lucaspa

I think Symbiosis evolved bit earlier than everyone would have thought. The fact that the mitochondria have their own DNA suggests that once these were independently living and somehow got inside the eucaryotic cells and exchanged genes. The endosymbiosis theory explains that.

E.coli doesn't always stay in symbiosis with the humans if it gets access to the urinary bladder it causes a disease called cystitis. E.coli has to maintain its ecosystem (i.e. host) in order to stay alive and replicate. Quorum sensing is a wonderful example of symbiosis. Genes sometimes can be altruistic.

First, Dawkins is wrong with selfish gene. Genes cannot be the unit of selection.

Second, natural selection can never produce anything purely altruistic. There must always be a selfish component. Darwin himself stated this and used pure altruism as a way to falsify natural selection.

Third, yes, symbiosis seems to have been around for a long time, since mitochondria and chloroplasts seem to have resulted from single celled organisms becoming incorporated into other single celled organisms and acting as organelles. It's not only that they have their own DNA, but that ribosomes within them have prokaryotic subunits and differ from the ribosomes in the cytoplasm. I'm not sure this is before "everyone would have thought". Remember, there is 3.2 billion years between the oldest fossils known and the beginning of the Cambrian. That is over 5x the time between the Cambrian and present. LOTS of time for evolution of many things -- such as the common metabolic pathways and endosymbiosis.

Fourth, yes, E. coli can sometimes become toxic, even within the GI tract. There are strains(species) of E. coli that are fatal to humans. And example is a recent strain that has the ability to live in an acidic environment, such as apple juice. While the variation opens up new food sources for that strain, the strain itself is now toxic to humans and has resulted in over 100 fatalities to their hosts.

Fifth, quorum sensing is not symbiosis, but rather an intermediate step to multicellularity. The bacteria are acting somewhat as a multicelled organism. And there is obviously a selfish component to quorum sensing. Each and every single bacteria benefits from it in some form -- either in gaining access to food or in avoiding death.

I don't think he's saying that they have the same kind of reproduction; rather, both E. coli reproduction and human reproduction are dependent on the human staying alive and healthy; they both require the same thing in order to propagate.

That would make more sense.

Thanks for all comments...

This passage is written after I have read Dawkins' allegation about two organisms with the same methods of propagation

Are you sure E. coli and humans have the "same methods of propagation"? After all, humans reproduce sexually while E. coli reproduce asexually.

Those individual parasites that cause the least harm to their hosts will be selected. Any individual parasite that causes the premature death of its host creates a crisis for itself: the death of the host results in the death of the parasite unless the parasite has managed to colonize a new host.

Mutualism is simply an extension of that "do the least harm" to "do some good". Individuals that help the host will then have a healthier host with more spare resources for the parasite. Those individuals will have a competitive advantage.

Eventually the cost of producing the benefit to the host will equal the increased resources from the host and, at that point, the mutualism should reach a stable equilibrium.

I think you should read the above again:

The part you looked at has Dean Kenyon stating that the protocells were not alive. However, look above where Kenyon lists the abilities of the protocells: "exchange materials with the ambient medium, grow, cleave in two, fuse, exhibit weak catalytic activiity, and move when ATP is added to the medium. " This covers the 4 essential criteria for being alive. So Kenyon says the protocells are alive, then refers to them as "prebiotic". Oops on his part.

Bombus, you have to read what is actually there by the data, not focus in on key phrases that you mindlessly repeat. Kenyon was wrong on that point. The protocells are fully alive.

Life from chemistry, and then that life is subject to evolution.

What about mutation?

Look what I said: "This ribozyme would be such that one and ONLY one base sequence could synthesize an identical base sequence. Any variation would destroy the ability to self-replicate. "

The postulate is that the mutation (variation) could only destroy the ability of the ribozyme to replicate.

No. 2 is not always required. The challenges of the abiotic environment is just as good.

And what exactly do you see as the difference between "challenges of the abiotic environment" and "competition for scarce resources"?

You are taking too narrow a view of "competition" as being only directly between individual living organisms. I suggest you review Darwin in Origin of Species in the chapter "Struggle for Existence"

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F391&viewtype=text&pageseq=1

I would say the following evidence supports MolotovCocktail's hypothesis:

1. Same subject.

2. Same writing style.

3. Ceases posting after Lucaspa posts on chemistry and natural selection.

Do you, Carl Sagan, have any evidence falsifying the hypothesis?

Survival instinct and adaptability are not equivalent to intelligence.

QUOTE]

 

Pretty relative statement there I think.

 

Not really. Think about it: every species on the planet is adapted to its environment. Plus' date=' since "adaptability" in the evolutionary sense involves natural selection, it obviously does NOT involve "intelligence". Why? Because the species is not manipulating its environment.

