Evolution hard to grasp

[Anarchaus]

I just cannot rationalize the "compitition of the molecules" thing, and i cannot think of how random mutaions can kickstart life, I mean

 

DNA says nothing unless you have a language to speak it in.

the probibility problem

every other process in nature does not rely on "chance"

 

The accretion of mass into protogalaxies for example, random chance I think not

accretion of dust and gas in the solarsystem random chance, again, no, also the ability of mechanical systems(like water in a bathtub) automatically find equalibrium random occurances? no Physics the universe is chock full of examples of things automatically getting more complex, and "finding" equilibrium all on their own.

life, in all this confusion (according to darwinian evolution) is the odd one out.

Controlled by random chance, and enviromental constrictions only? I cannot honestly belive that. Yes I am well aware of the lack of conclusive evidence to promote this theory, but just look at life, can you honestly say that it is just a one in a 100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 chance occurance?

and the mysterius nucleolus, with its protein factory, what does it do in all of this?

 

What i "believe" is

 

Proteins came first, they float around etc. (im going to call them scribes)

 

so, these scribs, float about all lazy like, and then, all of a sudden BOOM the temperature changes, and so does the scribes shape, now the new shape allows nucleotides to fit in the "creavaces"(sorry for the spelling) and attach to each other in a certain order

 

lets say

 

temp goes up----->scrib changes shape accordingly---> nucleotides can fit in certain pattern---->the scrib has now "spelled" hot

 

so basically the "scribe" invents a language to "explain" the changes in the enviroment Creating a primitive RNA "language". the more changes in the enviroment the bigger the vocabulary. then the RNA can in turn serve as the proteins "memory" of past events. Then as the RNA becomes more complex, it can express more things, and create proteins for certain temperatures, pHs and such and it gets more and more complicated and we wind up here.

(its way better that "compitition of the molecules" molecules dont say anything unless there is a pre exsisting "language" and molecules don't "compete" they sit there until something bumps into them)

 

Ta DA!!

I know that this is just ramblings, but "guided"( religion haters run away screaming now) evolution fits with observations of other systems in the universe sooooo much better than random evolution.

 

Now in all this you are tempted to point out that evolution does not have a "goal", but: what if mutations allow energy to flow better? to be more "efficient" if you will. Remember, energy likes to follow the path of least resistance, what if mutaions "allow" that to happen, in effect, giving mutations a "purpose" and creating a "goal" for the organism.

 

note: im not saying that random point mutations cannot occur, they do, im just saying there is no way that they can be responsible for the world we see today.

[swansont]

I know that this is just ramblings' date=' but "guided"( religion haters run away screaming now) evolution fits with observations of other systems in the universe sooooo much better than random evolution.

[/quote']

 

If by 'random' you mean that 'all outcomes are equally probable' (and you appear to) I have to ask:

Who said evolution was random?

[Dak]

I know that this is just ramblings, but "guided"( religion haters run away screaming now) evolution fits with observations of other systems in the universe sooooo much better than random evolution.

the base changes are random, but - by a prosess of natural selection - the bad changes are filtered out, and the good changes propagated. thusly, evolution is not random.

 

evolution is the natural prosess whereby random changes result in a non-random improvement over time, and so i suppose could be seen as self-guiding, although i think im using "guided" in a slightly different way than you did.

[Mokele]

The others seem to have this covered, but I'd like to add that a lot of your objections seem to have to do with origins of the universe, the Earth, and the first life. While these are interesting fields, they are not evolution, nor are they needed for it. Evolution is simply a process that happens on life under certain conditions (which happen to be nearly universal conditions on this world). Where that life came from doesn't matter to evolution.

 

As I've said before, it's like gravity; gravity doesn't give a crap whether I bought a ball from a store or carved it from wood myself, it'll make it drop all the same.

 

Mokele

[island]

His point is valid as it applies to Darwin's idea of how whatever mechanism behind human origins relates to evolutionary theory, and this is the exact reason why the Dover PA school board had to include this into their statement on intelligent design theory.

