Posted on 11/25/2008 10:22:41 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
A team of Princeton University scientists has discovered that chains of proteins found in most living organisms act like adaptive machines, possessing the ability to control their own evolution.
The scientists do not know how the cellular machinery guiding this process may have originated, but they emphatically said it does not buttress the case for intelligent design, a controversial notion that posits the existence of a creator responsible for complexity in nature...
(Excerpt) Read more at princeton.edu ...
A linear view has them peeling off from the others in some sort of sequence. A more realistic view has them peeling off from each other, in part, and coming back together, in part, at different times.
Think of horses, donkeys and zebras.
Pretty obvious that they all share a very similar body plan, but what's the truth of their relationships ~ what does their DNA say?
Remember, donkeys and horses can currently reproduce with each other. Both can still breed with zebras. Yet, there are three Species of Zebra. All inhabit different areas, all have different chromosome counts.
Then, there's the "Ultimate Peoples Hero Horse" the Hippopotamus. They don't mix well with any of these guys! Yet, they have the body.
Read what I am saying. I said if the rate was established independent of assumptions about the mechanism, then new knowledge about the mechanism doesn't change the rate.
You are disagreeing, then just assuming that the rate was established by studying the mechanism! That doesn't disagree with what I said. But you can't just assume the rate was established that way. I doubt very much that it did.
No, because you have hidden assumptions in there. It's not a matter of basic logic. You are assuming things about a linear relationship between genetic patterns and body plan that may not be true. Genetics is quite a bit more complex. Some very different genetic blueprints could create similar plans, and similar blueprints could create very different plans.
Everything must be RECALIBRATED.
Back at you. The question I addressed was the causality question. I merely answered your challenge for proof of 1 + 1 = 2. Again, countless people more intelligent than you or I have wrestled with the question. They didn’t throw up their hands and say “We can’t know.” They attempted answers. Obviously none satisfy you. That does not mean you are right and every believer is wrong. You establish that you know the complete set of unknowable things or can prove the membership of any and all items in that set.
Do you have documentation to support that IDers have theorized that directed mutation would be an indicator of intelligent design? If so, this would seem to be scientific evidence put to the test. Exactly what the Evo's claim ID NEVER does.
For the reason I've already explained, this is not true.
As I've already explained, I was asking you to actually prove 1 + 1 = 2.
"They didn’t throw up their hands and say “We can’t know.”"
Saying "we can't know" to an *unknowable* question isn't throwing up your hands. It's being honest and rational. That's all I'm trying to get across.
Certainly many people have made up answers, so what? *By definition* there is no way to know their answers to an unknowable question are correct.
"The competition to reproduce" is what GUIDES evolution? So the "competition to reproduce" is a force of some kind that is capable of ADDING complexity to living organisms and their sub-systems? "Competition to reproduce" is the guiding (intellegent) force behind evolution? Prove it.
"Designed itself"? No, design is not the right word.
Designed itself is the correct terminology. Fine, the competition to reproduce is what caused life to design itself and lifes' sub-systems to design themselves and natural selection is why life chose to keep the working mutations and abandon the bogus mutations. Is that better?
Final question: Is SETI science? The evolutionists act as if they OWN the definition of science and are so certain about what is and what is not science. Please explain why SETI is science, or admit that SETI is not science.
The problem the discovery of proteins that "fix" errors (mutations) presents to us is that this process will have its own rate of change. In the near term it may make little or no difference in the rate of change. Over a long period of time it may well be of vast importance, particularly if the fix rate has a large variance. (NOTE, taking a WAGuess I'm presuming there are proteins produced in the mitochondria that fix "non coding sequences", not just genes).
Our current estimations of the mutation rate of a particular strain of mytochondrial DNA may well be skewed by a previously undetected, but significantly large error in the fix rate.
Like I said, we need grants, we need new buildings, we need platoons if not divisions of grad students.
Maybe we can figure out how to communicate with "it".
And I have done that.
Saying "we can't know" to an *unknowable* question isn't throwing up your hands. It's being honest and rational. That's all I'm trying to get across.
And how does one determine something is unknowable without trying? Those "made up" answers are nonetheless answers to the question posed. And "by definition" those "unknowable" things are called beliefs. Our Declaration of Independence includes some of those beliefs. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...."
The “sudden jumps” you have in mind involve millions of years or hundreds of thousands of generations. The varity of morphology seen in dogs bred over the last thousand years is greater than the “gaps” in the fossil record for most lineages.
I said neither that competition is a "force" or that it is intelligent. You are making unfounded assumptions.
Is the non-force, non-intelligent, process of natural selection capable of leading to additional complexity? Absolutely.
"As I've already explained, I was asking you to actually prove 1 + 1 = 2. "
It should have read, "As I've already explained, I WASN'T asking you to actually prove 1 + 1 = 2."
By understanding the question.
If everything we can observe is causally related to the origin of the universe, but no information exists to be observed that can tell us what predates the singularity, if those things are true, then what happened before the singularity is unknowable.
If it is unknowable, that doesn't mean you get to insert your own favorite story in its place. It means you can't know.
Beliefs are not the same thing as knowledge. People have many beliefs. Some are quite absurd. Belief doesn't make them true.
I'm not sure what SETI has to do with any of this, but, part of science is gathering data. Making observations. SETI does that. So it is a scientific endeavor, yes.
SETI is the attempt to detect signals that may originate with alien civilizations. It makes observations and gathers data that may or may not lead to new discoveries. What's not scientific about that?
Your statement starts out with an "if". That is the nub.
Your statement starts out with an "if". That is the nub.
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