markfiend

I've snipped some of what CD has posted.Common descent predicts a nested heirarchy. That you refuse to accept this is puzzling unless it is a result of your religious dogma.I would imagine that once one line of (probably chemotrophic) life got going, it and its descendants "ate" the precursor molecules necessary for any further abiogenesis. Before you point it out, I am aware that this is speculative, but it does give reason to believe that more than a small number of abiogenesis events is unlikely.Aye and here's the rub, Charles. Where are the feathered bats? Where are the placental birds? Where are the photosynthesising vertebrates? Where are the insect wings on flying squirrels?

If I was to design a boat, I could power it with an internal combustion engine from a car, put a chair in it from my living room, make the hull from oil drums, have a monitoring system based on a PC, etc. The different parts would come from unrelated sources. I do not need to redesign the internal combustion engine, because it has already been designed. But in life, these convergences you're so fond of are different designs for the same purpose. Compare and contrast vertebrate eye and squid eye. Same function, similar "design" and shape, different "wiring".And traits that are distributed over many/all subgroups. My car is green, has a 998cc engine, five forward gears and one reverse (manual shift), 93 inch wheelbase (I think), two doors and a hatchback. Charles, what make, model and year is it?Well, no, because rodents are a subgroup of placental mammals.Why not? I don't see why some convergence need be a problem. If you're an arboreal species jumping from branch to branch, then you're going to die if you can't quite jump far enough. Gliding will aid in distance-jumping, so any gliding ability will be selected for. There isn't much on a squirrel (or whatever marsupial you're talking about) that can evolve into a surface to support gliding, other than loose skin between front and back legs. Similar lifestyles will tend to produce evolution in similar directions. Look at a shark and a dolphin, Charles. Esentially the same body shape but when you look more closely there are gross anatomical differences. As there are gross anatomical differences between placental and marsupial mammals. I wonder why you think this is controversial?

Edit to add more "taxonomic information" on my car.

Jack the Bodiless

This is a form of fallacious reasoning similar to your position on vestigial organs. Yes, a particular organ MIGHT have been eventually eliminated entirely: for instance, ostriches MIGHT have lost their wings. And evolution would have accommodated that: it wouldn't be conclusive evidence AGAINST common descent. But the fact remains that ostriches DID NOT lose their wings, therefore the wings remain as evidence FOR common descent.

Similarly, while it's POSSIBLE (though extremely unlikely) that evidence of a nested hirearchy MIGHT have been erased, the fact is that it was NOT erased.
Yes.

...Why are you implying that we would have a problem with this?

Now, if you can show that placental and marsupial gliding mammals are genetically too alike, then I'm all ears.

But I'm betting you can't.
Baloney. What we know of the natural world DOES suggest this: that it CAN happen, and that it DID happen.
I honestly don't see what the problem is. Why can't you spell it out?
IF God exists, then he created species by some mechanism involving common descent. That is abundantly clear.

It is YOU who is arbitrarily decreeing, despite all evidence to the contrary, that God did NOT do this.
No, the scientific evidence does NOT point that way. No amount of repetition of this baloney will ever make it true.
Yes.

Why do you believe otherwise?

More importantly: why do you assume that WE will simply blink and say "Gosh, I never thought about this before"?

You seem to have the attitude that Biblical creationism is obvious.
No, it doesn't. Again, no amount of repetition will ever make this true.

Why don't you talk to people who actually breed plants and animals? They'll tell you that selective breeding is bounded only by the size of the available gene pool, which is continually being enlarged by mutations: a new variety, formerly impossible, suddenly becomes possible when a mutation occurs. Many breeds derive from a specific mutated individual.

Jack the Bodiless

I think some of this odd behavior comes from the theistic mindset, and the habits it encourages. Charles, you're accustomed to praying. Repetitive, self-hypnotic chanting which reinforces your beliefs.

Now, your point about HERV's wasn't like that: it's the closest you've yet come to a scientific argument. But you've padded this out with prayer. You are praying that "echolocation is a problem for evolution", for instance, or that "rapid diversification after mass extinction is a problem for common descent", or that "scientific evidence supports creationism and stands against evolution".

You make these statements as if they're uncontroversial. And, apparently, you think that repeating them without providing support is a worthwhile strategy.

You seem surprised that we do not join you in your prayer.

NottyImp

In what sense are they non-material? They are a consequence of the material organisation of your brain. You can even see in the animal kingdom a clear gradation of consciousness, self-consciousness, social and moral behaviour that you describe.

