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DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution
Good News Magazine ^ | May 2005 | Mario Seiglie

Posted on 05/06/2005 7:36:09 PM PDT by DouglasKC

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To: GSHastings
Evolutionists commonly like to snear that those that believe in a God are the "Flat Earth" society members.

Because there are a large number of parallels.

Rather it is the Evolutionist who still cling to the notion of "Spontaneous Generation" which was common in Darwins time.

Evolution is not at all the same thing as spontaneous generation -- do you really think that telling falsehoods helps your case any? Or were you just too ignorant to know the difference but spouted off about it anyway? Here, read this if you'd like to start your education so that you could start having an informed opinion instead of the usual propaganda-filled creationist type.

How anyone can look at the unfathomable complexity of living things, and believe that it occured through the mechanisms proposed by Darwin,

...because that's what the mountains of evidence and over a century of study overwhelmingly indicates.

requires a suspension of reason, and blind FAITH.

Complete and utter horse manure. You clearly don't have even the first clue about this subject, or the people who study it and understand it. Knowledge of the validity of evolution does not require "FAITH", blind or otherwise -- it requires knowledge, understanding, and a familiarity with the vast amounts of evidence and experimentation supporting it. It takes a deep knowledge of the processes involved and the pattern and history and structure and genetics of life. This is probably why most creationists are out in the cold when it comes to understanding evolution.

Here's an essay which refutes your fundamental mistake much better than I can:

Do You Believe in Evolution?
by Bob Riggins

Introduction

In my part of the country I get asked that a lot by students. That's partly because of the part of the country I'm in (South Texas). Fundamentalism-creationism is endemic around here, and somehow that noisy minority has convinced the indifferent majority that to be a Christian of any sort, one must reject evolution. Ironically, even many of my Catholic students think their church is "against evolution" (it isn't). Somehow Protestant fundamentalism has "converted" them, at least on this article of faith, without their even realizing it. Perhaps their own church has not strongly, positively, and publicly stated its position to parishioners.

Perhaps it's also because, as an English teacher in a science-oriented magnet school, I often include science fiction novels and, at least once a year, a science nonfiction book as assigned readings. Inevitably, there will be something (probably a lot of things) in those books that rub the creationists the wrong way, since to maintain their structure of beliefs they have had to reject the facts established in practically all areas of science, from astronomy through nuclear physics to geology and biochemistry. Perhaps they've actually never encountered a teacher who openly "believes in" evolution (a very real possibility around here). Now that's scary! No wonder on those international comparisons our students score worse than kids in Lower Slobovia or wherever.

The Question

But the problem I want to deal with here is how to answer that question: Do you believe in evolution? It's easy to say "Yes!" but that's not right. The problem is that the question itself is wrong. It's like the old "Have you stopped beating your wife?" question: either a yes or a no gives the wrong impression.

I certainly don't want to say no, since that would create an entirely wrong impression. But answering yes isn't quite right, either. The problem is the phrase "believe in," just as the "have you stopped" is the trap in the earlier example.

Concentrate on the believe in: no, I don't believe in evolution. Think of how that phrase is often applied. Little kids believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. We often judge their maturity by finding out which things they still believe in and which they have "grown out of" ("Aren't you a little old to still believe in the Tooth Fairy?"). The phrase believe in in common parlance seems to mean to take something literally for which there is little or no objective evidence. You must believe in the Easter Bunny, because you've never seen the real one yourself, there's nothing he has done that couldn't be simply explained by ordinary phenomena (parental trickery), and there's no objective, physical, replicable (in other words, scientific) evidence that he's real. If you had those last things, then you wouldn't have to believe in the Easter Bunny, you would know he was real.

Knowing vs. Believing

That's the difference: you absolutely know some things are real, through your own experience or other kinds of really solid proof. That's knowledge, not belief. Other things you believe in. You want them to be true. It would be nice if they were true. It's probably fun to believe in them. But you don't have solid, irrefutable (scientific) proof, so you have to keep believing in them, rather than knowing them (or you could just throw them out entirely, like most of us over six have done with Santa Claus). If you had that kind of evidence, then the folks whose job it is to find out the physical facts about the world (scientists) would know them too, and belief wouldn't be required. A mark of the immaturity of small children is that they haven't learned this distinction yet. About the only proof they may demand is what someone older tells them, or what they see on TV. Note also that you can't trust the believer. He may, of course, say he "knows" his favorite belief is true, and may trot out what to him is adequate proof ("But I saw Santa in the store, and look at all the stuff he brought, and on the news they saw him on the radar, and... and..."). Or he may be one of those incredibly shallow people whose answer amounts to, "I don't know why, I just believe it," or the ludicrous contradiction, "I just know it's true."

