lucaspa

This will move the selection pressures away from what could be thought to be the classic pressures that are found within the animal kingdom to a more select few.

 

So my question to you is, what in your opinion do you think the strongest selection pressures are within the first world and how significant, if at all do you think selection pressures are in current human society?

You have the classic misconception that selection pressures apply to the entire population and that the entire large population must evolve. The vast majority of evolution has occurred in small, isolated populations facing a slightly different environment. Of course, modern transportation technology makes it difficult to have an isolated human population.

So, instead of looking at global selection pressures that would affect all 6 billion humans over the entire earth, look at small, relatively isolated populations of humans for the next evolutionary change. People have done this and it turns out the both Andean and Himalayan highlanders are showing adaptations to living at high altitude.

1. Hum Biol 2000 Feb;72(1):201-28: Tibetan and Andean patterns of adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia. Beall CM

2. Comp Biochem Physiol A Mol Integr Physiol 1999 Sep;124(1):1-17 Adaptation and conservation of physiological systems in the evolution of human hypoxia tolerance. Hochachka PW, Rupert JL, Monge C

3. Am J Phys Anthropol 1998;Suppl 27:25-64 Human adaptation to high altitude: regional and life-cycle perspectives. Moore LG, Niermeyer S, Zamudio S

The !Kung in Africa are showing unique alleles not present in other human populations:

1. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1994 Oct;51(4):460-5 Low prevalence of human T lymphotropic virus type I in !Kung San in Bushmanland, Namibia. Steele AD, Bos P, Joubert JJ, Evans AC, Joseph S, Tucker L, Aspinall S, Lecatsas G

2. Ann Hum Genet 1979 May;42(4):425-33 Red cell adenosine deaminase (ADA) polymorphism in Southern Africa, with special reference to ADA deficiency among the !Kung. Jenkins T, Lane AB, Nurse GT, Hopkinson DA

3. Am J Phys Anthropol 1988 Nov;77(3):303-19 Fitness and fertility among Kalahari !Kung. Pennington R, Harpending H

If you've ever seen the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, you will see the beginnings of reproductive isolation between the !Kung and Europeans.

You might also do research on islanders in Melanesia, since they face a hot, tropical climate and have been reproductively isolated from other human populations for about 20,000 years.

If Nature (Evolution, nothingness, the universe, randomness, whatever you want to call it), which is not supposed to be a sapient entity in itself, was able to "come up with us", human beings, intelligent, with feelings and self-awareness, how come we, the most intelligent known entities in the universe cannot or will not be able to at least match ourselves artificially??

Because we are not as smart as natural selection. We turn to natural selection when the design problem is too tough for us, do some searching under "genetic algorithms". http://www.genetic-programming.com

However, some groups are now trying to evolve AI, not manufacture it:

http://www.discover.com/aug_03/gthere.html?article=feattech.html

I think this approach has a much better chance of success than the direct manufacture approach.

Mokele, my sincere apologies. In replying to your post, I accidentally hit "edit" instead of "quote" and it replaced your post with my reply, under your name. The hazards of being a moderator without knowing all the mechanics involved. You will have to repost your reply to Scrappy, I'm afraid.

And my apologies to all the readers. The previous post is by Lucaspa, NOT Mokele. It's my response to Mokele.

((This is Mokele, I'm copying lucaspa's misplaced text below))

I disagree - Ockham's razor doesn't say the simplest theory is correct, only that it's more likely to be correct (assuming both account for all data). And it's not only useful (as the primary driving force behind all phylogenies), but essential - without this supposition, there's no limit to the number of additional speculations that could be made.

If the theory is only "more likely to be correct", then how do you find out if it is correct? You are using it to eliminate theories that are more complex, but according to your own formulation, you can't do that! Because when you eliminate the theory (such as panspermia), you say that it is not correct at all. But, according to you, Ockham's Razor leaves it open that panspermia could be correct, just not as likely as abiogenesis.

Basically, Mokele, you have cut yourself off at the knees.

I can give you several examples (one of which I was personally involved in) where use of the Razor held science back.

It's basically saying that we shouldn't make more speculations than the data support.

Actually, what the Razor originally stated was that we should not add hypotheses onto the description of phenomenon. Ockham's original example was "objects move because of an impetus". Ockham realized that movement is change in position over time. Therefore the correct statement is "objects move". "because of an impetus" is a hypothesis to explain why the object moves. It's not needed.

In the present situation, the Ockham statement is "life exists on earth". Panspermia, abiogenesis, or special creation are all hypotheses to explain why live exists on earth. ALL of them are eliminated by the Razor.

Now, panspermia is actually eliminated by phylogenetic analysis. If panspermia is correct, it means that DNA is injected into life on earth that has no historical connection to the life that is already present. That's the essence of panspermia: life from outside earth. But phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequences shows that all DNA sequences are related by historical connections. That isn't possible if panspermia is true. So we can evaluate the validity of panspermia the only way theories are evaluated: by the data. In this case, panspermia is falsified.

I do not see one gene could set the tone, as here are a lot of different skin tones seen in mixed marriages.

What matters is the melanin content of the skin. Our skin "tone" is determined by the amount of two different types of melanin in the skin.

http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_4.htm

Melanin is made by special cells called "melanocytes" in the skin. Because the genes for each type of melanin content are expressed the same in every melanocyte, there is no "spottiness" the way you are using the term.

Also, I should think different races have a slightly different genes for skin colour, and therefore they could not just mix, so that dark+white gene would produce light brown as it would in a colour palette.

But it's not one gene, it's two: pheomelanin and eumelanin. Skin color depends on the proportion of these two melanins and on the number and size of the melanin granules in the skin. Remember, people do "tan" and change skin color by increasing the number and size of the melanin granules with stimulation of melanin synthesis by UV radiation (all this is in the website).

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I believe the skin colour solution was of Divine origin.

 

God did not want crossbreed humans to look like zebras.

Sorry, but the data denies that. Melanin content evolved to protect the breakdown of folic acid by UV radiation. If humans have too little folic acid, neural tube birth defects and lack of sperm result. If humans evolved like zebras, too much UV would get thru the "white" parts of the skin to break down folic acid. So the skin had to be black all over (except for palms of the hand and soles of the feet that do not get irradiated by the sun much). Lighter colored skin evolved as people migrated out of Africa into areas where there was less UV light. It turns out that UV is necessary to make vitamin D from cholesterol in the blood vessels in the skin. In northern latitudes, black skin (lots of melanin) blocked too much UV light and resulted in vitamin D deficiency -- rickets. So those individuals with less melanin content and more pheomelanin were selected. G Kirchwager, Black and white: the biology of skin color. Discover 22: 32-33, Feb. 2001.

For those people who believe in God, evolution is the secondary cause by which God created humans. "Secondary cause" is a theological term. You might want to look it up.

how is it debatable of the fact that we as life forms evolve without just random mutations but actually genetic differences to better fit there environment.

What you seem to be ignoring here is that selection is not random. Natural selection is a two step process:

1. Variation (mutations are one way to get variation)

2. Selection.

Variation is random in regard to the needs of the individual or population, but selection is not random. Only the variations that do well in that particular environment are selected.

things couldnt just be random like that. its alot like muscles, we need better ones, we develop better ones, we dont, we dont, right?

No, we don't. Here you are confusing the individual with the population. Evolution happens to populations, not individuals. We die with the same alleles we are born with. Our genetic makeup doesn't change during our lifetimes. So, if we need peak muscle strength beyond what we can genetically achieve, then no, we won't develop better muscles. You notice that no human can clean jerk 300 kg. Someone might "need" to do that in order to win the Olympic Gold in the sport, but he isn't going to develop the muscles to do so.

Now, if we were in an environment where people who could clean and jerk higher weights had a survival advantage, then eventually the population of humans would evolve to do so.

our different skin pigments? lighter skin, come from a snowier place, wich white reflects sun, and also blends in.

brown, from hotter places, like mexico, and alot of america, to not be as harmed by the sun by just getting darker instead of getting damaged.

black, well im sure they have a reason too. alright maybe thats not a good one to use for an example.

The evolutionary reason for skin color has been worked out, and it's not camoflauge. People in climates with snow can't survive without clothing, so skin color blending into snow has nothing to do with it. Instead, it involves vitamin B6 (folic acid) and vitamin D. UV light breaks down folic acid and deficiency in folic acid causes neural tube birth defects. So people in equatorial climates need lots of melanin in their skin (black) to protect their folic acid from UV radiation. However, UV light is needed to make vitamin D in the skin from cholesterol. So, as humans migrated north and got less UV radiation, really dark skin was disadvantageous because lack of vitamin D results in rickets. So, the further north (or south) from the equator, the lighter the skin as a balancing act to protect folic acid but let enough UV thru to make vitamin D. You can read more about it here: G Kirchwager, Black and white: the biology of skin color. Discover 22: 32-33, Feb. 2001.

but i just think that that sounds too far-fetched to belive that we are as we are by coincidence of gene abnormalities that just happen to be perfect for the environment we live in.