They are not illusions - I experience them and act upon them as part of my material existence. Some of it is hard-wired, some learnt. Wherein lies the mystery?

Well, not on this thread, anyway. As to ulterior motives, the history of religion provides me with enough evidence of ulterior motives to furnish a good sized National Library.

Which is rather the point. Why should I believe your stories rather than, say, a Buddhist's?

Ah yes, the old "You cannot know the mind of God" cop-out. What I find absurd is that you are prepared to worship a being whose acts you admit you cannot understand.

But lets run with this for a moment. Accepting that the act of "poofing" species into existence is beyond my comprehension (should god ever deign to try to explain it to me), the consequence of his actions is not.

Clearly, if creationism is correct, then at some point in time and space, a population of a new species must appear on Earth. If one were videoing this event, perhaps it would quite literally just appear out of thin air.

Have you any evidence, Charles, that a new species has ever appeared on earth in this way? Do we have recordas of it from the last 300 years or so of natural philosophy? It would surely be a knock-out vindication of your position if you had.

I'm sorry, but who protests? Can you cite me references? I think this is precisely the rhetorical technique I was accusing you of using, charles.

lpetrich

Charles Darwin:
You can get convergent phylogenies on man-made categories of objects too (already discussed in this thread).

Actually, one often finds non-hierarchical arrangements in most cases, with hierarchies appearing only in certain special cases, like copyists' errors in medieval manuscripts. Such circumstances are multiple designers working from their predecessors' work -- which suggests that if features of our planet's biota are designed, then they were designed by multiple designers over geological time, each of whom works from pre-existing designs.

And CD shows a remarkable unwillingness to make the multi-design inference, as it may be called. If one infers design out of analogy with human designers, then one may reasonably infer multiple designers.

There are two points two understand. First, evolution does not predict the species to form a nested hierarchy, as discussed a few posts back:

It does -- CD has clearly not done much studying of the only diagram in Origin of Species.

And if you are willing to swallow the origin of life once, why not twice? And thrice? Who knows, life may have been popping up like corn. With life originating so often, you could get many species, but no hierarchy.

There is, however, no reason to believe that to be the case; All surviving life on Earth has had a single ultimate ancestor, and no counterexamples have ever been discovered. And counterexamples could be recognized if they exist.

(claims of hierarchy for vehicle and engine types...)

It's more like a "Great Chain of Being" than a true family tree.

... Did the flying squirrel, just to name one example of a great many, arise twice on different continents and over millions of years? Essentially the same design; one marsupial and one placental?

Except that growing a flap of skin on one's sides is not a terribly-complicated convergence.

Do you really believe there is no such thing as you; that you is really just a very complicated and immense set of neurons in action? Something that just arose all by itself? And now you are deceived into thinking that there really is a you, when in fact there is no such thing as you.

What does that mean, that I am what I am because of some special personality-stuff or whatever?

What we know of the natural world does not suggest that the most complex things arose by themselves.

And CD is absolutely sure of this for what reason?

You are not merely asking to know how God did it; you are demanding to know how God did it.

Which is a confession of how little explanatory value "goddidit" has.

Oh, OK, I see what you are saying. The reason I opt for creationism is because the scientific evidence points that way.

And can CD prove that elves or fairies or ghosts or leprechauns or goblins or demons or jinn had not been responsibile?

Actually, I'm not using rhetorical techniques. Spontaneous change, as I'm sure you know, is the scientific term for the changes that a system undergoes without outside interference. All by itself, to a lower free energy level.

Except that this can drive parts to higher free-energy levels. Look inside your freezer some time. If you have ever had frost in it, you will have seen order emerging from disorder.

If you were to read evolutionists you'd see a tendency to pour a greater creative power into evolution than the theory actually gives to it. We start talking about evolution 'creating' by this or that means. And oh how they protest when the reality of their theory is laid out before them.

Whining is NOT an argument.

And there are easy mechanisms for "creativity", like gene duplication and divergence.

Wounded King

Words we should all take to heart.

Albion

Why would it be evidence against materialism rather than against the particular theory? Do you mean to say that if the current theory of evolution is ever invalidated in the eyes of the scientific commnuity in general, there's no point looking for an alternative theory because the entire concept of an explanation based on purely natural processes has been invalidated along with evolution by variation and selection? And if the explanation based on natural processes is invalidated, and the scientific method is grounded in explanations based on natural processes, then what does this do for the scientific method in general?

