Unlocking cell secrets bolsters evolutionists

The Chicage Tribune ^ | Published February 13, 2006 | By Jeremy Manier Tribune staff reporter

[MRMEAN]

Biologists are beginning to solve the riddles on which intelligent-design advocates have relied

To advocates of intelligent design, the human sperm's tiny tail bears potent evidence that Charles Darwin was wrong--it is, they say, a molecular machine so complex that only God could have produced it.

But biologists now are starting to piece together how such intricate bits of biochemistry evolved. Although the basic research was not meant as a response to intelligent design, it is unraveling the very riddles that proponents said could not be solved.

In contrast, intelligent design advocates admit they still lack any way of using hard evidence to test their theories, which many biologists find revealing.

The new insights on evolution at its smallest scale were a major yet little-noticed reason why a federal judge late last year struck down a plan in Dover, Pa., that would have put intelligent design in public school classrooms. The findings the judge cited will provide the ultimate test of ideas about the origins of life, more lasting than court rulings or the politics of the moment.

Most scientists have long rejected intelligent design, or ID, on the grounds that it is a religious proposal not grounded in observation. ID adherents say biochemistry actually supports their view. They argue that many tiny mechanisms--the tails of sperm and bacteria, the immune system, blood clotting--are so elaborate they must have been purposely designed.

Yet biologists have made major strides on each of those phenomena since the first ID books were published in the mid-1990s.

Working without the benefit of fossils, experts are using new genome data to study how fish evolved the crucial ability to clot blood. A wave of new research on the evolution of the immune system seemed to stump ID witnesses in the Dover case. And even ...

[bikepacker67]

Besides, activation energy may explain how complex molecules can be created by radiation/heat etc. but it doesn't come close to explaining the monumental jump to having those chemical concoctions spontaneously replicating themselves.

[Dimensio]

If you can say evolution has nothing to do with the beginning of life then you can discount all the facts and how they disprove evolution.

Non-sequitur. Evolution occurs no matter how the first life forms came into existence. If there are "facts" that disprove evolution, then present them, but refusing to discuss because you want to dishonestly redefine evolution doesn't make you look very bright.

[VadeRetro]

Not having your facts straight is OK as long as you're "witnessing."

[puroresu]

Evolution is an interesting and POSSIBLY correct theory. But if we assume for the sake of argument that it's a fact, then either God had something to do with it, or He didn't. I wouldn't ban either suggestion from the public schools.

[Old Professer]

Politics: The art of stealing in plain sight.

[VadeRetro]

Well, maybe, but remember that only evos fake and wildly misinterpret fossils. No creationist would ever do such a thing.

Let's just do one for fun. The Life and Death of Malachite Man. Death? But there it is still there on the Bible.CA site!

[Rudder]

(Re: Abiogenesis) It is only a false statement to evos, because it is matematically impossible for it to have happened, and so evolution is so much BS...

You have redefined Evolution in your own image and then attack it for for not being the way you want it to be.

This is called sophistry, intellectual dishonesty and just plain worthless.

You should start these discussions with a treatise on your unique theories of the universe and its life forms and then field questions and answers.

As it stands now, it's impossible to have a discussion with someone who redefines the terms up for debate.

[The_Victor]

Evolution is an interesting and POSSIBLY correct theory. But if we assume for the sake of argument that it's a fact, then either God had something to do with it, or He didn't. I wouldn't ban either suggestion from the public schools.

Evolution fits the evidence. The scientific evidence for God is nonexistent. But that doesn't He doesn't exist, just that we cannot demonstrate it in a laboratory.

[calex59]

There are plenty of facts that disprove evolution, and the failure to determine how life started from lifeless chemicals is one of the biggest proof. Evos like to disgard it and call it terms such as a non-sequitur but the fact is, without the beggining of life, evolution would not be possible. How it started is all important to the theory of evolution and the theory of ID.

Life didn't start the way it is postulated, it simply is mathematically impossible. Proof that evolution is not true? That it is easy. There are NO transitional species, no matter how evos lie about it, there simply are none. There should be more transitional species than finished species. Even if you count the species now existing as transitional, there should still be millions of other speices leading up to ours, but where are they? They don't exist, and even Darwin, whose theory is actually in the toilet now, said that if the transitional species couldn't be found his theory was toast. Show me a real transitional species, not a fake one or a species conjectured to be one but a real one, and I will relent, until that time, evos and IDers are both full of it.

Clinging to these two ideas is stopping real thinking from occuring. Have a good day:)

[puroresu]

####Evolution fits the evidence.####

Theories generally fit the evidence. But that doesn't mean the theory in question is inviolable.


####The scientific evidence for God is nonexistent. But that doesn't He doesn't exist, just that we cannot demonstrate it in a laboratory.####

True. It's an act of faith to believe in God. Or to be an atheist. But my argument would be that we should not exclude either option as a point of discussion, or a point of departure when discussing life on earth.

I have no idea whether or not intelligent life exists on other planets, but it wouldn't be an attack on science to suggest either possibility. Ditto for the existence of a parallel universe. Yet, if I were a public school science teacher, and I spent five minutes of the school year telling my class that I believe there's life out there in a distant galaxy, I wouldn't get hauled into court by the ACLU or the evolutionist crowd. I could even suggest that aliens "seeded" life here and not get in any trouble. But even a brief suggestion that maybe God had something to do with the countless species we see on earth would be lead to some leftist federal judge's wrath falling upon me.

[VadeRetro]

There are plenty of facts that disprove evolution, and the failure to determine how life started from lifeless chemicals is one of the biggest proof. Evos like to disgard it and call it terms such as a non-sequitur but the fact is, without the beggining of life, evolution would not be possible. How it started is all important to the theory of evolution and the theory of ID.

