Posted on 09/08/2005 5:16:56 PM PDT by Mike Bates
The evolution of the human brain is not quite a done deal, say researchers who've uncovered genetic evidence that man's mysterious gray matter is still undergoing beneficial change.
The scientists make their claim based on the recent evolutionary history of two genes -- microcephalin and abnormal spindle-like microcephaly-associated (ASPM) -- which appear to regulate brain size.
Over thousands of years, both genes seem to be generating new and improved versions of themselves -- beneficial mutations that are spreading rapidly among the human population to reshape and strengthen brain capacity.
"I think a lot of people might consider humans to be at the pinnacle of evolutionary lineage -- that we have achieved an advanced state as a species, and we have basically become the end-game," said study co-author Bruce T. Lahn, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago. "But what we found indicates that the species -- particularly when it comes to the brain, which is perhaps our most defining feature -- is still evolving."
In the Sept. 9 issue of Science, Lahn and his colleagues report on the results of two genetic analyses -- the first conducted among 90 men and women and a chimpanzee, and the second among almost 1,200 men and women. The participant pools were drawn from 59 ethnic groups from all over the world.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
Not likely. Although this is really pretty elementary stuff, if you can't answer the questions, because you don't understand the concepts, that's fine. I'll leave it to you to seek your own tutor on this subject.
Even Right Wing Professor thinks he understands the questions well enough to answer incorrectly. Perhaps you will too if you happen to think like him.
I'm not following your point. Are you trying to sell me a book?
A fine example of subjective thinking.
Wow! I was just going to do a search for that David McCallum 'Outer Limits' episode to see if there was a picture to post!
No sir. Dr. Ravi Zacharias is one of the most gifted and brilliant persons who makes a case for Christ that I have seen. He is a voice for thinkers.
Perhaps you have the time to listen to him via that website, or read his articles. This man is no PTL James Baker---he is an intellectual and I doubt you (or I) could withstand his arguments. He is also one of the dearest and sweetest men I have ever met.
It is a choice, sir.
Take good care.
Then how do you explain Moses, Paul, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, etc?
Why do you claim to understand how God works, yet you reject the obvious evidence of His prophets and servents? The weight of history is against you sir, and you are naked in this charge.
If what one believes about God is based on the words of a man, then it is ultimately really just faith in that man. No matter how eloquently he makes his case.
Then read the bible sir--it is the Word of God. The Lord is very clear on this--it is not the words of man, but God Himself.
I believe there is a place in human existence for God.
How big of you. I don't mean to mock you on this forum, but the arrogance of that statement is ridiculous. The fact is the God created humanity, and we should honor the Creator--not the other way around.
It is not in any machine of man, for nothing man made can ever begin to be worthy of it. No building, book, website, auditorium, temple or shrine conceived by man. If you were to forsake all of these things, would you still believe? And in what? That is the true measure of one's faith in God.
??? This is contradictory.
And that is why God cannot and should not be defined by science; it cannot do justice to Him. Leave science to be a plaything of man. Honor God in your heart instead.
This coda sounds good on the surface, but is meaningless based on your above comments. God accepts us only through His son--the Lord Jesus Christ. I honor God through worship, but acceptance of His son is what He seeks. Don't you see? God does not want to punish or reject us--that is why Christ accepted that terrible torture. Rent the DVD "The Passion" by Mel Gibson and see a very real portrayal of what He went through. The curtain has been torn into 2 pieces, and God is in available to us.
I fear you will write back, tell me you knew all of this, and are light years ahead in your faith. But based on your comments, I don't see that. But--I am not a judge--and I don't judge you. Only God has that post.
Take care.
Go have your own, based on whatever you wish, but remember that it is you that is the bigot here. I have shown nothing but respect for your opinions, yet you feel free to brush mine away simply because they are not yours! Fine...
The bible is the word of man. Not God. Show me one single word that is not attributed to someone that just claims God said it! That is how I explain your baseball lineup of bible authors! What I claim is that I don't understand how God works! That makes only one of the two of us that isn't so arrogant as to claim to be able to!
Now, go worship your internet book-writing God and leave me to my own beliefs.
O.K. I'm really offended, how did my X-Ray get on this site.
Ridiculous. Scientists have proven the "evolution can't add information" point to be a red herring over and over and over again.
If you're going to spread inaccuracies about science, at least stop spreading the same ones over and over again.
LOL
I did enjoy Agamemnon's rant about thermodynamics - one of the funnier things I've seen on these crevo threads. I wonder if he even knows the mathematical definition of entropy ("pretty elementary stuff"). I don't see how he could have typed the above with a straight face.
