A New Theory for the Origins of Life

[BlackJackal]

Greetings,

I know that I am new here and that this topic is probably going to be meet with the usual moans and groans that this topic generally receives. However, I am convinced by my eight years of study in biology and particularly evolution that evolution as a theory is fatally flawed and science needs to explore a new path. I know that science as a whole is almost unwilling to do this because of the creationist movement but, to continue pursuing a dead end does not help either.

Before it is brought up by someone else, I am not a creationist myself. I don’t really know what I am, because many of the arguments for creationism are scientifically based but many more are not. The same way with evolution, it is a sound idea in some areas but in many many more it falls short. There is a severe lack of evidence for it.

Now my point in posting this topic is not to get into a debate over whether or not evolution or creationism are viable theories because I am hoping that the posters here will already be aware of the major holes in these theories (however, I can point out the flaws if need be). I would like to discuss possibilities of a new theory for the origins of life.

Any Takers?

[mooeypoo]

I know that science as a whole is almost unwilling to do this because of the creationist movement but, to continue pursuing a dead end does not help either.

Okay, well, you got to the right place. People are not creationists either here-- okay, MOSTLY <to this I will groan> and we listen to exotic new theories.

We do appreciate proofs of course though ;)

The same way with evolution, it is a sound idea in some areas but in many many more it falls short
Any examples?
...I am hoping that the posters here will already be aware of the major holes in these theories ...
Every theory has holes, that's why it's a THEORY ;) but yes, I'm taking.

I'd like to hear some more. Can't promise I'll agree, but I will listen :-)

~moo

[dave]

As mooeypoo said, you've come to the right place. We do listen to theories on here, and although we've had some absolute twaddle, I daresay we'd all be interested in discussing this particular subject :-)

(I have to say that I'm a creationist myself, but I'm certainly not going to get into a huge argument about it)

[Z-space]

I would like to add my bit to this thread as it is a subject that interests me. The best book I've ever read on evolution is "The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution" by Stuart Kauffman. As a very brief (and therefore inadequate) explanation of this book - he uses complexity analysis to show that life likely sprang into existence when a critical number of biochemical reactions became interconnected. Stuart Kauffman's home page is here: http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/

[BlackJackal]

Iam thankful that there are people here with open minds ( This is a quality often not found when discussing origins). Basically my disenchantment with the Theory of Evolution is in the many holes that it has but mainly one big one. The Second law of Thermodynamics precludes it. And yes I do know about the whole argument that the earth is an open system with the influx of energy from the sun and all that. But even if the earth is a open system there would still need to be an energy conservation mechanism to harness the energy for life to begin. Anyways if I need to go into that more in depth I will.

With that being said I don’t know what the new theory would be because I don’t believe I have it in me to come up with a completely new theory. I was hoping that by brainstorming with some other people maybe just maybe a new theory might be born. I just can’t wholeheartedly support a theory that has parts that require you to just believe and I cannot believe in a scientific theory that defies scientific law.

Anyways this new theory would have to obey the second law of thermodynamics first and foremost but also fit in with the fossil record and genetics.

[PerpetualYnquisitive]

Do you mean to discuss things such as; Intelligent Design, Panspermia, E.T. Intervention, Cosmic Ancestry etc. or something totally new and not previously brought up?

I personally subscribe to creationism, though I have NO religious affiliation, for men write 'Holy' books and men are not holy. I also do not believe that it is necessary for others to believe that which I believe as I also do not have to believe that which they do either.


btw
Welcome to the Forum.

[apathy]

Basically my disenchantment with the Theory of Evolution is in the many holes that it has but mainly one big one. The Second law of Thermodynamics precludes it. And yes I do know about the whole argument that the earth is an open system with the influx of energy from the sun and all that. But even if the earth is a open system there would still need to be an energy conservation mechanism to harness the energy for life to begin. Anyways if I need to go into that more in depth I will.

Please do go into more detail.
There are energy conversion mechanisms all over the place called molecules. They get excitied by radiant energy (light) and change and do all the cool things they do. Given time, certain reactions might couple so that a thermodynamically unfavored reaction is powered by a thermodynamically favored one. This is mostly how life works to build complexity and there never needs to be any violation of any thermodynamic laws.


