lpetrich

I'm not very knowledgeable about chromosome variations, but I suggest that one thing that may make it difficult to find harmless or nearly-harmless chromosomal variation is the lack of symptoms that would call attention to it.

Except that there is a huge bulk of literature on doing exactly that, and some parts are now very very well-understood.

I'm not sure how much has been done in inducing evolution in laboratory mice and rats, but there is a big literature on induced evolution in bacteria and fruit flies and the like. Bacteria are an excellent subject for research into evolution because they breed at a prodigious rate -- a well-fed bacterium can divide as fast as once every 10 minutes.

Why is evolutionary biology so "unreliable"? In fact, it's been very reliable in some ways. Molecular-evolution methods have dramatically confirmed many of the relationships posited earlier as a result of analyzing macroscopic-feature evidence, and this confirmation becomes stronger and stronger the more molecules are looked at.

Just one example: the genome of the malaria-carrying mosquito Anopheles gambiae was recently sequenced. Which species is it likely to share the most genes with, on the basis of macroscopic-feature evidence?

Fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster)
Human
Mouse
Yeast
Small mustard-like plant (Arabidopsis thaliana)
Escherichia coli bacterium
Smallpox virus

dk, all you have done is drag in irrelevancies. Perpetual motion machines are now as discredited as alchemy, and have been for more than a century.

And what would you consider convincing evidence O dk, short of going back in a time machine?

dk, I have no idea what you mean by "lack of confidence in evolutionary science".

MOJO-JOJO

Hey, I think it made your Pope more competent (if that's possible). At least we know he's intellectually honest about ONE thing....

Btw, where the hell is the intended recipient of this thread? Still licking his wounds perhaps? Hopefully sciteach will switch to teaching P.E. (no, not punctuated equilibrium....)

lpetrich

What are the "pretext" and the "context" of evolution?

I suggest that you check out <a href="http://gnn.tigr.org" target="_blank">the Genome News Network</a> some time.

dk shows a remarkable lack of understanding of what he discusses. The "survival of favored races" is exactly what produces MDR microbes -- being "favored" in this case meaning surviving efforts to poison them.

It takes time, but it will happen.

(stuff on city planning...)

What does that have to do with evolution?

I don't see how one deduces selfishness from evolutionary biology.

Also, one important triumph of evolutionary biology is explaining self-sacrificing behavor (altruism). In many cases, the answer is kin selection -- the self-sacrificing benefits others with many of one's genes, which allows that tendency for self-sacrifice to perpetuate. This explains:

Cells in multicellular organisms. The vast majority of them will not survive the death of the overall organism, and many of them die before:

Surface-layer cells: skin, digestive system, bark, wood (on the inside, but much the same principle)
Removed body parts: leaves of deciduous plants
Cellular hara-kiri: apoptosis or Programmed Cell Death, which is a necessary part of some growth processes

Parental care: that's a rather obvious one, and it takes numerous forms.

Non-reproducing ("worker") insects and Naked Mole Rats: they help their parents do the reproducing. Worker honeybees carry this principle even farther, having barbed stingers that stick in their targets, making their sting a kamikaze sting. Queens, by comparison, have smooth stingers, because if they do not survive their stinging, they cannot reproduce.

Aging. After one has done enough reproducing, there is not very much reason to live much longer -- in fact, one may go into competition with one's offspring.

