Posted on 12/27/2004 2:34:25 PM PST by Ed Current
The genetic code is a mechanism to translate nucleic acid information (DNA and/or RNA) into protein.
Since you are very knowledgable about evolution perhaps you can explain the above apparently tautological statement to me.
Cordially,
You had an online debate with Phillip Johnson??? When did that happen???
Einstein was a Creationist. >>Bullsh*t! >>Einstein was an empiricist above all. "Creationism" didn't exist during his lifetime I happen to know a man who actually worked with Einstein at one point in his life... and spoke with him frequently about God. Einstein WAS a creationist. |
Wow, what an ignorant, incorrect statement. Where exactly did you "learn" this bit of disinformation? From a creationist source, right? They're famous for that sort of lie.
So biologists "really have no idea" about whale evolution, you say? Here are just a few of the many things you're extremely ignorant of on this topic:
(From Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics)That's just a quick layman-level overview of *one* of the many ways that whale evolution has been verified. For more technical examinations along several independent lines of evidence, see for example:.
A particularly impressive example of shared retroposons has recently been reported linking cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) to ruminants and hippopotamuses, and it is instructive to consider this example in some detail. Cetaceans are sea-living animals that bear important similarities to land-living mammals; in particular, the females have mammary glands and nurse their young. Scientists studying mammalian anatomy and physiology have demonstrated greatest similarities between cetaceans and the mammalian group known as artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates) including cows, sheep, camels and pigs. These observations have led to the evolutionist view that whales evolved from a four-legged artiodactyl ancestor that lived on land. Creationists have capitalized on the obvious differences between the familiar artiodactyls and whales, and have ridiculed the idea that whales could have had four-legged land-living ancestors. Creationists who claim that cetaceans did not arise from four-legged land mammals must ignore or somehow dismiss the fossil evidence of apparent whale ancestors looking exactly like one would predict for transitional species between land mammals and whales--with diminutive legs and with ear structures intermediate between those of modern artiodactyls and cetaceans (Nature 368:844,1994; Science 263: 210, 1994). (A discussion of fossil ancestral whale species with references may be found at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2b.html#ceta) Creationists must also ignore or dismiss the evidence showing the great similarity between cetacean and artiodactyl gene sequences (Molecular Biology & Evolution 11:357, 1994; ibid 13: 954, 1996; Gatesy et al, Systematic Biology 48:6, 1999).
Recently retroposon evidence has solidified the evolutionary relationship between whales and artiodactyls. Shimamura et al. (Nature 388:666, 1997; Mol Biol Evol 16: 1046, 1999; see also Lum et al., Mol Biol Evol 17:1417, 2000; Nikaido and Okada, Mamm Genome 11:1123, 2000) studied SINE sequences that are highly reduplicated in the DNA of all cetacean species examined. These SINES were also found to be present in the DNA of ruminants (including cows and sheep) but not in DNA of camels and pigs or more distantly related mammals such as horse, elephant, cat, human or kangaroo. These SINES apparently originated in a specific branch of ancestral artiodactyls after this branch diverged from camels, pigs and other mammals, but before the divergence of the lines leading to modern cetaceans, hippopotamus and ruminants. (See Figure 5.) In support of this scenario, Shimamura et al. identified two specific insertions of these SINES in whale DNA (insertions B and C in Figure 5) and showed that in DNA of hippopotamus, cow and sheep these same two sites contained the SINES; but in camel and pig DNA the same sites were "empty" of insertions. More recently, hippopotamus has been identified as the closest living terrestrial relative of cetaceans since hippos and whales share retroposon insertions (illustrated by D and E in Figure 5) that are not found in any other artiodactyls (Nikaido et al, PNAS 96:10261, 1999). The close hippo-whale relationship is consistent with previously reported sequence similarity comparisons (Gatesy, Mol Biol Evol 14:537, 1997) and with recent fossil finds (Gingerich et al., Science 293:2239, 2001; Thewissen et al., Nature 413:277, 2001) that resolve earlier paleontological conflicts with the close whale-hippo relationship. (Some readers have wondered: if ruminants are more closely related to whales than to pigs and camels, why are ruminants anatomically more similar to pigs and camels than they are to whales? Apparently this results from the fact that ruminants, pigs and camels changed relatively little since their last common ancestor, while the cetacean lineage changed dramatically in adapting to an aquatic lifestyle, thereby obliterating many of the features -- like hooves, fur and hind legs -- that are shared between its close ruminant relatives and the more distantly related pigs and camels. This scenario illustrates the fact that the rapid evolutionary development of adaptations to a new niche can occur through key functional mutations, leaving the bulk of the DNA relatively unchanged. The particularly close relationship between whales and hippos is consistent with several shared adaptations to aquatic life, including use of underwater vocalizations for communication and the absence of hair and sebaceous glands.) Thus, retroposon evidence strongly supports the derivation of whales from a common ancestor of hippopotamus and ruminants, consistent with the evolutionary interpretation of fossils and overall DNA sequence similarities. Indeed, the logic of the evidence from shared SINEs is so powerful that SINEs may be the best available characters for deducing species relatedness (Shedlock and Okada, Bioessays 22:148, 2000), even if they are not perfect (Myamoto, Curr. Biology 9:R816, 1999).
