Jack the Bodiless

Charles:
...The evidence for WHAT "does not stack up"? The evidence for WHAT "does not even come close"?

The evidence for both evolution and common descent certainly stacks up: no competent person who has actually studied it will deny this, regardless of their religious beliefs. Even the anti-Darwinian "intelligent design" advocates will not deny these facts.

I could just as easily argue that the evidence for round-Earthism does not stack up; it does not even come close.
By random mutation and natural selection.

...Come off it, Charles! Why are you being so obtuse? Why is this NOT an "explanation for how the most complex things are supposed to have arose by themselves?"

Evolution is an inevitable consequence of the existence of imperfectly-replicated heritable characteristics which influence an organism's chance of survival. Even if God poofed all species into existence in 4004 BC, they would inevitably have evolved since.

Now, we have a theory that the fact of evolution is sufficient to account for the fact of common descent. You may disagree that it is sufficient, but you really need to demonstrate that it is insufficient, rather than snorting with indignation at it. You certainly can't pretend that you haven't even been presented with this as an explanation!

Alternatively, if you disagree that common descent is fact, then it isn't sufficient to simply wave your hands and say that "God made it look that way". Nor can you get away with calling a belief in common descent "evolutionism" and implying that it is a religion.

We also have a theory that the fact of gravity is sufficient to account for the fact that the Earth is round. What is "unscientific" about that? Sure, maybe God just likes round planets, but are you prepared to argue that it is "unscientific", or even a "religious belief", that planets are round because gravity made them that way?

...Because, so far, your argument against evolution is analogous to arguing that the Earth is flat "because God made it that way" (which, incidentally, is what the authors of the Bible actually believed: if YOU don't believe this, then why not?).

Let me ask you a variation of caravelair's question:

just out of curiosity, exactly what type of evidence would you need to see to be convinced of common descent? would you be convinced by ANY evidence, or have you closed your mind completely to the possibility? give me an example of something you think would be convincing evidence of common descent, if such evidence existed.

lpetrich

Badfish:
I don't mean to butt in, but if I was to believe evolution, then I would be even more concerned and thirsting for knowledge about our origins.

Except that there has been a Hades of a lot of work done on the evolution of humanity, if that's what you are asking about.

This is something that I don't understand, it seems that evolutionists and atheists are content not knowing where we came from or began, ...

Why do you think that evolutionary biologists believe that?

If something can appear as a result of random chance and come from absolute nothing,

Evolution does NOT involve such a "poof" theory of origins, the way that creationism does.

then surely the odds that a designer is responsible instead seems to be more compelling, given the apparent design and millions of unique specimens of life.

If there were any designers involved, it was a multitude of them.

Is it just coincidental that we share some form of common ancestry with just about every other animal or creature? Or is the DNA "double helix" an undeniable or at least possible signature of the "Creator"?

Or else that later designers built on the work of earlier ones.

lpetrich

Badfish:
And not to complain, but you need a new line, that goatherder line is so old, and we all know (or most of us) the origins of the bible. And since human life was relatively new when the bible was written (according to the bible), farming and herding was the prevalant way of life, so would you expect biblical testimony to be written by a rocket scientist?

It ought to be clear that we are capable of learning things since the Bible was written 2000-3000 years ago. So why should we be bound by it?

lpetrich

(evolution vs. creationism)
A remarkable claim.

HRG

All hydrogen atoms look alike. Does that seem like design with a signature ?

I hope you realize that the genetic code still evolves.
The only designers we actually know of are human designers, thus your suggestion must be based on some similarities to human design activities and their results. Which designers have we actually observed making something out of nothing ?

Of course, the "something out of nothing" formula is pure polemics. The universe did not have to "come from" anything, and when life emerged, there was quite a lot of "something" around.

Regards,
HRG.

Charles Darwin

quote:
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Pseudogenes are an interesting evidence, but you are mistaken if you think creationism has no explanation. An obvious explanation is that they occurred via common crippling mutations. Analogous to your "convergent" evolution, where the same thing happens different lineages. Also, as discussed earlier, we know that mutations can be concentrated along the genome, supporting the idea of a common mutation in allied species.
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But convergence is well accepted in evolutionary theory, and convergent mutations are an empirical fact. This is not an unreasonable explanation. As we discussed earlier, mutations can be predictable in bacteria. In Molecular Strategies in Biological Evolution L. Ripley writes:

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."