There's another common meaning for "believe in," as in "Do you believe in democracy?" "Do you believe in the American Dream?" "Do you believe in abortion under certain circumstances?" "Do you believe in the justice of our cause?" Here the meaning of "believe in" seems to be something like "trust," or "think it's probably best," or "are willing to go along with." That doesn't seem to be what someone is getting at when he asks me if I believe in evolution, or at least that's not how I take the question. So in that sense, no, I don't believe in evolution: it's not a matter of personal opinion, or philosophy, or a gray area where one must decide what might be best overall.

But back to the real distinction: no, I don't believe in evolution--I know that it's real. It doesn't require believing in. And I don't "just know it," like the vacuous air-head. I have all the objective evidence I need for real knowledge . The reality of evolution having occurred and continuing to occur is every bit as strongly established as the knowledge that the Earth is round, that germs cause disease, that electrons exist, or that the speed of light is ~300,000 kilometers/second. If anything, I have more daily-life experience to show me evolution happening than I have for those other things. I can see that offspring aren't identical to their parents. I have seen new varieties of plants and animals developed within my own lifetime. I live in an area where boll weevils often win the evolutionary race to develop resistance to pesticides. I can easily catch a case of (newly evolved) resistant staphylococcus, which might very well kill me. I have seen and touched and personally found the fossils of the now-extinct ancestors of living creatures.

Evidence of Evolution Is Stronger Than Evidence of Electrons

As a matter of fact, I have more down-to-earth proof of the reality of evolution than I have of the other things mentioned above, which I know to be real. I will never see an electron. How would I ever come close to accurately measuring the speed of light? My chances of ever getting far enough away from Earth to actually see for myself that it is round are practically nil; and I don't have the equipment or the expertise to ever really prove for myself that a particular breed of bacteria actually causes a particular disease. Then don't I just take those things "on faith"? Don't I believe in them, rather than actually knowing them? No. As a society, we have hired specialists to find out these kinds of things. We've done everything we can to assure that they are highly trained, that they are objective (not letting their philosophies or beliefs get in the way), that they are honest, and that their answers are true (they constantly check on each other, compete, and repeat experiments to make sure the results are real). We've set up a system (science) in which wrong answers are quickly thrown out, all answers are tested over and over in every imaginable way, right answers get righter all the time (e.g., relativity doesn't "disprove" Newtonian mechanics, it just improves on it; punctuated equilibrium doesn't "disprove" Darwinian evolution, it just clarifies it further), and the best way to make a name for yourself is to disprove an older idea (with enough proof of your own to stand up to the toughest tests). And finally, that system works far better than any other way mankind has ever tried for finding out about the physical world.

So what science knows, I know. They are my agents for finding out things I can't find out for myself. Science knows (and tells me) that there are electrons and what the speed of light is. I would be foolish to reject that knowledge. Science also tells me, with just as much assurance, that living things have evolved. I know that knowledge has been tested, tried, experimented with, and applied to real situations, and has proven its "fitness" by growing stronger through 150 years of severe testing. I would be foolish to reject that knowledge.

So no, I don't believe in evolution; I know that it has happened and still does. As a matter of fact, I should probably feel insulted. If you asked me if I believe the Earth is round, that would be insulting. Do you think I could be so ignorant as to believe it is flat? The same goes for evolution. Do you think I would reject the last two centuries of scientific progress and the evidence of my own eyes? I should be thoroughly offended.



161 posted on 05/06/2005 9:43:12 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Freeper john
Christians can always celebrate Christmas.

Jews can celebrate Hanukkah.

Muslims can celebrate Ramadan.

Race baiters can celebrate Quanza.

Evolutionists can celebrate multicultural diversity giving tree winter solstice day.


The difference is Christians must be shunned for their celebration.
162 posted on 05/06/2005 9:44:44 PM PDT by Pan_Yan (All grey areas are fabrications.)
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To: Tirian; DouglasKC
Dr. Behe spoke in Ithaca this past week, and reiterated - by citing writings of prominent Darwinists themselves - that no one has yet demonstrated how any complex biochemical systems have "happened to develop" in the incremental stepwise manner that classical Darwinism requires.

