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."
Get used to it, that's Gore3000's favorite tactic, and he never tires of it.
That's pretty funny coming from the guy who has himself made such a career out of making outrageous statements and then dodging all attempts to get him to back them up.
Or have you so soon forgotten:
[Used with permission of the original author]Gore3000's FABNAQ's
(Frequently Asked But Never Answered Questions)
These questions have been dodged [6] times so farScience is very much aware that evolution is total nonsense, that is why it keeps refuting it.
Amazing claim, let's see if you can substantiate it:
In fact it is totally unbelievable that anyone would call evolution science in this day and age.
You mean, other than those countless thousands of scientists who work with it and research it all the time?
You make a lot of unsupported claims, son, let's see if you know how to support them:
1. The disproof of Darwin's racist claim that the brachyocephalic index showed what races were superior and which were inferior.
Troll Challenge #1: I've already challenged you to document this ad hominem claim. I already pointed out it was contrary to all I've read that Darwin has written about race (i.e., he considered them intellectual and moral equals; an amazingly fair-minded belief for his era.) You failed to even attempt document it. Do so now -- QUOTE Darwin and cite the source.
Troll Challenge #2: Document that whatever Darwin may have actually said on the matter has been "disproven".
NOTE:
For this and subsequent challenges, "document" does not just mean "declare it over and over again" as is your usual mode of "proof". It does not mean "quote other creationists". It does not mean "cut-and-paste semi-relevant website pages that happen to talk about the subject at hand and then declare that this proves your point through sheer volume". In short, none of your usual game-playing of "the conclusion is left as an exercise for the reader, and if you don't reach my conclusion you're an idiot." None of those are sufficient for your *specific* claims that "SCIENCE...KEEPS REFUTING" evolution and "SCIENCE is very much aware that evolution is total nonsense". So to document your amazing claims, you must quote, or provide specific citations for, MAINSTREAM SCIENCE publications which *specifically* declare to have contradicted, refuted, contradicted, or proven wrong the point you claim has "refuted" evolution via "science". For surely, if "science keeps refuting" evolution, someone in science would have mentioned it somewhere. Lord knows scientists aren't shy about pointing out when they've debunked something.In short, you must quote/cite an actual science source which AGREES WITH YOUR CONCLUSION in each case and FLAT OUT SAYS SO. Not just "could be used to argue that conclusion" if you squint at it just right, you must actually find where science SAYS WHAT YOU SAY IT DOES, with no need for "interpretation" or "line of reasoning" on your part.
You say that "Science is very much aware that evolution is total nonsense", so all you have to do is *quote* science actually SAYING the things you say it does. Should be easy -- if you're not a lying swine.
While some may dismiss this as a minutae, it is a strong refutation of evolution because it shows that there has been no 'evolution' in the human species and according to evolutionists evolution is always going on.
Troll Challenge #3: Over what timespan has your alleged "no change" occurred?
Troll Challenge #4: Document (*see above*) that it hasn't.
Troll Challenge #5: Document (*ditto*) that "according to evolutionists" there would *have* be a change of the specified type over the specified time period if evolution were true.
2. Mendelian genetics showed that the transfer of new traits was very difficult if not impossible.
Troll Challenge #6: Document this insane claim. And since you have a short memory, I will again point out that you must DOCUMENT this by citing an actual scientific source which declares it to be "very difficult if not impossible" -- your own babbling, hand-waving arguments don't count. You're not allowed to try to prove your amazing assertion, you must *document* that *SCIENCE* flat-out says so, since you claimed that it did.
Indeed because a new trait or mutation is not in the gene pool of other individuals, it has an almost impossible chance of survival.
Troll Challenge #7: Document, please. And since I remember your failures in our earlier discussion of genetic drift, I must remind you that 1-in-a-thousand, or even 1-in-a-million, is *NOT* "almost impossible". Nor do your misconceptions bother to address the selection of favorable new traits, which have a far higher success rate.