Anyways this new theory would have to obey the second law of thermodynamics first and foremost but also fit in with the fossil record and genetics.

How is there a fossil record with no evolution? Why do we see evolution happening around us all the time, albeit at a slow pace for more complex organisms, but at a faster rate for simple ones, ie microbes?



:rolleyes:
oh, btw, creationism is not a theory. it's not even a hypothesis. a hypothesis has to be testable, once its passed a test or two, it becomes a theory. evolutionary theory has passed quite a few tests, and since most of modern biology wouldn't work without it, it's a pretty indispensible theory

[admiral_ju00]

it's a pretty indispensible theory

yeah, as long as it doesn't rely on pure darwinism - that being random mutations and natural selection.

natural selection is fine so leave that alone, but the random mutations thing is a problem.

[alt_f13]

Sorry if I'm way off in this... but doesn't creationism prompt the exact same question it is meant to answer, in that there needs to be an origin for that which created life on earth?

If not, I will voluntarily squeeze lemons into my eyes.

[edit]

...and then do the same to whomever says 'no.'

[admiral_ju00]

Six days of Biblical creation story by David Brower.

Earth is created on Sunday at midnight. Life in the form of the first bacterial cells appears on Tuesday morning around 8:00am. For the next two and a half days the microcosm evolves, and by Thursday at midnight it is fully established, regulating the entire planetary system. On Friday around 4:00pm, the microorganisms invent sexual reproduction, and on Saturday, the last day of creation, all the visible forms of life evolve.

Around 1:30am on Saturday the first marine animals are formed, and by 9:30am the first plants come ashore, followed two hours later by amphibians and insects. At ten minutes before five in the afternoon, the great reptiles appear, roam the Earth in lush tropical forests for five hours, and then suddenly die out around 9:45pm. In the meantime the mammals have arrived on the Earth in the late afternoon, around 5:30, and the birds in the evening, around 7:15.

Shortly before 10:00pm some tree-dwelling mammals in the tropics evolve into the first primates; an hour later some of those evolve into monkeys; and around 11:40pm the great apes appear. Eight minutes before midnight the first Southern apes stand up and walk on two legs. Five minutes later they disappear again. The first human species, Homo habilis, appears four minutes before midnight, evolves into Homo erectus half a minute later, and into the archaic forms of Homo Sapiens thirty seconds before midnight. The Neanderthals command Europe and Asia from fifteen to four seconds before midnight. The modern human species, finally, appears in Africa and Asia eleven seconds before the midnight and in Europe five seconds before midnight. Written human history begins around two-thirds of a second before midnight.


edit: i don't know why i posted this here, but out of all creationist nonsense ideas, i kind of like that. not in terms of contents, but the idea of squeezing 4.6 billion years of earth's history into 6 days and doing it scientifically is neat.

[Skye]

I like this one:

http://www.rdrop.com/~jimka/text/creation.html

[admiral_ju00]

I like this one:

http://www.rdrop.com/~jimka/text/creation.html

good one :D

[Sayonara³]

However, I am convinced by my eight years of study in biology and particularly evolution that evolution as a theory is fatally flawed and science needs to explore a new path.
Evolution isn't a single theory, so I don't see how you can say it is "fatally flawed".

Better explanation of your position please.

[Sayonara³]

The Second law of Thermodynamics precludes it.
No.

[BlackJackal]

Alright, Like I said earlier the basis here is not to discuss evolution or creationism but to come up with a new theory. But since it doesn't look like that is going to get done without first arguing against evolution so be it. As for the 2nd law it goes something like this: Life is organization. From prokaryotic cells, eukaryotic cells, tissues, and organs, to plants and animals, families, communities, ecosystems, and living planets, life is organization, at every scale. The evolution of life is the increase of biological organization, if it is anything. Clearly, if life originates and makes evolutionary progress without organizing input from outside, then something has organized itself. Logical entropy in a closed system has decreased. This is the violation that people are getting at, when they say that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. This violation, the decrease of logical entropy in a closed system, must happen continually in the darwinian account of evolutionary progress.

