Well, well, well… like we don’t waste enough time playing (and modding) SEIV, we have to go and open up this can of Creationist-Evolutionist worms
I may as well jump in. I’ve just read the Last 4 pages of this thread, and I gotta tell you, it’s really
Evolved (snicker) beyond Twinkies as the absolute perfection in FTL power supply.
As a practicing biologist, here are my thoughts. I picked out some of the more interesting bits of the Krsqk/IF discussion (from about 2 pages back) and just added my thoughts. As to my biases, I’m not really that interested in Creationism as it pertains to the Young Earth Version, and I’ve got a great regard for micro-evolution, but have strongly questioned the state of science as it attempts to address speciation. Someone (really sorry, can’t remember who) made the analogy that [paraphrase] we don’t know
how gravity works, but we still
observe it everyday. However the same is not true of evolution. Though this may seem pedantic, it’s important to see that it is a question not of evolution, but the observation of Speciation. So, more correctly we should be saying that we don’t know
how species have arisen, but we still
observe them everyday. As such, evolution is not an observation, but a theory of explanation for
speciation.
With that introduction, I know this post will be long, so if you’re really not interested in my thoughts on the state of evolution, I’d suggest you just save yourself some effort. I don’t discuss Twinkies, FTL or Swiss-Chocolate beyond this point.
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from [Jim: a-biotic] dead matter?
IF: The Earth was not completely covered in perpetual storms when life evolved from primordial goo. All it takes is a cliff-face to block the wind, and there is plenty of stable goo for the organci molecules to form. More complex molecules form out of the basic ones, and this has been proven in laboratory experiments.
Jim: Yes, it has been proven that more
complex molecules can be created from our best guesses at a primordial goo (i). The problem is that despite enormous amounts of work, it has yet to be shown that anything beyond “complex molecules” could be formed. That is to say short peptides (proteins in this case of less than 20 amino acid length) could be formed, but nothing even approaching a useful/functional peptide has ever been produced (ii). That said, nothing vaguely resembling any sort of
reproducing entity has
ever been observed in these experiments. If I’m wrong, please do inform me!! Seeing as I’ll be teaching this stuff, I absolutely need to know if I’m missing something.
My personal side notes:
(i) I think it’s important to note that the in vitro primordial goo experiments typically use much higher concentrations of the putative goo than would be found in nature. This is expected to aid the experiment in terms of time frame (in their defence, it’s awfully difficult to get a 50 year grant from any federal or independent agency).
(ii) typically useful modern proteins begin to weigh in at around 80 – 100 amino acids.
IF: You do realize that the Design Argument has been proven inadequate by people such as Hume, right?
Jim: Really? I’d love a reference for this because I’ve seen a lot of arguments regarding Paley’s (sp) watch, but only by contemporary authors. IMHO, Paley (again, sp.) had a good argument from what I can see, but then went off into hypothetical land on the applications… and his “hypotheticals” got him in trouble.
12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available and tends only to keep a species stable. How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?
IF: Sometimes, the code gets mutated to have a few extra base pairs. Sometimes it is mutated to have fewer base pairs. Often, this does not cause the organism to fail at living, and so goes unnoticed. If that organism reproduces, it's offspring could inherit the extra base pairs, or the fewer ones. Given many generations in which more extra base pairs are added than lost, you get a steadily increasing DNA code. And remember, somewhere over 90% of the DNA is junk, and is NEVER used in replication. So, a few extra base pairs here and there won't hurt much, especially if they are added at the end.
Jim: Yes, it is true that we very often observe point mutations, small lesions, wholesale inVersions, etc. in the genetic code of organisms (i). And yes, often these changes do not cause the organism any harm, or no discernable harm anyway (ii). However, the question is not “can an organism survive genetical damage/degeneration”, but is “can genetical damage result in the production of new species/entire
de novotrait.” Junk DNA or no, the burden on evolutionary theory is not to show that organisms can sustain damages, it is to show that this damage can cause the formation of new species.
(i) it has been estimated that huge tracts of the human genome are made up of dead retroviruses and insertion sequences. The human cell response has been to push together large tracts of these “extra genomic parasites” in “grave yards” that are then wrapped up in chromatin, never to be transcribed again!! I love this stuff!!
