Badfish

Can I incorporate those into my bowling game?

I can't comment seriously, I am out of my league here, I am sorry, I am sure there is very good and compelling evidence, if God had a part of macro evolution so be it, I can't prove a thing. But as a freethinking Christian, this evidence does not change my faith.

Lets talk about it over a game of bowling and a few brews.

scigirl

Fair enough. And evolutionary theory does not ask you to - many many people have no problems believing in evolution as a scientific theory, and believing in Christianity. My boss for example - he's a Christian, but he also studies the evolution of the immune system. (Incidentally, he excels in both areas - a brilliant scientist, and a nice guy and great family man).
Now you're talking! Just let me know when you will be in Bozeman (although I'm moving to denver soon so you better make it here fast!)

Heh, when I bowled for Kids Sake (Big Brothers and Sisters fundraisier), they had to round my score to 100!

scigirl

Dr Rick

...which in turn belies the "freethinking" part of this self-description.

Rick

GeoTheo

I was up all night reading "Origins Reconsidered"
by Richard Leakey. I started to go through a paradigm shift. Human evolution makes a lot of sense. For example, bipedalism is actually more efficient for travelling long distances than knuckle walking, even though quadrapedalism is more efficient than either. I find it not implausable at all that that is how it would evolve in response to a habitat change that caused food to become more spread out. This may not sound earth shattering, but there is a certian elegance to the logic there. After this He believes that one branch evolved enormous teeth and jaw muscles to eat tough plants found in arid climates. (Australopithecines)
Then another branch (homo erectus) developed tool use in order to hunt and expand the diet. Then after this a positive feedback system emerged where tool use, cooperation and eventually language propelled the brain to develop even further which in turn caused the delayed childhood we see in modern humans. Using knowledge of tooth eruption coefficients related to Brain size in various mammals including primates, they were able to calculate the age of Turkana boy ( a big strapping young fellow with an obviously humanoid skeleton, though more robust, and a decidedly small brain by our standards)
It all makes a lot of sense. I also was surprised to find that Leakey has serious doubts that Lucy was and her Australopithecine kin were much more than apes and that they were not bipedal in the same sense that We are. I have always suspected this also. I also question the reconstruction of her pelvis but Leakey does not.
Also He thinks they were around at the same time as homo which obviously excludes them as our ancestors in my book.
I was refreshed to see that there is apparently lively debate amoung paleoanthropologists and more than a little outright disagreement and that dates are not considered infallible.
Frustratingly, however, after this "revelation" that human evolution is pretty likely. I began to see through the 23 vs. 24 chromosome thingy.
If it is a fusion so what? If you were to go in and somehow break it a part again in a lab and make a test tube baby with 24 pairs it would not make him a chimp. He would simply be a person with 24 pairs instead of the usual 23. All it means is that their was a fusion and that Mankind went through a genetic bottleneck at some point in history so that now all of mankind has it.
It is even consistant with the flood.
Oh well.

WinAce

We can easily test the hypothesis that the flood was responsible for the bottleneck. Since we know the year when the flood supposedly occured, we can perform DNA analysis of earlier humans. If all of them have the fused chromosome, the flood bottleneck hypothesis is shot down. If only humans after the flood all have it, it's corroborated.

Science consists of asking these questions and looking for the answers. "Never stop questioning nature and the answers will be forthcoming."

I'm unaware of any genome sequencing from ancient humans contradicting evolution; moreover, since humans as a species have a massive amount of genetic diversity, any bottlenecks would have to be in the distant past. We can identify animals that had more recent ones, like Cheetahs, because they have much less variation.

Then there's stuff like the Vitamin C gene... present in all mammals, doesn't produce vitamin C in only a few of them with other sources of it. Humans and chimps have the gene but it doesn't actually produce Vitamin C; the kicker is that it's 'broken' by the exact same mutation in both species!

What makes more sense in this case? That an intelligent designer would give two distinct species the same exact broken copy of a gene that works in virtually all other mammal species, resulting in Scurvy when you don't get another source of it? Or that the common ancestor of humans and chimps had it accidentally deactivated because they were already getting enough from their fruit-rich diet and its loss produced no deleterious effect?

There really is no way for a rational human being to accept 1 over 2. It makes God look like an idiot if he's responsible, and the second has experimental support as well because we directly observe non-essential genes being deactivated in a similar manner.

GeoTheo

No, you're probably right. I just threw the flood thing in there. I think the vitamin C thing has more going for it than this chromosome pair example as pointing to a common ancestor. So I guess my point is it is not as much of a clincher for me as other pieces of evidence, which is different for saying that its a false conclusion. But there is jusst so much! Like for example We share more DNA with chimps than zebras do with horses and horses and zebras are in the same genus.

scigirl

I need to get that book!
I guess you went through a paradigm shift - now you refer to Richard Leakey as "He" instead of "he"!

GeoTheo, this is exactly why I want people to accept evolutionary theory. Not just because I think it's the correct theory, but also for the implications it could have in medicine, history, and yes even psychology. If we currently use evolution to explain things like back pain, what might we use it to illuminate in the future?
This is common in science - and I believe, a good thing. Controversy abounds in science, and fortunately, science provides us with ways to resolve these controversies.
Sure, the chromosome thing isn't really that exciting for explaining humanity.

However, accepting evolution may be important for humanity on several levels, one of which is simply to acknowledge that a naturalistic explanation just may exist for many of our "human" traits.

I elaborated on this idea here:
<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001126" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001126</a>

scigirl

[ July 22, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>