 

His point is also valid if the anthropic principle is true, since it indicates that there is a *higher reason* why ' 'life is too complex to have arisen and evolved to such high orders by way of purely random chance events' ', because evolutionary theory is more probably governed by the same universal scale mechanism that enables life, if this is the case.

 

That, "too complex" part is the only valid point that "IDists", (intelligent design freaks), have going for them, but the only way to escape it is to project chaotic universal scale randomness... so he's got a valid point in that respect, as well.

 

His point gets really good though, when he ties it into our *unmatched* capability for energy dissemination, because that indicates that the anthropic principle is an "entropic" anthropic principle, which is most fundamental, since it equates "human purpose" as a function of the predominant impetus of our expanding universe, which actually makes a lot of sense, since the tendency was instilled into the total energy of the universe at the moment of the big bang, and has remained the predominant driving force for about 13 and a half billion years.

 

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/09/30/2003204990

 

http://www.intothecool.com/

 

www.anthropic-principle.ORG

 

 

Just an FYI, but the creation/evolution debate will eventually attract more political fanatics than you can throw bibles or bananas at...

[Anarchaus]

the base changes are random' date=' but - by a prosess of natural selection - the bad changes are filtered out, and the good changes propagated. thusly, evolution is not random.

 

evolution is the natural prosess whereby random changes result in a non-random improvement over time, and so i suppose could be seen as self-guiding, although i think im using "guided" in a slightly different way than you did.[/quote']

 

Yes,Yes thats not my problem,

 

i probably didn't display my views properly:

 

It is just the fact that every other physical system in the universe is "guided" by some law, or some force, EXCEPT LIFE!

I have no problem whatsoever about the whole natural selection, with nature screening out "unfit" organisims from the enviroment, but my problem resides in the actual beginnings of life. "unfit" molecules don't die off, they sit there just as the "fit" molecules do, there is no compitition, they only sit there. And how can the nucleotides express information when they have nothing to express it to?(proteins) and the nucleotides say NOTHING, untill something uses the nucleotides to invent a "alphabet" to express something, the nucleotides will sit there like any other molecules. Thats my beef with evolution.

 

And also the actual process of "mutation", i don't believe that all this diversity is the result of a UV ray hitting genome 143-u-45 causing a repeating error. Especially since (as you know) the odds of something going wrong, instead of right are astronomically huge, and then if a miracle happens and a mutation just happens to cause a benificial effect, that is only one in a billion required mutations to come up with higher organisms. so the odds of even one mutation working are already tiny, the odds of it doing this impposible task a billion times is damn impossible.

That is my problem.

not the whole" evolution acts as a screen against unwanted organisims that are unfit for survival in a particular setting"

This part has been shown to work(ie: man in shorts trys to survive in the antarctic) thanks for your input

[tskaze]

I just cannot rationalize the "compitition of the molecules" thing' date=' and i cannot think of how random mutaions can kickstart life,

[/quote']

 

The issue there is that its not random, its probability. The strongest survived, or at least their traits did more or less. It makes a lot more sense if you view it like that.

[island]

It always cracks me up to see people make the irrational leap of faith beyond the physics and into the realm of the supernatural, without good reason... or any reason, for that matter...

 

Increases in complexity and order necessarily produce an increase in the potential for disorder in an expanding universe.

 

This effect gets compounded as negative vacuum pressure increases in an expanding universe.

 

That "natural imbalance" creates an entropic debt that can only be satisfied by way of emergent properties that enable the system to pay back the debt or die:

 

Schneider, Eric D. and James J. Kay, 1994. "Life as a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics." Mathematical and Computer Modelling 19(6-8): 25-48.

 

http://www.fes.uwaterloo.ca/u/jjkay/pubs/Life_as/lifeas.pdf

 

I know it's hard to reach that little clicker button, so...

 

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/edit/archives/2004/09/30/2003204990

 

Scientists explain the meaning of life (and we don't matter much)

 

A new theory states that it is entropy which drives evolution to higher levels of complexity -- for the sole purpose of disseminating energy gradients

By Arne Jernelov

 

Most religions embrace and promote certain notions about the meaning of life, offering the faithful reasons why we and all other organisms exist. Indeed, perhaps the fundamental definition of religious faith is the belief that life serves a (divine) purpose. Science, however, has always given a resounding "no" to the question "Does life have a higher meaning?" At least until now.