Behe has been repeating this lie for years, but it's still a lie (or a bit of grossly incompetent ignorance on his part, but I'd rather give him the benefit of the doubt).

Publish or Perish

Some Published works on Biochemical Evolution

edited by John Catalano
Copyright © 1998-2004
[Text updated: October 16, 2001]
[Links updated: January 25, 2004]
Other Links:
Outside links open in new windows
The Elusive Scientific Basis of Intelligent Design Theory
So-called "intelligent design theory," of which Behe is a major proponent, has produced no publications in major scientific journals. Who was it that said publish or perish?
Behe's Empty Box
This web page contains many links to web pages supporting or criticizing Behe's work.
Irreducible Complexity and the Evolutionary Literature: Response to Critics
This article includes Behe's response to this page.

On page 179 of Darwin's Black Box Michael Behe claims:

"There has never been a meeting, or a book, or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems."

He closes the chapter with this ludicrous statement:

"In effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so it should perish"

(Did someone say publish or perish?: The Elusive Scientific Basis of Intelligent Design Theory)

To be honest, I suspect that the extent of detail Behe is demanding would require a combination cutting-edge biochemistry lab and a time machine. How else can science fully recover, for example, every single step in the evolution of the bacterial flagellum that took place billions of years ago?

In any case the claim itself is false since papers do in fact exist that attempt to flesh out the details of the evolution of various biochemical systems and structures. Many such citations are included below.

But that is only part of the story. There are thousands of additional published papers containing solid and detailed evidence of biochemical evolution:

  • Evidence of gene duplications and subsequent functional divergence, or functional loss in the form of pseudogenes.
  • Evidence of exon shuffling and modular re-use within proteins.
  • Evidence of both natural selection and neutral drift at the molecular level.
  • Evidence of the malleable and adaptive nature of molecular evolution itself. For example in recent shocking cases of bacterial drug resistance - the evolution of evolvability.
  • Evidence that the phylogeny inferred from protein and DNA sequence comparisons is correlated with the phylogeny inferred from evolutionary biology.
  • Evidence that within every studied biochemical system, the "parts" themselves have evolved, and the interactions between those parts have also evolved. Are we to believe that an intelligent designer builds with components that evolve via the blind forces of mutation, selection and drift?

Most of the citations and abstracts below were found using the PubMed MEDLINE search engine and microbiology database. A simple search reveals that there are over 13,000 articles that contain "evolution" as a major subject keyword - hardly the dead silence that Behe proclaims. Granted many of these do not directly address the problem of adaptive complexity in biochemical systems, but many of them do.

Note that I have excluded papers that discuss sequence comparisons being used solely to determine lines of descent. Michael Behe already admits that common descent is reasonable.

Keep in mind this is only a small sampling of citations collected from my own searches, and from the suggestion of others (thanks for those suggestions!)

Last but not least. Please help me find more citations and continue to grow this page - especially if you have a background in biochemistry or microbiology. Thank you.

Introduction

Books

Conferences

Immune System

Blood Coagulation

Globin

Flagella and Cilium

Other Motor Proteins

  • +Kinesin Motor Phylogenetic Tree - Behe likes to play down the importance of sequence comparisons. It's no wonder - just click around this diagram for a while. It becomes obvious that an important motor protein like kinesin has gradually evolved across many species. From the Kinesin HomePage.

Actin

Cell Membrane - Receptors, Pumps, etc.

Citric Acid Cycle (Krebs Cycle)

Amino Acid Biosynthesis

Gylcolysis

Photosynthesis

Lysozome

Vision

Development

Transcription / Translation / Duplication

From Russell F. Doolittle

Drug resistance is biochemical evolution

Other

General

Someone say Intelligent?

Cancer as Molecular Evolution

Test Tube and Artificial Evolution

Origin of Life and Cells

More Visitor Submissions(thanks!)

Here are a number of articles from a quick search of the Journal of Biological Chemistry using the word "evolution" at http://www.jbc.org/ --

Andrew P. Spicer and John A. McDonald Characterization and Molecular Evolution of a Vertebrate Hyaluronan Synthase Gene Family J. Biol. Chem. 1998 273: 1923-1932.

Catherine TomHon, Wei Zhu, David Millinoff, Kenji Hayasaka, Jerry L. Slightom, Morris Goodman, and Deborah L. Gumucio Evolution of a Fetal Expression Pattern via cis Changes near the Globin Gene J. Biol. Chem. 1997 272: 14062-14066.

