BOW DOWN AND PRAY!
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."
So somehow they seem to think that there must be a discontinuity between category 'A' and category 'B' just because they have different names. That this doesn't have to be so is obvious in the case of the visible spectrum but why they have this difficulty to see that this is the same principle for a population changing over time is beyond me.
Would it be fair to summarize your statement like this?
The existence of gravity is certain but its mechanism is unknown and therefore theoretical? If so, your statement that all science is theoretical is not exactly factual.
But it isn't so.
One who needs proof that religion exists first needs critical thinking skills.
The problem is, they generally have no direct experience of the natural world. If you watch birds, for example, you're well aware species like the northern junco or eastern meadowlark vary continuously with geographical location across the continent. And if a species can vary with location, why can't it vary with time? But if you've never looked at juncos, or meadowlarks (or many types of warblers, or the hundreds of other species that show clinal variation) you might well think species are somehow well-defined and immutable, rather than just convenient categories.
‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.’ (Luke 20:17)
"The most familiar, and the best-loved images of Jesus, are those that picture to us, his gentle, compassionate spirit. "Whoever comes to me, I will in no wise cast out"; "Come to me, all you who are weary"; "Let the little children come to me."
"But there are other images of Jesus in the Gospels, which show another aspect of his personality. They emphasize the steel in him. Sometimes Jesus was awesome; formidable."
"In the parable, Jesus presents himself as the landlord's Son; the rejected stone, that eventually becomes the most important stone in the superstructure of the kingdom of God. Jesus plainly thought that those who opposed him were in collision with God. He was warning nation's leaders: "It is unwise and unsafe to be against me." Tough talk from Jesus! He was signaling what was taken up by Peter at Pentecost, where, full of resurrection joy and authority, he preached saying: "This Jesus, you put him to death. . . . but God raised him from the dead. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:31-36).
"In the parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus teaches that those who discard him, will not thereby have gotten rid of him. Jesus was not, and is not now, a passing phenomenon. So truly does Jesus represent reality; so deeply entrenched in the ultimate truth of existence, is his life and teaching, that He, and not his opponents, will prevail. If the universe is a moral place (and Christ himself is the most convincing evidence that it is), then his prediction that he would triumph, even over those who killed him, must come true. Therefore let us treasure the august aspects of his personality, as much as his gentle features, for they signal a world order in which 'goodness', as Jesus taught it, will... reign---unopposed. The stone that was rejected, will become the capstone."
Good News For The Day
‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.’ (Luke 20:17)
"There is a certain inevitability about Christ. He is the fulfillment of Herod's worst nightmare. Herod killed John the Baptist, and when Christ followed, the ruler thought John had risen from the dead. In a sense, it was true. Jesus' first appeals to the corrupt king were made through the Baptist."
"Christ is uncompromising; inexorable. He is unpreventable, unstoppable, unavoidable. An outline of the creation's future is discernible in the personality of Jesus. The new world order will bear the stamp of his character."
"The invincibility of Jesus is good news. It confirms our deepest hope-that the highest values known to humankind, will overcome, and reign. It is good strengthening to believe that... Spirit---is higher than matter. No one really wants to inhabit a world where material values rule. The incarnation of such values are exampled by Adolf Hitler, or Idi Amin."
"It is good news to know that we are loved by a 'tough love'; a love that is not willing to give up, or let go, and hence, a love that suffers long. In short we are loved by a love that will triumph. "Love never fails."
Good News For The Day
‘He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whom it falls will be crushed.’ (Matthew 21:44)
"In his parable of the tenants, Jesus looks across the years of Israel's covenant privilege, and gives his interpretation of them. He sees that Israel's history can be stated in terms of its refusal to recognize Him-the rejected stone. Through the prophetic ministry, Christ had made many pre-incarnational appeals to his people. "How often would I have gathered you together, even as a hen gathers her chickens."
"Thus did Jesus claim deep involvement in his nation's history. The Jews had stumbled over the Christ of the Old Testament. Many times the people had been humbled and broken through its rejection of his claims. So it may be with us. Our life story can be understood as the tale of a person engaged in a quest to make terms with the Stone-with Christ."
"From the beginning, Christ has been present to us. Our first meeting with him was through the warmth and love of our mother; then our father, and later, teachers and mentors. Christ has been there in providence; in good and ill. We have bumped into him time and again, in our attempts to be free of his claims. We have fought tooth and nail for our freedom from God. We have been burned and bruised repeatedly. These seasons of brokenness have been gracious. They have been... signs to us---that life will not work any other way but Christ's way."
"God enable me to discern the ministry of Jesus, the Stone, in my life."
PANCREATIC EVOLUTIONARY SPONGE STEROIDS FOR NONE
BOW DOWN AND PRAY!
You're missing the point. The whole idea of individual liberty is rooted in rebellion, in the idea that "No one has the right to tell me what to do!". Evil began when Lucifer cried out his eternal non serviam to God in Heaven, and to this day human beings follow in his footsteps, refusing to submit their own wills to any authority.
Rebellion is pandemic in our society; everywhere, people cry out for freedom from Church, State, parents, teachers, or anything else that denies them the satiation of the senses or the deification of the Self. The worship of the goddess Liberty has become our national cult; piety towards our Creator and loyalty towards our ancestors (i.e. traditionalism) have been cast aside by our culture. Confronted with the majesty of God and His Law, we turn instead to the worship of the golden calf of that makes us happy -- our own selves. But there is no happiness there. There is no freedom there. There is only us, enslaved to our nerve endings for all eternity.
The freedom promised by this world is an illusion. Every man who "liberates" himselves from the Yoke of God only chains himself to the millstone of his own desires. The way of Self, as both Our Lord and the Buddha pointed out, is the most abject slavery of all. Only by dying to Self -- by renouncing the illusion of individual liberty and submitting our wills to God -- can we hope to live. In a very real sense, the only way to be free is to become a slave of Christ. "He that loses his life for My sake shall find it."
Only by acknowledging Jesus Christ as our LORD -- not our buddy or our peer but as our absolute Master -- can we ever be free. Christianity is a religion of humilty, not pride; of submission, not of independence. Only by throwing away our pride, by humbling ourselves before God and the authorities he institutes here on Earth (even when it hurts!), and by dedicating ourselves to obedience, order, and our duty can we ever cast of the shackles of unquenchable desire and truly be free.
"Where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is liberty."
23 posted on 05/01/2003 1:40 PM PDT by B-Chan (Catholic. Monarchist. Texan. Any questions?)
To: B-Chan
fC ...
Very good ... protestant -- Christian -- republican -- hawaiian --- any questions !
27 posted on 05/01/2003 2:02 PM PDT by f.Christian (( The separation of state and religion means ... ideology // whacks --- NOT God ! ))
Hmmm. I too yearn for a return to the Dark Ages. Life was so much simpler then!
/taliban_mode>
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.