Not "perfect", but "better than the other guy". But yes, that's why we are as we are. We are designed by natural selection, not by direct manufacture by an intelligent entity.

When I say "better than the other guy", the design doesn't have to be "perfect", but just a bit better than the designs other people have. As the saying goes, you two of you are running from a bear, you don't have to be able to run faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy.

Merged post follows:

I have no quibble with nature's many ways of making fancy bubbles. You can call them "protocells" if you want to, but more than lipid membranes are needed to make a living cell. What more is there to address in the subject data?

You don't need lipids to have a cell membrane. All you need are proteins. There is at least one way to get living cells from non-living chemicals. It's been done. Start at these websites (be sure to read them!) and we can discuss it further:

http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html

http://www.siu.edu/~protocell/

Bottom line: we have at least one way that, by chemistry, we can get the first life without it being manufactured.

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When it comes down to abiogenesis there are no minimal assumptions. As such, Occam's Razor is useless without a face for it to shave.

Ockham's Razor is useless in theory evalution anyway. The simplest theory is not necessarily the correct one. (BTW, what people call Ockham's Razor is, in reality, a principle formulated by Newton. Ockham described not a way to evaluate theories, but a way to describe phenomenon.)

But there is no evidence of an Earthly abiogenesis. The fact that life is here does not allow any more assumptions than that Earth is now bio-friendly. We simply do not know if Earth was also friendly to abiogenesis, simply because we do not know anything about how abiogenesis happened.

That last is simply not true. Read the websites. Protocells from thermal polymerization of amino acids has been shown to happen in a wide variety of conditions, all of which could have been present on the early Earth. For instance, protocells have been made in simulations of underwater thermal vents. Those are present now and would have been present on the early earth.

What's more, Fox and colleagues did simulated fossilization of the protocells and then compared those to fossils of the earliest life. They are identical.

The pictures are repoduced here: SW Fox, "Creationism and Evolutionary Protobiogenesis" in Science and Creationism ed. by Ashley Montagu, pp 194-239, 1982.

Sorry, but abiogenesis is not a "gap" that you can insert God into.

I am in favor of creating new alleles via genetic engineering, not of replacing natural alleles in the entire population with a single genetically engineered allele.

 

Lucaspa, how can you keep insisting that creation of new alleles implies the elimination of all the other ones?

You answered that one yourself later in your post: "However, the genetically engineered genes are artificially selected for, to the point of eliminating the other genes." You think the new alleles are going to be better: you call them "genetic enhancement" The inevitable result of genetic engineering humans is that, in order not to be inferior to other humans, each parent is going to engineer their children with the new alleles. So within a few generations everyone is going to have the new alleles -- and a loss of genetic variability.

The way to avoid that is to have genetic engineering be so expensive that only a fraction of the population can afford it. You have that solution below. But then you have other problems: you are creating a genetic aristocracy. These people would think they are "better" than the proles and, eventually, change society to reflect their superiority. Of course, you might have a revolt from the proles. In which case, the result would be no genetic engineering.

Also, the original alleles should and will be preserved, be it in poor people who cannot afford genetic enhancement, people who are opposed to genetic engineering for religious, cultural, or scientific reasons, sperm banks, etc.

 

So this is your proposed mechanism to ensure genetic variability. The "religious, cultural, or scientific reasons" aren't going to hold under your scenario. In the short term, you are talking "enhancement". I might have objections to my kids being "enhanced", but they are going to see that they don't perform as well as the "enhanced". So they are going to do one of 2 things:

1. Make sure their kids are enhanced.

2. If they can't do that then exert political pressure to have enhancement stopped so that their kids have a level playing field to do well in society.

 

Your reasons (other than poverty) are only going to last one generation.

 

That's not true. Humans can keep track of many different things at once, as evidenced by the complicated things we build all the time.

 

Because the things are complicated doesn't mean that we keep track of all the variables. Look again at what Thompson said. We tend to specialize our artifacts in a few specific traits and then ignore the other interactions.

 

Again, I am not advocating we replace natural selection, only that we create new alleles that random mutation would not be able to do. Natural selection can still have its say.

 

It can't work this way, unless you artificially restrict the number of people who get the new alleles. If you don't think the new alleles are "better", how are you going to get parents to accept something that might be harmful to their lineage in the long run? After all, when the individual doesn't reproduce, not only do the artificial alleles get lost, but all the alleles. So you are asking parents to risk all their genetic heritage on whether the introduced alleles are, in fact, "better".

 

Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. You either have to say that the alleles are "better", in which case everyone wants them, or you say that the new alleles are a crapshoot in which case no rational person is going to want to gamble that way.

 

Just to keep you happy -- we are perfectly capable of using genetic algorithms to help us design humans.

 

If we don't know the complete variables of the environment, how do we set it for genetic algorithms? And we don't. Also, if you do, then you back to decreasing genetic variability. After all, won't you be saying that the humans designed by the genetic algorithm is "better" than the current humans? Then every parent is going to want their children designed to the new standard.

 

The fitness function in a genetic algorithm is arbitrary, whereas NS has only one fitness function. Which makes the genetic algorithm a more general algorithm than NS.

 

The environment of a genetic algorithm is not "arbitrary". It is determined by the function the individual needs to do. NS does not have "one fitness function". Rather, it has many fitness functions, many of which are contradictory. Remember, every trait comes with a cost as well as a benefit. The eyesight of a hawk comes at the cost of finer control of development of the eye. The speed of a cheetah comes at the cost of more energy used. What's the correct balance between speed to catch a prey (to get food for energy) and energy expenditure. If the cheetah expends more energy to catch the prey than it gets from eating the prey, then the cheetah loses overall.

 

No, NS is a more general and complicated algorithm than genetic algorithms. And, in turn, genetic algorithms are more complicated and general than human designing.

 

Natural selection is a type of genetic algorithm.

 

That's quite a reversal for you! You started out saying that genetic algorithms weren't anything like NS. Genetic algorithms are a simulation of NS.

 

Babies do not go through a phase where they string random words together. Their grammar is very crude, but they make intelligible requests, not random words.

 

Babies go thru a phase where they make random sounds. When those random sounds match the environment so that they get positive feedback -- as when they say "da-da", then those sounds are selected for.

"Four months

At this stage, your child will start to babble, combining consonants and vowels (such as "baba" or "yaya"). The first "mama" or "dada" may slip out now and then, and though it's sure to melt your heart, your baby doesn't quite yet equate those words with you. That comes later, when she's almost a year old. Her attempts at talking will sound like stream of consciousness monologues in another language, endless words strung together. http://www.babycentre.co.uk/toddler/development/speechandlanguage/milestonetalking/

 

And no, when children first learn to talk, many of their requests are not intelligible. Ask any parent who has raised kids what it was like trying to understand children between the ages of 1 and 2.

 

NS is slow but competent. We are fast, and more competent.

 

Again, go back and read Thompson. We aren't that competent.

 

We can look at our billions of base pairs and figure out which changes lead to which medical conditions. We have the ability to copy good ideas (eg to take useful genes from other species -- again to make you happy, these were created by natural selection).

 

All this is irrelevant. What we can't do is model the cost vs benefit analysis of a trait with every other trait in the individual or against the environment.

 

Sexual type recombination (including plasmids) does not generate any new alleles, and that is the only type that is rapid.

 

Remember, most traits are polygenic. You are thinking of one allele = one trait. Also, most genes are pleiotrophic: they contribute to more than one trait. So, recombination will produce new traitswithout ever having to generate a new allele. Now, if we do like you say -- genetic engineer an allele from an unrelated species -- how is that allele going to affect not only the trait we want but also all the other traits that it contributes to? That's part of what natural selection can do that humans can't.

 

And, if you say that you want to let natural selection work that out after you introduce the allele, remember that natural selection is pretty hard on the individual. But the individuals here are people. If the allele is harmful, it is analogous to poisoning that individual (which is unethical).

 

We better let the process that let 99% of species go extinct be the judge then. How can you put your faith in that? Natural selection can neither prepare for the future, nor learn from the past. We can.

 

Considering that we are the result of 3.8 billion years of winners, yes. We can't prepare for the future, either, because we have a very imperfect idea what future environments will be like. For instance, 40 years ago would we have predicted HIV?

