Posted on 05/08/2003 10:11:06 AM PDT by Nebullis
Arlington, Va.—If the evolution of complex organisms were a road trip, then the simple country drives are what get you there. And sometimes even potholes along the way are important.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists at Michigan State University and the California Institute of Technology, with the help of powerful computers, has used a kind of artificial life, or ALife, to create a road map detailing the evolution of complex organisms, an old problem in biology.
In an article in the May 8 issue of the international journal Nature, Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami report that the path to complex organisms is paved with a long series of simple functions, each unremarkable if viewed in isolation. "This project addresses a fundamental criticism of the theory of evolution, how complex functions arise from mutation and natural selection," said Sam Scheiner, program director in the division of environmental biology at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research through its Biocomplexity in the Environment initiative. "These simulations will help direct research on living systems and will provide understanding of the origins of biocomplexity."
Some mutations that cause damage in the short term ultimately become a positive force in the genetic pedigree of a complex organism. "The little things, they definitely count," said Lenski of Michigan State, the paper's lead author. "Our work allowed us to see how the most complex functions are built up from simpler and simpler functions. We also saw that some mutations looked like bad events when they happened, but turned out to be really important for the evolution of the population over a long period of time."
In the key phrase, "a long period of time," lies the magic of ALife. Lenski teamed up with Adami, a scientist at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ofria, a Michigan State computer scientist, to further explore ALife.
Pennock, a Michigan State philosopher, joined the team to study an artificial world inside a computer, a world in which computer programs take the place of living organisms. These computer programs go forth and multiply, they mutate and they adapt by natural selection.
The program, called Avida, is an artificial petri dish in which organisms not only reproduce, but also perform mathematical calculations to obtain rewards. Their reward is more computer time that they can use for making copies of themselves. Avida randomly adds mutations to the copies, thus spurring natural selection and evolution. The research team watched how these "bugs" adapted and evolved in different environments inside their artificial world.
Avida is the biologist's race car - a really souped up one. To watch the evolution of most living organisms would require thousands of years – without blinking. The digital bugs evolve at lightening speed, and they leave tracks for scientists to study.
"The cool thing is that we can trace the line of descent," Lenski said. "Out of a big population of organisms you can work back to see the pivotal mutations that really mattered during the evolutionary history of the population. The human mind can't sort through so much data, but we developed a tool to find these pivotal events."
There are no missing links with this technology.
Evolutionary theory sometimes struggles to explain the most complex features of organisms. Lenski uses the human eye as an example. It's obviously used for seeing, and it has all sorts of parts - like a lens that can be focused at different distances - that make it well suited for that use. But how did something so complicated as the eye come to be?
Since Charles Darwin, biologists have concluded that such features must have arisen through lots of intermediates and, moreover, that these intermediate structures may once have served different functions from what we see today. The crystalline proteins that make up the lens of the eye, for example, are related to those that serve enzymatic functions unrelated to vision. So, the theory goes, evolution borrowed an existing protein and used it for a new function.
"Over time," Lenski said, "an old structure could be tweaked here and there to improve it for its new function, and that's a lot easier than inventing something entirely new."
That's where ALife sheds light.
"Darwinian evolution is a process that doesn't specify exactly how the evolving information is coded," says Adami, who leads the Digital Life Laboratory at Caltech. "It affects DNA and computer code in much the same way, which allows us to study evolution in this electronic medium."
Many computer scientists and engineers are now using processes based on principles of genetics and evolution to solve complex problems, design working robots, and more. Ofria says that "we can then apply these concepts when trying to decide how best to solve computational problems."
"Evolutionary design," says Pennock, "can often solve problems better than we can using our own intelligence."
I don't have to--mine is the skeptics position. All I need to demonstrate is that you haven't provided any evidence, much less proof.
And if you want to debate the point I will be glad to do so. We can start off with Marx who wished to dedicate Das Kapital to Darwin because of how greatly he considered it helping his theory. We can continue with Eldredge who said that evolution made atheism respectable. We can continue with the long line of atheists who have been the main promoters of evolution: Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, Gould, Eldredge, and Dawkins. If that is not enough we can just look at the avowed and obvious atheism of most of the evolutioninsts on these threads.
I haven't any idea how this point supports the rest of your argument, but, hey, what's new?
Gee, I already told you the point in the post you are responding to:
As to fitness cost, I already gave it to you in the post you are responding to " However, in real life there is a fitness cost of non-useful organs, DNA, etc. It takes energy, food, etc. to keep such useless things alive so there is definitely a fitness cost." Further you already agreed that even a small fitness differential will result in the more fit organisms overcoming the less fit.
The above seems pretty plain to me. However now you are starting with the doubletalk:
The point, if I might be so bold as to suggest sticking to it, was that it isn't necessary to punish failure to have evolutionary changes take place. It is only necessary to reward success.
The above clearly contradicts your statement in post#1012:
It's a truism of entomology (been demonstrated in sealed mason jars thousands of times) that when two nearly identical species occupy nearly the same contained biological nitche, one or the other will eventually prevail entirely, no matter how tiny its differential advantage.
