Posted on 09/10/2006 5:38:02 AM PDT by voletti
At the moment, what passes for genetic engineering is mere pottering. It means moving genes one at a time from species to species so that bacteria can produce human proteins that are useful as drugs, and crops can produce bacterial proteins that are useful as insecticides. True engineering would involve more radical redesigns. But the Carlson curve (Dr Carlson disavows the name, but that may not stop it from sticking) is making that possible.
In the short run such engineering means assembling genes from different organisms to create new metabolic pathways or even new organisms. In the long run it might involve re-writing the genetic code altogether, to create things that are beyond the range of existing biology. These are enterprises far more worthy of the name of genetic engineering than today's tinkering. But since that name is taken, the field's pioneers have had to come up with a new one. They have dubbed their fledgling discipline “synthetic biology”. Truly intelligent design
One of synthetic biology's most radical spirits is Drew Endy. Dr Endy, who works at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to the subject from engineering, not biology. As an engineer, he can recognise a kludge when he sees one. And life, in his opinion, is a kludge.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
As metmom has explained, you cannot prove that there is no underlying intelligence behind the formation of snowflakes. In fact, metmom's assertion is unfalsifiable because it is entirely untestable and, therefore, worthless.
You don't get information from your computer?
You'll interact with your computer faster when you aren't slowed by things like monitors, keyboards and mouse buttons.
Microsoft isn't even a player in this industry. There are no profits yet.
I have worked with both scientists and engineers. As a general rule, I have found that scientists focus on what they don't know, while engineers seem to think they know everything.
Indeed. I'm just hoping for an amusing explanation of how snow violates the laws of thermodynamics.
DNA can also exist as a crystal. It should read order and simplicity. Ordered things, whether designed or evolved, are simpler than random assortments of molecules having equivalent mass.
Indeed. I'm just hoping for an amusing explanation of how snow violates the laws of thermodynamics.
And possibly even the Second Law of Thermal Documents.
Hey, somebody had to post it. :)
Not presumptuous.
Of course it is. The depths of the fallacies of that kind of presumption are analyzed quite well here: The advantages of theft over toil: the design inference and arguing from ignorance.
Order and complexity are a result of intelligence.
Sometimes, yes. They are also often the result of many natural processes, including evolutionary ones. Sort of "forgot" that part, didn't you?
That's the evidence that's staring everyone in the face that some refuse to see or acknowledge.
No, what's staring everyone in the face that "some refuse to see or acknowledge" is that natural processes are known for a fact to be able to do the kinds of things (i.e. increase order, and increase complexity) you keep claiming, incorrectly, only an intelligence can do.
What's also staring everyone in the face that "some refuse to see or acknowledge" is that there is a vast amount of evidence along multiple independent cross-confirming lines that the elements of modern life are indeed the result of evolutionary processes.
What's also staring everyone in the face that "some refuse to see or acknowledge" is that if complexity can only be the result of intelligence, then your own hypothesis (God) has severe problems, since that complex intelligence itself must have been the result of another intelligence (since you claim that complexity can ONLY exist by being formed by a prior intelligence), and so on, and so on, to an infinite regress of absurdity. You undercut your own premise, your own explanation is self-contradictory and unworkable.
Science depends on it and we are expected to believe that what goes on in a science lab is a result of intelligence and design.
I'm sorry you misunderstand science so badly, and file to grasp how science actually works.
But then we are told that the order and complexity just happened by itself and there's absolutely no basis for that conclusion.
There's a vast amount of basis for that conclusion. Too bad you're so busy stomping your feet and declaring what you'd like to be the case instead of taking the time to actually go learn what that basis really is.
There's nothing to support it.
Nothing within *your* knowledge and understanding, certainly.
It never ceases to amaze me how little the "ID" folks actually know about the topics they attempt to critique. Wouldn't a prudent person bother to learn about a subject before pontificating upon it or making blanket claims about it?
I can give you more than one:
The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution. By Stuart Kauffman, S. A. (1993) Oxford University Press, NY, ISBN: 0195079515.How many more would you like?Compositional genomes: Prebiotic information transfer in mutually catalytic noncovalent assemblies
Eigen M, and Schuster P, The hypercycle. A principle of natural self-organization. Springer-Verlag, isbn 3-540-09293, 1979
The origin of genetic information: viruses as models
Compositional genomes: prebiotic information transfer in mutually catalytic noncovalent assemblies
Stadler PF, Dynamics of autocatalytic reaction networks. IV: Inhomogeneous replicator networks. Biosystems, 26: 1-19, 1991
Lee DH, Severin K, and Ghadri MR. Autocatalytic networks: the transition from molecular self-replication to molecular ecosystems. Curr Opinion Chem Biol, 1, 491-496, 1997
Lee DH, Severin K, Yokobayashi Y, and Ghadiri MR, Emergence of symbiosis in peptide self-replication through a hypercyclic network. Nature, 390: 591-4, 1997
Apolipoprotein AI Mutations and Information
Creationist Claim CB102: Mutations are random noise; they do not add information.
Evolution of biological information
Evolution of biological complexity
Evolution and Information: The Nylon Bug
Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation
Examples of Beneficial Mutations and Natural Selection
Gene duplications in evolution of archaeal family B DNA polymerases
Koch, AL: Evolution of antibiotic resistance gene function. Microbiol Rev 1981, 45:355378.
Selection in the evolution of gene duplications
Velkov, VV: Gene amplification in prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems. Genetika 1982, 18:529543.