Most darwinists just ignore this staggering problem. When confronted with it, they seek refuge in the confusion between the two kinds of entropy. Entropy [logical] has not decreased, they say, because the system is not closed. Energy such as sunlight is constantly supplied to the system. If you consider the larger system that includes the sun, entropy [thermodynamic] has increased, as required.

While it is true that local order can increase in an open system if certain conditions are met, the fact is that evolution does not meet those conditions. Simply saying that the earth is open to the energy from the sun says nothing about how that raw solar heat is converted into increased complexity in any system, open or closed.

The fact is that the best known and most fundamental equation of thermodynamics says that the influx of heat into an open system will increase the entropy of that system, not decrease it. All known cases of decreased entropy (or increased organization) in open systems involve a guiding program of some sort and one or more energy conversion mechanisms.

Evolution has neither of these. Mutations are not "organizing" mechanisms, but disorganizing. They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never add useful information to the genetic code (at least as far as observed mutations are concerned). Natural selection cannot generate order, but can only sieve out the disorganizing mutations presented to it, thereby conserving the existing order, but never generating new order. In principle, it may be barely conceivable that evolution could occur in open systems, in spite of the tendency of all systems to disintegrate sooner or later. But no one yet has been able to show that it actually has the ability to overcome this universal tendency, and that is the basic reason why there is still no bona fide proof of evolution, past or present.

[Sayonara³]

The first gaping hole I see is that Darwinism is not the same as evolutionary theory.

Also I'm not sure you understand what selection does.

[Aeschylus]

Alright, Like I said earlier the basis here is not to discuss evolution or creationism but to come up with a new theory. But since it doesn't look like that is going to get done without first arguing against evolution so be it. As for the 2nd law it goes something like this: Life is organization. From prokaryotic cells, eukaryotic cells, tissues, and organs, to plants and animals, families, communities, ecosystems, and living planets, life is organization, at every scale. The evolution of life is the increase of biological organization, if it is anything. Clearly, if life originates and makes evolutionary progress without organizing input from outside, then something has organized itself. Logical entropy in a closed system has decreased. This is the violation that people are getting at, when they say that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. This violation, the decrease of logical entropy in a closed system, must happen continually in the darwinian account of evolutionary progress.

What the hell is logical entropy'??? if you invent a concept you have to prove that it should always tend to increase. Now if your talking about organisational entropy which is complelty different, it has nothing to do with 'biological organisation' it has to do with the number of microstates that are equivalent to a macrostates.

Most darwinists just ignore this staggering problem. When confronted with it, they seek refuge in the confusion between the two kinds of entropy. Entropy [logical] has not decreased, they say, because the system is not closed. Energy such as sunlight is constantly supplied to the system. If you consider the larger system that includes the sun, entropy [thermodynamic] has increased, as required.

You cannot use science you don't understand to disprove a theory you don't understand.

[swansont]

What the hell is logical entropy'???

Seconded. There is no "second law" for information theory.

[YT2095]

Swansont, I`m shocked at you!

didn`t you know that "Logical entropy" is when the strength of an argument decays into meaninglessness (is there such a word?). but anyway, that`s what it means and you`ll see it quite regularly from 1 or 2 of the posters :)


[edit] that should make me eligable for this months "Saucer of Milk Award" :)

[admiral_ju00]

Reply#15.


all or most of this sounds very very close to a book i read a while ago.
tell me, did you come up with all this stuff on your own or did you simply rip that out of the book?

[BlackJackal]

You can find your definition of Logical Entropy here

http://www.math.psu.edu/gunesch/Entropy/algor.html

I am beginning to think that no one here wants to discuss a new theory for the origins of life. Everyone seems to be stuck on evolution.

[Sayonara³]

I am beginning to think that no one here wants to discuss a new theory for the origins of life. Everyone seems to be stuck on evolution.
Maybe we just don't see how attempting to trash an established theory group using an argument that has been trounced again and again and again is a part of the process usually associated with devising "new theories".

You might see this as a distraction from the topic, but seeing as you didn't propose a new theory - just attacked an existing one - it really isn't.

[atinymonkey]

I am beginning to think that no one here wants to discuss a new theory for the origins of life. Everyone seems to be stuck on evolution.

