved from scales. So it's not that there was a hairless creature that had the DNA for hair, but rather a scaly creature that had a mutation that made some of its scales a little more hairlike--possibly whiskers that helped it perceive things at night, maybe something more like fur that kept it warm. I don't think this transition is particularly well understood yet, but I'm sure people are working on it.
The point is that evolution works through modification of structures that are already there. There weren't genes for hair until there were already genes for scales in which a mutation could produce something on the road to hair.
Cat... You must have read “Darwin’s Doubt”?
Meyer says pretty much the same things you said (with a lot of reference material and impeccable logic to back it up).
He disagrees with you, though, that all life came from simpler life. His contention based on the Cambrian explosion is that the complex animal life that appears at that time did not “evolve” from precambrian eras (where only single cellular life abounds). His basic claim is that the Cambrian explosion was due to some sort of intelligent agent/force not neo-Darwinian evolution.
The title “Darwin’s Doubt” comes from Darwin’s own doubt about his theory with regards to the Cambrian explosion and the lack of complex animal fossils prior to that era. He rationalized the doubt in his own mind by asserting that with more research and excavations precambrian complex animal life would be uncovered.
But to this date it hasn’t.
“You must have read “Darwin’s Doubt”?”
Yes, and several other similar books, though the way I express my ideas is my own synthesis.
“He disagrees with you, though, that all life came from simpler life.”
I believe it did, but not in way most people think. I believe our makers, when they first set about making the earth’s biosphere did not in fact know how to make such complex creatures as ourselves, but that they built up their knowledge base and technology, for example, first starting with viruses, which they then used as tools to build the DNA/replication infrastructure inherent in all cells. They then figured out how to make simple one-cell creatures, which were used to terraform the earth’s environment, making it hospitable for their next generation of creatures, namely simple multi-cell creatures they figured out how to make while the terraforming was underway.
There’s an enormous difference in complexity between single-cell creatures and multi-cell creatures, particularly with gestation, replication, and growth. Such creatures also require a more complex bio-environment.
Once certain kinds of problems were worked out and the mechanisms understood and constructed, then these could be applied to a whole new generation of creatures consisting of a remarkable diversity of similar creatures. This new set of creatures could then be released into the existing biosphere and allowed to reach equilibrium amongst themselves and those that preceded them while work proceeded in the labs on the home planet on the next generation of improved/increased complexity.
This cycle was repeated several times until we’ve arrived at where we are today (essentially Nexus-7s if you will), and accounts for the abrupt changes we see in the fossil record which shows these periodic “explosions” of life forms at substantially increased levels of complexity and diversity from the previous explosion. Each explosion of “improved” creatures was possible because a new set of problems had been solved by The Makers and these solutions could be applied to making the next generation of creatures.
It should also be noted that problems also had to be solved as to how the new, more complex creatures could be layered in on top of all of the old ones and have the whole symbiotic biosphere continue to function in a self-supporting and self-sustaining fashion by reaching a new and stable equilibrium.
In summary, in my scheme, there IS evolution, it’s just that the evolution is purposeful and intelligent, and is analogous to the way human invention evolves, with digital electronics providing one of the most instructive examples of what I am talking about.
Quite frankly, I think earth’s biosphere is simply an instantiation of someone else’s life-making project or experiment, in other words, a fancy terrarium.
I take it, then, you must have also read “Signature in the Cell”. I plan on reading that next.
I find the assertion that all life came from a single primordial cell, which came about through some accidental combination of molecules and some type of energy utterly preposterous. Just the idea that only one cell would have arisen and survived in all of earth challenges all credulity. And only at that point in time and place, never to be repeated again.
I must say that Meyer has made a profound impression on me. I used to dismiss ID as just some bible literalists trying to put a scientific patina on religious dogma. Meyer, using scientific evidence and impeccable logic and no reference to biblical scripture, has won me over. He has also convinced me that it is the scientists who espouse only the materialistic world view that are the dogmatic, closed minded and intolerant ones.
With regard to the Designer or Designers, I too sometime think we’re just someone’s lab experiment and that all the problems and issues we face are just situations created by the Designers to see how their creations (us) deal with them. They might be using us as entertainment or as simply work in progress toward a better model.
The idea that we’re somebody’s experiment (God’s?) and that that god is less than perfect comes across strongly in the old testament. I was particularly taken aback at the passages in the old testament where God refers to himself as a “jealous god” as well as one who likes to be worshipped and feared - qualities belonging not to a perfect, all powerful being, but rather to a master (the Designer?) and an insecure one at that.
Ezekiel’s spaceships is another fascinating mystery in the old testament.
“I take it, then, you must have also read “Signature in the Cell””
Yes, I’ve read that too.
Another interesting book is “The Way of the Cell” by Franklin Harold. Not an ID book, but interesting nonetheless. Some of my favorite parts are after he makes compelling cases for how something works by discussing its design, he then feels compelled to assert that there was NO DESIGNER EVEN THOUGH IT LOOKS LIKE THERE WAS! Actually, I don’t think he really believes that, but feels compelled to occasionally throw a sop to the central dogmatists in order not be drummed out of their society, even though he had only emeritus status when he wrote the book.
BTW, my favorite Bible verse is:
“So God created man in his own Image”
That’s very consistent with my own theory of life creation and has several interesting implications, the main one being that humans strive to create in a manner similar to that which our creators strove(or strive) to create with, and furthermore we’re compelled to create sentient life just as our creators did (or still do). And the “like manner” part is what makes me think we can study and draw conclusions from what we as a species do and how we do it as an exemplar of how we ourselves were created.
Furthermore, the seven day cosmology in the Bible is surprisingly accurate for its time, especially if you consider a “day” to be a day in the life of our creators and not a human day.
The theory of ID opens up worlds of fertile thought and investigation. The theory of The Big Accident leads nowhere intellectually, because pretty much any road taken can lead only to the one conclusion that there’s no causality, because, hey, IT’S ALL JUST A BIG ACCIDENT! Or as Hillary so accurately phrased it, “What difference does it make?” In fact, it’s completely intellectually dishonest to apply design and engineering principals as a means to describe or explain the workings of the molecular machinery of life. There’s really a gigantic intellectual disconnect between the central dogma of “everything is an accident” and then proceeding with all of our studies and investigations as if cause and affect exist and that the things we study have meaning.
I was reading another book today “Why Evolution is True”, by Jerry Coyle to get the other side’s POV. (Have you read it?).
I haven’t read all of it yet, but the parts that I’ve read, he makes some quite strong points in favor of evolution and against ID.
So the more I read of both sides the more I’m tending to believe that both theories (ID and Darwin’s) each offers explanations of various aspects of life’s development on earth.
Perhaps, instead of fighting each other and insisting that only one or the other is the true model, they should join forces and come up with a unified theory. I really think that’s what the evidence supports.
Even Stephen Meyer accepts that darwinian type of evolution or variation does indeed take place at the level of species. I believe it would be quite fruitful to do some intensive research as to where design ends and natural selection begins.
Such a collaborative effort would usher a great new renaissance that would go a long way in reconciling science with faith and the idea that there is “something” bigger that us.
I believe IDers are more open to this than Darwinians. The reason may be because there’s nothing in ID that precludes darwinian evolution. Their problem with darwin is that it doesn’t effectively explain many things (such as the Cambrian explosion). The Darwinians, on the other hand, have a lot of problems accepting ID because 1. they’re atheists and thus have a hard time coming to terms with something bigger than they (the thought of a “god” and what that implies terrifies them) and 2. having a “designer” creating stuff introduces a level of arbitrariness in nature that is totally anathema to their world view.
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