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

dk

<ol type="1">[*]dk:: I’m saying the evidence was overstated in the context of evolution.
rbochnermd: All the evidence supports evolution as strongly as all the evidence that supports heliocentrism, and that is not an overstatement.
dk: The statement is a truism. Whatever evidence exists about evolution, found or unfound, can’t possible be contrary to evolution. How much the theory of evolution will change over time presents a much better question. The theory of evolution has changed significantly over the last 20 years.[*]dk:- Then recognize all rational people want science to succeed.
rbochnermd: Not all people understand science; those that do recognize that evolution is the only scientific explanation for all the evidence.
dk: You are running in circles, evolution is a truism, so whatever evidence is found must support evolution.[*]dk: - -But there are many examples of people with the wrong number of chromosomes, there are many birth defects none, to my knowledge, offer much hope as an evolutionary mechanism.
rbochnermd: That mutations can occur at all is predicted and indeed necessary for evolution, but is not in any way accounted for by intelligent design or creation.
dk: Now we are getting down to the nitty gritty. This isn’t about science but religion. That’s fine but then have the stones to call evolution a religion.[*]I think it’s possible, but unlikely. I’d like to know how this relates to Downs Syndrome and other birth defects. I’d like to know more about error correction at germination and retroviruses. None of this appears to be directly related to evolution, but could have baring on evolution. At some point the knowledge base will offer reliable insights about what it means to be a human being, or a monkey, but I think evolution could put many people out on a limb and saw the branch off.[*]rbochnermd: Superstition and religion fail much more often than science.
dk: Fails at what? Seems to be they are interlocked. How exactly does science or religion succeed according to theory of evolution?[*]dk: All what evidence, trying to deduce from what exists, what a thing came from or will become is fraught with problems.
rbochnermd: Do you have a better way of studying the material world? Astronomy, geology, and meteorology depend in great part upon observation, too. Are you seriously going to argue that reading religious texts to explain these sciences is better than looking at the evidence rationally? That's essentially what you are doing when you argue for intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.
dk: Religious liberty has nothing to do with science, don’t confuse politics, science and religion. I could effectively argue that evolutionism establishes a state religion, and in doing so violates the 1st Amendment.[*]dk: I’m a network analysis and have done some reverse engineering but in my opinion its monkey play compared to DNA. It’s a hit and miss art that requires a sound foundation and a detailed description at every layer, whether the detail makes sense or not. Miss a single component and some nonsense down the line can blow the whole stack apart, and must be torn down layer by layer, and component by component by component by component until the missing element presents itself.
rbochnermd: Your analogy would work if you told us that most of the computer code you reverse engineered had no programming function.
Computer code is intelligently designed, DNA is not.
dk: You might think its funny, but quite often there is absolutely no evidence of design at all, truly, the fact that some of this stuff works is miraculous. What I’ve found from experience is that 10 lbs of shit don’t fit in a 5 lb bag, most of the time, but don’t count on it.[*]dk: You guys act like DNA is a simple matter of identifying pieces, speculating what pieces might plausibly fit, and construct a multi-layer model absent hard facts, so I think you guys in many respects are chasing your tails.
rbochnermd: Strawman fallacy
dk: A personal opinion openly presented as a personal opinion is not a Strawman. But I’ll snip the rest as off topic.[*]dk: and we’re not talking about decades but millions of years. It seems to me you guys need to get a grip on reality. I might be wrong but I doubt it.
rbochnermd:Those that are wrong usually do.
dk: A true yogism, how about ‘It ain’t over till its over’.
dk: I’d be happy if a single mechanism in mammals could be identified, tested and proved reliable. I’d like to see an open discussion to draw a line between macro and micro evolution. That would be a solid starting point.
rbochnermd:: www.talkorigins.org
dk: Talk Origins seems to agree with me on religion, philosophy and the predictive value of evolutionary processes. Here’s a clip on chromosome fusion...
[*]dk: I understand the concepts of plausibility and possibility, I’m talking about reliability, and the reliability of evolutionary science stinks.
rbochnermd:The reliability of evolution is excellent; it reliably explains all of the available evidence, and accurately predicts what we will find. Evolution predicts that we will not find a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian strata, and we do not. Evolution predicts that we will find more similaraties between monkey and human DNA than bumblebee and human DNA, and we do. Intelligent design and creation do not reliably explain or predict anything.
dk: If somebody found a rabbit fossil in a pre-Cambrian strata, it wouldn’t prove anything, Strawman. By the way, what does evolution predict?[*]dk: That’s a possibility, but it is not a mechanism or even a proof of viability, much less reliability.
rbochnermd: It's an explanation for the observed phenomena, unlike creation.
dk: So, Aristotle had a theory (explained) that the world was made from the basic elements of fire, earth, air and water. It was a great explanation, but not particularly meaningful. ][/list=a]

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

sciteach

Er...I'm returning when Ive learned some more biology. I may yet be convinced by evolution as a mechanism and Im open to that happening, but as to its propogation being a random and non-directed process, I will never buy that. I still will see the hand of God. Man will never prove either the existence of God, and proving his non-existence in the Universe is a logical impossiblity. Again I say, the God question is purely an affective one--no less, no more. Thank you for your posts--I have printed themoutfoer future reference.