 

Remember, evolution happens to [i']populations[/i], not individuals. So now, throw 1,000 humans naked into the Arctic and forbid them to use any technology, they all will die. Throw 1,000 rats into the Arctic, probably 990 of them will die, but the behavior to burrow combined with the luck to have thicker fur will probably keep 10 of them alive. However, that behavior is not conscious, but simply part of the genetic variability in the population.

 

I think the ability to make adaptations would be rather key actually in gauging intelligence.

 

Now you are starting to get something when you say "make adaptations". You are talking about manipulating the environment. The adaptations you are talking about are those individuals can make within their lifetime -- by altering their behavior and/or their environment. By this criteria of "adaptability" -- which is flexibility in conscious behavior AND technology, humans are by far the most "intelligent" species on the planet.

 

It did not “learn” how to be a wolf so to speak in short, or the environment turned off certain genes, I really don’t know save for the fact that it occurs with a great many species.

 

It's learned behavior. The environment in the sense you are using it does not turn off genes.

 

Lastly one aspect I think that can be used to gauge animal behavior is repetition of behavior giving a certain criteria. For instance a fly or a microbe only has a certain range of behavior it will express.

 

Again you are back to a repertoire of behavior.

 

I don’t think you can reach that with a simple on or off switch, in relation to your position how would a bunch of no nothing and simply process neurons account for this, or for human behavior in that sense even?

 

It's called "neural nets". A single neuron may only have an on/off switch, but in a neural net decisions are based on which and how many of the neurons (and there can be millions in a neural net) are firing. Thus different input can give different outcomes, such as the input of humans as prey and the different hunting techniques used by lions on the humans. Since other prey do not exhibit the same behavior as humans, having the input of human on the neural net gives a different outcome.

 

If you want to learn more about the subject, the following articles would be a good place to start:

 

4. M Morange, The Misunderstood Gene. Harvard University Press, 2001. "the genes involved in learning are not specific to this process; they code for ordinary proteins that are involved in intercellular interactions and intracellular signaling pathways. There are no proteins specific to learing and memory but rather proteins that, through their function as relays or transmitters, have been harnessed by evolution in the development of cognitive processes."

 

1. GM Edelman and G Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness How Matter Becomes Imagination, Basic Books, 2000. Argue that a Darwinian model can be applied to neural activity to explain consciousness. In this "neural Darwinism", selective mechanisms on various scales arise, favoring certain neuronal firing patterns over others.

2. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/294/5544/1030 Review of memory and learning as chemical processes.

3. Genes involved in memory formation: http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=106076

4. JG Nicholls, AR Martin, BG Wallace, PA Fuchs From Neuron to Brain, 2002

Hmm, good point. However how are we going to discuss this in any way other than anthropomorphism. Were humans, unless we were raised by animals, or have clinical lycanthropy we can't see things from animals perspectives without making a shit load of assumptions and guesses.

And this is why the thread is silly. We don't have a precise definition of "intelligence", much less an objective measurement of "intelligence" so that we can compare species. All the criteria proposed here have been judgement calls on what the individual (all humans) consider as important.

As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet that would even consider such a comparison. But then, can we really communicate with other species? Maybe dolphins and whales hold colloquia and discuss the subject.

That’s neat but my point is simply that the argument using entropy by creationists is based on a fallacy, simply you have to ignore the fact the sun exists among other variables to make it true in any regard. Entropy in a system was proved to be able via entropy to work itself into systems, this has been proved by electrical engineers amongst other people. The founding for this argument was based on an old research project that reached a conclusion using a certain environment that in no way reflects the earth as a system or as you would have it part of the solar system. Yes, I think its called heat death or something, its one of the scenarios of how our universe might simply die out in relation to entropy. I have no idea if this will come true or not, but for relation to organic evolution here on earth, the argument is little more then a fallacy that shows the level of intelligence creationists hold, or simply the level of integrity they hold.

WHOA! I agreed that the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument used by creationists is based on a fallacy. What I was trying to do was show what the fallacy is! And that fallacy is: entropy can only increase, not decrease. The reality is that the entropy of a subsystem can decrease as long as the entropy of the entire system increases.

I have no idea what you mean by "Entropy in a system was proved to be able via entropy to work itself into systems, this has been proved by electrical engineers amongst other people. " That makes no sense in terms of thermodynamics.

The original definition of entropy is the ability of the system to do work. A later sense of entropy involves the "order" or "disorder" of a system. Your use of entropy in that sentence doesn't fit either of those.

As in remarks to your talking on entropy as it applies to reactions, well homeostasis, is it really a word for equilibrium, or am I generalizing such to much?

Generalizing too much. They are similar.

equilibrium: "A condition in which all acting influences are canceled by others, resulting in a stable, balanced, or unchanging system."

homeostasis: "The ability or tendency of an organism or cell to maintain internal equilibrium by adjusting its physiological processes."

In chemistry, equilibrium is reached when the reaction is going in both directions to maintain equal amounts of starting material and product. It is stable. Homeostasis is unstable and is an active process trying to maintain the system where it is in the face of forces/processes trying to take it out of equilibrium.