Chien-Chia Wang, Andrey Pavlov, and Jim D. Karam Evolution of RNA-binding Specificity in T4 DNA Polymerase J. Biol. Chem. 1997 272: 17703-17710.

David R. Gang, Hiroyuki Kasahara, Zhi-Qiang Xia, Kristine Vander Mijnsbrugge, Guy Bauw, Wout Boerjan, Marc Van Montagu, Laurence B.Davin, and Norman G. Lewis Evolution of Plant Defense Mechanisms. RELATIONSHIPS OF PHENYLCOUMARAN BENZYLIC ETHER REDUCTASES TO PINORESINOL-LARICIRESINOL AND ISOFLAVONE REDUCTASES J. Biol. Chem. 1999 274: 7516-7527.

Elizabeth A. Bucher, Gurtej K. Dhoot, Mark M. Emerson, Margaret Ober, and Charles P. Emerson, Jr. Structure and Evolution of the Alternatively Spliced Fast Troponin T Isoform Gene J. Biol. Chem. 1999 274: 17661-17670.

Florence Magrangeas, Gilles Pitiot, Sigrid Dubois, Elisabeth Bragado-Nilsson, Michel ChŽrel, SŽverin Jobert, Benoit Lebeau, Olivier Boisteau, Bernard LethŽ, Jacques Mallet, Yannick Jacques, and StŽphane Minvielle Cotranscription and Intergenic Splicing of Human Galactose-1-phosphate Uridylyltransferase and Interleukin-11 Receptor -Chain Genes Generate a Fusion mRNA in Normal Cells. IMPLICATION FOR THE PRODUCTION OF MULTIDOMAIN PROTEINS DURING EVOLUTION J. Biol. Chem. 1998 273: 16005-16010.

James E. Hagstrom, Michael P. Fautsch, Monique Perdok, Anne Vrabel, and Eric D. Wieben Exons Lost and Found. UNUSUAL EVOLUTION OF A SEMINAL VESICLE TRANSGLUTAMINASE SUBSTRATE J. Biol. Chem. 1996271: 21114-21119. [

Juan Ausi— Histone H1 and Evolution of Sperm Nuclear Basic Proteins J. Biol. Chem. 1999 274: 31115-31118.

M. Neale Weitzmann, Kerry J. Woodford, and Karen Usdin DNA Secondary Structures and the Evolution of Hypervariable Tandem Arrays J. Biol. Chem. 1997 272: 9517-9523.

Marieta Costache, Pol-AndrŽ Apoil, Anne Cailleau, Anders Elmgren, Gšran Larson, Stephen Henry, Antoine Blancher, Dana Iordachescu, Rafael Oriol, and Rosella Mollicone Evolution of Fucosyltransferase Genes in Vertebrates J. Biol. Chem. 1997 272: 29721-29728.

Medeiros, Edward G. Rowan, Alan L. Harvey, and AndrŽ MŽnez On the Convergent Evolution of Animal Toxins. CONSERVATION OF A DIAD OF FUNCTIONAL RESIDUES IN POTASSIUM CHANNEL-BLOCKING TOXINS WITH UNRELATED STRUCTURES J. Biol. Chem. 1997 272: 4302-4309.

Ronald E. van Kesteren, Cornelis P. Tensen, August B. Smit, Jan van Minnen, Lee. F. Kolakowski, Jr., Wolfgang Meyerhof, Dietmar Richter, Harm van Heerikhuizen, Erno Vreugdenhil, and Wijnand P. M. Geraerts Co-evolution of Ligand-Receptor Pairs in the Vasopressin/Oxytocin Superfamily of Bioactive Peptides J. Biol. Chem. 1996 271: 3619-3626.

Sandra K. Parker and H. William Detrich III Evolution, Organization, and Expression of -Tubulin Genes in the Antarctic Fish Notothenia coriiceps. ADAPTIVE EXPANSION OF A GENE FAMILY BY RECENT GENE DUPLICATION, INVERSION, AND DIVERGENCE J. Biol. Chem. 1998 273: 34358-34369.

Stefanie Brumme, Volker Kruft, Udo K. Schmitz, and Hans-Peter Braun New Insights into the Co-evolution of Cytochrome c Reductase and the Mitochondrial Processing Peptidase J. Biol. Chem. 1998 273: 13143-13149.

Stephan M. MŸhlebach, Thomas Wirz, Urs BrŠndle, and Jean-Claude Perriard Evolution of the Creatine Kinases J. Biol. Chem. 1996 271: 11920-11929.