 

In a series of lectures and in a forthcoming book, science writers Eric Schneider and Dorion Sagan argue that even from a scientific perspective, life does serve a purpose, and thus does have a meaning that transcends the self. They arrived at this conclusion when trying to reconcile a contradiction that has long puzzled those who study both biology and physics.

 

Living organisms obviously embody arrangements of matter into complex structures. They transform chemicals and, in an orderly fashion, transport and store them in purposeful ways. Above the level of individual organisms, they form societies and ecosystems. All of us are familiar with these fundamental biological notions, and we are all part of these processes. Order seems to be the name of the biological game, and evolution leads to more complex organisms and more organized structures.

 

This is, of course, at odds with one of the fundamental principles of physics: the second law of thermodynamics, which holds that entropy -- the degradation of all matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity -- increases as a result of each and every process. The more the world develops the more disorder there will be. Physics even accepts the idea that entropy defines the direction of time. In the end everything will be broken down and randomly distributed.

 

How do Schneider and Sagan reconcile the contradiction between what appears true of life -- that it organizes matter into increasingly complex creatures and structures -- and the notion that disorder should increase and order should be lost? Equally important, how can science see any meaning of life in the reconciliation of that apparent contradiction?

 

The bottom line is that the second law of thermodynamics rules and that the existence of life helps increase entropy. In other words, life promotes disorder. Some might think that this could be true only if the logical end of evolution and intelligent life were to be a nuclear explosion that pulverized Earth. But that is not what Schneider and Sagan mean. Instead, they make a distinction between matter and energy and say that matter organized in structures disseminates energy gradients faster than randomly distributed matter.

 

As one example, they consider a phenomenon of which beer drinkers have long been aware. If you want to empty a bottle of water (or beer) and turn it upside down, the water will come out in uneven glugs. If you spin the bottle and create an eddy inside it, the water will flow out much faster and more smoothly. The eddy in the bottle is a structure in the water. Water running down is matter losing its potential energy. The structure speeds up the dissemination of the energy gradient.

 

Similarly, on a hot day, the air in a forest is cooler than over adjacent bare lands, thanks to evaporation and transpiration in the trees. The energy gradient, in this case that of heat, is disseminated more effectively by the structure of the forest and the life within it.

 

The more complex the structure the more effective is the energy dissemination. Populations are better in this respect than single individuals; ecosystems even more so, and most effective of all -- so far -- are human high-tech societies.

 

Thus, goes the argument, the second law of thermodynamics is not contrary to the existence of life; rather, it is the cause of life. That law drives evolution to higher levels of complexity and to more sophisticated societies and technologies for the sole purpose of disseminating energy gradients.

 

So life, at long last, has a higher meaning in the eyes of science -- even if serving the second law of thermodynamics is not exactly what the religiously faithful had in mind.

 

 

Arne Jernelov is professor of environmental biochemistry, an honorary scholar and former director of the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna and a UN expert on environmental catastrophes.

[Dak]

"unfit" molecules don't die off, they sit there just as the "fit" molecules do, there is no compitition, they only sit there. And how can the nucleotides express information when they have nothing to express it to?(proteins) and the nucleotides say NOTHING, untill something uses the nucleotides to invent a "alphabet" to express something, the nucleotides will sit there like any other molecules. Thats my beef with evolution.

 

molecules and other unliving matter do evolve if the correct conditions are met, ie there is competition for resorses and the molecules can pass there information on (ie, there is hereditary). i can imagine how prions could be used to demonstrate this principle, with 'unbent' protons being introduced into a mixture of different prions (so that the prions could 'pass on' their shape to the unbent protons). in this case, the prions that are more stable would be present at a higher rate, and so 'unbent' protiens would be more likely meet, and thus adopt, the succesful prion shape. by changing the temperature, the ration of the prions would change, with the most stable-at-the-given-temperature prion being the most comon -- thus, the colection of prions would 'evolve' in reponce to the changing environment.