2a. Mendelian genetics also showed the concept of alleles - duplicate genes in every organism which performed the same function but a bit differently. This allows the adaptation of a species to the environment without the need to wait for a chance mutation to occur. It shows that transformation of organisms is not necessary for survival.
Troll Challenge #8: Explain how the (obvious) fact that organisms can "survive" without evolution in any way supports your thesis that "science keeps refuting evolution". Oh, don't bother -- you can't. You're just being foolishly irrelevant here and even you must realize that.
3. DNA - a Nobel Prize winning discovery - showed the utter complexity of the cells in every organism. It laid to rest forever the concept that just a little mutation could transform an organism or a species.
Troll Challenge #9: Document (again, via quoting an actual scientific source which SPECIFICALLY AGREES with your CONCLUSION here) that you're not just making a wild leap from "it's complicated" to "it's impossible".
Troll Challenge #10: Document where evolutionists have ever said that "*A* little mutation" (i.e., singular) could "transform" an organism or species.
Troll Challenge #11: While you're at it, define "transform" in a way that doesn't make your statement trivially false or tautologically true.
4. Genome Project - showed the utter interrelatedness of every single gene, cell, part of the body.
Troll Challenge #12: Document that twaddle. Make sure your source speaks of the "utter interrelatedness" of "every single gene".
It has shown that it is impossible for any new trait to evolve by chance occurrence (or at random, or without design or whatever you wish to call how evolutionary changes to the genome are supposed to occur according to evolution).
Troll Challenge #13: Document where "it has shown" this. Again, you must find a scientific source which specifically agrees with your *conclusion*, not merely one that you can wave around and say, "this is supporting evidence, my conclusion is therefore inescapable, can't you see that?"
For any change, for any transformation to occur, there would need to be the coevolution of the new trait together with a complete support system to make it work.
Troll Challenge #14: And "science" agrees with you on this point where, exactly? Document it. Make sure it's talking specifically about "ANY change, ANY transformation".
This of course is totally ludicrous, especially in view of 2 and 3 above.
I agree your descriptions are ludicrous.
5. discovery of gene control - showed forever that the arrogant (and moronic) evolutionist theory that 95% of DNA was just there doing nothing except to give proof of evolution was utter bunk.
Troll Challenge #15: Documentation, please.
Science showed that it is that very DNA which evolutionists called 'junk" which is what controls the actions of genes and many other processes in the organism.
Troll Challenge #16: All of it? Document where science "shows" this.
[Update: This is the one challenge that Gore3000 actually attempted a response to. Amusingly enough, his linked source material actually VERIFIED THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW THAT HE WAS TRYING TO DISCREDIT. Hmm, speaking of people posting "things they have not themselves read"...]
So as you can see, we are very lucky that scientists ignore evolution.
Troll Challenge #17: Document that this is the case. I'll accept a quote from any peer-reviewed publication in an accepted science journal.
Otherwise, biology would still be stuck in the dark Darwinian ages.
Someone's sure in the dark here, but it's not us.
Time for you to document your assertions, or withdraw them. Time for you to demonstrate that you have any idea what in the hell you're talking about when you make claims about what "science" shows.
[End of FABNAQ]
Yes. You are wrong. I am a Christian first.
First of all, your example (if true) does not refute my statement that "Almost all the evolutionists here are atheists".
Second of all, there are several kinds of 'evolutionists'. One kind is the kind that does not care to much about the matter and will say they believe in it because others do. These can be Christians, since to them it is not relevant to their lives or thoughts. Another kind is the kind which thinks they can serve both God and the devil. They may be Christian but they put themselves in dire spiritual trouble by their attempted fence sitting. The last kind is the virulent evolutionists (which include most of the evos on these threads). They will lie profusely and claim to be Christians but they are just doing what atheists have done for centuries (including Darwin) - profess to be Christians to attempt to lead people into the balancing act that leads to perdition.
However, evolution is still the only viable scientific explanation for the existing evidence.