Zhe Lu, Elisa Cabiscol, Nuria Obradors, Jordi Tamarit, Joaquim Ros, Juan Aguilar, and E. C. C. Lin Evolution of an Escherichia coli Protein with Increased Resistance to Oxidative Stress J. Biol. Chem. 1998 273: 8308-8316.

(major MeSH 1998 Jan-May)


[Return to the Irreducible Complexity FAQs]


163 posted on 05/06/2005 9:44:45 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: GSHastings
Wouldn't it make MORE sense, to recognise that the case for intelligent creation is FAR stronger than Evolution.

It would make more sense if the ID case was actually "FAR stronger" than the case for evolution, but you have it exactly backwards, so no.

164 posted on 05/06/2005 9:46:06 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: All

The whole problem with this debate is the assumption that there are only two possible answers, and one is correct. The assumptions states that either life arose and continues because of chance and biochemical reactions (for which there is no proof, and much against), or failing this, that life was created by an unkowable, mystic omniscient God (for which there is no proof, and much against).
The truth is that we are as much in the dark about the origins and continuance of life now as we have ever been. Molecular and sub-atomic science have given us sufficient knowledge to blow Darwin and his hangers-on out of the water. On the other hand, nothing has been discovered which demonstrates the presence of a mystical being.
So, we just dont know. Yet. Until the dogmatists in science give up on Evolution (which they never will while running scared from the label "creationist"), we will never add to our knowledge in order to find out.


165 posted on 05/06/2005 9:46:30 PM PDT by weatherwax
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To: sigSEGV

http://arxiv.org/abs/math-ph/0504033
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0503203
http://arxiv.org/abs/nucl-th/0504015
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0504193

Only one of those (3rd) appears to have any possible applications in engineering or materials work.

And hydrogen atoms are simple compared to DNA. You can spontaneously create hydrogen. Can you do the same with DNA ?


166 posted on 05/06/2005 9:46:47 PM PDT by Centurion2000 (The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no)
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To: qam1
Believe in something ...

Believe in nothing ...

It's still belief ...

And I doubt very few people have had their beliefs changed while arguing on a thread.
167 posted on 05/06/2005 9:47:33 PM PDT by Pan_Yan (All grey areas are fabrications.)
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To: GSHastings
I think the scientific world itself will have to kill Darwinism because its own standards of integrity are not going to permit the great mass of scientists to rely on the kind of obfuscation and misdirection that you have to keep that dying theory alive.

Although the battle between theologians and scientists regarding the origins of man and nature, has raged for decades, an accumulating amount of evidence seems to be causing some scientists to re-examine the role an intelligent designer might have played in the origins of life.

168 posted on 05/06/2005 9:48:39 PM PDT by concerned about politics (Vote Republican - Vote morally correct!)
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To: Centurion2000

Well, this is all a quibble on the meaning of "complex" I suppose, but do you really believe you can hold hydrogen in your mind? - like a poker hand or something?


169 posted on 05/06/2005 9:48:49 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: Ichneumon
Ah Yes... as with all these threads the "My side must be right because I can post a longer thesis as a reply than you can" theory has kicked in.

Don't get made, one of the creationists will post a reply in a minute, so it's not a partisan argument.
170 posted on 05/06/2005 9:52:41 PM PDT by Pan_Yan (All grey areas are fabrications.)
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To: concerned about politics
Although the battle between theologians and scientists regarding the origins of man and nature, has raged for decades, an accumulating amount of evidence seems to be causing some scientists to re-examine the role an intelligent designer might have played in the origins of life.

That's a good point. If it were simply a matter of a few religious nuts making noise than these threads wouldn't exist. What scientist would debate the doctrine of baptism on scientific merit? The reason it's such a lively debate is exactly because it has merit within the scientific community.

171 posted on 05/06/2005 9:52:42 PM PDT by DouglasKC
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To: LauraleeBraswell
Evolution does not even attempt to explain where something once came from nothing. It explains the progress- this turned to this which turned to that- but not where Life began.

That seems to be the primal cop-out of evolutionist these days. They like to pretend that evolutions doesn't try to explain the origins of life. When in fact it does, and they truly believe that it does. They think that the same process of chance events resulted in the formation of life.

As we speak, members of the evolution religion have their robots roaming around on Mars, pationately hoping to prove that Life occured on MARS.

The first living thing (which no one has even been able to define what that would be) would by definition have to be a SPECIES.