Well, you have yet to mention the detail of your new theory. Traditon dictates that we wait until you present your theory before commenting on it.

I could try and discuss it now, without hearing the details, but trust me when I say I assume your theory involves Ninjas.

[Aeschylus]

You can find your definition of Logical Entropy here

http://www.math.psu.edu/gunesch/Entropy/algor.html

I am beginning to think that no one here wants to discuss a new theory for the origins of life. Everyone seems to be stuck on evolution.

That's information theory, I imagine it's relevant in genetics but of little relevance here and has no relation to what you said.

[Dov]

On the NO side
==================
(1) "Life is organization"

No more than "a car or everything else is an organization" of its components.

(2) "evolution of life is the increase of biological organization"

No. It is ( as stated further ) an increase of complexity. And this not because " raw solar heat (?) is converted into increased complexity ", but due to ever increasing availability of number of mutatable factors.

(3) "Influx of heat into an open system will increase the entropy of that system, not decrease it. All known cases of decreased entropy (or increased organization) in open systems involve a guiding program of some sort and one or more energy conversion mechanisms. Evolution has neither of these".

Influx in case of life is not just heat, translated into motion, and Life Evolution certainly does have several inherent guiding programs, all plainly scientifically verified .

(4) "Mutations are not "organizing" mechanisms, but disorganizing. "

Mutations are neither of these, but naturally occuring unavoidable events in the complex and vast systems.

(5) "there is still no bona fide proof of evolution, past or present".

You can't be serious...


On the MAYBE yes side
===========================
* Life is a system of collecting, using and storing energy. Compare Life with Death.

* Earliest Life was not yet celled, and consisted of individual archaic genes most probably of RNA conformation.

* Genes are live organisms that underwent and are undergoing evolution, and we are now unable to "roll back their development" for evidence.

end

[Dov]

Probable early life raw materials on earth's surface were CO2, CO, H2, N2. None or very little free oxygen, thus formation of organic compounds enabled, that evolved into life.

Water was the medium enabling life evolution and celling of primary early archaic RNA genes, as lipid bilayer biological membranes need water to form.

The characteristics of the 4BYA environmental energy, that drove the auto-synthesis of complex living molecular conformations , is not now yet known.

Ukaryotes arose via ingestion and development of obligate symbiotic relationships which were metabolically specialized. Chloroplasts and mitochondria are compartments within the cells, bound by double membranes. Their DNA is in a circular strand, organized not like the chromosomes. Comparisons of ribosomal RNA and other molecules have confirmed that they are related to and likely arose from bacteria. Mitochondria were probably free-living bacteria that became cellular endosymbionts and lost much of their autonomy.

By evidence to date mitochondria were acquired only once within eukaryotes. In the case of chloroplasts, evidence suggests that several different types of photosynthetic bacteria contributed to several different episodes of formation of endosymbionts, since there are large differences among chloroplasts and chloroplast DNA.

[admiral_ju00]

i love the fact that the original poster is no longer here to defend his/her position, or propose a new theory......

[Sayonara³]

I like the way Dov is putting all that effort into "maybe yes", even though we don't know what the "yes" is yet.

<3

[Dov]

Sayonara is precise, as usual.

BlackJackal post is "A New Theory for the Origins of Life".

My remarks aim at No or Yes likelihood of some conjectures about origin of life

[apathy]

The "entropy" in Information Theory has jack squat to do with the "entropy" of Thermodynamics. Maybe in analogy only.

If you want to use the 2nd Law as an argument against ToE, then you had better well understand what it says. If you can't pass this elementary test on the 2nd Law you have no place basing any arguments on its violation.
http://home.houston.rr.com/bybayouu/Thermo_test.html

No one wants to discuss a new theory because we are comfortable with the working one. Where is a viable alternative.

Also, we keep forgetting that ToE has jack squat to say about the ORIGINS or life, it merely deals with how it changes over time.

[Sayonara³]

Sayonara is precise, as usual.
BlackJackal post is "A New Theory for the Origins of Life".
My remarks aim at No or Yes likelihood of some conjectures about origin of life
It was one of my "really difficult to spot" compliments :-)

[nasor]

BlackJackal, the guy who started this thread, likes to drag this same argument around from one forum to another. He plays it out until someone who actually knows about thermodynamics shows up and points out the gaping holes in his argument, then moves on to somewhere else. I have no idea why he does it.

