Intellectuals Who Doubt Darwin

The American Prowler ^ | 11/24/2004 | Hunter Baker

[Ichneumon]

[Yeah, like that underdog bald man who won out over the two kids teasing him about his baldness, when the Lord sent a bear to rip the kids to shreds and helped him "win out".]

Zero points for context...100 points for originality...

Okay, I'll bite -- exactly what "context" am I missing here?

So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake. And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them. And he went from thence to mount Carmel, and from thence he returned to Samaria.

-- 2 Kings 2:22-25

I did get the number of children wrong, though -- it was 42 kids torn up by the bears, not 2.

[Ichneumon]

Closer, but no cigar, unless you really want to cube a mass. Allow me:

F=Gm₁m₂/r²

[RadioAstronomer]

Sigh! LOL!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

IMHO, if the progression is ideology to speculation to theory to fact - then I would say the theory of evolution is going backwards.

As evidence I assert the randomness pillar in the equation random mutation + natural selection > species stands defeated because regulatory control genes are not mutable.

A better formulation for today might be autonomous self-organizing biological complexity + natural selection> species - but it shouldn't be called the theory of evolution since the first formulation fails.

[StJacques]

" . . . As evidence I assert the randomness pillar in the equation random mutation + natural selection > species stands defeated because regulatory control genes are not mutable. . . ."

Regulatory genes are mutable. Please reference the following study:

Mutation of gene-proximal regulatory elements disrupts human -, -, and -globin expression in yeast artificial chromosome transgenic mice

[StJacques]

" . . . As evidence I assert the randomness pillar in the equation random mutation + natural selection > species stands defeated because regulatory control genes are not mutable. . . ."

Regulatory genes are mutable. Please reference the following study:

Mutation of gene-proximal regulatory elements disrupts human -, -, and -globin expression in yeast artificial chromosome transgenic mice

Note: this is a second posting of my response. In my first one above I left out the url for the link. Sorry.

[PatrickHenry]

F=m₁m₂/r²

It's all in the wrist.

[Junior]

A "yeah, we know how your wrists got so strong" placemarker.

[Tribune7]

bump

[stremba]

Evolution states that all organisms are descended from a common ancestor. Logically, then, they all should use similar genetic material. It also states that humans and other complex organisms came about as a result of a long, gradual process of mutation and natural selection. Therefore, you shouldn't be able to observe fossils of modern organisms in very old rock layers. Evolution states that allele frequencies in population gene pools change over time. This is simply another way of stating the prediction I gave in my original post. I fail to see how any of my examples are not implicit predictions of the theory of evolution.

[stremba]

I never claimed it was a fact. It is more than "just a theory", however, which is the bad argument made by many creationists.

[RadioAstronomer]

It's all in the wrist.

A "yeah, we know how your wrists got so strong" placemarker.

Are you sure they are strong enough? I don't see a "G". :-)

[RadioAstronomer]

I never claimed it was a fact. It is more than "just a theory", however, which is the bad argument made by many creationists.

See my post #237 (minus the super-script/sub-script error) LOL!

[PatrickHenry]

Are you sure they are strong enough? I don't see a "G".

Constants are for the weak! (Besides, I was so intent on the coding I just goofed!)

[js1138]

...his research suggested that natural selection may only explain the evolution of certain living organisms whose populations are under stress, while there may be an overall thrust to evolutionary development that is quite different.

There is nothing in evolutionary theory that requires perfection in adaptation. Adequacy is sufficient. Change does not automatically imply a direction.

[VadeRetro]

He couldn't find much on Rhodocetus, evidently. In alleging the poverty of the whale series, he forgets to mention Ambulocetus, the alligator-like one before Rhodocetus, and various later whales--Basilosaurus and Dorudon come to my aging mind--which are fully obligate ocean swimmers whose hind legs slowly disappear.

Might as well mention that in this fossil series you can also see the land-mammal nostrils creep from the end of the muzzle up the skull to form the cetacean blowhole atop the head.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

The essay is rhetorically devastating.

This is the basis for most of "scientific creationism."

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the link! I just scanned it briefly and will read it in more detail later.

I am looking for information on the natural (as opposed to laboratory-induced) mutability of developmental regulatory control genes. It has been some time since I last researched this subject, but as I recall the gathering wealth of genetic information suggests that nonmutability of such (in nature) is the reason why such things as eyeness develop concurrently over many phyla in the geological record.

[Alamo-Girl]

Here's a quickie article on the point I was trying to make:

How the Eye got its Brain

[Hegewisch Dupa]

Actually, the correct statement is - Irreducible Complexity, the enigma that evolution cannot possibly answer.