If Evolution cannot explain the occurance of the first species, then Darwin should have titled his book something like "Evolution: The Origins of Species (except one)".

172 posted on 05/06/2005 9:53:03 PM PDT by GSHastings
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To: Ichneumon
If you asked me if I believe the Earth is round, that would be insulting.

Unless you've seen the earth from several hundred miles up I'd say you trust the pictures and testimony of other people. Maybe you've been up there already. I don't know. Buy why be insulted on account of a simple question? I believe the earth is round, and if anyone asked as much I'd answer the same, even though I have not seen it with my own eyeballs. I certainly would not count it an insult if someone asked. Good heavens, the earth is just the way God made it, and just the way He keeps it.

173 posted on 05/06/2005 9:53:11 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew
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To: bondserv

Thanks for the ping!


174 posted on 05/06/2005 9:53:12 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: DouglasKC
One has to be careful with that argument, as computers aren't biological organisms. Neither are junkyards, so a tornado moving through one won't assemble a 747, and neither will a silicon and quartz based digitial watch assemble itself together. None of the components have a natural tendancy to organize and arrange themselves in that way.

You see, you'll be told you're guilty of making the strawman appeal to incredulity. Just because its mind-bogglingly complex or so improbable means it can't be that way by chance.

Biological organisms are much different though. Despite the greater the improbability of any arbitrary biological process, the fact that it actually exists means the possibility of it being is 100%. In fact with the natural order of things, the way they are is just the most likely way for them to be. The physical constants of the universe having to be each as precise as they are - both individually and in concert - each dependent upon all the others for their specific values, and the incomprehensible harmony of the mechanics of the universe is not collossally improbable, that's just the natural tendancy of the universe. Why argue about the seemingly improbable odds of left-handed proteins being required for all life, when identical but right-handed (chimeric) proteins would destroy the life being randomly assembled, the fact that it is that way shows that's the universes natural tendancy in being. Over the time of billions and billions of years, the natural tendancy would be for more left-handed proteins to assemble themselves, so obviously all biological process are going to be dependent on them. That's just pure logic. Why debate or argue about that? This is not a matter of faith or anything. It just is that way. Period. Creationists will tell you that God just is, so why can't evolutionists just have their is too?

Look, flipping a nickle 1000 times in a row and coming up heads is monumentally improbable, but if it happens then the possibility of that happening is 100%. Now for that to happen again would be even more remote of a probability, but if it does happen again, the possibility of it happening again would be 100%. Just because each of the components and physical constants of the universe in and of themselves have a higly improbable likelyhood of occuring, the fact they they all did simultaneously assemeble together into this universe means that the possibility of a universe constructed in the way it is is 100%.

175 posted on 05/06/2005 9:57:25 PM PDT by raygun
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To: Alamo-Girl
"The six feet of DNA coiled inside every one of our body's one hundred trillion cells"

Tied end to end they would reach from the Earth to the Sun over 1200 times! Pretty amazing considering it is over 90 million miles to the Sun...

176 posted on 05/06/2005 10:01:41 PM PDT by FireTrack
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To: concerned about politics

Speak for yourself. What kind of a role do you think an "intelligent designer might have played in the origins of life." Did he order others about? Did he mold clay with his "hands" ? Did he arrange molecules with tweezers, perhaps? Speak!


177 posted on 05/06/2005 10:02:04 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: FireTrack

Jeepers! Thanks for the illustration!


178 posted on 05/06/2005 10:06:23 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: MamaLucci
It doesn't matter. Doctors aren't biologists. And many biologists aren't even evolutionary biologists. And the opinion of anybody who's not an evolutionary biologist doesn't matter anyways. But evolution is absolutely true so it has to be taught to everbody, lest people shun science and begin believing in magic (or that the earth is flat).

Any doctor, who's also a Christian must (by definition) also be a Chrisitan evolutionist, or they're definitely not a doctor anybody would want to go to, because evolution is essential to the science of biology, which is esential to the study and practice of medicine. BUT it really doesn't matter one way or the other since doctors aren't biologists.

Ergo, you don't have a point.

179 posted on 05/06/2005 10:06:55 PM PDT by raygun
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To: jdhljc169
How about blood clotting? How can blood clotting develop over time, step by step, without bleeding to death in the meantime?

See below.

The whole system needs to be in place.

No it doesn't. There are animals that get along just fine with only a portion of the vertebrate clotting system. Nice try. Learn some science before you attempt to critique it.