MOJO-JOJO

Thanks for coming, sciteach. Nothing personal of course, attacking ideas is always fair game (like the scientific process), attacking people, or ad hominem attacks, are never encouraged. That's what religious people do.

You may want to spend time at talk.origins, or perhaps the thread where Dembski and his IDeas are being soundly rebutted by Deanne Taylor. The hand of god is no more at work in nature than little fairies or elves are at work under the hood of a car making it run (ie; what people in the middle ages would think if a moving vehicle suddenly appeared before them).

Albion

Why do random processes have to be undirected? I don't see where that follows. I assume you believe that God created the universe, right? Which means that God created it to include things like quantum uncertainty and other random processes, correct? I mean, I assume you aren't saying that that sort of randomness doesn't exist in God's universe (or that Satan did it). So since randomness exists and since God created the universe in which it exists, then randomness doesn't imply lack of direction. In fact, if God is using the laws of nature to achieve certain ends (such as an intelligent species capable of abstract thought), then what better way to do it than by using those very same random processes, thus not disrupting the nature of the universe whenever he wants to do something? How do you know that isn't the reason for randomness in the first place? It could actually be the closest thing we have to evidence for the existence of God.

Dr Rick

There is no evidence that could refute creation, just as there is no scientific evidence to support it. On the other hand, there are an almost limitless number of evidences that could refute evolution: A rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian strata would refute evolution; a horse with feathered wings would refute evolution; A normal-appearing human springing de novo from the dirt would refute evolution. These things would refute evolution if they were found because evolution predicts that they cannot occur.

Evolution is scientific and stands because all of the evidence supports it and no refuting evidence has been found, not because there is no possible contrary evidence. Creation, on the other hand, is not scientific as it is not naturalistic, predictive, or verifiable. Evidence cannot disprove religious beliefs such as creation, but it can potentially disprove scientific ones such as evolution.

<strong> You've had to shift your argument; now, it's not that the evidence for evolution is overstated but that evolution changes. However, that's not an indictment against evolution but a re-affirmation that it is science. All of science can change as new information is gathered; that's one of the big differences between science and religion.
<strong> The hallmark of a discussion with dk.

<strong> Evolution is true; all of the evidence found supports it.


<strong> Now you just posted an irrelevant conclusion. The only stones necessary to call evolution a religion would have to be in your head. Science is not religion.

<strong> Religion fails because it is not predictive or verifiable; it does not allow us to manipulate the world, discover antibiotics, or fly to the moon, whereas science does.

Creation does not predict the similarities between monkey and human DNA, nor does it predict pesticide resistance developing in insects nor the fossil record, but evolution does.

Religion and science seem interlocked to you because you don't know the difference between them.

<strong> ...so keep religion out of the science classroom.


<strong> You already beat me to it.

<strong> You have yet to effectively argue anything.

<strong> Wow, are you seriously suggesting that computer code generation is not the product of intelligent design, but life and DNA are?

<strong> okey-dokey.

<strong> It is if it presents a false argument as you do.

<strong> Go back and re-read it; you're wrong, and the quote says nothing about religion

<strong> Evolution predicts that you will not find a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian strata, that you will find more similarities between monkey and human DNA than bumblebee and human DNA, and that horses will never give birth to colts with feathered wings.


<strong> Irrelevant and completely unrelated to the science of evolution.

Rick

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

sciteach

Well as a Xian, I say that what appears random from our space-time continuum isnt so with God. But, what I was implying is the whole process of evolution not being random.

sciteach

Mojo--you're saying that there is no hand of God is your interpretation of some of the available data, it is not a scientific statement, and is not even provable either way, so is ultimately not useful.