I think the latter, but then again I am still thinking the cell came before the code, so what have you.

The cell did come before the code. http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

Ran across this

 

http://arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html

 

"During the submission process, we may require authors who are submitting papers to an archive or subject class for the first time to get an endorsement from another arXiv author."

Cool! I never found that link. As you said, it would not be difficult to find an "endorser" and send the paper to him/her. If the endorser refuses to endorse the paper, at least the endorser would give reasons -- acting like a peer-reviewer. And thus Merlin Wood would get peer-review critique of the work.

Then use of entropy by creationists to denounce evolution is based on a fallacy.

Very much so. It is based on the strawman of a "closed system". Not that a "closed system" is a strawman, but that when you look at entropy you must look at the total system. Entropy can decrease in a subsystem as long as the total entropy of the entire system increases.

Another way to say the same thing is to look at the system (of interest) and the surroundings. The entropy of the system can decrease if the entropy of the system + surroundings increases.

This is what happens when you clean your garage. The entropy of the garage decreases, but your body creates energy thru oxidative phosphorylation (essentially combustion) and gives off a lot of (waste) heat. The entropy of the garage + the entropy of your body and the air increases. The increased entropy of the (waste) heat of your body is greater than the decreased entropy of the garage. (Sometimes I think that creationists dreamt up the entropy argument to get out of cleaning the garage. They can tell their wives "Honey, you know I can't clean the garage because that would be a decrease in entropy and you know that can't happen.")

As you noted, the solar system can be considered a "closed" system. And, as the sun fuses hydrogen to helium and gives off radiation, the entropy of the solar system massively increases. Some of that energy is trapped on earth and is used for a local decrease in entropy in living organisms. But that decrease of entropy is SO much less than the increase in entropy of the solar system.

The universe is the ultimate in a closed system. And yes, 100 billion years from now entropy will reach its maximum and life (and evolution) will cease. I refuse to worry about it.

Overall it simply is a daft argument really in the face of reality, for taking it seriously basically states that the reality we live in simply cannot exist really,

All creationist arguments are "daft" in one way or another. They can't help it. They are trying to tell people that a refuted or falsified theory is actually valid! You can't do that with real arguments. It's like trying to make flat earth theory valid.

Also, there is an equation in chemistry called "Gibbs Free Energy". It tells you whether a reaction will be spontaneous. The equation is: deltaG = deltaH -T x deltaS. DeltaG is the free energy, deltaH is the enthalpy, or heat given off or taken up by the reaction, T is temperature in degrees Kelvin, and deltaS is the change in entropy. For a constant P, constant T, deltaG is a measure of the *spontaneity* of the process.

deltaG < 0 means the reaction tends to proceed spontaneously. This can happen even tho you get a decrease in entropy if delta H is a large enough negative number. (remember, -T x deltaS is going to be positive if deltaS is negative or decreasing entropy)

DeltaG > 0 means the reaction proceeds spontaneously in the *opposite* direction. If you wish to proceed with the reaction, energy must be added to get the reaction to occur. This can happen even if there is an increase in entropy if delta H is a large enough positive number. This is what happens in DNA unfolding. Entropy increases, but you have to heat the DNA solution (add energy) because the delta H of the hydrogen bonds provides a large positive delta H.

Cloning?

 

Great idea. I'd love a spare me I can take bits from when I need them.

I can see that you will be among the first killed when the clones rise in revolt. I'd like to say it was nice knowing you, but really, with your attitude? Nope. Instead, "good riddance".

BTW, with adult stem cells and tissue engineering, you can grow whatever spare parts you need without a clone.

that's irrelevent. all that matters is that:

 

a/ they're not alive, yet are evolving (so, evolution can work on non-life), and

 

b/ they may eventually become life (again?).

Remember the original claims. This is what you said:

viruses are one example of non-life that clearly evolves. it's hypothetically possible that, given enough time, viruses could evolve into something that qualifies properly as life.

Viruses are not a good example because they are not a clear example of "non-life". In order to be that for this discussion, viruses' recent ancestors must have been non-living chemicals. But they aren't. The ancestors of viruses are living cells. So viruses cannot provide an example for evolution to participate in non-life to life.

Now, what makes you think viruses can evolve into fully independent cells again? How do they compete with already existing fully independent cells? They are at a severe selection disadvantage. It's the same reason a chimp won't evolve to a human -- there are already humans occupying that ecological niche!

replace viruses with my RNA example above, if you want, or with genetic programming, which is unquestionably non-living. ... the point is that evolution (as in, not neccesarily biological evolution described by the modern synthesys, but the basic phenomena of evolution) can effect non-life and increase it's complexity, potentially forming life from non-life.

That's the disconnect. What you are talking about is natural selection, not evolution. Natural selection is a mechanism of evolution. I would even go so far as to call it the overwhelmingly important mechanism. However, it is not the "basic phenomena of evolution". The "basic phenomena" of evolution is "descent with modification". Natural selection is the major means to get that modification.