[admiral_ju00]

Well, in the light of this evidence, I suppose he's trying to redefine the word Troll.

[budullewraagh]

i still prefer a i oparin's theory

[rbp6]

I think one of the problems is the way Thermodynamics is taught to people who go into it very briefly. Usually very simplified explanations such as a kid's room becoming dirtier or a messy baby eating dinner are used. Usually people are able to get the right idea from these analogies but some people misinterpret it.

[[Tycho?]]

No.

I'm glad somebody said it, I've heard this argument before.

Remember kids, its not that entropy always increases, its that net entropy always increases. So entropy can decrease, as long as it increases in another spot in the system to make up for it.

[apathy]

Oh, the entropy thing is the most tired argument. Whenever someone brings it up they are announcing "I do not understand basic thermodynamics!" and "I am new to the Creation vs. Evolution debate and would like to be schooled!"

For the lay folk, some sites about entropy that aim to clear up confusion:

http://www.entropysite.com
http://www.entropysite.com/students_approach.html

This site has nothing to do with c vs. e, but is the result of frustration stemming from people's confusion of entropy and "disorder." This is the result of undergrad textbooks attempts to "simplify" the concept, but only adding confusion to it.

[AL]

Looks like I got beaten to it while I was waiting for this account to activate....

But in any case blackjackal, you are not taking into account net entropy. Life is ordered, but how much energy was lost in the process of creating it? Everyday you eat and destroy another animal just to maintain your own life. Sustaining your own life increases net entropy.

At the most fundamental level, autotrophic life is also less than 100% efficient. For instance, photosynthetic plants only use red light, out of all the other frequencies of sunlight. Non-red light is simply wasted by clorophyll -- thus increasing net entropy.

There is a lot of lost energy going into life. You are not looking at the bigger picture. Evolution does not violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics; if it did, physicists and biologists would have done something about it long ago.

[blackscience]

Theory...it seems most people don't understand the concept of what a theory is. Theories are not accurate. They may explain some parts of a question but its not 100% accurate. Some test proved it to be wrong or inaccurate. Evolution has already been proven wrong! The Big Bang theory is a guess. The age of the planet is wrong!

The universe has always existed. I guess we forgot about the law that tells us that energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

Most people can't understand the origins of the universe. It takes a certain type of science to understand this, and that science isn't taught in public and private schools or at a college level.

Here's a question. Before anything can be made or created, what is the first thing needed?

[Sayonara³]

Evolution has already been proven wrong! The age of the planet is wrong!
I'd love to see you back either of those statements up.


The universe has always existed. I guess we forgot about the law that tells us that energy cannot be created nor destroyed.
That law applies to the universe as it is now, not before or during the creation of the universe. The laws of physics that operate in this universe could not very well have operated before it existed, now could they?


Most people can't understand the origins of the universe. It takes a certain type of science to understand this, and that science isn't taught in public and private schools or at a college level.
Such as?

[NavajoEverclear]

Alright, Like I said earlier the basis here is not to discuss evolution or creationism but to come up with a new theory. But since it doesn't look like that is going to get done without first arguing against evolution so be it. As for the 2nd law it goes something like this: Life is organization. From prokaryotic cells, eukaryotic cells, tissues, and organs, to plants and animals, families, communities, ecosystems, and living planets, life is organization, at every scale. The evolution of life is the increase of biological organization, if it is anything. Clearly, if life originates and makes evolutionary progress without organizing input from outside, then something has organized itself. Logical entropy in a closed system has decreased. This is the violation that people are getting at, when they say that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. This violation, the decrease of logical entropy in a closed system, must happen continually in the darwinian account of evolutionary progress.

Most darwinists just ignore this staggering problem. When confronted with it, they seek refuge in the confusion between the two kinds of entropy. Entropy [logical] has not decreased, they say, because the system is not closed. Energy such as sunlight is constantly supplied to the system. If you consider the larger system that includes the sun, entropy [thermodynamic] has increased, as required.