 

You can say it is different if you like. But you can't have natural selection without genetic drift.

 

Of course you do! Mr. Skeptic, please read an evolutionary biology textbook. Genetic drift and natural selection are different. I think you are confusing that genetic drift starts with a mutation and natural selection can start with a mutation with the idea that you must have genetic drift to have natural selection. Yes, both start with a mutation. But what happens after that is completely different. Under natural selection, the change in frequency of the allele is deterministic and related to the selection coefficient of the allele while in genetic drift the change in frequency of the allele is pure chance.

 

Genetic algorithms need not have accidents, but natural selection will have accidents. Even if a beneficial allele is established in a large population, accidents can still remove it.

 

If a beneficial allele is established in a large population, accident can't remove it. Instead, accident can remove the allele while it is present at low frequency.

 

You forget that humans designed the designer.

 

Stated like a true IDer! All the humans did was simulate natural selection. In genetic algorithms the permutations are "random". That is, humans don't have control over them

 

But the situation would be completely different. Crops are so vulnerable mostly because they are a monoculture, not because of any engineering. Monocultures have been vulnerable way before genetic engineering existed.

 

How does "monoculture" differ from "low genetic diversity"?

 

We would never allow humans to become a genetic monoculture.

 

How would you stop it? As I've said before, if the allele is "better", then every parent is going to be sure that their children get the genetic engineering so that they are not "inferior". Who would you designate to keep the old, inferior alleles and how would you enforce it? As you follow the logic chain of your claims, genetic engineering becomes undesirable from an ethical and societal aspect as well as a biological aspect.

 

There are things natural selection isn't good at either. Think computers (programmable with negligible calculation error), nuclear power, space travel/habitation, supersonic travel, etc. Think "irreducible" complexity, or if you prefer, "finding non-local maxima". Natural selection has a strong pressure to remain at a local maxima, which prevents it from seeking out a non-local maxima which may be far better.

 

First, as you should be aware, there is no "irreducibly complex" structure that can't be reached by natural selection: http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dave/JTB.html

 

Second, you are trying to compare manufactured artifacts to biological entities that arose by natural selection. There are no evolutionary processes in the environment that will produce computers or nuclear power, machines that travel at supersonic speeds, etc. But that is irrelevant because you are comparing apples and oranges. Natural selection did produce programmable computers with negligible calculation error: the human brain.

 

In fact if it wasn't for the genetic drift which you seem to despise, natural selection would be stuck at a local maxima until environmental conditions moved the local maxima.

 

So? That isn't what we are talking about. We are talking about humans trying to pick alleles that will be at a new "maxima" based on their imperfect knowledge of the environment and the interaction of genes with other genes.

 

BTW, how did you get the idea that I "despised" genetic drift? I just said it was not the same as natural selection. Also, genetic drift will not move a population from one fitness peak to another. Remember, genetic drift is only effective at very small populations -- less than 10 effective individuals. And here the most common result is fixing neutral or even slightly deleterious effects.

 

Thinking outside of the box has its limitations -- notably it is less efficient (but has potential to be more competent). We simply cannot afford to think outside the box all the time, as we would get nothing done. However, thinking outside the box once in a while can make the box bigger for everyone.

 

But you are not thinking "outside the box". You are very much within the traditional box that says "humans are great designers, we will just apply this human ingeniuosness to our own species".

 

Outside the box in this case is realizing that natural selection is a better and more ingenious than we are.

 

Trial and error is a last resort because it works for all cases but is far less efficient. It is "last" because it is less efficient, and a "resort" because it works.

 

As I showed, humans always use trial and error. The question is whether that Darwinian selection occurs in our minds and the trial and error are ideas in our heads or whether it happens out in the physical universe.

 

You are very much in the "box" that views humans as the smartest things around. Out of the box here is that natural selection is smarter than we are. That's why using natural selection to design things was so innovative.

 

I'd like to point out that there are no "physics we humans haven't discovered yet" mentioned anywhere. The new principles are principles of design, not of physics, as far as I can tell.

 

My apologies. That was in a bit I put in ellipses. The problem comes with the circuit getting a clock without the elements to make a clock. To do so, it might be using physics we haven't discovered yet.

 

Another flaw was that the result was based on the specific FPGA he used, rather than the circuit in general. Had he used several FPGA's he might have gotten a circuit design rather than a design for that specific FPGA.

 

First, an FPGA is general. The whole point of an FPGA is that it can change: "the logic gates in an FPGA and their interconnections can be changed at will. The transistors are arranged into an array of "logic cells" and simply by loading a special program into the chip's configuration memory, circuit designers can turn each cell into any one of a number of logic gates, and connect it to any other cell. So by loading first one program, then another, the chip can be changed at a stroke from, say, an amplifier to a modem ("Software, who needs it?", New Scientist, 2 November 1996, p 41).

 

Second, for what I want to demonstrate, that is irrelevant. The point was that natural selection did the designing and, as evidence of that, Thompson doesn't know how it works.

 

I just want people to have the freedom to change their genetic makeup.

 

Do you also want people to have the freedom to own other humans as slaves? "Freedom" does not mean that we should do whatever we want. There are limits on freedom.

 

How is creating a new allele the same as destroying the others?

 

I've told you several times: since you insist that genetic engineering is "enhancement", the result is going to be replacement of all other alleles with the genetically engineered one.

 

No, natural selection decreases variability, and genetic engineering increases it. That is a tautology, you can't argue against it.

 

Sure you can. With data. Remember heterozygote superiority. This has kept both the sickle cell and normal hemoglobin alleles in the population. Also remember polygenic traits and pleiotrophy. This too keeps many alleles in the population. Also remember disruptive selection. In the case of humans, this one is very important. Humans have such a wide range that they face different environments. Natural selection fosters different alleles for the different environments and gene flow keeps them all in the population.

 

Genetic engineering creates new permutations. More permutations == more variability.

 

The fact that people artificially select in favor of genetically engineered genes is also a selection process that reduces variability,

 

THANK YOU for showing how genetically engineered genes are going to reduce variability. Thank you for agreeing with what I have been saying. What you are trying to do is separate the generation and insertion into the population of genetically engineered genes from the artificial selection that you admit it is going to follow. But, when looking at overall genetic variability in the population, you can't separate the two.

 

However, the genetically engineered genes are artificially selected for, to the point of eliminating the other genes.

 

And that answers your question above "how can you keep insisting that creation of new alleles implies the elimination of all the other ones?"

 

The new genes will come at a cost, one of which will be increased risk. Many people will not have them. Discrimination will be a problem, but isn't that also a problem with people who are "naturally" smarter?

 

But now "smarter" is not determined but any family can produce a smart kid. Now you are making a trait deterministic.

 

The society that allows genetically engineered humans would have both their original alleles, and the new ones -- more variety.

 

You contradicted that above. The society that allows genetic engineering is going to have artificial selection for the "enhanced" allele: less variability.

 

The only way it could end in less variety would be if one genetically engineered allele replaced several natural ones, which without artificial selection would only happen if they were superior.

 

It would happen if they were perceived as superior. But then again, why would anyone introduce what they thought was an "inferior" allele? What you have said, and what I have said, is that replacement is inevitable within a few generations -- far too little time to see the possible detrimental effects.

I think the onus for disallowing the intervention of genetic tinkering rests with those wishing to outlaw it.

I'm afraid you have just Shifted the Burden of Proof -- a fallacy. In general, people wanting to change the status quo have the burden of proof.

"In most arguments, however, it is usually the side that supports altering or rejecting the status quo--the current beliefs, practices, and information--which has most of the burden of proof. The more controversial the matter, generally speaking, the more evenly is the burden of proof shared by all sides; and the more extreme or unusual one side of an argument is, the greater its burden of proof. "

"Intentionally shifting the burden of proof, in order to avoid offering support for one's premises, is a logical fallacy. " http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/claims/truth.html#burden

In regards to medicine and our society, the burden is to show that a new treatment is, first and foremost, safe and second, effective.

Mr. Skeptic: Why not let some researchers add new alleles, and then let natural selection either choose them or not. Ie, we could replace some of the mutation process with intelligent intervention.

The problem with this is that we are dealing with people. Do you want your alleles (all the rest of the alleles in your children) being put at the mercy of some researcher on what he/she considers a "good" allele?

The problem I have with your idea of "intelligent intervention" is what I have stated before: in comparison with natural selection, we are just plain stupid. Natural selection is so much smarter than we are that it's no contest.

