Posted on 06/18/2006 5:02:00 AM PDT by Tribune7
You don't have to take anyone else's word for it - you can use the Random Mutation Generator to find out for yourself how Darwinian evolution really works.
Your Mission, should you choose to accept it, is to type a sentence into the Random Mutation Generator
(Excerpt) Read more at randommutation.com ...
The idea that natural selection works on the whole individual, but only the heritable component of a trait will be passed on to the offspring, with the result that favorable, heritable traits become more common in the next generation. given enough time, this passive process can result in adaptations and speciation is clearly addressed.
Here scroll down the page
You'll like this one. I should have pinged you.
Is that anything like this gadget?
LOL
:-)
LOL!!! Absolutely.
The problem with the secular crowd is the overbearing pride and arrogance you always display. That why you can't sell your narrative to save your life.
WOW, JC, you're not even clicking on the link before spewing the ID-speak???? Jeez, this is an anti-science website. Just up your alley...
You are correct on at least a couple of levels. In evolution, there are mutations, either caused randomly or divinely directed.
Most mutations are either neutral or harmful. Those with the harmful mutations die out quickly and do not produce successfully; thus, the harmful mutations die out rapidly and do not have a chance to compound themselves.
Some of those mutations are useful in that they allow the mutated creature to produce more successfully or to take better care of its offspring or to do something that is useful to its offspring's existence and propagation. It is only these useful (not necessarily good in any absolute sense) mutations that live long enough for more useful mutations to compound further.
Wow... You didn't even read the site, did you. I guess you creationist types can tell all you need to know by the name alone, eh? (HINT: It links to an anti-science creationist website.) Tell us again about overbearing pride and arrogance...
Not to mention the fact that Islamists don't believe in evolution, either...
Thanks, I'll bet the house.
the development of life on earth is neither random, nor survival of the fittest related, nor Genesis Old Testament's account.
It's beyond comprehension of both the scientific rationalists and the fundamentalist literalists. The two groups are a lot alike in their inflexible approaches to this astonishing phenomenon.
As it says on the American Museum of National History "There are no words or systems of thought that can contain [i]boundless]/i] life."
Life finds a niche anywhere and everywhere on the planet whereever there's an opening. At the bottom of the Marianas trench with crushing water pressure, no sunlight and no oxygen, in the boiling sulfur pots at Yellowstone, a mile down in the earth's crust, anywhere. And it's forms are stunning. Life "anticipates" environment, in jaw dropping fashion.
If a second were a year, most of us will live a bit more than one minute. Jesus would have been born 33 minutes ago. The earliest written history of man would be about an hour old, as would be the oldest sources of the Old Testament probably 40 minutes ago. The cave paintings at Lascaux in contrast would have been done 10 hours ago.
The earliest fossil evidence of our own species would be about 30 hours old. The earliest fossil evidence of non-knuckle walking hominids would be 1,600 hours old or about 50 days ago.
The earliest fossil traces of birds and early mammals are 6 years old. Dinosaurs, reptiles and insects, 11 years, Trilobites and the first complex animals 17 years.
The earliest life forms would be around 110 years old. Life existed without "eyes" or photo-receiving cells for almost 100 years in total darkness. It also existed for most of that time without male or female gender. And of course before life, there was no gender. (This makes calling god "Father" an example of the limitations of language of the literalists. The center of numinous being is clearly transcendent of gender.)
The earth would be 146 years old, and the universe which is difficult to age precisely, perhaps 410 years old.
"Ask not from where the flowers come. The god of spring himself knows not the answer."
Unlike destroyed sentences, destroyed offspring stop mutating and die, leaving offspring with beneficial or benign mutations. Also, its a misconception that "The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance."
There is probably no other statement which is a better indication that the arguer doesn't understand evolution. Chance certainly plays a large part in evolution, but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance. Chance, in the form of mutations, provides genetic variation, which is the raw material that natural selection has to work with. From there, natural selection sorts out certain variations. Those variations which give greater reproductive success to their possessors (and chance ensures that such beneficial mutations will be inevitable) are retained, and less successful variations are weeded out. When the environment changes, or when organisms move to a different environment, different variations are selected, leading eventually to different species. Harmful mutations usually die out quickly, so they don't interfere with the process of beneficial mutations accumulating. Nor is abiogenesis (the origin of the first life) due purely to chance. Atoms and molecules arrange themselves not purely randomly, but according to their chemical properties. In the case of carbon atoms especially, this means complex molecules are sure to form spontaneously, and these complex molecules can influence each other to create even more complex molecules. Once a molecule forms that is approximately self-replicating, natural selection will guide the formation of ever more efficient replicators. The first self-replicating object didn't need to be as complex as a modern cell or even a strand of DNA. Some self-replicating molecules are not really all that complex (as organic molecules go).Some people still argue that it is wildly improbable for a given self-replicating molecule to form at a given point (although they usually don't state the "givens," but leave them implicit in their calculations). This is true, but there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. A calculation of the odds of abiogenesis is worthless unless it recognizes the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from, the probably innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken, and the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with.
(One should also note that the theory of evolution doesn't depend on how the first life began. The truth or falsity of any theory of abiogenesis wouldn't affect evolution in the least.)
My point being: your hostility failed to persuade. Why don't you try again by calling me unflattering names?
The sentence isn't destroyed after one mutation. Just mutated.
Also, its a misconception that "The theory of evolution says that life originated, and evolution proceeds, by random chance."
The link doesn't refer to origins.
I was thinkin' the same thing! But it didn't say which lottery or what date. I went back and typed in my name again and all that came out was "sucker"!
I just played with the generator. It accumulates mutations, yes.
What I don't see is mutated versions competing in any fashion against other mutated versions and/or the original.
Now, we do have models that do this kind of thing routinely. We use them to do a sort of hands-off Intelligent Design which often surpasses direct, hands-on human design. We call these ... (Wait for it!) ... Evolutionary Algorithms.
The author of this idiotic strawman simply took the evo algoritm concept, broke it so it doesn't work, and announced the downfall of Darwin.
Typical Cretin Science.
"but this argument completely ignores the fundamental role of natural selection, and selection is the very opposite of chance."
Are you saying that evolution could occur without chance?
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