 

now imagine these prions contained within a micelle. micelles are little spontaniously-forming spheres of phospholipids. if more phospholipids are added, then the micelles will incorporate them, grow in size, and eventually grow so large that they are unstable, at which point they will split and divide into two.

 

now, to finish our thought experiment, imagine a whole range of prions contained within many micelles, and with 'unbent' protiens and phospholipids being continuously added to the mixture. the micelles with the best mixture of prions (eg prions which strengthen the micelle wall, prions which are more temperature resistant, prions which increase the rate at wich 'unbent' protiens/phospholipids are taken up etc) will survive more oftern than the other micelles and, upon splitting in two, will pass-on their prions, and thus their inheritable material, to the daughter micelles, with the occasional prion being randomly not present in the daughter micelle, or a prion being taken up from the invironment. over time, this collection of basically inert matter will 'evolve' untill it is more adapted to the enviroment, eg more resiliant to the temperature of the system. if detergents are added, then eventually the mycelles will evolve so that most of them have the highest possible resilience to detergents by posessing the prions (if any exist within the system) that confer this resistance.

 

as for the bit about nucleotides... if i savvy what your saying, then i believe that your talking about abiogenesis.

 

evolution assumes living creatures exist, and describes how these living creatures could improve; so evolution explains how, for example, humans could result from simple bacteria.

 

where the first life originally came from and how it evolved when it was non-living (abiogenesis) and the whole question of how the DNA --> RNA --> protien system evolved, the conundrum is: given that nucleotides are benificial because they code for protiens, so without protiens theyd have no advantage and so couldnt evolve; whereas protiens cannot evolve because they cannot pass on hereditary information.

 

the currently favoured model is that RNA came first. as RNA can act as an enzyme, and also can replicate itself, it meets the condition for something that can evolve, and both DNA and protiens could have evolved from it. as for how non-living matter spawned life in the first plase... no one really knows. there are a few theorys involving micelles, the chemistry of the surface of clay, and/or the conditions on earth yonx ago, but no-one is really sure, but as i said its a slightly seperate (though by no means entirely unrelated) issue; evolution generally assumes that there are already living creatures existing for evolution to act upon.

 

phew! sorry if i completely missed your point, im a bit tired

[Ophiolite]

whats a 'carnal desire of financial gain'? sounds illegal

Sound like fun. Can we sign up somewhere?

 

christ slave: theres a difference between chaos and random

And returning to Anarchaus's opening post:

I'm not saying that random point mutations cannot occur, they do, i'm just saying there is no way that they can be responsible for the world we see today.

There is also a difference between random and constrained random. When I roll a dice the outcome of the throw is random, but I will always roll a number between one and six, and this number will always be an integer. I shall never role a fraction or a negative number, or an imaginary number. Yet the outcome will still be random.

In the same way physics and chemistry determine the possible outcomes of the random concatenation of molecules. The three dimensional properties of proteins, the structural character of droplets, the template nature of clay surfaces, etc (all of which have been mentioned earlier) constrain the randomness of pre-biotic development.

[swansont]

And returning to Anarchaus's opening post:

There is also a difference between random and constrained random. When I roll a dice the outcome of the throw is random' date=' but I will [b']always [/b]roll a number between one and six, and this number will always be an integer. I shall never role a fraction or a negative number, or an imaginary number. Yet the outcome will still be random.

In the same way physics and chemistry determine the possible outcomes of the random concatenation of molecules. The three dimensional properties of proteins, the structural character of droplets, the template nature of clay surfaces, etc (all of which have been mentioned earlier) constrain the randomness of pre-biotic development.

 

And in addition, when you roll two dice, a seven appears more often than any other number; two and twelve appear the least. The outcome is due to a random set of events, and the outcome is probablistic, but not all outcomes are equally likely.

[ctc7752]

There is no such thing as infinity. Send a light ray into space and it eventually curves out of sight. This suggests the universe is round and therefore not infinite. And if the universe is not infinite, then nothing is.

[Severian]

Send a light ray into space and it eventually curves out of sight. This suggests the universe is round and therefore not infinite. And if the universe is not infinite, then nothing is.

 

No it doesn't. Please don't just make things up.