I can see replacing some alleles, such as for the changed allele in muscular dystrophy or Tay Sach's, to the normal allele in the population. But trying to make a "better" allele? Forget it. We are not smart enough to foresee the interaction of an allele with all the other genes and with all the rest of the environment to know what is a "better" allele than the predominant one in the population.

If you think animal testing is just " no big deal", then how bout you let me lock you in a cage,and make you puff till you puke.

You are arguing "apples" and "oranges". You are saying that the rules we appy within our species -- how we treat members of our own species -- apply to other species. This is a does-not-follow. EVERY species exploits and uses some other species. This is going to result in your starving

For instance, you use the argument of "intellect".

If you think animals have no "intellect", then how about we test your ****ing intellect, swank.

You think because they don't speak, they don't have intellect?

Would you say that plants have no "intellect"? You can't, using your own arguments! Yet you kill -- painfully -- plants for food. You rip them apart. Using your own arguments, you should not be engaging in this behavior. But if you don't, you starve.

You think something with basic ****ing survival skills should be used for our ****ing pleasure.

None of us are talking about "pleasure". We are talking about health and survival. All of the people arguing for using animals in research pretty much agree that painful testing without analgesics on animals for such things as a new shampoo or makeup is unethical. Instead, we have been pointing out that animal tests have been replaced by tests on cultured human cells.

What we are talking about is more fundamental: drugs to prevent heart attacks, relieve rheumatoid arthritis, treatments for heart attacks, cancer, etc. For instance, my current research project is using an animal model of bone fractures where a large amount of bone is missing to test the ability of adult stem cells to regenerate that bone. The use in humans would be to prevent amputation and loss of mobility to people suffering trauma where there is massive bone loss. This isn't "makeup" but rather their very lives and the ability to walk again. The animals are given all the appropriate analgesics (like humans would be given) to combat pain.

Now, are you just as angry at this research as you are about animals being used as test subjects in the cosmetic industry?

ANIMAL testing is disgusting its wrong it shouldnt be done why should animals have to suffer a slow painful experiance and probly end up dead

You seem to have some misconceptions.

First, in scientific research the animals receive appropriate pain medication so they are not suffering. No more than a human in the same situation.

Second, we all end up dead. However, in scientific research the rules are such that the experiment can't kill the animal. The methods allowed for euthanasia are very specific and are all painless.

why do people think its okay is there something wrong with you its horrible animals have the same rights as people

That's the faulty premise. Animals do not have the same "rights" as people. "Rights" are things humans allow to other humans. They are not independent entities that can apply to other species.

I'm a big follower of Dawkins, even way before he got famous for this Atheist beliefs. Dawkins is not only a brilliant man, he's a great speaker. I can listen to him talk all day:D

 

The "selfish gene theory" makes all the sense in the world considering the behavior of almost everything living thing on the planet.

Being a great speaker doesn't mean having correct ideas. As I noted with the writings of Ernst Mayr and others, Dawkins' ultimate reductionism of the "selfish gene theory" has some real problems with the data.

One of those is the fact that most traits are polygenic and most genes are pleiotrophic (used in several traits). This means that a purely selfish gene can't work. An allele has to be able to play well with others because it is not the allele that is the unit of selection, but the whole genome.

Clearly any success would eventually inevitably lead to more crossbreeding and the species gap would be weakened.

Not necessarily. The hybrid would most likely be infertile. Also, "hybrid vigor" is rare when you are talking about hybrids between species separated from each other by many speciation events, which is what we are talking about here.

I just saw a documentary on the History channel entitled "Clash of the cavemen."

I also saw the show. It wasn't a "documentary" and the appropriate caveats were given. For instance, it was stated that we do not know of any particular abductions.

In this 'documentary, the statement was also made that there is no evidence of neanderthal DNA in human DNA. Now that fact is obvious to anyone with common sense and a basic understanding of the birds and the bees. But not to scientists because they seem to be the last group of people who are not capable of understanding why ape, or any animal DNA, especially the DNA of fictitious animals can't get into the DNA of humans.

1. Neandertals are not "fictitious. We know they existed. There are now hundreds of neandertal fossils discovered. Also, they are sibling species with humans. We both evolved from H. erectus. We have the transitional individuals connecting H. erectus to H. neandertals

2. As the show explained, there has been a scientific theory called "Multiregional" (Milford Wolpoff is the most ardent supporter of this). This theory says that H. sapiens evolved by the interbreeding of H. erectus, H. neandertals, and other Homo species across Eurasia and Africa. The ultimate result of this mixing was H. sapiens. Another theory is Out of Africa which says H. sapiens evolved from H. erectus in Africa then migrated out of Africa and replaced all other Homo species over the globe. The DNA evidence supports Out of Africa.

Nevertheless, since again, the imagination is considered evidence in the scientific world, the scientists on that documentary kept insisting that apes or some form of ape bred with some form of modern day human (which is actually bestiality) so that humans could claim our ancestors were apes, or some form of ape.

As others have pointed out, H. sapiens (humans) are apes. "Ape" is the name for a Family that about a dozen species in several genera. The genus Homo is one genus within the Ape Family. But notice that Homo neandertals is also in the Homo genus. That means that H. neandertals and H. sapiens are close in appearance, physiology, and relationship. Therefore it is possible to consider that the two species of Homo could interbreed, much like the species of the genus Drosophila interbreed or the species of Equus, E. caballus and E. asinus, interbreed to produce mules. The mitochondrial and Y-chromosome data, however, indicate that H. sapiens and H. neandertals did not interbreed.

So even though the facts don't verify the theory of evolution,

But the facts do strongly support evolution. There are all those transitional individuals that link H. sapiens to H. erectus, H. erectus to H. habilis, and then H. habilis to A. afarensis. Lots of "missing links" found. All that evidence that God left us shouting "I did it by evolution!"

this is not as simple as popping a pill that makes some stem cells in the the body. it doesn't matter how many stem cells you pump into someone. unless you give them specific and targeted chemical signals they won't do anything.

That's not strictly true. The body can provide the cues at the site. All our research shows that. We never give the cells cues before we put them into the body, but we have had the MASCs differentiate in vivo into:

articular cartilage, bone, meniscal cartilage (fibrochondrocytes), mesothelial cells, endothelial cells, neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes.

1. Lucas, P.A., Warejcka, D.J., Zhang, L-M., Newman, W.H., and Young, H.E. Effect of rat mesenchymal stem cells on development of abdominal adhesions after surgery. J. Surg. Res., 62: 229-232 1996.

2. Grande,D.A., Southerland, S.S., Manji, R., Pate, D.W., Schwartz, R.E., and Lucas, P.A. *Repair of articular cartilage defects using mesenchymal stem cells.* Tissue Engineering 1:345-353, 1995.

3: Schultz SS, Lucas PA. Human stem cells isolated from adult skeletal muscle differentiate into neural phenotypes. J Neurosci Methods. 2006 Apr 15;152(1-2):144-55.

3: Mignon L, Vourc'h P, Romero-Ramos M, Osztermann P, Young HE, Lucas PA,

Chesselet MF. Transplantation of multipotent cells extracted from adult skeletal muscles into the subventricular zone of adult rats. J Comp Neurol. 2005 Oct 17;491(2):96-108.

4: Arriero M, Brodsky SV, Gealekman O, Lucas PA, Goligorsky MS.

Adult skeletal muscle stem cells differentiate into endothelial lineage and

ameliorate renal dysfunction after acute ischemia. Am J Physiol Renal Physiol. 2004 Oct;287(4):F621-7. Epub 2004 Jun 15.

Can stem cells be used to treat/cure diseases and conditions? yes.

 

will the stemtech method do any of these? no.

Exactly. Increasing the number of circulating stem cells by 30% isn't going to provide enough stem cells to treat/cure diseases. The number of stem cells is still such a low percentage of circulating cells (0.15% at the most according to the paper at the site) that there won't be enough stem cells. When stem cells are used to treat disease, tens of millions to billions of stem cells are injected into the blood stream or placed at the site.

The fact that you never heard of a pill does not rule it out.If you were actually to go to their website, and study the detailed information , and very long , and essentially transparent and open handling of the studies,

First, the reason I had not heard of it is because this study is not in the peer reviewed literature. The paper is only "prepared for submission". The paper at http://www.enhancestemcellsnaturally.com/study.htm does list peer-reviewed studies on the mobilization of stem cells. Notice that none of them use a pill.

Second, what you claim does not exist. I did go to the website and check it out. We have 2 studies and we don't get the detailed information. Not "detailed" as a scientist would conceive of it. For instance, What they did here -- http://www.enhancestemcellsnaturally.com/study.htm -- is look at CD34+ cells. The hematopoietic stem cells are CD34+, but the more primitive stem cells and MSCs are not.