Since you have put yourself as an example of a Christian evolutionist, then it is fair to examine the evidence you have offered. Let's try to see on which of the above categories you fit by seeing how you answer the following question:
How can a good Christian who believes in an Allmighty God, say that evolution is the only viable explanation for man, species, and living things?????????????
I told you, a red herring does not work no matter how frantically you wave it. The evidence is for a specific assertion concerning specific circuits. You have yet to back up your assertion. To wit---
Deal with it. In this case, it made a cubic function generator circuit which outperforms the best that all electronic engineers were capable of producing in all the history of electronics.
The circuit at the top was patented in 2000, and is the current state of the art. The circuit at the bottom was produced by pure unaided evolution, and outperforms the human version. It's also complex enough that no one's figured out how it works yet...
From post 633
No, that does not apply in this case. Animal instincts, unlike human action, are innate in the species. This is not the case with human behavior. Humans are different from animals in numerous ways. They are not driven by their material nature, but by their will, their mind, their thoughts, their reason, their logic. All of which things are totally lacking in the beasts.
the well proven point that the will to live leads to longer life.-me-
Yes, suicide tends to shorten the life span, agreed.
No I am not talking about suicide, and you know it. I am speaking of the willingness to live. The desire to live is one of the strongest forces in the recovery of an individual that is ill as any doctor will tell you. In other words, the will to survive affects very deeply the material portion of an individual and thus proves that matter is not all that atheists claim it to be - the be all and end all of existence.
Yes, when shortly after someone makes a post you make a post in which you blatantly insult the poster and do this every time that person posts, that is stalking. Everyone knows very well who you are insulting and just because you are too much of a coward to address your posts to the person you are viciously attacking, does not mean that you are not a stalker.
But of course, we know why you do it. You know that your side cannot refute the arguments being made against your atheistic theory you so deeply love so you try to disrupt the thread and perhaps have it pulled by turning it into a slime-a-thon.
You have - in the very post you are responding to. Science has determined that all the below are essential for a living organism. I asked you to show me a theory that surmounts all these problems of life arising from non-life. You cannot even give me a theory of how such a thing could be possible, so yes, I have proven my point. Here it is again in case you wish to address the challenge instead of avoiding it:
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.
Where did I claim that, exactly?
Let's see, in Post# 1255 you said:
Wolfram has demonstrated that about one in 256 ramdomly chosen, rudimentary discrete fields of discourse that can generate repeating patterns through simple cell relationships, generate turing machines.
Seems I have to keep reminding you of what each one of us posted just a post or two back. Losing your memory or trying to dance your way out of bluffs you have been called on?
You are not an innocent victim.
You certainly have not. All you do is ask others to prove their point, you never prove yours. You have not given any proof of either evolution or of abiogenesis. All you do is dance around the questions asked of you. For abiogenesis I have already given proof of why it is impossible. For evolution, it certainly cannot be science since science depends on the predictability of results and evolution denies predictability and postulates that it occurs due to random events. Now this 'randomness' (a central part of all atheistic theories since the Greeks) is totally inimical to science which seeks patterns and rules in nature in order to tame it and produce useful results.
Aaah, the evolutionist snow job. When shown that what you are discussing has been proven false you just pull out a bunch of links which you have not read and cannot discuss and ask your opponent to disprove it all. Pick ONE of those articles, post it here all to see and I guarantee you that we will show why it is absolute garbage.
BTW - I also can guarantee that you will not take up the challenge.
Easy. By passively submitting to government school indoctrination. I know how it is, having been there before.
Evolution is not just about prokaryotes and you know it. My statements apply to all evolution and you know that also. The problem is the requirement of 'fitness' which supposedly drives ALL evolution. My concise argument, which you continue to fail to address is:
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.
Now stop trying to confuse the issue and address the points I have made above about evolution and in post# 1329 about abiogenesis. They are completely different questions which you continue to try to confuse with each other for some 100 posts already.
Behold! A new species has spontaneously generated. In the spirit of the first man, I name thee: Sympathy Troll.
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