GunnerJ

Posted by Jim Larmore:

This post originally appeared on this thread and has been moved here to avoid sidetracking the original discussion.

Godless Dave

Don't you mean macro-evolution, GunnerJ? Marco-evolution is the hypothesis that all humans have a common Italian ancestor.

Oolon Colluphid

Nope. The majority of people here simply accept it on the basis of overwhelming evidence. It’s not our fault if you are not acquainted with this evidence.
Nope, that’s called ‘abiogenesis’. Not doing very well really, are you?
Then find someone who believes in random chance evolution and ask ’em. What you’ve got there is a ‘straw man’.
Like I said, find someone who thinks this is all down to chance and ask them about it.
It couldn’t.
What, like James Watson?
Yup. Because it means accepting a creator that’d make things like hookworms and blind eyes for creatures that don’t need eyes at all.
Who doesn’t? And just how much biogeography, anatomy and palaeontology does the average “cellular/genome researcher” know anyway? Do you get a plumber in to fix your car?
What you personally feel is neither here nor there, considering your woeful understanding of what evolution is about.

We’ll happily point you towards information about what evolution is really about. But I somehow doubt you’re interested. You’ve got that DNA spiel just too down pat. But sorry, it just doesn’t cut it round here. I’d leave in the direction of my local library if I were you, before the geneticists here turn up.

TTFN, Oolon

GunnerJ

THERE ARE NO MISTAKES IN MY POST. I AM INERRANT.

-GunnerJ, E&C Pope

WinAce

Correction: there were no mistakes in the inerrant original post, before the buggy IIDB software incorrectly parsed and translocated two letters.

Peez

I don't "believe in" macro-evolution any more than I "believe in" gravity, but in any event macro-evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life on earth. Please learn about this before trying to critique it.I don't know anyone who believes in "random chance evolution" of adaptations, and once again evolution is not concerned with the origin of life. For example, one could believe that life was created by one or more supernatural creatures and still accept the fact that living things have evolved through descent with modification from common ancestors, and that the theory of evolution is the scientific explanation for this evolution.There is certainly a great deal of complexity in nature, but you would have to give us some evidence that there has been any "design" outside of what humans have done.You need to explain what this "random/chance origins" stuff is. It doesn't sound like anything that I have seen in science.I would avoid ascribing a particular length as an "average" for a protein, but 300 amino acids is probably the right order of magnitude for a human protein. As for how "logical" the sequences might be, you will have to explain what you mean here.No, this is incorrect. Not only are their many variations that would do essentially the same thing, there are many variations that would work but work differently. You should do some research before making such assertions, these errors only undermine your credibility.This is a very interesting point, given that there are at least thousands of different possible amino acids. Of course, if we all evolved from a common ancestor then it would not be surprising that we all used the same amino acids. (by the way, this article discusses an engineered species that uses 21 amino acids) Nope. Many creationists get the idea, I don't know where, that evolution by natural selection is a random process. It is not. Furthermore, the 300-amino-acid protein mentioned is not thought to have evolved all at once, it was modified from an earlier protein. Your lack of understanding here is undermining your attempt to discredit evolution.I assume that you mean "in all the living things one earth" because right handed amino acids are found in "nature" if you take "nature" to include the universe outside of the works of humans.You are making a couple of unsupported assumptions here. First, you assume that amino acids available at the time and place where life formed were distributed 50:50. If you have some evidence for this, please present it. Second, you assume that left- and right- handed amino acids are entirely compatable in living systems. If you have evidence for this, please present it. In fact the universality of left handed amino acids in living systems is an interesting problem for science, but it poses no special problem for evolution.Wrong again. Actually it is approximately 1 in 2.0 x 10 to the 390 power, but this is irrelevant: many sequences are potentially useful and nobody thinks that such a protein appeared by the random connection of 300 amino acids.Trying to impress people with large (irrelevant) numbers is not a useful replacement for evidence. If you have any evidence that living things did not evolve from common ancestors, please present it.Not really.Ah, I see that you are referring to the whole human genome, compared to one human protein. Then yes, it is more complex.Actually just one could be fatal, but it almost never is. You see, almost every human born has at least one random mutation, and we seem to be doing just fine. The sequence of more than 90% of our DNA rarely matters at all, and even changes in the parts in which the sequence is expressed as proteins a change will often not change the protein at all, and even when it does change the protein it sometimes has little or no effect on the function of the protein. Your substantial lack of understanding of biology is interferring with your ability to discuss this issue in a useful manner.Yet again, you have made a false statement. It is very hard to detect a useful mutation, and one must define "useful" in a particular context. Even so, undeniably useful mutations have occurred, as discussed here. That is the way it works now, but of course there is no reason to assume that it was always thus. Please do a little reading on abiogenesis and the RNA world. However, keep in mind that it is not evolution.I have no idea how such complexity could be the result of this "random/chance evolution" you refer to. On the other hand, evolution through the mechanisms described in the theory of evolution are quite sufficient to explain such evolution.You are attacking a straw man, as no scientist thinks that this is how life started, but as I said this has nothing to do with evolution.Did you just make this up? I know quite a number of scientists involved in cellular/genome research, and as far as I know they are all atheists (though I could be wrong, of course; religious beliefs are not an issue in science).Macro-evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life. By the way, the evolution of living things by descent with modification from common ancestors is a scientific fact that is accepted by virtually all biologists.Given that you do not even understand what macro-evolution is, this is not very convincing.