The second paper -- http://www.enhancestemcellsnaturally.com/paper.htm -- is a review paper, mostly speculative, and gives no data on the pill at all.

The most primitive kinds of stem cells as produced by the marrow, have been found as 'becoming' healthy tissue.An overabundance just gets recycled out of the system, but if there is bad tissue,it can help

Not the stem cells they tested for! They tested for hematopoietic stem cells. Those can only become blood cells, not other tissues.

"The battalion had come back from Blanc-Mont ridge. No, the battalion was still up there. But anyway, oh hell, let me get this straight. A hundred and thirty-four of us had come back from Blanc-Mont ridge. We had gone up a full-strength battalion, a thousand strong." Sgt. Elton E. Mackin, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines.

The attack was Nov. 1, 1918

Differentiating the water can be done two ways. The first way is labor intensive and requires examining each situation, independently. The other way is to develop some broad based principles that can treat the water affect in a more broad based way. This is less resource intensive but has the requirement of redefining some existing chemistry.

Pioneer, for goodness sake, read some biochemistry.

To begin, the following reaction defines the range of energetics within the living state. O2 + H2 <=> 2H2O

There are other energetics. The most common one is C6H12O6 + 6O2---> 6CO2 + 6 H2O. It's called "combustion" and occurs in mitochondria. It is the energy source for your body.

This is just a way of representing hydrogen bonding.

Hydrogen bonding is already adequately represented by other means. We know that hydrogen bonds are ~ 7 kcal/mole.

What this means is everything in the cell is assisted by a slight reduction potential in the water, which can be tweaked locally and globally, around this bandwidth depending on how the bio-materials impacts the local and global water.

You are forgetting nucleophilic reactions where the oxygen is inserted into a molecule during the reaction.

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~newton/Chy251_253/Lectures/NucleophilicAdditionII/NucleophilicAdditionII.html

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~newton/Chy251_253/Lectures/NucleophilicAdditionII/NucleophilicAdditionII.html

Will someone please move this thread to "pseudoscience"?

Evolution is slow boat if it took a billion years to make a cell, so this artificial technique is too fast.

I'm afraid you misunderstood. Chemistry took only a few hours to make the cell, but that is a long way from a modern cell. The catalytic activity in thermal proteins are about 0.1% of those in modern enzymes. It took a billion years for evolution to standardize and optimizeall the metabolic pathways in modern cells.

This is the perfect way to preserve life in a state of suspended animation. It can't evolve from there. We can mess with the DNA or proteins and it will continue to evolve, but don't mess with the water.

You say it "can't evolve from there" but then say "it will continue to evolve". Can't be both.

Instead of seeing the DNA mutating in a void, I am trying to add its natural environment, water.

Again, been done. All studies of DNA mutation take place in a cell -- water. No one looks at DNA in a dry state mutating. Seriously, you need to go back 30-100 years and look at the research done then.

IThe formation of early protein on clays sort of makes sense, since the dehydration is a perfect way to concentrate amino acids so the polymerization is possible in a sustained way.

That isn't the theory. You are confusing theories. The clay hypothesis belongs to the RNA World theory. It is RNAs that are thought to have been made on clay, not proteins.

Proteins can be, and are today, made in hydrothermal vents.

If we evaporate the water the concentration gets high enough even starting with very dilute solutions of amino acids.

Very good. The most common scenario for protocell formation is evaporation of a tidal pool with a dilute solution of amino acids, sugars, nucleotides, etc. The evaporation will first concentrate the solution and then, when dry, the amino acids will polymerize. When the tide comes back in, the proteins form cells.

Another more speculative hypothesis is that thermal proteins were made on hot lava. As the lava reached the sea, the dilute solution was splashed up onto the hot lava, where the heat evaporated the water and then made the proteins. Later waves washing up on the lava made the cells.

Water set a constraint right at the beginning of evolution.

Pioneer, let's get our terms straight. You are talking about abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution does not happen until you already have a living organism. Getting a living organism from non-living chemicals is chemistry, not evolution.

By adding water to the protein plastics stemming from clay, they softened the intermolecular bonding that kept them solid at room temperature.

The chemistry does not work that way. The reason proteins are solid is that there is no water. Like sugar, proteins dissolve in water.

This also required they assume minimum energy shapes which required the polar groups go to the surface and organics in the center. The shape is now right for these to evolve a way to make proteins in water.

You've got the reason the proteins folded correct, but the result is getting shape for the protein to be dissolved in water, not "evolve a way to make proteins in water". the proteins are already made.

By forming protein directly in water, water is now there at the very beginning as the protein grows using hydrophobic and hydrophilic push and pull to perfect the shapes.

"Perfect" in what sense? Each protein is going to fold. Each protein is going to have a biological activity. But most of those activities are going to be slight. The way to get "perfect" function is then evolution by natural selection.

Once life begins to use ATP energy in this process, it can defy the natural push and pull of water to add tension or energy into the shapes by changing the ordering of amino acids.

Sorry, but it doesn't work this way. ATP doesn't let proteins defy hydrophobic interactions. Instead, ATP is by enzymes to force reactions that require energy. As it turns out, some proteins formed by thermal polymerization can already do this and can, with ATP, make proteins or RNA/DNA.

Before replicators were around nature had to decide on what RNA and DNA needed to look like.

You are injecting consciousness into the process. RNA and DNA take the shapes they do from chemical reactions: interaction with water and hydrogen bonding between complementary bases on other DNA/RNA molecules.

Please, Pioneer, get a basic biochemistry text!. I know there are used copies of the 1972 edition of Biochemistry by Lehninger out there. GET ONE. Look at what is already known so you can please stop mangling science.

Ermm... I said it works without deity being included, and you told me that I was wrong because a deity is neither included nor excluded.

 

Care to explain that one?

You only have half the requirements necessary for the neutrality of science. You've been trying all along, iNow, to shift the neutrality of science toward atheism. This is just another attempt.

As you put it, science only does not include deity. Well, not include = exclude, doesn't it? But that isn't the neutral position of science. Science neither excludes nor includes deity. Science simply can't comment on whether deity is participating:

" To say it for all my colleageues and for the umpteenth millionth time (from college bull sessions to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on it as scientists." SJ Gould, Impeaching a self-appointed judge. Scientific American, 267:79-80, July 1992.

" Because creationists explain natural phenomena by saying "God performed a miracle," we tell them that they are not doing science. This is easy to understand. The flip side, though, is that if science is limited by methodological materialism because of our inability to control an omnipotent power's interference in nature, both "God did it" and "God didn't do it" fail as scientific statements." Science and Religion, Methodology, and Humanism, Eugenie C Scott, NCSE Executive Director; Reports of the National Center for Science Education 18: 15-17, Mar/Apr. 1998.

lucaspa: Now, if we have actually found the material method by which deity works, then of course we won't need to add to that material method. The material method will be sufficient as a material method. The issue is whether the material method is sufficient as the total cause. But at that point we leave science and get into matters of faith.

 

I couldn't agree more, and your last sentence there is exactly my point. Where's the problem again?

The problem is that you keep insisting that deity is "not included". For deity to be "not included" you must have faith that the material cause is the only cause. But that is exactly what science cannot say. Saying only "deity is not included" is a statement of faith.

In my view, the inclusion of such a "god possibility" only offers solice to the mentally handicapped people ..

Probably because they left their theism out of it, but that's just my guess.

So you want to compartmentalize "mentally handicapped". They are mentally deficient only when they talk about deity? Nice Special Pleading. You know it's not a valid argument.

BTW, your picture of atheists seems to include Darwin. Darwin was never an atheist.

Again, what references will you be sharing that show we've disproved the existence of fairies, unicorns, dragons, and leprechauns ... I ask you to please support your position that these things were somehow disproved, and are hence different than god.

Go back to my post of 10-06-08, 2:18 PM.

Frankly, all of the reasons you cited for the disproof of fairies, unicorns, and lephrechauns apply equally to your assumed deity.

WAIT a minute. First you say I didn't give any evidence, now you say that that evidence and reasons (I didn't give) apply equally to deity???!!! So, you knew your statements that I had not provided the evidence were false. Are you so desperate about this discussion that you felt you had to step over the line into deliberate dishonesty?

BTW, if you think the reasons apply equally, please apply them. This ought to be fun.

The reasons don't apply because

1. Deity (particularly Yahweh) was never stated to be material. Therefore you can't falsify it by looking thru the search space.

