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."
That one is even more biased. The editor is the author of a totally moronic screed against the opponents of evolution. It was quickly refuted in 15 Answers to John Rennie and Scientific American's Nonsense . Like all evolutionists, they did not try to refute the response to their moronic rants against opponents, instead they tried to have it suppressed. So much for evolution being science.
My beliefs are irrelevant to the discussion. What science has found is relevant. It has found that over 40 new animal phyla arose during the Cambrian in a matter of a few million years at most. It has found no possible ancestors for the vast majority of these phyla. In addition, no new animal phyla have arisen since that time. This totally disproves Darwinian evolution and is why Gould and Eldredge, both inveterate atheists, broke off with Darwin and proposed a totally new materialistic/atheistic theory (based on nothing but wishful thinking).
I have not said that man has no material needs. What I have said is that man is not driven merely by material needs. The saying 'the pen is mightier than the sword' ilustrates the complete difference between man and beasts. Ideas, thoughts drive man's actions as much as material things. Abstract terms such as freedom resound even more strongly in their hearts than the desire for material things and often drive them to risk their lives for it.
Further, man is the only creature which has art. This is a totally non-material activity which in no way has any basis on material needs but shows man's innate need to nourish the spirit as much as the body.
It is crystal clear to me that you are another one of these charlatans who use your anti-science point of view to shakedown gullible Christians for money.
Caught in yet another lie, you continue to evade and misdirect. You pretend not to remember what you posted, but it's clear that you're doing this deliberately. No wonder everyone ridicules you.
Here's another reason:
[snip] Predictability is a requirement of science, [snip]=========================================================1,359 posted on 05/14/2003 7:28 AM EDT by gore3000
Quick; somebody better call the meteorologists and tell them to turn in their "Scientist" credentials; since they can't "predict" the weather accurately more than three or four days in advance (and never will, due to the fact that weather systems are an example of non-linear dynamical systems with extreme sensitivty to initial conditions), meteorology, by G3k's definition, cannot be "science."
Your beliefs are quite relevant when you make claims that are at variance with generally accepted scientific practice.
It's a simple question. How long ago do you believe the Cambrian to have occured?
No, what you said was, and I quote:
are not driven by their material nature,
So, not only are you wrong, you're trying to weasel away from what you said.
The saying 'the pen is mightier than the sword' ilustrates the complete difference between man and beasts.
Yes, men build pens to keep animals in for later consumption, and use swords on each other. Animals just use their teeth and claws where opportunity permits, since they lack the evolutionary history that forced man to become a tool user.
What's your point?
1) To sell. (ie make money, to buy food, shelter, clothing, time share condos, girlfriends, etc)
2) Social recognition (which is another pathway to food, shelter, girlfriend's pants, etc)
The "artist" that creates, but doesn't show it to anyone, has a mental disorder not conducive to survival.
.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?
This surpasses even your capacity for rudeness.
This does not constitute a claim that I have read the book. No one has read the book--that would be like reading Numbers or the phone book. Like everyone else, except possibly Wolfram, I have scanned it for the meat, and ignored most of the examples and details of implementation.
Evolution is not just about prokaryotes and you know it.
A fairly idiotic attempt to distract from how tissue-thin your fundamental argument is through irrelevant agreement.
My statements apply to all evolution and you know that also.
Repetitive blue drivel at it's finest. I know no such thing. Nobody writ in concrete that fitness test failures are necessary for evolution to take place. They only become important when vast treasures of nutrients are in permanent short supply, relative to our ability to procreate.
1. the experiment is false because it does not punish as yet useless novelties.
Hogwash. prove it. You don't know squat about what the rules were before meat machines existed, and you've provided no compelling evidence whatsoever, for about an eon now, to suggest why I should take seriously the notion that there was nothing before meat machines. What's a virus?
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.
As you know, but conceal from the audience, this is Behe-ist drivel that was disproved before Behe even published. How do you account for the immune system trying literally millions of failed combinations to drive out a foreign body before stumbling on the right one?
Now stop trying to confuse the issue and address the points I have made above about evolution and in post# 1329 about abiogenesis.
If I needed someone to guide and direct my conversations, I'd look up my ex-wife--you're not qualified on a breathtaking basis.
They are completely different questions which you continue to try to confuse with each other for some 100 posts already.
Even if you break your arm trying to pat yourself on the back, the points you have made are all predicated on the absurd notion that there was nothing before prokariotes. My argument is pretty simple, but it's easy to understand how you could get confused.
This is intelligent design.
Yes, they intelligently designed an experiment that tested how complexity can and does arise *without* the intervention of intelligent design.
Your point? If you had one?
Sigh -- someday I hope to see "intelligent response".
...as we now start the countdown to see how quickly Andrew posts his *next* non sequitur explanation/excuse for a) why he need not deal squarely with the issues raised until we jump through 14 more hoops he sets out, or b) why the whole thing is easily dismissed (in Andrew's mind), e.g. "but they didn't use *cheese*, did they? Huh? Huh?!?"
Okay, now you are really showing what a low life you are. Instead of discussing the question you slime - as usual with atheist evolutionists. If you were a Christian you would not slime me for asking you a couple of questions. The questions are short and to the point and being an atheist evolutionist you cannot answer them so all that is left for you to do is sliming me. Here are the questions you refuse to answer from post 1350:
Like all the others you are sliming instead of discussing. In post# 1271 I asked you to refute my statement about most evolutionists here being atheists and challenged you to do the following: This thread is over 1200 posts long. How about pointing out one (1) post in which evolutionists say something good about Christianity and Christian beliefs. Just one. In 1323 I asked you: 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????????????? Of course you do not respond to the above and indulge in personal insults. You cannot argue with the truth, so you follow in the steps of your fellow evolutionists and refuse to meet the challenges put to you to back up your statements with facts and to respond to questions.
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