Peez

Duvenoy

Ah yes, the F-word, bandied carelessly about again. After a while, I get tired of hearing it.

You don't need 'faith' when you have evidence; indeed, overwhelming evidence. 'Faith' is for wishful dreamers trying to reconcile their unsupported befiefs with reality.
I have no 'faith' in the ToE (or much of anything else, for that matter). But I accept it as the best explanation for certain, biological process' thus far. Come up with a better one, solidly backed by hard evidence, and I'll accept that. But, I doubt if that'll happen. And if it should, I further doubt that any religious text will cover it any better than they cover the ToE.

doov

pz

If you get to be pope, I insist on being Inquisitor. I may make errors, but all my mistakes are burnt and trouble me no more.

Jim Larmore

Well I see I got a pretty large response from you guys and its interesting to see how strongly you all have attacked my statements. I won't be as lengthy as I was before but I will comment on a few other areas involved with evolution.

First to the one saying he has no "faith" in anything, do you realize how rediculous that makes you sound. Everyone has faith in something, Everyday you wake up and turn on the light switch you have faith the electric company will generate sufficient current to "illuminate" your enviournment. You have faith that your body will cause your next breath to happen. There are many things we have to have faith in , but I must say its difficult to put much faith in punctuated equilibrium or other philosophies pertaining to evolution. The evidence for fiat creation is just as obvious as is the "claims" of evolutionist.

I can't remember the name of the evolutionist who stated this but what he basically said was this, "if" it could be shown that man and dinasaurs lived contemporaneously then all of evolution would fall on its "ear". Well, in GlenRose Texas in the cretaceous rock on the Puluxy river they have found human and dinasaur tracks side by side and even one inside the other. How do you explain this? The tracks have been sectioned and analyzed for compressional laminations and they are authenticated as genuine tracks. My major is Bio/Chem and I'm not a archeologist and I must admit a degree of ignorance when it comes to the present philosophies of evolution , however if you consider the probability alone of random/chance evolution its absolutely impossible.

Evolution does happen theres no doubt, but I believe it occurrs more in the realm of special adaptation rather than mutation. Nature simply adapts to things i.e. bacteria's resistence to anti-biotics, in any given situation there is never a 100% kill , the ones who survive pass on this adaption to the daughter cells but this is not mutation. I've studied intercellular biology quite a bit and I just can't see this as anything other than being a result of a massively intelligent designer its just too complex to have originated from a slimy pit that got struck by lightning!!!

Peez

You seem to be confusing "faith" with any reasonable inference based on experience. However, rather than argue semantics, why don't you address the issues that we have raised?Why don't you surprise us and tell us what "punctuated equilibrium" is. By the way, it is not required for evolution and many biologists do think that it is important.Excellent! Please present some of this "evidence."It might be better to be a little more precise when trying to quote someone. You can quote me as saying that evidence that there were modern humans living with Tyranosaurus rex would certainly call into question our current understanding of the evolution of living things.No, they have not. See here for a discussion of this falsehood.Creationists who are overzealous and/or dishonest.By who? Please provide a reference to the peer-reviewed article that demonstrates this.It is appalling to me that someone studying biochemistry could be so completely ignorant of the single most important concept in biology. As has been explained to you, random chance (or "random/chance") is the antithesis of evolution by natural selection.Please define a "special adaptation" and explain how it differs from evolution. Perhaps you should tell us what you think evolution is.???Of course that is not mutation, that is natural selection. Mutation is when you start with a single bacterial cell, allow it to multiply many, many times so that you have millions of bacterial cells that are all identical to each other except for any changes due to mutations, then you expose them all to an antibiotic and find that almost all of them are susceptible, but one is not. Gee, I wonder where that new trait came from.Intercellular biology? Exactly what is that? Never mind, it doesn't matter. You have once again gone back to the origin of life (if I understand your last sentence correctly), but as has been explained to you more than once this has nothing to do with evolution. Not only that, but you have failed to respond to any of the points that we raised about evolution. All you have managed to do is convince us that you know little about biology and less about evolution. Please take the time to learn about something before pretending to understand it.

Peez