While it is true that local order can increase in an open system if certain conditions are met, the fact is that evolution does not meet those conditions. Simply saying that the earth is open to the energy from the sun says nothing about how that raw solar heat is converted into increased complexity in any system, open or closed.

The fact is that the best known and most fundamental equation of thermodynamics says that the influx of heat into an open system will increase the entropy of that system, not decrease it. All known cases of decreased entropy (or increased organization) in open systems involve a guiding program of some sort and one or more energy conversion mechanisms.

Evolution has neither of these. Mutations are not "organizing" mechanisms, but disorganizing. They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never add useful information to the genetic code (at least as far as observed mutations are concerned). Natural selection cannot generate order, but can only sieve out the disorganizing mutations presented to it, thereby conserving the existing order, but never generating new order. In principle, it may be barely conceivable that evolution could occur in open systems, in spite of the tendency of all systems to disintegrate sooner or later. But no one yet has been able to show that it actually has the ability to overcome this universal tendency, and that is the basic reason why there is still no bona fide proof of evolution, past or present.

What the hell are you talking about? You say you studied biology and evolution for years? Then you know how all this works. Look all around you YOU CAN SEE evolution working. It's common sense.

I dont completely understand this entropy thing, or why it has to be a universal law, but it doesn't sacrifice evolution. Doesn't it apply to the general disorganization of the entire universe combined? Stars dying out and planets drifting apart? Hopefully to collapse back in and start all over again.

You are an intellectual weakling and an idiot and i hope your head explodes. Also, your attempt at diplomacy is terribly aggrivating, disgusting to such a degree that not even I have mastered (and never will thanks to your obscene reverse-motivation). Sugar coating contempt is stupid. Conflict rules, embrace it.

[AL]

Theory...it seems most people don't understand the concept of what a theory is. Theories are not accurate. They may explain some parts of a question but its not 100% accurate. Some test proved it to be wrong or inaccurate. It seems you don't understand the concept of a theory as used by scientists. Do not confuse it with the colloquial use of the word theory, which means "hypothesis" or "conjecture." In science, a theory is not a hypothesis or conjecture; it is a well-substantiated abstraction intended to represent the reality of the particular scientific phenomenon in question. Theory in science is as opposed to empiricism, which is observing the actual phenomenon as opposed to its abstraction.

An analogy would be learning to play the guitar. When you start out learning the techniques and how to read music, you are learning guitar theory. This is as opposed to actually playing the guitar, which would be analogous to empiricism (theory vs. practice). Theory in this case does not mean "guess," because you are not "guessing" how to play the guitar.

Evolution has already been proven wrong! The Big Bang theory is a guess. The age of the planet is wrong! Evolution has been proven wrong? By who? Michael Behe and his ridiculous notion of "irreducible complexity," which is basically "intelligent design" in another guise? And Big Bang is not a blind guess. I am not aware of any other theory out there that does a better job of explaining an expanding universe, cosmic microwave background, isotropy and the numerous other things Big Bang explains.

The universe has always existed. I guess we forgot about the law that tells us that energy cannot be created nor destroyed.

Most people can't understand the origins of the universe. It takes a certain type of science to understand this, and that science isn't taught in public and private schools or at a college level. Religion is not science, if that's what you were getting at. I'm sure you can learn this stuff at Bob Jones University, but there's a reason why it's not an accredited institution.

Here's a question. Before anything can be made or created, what is the first thing needed? OMG A CREATOR!!!1 U R TEH CREATIONIST!!!1
You seem to be unaware of the logical fallacy of petitio principii. If you assume the universe was created, then you have already presupposed the existence of a creator. You are using a circular argument for creationism.

[YT2095]

the "creator" could be nothing more than pure probability, some may prefer to call this "God" :)

[mooeypoo]

I completely agree YT, but I just don't see how probability can be god.
I see how probability is the thing that made us - i completely agree here - but it doesnt fit the "all knowing" (it really doesn't care) and "all contolling" (it really really doesn't care) and "all seeing" (you got the picture).

So I agree, but I disagree with the GOD thing.