2. The consequences of deity (particularly Yahweh) either a) can't be tested by science due to Methodological Materialism, b) haven't been falsified, or c) been supported.

I think that why creationist “science” will fail is that it cant reach being a science.

Creationist science fails precisely because it is a scientific theory. It was the accepted scientific theory from 1500 - 1831. It was falsified by the same scientists who espoused the theory.

In simple terms I think, how could they ever prove, via an empirical physical mechanism throughly tested for something that could prove anything dealing with a creator period?

You don't need that. All you need are the consequences of the "creator period".

You test scientific theories/hypotheses by assuming they are true and then looking for the consequences of the theory. Traditional "creation science" has a number of consequences:

1. No or very little sedimentary rock, because there has not been enough time for erosion to make sediments.

2. No stars visible beyond 6,000 light years and stars becoming visible thru history as their light first reached the earth.

3. Isotopes with half-lives less than 50 million years in the earth's crust.

4. No or very few fossils. And those fossils are those of contemporary organisms. Skeletons of ALL organisms mixed together in the sediments.

5. Clear genetic boundaries between the "kinds" of organisms.

Now, if we had found this evidence, we would have (rightly) concluded that creation science was strongly supported and that the universe, earth, and life on earth had come into existence as described by creation science: instantaneously appearing in the present form. Instead, we found contradictory evidence -- false consequences. True statements cannot have false consequences. By deductive logic, creation science is false.

Evolution does not say there is some higher thing nor does it deny it.

Exactly. For Christians evolution simply becomes how deity created.

Lastly creation science is always built on god of the gaps.

Very good. This is true, especially of ID. However, science got its rejection of god-of-the-gaps from Judeo-Christianity! god-of-the-gaps is not biblical, but instead Biblical teaching is that Yahweh created a complete universe that should have no gaps. Eventually science came to the same conclusion about gaps, but Judeo-Christianity got there first.

Sayonara: ""Design" is a flight of fancy which has no evidence behind it, and - more importantly - no functional necessity."

As you stated it, you were referring to "design" in general. There is no indication that you were including "design by an intelligent agent". If you were, then the arguments are faulty.

1. "There is no evidence" is an invalid argument. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We know there are designs in living organisms. Absent any evidence, the proposal that those designs are by an intelligent entity is as good as any other hypothesis.

2. "functional necessity" doesn't work unless you note that natural selection is a means to get design. Since you didn't do that, you have no other mechanism to get what is "functionally necessary" -- the design of the female nipples.

The only way "functional necessity" is a valid argument here is if you mean that the word "design" in general has no functional necessity. Then you are denying that there are "designs" in living organisms. But that brings us back to my point: running away from the facts. It's better to face BlackPowder's "I hear you with the design" by saying: "yes, living organisms are designed and there is a "common designer". That designer is natural selection."

I The question, "do leprechauns exist," does not have meaning, because "leprechaun" is inadequately defined.

From the beginning, leprechauns were said to be invisible. Therefore invisibility was not an ad hoc hypothesis. Fairies, unicorns, and dragons never had the characteristic of invisibility. So introducing invisibility after the falsification becomes an ad hoc hypothesis.

The question, "does God exist," is not just unfalsifiable, but almost completely without meaning. This is simply because the word "God," without further elaboration or specificity, is an empty term, to a far greater degree even than "leprechaun."

Leprechaun was never an empty term. Neither is deity. Certainly "God" as generally taken to refer to the deity of Judeo-Christianity was never an empty term.

We don't need precise definitions in order for words to have meaning. Since we are in the "evolution" section, you must know that "species" has no precise, specific definition that works all the time. Yet the term is not without meaning.

And as with leprechauns, some "Gods" are falsifiable (of which a subset have been falsified), some are not (the "clockmaker", the "trickster") and some just cognitively empty words ("the essence of infinite perfection"). Some are even demonstrably true, as with those defining "God" as "an order to the universe" or some such. So saying "God is neither included nor excluded" is not saying anything whatsoever.

In this case you are making a semantic quibble. Within the context of the discussion, "God" meant Yahweh or a close proximity of the monotheistic deity of Judeo-Christianity and Islam.

Overarching theories like evolution come in essential statements and auxiliary hypotheses. In evolution, one of the essential statements is "descent with modification". But there are/were many versions of evolution, particularly depending on the mechanism of modification. Many of them have been falsified (such as Lamarckism), some are still being argued. Deity or God works the same way: there are some essential statements and lots of auxiliary hypotheses. Therefore different versions of deity have been falsified. Notice who did the falsifying. Not atheists. Theists. You might want to look into how they did that to see if you can use the same technique on the versions not falsified.

However, the God described in the literal words of the Bible, the one the Creationists worship, is falsifiable, and I'm sure you'll agree has been falsified to as great a degree as the more falsifiable breeds of leprechaun.

Here you make the same logical error as the creationists. God (or better Yahweh) has not been falsified. Rather the mechanism of creation has been falsified. What got falsified was that particular interpretation of the Bible. IOW, the literal interpretation of those passages was falsified. What you have done is tied that to the existence of Yahweh and whether Yahweh created. That is faulty logic. You have 2 separate issues:

1. Whether Yahweh exists and created the universe.

2. How Yahweh created the universe.

I can see why you would want to make that error; it's the only way you can falsify Yahweh. But that doesn't change that it is an error.

That particular God and ones similar to it were among the first worshiped, and up until relatively recently they were worshiped almost exclusively.

Actually, no. The belief in a literal Bible is recent. It arose in the late 1800s as a response to Higher Criticism and evolution. It was codified in the series of pamphlets called "The Fundamentals" published between 1900 and 1910. They are online and if you want to look at them I can give you the link. This was the birth of a new religion. The god of this religion was not Yahweh, even tho the worshippers say they are "Christian". Instead, the god is the literal interpretation of the Bible. In terms of Judeo-Christianity, the god is a false idol.

Before Fundamentalism, Genesis was not taken literally. Look at the writings of St. Augustine and John Calvin, among others. Martin Luther was an exception, not the rule. The two foundational creeds of Christianity -- Nicean and Apostle's -- only assert that God created; they do not specify a how. In addition, Christianity has always had a tradition of "two books". Yahweh has 2 books: the Bible and Creation. The tradition has it that people learn from both books and that Creation can inform interpretation of scripture.

Even if you look at Genesis and read it literally, you quickly see that there are two creation stories that contradict. That means that neither one could have been intended literally. What's more, the Bible has it in several locations that Yahweh sustains the universe. The idea of secondary causes was in place long before modern science.

Because of the "ad hoc hypotheses."

Ad hoc hypotheses must be posted after the falsification. But Judeo-Christianity had the hypotheses in place before the falsifications. What you, and Fundamentalists, have done is to be ignorant of Judeo-Christian theology and history.

Essentially, to continue the analogy, instead of giving up on leprechauns when they can't be found around Irish rainbows, we've decided they must be invisible.

This is your mistake. Go back and read what I wrote:

" Leprechauns are said to be able to become invisible. However, an essential characteristic of leprechauns is that they have pots of gold at the end of rainbows." Invisibility preceded falsification by rainbows. You started out with an error and therefore continued on an erroneous path.

And instead of giving up on the truth of the Bible when facts contrary to it are demonstrated, we decide it must be allegorical, merely "divinely inspired," and evolution is "the means by which He creates." Can it be proved wrong? No.

It was hypothesized that Genesis 2 was allegory and that the Bible was "merely divinely inspired" long before modern science found the means to fasify a literal interpretation. Actually, the "inspired" but not inerrant was present in the Bible itself. See Mark 10 and Matthew 14.

Remember, theists have decided that facts have falsified different versions of deity. The fact that people climbed Mt. Olympus and didn't find Zeus and company was a falsification of the Greek pantheon. So, if theists are honest enough to let facts falsify versions of deity, then why would you think they were not honest enough to falsify Yahweh if that were the case?

Definitions are supremely important. That is one reason scientists like math so much, the terms are well defined and consistent from one person to the next. A leprechaun is not defined by a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow so not finding that pot is not going to disprove the existence of leprechauns.

In all the legends, having a pot of god at the end of the rainbow is an essential characteristic of leprechauns. Just like delivering toys to all the world's children is an essential characteristic of Santa Claus. So falsifiying the delivery of toys falsifies SC.

Now, I submit that creating the universe is an essential characteristic of deity. If ekpyrotic theory turns out to be correct, deity would be falsified.

Leprechauns (like God) can be defined in such a way as to be unfalsifiable with 100% certainty.

This is the ad hoc hypothesis I was talking about. Yes, you can change the hypothesis/statement/definition after falsification so that falsification is avoided. However, this is not valid unless the change is such as to be independently testable from the hypothesis it is designed to save.