Yes, natural selection happens in ANY system that meets the requirements of 1) a population of non-identical individuals, 2) selection, 3) inheritance. The disconnect is whether natural selection can create the system to begin with! I say "no". Genetic programming was not created by genetic programming -- it was created by humans. Even if you turn genetic programming loose on chips or programs to make "synthlife", did genetic programming make the first chip or the first program? NO. They were created by other processes.

Even looking at your self-replicating RNA molecule, can natural selection create the RNA molecule to begin with? NO! The first RNA molecule that can self-replicate has to arise by chemistry. Once that RNA molecule exists, then (perhaps) you have a molecule that meets the requirements for natural selection.

This is one reason why the protocell data is so great: you go from non-life to living cell in 2 simple steps using simple chemical reactions! The increase in complexity comes directly from chemistry and you end up with a system that has the requirements for natural selection.

wether that happened or not, and exactly how it would work, is not currently known, but evolution was possably/probably involved at some point prior to it becoming 'life' and at least partially drove the transition from 'non-life' to 'life'.

This presumes that we have never seen life come from non-life. I dispute that premise. Yes, we have seen life come from non-life and it involved chemistry, not natural selection. Once that life existed, then yes it met the system requirements for natural selection to work.

And no, what you call "evolution" was not involved at some point prior to its becoming "life". Because natural selection cannot create an entity with the requirements for natural selection to work. Natural selection only works once an entity has those properties -- from some other source.

yes, sorry: i didn't realise you were giving a specific hypothetical example of something that could tentatively be considered alive, yet does not evolve.

I would not consider a self-replicating RNA by itself to be "alive". Instead, it is something that can reproduce but can't evolve. Why? Because it is missing one of the essential components of the system of natural selection: variation.

Humans aren't very good at planning ahead.

That doesn't even address my point, much less contradict it. My point was that war was profitable and, in some circumstance, was very "intelligent" because it was led to survival.

Had we been, the first thing we would have done is try to stop our population growth.

You do realize that this goes against natural selection, don't you? Any tendency to limit reproduction is going to be selected against because it will result in fewer offspring than those who don't limit reproduction!

Back in the time of the Romans, there was PLENTY of land, water, and resources for every person on the planet. People weren't fighting for water or to survive.

Yes, they were. And it illustrates my point about the "intelligence" of war. The Vandals were starving. Invading Rome and taking their food and wealth kept them alive. For the Vandals, war was the "intelligent" thing to do. Just as making "war" on sharks is the "intelligent" thing for dolphins to do. Otherwise, sharks eat dolphins.

Dolphins cooperate with the other dolphins in their pod to deal with sharks. Humans cooperate with the other humans in their tribe to deal with other tribes. Sounds pretty much the same to me.

Why do you devalue the process of finding food.

I don't. I am disputing the factuality of your statement "They are very bright animals and their entire lives are spent in play." Dolphins do NOT spend their entire lives in play.

That is probably the smartest thing you can do.

But you didn't list that as a criteria for intelligence to begin with, did you? You said dolphins were intelligent because they played. Now you are changing the criteria.

Natureboy, that is not a good scientific thing to do. You are starting with a conclusion: dolphins are the most intelligent animal. Then you are looking for rationalizations of that conclusion.

Instead, what you want to do is start by asking: what constitutes intelligence and how do we compare intelligence? Set your criteria first and then look to see which animal most closely meets those criteria. maybe dolphins are the ones that best meet the criteria, maybe they aren't.

What I did was look at your criteria and then looked to see if dolphins really met the criteria. Your criteria was "play all the time". OK, that is your criteria for being "intelligent". So, do dolphins really play all the time? Nope.

Human's work 8 hours a day, 8 hours a day to put food on their table. Sometimes more. How many hours a day do you think a dolphin spends finding dinner?

More than that. Humans today work less for their material wealth than at any time in history. This is due to our technology. Go back even 50 years and look at the hours farmers put in. After all, they are the ones getting food primarily -- growing it themselves. My great-uncles routinely worked 12-14 hour days seven days a week. OK, they were producing food not only for themselves but for lots of other people. Perhaps if they didn't have to produce the extra food they could have worked less. But go back to the farmers in the 1770s. They were pretty self-reliant and produced only for themselves. They also made their own clothes and many of their own tools and built their own houses. How long did they work? At least 12-14 hours a day! Actually longer, since even when "resting" in the evening they were repairing tools and mending clothes.

You are at war right now and have been ever since I was born 26 years ago.

No, I am not at war. The country I live in is at war. A very small percentage of the citizens are involved in that war. The rest of us have nothing to do with it. We are at peace. No combat at all.

That's the point you are missing: you are equating the country with the individual. On an individual basis, humans are NOT warlike. Even tho there is A war going on somewhere in the world all the time, very few people are actually at war.

Play is the human definition of a good life.

