MrFungus420

So? A few years ago I read that extra-terrestrials were responsible for the disappearances of the Bermuda Triangle.

If you want to use something that you have read to support your position, cite it.

Was it that the bacteria became less virulent, or was it because the water treatment greatly reduced the population of the bacteria (lesser population=smaller initial infection=easier to fend off)?

Or, what about the possibility that the more virulent strain also happened to be more susceptible to way the water was treated?

How about the possiblity that the area that had the water treatment also had better overall living conditions so were better able to resist the bacteria?

Of course random mutation couldn't explain it. Of course something else was going on. Random mutation by itself explains virtually nothing.

I just gave you some possiblities for the "something else" that was going on.

no1nose

If you want to use something that you have read to support your position, cite it.


http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99feb/germs.htm

If virulent strains correlated with a contaminated water supply, and if, conversely, mild strains took over where the water was clean, the implication would be that V. cholerae becomes increasingly mild when it cannot use water as a vector. When the pathogen is denied easy access to new hosts through fecal matter in the water system, its transmission depends on infected people moving into contact with healthy ones. In this scenario the less-toxic variants would prevail, because these strains do not incapacitate or kill the host before they can be spread to others. If this turned out to be true, it would constitute the kind of evidence that Ewald expected to find.


This cannot happen by random mutations and without "random mutations" its not really evolution. It is? The "observer" at the quantum level is the one who determines the outcome. Rather than chance mutations the changes in life are better described by "observer" determined outcomes at the quantum level. And that aint evolution.

Keith&Co.

Is anyone saying that it IS evolution?

You quote: If virulent strains correlated with a contaminated water supply, and if, conversely, mild strains took over where the water was clean, the implication would be.....In this scenario .... If this turned out to be true...

Your quote doesn't quite address the suggested alternate explanation, what if the weren't two different strains?
Maybe it's the same strain, but water treatment makes a major difference in the population density, so the victim's immunity has a better chance?
Your quote is chock full of 'if's,' you can't really use it to make a firm conclusion.

no1nose

I reread the article and I see what you mean. The first quote was from memory (oh dear. . . but it was a few years old). But stil it applies an intelligence or consciousness to an organism that doesn’t have a brain. At some point you have to ask where the strategy is coming from. The changes are occurring too quickly to be explained as simply random. The will take a lot more proof for me to believe in the existence of the meme. The changes in life are better described by "observer" determined outcomes at the quantum level. This then brings consciousness to bear on the way life changes.

Keith&Co.

Not really. There's a tendency in discussions of evolution to use anthropomorphising as a shorthand. A researcher may say: "The beetle searches for a genetic profile that provides protection from the insecticide." He knows that a gene pool expresses mutations, which are selected for by habitat stressors that are transmitted to the next generation and, through the success of certain combinations, comes to increase in frequency in the next generation, eventually coming to dominate the gene pool... and he knows that the readers he writes the article for also understand the more complicated process. It's a mistake to read 'the beetle searches' as if there is an intelligence involved. Or, really, since it's still possible there's a skybeast behind it all, that's a shortcut.

It's a mistake to read 'the beetle searches' as if there is any sort of evidence that a theoretical intelligence must be involved, as opposed to the observed process of trial and error, mutation and selection, which occur apparently naturally.

You know, i can place four plush animals on a table (teddy bear, teddy skunk, teddy elephant, teddy fire ant), shuffle a deck of cards, and deal out five cards to each plushie. One of them will have the better poker hand. If the fire ant wins three hands in a row, do i have to ask where his strategy is coming from?

What changes? One explanation for the different results is simply by population, not evolution.

Well, if you start with a desire to find an 'observer' then you're going to find proof for an observer. If you want to show objective proof for this observer, though, you've got a long ways to go.
Not really.

Buck Laser

I think what you need to do is show definitively just how quantum mechanics is derived from the Nicene creed. The rest of it will just naturally fall into place then.

no1nose

This is actually a good post. I disagree of course

But I think arguing populations just pushes the issue of change back one step. Like saying life came from outer space answers the question of where life came from. Life favors the good and the bad and who ever else is around, your mode of reasoning depends on life favoring the good.


Now this is actually a bad post as not everyone knows the Nicene creed.

MrFungus420

Notice, they are talking about different strains and which one(s) become prominent in each scenario.

Notice the part that I highlighted?

That is differential reproductive success. That is a large part of evolution.

If there are differences that result in some of a population reproducing better than another part of the population, that is evolution.

A word of advice: don't talk about quantum mechanics, quantum effects, quantum level, etc, until you have a minimal understanding of what it means.

Quantum effects are at the molecular level if not smaller.

It looks like you are throwing around scientific terms in an effort to lend some verisimilitude to what you are waying.

Well, that statement isn't evolution in any way. What it is, however, is nonsensical.

no1nose

Yes I noticed. Smoke and mirrors to me and it still doesn't address the issue of "mutations" - did you happen to notice that.

You are the expert? What I am saying is well within what Bohr believed - would you correct him too?

A recent book, Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics by Gino Segrè (Viking, 310 pp., $25.95) review:
"But Bohr in 1932 proposed to extend the idea of complementarity to biology, suggesting that the description of a living creature as an organism and the description of it as a collection of molecules are also complementary. In this context, complementarity would mean that any attempt to observe and localize precisely every molecule in a living creature would result in the death of the organism. The holistic view of a creature as a living organism and the reductionist view of it as a collection of molecules would be both correct but mutually exclusive. …

Keith&Co.

What, now change is the issue?
I thought the survival was the issue and that it was too fast for evolution to be the explanation.
If there's an explanation that doesn't depend on evolution inside of a generation, then your example doesn't support your argument. So what else have you got?
Not really.
Whatever my mode of reasoning, observation is that what does not kill us makes our gene pool stronger. Good? Bad? Whoever's got the most appropriate gene traits is going to pass them on to the next generation.

Everyone doesn't need to know the Nicene creed. But you claim that science has been made to copy Christainity, right?
Or, near as i can tell, Christainity is RIGHT, so any science that's going to be successful has to reflect reality, so science must agree with Christainity or it will be wrong. Right?


So, the council had to choose between a number of dogmas that were held by religious groups calling themselves Christain at the time, to come up with the Creed.

For example, they had to choose one of the following for Article 7:

* With the Father, He suffered and was buried.
* He suffered and was buried.
* He suffered, died, and was buried.
* He substituted the Wrong-doer upon the cross, and escaped death.
* He appeared to suffer, die and be buried.

What they chose made Christainity what it is today.
How did that choice affect the eventual development of the theory of Evolution, and later how quantum mechanics was made to reflect this decision?