Yes we can show that nobody has ever found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow and that no other creature on earth can turn invisible and therefore deduce that Leprechauns are highly unlikely to exist but those alone do not make it impossible, just seemingly impossible. As has been mentioned on this forum more than once, it is very difficult if not impossible to prove a negative.

Proving a negative is what science does all the time. C'mon, this is a science forum. People should know how science works. And our stock in trade is falsification -- proving negatives. The earth is not flat. Any doubt that negative has been proved?

So, the original hypothesis of leprechaun was that every rainbow had a pot of gold at the end. Finding several rainbows without pots of gold falsify leprechauns. Now, you can now make the ad hoc hypothesis that only a few rainbows have pots of gold. But how is that independently testable? It's not. It's only effect is to save leprachauns from falsification. Therefore it's an invalid ad hoc hypothesis.

Theists in 1830-1850 pointed to the bad designs in plants and animals as falsification of Special Creation/ID. Theists at the time accepted the falsification of Special Creation/ID. Modern day creationists have introduced the ad hoc hypothesis that the bad designs are due to the effect of "sin" on Creation. Within the designs, this is not independently testable because there is independent test for "sin" among designs. (However, there is an independent test in literal scripture in Genesis 3 where the punishment for "sin" is laid out and is very limited.)

The same can be said for "god". If I simply define "god" as "anything greater than myself" who would have enough hubris to claim to be an athiest?

Strawman. That's not the definition we are working with.

Back to the topic at hand, I think Darwin got his ideas from finches and moths.

You don't have to "think" and throw out an off-hand opinion. Darwin's notebooks have been published and you can go look to see where the ideas came from. He wrote it all down.

The mechanism that leads to males having nipples is relatively simple and well understood. "Design" is a flight of fancy which has no evidence behind it, and - more importantly - no functional necessity.

I think you are going too far. Female nipples are designed to dispense milk to the infant. Males have nipples for the reason you noted: the same genes are in males and they get turned on during embryonic development. They are not disadvantageous enough in terms of energy usage that natural selection has eliminated them.

But living organisms are designed. That is what Darwin recognized and realized he needed a mechanism for: getting the designs in organisms.

And that is what natural selection is: an unintelligent process -- an algorithm -- for getting design. If the steps are followed, design is inevitable. Sayonara, don't run away from "design" in biology. Dawkins made a huge mistake when he decided to coin the word "designoid". He ran away from the issue. Face the issue.

The real problem with "design" has been that unspoken prepositional phrase "by an intelligent entity". But "design" itself doesn't include that prepositional phrase. So yes, living organisms are designed ... by natural selection.

If you want a more detailed discussion of this, I refer you to Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea

In other words, what better way for water to retain its critical role to life than to push evolution in the direction where it could interface based on the same variable that gives water its unique properties. This keeps water always at the forefront of continuing evolution.

Natural selection is such that water can't "push" evolution. Water has no volition. What you have hit upon is what is stated in every biochemistry text I've seen: that water has a relatively high boiling point and can thus remain a liquid at relatively high temperatures compared to other liquids and waters bipolar nature (which contributes to the high boiling point) has strongly affected biochemistry.

Water although just H2O is the most complicated substance in nature with at least 63 anomalies relative to trends of other similar molecules.

That's unsupported hyperbole. Liquid ammonia is also bipolar and will engage in hydrogen bonding like water does.

In terms of speculation, maybe life is evolving to take into consideration the range that is inherent within the water. This is an area of evolution I would like to investigate and discuss in a rational way, even if empirical can ignore this critical variable for a good first approximation.

I would say that natural selection has already incorporated the properties of water into life. Remember, the basic biochemical pathways evolved over the first billion years or so of life and have not changed significantly since. Protein folding, catalysis, etc. already make use of hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, and hydrogen bonding.

I am not discounting the role of C,N,O, etc, but this doesn't work without water as the mediator.

C, N, O do not exist as atoms. By themselves, they have no role. The "roles" for these 3 elements come due to the fact that they combine to make molecules that are used by living organisms: amino acids, sugars, bases, and lipids. So, on the one hand you are looking at the molecule water and the other elements that don't exist as elements in living systems. Apples and oranges.

Pioneer, I think what you need to do is get ahold of the 1972 edition of Lehninger's Biochemistry. The first chapter is devoted to water and it is going to have all the information you need. I'm sorry, but you are trying to re-invent the wheel. However, you seem to be making it hexagonal rather than circular. Before you go off on wild speculation, go back and read about things that are so basic that they are not covered in detail in modern texts. That's what you are doing here.

If we could go back to the science version of the creation of life, and take a sample every year over the billion of so years and dehydrate it , water would also be critical.

It looks like initially you need to dry heat amino acids to polymerize them to proteins. Then add water. The proteins then form cells due to hydrophobic interactions.

We should be trying to understand the why behind this night and day difference between with or without water.

Biochemists have been there and done that. So long ago that it is half forgotten today. The newer versions of Lehninger devoted only a couple of paragraphs to water; there was simply way too much new information in biochemistry and something had to be cut to keep the book a reasonable size (under 20 pounds). So you need to do some historical research and look at what was done from 1900 - the early 1960s.

Perhaps just another example of genetic information, that is programmed in, but not used. Unused genetic info is found mostly in simpler creatures who have much of the same genetic info as humans. For example the sea urchin has the genetic info for a complex eye, and a sophisticated immune system. Isn't it interesting that this genetic info is found in the fossil record in the sea urchin 500 million years ago, yet the info was not expressed until hundreds of millions of years later in more complex creatures. Common designer?

Where did you get this information? What I have found is that sea urchins have DNA sequences in common with humans, but they use the genes differently than we do. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;314/5801/908

Unused genetic information is subject to mutation. Any genetic information that was not used and, therefore, not subject to natural selection to prevent non-functional mutations from being kept would be inoperative after hundreds of millions of years.

This has been shown in other developmental pathways that are suppressed. Unrepress the pathways and you get some very weird creatures due to the mutations accumulating in the unused genes.

For instance, your point (3) about the evolution of the eye is incomplete. From what did the eye evolve in 364000 generations?

From a light sensitive protein collected in a spot on a unicellular organisms such as a paramecium. And the paramecium does indeed have such a spot and the protein in it eventally became the Pax gene that controls eye development in more complex eyes.

And really, an eye can be described in 3640-ish bits? You must be kidding. Describing an eye, with all its intricaties, its interactions with other subsystems, its chemical composition, etc. etc. would take millions, probably hundreds of millions of bits.

Not necessarily millions. Development makes the description simpler. However, my example was just one looking at very low selection rates and thus very low additions of information by the equation. If at any point the ratio of N:M decreased, there would be more information added at that generation.

Now look at the human genome, how many bits are needed for describing it (using the best available compression techniques available)? Still many billions of bits.

We have a lot more text written commenting on Shakespeare's plays than the length of those plays. The information within the genome can be much less than the information used to describe the genome.

Assume, that initially, appr. 3.5 billion years ago, there was no information or just a few tens of bits of information (e.g. simple organic molecules), then it would take zillions of years to evolve to human beings, much more than the universe exists now (appr. 14 billion years) and even more than earth exists and could sustain life after its initial very hot period (3.5 to 4 billion years).

Not so. The first step isn't evolution, it's chemistry. And chemistry can generate lots of information because the selection process involves lots of amino acids per protein and trillions of proteins per cell. In making a protein by thermal polymerization, not every amino acid can be next to every other amino acid. So there is information generated with each amino acid added to the growing protein. Now, once you have proteins made by dry heating amino acids, they will spontaneously form cells when water is added. Those cells actually have more information than modern cells.

It is remarkable that evolution has gone so fast.

Actually, the opposite is true. Recent studies have shown that natural selection can operate at rates up to 10,000 times faster than the average in the fossil record. The question is: why has evolution gone so slowly?

Actually, scientists are coming out in droves disclaiming the theory.

No, they are not. Creationists have been making this claim for decades but it never happens. If you do a PubMed search on "evolution" and play with how far you go back, you will see that the number of papers supporting evoution has been increasing over time (with a corresponding increasing number of authors).

But if people were capable of thinking for themselves they would understand why apes or monkeys don't breed elephants, lions, tigers, bears or humans as descendants

But evolution never stated this happened. Instead, evolution states that the population transforms over the course of generations such that the new population is a different species than the old. Also, if you understood evolution, you would realize that all the animals you mentioned are contemporary evolutionary cousins. They are not ancestor-descendent in any fashion. So no, they can't interchange from one to another anymore than you can be descended from your first cousin. Instead, both of you are descended from your granparents.

when scientists once again say; "We now know that what we once thought was true is not true."

