Posted on 11/22/2002 9:09:10 PM PST by forsnax5
NSF awards grants to discover the relationships of 1.75 million species
One of the most profound ideas to emerge in modern science is Charles Darwin's concept that all of life, from the smallest microorganism to the largest vertebrate, is connected through genetic relatedness in a vast genealogy. This "Tree of Life" summarizes all we know about biological diversity and underpins much of modern biology, yet many of its branches remain poorly known and unresolved.
To help scientists discover what Darwin described as the tree's "everbranching and beautiful ramifications," the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $17 million in "Assembling the Tree of Life" grants to researchers at more than 25 institutions. Their studies range from investigations of entire pieces of DNA to assemble the bacterial branches; to the study of the origins of land plants from algae; to understanding the most diverse group of terrestrial predators, the spiders; to the diversity of fungi and parasitic roundworms; to the relationships of birds and dinosaurs.
"Despite the enormity of the task," said Quentin Wheeler, director of NSF's division of environmental biology, which funded the awards, "now is the time to reconstruct the tree of life. The conceptual, computational and technological tools are available to rapidly resolve most, if not all, major branches of the tree of life. At the same time, progress in many research areas from genomics to evolution and development is currently encumbered by the lack of a rigorous historical framework to guide research."
Scientists estimate that the 1.75 million known species are only 10 percent of the total species on earth, and that many of those species will disappear in the decades ahead. Learning about these species and their evolutionary history is epic in its scope, spanning all the life forms of an entire planet over its several billion year history, said Wheeler.
Why is assembling the tree of life so important? The tree is a picture of historical relationships that explains all similarities and differences among plants, animals and microorganisms. Because it explains biological diversity, the Tree of Life has proven useful in many fields, such as choosing experimental systems for biological research, determining which genes are common to many kinds of organisms and which are unique, tracking the origin and spread of emerging diseases and their vectors, bio-prospecting for pharmaceutical and agrochemical products, developing data bases for genetic information, and evaluating risk factors for species conservation and ecosystem restoration.
The Assembling the Tree of Life grants provide support for large multi-investigator, multi-institutional, international teams of scientists who can combine expertise and data sources, from paleontology to morphology, developmental biology, and molecular biology, says Wheeler. The awards will also involve developing software for improved visualization and analysis of extremely large data sets, and outreach and education programs in comparative phylogenetic biology and paleontology, emphasizing new training activities, informal science education, and Internet resources and dissemination.
-NSF-
For a list of the Assembling the Tree of Life grants, see: http://www.nsf.gov/bio/pubs/awards/atol_02.htm
Your use of the quote and this statement make it clear to me that you still don't understand. How do you hope to understand any other link I might give you?
I hardly think that is relevant to whether "Design can be inferred" or any part of our discussion. That makes it a red herring. I therefore consider it unnecessary to answer. Since with this post I will terminate my interchange with you which you started in post 257, I will answer your lawyer question(I answered before to Vaderetro). The answer is --- No. Now that is an unequivocal answer, something you find difficult to produce. The reason I am terminating this interchange is that my point is proven in answer to your assertion from post 257 Not a face, but was it design? Evidently you think not but how do you know? We need that precise definition of design and an algorithm to detect it.
I also find it unnecessarily vexing to communicate with someone who considers "Are the Nazca lines designed?" a trick question and unclear. That question is akin to "Is 'A Tale of Two Cities' a novel?"
Yes I was. It was pretty evident due to my citation from your link mentioning the photosynthesis tree.
You mentioned the lawn analogy in the same post. That was brought up in relation to the article at the top of the thread. Clarity can be useful.
Okay so you considered them independent points and did not tie them together.
Apples and oranges. I explain it in post 365 for those who may not understand.
You must be kidding. This explicitly mentions tree ---"We did a kind of tree analysis of all 188 genes to determine what the best evolutionary tree was. We found that a fraction of the genes supported each of the different possible arrangements of the tree. It's clear that the genes themselves have different evolutionary histories,"
They looked for a tree and found a bunch of equal things. That is known as a lawn.
Genes and species are not the same. No, I'm not kidding. I've had enough of this.
Really? (You might want to bring that up with Dawkins.) But tree analysis is tree analysis. Photosynthesis(not genes, but a consequent of them like a species) does not fit into a tree. It might even be said that the fit is a lawn.
Links provided by evos are read by creos mostly in the act of skimming for occurrences of "hypothesis," "hypothetical," "could," "may," etc. to quote with the key words in bold.
Few can resist.
I know. It's momentary.
I want to know how you make your judgements about design. I want to know how you justify that process as reliable. That is not philosphy.
I have the definite impression that Dembski thinks this is a scientific question and not a philosophical one so he and I agree at least on that.
Me: We need that precise definition of design and an algorithm to detect it.
You: You detected design in the Nazca lines without your prerequisites.
Really? I don't think so. But see, you've twisted it around again from being about your design claims to my inferences. You and Dembski are the ones making the big claims. You and Dembski should back them up.
Why do you keep asking questions that have already been answered in the posts you are responding to? The so called 'scientists' in the article knew darned well that one needed either photosynthesis or chemosynthesis for any life to exist at all but they tried to get around the impossibility of either arising by chance by just 'forgetting' that life needs nutrition. Some scientists!
To: Junior
Somenone should tell that to the chemosynthetic life around the black smokers...