Also, there are pseudogenes with identical modifications that appear to be independent. For example, a pseudogene (cmk) in the endosymbiotic bacteria Buchnera from two different insect species has an identical 16 base pair deletion. If evolution is true, and if the two pseudogenes share a common ancestral pseudogene, then they must have diverged ~50 MYR. But this would be very strange, for these pseudogene would have had to have endured the 50 MYR with essentially zero deletions while the Buchnera genome would have had to have been incurring massive genome reduction. [Mira, Ochman and Moran, "Deletional Bias and the Evolution of Bacterial Genomes," TIG, 17:589, 2001.] Even under evolution the best explanation appears to be that the pseudogenes arose independently, and that the two identical deletion events occurred independently.

I think it is fair for you to claim pseudogenes as evidence for evolution, but the evidence has its problems, as there are not a few anomalous situations. The evidence is not unequivocal, and certainly not unexplainable by non evolutionary mechanisms.

monkenstick

The reason convergent mutations isn't at all compelling to me is that the same stop codon mutation is present in a pattern that confirms the phylogeny we already have.

Its even more unbeleivable when you also include the data that gibbons also have an inactivated urate oxidase, but they all have a deletion, rather than a premature stop codon

So what you're asking me to believe is that a nonsense mutation at codon 33 occured in all members of hominidae that have been surveyed, and a different nonsense mutation occured at position 18 in all the members of the gibbon family that have been surveyed.

The mutation in codon 33 isn't present in any of the gibbons, and the mutation in codon 18 isn't present in any of the hominidae

http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Catarrh...group=Primates

Charles Darwin

quote:
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Chen Y, Zhang Y, Jiang TX, Barlow AJ, St. Amand TR, Hu Y, Heaney S, Francis-West P, Chuong CM, Maas R.
Conservation of early odontogenic signaling pathways in Aves.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2000 Aug 29; 97(18): 10044-10049.

Teeth have been missing from birds (Aves) for at least 60 million years. However, in the chick oral cavity a rudiment forms that resembles the lamina stage of the mammalian molar tooth germ. We have addressed the molecular basis for this secondary loss of tooth formation in Aves by analyzing in chick embryos the status of molecular pathways known to regulate mouse tooth development. Similar to the mouse dental lamina, expression of Fgf8, Pitx2, Barx1, and Pax9 defines a potential chick odontogenic region. However, the expression of three molecules involved in tooth initiation, Bmp4, Msx1, and Msx2, are absent from the presumptive chick dental lamina. In chick mandibles, exogenous bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) induces Msx expression and together with fibroblast growth factor promotes the development of Sonic hedgehog expressing epithelial structures. Distinct epithelial appendages also were induced when chick mandibular epithelium was recombined with a tissue source of BMPs and fibroblast growth factors, chick skin mesenchyme. These results show that, although latent, the early signaling pathways involved in odontogenesis remain inducible in Aves and suggest that loss of odontogenic Bmp4 expression may be responsible for the early arrest of tooth development in living birds.

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In this paper, they are using biotechnology to promote the development of epithelial structures. Consider the possibility that far in the future, we may learn how to create a working cell, by adding the right components at the right places and times. It would be disingenuous to claim it as evidence for how life got started, because the process is driven by our ingenuity rather than the workings of natural laws. Now consider the less ambitious, but conceptually the same, case of making bird embryos grow teeth, again by clever manipulation. In this paper, we see the beginnings of this process. They are not growing teeth, but they are manipulating the oral cavity development. They add bone morphogenetic protein and fibroblast growth factors, at the right development stage and location, and they obtain some epithelial structures. This is great research, and leaves one wondering about other possibilities. I wouldn't be surprised, for example, if they could induce strange developments elsewhere in the embryo as well. But so what?

monkenstick

oops
its not a deletion, its a nonsense mutation in codon 18

Badfish

Where did the "lot of something" come from? All matter capable of evolving into an organism has a limited lifespan I believe.

Therefore as all things we can observe has a lifespan, a beginning and an ending.

To suggest that there has always been something, or that the universe is eternal is just as much faith if not much more faith, than belief in a designer. IMO