Why? Says who? You put this out there as "fact", but your own data refute this: we don't maximize our time at play. Again, it looks like you are doing things backwards. The question should be: what is the human definition of a "good life"? Based on what humans actually DO, the definition of a "good" life is that we work. This is what we empirically consider "good" because we make the conscious choice to do it.

What you have done is start from your conclusion: play is good. Then you look around and see that people don't play. Rather than change your conclusion, you say we aren't "intelligent" because we don't fit your conclusion.

Back in the time of the Romans, there was PLENTY of land, water, and resources for every person on the planet. People weren't fighting for water or to survive.

Again, I dispute the factual basis of this statement. Based on their technology, no, there wasn't enough land, water, or resources for people to survive. The reason the "barbarians" overran the Roman Empire was that they had more people than their resources could support. It was either fight and conqueor the Romans or starve. What you have overlooked is that technology expands resources.

We fight amongst our own species more than any other mammal, and certainly more than dolphins.

Have you considered that humans do this because we really don't have any competition from OTHER species? For most species, the "fights" are either against the environment itself or against other species. For instance, cacti are "fighting" the lack of rain in the desert. Maple saplings in the forest are fighting other saplings for water, sunlight, and soil. Dolphins are fighting sharks. However, humans can manipulate their environment and we are so technologically superior to every other species that there is no competition with them for resources. So ... the competition is between human tribes for scarce resources.

They are brilliant animals and are more intelligent than humans in the things that really matter.

Define "brilliant". As you noted, in two categories of "brilliance" -- math and conversation -- you admit dolphins are not. So what do you mean by "brilliant"? Also, you have stated "in the things that really matter". This means that you are not using an objective criteria for "intelligent" but rather a judgement call that you are making. What you consider "really matter". So why should we accept your judgement here? What makes your judgement of what "really matter" superior to the judgement of anyone else?

that's not entirely true.

 

at some point, evolution starts having an effect, and it's not proven required that this point be after life has formed.

We have two different ideas going here, Dak. "Effect" in getting life from non-life or "effect" on that life.

Viruses are not a good example because they are not going from non-life to life. Instead, they are going from independent living organisms to as simple a parasite as you can get. IOW, the ancestors of viruses are NOT non-life, but rather living cells that gave up independence for parasitism.

So, your statement " given enough time, viruses could evolve into something that qualifies properly as life" is backwards. Viruses started out as "something" that already qualified as "alive" and has evolved toward parasitism so far that they no longer have independent metabolism.

in fact, i believe a large thrust of abiogenesis theory is trying to figure out how evolution could apply to non-life, is it not?

Not really. The focus is trying to figure out how to get directed protein synthesis. And, for that, evolution by natural selection would play a role. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to confuse the two concepts: life and directed protein synthesis. You can have one without the other.

if the RNA molecules degraded, then there would be evolutionary forses increasing the frequency of stable RNA molecules in your example, as the more stable ones would exist for longer,

I'm sorry, but you misunderstood what I was saying. Let me try again. I am not talking about "degrading". Instead, I am talking about variations of the self-replicating RNA molecule. What if there is one and ONLY one base sequence that allows replication? That means that any change in base sequence (variation introduced by reproduction) means a non-functional RNA molecule -- a molecule that can't self-replicate. So we would have only 2 possibilities: a base sequence that can self-replicate and all other base sequences that can't. There is no possible evolution because there is no variation in the base sequence. Do you follow now?

What we are saying is that there must be several different base sequences that ALL self-replicate. Then a variation that was "longer-lived" (= more stable) would indeed predominate in the population because it would produce more offspring. And the characteristics of the population would shift to that variation. We might then find other variations (base sequences) that could bind to proteins or lipids and still continue to self-replicate.

But all that presumes that there are many base sequences all of which self-replicate, in which case there can be selection based on what they ALSO do in addition to self-replicate.

The April 13 Science has 2 articles looking further at "soft tissues" in fossils. They are actually using mass spectrophotometry to get the amino acid sequences of the type I collagen in bones! They did 2 fossils: a 100,000 to 600,000 year old mammoth and the 65 Mya T. rex fossil.

The paper describes quite elaborate techniques to get the amino acid sequences. First they demineralize the bone with EDTA, then extract the protein. 90% of protein in bone is type I collagen. They then do a trypsin digest of the collagen and purify the resulting peptides. Trypsin cleaves proteins where there is an arginine or lysine. Thus, each species will give slightly different peptides depending where the lysine or arginine comes in the sequence in their collagen. But type I collagen is highly conserved, so the mass spec of trypsin fragments from the mammoth and T rex collagen can be compared to the known amino acid sequences of the mass spec from existing species where this has been done. This gives the amino acid sequences for those fragments from the mammoth and T. rex.

It turns out that only about 38% of the amino acid sequence for the mammoth could be determined this way, but that is 38% more than we knew before. Only 7 fragments could be identified from the T. rex, but that represents sequences of over 50 amino acids we didn't know before.