Figure 5. Specific SINE insertions can act as "tracers" that illuminate phylogenetic relationships. This figure summarizes some of the data on SINEs found in living artiodactyls and shows how the shared insertions can be interpreted in relation to evolutionary branching. A specific SINE insertion event ("A" in the Figure) apparently occurred in a primitive common ancestor of pigs, ruminants, hippopotamus and cetaceans, since this insertion is present in these modern descendants of that common ancestor; but it is absent in camels, which split off from the other species before this SINE inserted. More recent insertions B and C are present only in ruminants, hippopotamus and cetaceans. Insertions D and E are shared only by hippopotamus and cetaceans, thereby identifying hippopotamus as the closest living relative of cetaceans (at least among the species examined in these studies). SINE insertions F and G occurred in the ruminant lineage after it diverged from the other species; and insertions H and I occurred after divergence of the cetacean lineage.
SINE Evolution, Missing Data, and the Origin of WhalesAnd much, much more.Evidence from Milk Casein Genes that Cetaceans are Close Relatives of Hippopotamid Artiodactyls
Analyses of mitochondrial genomes strongly support a hippopotamus±whale clade
A new Eocene archaeocete (Mammalia, Cetacea) from India and the time of origin of whales
Mysticete (Baleen Whale) Relationships Based upon the Sequence of the Common Cetacean DNA Satellite1
Eocene evolution of whale hearing
Novel Phylogeny of Whales Revisited but Not Revised
New Morphological Evidence for the Phylogeny of Artiodactyla, Cetacea, and Mesonychidae
So, when you say, "Scientists now theorize that it evolved from a hippo-like creature, though they really have no idea", I only have one question for you: Are you outright lying, or are you just monumentally ignorant (but still arrogant enough to spout off about something you actually know so little about)?
That's not a rhetorical question. Please respond.
Now run off and play with the other creationists, the evolutionary biologists are doing adult-type stuff that you apparently can't grasp, and have no real interest in learning about.
What *kind* of creationist?
Nothing I've read in his works or his writings indicates that he had much in common with the typical anti-evolutionist, "scientists are foolish and part of a God-hating conspiracy" creationists.
Furthermore, there are many people who could fairly be called *both* creationist *and* evolutionist. But those aren't the kind of folks we're talking about on these threads when we talk about the antics of "creationists".
Creationists are those who believe in God. Evolutionists are those who don't. The fence straddlers don't know what to believe, so they attempt to bridge the gap between two mutually exclusive theories. |
Around 1992 or early 1993, in the talk.origins Usenet newsgroup. It took place over about a week of back-and-forth posts, until Johnson bailed out.
Unfortunately, I didn't save a copy, and the Google/DejaNews archives of newsgroups doesn't seem to carry anything from earlier than around mid-1993. I wish I could locate archives of those posts, along with other posts I made during that period, since those were my earliest months on the internet.
I don't have any of my own contemporaneous responses to Johnson, but the replies in the following thread from a few months later, begun when Johnson (yet again) posted a "farewell opus" to talk.origins, certainly match my own recollections of his behavior in those discussions: Au revoir (Phillip E Johnson)
You'll also note that Johnson employed the age-old creationist tactic of bailing out of a discussion with some minor variation on, "you evolutionists sure are meanies, too bad you never refuted any of my arguments, all you did was insult me, blah blah blah"...
The ability of the typical creationist to feign amnesia regarding all the times that evolutionists rebutted his claims with facts, arguments, evidence, scientific papers, etc. is truly astounding.
Darwin's "Creator" is not defined, and is left to the reader's imagination. "the Creator" to which Darwin refers is Nature, and it's laws of natural selection... which rejects intelligent design.
Did you miss my television debate with the late Steve Gould? Smoked him. How about Ed Current vs Eugenie Price? Maybe BibChr and Norm Geisler vs the entire biology department at MSU?
Then you're using these words in ways that almost no one else does. Do you do so out of ignorance of their meaning, or out of an attempt to mislead?
For example, Fred Hoyle is an an example of an atheist creationist (using "creationist" in the *usual* manner, not your own bizarre redefinition), and there are countless evolutionists (again, by the real-world definition and not yours) who believe in God, including many posters on these threads. In fact, the *majority* of American evolutionists are Christians.
So, do you want to continue to stamp your feet and insist on trying to bend reality to what you'd *like* to believe is true, or are you going to join the rest of us here in the real world and get a clue?
Did you miss my television debate with the late Steve Gould? Smoked him. How about Ed Current vs Eugenie Price? Maybe BibChr and Norm Geisler vs the entire biology department at MSU?
Are you really under the impression that you're adding anything to the thread by repeatedly behaving like an ass?
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