Romero, D & Palacios, R: Gene amplification and genomic plasticity in prokaryotes. Annu Rev Genet 1997, 31:91111.
Stark, GR & Wahl, GM: Gene amplification. Annu Rev Biochem 1984, 53:447491.
Reinbothe, S, Ortel, B, & Parthier, B: Overproduction by gene amplification of the multifunctional arom protein confers glyphosate tolerance to a plastid-free mutant of Euglena gracilis. Mol Gen Genet 1993, 239:416424.
Gottesman, MM, Hrycyna, CA, Schoenlein, PV, Germann, UA, & Pastan, I: Genetic analysis of the multidrug transporter. Annu Rev Genet 1995, 29:607649.
Schwab, M: Oncogene amplification in solid tumors. Semin Cancer Biol 1999, 9:319325.
Widholm, JM, Chinnala, AR, Ryu, JH, Song, HS, Eggett, T, & Brotherton, JE: Glyphosate selection of gene amplification in suspension cultures of three plant species. Physiol Plant 2001, 112:540545.
Otto, E, Young, JE, & Maroni, G: Structure and expression of a tandem duplication of the Drosophila metallothionein gene. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1986, 83:60256029.
Maroni, G, Wise, J, Young, JE, & Otto, E: Metallothionein gene duplications and metal tolerance in natural populations of Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics 1987, 117:739744.
Kondratyeva, TF, Muntyan, LN, & Karvaiko, GI: Zinc-resistant and arsenic-resistant strains of Thiobacillus ferrooxidans have increased copy numbers of chromosomal resistance genes. Microbiology 1995, 141:11571162.
Tohoyama, H, Shiraishi, E, Amano, S, Inouhe, M, Joho, M, & Murayama, T: Amplification of a gene for metallothionein by tandem repeat in a strain of cadmium-resistant yeast cells. FEMS Microbiol Lett 1996, 136:269273.
Sonti, RV & Roth, JR: Role of gene duplications in the adaptation of Salmonella typhimurium to growth on limiting carbon sources. Genetics 1989, 123:1928.
Brown, CJ, Todd, KM, & Rosenzweig, RF: Multiple duplications of yeast hexose transport genes in response to selection in a glucose-limited environment. Mol Biol Evol 1998, 15:931942.
Hastings, PJ, Bull, HJ, Klump, JR, & Rosenberg, SM: Adaptive amplification: an inducible chromosomal instability mechanism. Cell 2000, 103:723731.
Tabashnik, BE: Implications of gene amplification for evolution and management of insecticide resistance. J Econ Entomol 1990, 83:11701176.
Lenormand, T, Guillemaud, T, Bourguet, D, & Raymond, M: Appearance and sweep of a gene duplication: adaptive response and potential for new functions in the mosquito Culex pipiens. Evolution 1998, 52:17051712.
Guillemaud, T, Raymond, M, Tsagkarakou, A, Bernard, C, Rochard, P, & Pasteur, N: Quantitative variation and selection of esterase gene amplification in Culex pipiens. Heredity 1999, 83:8799.
Eh, Dave's not the one with the ping list.
What was the point of that?
I thought you were better than that.
I think that was the point, in an indirectly snide and snarky way. Just read between the lines.
I got over that misconception long ago.
"MicroThermal but not MacroThermal" placemark
Snowflakes are just evidence that water molecules behave according to the laws of chemistry and physics. They are not evidence that order and complexity can arise with no intelligence as its source. The only way you can use *nature* to demonstrate that order and complexity can arise without intelligence behind it, is to start with the premise that there was no intelligence behind the formation of the universe and since that's what is trying to be determined, you cannot use it to prove itself.
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
If someone creates a machine that performs a certain function and it does that faithfully, the machine was still created by intelligence so, not only is the machine a result of intelligence but the product it produces is also, even though the intelligent source was not directly active in the creation of each and every product.
Please do not grossly misrepresent our position. It does not help your credibility.
What we actually dislike, as we have explained to you many times before, is that you give "equal time" to nonsense and propaganda, because you are unable to personally assess which of your sources are crap and which are valid. As a result, you waste everyone's time, since people have to correct all the endless waves falsehoods and fallacies you keep spamming FreeRepublic with.
Heck, if not for PH's snobbish "I won't ping creation threads" he would ping several of mine.
It's not based on snobbery, and again your gross misrepresentations do not help your cause.
In some cases, he just had to create a copy to segregate the evolutionists from the creationists.
Has anyone else noticed that the science-literate posters get viciously attacked for "invading a religious thread" or "attacking religion" when they post on creationist/ID threads, yet the creationists/IDers cry about being ignored (or about "snobbery") when the science-literate posters decide to acquiesce and leave the creationists to their own sandbox?
Make up your minds, and either way, quit whining.
Indeed.
So does evolution, and that increases order and complexity as well.
And the last time I checked, the "laws of chemistry and physics" were natural processes.
They are not evidence that order and complexity can arise with no intelligence as its source.
Because metmom stamps her feet and says so!!
Pssst... Snowflakes are more ordered and complex than the water vapor from which they are formed via natural processes. Therefore natural processes can indeed increase order and complexity all by their lonesomes. QED.
The only way you can use *nature* to demonstrate that order and complexity can arise without intelligence behind it, is to start with the premise that there was no intelligence behind the formation of the universe and since that's what is trying to be determined, you cannot use it to prove itself.
Do you get dizzy when you frantically spin that much?
Moving the goalposts doesn't make you look very honest, either, especially when you do it that clumsily.
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.