Clearly, you are contradicting yourself within a matter of a few posts. Which is it - a tiny advantage destroys a species or not? Make up your mind.
In addition, the entire theory of evolution is based on 'survival of the fittest' and the 'natural selection' replacement of God the Creator to sift through the almost unimaginable amount of possibilities to achieve a more advanced organism. You are thus proving my points earlier on that:
1. the experiment is false because it does not punish as yet useless novelties.
2. that evolution is impossible because the gradualness of it cannot be achieved due to the necessity of each miniscule change making the organism more fit at each and every point.
You keep going back and forth between evolution and abiogenesis because you cannot contradict my devastating statements against either. Yes, the above does not apply to abiogenesis. However, I already demolished that one in post#1244:
For one thing, non-life cannot 'evolve'. YOu need a complete living thing to start off the life process and that requires at a minimum some half million DNA pairs. We do know that there is no needful arrangement of these pairs as regarding chemistry. We do not know of any DNA even in non-living things. Besides the arrangement of the DNA problem you have a few others in achieving life from non-life. One is that it takes more than DNA to make a living thing. You need the proteins, and the whole organism for life to work and be able to replicate itself. You thus have a chicken and egg problem here. In addition you have the problem of RNA reading the symbolic DNA code. This is impossible without a designer.
My argument against evolution is concicely stated in post#1265 just above. Pick and choose what you are arguing about and we can discuss that. Stop trying to purposely confuse the issues by saying that the argument against evolution does not apply to abiogenesis and that the argument against abiogenesis does not apply to evolution.
Matter cannot reason and not even the most ardent materialists argue that living things can will themselves into a new species so this argument is absolute nonsense.-me-
In what manner is this a relevant response to the extract quoted?
Seems quite obvious to me that matter cannot reason and not even evolutionists claim that organisms can will themselves into new more advanced forms of life. It takes a designer, a reasoning being to think and design things, not inanimate matter. Further that is the problem with this whole program - it was designed by intelligent beings. It was given 'logic' and 'reasoning' which matter does not itself has. It was given the power to self-modify itself which matter and not even living organisms have the ability to do. Therefore this experiment is as I (and many others have said) total nonsense. If evolution be science, then it needs to prove itself in real life. That it cannot do so, shows the emptiness and the lack of value of the theory, and its utter dissociation with real life.
First of all, there is no proof that man's sociability is an 'instinct'. There are many folk who are totally unsociable and like to live by themselves. If it were an instinct it should be universal amongst mankind.
Secondly, the point of the reference was that religion is good for the health of people. You seem to agree that it is yet take low blows against religion showing again that evolutionists and atheists are birds of a feather.
However, the point I made that definitely destroys materialism and which you do not wish to address is the well proven point that the will to live leads to longer life. This shows that there is a totally non-material portion of our nature which greatly influences the material part of it and therefore it shows that materialism is totally false.
SHOW ME THE BONES.
The actual bones that is, not paintings and drawings, the actual bones. Let's see them for the dinosaur to bird transition and for the reptile to mammal transition. Since these are the most recent large transitions, they should have the best fossil evidence of all.
Human beings are intelligent and in the image of God and therefore are able to alter their environment and even improve themselves, but animals cannot and never have been able to will themselves to change.
No, I am not. Almost all the evolutionists here are atheists, though almost all of them try to run away from the label. If questioned, they will show that they are indeed atheists, but they will fail to respond to it. Evolution is almost completely inimical to Christianity. The numerous attacks on Christianity by evolutionists is proof of that. In fact, here's a good one for you. This thread is over 1200 posts long. How about pointing out one (1) post in which evolutionists say something good about Christianity and Christian beliefs. Just one.
Well, since you claim to have read the book, kindly tell us exactly what particles of matter can generate turing machines. This I need to see, I can use a good laugh.
In other words donh, I am asking you to back up your statement. Can you do that, or are you going to resort to more insults?
Each time I say abiogenesis is impossible you argue with me. Now all I want from you is to show me one single theory which can resolve the following problems with abiogenesis - and explain how it surmounts them:
1. the problem of arranging some 500,000 pairs of DNA in exactly the correct way to make life possible.
2. the chicken - egg problem - you need DNA for life to exist, however, you need the products of DNA - the proteins, etc, in order to have an organism and for DNA to be able to work.
3. the DNA/RNA symbolism problem. You cannot have life without DNA coding for the amino acids which RNA translates into the amino acids which make the proteins of life. There is no chemical or other reason for the translation of these codes into specific amino acids. It is purely conventional as our letters represent sounds. So your theory also has to answer to how RNA was taught to interpret the DNA code.
Let's see you (or anyone else here) take up the challenge.
Yup. Essentially, atheists know that God exists but hate to admit it. They have become atheists because of hatred of God, not because they could care less about religion. The hatred shown towards Christianity by evolutionist-atheists amply proves my point.
His preoccupation with you, borders on the psychotic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.