GOD is abstract and can be practically anything (nature, big bang, yadda yadda). But probability... don't see it

;)

~moo

[john5746]

As for the 2nd law it goes something like this: Life is organization. From prokaryotic cells, eukaryotic cells, tissues, and organs, to plants and animals, families, communities, ecosystems, and living planets, life is organization, at every scale. The evolution of life is the increase of biological organization, if it is anything. Clearly, if life originates and makes evolutionary progress without organizing input from outside, then something has organized itself. Logical entropy in a closed system has decreased. This is the violation that people are getting at, when they say that life violates the second law of thermodynamics. This violation, the decrease of logical entropy in a closed system, must happen continually in the darwinian account of evolutionary progress.

Just looking at my yard: It gets more and more complex all by itself. I try to keep it simple and nice, but it's a battle.

[Yakuzi]

Evolution has neither of these. Mutations are not "organizing" mechanisms, but disorganizing. They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never add useful information to the genetic code (at least as far as observed mutations are concerned). Natural selection cannot generate order, but can only sieve out the disorganizing mutations presented to it, thereby conserving the existing order, but never generating new order.

What about the Sickel Cell Mutation, just to name one mutation even within the human species?


Here's a question. Before anything can be made or created, what is the first thing needed?

Well that either would be matter or energy IMO...
If u are referring to a creator, then who created the creator???

[LucidDreamer]

I think we are just beating a dead dog now.

[DoorNumber1]

I once was bored and grabbed a book called Quantum Evolution by a Brit named JohnJoe McFadden... I think this guy would benefit a lot from reading it. It will, by no means, answer all of this dude's questions (what the hell will!?) but it explains why there can be such things as directed evolution in a system that itself has no external direction and is playing by simple (well, comprehensible at least) rules.

Sorry creationists, evolution occurs. Ever heard of penicillin resistant strains of bacteria?

GRR Go back to school!

[Yakuzi]

Sorry creationists, evolution occurs. Ever heard of penicillin resistant strains of bacteria?


No you're ALL wrong, that's degeneration! Didn't you study your bible ;)

[devance]

There is a new theory, which is animal life, but not intelligent life, very much quickly responses to environmental changes basically by fractual morphing, because of predestionional whole gene complement fractual expresssion.
A linear random mutation pattern of evoltional would not have time to evolve in my opion.
Bryce 5 is a art learning tool for the artistcally challenged like myself and gives some insight..

[inamorata]

Evolution has neither of these. Mutations are not "organizing" mechanisms, but disorganizing. They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never add useful information to the genetic code (at least as far as observed mutations are concerned).

OK. Since the thermodynamics and chemistry are a little out of my field, Ill stick to the genetics. My field :)

Firstly, mutations are commonly neutral, sometimes harmful, and occasionally beneficial.
Nachman, M. W. and S. L. Crowell, 2000. Estimate of the mutation rate per nucleotide in humans. Genetics 156(1): 297-304. - estimate around 3 deleterious mutations out of 175 per generation in humans, of which the beneficial mutations have a higher survival rate than those that are harmful.

Examples of beneficial mutations:

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html - lists a number of beneficial mutations in humans

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoMutations.html - lists a number of beneficial mutations observed in nature

Boyden, Ann M., Junhao Mao, Joseph Belsky, Lyle Mitzner, Anita Farhi, Mary A. Mitnick, Dianqing Wu, Karl Insogna, and Richard P. Lifton, 2002. High bone density due to a mutation in LDL-receptor-related protein 5. New England Journal of Medicine 346: 1513-1521, May 16, 2002. - Results in increased bone strength with no observable negative effects.

Prijambada, I. D., S. Negoro, T. Yomo and I. Urabe, 1995. Emergence of nylon oligomer degradation enzymes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO through experimental evolution. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 61(5): 2020-2022. - confer ability to bacteria to degrade nylon


And some more: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB101.html

And even more: Peck, J. R. and A. Eyre-Walker, 1997. The muddle about mutations. Nature 387: 135-136.

And some more still: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mutations.html, http://info.bio.cmu.edu/Courses/03441/TermPapers/99TermPapers/GenEvo/mutation.htm,

And if you are still not convinced, here is a little more still: http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Most_mutations_are_harmful


And you studied evolutionary biology for how many years?

[Wolfman]

Now everybody knows that aliens came down to earth in their big spaceship with our DNA and created us.