I mentioned that and chemosynthesis is an even bigger impossibility to have arisen by chance than photosynthesis. So as I said, the whole 'research' is shamefully dishonest because before that there was nothing to eat.
328 posted on 11/25/2002 5:45 AM PST by gore3000
Photosynthesis is indeed a very complex system, it is so much a part of the organisms that use it that we separate life into plants and animals according to whether they can perform photosynthesis or not (chemosynthesis can also provide food, and it is even more complex than photosynthesis, it also defines a totally different kingdom of living things - the archaea). So before either of these very complex ways of creating nourishment, no life was possible and hence no 'exchange of genes' was possible to help it come about. So this is just one more evolutionist lie funded by our tax dollars.
231 posted on 11/24/2002 5:02 PM PST by gore3000
I just wanted to throw in my two cents about design. (for what is worth) I have seen the trap being set forth and have pondered the subject. Trying to force someone to admit that everything is designed only to different degrees. Personally, I see no problem in conceding this especially if you consider the opposite view.
To pose an example:
If a scientist, while walking down a path, literally trips over a rock he very well could attribute this to natural causes. But let us consider the scenario that somebody was camping and wanted to know if someone was coming into their campsite and dug a small hole with a large rock on one side followed by a smaller rock. The scientist could still attribute this to nature even if he stumbled into the camper’s campsite and said to the camper, “Somebody should move those rocks”.
Now what if this scientist was part of a group that was spread apart and this same scenario continued to happen and the camper witnessed this same thing over and over. As more and more scientists stumbled into the campsite though, they notice more and more people gathered around the fire.
Now the scientists gather later to evaluate their findings and they find themselves comparing bruises from the fall. The first scientist says, “I cannot believe that camper didn’t move those rocks!” They are all in agreement that the rocks should be moved and nature placed those rocks in such a stupid location.
Meanwhile, the campers who joined the original camper who set up the campsite, were told when they come to a branch too low to walk under to take the trail to the right. They all enjoyed the food and great evening even though brief interruptions occurred from the scientists cursing the rocks. They were all amazed though that not one of the scientists who stumbled through the campsite asked why the rocks were placed there or if they could join them even though they saw the great time had by all.
These rocks could be attributed to natural causes or intelligent design depending upon what a person is looking for when entering the campsite. Regardless though, the rocks were put there for a purpose and not merely natural causes. Truth is truth regardless of what one acknowledges.
So now the problem:
How does one who was invited tell a scientist who was not that those rocks were there for a reason? The scientist is liable to scoff and say, “Even if the rocks are as you say, how can someone be so cruel and allow this to happen?” The camper can only ask the scientist, “What were you looking for?”
How can anyone infer design if they don’t look for design? They cannot, everything is a natural occurrence and taken to a molecular level they are correct to a degree. They can still trip over design.
But if nothing was designed, it seems as though there is much more explaining to do for everything we see and feel. Darwinian mechanisms that are void of purpose and design must then factor in the universe and it’s mechanisms. It is a double edge sword in the sense that either nothing was designed and we are cursed and bruised with our existence or everything has a reason, plan, and design. They can stumble through the campsite and later recognize one of the campers and curse them for camping with such a cruel individual. But all the camper can do is ask, “What were you looking for?”
So what is the rock that causes one to stumble? To prove that nothing was intelligently designed before man entered the picture thus man entering the picture has no purpose other than survival. (But survival is purpose - and purpose is designed for a reason)
Just my two cents – for what it is worth…
It’s basically The 2001 Principle.
And there's the fallacy, right there in a nutshell. Just because one part of the cascade depend on another part, that doesn't mean that all parts of an organism are dependent on that cascade, or that they're dependent on anything at all.
Of course there is a purpose and a need for such an involved system. True you are speaking of an imaginary one but if it were an actual one you bet there would be an important function to it. Changing any part of the chain would destroy the function and therefore make the organism less viable. Now this is particularly important if you are going to surmise as Darwinians do that evolution is gradual. The organism would be much less viable during the time that it would take the organism to construct a better function.
Furthermore your last phrase is totally ludicrous. None of the cells in the body could continue to exist without numerous functions provided by the rest of the organism. A couple of little ones are oxygen and nutrients.
You've gone way out on the deep end and defined irreducible complexity so broadly that even Dembski and Behe wouldn't follow you. Your heroes had the brains to pull up and stop going, whereas you just sailed right off the cliff. Better luck next thread - I'm done with you on this one.
That's Behe's and Dembski's problem, not mine. I think for myself. The evidence totally supports my statements. "No cell is an island" and it cannot survive without the help of the rest of the organism. In addition just about every single life process requires a chain of events to occur to make it happen. Let's just say as an example that you want to move your arm. Well, the brain has to send a message through the nervous system to the muscles. This message has to be translated from the electric impulses used by the brain and the nerves to a chemical message which the cells will understand. The message then does not go to the gene itself, but it goes to the controller of the gene which tells the gene to start producing protein that will move the muscle in the arm. When the gene gets the message the DNA gets transcribed through the medium of RNA into amino acids and then to a protein which will finally help the muscle move. Of course this message goes out not just to one cell but to numerous cells (since one little cell can do hardly anything). Then when the muscle has finally moved as much as you wanted, then the gene is told to stop the process and rest. I am sure I missed a few steps in the above, but nevertheless it shows just how complex a really simple thing is in an organism and how many different parts have to work in concert to accomplish it. Also note how quickly the whole process takes place.
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