Why would these things be illusions just because they have a basis in the natural world? Come to that, why are you so sure they're non-material - is the study of neurology really sufficiently advanced that we can draw this conclusion with so much confidence? If free will or conscience is just one of many mental processes, rather than being a function of a deity, why would it not be just as real as anything else our brains come up with?

Well, if accepting creationism means accepting that God may have created in ways that we don't or can't understand, then what are we actually all doing? Why bother to even try and understand anything? And why rely on saying that evolution is invalid in order to advance creationism as the most likely explanation? If we don't or can't know how God did it, then creationism is just as likely to have occurred even if the theory of evolution provides a watertight explanation.

Absurd explanations have been abandoned before now, even though they wre mechanistic. When explanations progressively fail to explain, what is the advantage of holding onto them?

So far, for the last several hundred years, the scientific method has required explanations to be naturalistic. That makes them testable. Can the scientific method test your creationism-based non-naturalistic explanation without having to be changed in some fundamental way? You've already got through saying that we can't expect God to work in ways we understand simply because that makes things convenient for us. Assuming that God is involved in creationism, and assuming that God is working in ways that make sense to God but may or may not make sense to us, where does that leave the scientific method?

What do you mean by "outside influence" here? If a process requires catalysis or energy input to reach its lower energy level, is it still spontaneous?

What is the nature of the constraint that you claim exists? I assume this might be the focus of a certain amount of creationist research, since it's one prediction of the creationist model that ought to be testable.

judge

Hi all...

In a thread post here (which I can't find again, though I did cut and paste part of it) CD posted the following reference.

Also, convergent mutations are observed in SIV. See, for example:

Buckley, et al, " Convergent evolution of SIV env after independent inoculation of rhesus macaques with infectious proviral DNA," Virology, 312:470-80, 2003.

where they write: "The env gene of three simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) variants developed convergent mutations during disease progression in six rhesus macaques. progression. ... three regions consistently mutated in all monkeys studied; these similar mutations developed independently even though the animals had received only a single infectious molecular clone rather than standard viral inocula that contain viral quasispecies. Together, these data indicate that the env genes of SIVmac239, SIVdelta3, and SIVdelta3+, in the context of different proviral backbones, evolve similarly in different hosts during disease progression."

Another poster followed up with this reply.

A more recent paper posits the explanation that the pseudogene took two hits - a reduction in promoter function in the common ancestor of gibbons and hominidae followed by different nonsense mutations in those lineages

The conclusion isn't strange at all, if there is selective advantage in turning off a gene, then inactivating mutations in it will be favoured. The hypothesis is that urate, having antioxidant properties, may contribute to longer lifespans and a reduction in cancer rate.


Did we get a reference for this more recent paper, and could we have some further explanation?

Thanks in advance.

Charles Darwin

and,

C'mon guys, this is not complicated. You claimed that evolution predicts a nested hierarchy. I gave two ways that evolution can explain the species if there were no such hierarchy: multiple abiogenesis events and high rates of evolution. Both of these mechanisms are used by evolutionists today. So their use for the absence a of hierarchy would be perfectly reasonable. And either mechanism does the job.

markfiend you argue that one might expect only a few abiogenesis events. Sure, you can make that argument. But if there were no nested hierarchy you would have the option of reversing that argument too. Ipetrich, you say the only figure in Origin of Species makes this prediction. No it doesn't. That was an attempt to explain a known fact. It was known a hundred years before.

Charles Darwin

For about the 13th time, by showing the evolution is compelling.


quote:
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You are not making much sense. One of the important things about HERVs is that cannot become lost. You are obviously not reading the posts, we've gone over this a couple times already. This is why the HERV evidence is intriguing. The human site is a clean pre insertion segment; there never was an HERV there. But under common descent there must have been. The only way around this is to make up a just-so story about how it could have gotten into the lower species but somehow never into the human line.
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No. The argument given in the paper is that the gorilla split now must be viewed as coming just prior to the chimp-human split (in spite of data to the contrary); and that the provirus infects the common ancestor, but it coexists with an clean, preinsertion site allele. It successfully becomes fixed in the gorilla, but that occurs only after the gorilla had split off. Meanwhile, on the chimp-human branch it is not fixed yet. Then you have the chimp-human split, and it subsequently becomes fixed in the chimp, but not human. The HERV does not become lost, this story has it never becoming fixed. So let's not forget, evolution is now committed to the position that the gorilla cannot have split off so long before the chimp-human split.