Clot in lung, you die. Clot 30 minutes after a cut, you die. Clot throughout your whole body, you die. Clot that doesn't cover the whole cut, you die.

Modern vertebrates have come to critically depend upon the clotting system they've got now. However, when the current system was being evolved from simpler systems, the life forms which had those simpler systems didn't require anything as complex as our current system. A so-so clotting system is still better than none at all, especially for an organism that has other ways of dealing with vascular injury (or lower blood pressure compared to ours, or different blood composition which doesn't "leak out" as readily as ours, etc.) and doesn't put "all its eggs" in the one basket of blood clotting.

A huge amount of the evolutionary history of the modern blood clotting system has already been reconstructed, like which cascades were added in what lineages when, and based on what mutational changes -- most of what remains are just some of the finer details. Funny how the creationists sort of "forget" to mention that when they hand-wave about the "enormous complexity" of the blood clotting system, eh? Behe even goes so far as to falsely claim that nothing whatsoever is known on this subject -- he's either lying or is inexcusably incompetent, but neither option inspires confidence.

From a previous post of mine:

Now, also, you omitted all references to the blood clotting stuff.

...because Behe has already been hammered on that point thorougly enough that he has pretty much stopped using it as an "example". He has been concentrating on the flagellum mostly, thus the focus of my response.

For pete's sake, lets get comprehensive here! In detail, discuss why gradual evolution of blood clotting with 10 protein feedback loops all working at once is actually quite feasible evolutionarily speaking.

Well, okay, since you insist... Check out The Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Clotting, or The evolution of vertebrate blood coagulation as viewed from a comparison of puffer fish and sea squirt genomes. Excerpt from the latter paper:

It is thought that 50–100 million years separate the appearances of urochordates (which include the sea squirt) and vertebrates. During that time the machinery for thrombin-catalyzed fibrin formation had to be concocted by gene duplication and the shuffling about of key modular domains. The relative times of duplicative events can be estimated by various means, the most obvious being the presence or absence of a gene in earlier diverging organisms, although it must be kept in mind that lineages may lose genes. Another way to gauge events is from the relative positions of various gene products on phylogenetic trees, earlier branching implying earlier appearance. In this regard, (pro)thrombin invariably appears lower on the phylogenetic trees than do the other vitamin K-dependent factors (Fig. 2).

The order of events can also be inferred by considering the most parsimonious route to assembling the various clusters of peripheral domains. Nine of the proteases under discussion can be accounted for by six domain-swapping events (Fig. 5). Indeed, the presence of a multiple-kringle protease in the sea squirt genome provides a reasonable model for a step-by-step parallel evolution of the clotting and lysis systems. It should be noted that a serine protease with only one kringle has been found in the ascidian Herdmania momus (36). Although numerous scenarios have been offered in the past about how modular exchange was involved in generating these schemes (refs. 4, 12, and 37–41, inter alia), the new genomic data now provide a realistic set of starting materials.

Also, Evolution of enzyme cascades from embryonic development to blood coagulation:
Recent delineation of the serine protease cascade controlling dorsal-ventral patterning during Drosophila embryogenesis allows this cascade to be compared with those controlling clotting and complement in vertebrates and invertebrates. The identification of discrete markers of serine protease evolution has made it possible to reconstruct the probable chronology of enzyme evolution and to gain new insights into functional linkages among the cascades. Here, it is proposed that a single ancestral developmental/immunity cascade gave rise to the protostome and deuterostome developmental, clotting and complement cascades. Extensive similarities suggest that these cascades were built by adding enzymes from the bottom of the cascade up and from similar macromolecular building blocks.
That was the abstract. An excerpt from the text:
The downstream protease of the vertebrate clotting cascade (Fig. 1d), thrombin, belongs to the same lineage as complement factors C1r and C1s. The upstream and middle proteases of the clotting cascade (factors VII, IX and X) belong to the most modern lineage, that of horseshoe crab clotting factor C. Therefore, the lineage of thrombin is parental to that of the upstream and middle proteases of the clotting cascade (Table 1) and distinguishes it from the other vitamin-K-dependent clotting proteases (factors VII, IX and X, and protein C). This conclusion agrees with sequence and species comparisons implying that thrombin was the ancestral blood-clotting protein [11]. It also suggests that vertebrate blood clotting emerged as a by-product of innate immunity, because the entire functional core of vertebrate clotting shares ancestry with complement proteases.
And if that's not enough, you could check these out:
Banyai, L., Varadi, A. and Patthy, L. (1983). “Common evolutionary origin of the fibrin-binding structures of fibronectin and tissue-type plasminogen activator.” FEBS Letters, 163(1): 37-41.