It was enough to show that the modern animal with the closest sequence of type I collagen to T. rex is the chicken. Not much of a surprise, but independent support that birds are the closest living relatives to dinos.

You misunderstand. I did not say "new information is not added", I said that the claim "new information is added from nowhere" is false.

 

The reason for only addressing the novel combinations in selection is because the "garbled data" argument is the only one I have seen coming from the creationist camp (ref: Phil Fernandes and his buddies).

You made two statements and I was principally addressing the second: "Evolutionary theory proposes that novel combinations of existing information arise through selective mechanisms, and the claim is well-evidenced."

You limited evolutionary theory to "novel combinations of existing information". I am disputing that. Evolutionary theory also proposes the addition of new information. I went on to document how this is done.

Duplicating chromosomes and genes adds new information that does not arise from different combinations. In that case, you do get DNA de novo!

Also, the information equations say that new information does arise from selection. NOT from novel combinations. Instead, information is generated.

So relax. Evolution does have mechanisms for adding new information. Don't fixate on the "from nowhere". There is a "where". It's just that the "where" is not direct manufacture by an intelligent entity. Which, after all, is what creationists are getting at, isn't it? Their ultimate claim is that "information" must result from direct manufacture by an intelligent entity.

However, if you insist that evolution only rearrange existing information, you back yourself into a dead end. And end up denying data. After all, it is obvious that birds have more information than their dino ancestors in the formation of the beak. In embryological development, birds form teeth (like reptiles) but then have the additional information to resorb them!

It is even obvious that antibiotic resistant bacteria have more information than non-resistant bacteria. Tetracycline antibiotic resistant bacteria have ribosomes with all the old information of "bind the mRNA and tRNA" and ADD the information "but do not bind tetracycline". If we were writing this as a series of instructions or software code, that is a separate line that must be added.

So my advice is stop conceding "no new information" and simply point out how evolution adds information.

Evolution by natural selection applies to species really, but the principle is applicable to the formation of life itself.

Sorry, but evolution does NOT apply to the formation of life itself. That is chemistry. Once you get life, then you can look to see IF that life is such as to be able to evolve and be the object of natural selection.

As an example, look at this discussion of protocells:

"The ease with which such protocell units arise under possible primitive Earth conditions has been abundantly documented, especially in the elegant experiments of Sidney Fox and his collaborators on the proteinoid microspheres. .. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that preformed primitive polypeptides (proteinoids) have properties enabling them to aggregate spontaneously to form remarkably uniform spherical units of bacterial dimensions which contain complex internal morphology including a double wall, exchange materials with the ambient medium, grow, cleave in two, fuse, exhibit weak catalytic activiity, and move when ATP is added to the medium. Protocells containing both proteinoid and polynucleotide have been shown to carry on a primitive kind of protocoding activity (27,29) The proteinoid microsphere is a compelling model for the high-probability prebiotic origin of discrete individual units of evolving organic mattter which could conceivably compete with one another and thus provide the basis for a primitive selection process." Dean H. Kenyon, Prefigured ordering and protoselection in the origin of life. In The Origins of Life and Evolutionary Biochemistry, ed. Dose, Fox, Deborin, and Pavlovskaya, 1974, pg 211.

In the RNA world, you could envision a self-replicating molecule but it could not evolve. This ribozyme would be such that one and ONLY one base sequence could synthesize an identical base sequence. Any variation would destroy the ability to self-replicate. In that situation, you would have a self-replicating molecule (what you call "life"), but it could not evolve by natural selection because there could be no competition.

For natural selection you need:

1. Functional variations among individuals.

2. Selection by a competition for scarce resources.

3. Inheritance.

Now, once you get a living organism, the rate of reproduction is geometric but the rate of increasing resources is arithmetic. Therefore, eventually there will be competition for scarce resources and, thus, selection.

It never ceases to amaze me how peoples' faith in peoples' inspiration can blind people so much to be so ignorant of such indisputable facts. Surely, it must be due to childhood experiences.

No. Scientists can also be blind to indisputable facts. Anyone can get so emotionally attached to a theory/idea that they can't give it up. There were phlogiston chemists who went to their graves rather than admit that phlogiston was wrong.

Einstein made himself a laughingstock within the physics community and failed to make any substantive contribution to physics after 1930 because of his refusal to give up pure determinism and admit the indisputable facts of quantum mechanics -- despite the fact that his Nobel Prize was awarded for helping to found QM!

On the side of science in the science vs creationism exchange, we can see the emotional involvement of scientists when creationists attack the reliability of science as a means of knowing. See the attached file -- which is part of an academic article analyzing the emotional issues in the creationism/evolution exchange.