Among other flaws, this passage equivocates between whether life on Earth had a beginning at all and whether we fully understand what that beginning was. These are actually separate things.

There are plenty of facts that disprove evolution, and the failure to determine how life started from lifeless chemicals is one of the biggest proof. [Talks about what we understand of the beginning.]

... without the beggining of life, evolution would not be possible. [The actual beginning of life, not our understanding of it, is needed for evolution.]

Stupid lawyer tricks.

[Dimensio]

There are plenty of facts that disprove evolution,

So name one. and the failure to determine how life started from lifeless chemicals is one of the biggest proof

Please explain how the theory of evolution depends on an explanation for life origins.

Evos like to disgard it and call it terms such as a non-sequitur but the fact is, without the beggining of life, evolution would not be possible.

But life clearly exists, so obviously it started somewhere. How it started is irrelevant to how it developed afterwards.

Life didn't start the way it is postulated, it simply is mathematically impossible.

There are NO transitional species, no matter how evos lie about it, there simply are none.

How do the "evos" lie about it? What is wrong with examples of transitional species presented?

Even if you count the species now existing as transitional, there should still be millions of other speices leading up to ours, but where are they?

You mean something like these? I await your dishonest dismissal of them.

They don't exist, and even Darwin, whose theory is actually in the toilet now, said that if the transitional species couldn't be found his theory was toast.

Citation please. Show me a real transitional species, not a fake one or a species conjectured to be one but a real one, and I will relent, until that time, evos and IDers are both full of it.

In other words, you'll arrogantly dismiss anything presented to you as "fake" or "conjecture" so that you can maintain your claim that you are right in spite of all evidence against you.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"There are plenty of facts that disprove evolution, and the failure to determine how life started from lifeless chemicals is one of the biggest proof."

But evolution has never claimed to explain the origins of life.

"Evos like to disgard it and call it terms such as a non-sequitur but the fact is, without the beggining of life, evolution would not be possible."

Without matter, gravity wouldn't be possible. Yet the theory of gravity as it stand s now does not say how matter came to be. Does that mean that the current theory of gravity is false?

" Life didn't start the way it is postulated, it simply is mathematically impossible."

Please produce the calculations that make abiogenesis impossible.

" There are NO transitional species, no matter how evos lie about it, there simply are none."

Bwahahahahahaha!!

"There should be more transitional species than finished species."

Why?

"Even if you count the species now existing as transitional, there should still be millions of other speices leading up to ours, but where are they?"

Dead. fossilization is a very rare thing.

"They don't exist, and even Darwin, whose theory is actually in the toilet now, said that if the transitional species couldn't be found his theory was toast."

They have been found, so the toasting is premature.

"Show me a real transitional species, not a fake one or a species conjectured to be one but a real one, and I will relent, until that time, evos and IDers are both full of it."

Archaeopteryx. Do you really promise to relent now? :)

[Rebel_Ace]

Lot's of folks have the common misconception that the processes of life that they see about them here on good ol' Earth somehow violate the 2nd law of Thermodynamics. On several occasions I try to come in and clear things up for folks, to help them understand, in plain, ordinary English. I have not done that in few months, so here we go again:

In "layman's" terms, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics states that over time, things "run down" and become more disordered. Water runs downhill. Clocks unwind and stop. Shiny polished metal rusts and pits away. Batteries lose their juice and go dead.

Since people rewind clocks, pump water uphill, recharge batteries, reproduce and have children, smelt and process metal, then gee, aren't we INCREASING the order of our environment around us? Are we not violating the 2nd Law?

At first glance, this might appear to be so. All the organisms on this planet are directing their energies to making a more orderly and more complex environment about them, even if it is by the mindless act of bacteria reproducing. How is this possible? Where does the energy for all this activity come from?

If we follow the food chain backwards, we find that all life on Earth depends initially upon plants for a food source. Even meat eaters, since they usually eat animals that have in turn eaten plants. Where then, do the plants get their energy?

Plants create their own food by assembling sugars in a process called Photosynthesis. Energy from the Sun's light is used to drive the production of sugar molecules. OK, so where does the Sun get its energy?

The Sun produces energy from the fusion of Hydrogen Atoms into Helium Atoms. The Sun has been doing this for a VERRRY long time (billions of years). The Sun is likely to continue to do this for a VERRRY long time (billions of years). However, the amount of Hydrogen in the Sun is FINITE. The Sun WILL EVENTUALLY run out of fuel. When that happens, there will no longer be a steady stream of inflowing energy to planet Earth. Earth will cool off (after an initial baking, but that is another story), things will run down, and there will be nobody to "wind things back up".

It makes no difference if we consider only our local solar system, or the known observable universe. Virtually all the order and energy we see generated stems from the conversion of Hydrogen into Helium. Eventually, the stars will cease to shine, and the remorseless 2nd Law will have the last say. Life offers no contradiction.

[Doctor Stochastic]

...it is unraveling the very riddles that proponents said could not be solved.

Negative predictions should be made carefully.

[Rudder]

...so that you can maintain your claim that you are right in spite of all evidence against you.

Now you're starting to sound like me.

P.S. I checked out the thingy on apostrophe's...hehe.

[puroresu]

####Earth will cool off (after an initial baking, but that is another story), things will run down, and there will be nobody to "wind things back up".####


Who wound it up to begin with?

[VadeRetro]

Who wound it up to begin with?

Cthulhu.

[Rudder]

Excellent presentation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Hell, even I understood it! But, regarding your statement: ...things "run down" and become more disordered.

Shouldn't that be "ordered?"

[King Prout]

you might wish to add definitions of "transit" "transition" "transitional" "species" "fossil" "evidence" and "fossil evidence of transitional species"