You do realize that this is what happened to creationism? Creationism was once thought to be true but scientists falsified it. The data that falsified it is still there, so creationism will remain dead.

Since evolutionists don't know from which creature man descended because the so-called "common ancestor" is still as imaginary as he's always been,

Actually, we do know the last 3 species humans descended from. Going back in time it is H. erectus, then H. habilis, then A. afarensis. There are transitional individuals linking each species with the one that came after.

So, when you limited the discussion to "common ancestor" you made a strawman.

Either way, calling a human an ape doesn't make it possible for apes to breed human descendants.

Not in a single generation. But then, evolution doesn't talk about single generations but rather hundreds/thousands of generations over which a population changes to a new species. Your claim about studying evolution is looking more and more false.

Nevertheless, if you want to call a human an ape, then what you're actually saying is that humans have always come only from humans as creationists have always known.

"Apes" are a Family of many genera and species. And not all those species are H. sapiens, are they? For instance, no creationist calls A. afarensis a "human". Yet A. afarensis is our direct ancestor.

i heard he got em from a monkey. i could be wrong.

You are wrong. Darwin's notes documenting how the idea of evolution developed are public knowledge. Read them. Then you won't come up with such silly and juvenile statements.

Natural selection is a myth. The fit and the unfit always co-exist in every species. Mating and breeding is what passes along genes to offspring, not environment or adaptation.

But the fit will have more offspring than the unfit -- because they will live longer and thus be able to reproduce more over time. Also, the offspring of the unfit will produce less, also being unfit. Over the course of generations, this difference in reproduction will mean that the alleles of the unfit will disappear from the population and the alleles of the fit will be in every member of the population (fixed). Thus the genetic makeup of the population changes.

Environment sets the design problem. Adaptation is the resulting design to solve the design problem.

Here is natural selection as Darwin summarized it. Notice that it is a deductive argument. If the premises are true, then the conclusion is true. So, can you argue the truth of the premises? Can you somehow argue that the conclusion does not follow from the premises? Let's see you try:

"If, during the long course of ages and under varying conditions of life, organic beings vary at all in the several parts of their organization, and I think this cannot be disputed; if there be, owing to the high geometric powers of increase of each species, at some age, season, or year, a severe struggle for life, and this certainly cannot be disputed; then, considering the infinite complexity of the relations of all organic beings to each other and to their conditions of existence, causing an infinite diversity in structure, constitution, and habits, to be advantageous to them, I think it would be a most extraordinary fact if no variation ever had occurred useful to each beings welfare, in the same way as so many variations have occured useful to man. But if variations useful to any organic being do occur, assuredly individuals thus characterized will have the best chance of being preserved in the struggle for life; and from the strong principle of inheritance they will tend to produce offspring similarly characterized. This principle of preservation, I have called, for the sake of brevity, Natural Selection." [Origin, p 127 6th ed.]

You're right. This little semantic word game you're playing is not wrong. Science cannot tell us that a "super natural cosmic dictator" is not required. However, the theory in existence that has ZERO inclusion of a supernatural entitiy still works as well as can be. It does not include the assumption of the supernatural, yet it performs majestically.

Leaving aside your ad hominem agaist deity ("dictator"), your statement about "zero inclusion ... still works as well as can be" is wrong. Deity is neither included nor excluded. And we don't know that the theory will work in the absence of deity. That's the point. All we know is that deity would not need an additional material cause for the origin of species, i.e., direct manufacture.

Adding the part you did which implies that a supernatural cosmic dictator might be involved does nothing for us beyond semantic correctness, and offers seemingly nothing to an already robust theory.

It is required for the integrity of science. You miss the point. Creationism/ID runs into trouble not because it explicitly talks about deity, but because it offers an alternative material cause by which deity works. It's the material cause in creationism/ID that we reject, not the inclusion of deity.

Now, if we have actually found the material method by which deity works, then of course we won't need to add to that material method. The material method will be sufficient as a material method. The issue is whether the material method is sufficient as the total cause. But at that point we leave science and get into matters of faith.

What I'm trying to do is keep you from injecting faith into science.

In my view, the inclusion of such a "god possibility" only offers solice to the mentally handicapped people who are still struggling to reconcile their belief in god and their Iron Age fairy tales with their empirical knowledge of the natural universe.

Unfortunately, those "mentally handicapped" people include Darwin at the time he wrote Origin of Species, Asa Gray, Woolcott, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Francisco Ayala, and at least half of all evolutionary biologists. It's a wonder, isn't it, how such "mentally handicapped" people could come up with the evidence and theory that you say "performs majestically"?

What we have here is you injecting your own faith views into science. And look at the effect: you undermine the very theory you are trying to promote! That's what I'm trying to do here: get you to acknowledge the limitations of science in order to preserve the integrity of science. An integrity that you are threatening by trying to overlay your own faith onto science.

If Newton had devised a theory of Gravity that was partly wrong and as a result 100 million people lost their lives – then Newton would be responsible.

Let's take this out of science. Jesus founded a religion that has resulted in the deaths of far more than 100 million people. Is Jesus responsible? Or are the people who misinterpreted his teachings responsible?

The “Evolutionary” ideas of survival of the fittest and chance have indeed led to the loss of at least 100 million lives.

First, these are not "evolutionary ideas". The "survival of the fittest" used by Social Darwinists was NOT what Darwin stated.

Second, what we have here is are people warping evolution for their own ends. You say:

they can’t be blamed to what they got wrong about evolution. Frankly this kind of reasoning disgusts me.

Evolutionary biologists did not get anything wrong about evolution. Natural selection does happen. However, some people got evolution wrong and then misused it. How can evolutionary biologists be responsible for that? Is Madame Curie responsible for dropping the atom bomb on Hiroshima because she discovered radioactive decay?

First of all, all animals and humans eventually die, the fit as well as the unfit.

But in the meantime, the fit will live longer and have more offspring than the unfit. Yes, the fit may die, but the unfit die quicker.

Secondly, every species breeds defective offspring and in every species the fit offspring can be killed by predators or disease just as well as the unfit. So again, natural selection is a myth.

Yes, there can be non-fitness related mortality. Your non-sequitor is that this negates natural selection. Remember, avoiding predators and being resistant to disease is part of being "fit". Now, an individual that is resistant to disease may be killed by a predator and vice versa, but even if 90% of the mortality is non-selective, the equations of population genetics is clear that the selective allele will still become fixed in the population.

Unfortunately, I've studied evolution for probably longer that you've been alive.

Judging from the error you made above, I sincerely doubt you have read any evolutionary biology textbook or papers. That kind of error, tho, is often seen in creationist literature. I hypothesize that your "studying" has been reading the misinformation put out by creationists.

When and how have we disproved the existence of fairies, unicorns, dragons, and leprechauns?

 

 

First, you asserted that we can disprove their existence, then you said flatly that they don't exist. Which is it?

If we've disproved their existence, then they don't exist. Simple logic.

For the first 3 they are material creatures that are said to inhabit particular geographical regions. We have searched those geographical areas and the creatures are not there. It is the same way we would disprove the couch in my living room. Search the entire living room and no couch. In many cases, it's not possible to search all the search space, but for those 3 it has been done.

Leprechauns are said to be able to become invisible. However, an essential characteristic of leprechauns is that they have pots of gold at the end of rainbows. Well, many, many people have now been at the end of rainbows and never a pot of gold there. That falsifies leprechauns.

Now, you can modify all 4 of these so that you can make them unfalsifiable by adding ad hoc hypotheses. But then, you can modify and and every scientific theory with ad hoc hypotheses to avoid falsification. In order for an ad hoc hypothesis to be valid, it must be able to be tested independently of the hypothesis it is saving.

@ Lucaspa... I knew that part already. I just want to know what she meant by the "whole" universe and how it relates to this question..

That's what she meant by the "whole universe": dark matter, dark energy, and the part of the universe that is beyond our visible limit (what Arch2008 was referring to). All this came into existence with the Big Bang.

As far as we know, there is no more to the universe than what appeared at the Big Bang. Lots of speculation about other "universes" in some larger "metaverse", but no data and, worse, no way to get any data. Linde is one of the better speculators, but that's all it is.

So,[Martin] could I get away with saying that the Big Bang was an event that "created" our region of the greater universe that was NOT created along with our BB?

No. It's pure speculation that there is any form of "greater universe". So you cannot state this as the fact that you do. Anyone familiar with the state of knowledge is going to hand you your head.