The Law is the Law regardless of whether you are in what you imagine to be a closed system or an open system. Sorry. That's the Law.
Energy is lost to entropy whether one is in a closed system or open. Energy derived from an external source which by its existence supplements the total energy to the open system does not by its existence restore all the energy lost by that which inhabits the open system. Entropy still occurs in open systems; one may not assume that any or all of the externally sourced energy present in the system is able to be made available to the "engines" in the open system to the point of reversing energy lost to entropy.
In any other observable example, "engines" are designed to utilize the energy to make that energy useful to the point of being able to perform work. The more efficient the engine, the more work per unit of energy is accomplished. An engine does not just happen to assemble itself into any form of operating machine from a bucket of bolts and block just because someone pours a continuous stream of gas on it and lights a match.
Taking a simplistic illustration one more step, like a full gas station that has a pump lacking a pump hose and a car that just ran out of gas pulled up next to it, there can be an abundance of potential energy, and painfully little truly available energy to the point of its being useful to the open system.
There is a giant nuclear reactor called the sun outside of the system that pumps more or less an endless supply of new energy into the system.
And by the same logic the enclosed system of your desk top computer will also run forever if it has a limitless supply of electricity?
Part of the heat lost to entropy from the computer is derived from the power going in. Another source of loss to systemic entropy is the gradual physical degradation of the circuit board itself. The circuit board is a well ordered piece of machinery even as it was designed and created to be.
Just because the supply of energy continues to enter the system does not mean that it also functions to prevent the system from going from its working (ordered) state to a broken down (disordered) state with time. That complex circuitry will fail someday. The 2nd Law allows one to predict as much.
Does keeping your car continually supplied with gasoline reverse the contributions of engine fatigue, or rust from forming in the quarter panels?
Biological systems -- quite a bit more complex than computer circuit boards -- fail -- and die -- not entirely by the same mechanisms as do cars and circuit boards, but certainly under the same principles embodied in the Law. Quark2005, as the physicist he claims to be, admits he does not understand thermodynamics (so then by his implication a scientist who happens to be a creationist suffers from what is his deficiency.) Still, a physicist doesn’t need to chase his tail like Quark2005 does in his post to make the simplest observation any freshman-level scientist (if not a school yard 4th grader) may readily make – decay happens in the face of that ever present stream of solar energy too. Decay is accelerated in living systems, in chemical systems, and in physical systems in many instances because of exposure to solar energy.
As evolution would have it, a constant stream of electrons should cause your computer to decide in its best interest to evolve eventually -- if just given enough time -- from a mere desktop to a super computer. Just keep pumping that stream of gas and that Yugo you have will someday become a Maserati. Just give them more time and they’ll overcome mathematical and thermodynamic impossibilities -- or so they think.
Today’s clowns in academia can’t cause in their own labs under conditions designed by their own self-elevated intellects to make happen what they believe philosophically happened in nature – in an open system no less – all by chance. Sadly, in their minds the more they repeat this pap within the confines of their closed intellects, the more scientific these guys think it all sounds.
That’s not science. That’s merely premise re-inforced by self-delusion.
You must mean: "the entropy of the entire earth-sun system is lower today than...." Otherwise what you have written has no comparative basis, and makes no sense just on that point alone.
"Billions of years" may be essential to the viability of your premise (and something you still need to prove your have rather than merely assume as you do) but your admission that entropy happens in an open system is a true enough, if not obvious admission. maybe you could educate ModernMan on this same point.
As a materialist evolutionist the burden is entirely upon you to prove that because earth exists in the "open system", all energy lost to entropy by inhabitants of the "open system" is essentially restored by the energy supplemented from the sun. You must also prove that biological engines came into being in order to perform work -- which until the engines existed had no purpose to be performed -- because of the energy from the sun introduced into this allegedly self-improving system. Lastly, you will have to make a case against what you have admitted is true: entropy occurs in an open system which the sun cannot in all its power restore.
You can't even prove the entropy of a human is lower than an equivalent mass of bacteria!
I don't have to. Your illustration admits entropy happens in "open" system earth inspite of alternative energy introduced to the system by the sun. You make my point.
The systems are too complex. Entropy is a difficult enough concept to apply to even simple, self-contained systems - it is a useless concept in the context you're trying to use it in.
It's a tough concept for you maybe though not entirely over the head of a typical 4th grader, because you are trying to make it conceptually more difficult than it is. Your argument ties you in knots and with evidence of entropy in the open system around all around you, you have made yourself purposefully blind for the sake of your silly if not entirely pretentious argument.
I'm sure your Nobel prize just got lost in the mail, Aggie.
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