Bill

You must hang out with some really hairy humans then.

== Bill

Camaban

god dammit

sorry about that

the pic is here:

<a href="http://emblems.utopiatemple.com/pic16199.jpg" target="_blank">http://emblems.utopiatemple.com/pic16199.jpg</a>

RufusAtticus

Camaban,

Your link is still comming up "denied." I went ahead and removed the post with it as [img] tags.

~~RvFvS~~

Synaesthesia

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> &lt;--- If you stare at it fixedly for some time, you'll begin to see that scigirl is making some progress!

Camaban

*damns its black heart*

It was a picture of 2 people in the world's hairiest family (hair covering 98% of their bodies)

got it from the guiness book of records site.

Douglas J. Bender

scigirl,

I know that that's not what the article "says" - I was asking if that's what, at least to you, it implied. I was trying to make a point, which I've forgotten now after so lon...wait a minute, I just remembered it.

So, you admit that there are other genetic differences between humans and chimps, and that these other differences account for much of the observed differences between them. Okay. Now, if one is designing robots, say (like a recent television program I saw which showed various analog robot insects which lacked computers, but which exhibited complex motion), and one makes one robot a certain way, and another robot a similar, though slightly different, way, and uses pretty much the same parts, but in one case "fuses" two important parts which are unfused in the other (for whatever reason), then this means that those two robots "evolved" from a common ancestor? Remember what I said about "correct inferences"?


In Christ,

Douglas

[ June 15, 2002: Message edited by: Douglas J. Bender ]</p>

Vorkosigan

scigirl,

I've got to research a bit more about the myth of Mithra [or is that "the mith of Mythra"?], in order to debunk the idea that Christianity developed from some primary "god"-myth of India). Maybe some other time, Lord willing (I've got to get some of these stupid bills paid off; otherwise, there's no point in my even thinking about graduate school).

Hi Doug,

You've garbled all this up. Mithraism was originally thought to have come from Persia, not India. In any case, Berkeley prof David Ulansey has pretty much solved the problem of its origin:

<a href="http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html" target="_blank">http://www.well.com/user/davidu/mithras.html</a>

but not what its influence, if any, on early Christianity might be.

Vorkoisgan

Daggah

Have a look at cytochrome C sequences, Dougie-whiny-baby...

Tell me, if one were designing robots, would it be "good design" to design them so that they share features that are basically unused/unusable, with no reason for their presence, and designed so that small changes were made to these similiarly shared useless features to the latter robot designed? Because that is essentially what happened.

I have not yet seen a single creationist even attempt to explain the pattern in cytochrome c sequences, of which only 33% of the sequence actually accounts for functionability. Amazingly enough, cytochrome c sequence similiarities correspond exactly to the evolutionary relationships we already knew about.

scigirl

Douglas,

Once again you misunderstand me, the article, and everything else. Please go back and read everything again.

I have absolutely no idea where you came up with this. The answer is, "of course that's not what I was saying."

Here's a very simplified version of my fusion point:

1. Scientists hypothesized that humans and chimps came from a common ancestor (note - this was done before we discovered DNA).

2. Scientists found out that chimps have 24 chromosomes in a gamete, whereas we have 23.

3. Scientists then speculated that during evolution, a couple of chimps had two of their chromosomes fused, and thus all the descendants of those particular chimps (i.e. you and me) had only 23 (46 in somatic cells). (Note there were other theories here as well, read that article I linked to above for the entire story).

4. To test this theory, scientists sequenced the chromosomes, and looked at them using other methods as well, and found these observations:

* If you line up two specific chimp chromosomes, they have the same banding patterns as our chromosome we call # 2 (occurs when certain stretches of DNA contain a lot of G's, I think). That is shown in the above picture.

* Evidence of "ends" of chromosomes are found in our chromosome 2, in exactly the right places (chromosome 2 has two telomeres - one at each end - obviously, and also has telomeres right where they should be if chromosome 2 is the result of a fusion.)

* Evidence of an extra centromere (when the chromosomes fused, one centromere stayed functional, the other did not, but the sequence indicates it used to be a centromere). Note: each chromosome only uses one centromere--it's for meiosis and mitosos.

* Also, chromosome fusion is not some magical unexplainable event. It actually happens frequently, as do transversions (parts of chromosomes get stuck on to other chromosomes)

So, the hypothesis that our chromosome 2 came from a fusion of two chimp chromosomes is well-supported by the evidence. However, if you want to infer that God just made our chromosome 2 to look like 2 chimp chromosomes, I guess you are entitled to your opinion. But that, I think, would be a faulty inference (where's your data, and explanatory mechanism, and testable prediction?)

Again, re-read everything I wrote. I am talking about one specific phenomenon in the chimp-human evolution, not the entire genome.

No, because I know they were made by a human. Do you try to find evidence that Van Gogh painted the Mona Lisa?

Your analogy is faulty. You see, the extra telomeres and the centromeres don't appear to be doing anything.

And even if they were, your "same creator using same parts" still doesn't explain the identical locations of everything. It sure is a really weird freaky coincidence that the telomeres and centromeres, as well as the g banding patterns, are in the exact same spot as predicted by the evolution fusion theory. Other than telomeres (which obviously have to be at the end), none of the other pieces of DNA have to be in that exact place to function. In fact, our genome is a mess. Genes are all scattered with no apparant intelligent rhyme or reason: The protein complex I study (NADPH Oxidase) is encoded by genes on several different chromosomes. If I was a glorious creator, I would put these genes in tandem: way easier to regulate! But alas, it looks like NADPH oxidase came from adapted proteins that did not originally work together.

The patterns we see in DNA between species are not there out of necessity either. You can move around and reassort our DNA, and it doesn't usually make that much difference. Genes can be anywhere, as long as they still have their promotor (the on/off switch).

Yet many of these patterns (like the g banding ones above) are conserved in the evolutionary tree. Why?

If you do wish to formally debate me, we need to go to the formal debates, because I don't want to be accused of editing the debate (I'm a mod now). Let me know, and it can be arranged. Except this time, we will need to stick to a more specific topic (which will be evidence for human/chimp evolution).

scigirl

Edited to make the post nicer, and to remind people to try and refrain from ad homs and insults! Thank you!

[ June 15, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

scigirl

Rufus - I edited your pic above for clarity - hope you don't mind!

scigirl