It requires uncommon mental discipline to ALWAYS maintain the ideal attitude expressed by Milgrom:

"As its inventor, I would like it [MOND] to be a revolution, but I look at it coolly," says Milgrom. "I will be very sad, but not shocked if turns out to be dark matter." C Seife, Radical gravity theory hits large scale snag. Science 292: 1629, June1, 2001

Also, I would ask you to cut the rank and file creationsts some slack and compassion. They have been lied to by people they trust. Just like the person who buys a lemon from an unscrupulous used car salesman, they are victims. The people who deserve your disgust and contempt are the professional creationists who take advantage of this trust and put out misinformation that they know is wrong. aTruthSeeker is getting conned.

Berry-threat to science.txt

Or a common Creator/Designer... If you look at the work of an artist, you can see commonalities from piece to piece. Sometimes you can look at a piece of art and say " that looks like the work of..." only to later find out it was created by that artist.

People tried that. Unfortunately, there are species that simply won't fit that.

What you have to understand is that "evidence for" is not what you want to look at. So when you say

I believe that the evidence for the flood of Noah's day is very persuasive.

There are many ways to interpret what we see. I think that it is interesting that the "geologic column" has only found in the "correct order" (as far as rock types and index fossils are concerned) in 7 +/- places in the world. Many times there are petrified trees standing vertically, through many of the layers.

What is your source for this? I will tell you right now that you have been lied to. I know from my reading that parts of the geologic column were correlated at hundreds of sites in Europe and America in the early 1800s. That is hnow Sedgwick, Buckland, and others formulated the geological maps of Europe and the eastern US.

And no, petrified trees are fallen and lay horizontally.

Also, some of the trees are found upside down! I feel that this is evidence for a very large flood.

And if you look, the hypothesis is for a very violent LOCAL flood. But because of geological evidence that could NOT be formed by a flood, we know that a universal flood is wrong.

Layers will form and the bugs and animals will be sorted according to density in the various layers. If you did the same thing on a much larger scale, say the whole planet, you would also want to take into consideration the natural location of certain species (fish and other aquatic life at the lower places, land dwelling animals in the middle, and birds at the top)

But that isn't what we see. For instance, cartilaginous and bony fishes are the same size and density. Therefore they SHOULD be sorted the same if your theory is correct. BUT, we find cartilaginous fishes always BELOW the bony fishes of the same size and density. That is an example of evidence that refutes or falsifies a theory. And it is why such evidence is the really important evidence.

I would love to have a discussion with you about this. I promise to keep an open mind. So, lets do our best to lay aside all presuppositions (knowing that it is impossible for either of us to entirely eliminate them) and begin. We can begin anywhere you like, but lets tackle one issue at a time. I don't want to believe in anything but the truth, even if it is painful. I am no troll, so throw me a bone. What do you consider to be the most convincing evidence of evolution?

Please remember that the scientific community started with young earth creationism as THE accepted theory. What happened was that the data convinced them that young earth creationism -- including Noah's Flood -- was wrong. Even then, many scientists did not give up all of creationism immediately. Instead, they waited until the data also showed that special creation was wrong.

For instance, Rev. Adam Sedgwick was professor of Geology at Cambridge in the first half of the 1800s. He was also President of the Royal Geological Society for over a decade. He started out as a Flood Geologist and creationist. By 1831 the data had convinced him that Noah's Flood never happened, and he publicly announced this as he finally retired as President of the Royal Geological Society. IOW, he admitted that his "bias" had been wrong. However, he remained a special creationist in that he thought that God had specially created each species and that they did not change.

The same can be said of Charles Lyell. Lyell's Principles of Geology, published in 1830-1832, did much to put the final nails in the coffin for Flood Geology. Yet in that book Lyell still affirmed special creation. However, 20 years later the data Darwin and others had gathered convinced him that special creation was wrong and that species had evolved.

There is no ONE piece of evidence. Instead, there are literally tens of thousands of pieces of evidence.

One area that is often convincing is phylogenetic analysis. IF creationism is true and there are separate "kinds", then the sequences of bases in DNA should be independent observations. That is, since one "kind" cannot transform to another "kind", there should be barriers to changes in DNA sequences for inheritance. OTOH, evolution says "descent with modification", which means DNA sequences should be related by historical connection.

During the 1980s technology provided the means to cheaply and easily sequence DNA. The sequences from hundreds of species from widely different taxa were sequenced and compared. Were the sequences independent observations as would be true if creationism were true? NO! Instead, the sequences are related by historical connections -- which is what evolution predicts. DM Hillis, Biology recapitulates phylogeny, Science (11 April) 276: 276-277, 1997. Primary articles are JX Becerra, Insects on plants: macroevolutionary chemical trends in host use. Science 276: 253-256, 1997; VA Pierce and DL Crawford, Phylogenetic analysis of glycolitic enzyme expression, Science 276: 256-259; and JP Huelsenbeck and B Rannala, Phylogenetic methods come of age: testing hypotheses in an evolutionary context. Science 276: 227-233, 1997.

(Science is in any public library, so you can look up the articles for yourself)

Another study which encapsulates evolution is 1. G Kilias, SN Alahiotis, and M Pelecanos. A multifactorial genetic investigation of speciation theory using drosophila melanogaster Evolution 34:730-737, 1980.