Bazan, J. F. (1990). “Structural design and molecular evolution of a cytokine receptor superfamily.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 87(18): 6934-6938.

Blake, C. C. F., Harlos, K. and Holland, S. K. (1987). “Exon and Domain Evolution in the Proenzymes of Blood Coagulation and Fibrinolysis.” Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology: The Evolution of Catalytic Function, LII: 925-932.

Fornace AJ Jr, Cummings DE, Comeau CM, Kant JA, Crabtree GR. “The Structure of the human gamma-fibrinogen gene. Alternate mRNA splicing near the 3' end of the gene produces gamma A and gamma B forms of gamma-fibrinogen.” J Biol Chem. 1984 Oct 25;259(20):12826-30.

Crabtree, G. R., Comeau, C. M., Fowlkes, D. M., Fornace, A. J., Jr., Malley, J. D. and Kant, J. A. (1985). “Evolution and structure of the fibrinogen genes: Random insertion of introns or selective loss?” Journal of Molecular Biology, 185(1): 1-20.  

Di Cera, E., Dang, Q. D. and Ayala, Y. M. (1997). “Molecular mechanisms of thrombin function.” Cell Mol Life Sci, 53(9): 701-730.  

Doolittle, R. F. (1985). “More homologies among the vertebrate plasma proteins.” Biosci Rep, 5(10-11): 877-884.

Doolittle, R. F. (1990). “The Structure and Evolution of Vertebrate Fibrinogen A Comparison of the Lamprey and Mammalian Proteins,” in ADVANCES IN EXPERIMENTAL MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY: FIBRINOGEN, THROMBOSIS, COAGULATION, AND FIBRINOLYSIS. C. Y. Liu and Chien, S. New York, Plenum Press. 281.

Doolittle, R. F. (1992). “A detailed consideration of a principal domain of vertebrate fibrinogen and its relatives.” Protein Science, 1(12): 1563-1577.

Doolittle, R. F. (1992). “Early Evolution of the Vertebrate Fibrinogen Molecule.” Biophysical Journal, 61(2 PART 2): A410.  

Doolittle, R. F. (1992). “Stein and Moore Award address. Reconstructing history with amino acid sequences.” Protein Science, 1(2): 191-200.

Doolittle, R. F. (1993). “The Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Coagulation - a Case of Yin and Yang.” Thrombosis and Haemostasis, V70(N1): 24-28.

Doolittle, R. F. and Feng, D. F. (1987). “Reconstructing the Evolution of Vertebrate Blood Coagulation from a Consideration of the Amino Acid Sequences of Clotting Proteins.” Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology: The Evolution of Catalytic Function, LII: 869-874.

Doolittle, R. F., G., Spraggon and J., Everse S. (1997). “Evolution of vertebrate fibrin formation and the process of its dissolution.” Ciba Found Symp, 212: 4-17; discussion 17-23.

Doolittle, R. F. and Riley, M. (1990). “The amino-terminal sequence of lobster fibrinogen reveals common ancestry with vitellogenins.” Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 167(1): 16-19.

Edgington, T. S., Curtiss, L. K. and Plow, E. F. (1985). “A linkage between the hemostatic and immune systems embodied in the fibrinolytic release of lymphocyte suppressive peptides.” Journal of Immunology, 134(1): 471-477.  

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Hervio, L. S., Coombs, G. S., Bergstrom, R. C., Trivedi, K., Corey, D. R. and Madison, E. L. (2000). “Negative selectivity and the evolution of protease cascades: the specificity of plasmin for peptide and protein substrates.” Chemistry & Biology, V7(N6): 443-452.  

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Kant, J. A., Fornace, A. J., Jr., Saxe, D., Simon, M. J., McBride, O. W. and Crabtree, G. R. (1985). “Evolution and organization of the fibrinogen locus on chromosome 4: Gene duplication accompanied by transposition and inversion.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 82(8): 2344-2348.  

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The 2.0-Å crystal structure of tachylectin 5A provides evidence for the common origin of the innate immunity and the blood coagulation systems

Davidson CJ, Tuddenham EG, McVey JH. 450 million years of hemostasis J Thromb Haemost. 2003 Jul;1(7):1487-94.

And so on...

180 posted on 05/06/2005 10:08:10 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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