Posted on 01/20/2003 7:01:47 AM PST by forsnax5
That enduring metaphor for the randomness of evolution, a blind watchmaker that works to no pattern or design, is being challenged by two European chemists. They say that the watchmaker may have been blind, but was guided and constrained by the changing chemistry of the environment, with many inevitable results.
The metaphor of the blind watchmaker has been famously championed by Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford. But Robert Williams, also at Oxford, and Joäo José R. Fraústo da Silva of the Technical University of Lisbon in Portugal say that evolution is not strictly random. They claim Earth's chemistry has forced life to evolve along a predictable progression from single-celled organisms to plants and animals.
Williams and da Silva take as their starting point the earliest life forms that consisted of a single compartment, or vesicle, enclosing the cytoplasm that produced polymers such as RNA, DNA and proteins. That cytoplasm was partly dominated by the reducing chemistry of the primitive oceans and atmosphere from which it formed, and has changed little since, says Williams.
As these primitive cells, or prokaryotes, extracted hydrogen from water they released oxygen, making the environment more oxidising. Ammonia became nitrogen gas, metals were released from their sulphides, and non-metal sulphides became sulphates.
These changes forced the prokaryotes to adapt to use the oxidised elements, and they evolved to harness energy by fixing nitrogen, using oxygen, and developing photosynthesis. But these oxidising elements could also damage the reducing chemistry in the cytoplasm.
For protection, there was just one option: isolate the elements within internal compartments, says Williams. And that gave rise to eukaryotes - single-celled organisms with a nucleus and other organelles.
Harold Morowitz, an expert on the thermodynamics of living systems at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, says these ideas are very exciting. "It's part of a quiet paradigm revolution going on in biology, in which the radical randomness of Darwinism is being replaced by a much more scientific law-regulated emergence of life."
According to Williams and da Silva, eukaryotes also had to evolve a way to communicate between their various organelles. The surrounding raw materials dictated how this could be done. Calcium ions would have routinely leaked into cells, precipitating DNA by binding to it. So cells responded by pumping the ions out again.
Eukaryotes evolved to use this calcium flow to send messages across internal and external membranes. Similarly, sodium ions formerly expelled as poisonous became the basis of communication in nerve cells.
Life continued to react to Earth's oxidised environment. Hydrogen peroxide gave rise to lignin - an oxygen-rich polymer that is the chief constituent of wood. And eukaryotes used copper oxidised from copper sulphides to cross-link proteins such as collagen and chitin, which help hold nerve and muscle cells in place. Such evolution of materials suitable for multicellular structures paved the way for plants and animals.
Not everyone is convinced. Evolutionary biologist David Deamer of the University of California, Santa Cruz, says the claim that evolution followed an inevitable progression should be qualified: "The inevitability depends on the origin of life and oxygenic photosynthesis."
He agrees that life arose in vesicles, but says that oxidative chemistry cannot explain everything from prokaryotes to humans.
Williams admits their theory has limitations. For instance, he agrees that Dawkins's argument is correct in that chance events drive the development of species. But he does not believe random events drive evolution overall. "Whatever life throws away will become the thing that forces the next step in its development."
However, David Krakauer, an evolutionary theorist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, says Williams and da Silva have simply listed the chemical processes that coincided with each evolutionary transition, which does not prove that the chemistry caused the transitions. But Williams says that the environmental changes had to come first, because they occur faster than changes in biological systems.
No, it's only by your contorted reading of what I posted. I can't debate about phantasms which exist only in your mind.
What's the Achievement? Breaking it down to chemical principles has already been done and analyzed on the Creationist front. In effect, it debunks evolution at the outset by showing that that which needs to be accomplished cannot happen - it's nothing new. That aside, The argument being made is assinine. In effect they are saying that radical chemical changes that would cause an extinction event do not and rather give rise to change in organisms through evolution. To which I would retort, that if you flood the planet and hold the heads of all dogs under water, they will not suddenly adapt and learn to breath water. That so-called scientists wish us to make a leap of faith that other life forms react differently given similar circumstance is ludicrous. And one should note that if evolution happened, why then do baby's get born addicted to the same drugs their mothers were addicted to when used all through pregnancy instead of seeing an adaptation. When mutation occurs it is destructive, not constructive. And it does not get passed on - which illustrates predictability(stunting formative cycles causes damage to the entity arising in malformation which can be deadly) and resistance to change (the baby becomes addicted rather than developing immunity). Life systems are predictable; but, in ways antithetical to evolution - the opposite of what evolutionists predict in evolution is observable in real life. Evolutionists can't argue the amount of time involved in a change because they don't know what amount of time that would take. They can only hypothesize. So the usual retort would be that it takes a long time so as to try and dodge any effort of demonstrating such things happening now. Not knowing they simply state this as a logical conclusion based on the lack of observables. This is begging the question - not to mention a poor excuse for science.
But let us not also forget how things work in the animal kingdom. Diversity within a species is frowned upon, not nurtured. At birth, defects are treated as weaklings and often die rather than living. An obvious and readily observeable example of this is the Panda. Mothers will only nurture one cub at a time and only the strongest of the litter. In other prides and packs, weeklings often die due to the fend for yourself nature of feeding and movement. If a deformity arises, it will either starve, be killed or eaten within the pack or will become prey from outside the pack. In essence, the ecosystem checks itself by dealing with deformity in drastic fashion.
