Freethought & Rationalism ArchiveThe archives are read only. |
09-04-2002, 07:02 PM | #11 | |
Regular Member
Join Date: Jul 2002
Location: Australia
Posts: 214
|
i'm just about to decide whether to go to med school or not.
The medschool I applied to is post graduate though, so i'll at least have a BSc if I don't get in. I'm still not sure whether I want to commit to at least another four years of hard work, or just do honours and see what happens (theres a really cool honours project offered thats investigating the contribution of RNAi to gene regulation - an excerpt from the honours handbook; Quote:
maybe I could be part of something that rewrites genetics textbooks, maybe not - either way its pretty cool |
|
09-05-2002, 06:49 AM | #12 | |
Junior Member
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Milwaukee, WI, USA
Posts: 77
|
Quote:
In fact, if we hypothesize a human-like intelligence as the designer, then reuse of designs seems to me to be a powerful prediction of design theory. |
|
09-05-2002, 12:42 PM | #13 | |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: St Louis area
Posts: 3,458
|
Quote:
|
|
09-05-2002, 05:59 PM | #14 | |
Junior Member
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Milwaukee, WI, USA
Posts: 77
|
Quote:
Maybe the designer thought our eyes were good enough already. |
|
09-05-2002, 06:24 PM | #15 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Des Moines, Ia. U.S.A.
Posts: 521
|
To use the re-used design theory, you would have to show that the same similarities of design show in all creatures. Unfortunately for creationism, there are enormous differences among many creatures and incredible similarities in others.
Certainly, you can posit "how it might have beens" till the cows come home, but that doesn't help to advance our understanding in any meaningful way. |
09-06-2002, 01:26 PM | #16 | ||
Veteran Member
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: St Louis area
Posts: 3,458
|
Quote:
Quote:
[ September 06, 2002: Message edited by: MortalWombat ]</p> |
||
09-06-2002, 06:56 PM | #17 | |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy
Posts: 3,092
|
Quote:
Another thing that common design would not explain why the mitochondria has two membranes which is quite easily explained by having mitochondria as being descended from bacteria. |
|
09-09-2002, 06:13 AM | #18 | |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the land of two boys and no sleep.
Posts: 9,890
|
Quote:
Logically, though, if the creator wasn't omnipotent, then sure. |
|
09-30-2002, 03:14 PM | #19 | |
Veteran Member
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Seattle
Posts: 4,261
|
Another way that evolutionary theory is helping us to understand disease. . .
Sickle cell anemia. This blood disorder is caused by several mutations in hemoglobin, the most common being a point mutation which changes a glutamic acid to a valine. Hemoglobin is the oxygen-carrying molecule found in our red blood cells, and when this mutation occurs, two hydrophobic "patches" are formed, which deforms the proteins and causes them to crystallize. If you have two mutated copies of the gene (one from mom, one from dad), then you are homozygous, and you have this severe disease. If, however, you are only a carrier (i.e. heterozygous), you do not have disease, and are more likely to be immune to malaria - a red blood cell parasitic disease. Check out these statistics from the NIH: Percent Heterozygousity of Several Forms of Sickle Cell Anemia (broken down by ethnicity):
When medical professionals see a genetic disease with a higher prevalence rate than expected from random spontaneous mutations, evolution theory can guide us as to an explanation, and is extremely useful as to the epidemiology. Here is a PDF from the <a href="http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/blood/sickle/sca_fact.pdf" target="_blank">NIH</a>, and some more web sites <a href="http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/sicklecellanemia.html" target="_blank">here</a> for information. Contrast these high incidences of sickle cell anemia with another group of genetic disorders, hemophilia (where your blood clots poorly). I don't have the statistics handy, but they are much lower overall than sickle cell. What does this tell us? We could predict from these statistics that the mutation was not maintained in the population for a survival advantage, like it was in sickle cell. In other words, there is no known survival advantage for this mutation and never was one. Also, it might mean that more cases of hemophilia arise from spontaneous mutations than from simple inheritance. And these two predictions do indeed come true. No known survival advantage exists for bleeding disorders, and therefore many people with hemophlia have it because of a spontaneous mutation from one parent's gamete, and an inherited mutation from the other (contrast this with sickle cell - where usually the mutations come from two carriers). In fact there is an interesting history of the factor XIII deficiency form of hemophilia in the British and Russian royal families. What looked like a scandalous affair, due to a child born with the recessive form of hemophilia, was actually due to a spontaneous mutation in the other germline cell. I found an interesting article on diseases and evolution - and it's even from a Montana conference (no I didn't go). <a href="http://mdecode.umich.edu/pubs1999/TempletonMontana99.pdf" target="_blank">The Role of Evolution in Understanding Biological Causation.</a> I liked the last two sentences: Quote:
|
|
10-01-2002, 12:10 AM | #20 | |
Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 2,832
|
Quote:
In fact there’s quite a movement in the social sciences to “scientifically” deny the existence of biological racial differences, ironically quite at odds with evolution theory. To some extent I sympathise with the motivation, because once one accepts biological racial differences, one opens the door to those who would extend evolutionary theory to justify racism, the ugly “e” word. Right or wrong, this is a delicate area where science is often hijacked by those with a political or moral agenda. |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
|