This one is more difficult to find and you'll need a university library. We can discuss the paper in detail if you want. But to summarize, the researchers took "fruit flies" from the wild and then divided them into different populations in the lab. Drosophila has a generation time of 1 week and the experiment ran for 5 years or 2500 generations. They put the flies in temperature colder than the wild and on different diets. After 5 years they compared the lab populations to each other and to fresh-caught wild flies. They were testing both 1) the formation of new species and 2) natural selection.

They found that the control flies in the lab (same environment as the wild) and fresh caught wild flies freely interbred to produce fertile offspring. IOW, they were still the same species. But the flies in different environments in the lab did not breed with either the control population or wild flies or, if they did breed, the offspring were not fertile. IOW, they were now different species.

The researchers then looked at about a dozen common proteins to get an idea of the genetic difference between the new species and the old. They found a 3% genetic difference between species. When looking at comparable proteins in chimps and humans, the difference is less than 1%. So, evolution by natural selection had produced not only new species, but had produced a greater genetic difference than we find between chimps and humans!

Some other websites for you to look at:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/

http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/farabee/BIOBK/BioBookEVOLII.html

http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/

http://home.earthlink.net/~misaak/guide/list.html

http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/evolk12/evoops.htm

http://www.christianforums.com/t96639

Oh yes it does...

Strictly speaking, evolution does not explain the origin of life. Evolution assumes the existence of living organisms and doesn't care how they got here. Once here, life evolves.

Abiogenesis is the area that attempts to explain the origin of life. I call it an "area" or "discipline" because abiogenesis is not A theory, but instead there are several theories of abiogenesis. The RNA World is one theory within abiogenesis. Fox's protocells are another. Hypercycles is a third.

If you had an organism that was rendered sterile by any functional change in its genetic code relative to the population's progenitor, then you would have a population for which evolution was impossible.

You wouldn't have a population! If all the members of the population are sterile, then they die and there is no population.

In order to have a population -- as opposed to a single generation (which is what you are proposing) -- then you have to have reproduction.

In fact, since the definition of "life" mandates the ability to reproduce, you could argue that your coral or bryozoan colony has ceased to be "alive".

Better question is this... is evolution real and scientifically observable?

Yes.

If we evolved from apes, why do we still have apes... and why aren't they turning human?

Sigh. I can see that you are going to repeat a lot of creationist fallacies.

How do we know if the earth is really billions of years old? Have we concluded that by presupposing that life MUST have come from evolution?

To answer your second question: NO! That the earth is young was falsified by 1831, 27 years BEFORE Darwin published Origin of Species. The people who showed the earth was old were all creationists.

If we date the layers of the "geologic column" by "index fossils" and date the "index fossils" by the layer that we find them in the "geologic column", isn't that circular reasoning?

It would be IF that had been what was done. But it didn't happen that way. Long before evolution was an accepted theory geologists noted empirically that fossils appeared in unalterable order in strata. Pure empiricism. It was then noted that some fossils were only associated with particular strata. Usually these were small animals -- such as foraminifera. In conjunction with other means of identifying the strata, this allowed for relative dating and comparing strata from different parts of the world. It helped identify when some strata were missing from the column at particular locations (due to erosion).

Why are we still missing the "missing link"? Since we have so many species of animals and plants on earth, shouldn't there be a fossil record of transitional species... even a few examples would be nice.

There are thousands of examples of transitional species. Archeopteryx is a famous one. So is Acanthostega. There are also examples of sequences of transitional individuals linking species and from species to species linking higher taxa. The creationists, quite simply, lie about the lack of transitional fossils.

Why would we give unintelligent forces credit for creating life, when we as intelligent beings can not create life without borrowing it from something living? We know all of the chemicals that make up a living creature, but why can't we assemble them into a living being?

As I noted, we have seen the chemical reactions that form life. Been done.

What about irreducible complexity? If a creature can not live without certain parts, what did it do before it evolved to have those parts? And what on earth would the first living being eat anyway?

Here is a paper showing that any "irreducibly complex" system can be made by Darwinian evolution: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/JTB.html

The first cell ate the amino acids and sugars made by the Miller-Urey (and other) reactions.

Why is spontaneous generation of life still being taught in our schools when Louis Pasteur disproved it back in 1859?

Because abiogenesis is different from spontaneous generation! Once again the creationists have committed false witness. Spontaneous generation was the theory that multicellular, complex life arose from decaying living matter. Mice from grain, maggots from rotting meat, etc.

Abiogenesis is the idea that life can arise from non-living chemicals.

I don't know of a kinder way to tell you this, but you have been conned by the professional creationists. For people who profess to be Judeo-Christians, they violate the 9th Commandment on a regular basis. Stick around here, ask questions, and we will provide you with the correct information.

Just remember: evolution is NOT atheism