Now ultimately, we will say, given, a deformity is allowed to live. This doesn't amount to evolutionary change as the deformity does not get passed necessarily to the next generation. Nor does having a male and female with the same deformity mean it will get passed on. Consider the human species. A male and female both inflicted of downs-syndrome may give birth to a perfectly normal and healthy child or may give birth to another downs-syndrome child. What's this telling us? Generation after generation, the same family lines continue producing down's syndrome children due to a predilection toward deformity. In absence of time based argumentation, logic would suggest that either the weakness would cause the family line to eventually cease, or it should adapt. In either case, the deformity should disappear. In 2000 years of recorded history, this is not seen.
Now one would argue that 2000 years isn't long enough a sample to really get a handle on things. To which I would respond that Enviro science is attempting to change the way we live based on 100 years worth of known data. So it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. If evolution were true, then we should all adapt to the change in environment. Seems even they don't believe their theories enough to trust that they would hold true under circumstances they hypothesize about while hypothesizing over the changes that could hypothetically happen if hypothetical longshots were to roll in and all natural processes were suspended for a hypothetical amount of time for each deviation such that a freak change might be allowed to survive.
Evolution amounts to stacking these hypotheses 100s to 1000s deep and then responding to presumed consequences as fact when addressing everything under the sun. They teach it as theory, then walk to biological and archeological sciences and apply the theory as fact in making determinations and conclusions. If evolution were true, one would have to wonder when it will come about that when mitochondria runs into a dry spot on a slide under a microscope, it will not explode but rather tan itself a bit with some spf14 and roll on back into the surf. But since samples of it are frozen in ice around the body of Mammoths and other extinct beasts, one wonders why they haven't changed in all this time already. Either evolution isn't happening, or mitochondria are too stupid to mutate positively.
Last thing I want to note is that it's funny to me that monkeys are quadropeds that happen to have functional hands. This is so even for apes. They do not walk upright as a preferred mode of locomotion. Nor is there an example of an ape that prefers upright stance. Like bears, they can stand upright for some things when it's called for. It is an exception, not the dominant happenstance. And I'd note too that in a special that investigated how extinct forms of apes might have walked upright, it was found through computer modelling that the stresses on the frame did not allow it, they therefore conjectured a way to make it look natural vs. debating wether it was likely. That such a thing should be aired on public airwaves was I'm sure a most profound tipping of the hand toward inherant bias. Rather than deal with the facts, they preferred to hold to their theorizing. When people start thinking for themselves and being as critical on these things as they are on their finances, we might get some truth and accountability. Till then, we will hear government funded theorizing. Perhaps a good move would be to defund this stuff at the government level and hinge any future funding upon results. If you continue to hand in new theories, we defund you. If you prove your case in an observable fashion, you get funded. Anyone want to cosponsor it? LOL
Look at the difficulties and controversies that arose when continental drift or the KT impact theories were first proposed.
There is no mention of catastrophic 'radical' change so I'm not sure where you got that. Rather, they are laying out the biological consequences of very, very gradual changes in the earth's chemistry. If certain changes are predicted by chemical constraints, and fossil evidence backs up the predictions, it's an achievement.
Since the critters that reproduce that rapidly are typically microscopic and cannot support large eyes, probably nothing. On the other hand, the critters with longer breeding times are more likely to already have advanced eyes quite sufficient for the job at hand. Also, finally, remember there some critters might not need or be able to support advanced optics, or their environment might call for the ascendency of other senses (moles, cave fish, etc.).
And we are talking about catastrophic change when we talk about chemical changes in the atmosphere. Bump up the nitrogen levels in the atmosphere and see how long you keep breathing. Ecco systems respond to minor changes, you're talking about chemical shift in composition of atmosphere as though a gradual change is non-toxic. Simple fact is that if you introduce the Potassium element of the three chemical mix quickly or slowly to a man's system during execution it matters not a whit - it stops the heart either way. And here we have scientists theorizing about things of which they are totally ignorant. They can't say what Oxygen levels in the atmosphere have been beyond 100 years ago with any degree of certainty. And they wish to pretend they know the chemical composition of the atmosphere when the planet was formed and the rules under which life forms flourished therein with no understanding of biological organisms at the time. Yeah, right. These are the same people who, given bones, still don't know the nature of internal organs within dinosaurs or their purposes other than to guess based on modern beasts.
It doesn't matter how one looks at this stuff - from what angle - it's betrayed as one big shell game when one examines any part of it. We dropped a Bomb on Nagasaki because we proved a concept and developed it. If we'd dropped a bunch of theories on Nagasaki, the Great war would have stretched on longer. But the US government pressed for results instead of theory. We don't award people for theories, we award people for proven theories. At least until modern times when liberalism seems to think effort = achievement. And probably largely because of Evolution. The day evolutionists prove a theory, I'll fall over. The likelyhood is 1000 theories will be debunked and created before they decide to just give up and admit it unproveable then force feed people with it anyway.
Gradual or immediate change is of no consequence. Chemical changes in the atmosphere to any great extent would lead to extinctions of existing life. The entire Biosphere is a delicate balance that is all interconnected. When you shift one element, it all starts unravelling. Or were you not aware that this is in part why biosphere experiments have occurred. Let's put our thinking caps on. Shall we.
Can anyone point to any theory that debuted with unanimous acceptance?
I'm not aware of any theory that has received a collective bye from the science community.
IMHO, extensive critical review is a very good thing except when it turns personal.
And thank you so much for solving the access problem, RadioAstronomer! Hugs!!!
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