(ii) an organism that has more junk DNA is going to be more energetically burdened than a counterpart without this energy burden. In lower complexity organisms such as bacteria, especially the gut organisms such as
E. coli, this can mean the difference between reproductive success and reproductive failure in a competitive environment. For higher complexity organisms, such as humans, I have never seen any equivalent reports. My guess is that it won’t affect us significantly.
When, where, why, and how did:
1. Single-celled plants become multi-celled? (Where are the two and three-celled intermediates?)
IF: There is no such thing as a single celled plant. All plants are very, very multi-cellular. You are thinking of Protista. Some of them are similar to plants, but they are not plants.
Jim: I’d suggest there is potentially a semantic misunderstanding at one level. If we go back far enough on a phylogenetic tree we will find that plants had an ancestor that was still single celled, and so we could in fact refer to it anachronistically as a single celled plant. The real quandary is this: how does an organism/when did an organism first become multi-celled? The vastly more important
implied question is how does a competitive and selfish organism come to cooperate with others of it’s own kind (or non-kind if you Subscribe to the theory that chloropLasts and mitochondria are captured/symbiotic bacteria)
3. Fish change to amphibians?
IF: Build me a time machine, and I will tell you when and where.
Gollum: Fish?!
fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish fish
Jim: We can do it cheaper than that. We can see exactly when amphibious species appear in the fossil record. If you believe that they evolved from fish, you’ve got your answer! I’m still big on the time machine though, cause I’m wantin’ me some of that primordial soup! Yummm…
Krsqk, I’m not actually sure why the time frame is really important though…
6. How did the intermediate forms live?
IF: You are assuming there was a magical jump from a Carp to a Frog. Well, there wasn't. The intermediate forms were only slightly different form what came before them. They lived the same as their parents did. Evolution does not occur over night.
Jim: And this is the problem… the fossil record
clearly shows that there are indeed “magical jumps” between species (your words, not mine
). Unfortunately this
IS the state of affairs. This is so obviously true that Gould and Sflkghfv (I can’t remember his name, for shame
) invoked Punctuated Equilibrium to account for these leaps, without abandoning the concept of evolution altogether. There are some that charge that Punctuated Equilibrium is simply a non-Supernatural Version of Saltation (ii).
(ii) Yeah, I could use a little Saltation with my primordial soup too. I’m more of a salty snack kinda guy than the sweet/twinky kinda guy. Oh! there it is, I couldn’t resist bringing up twinkies.
IF: You are still assuming a magical jump between a lion with no lungs to a lion with lungs. Well, that never happened. ALL multi-cellular organisms have always had the bulk of the systems you mentioned.
Jim: Err… well that’s a little extreme, but I see your point. Unfortunately that is dealing with entire systems of advanced organs. If we step down to a molecular level, that is to say we look at just a few gene products working in concert, there still is this nagging sense of irreducible-ness (i). I’m currently working on a single protein product (RpoS) that is regulated by no less than 28 other gene products, and itself… and that’s just what we know so far! Knocking out just one of these players has
extreme effects on the cell responses (capacity to survive starvation, cause disease, etc.), so it is difficult to imagine an organism with mutations in any of these other genes being stable/functional within their environment. Or more to the point as we look at evolution, the converse is hard to believe - that there would be a mutation of another gene such that it’s product now regulates my protein without whacking out the entire system (ii). Irreproducibility is a sticking point, especially when living creatures are more complex than Formula 1 cars – and I’m just talking about bacteria here!
(i) sorry, it’s getting late, and I’m beginning to make words up.
(ii) my protein is not the best example of the irreproducibility problem though. There are some real doozies out there.
My take home from all this is that biology is by far the most fascinating subject, and that there are some significant problems with evolution as it currently stands. Punctuated equilibrium is a good first start in explaining the fossil story. Unfortunately the real game is in the genes (though being a geneticist I’m perhaps a little biased here). I really wish that some of the bigger problems such as the problems/failures of a-biotic evolution research and irreproducible systems would be addressed by the scientific community with more research/thought, rather than cries of ‘heresy!’ though.
IF and Krsqk, thanks for opening up a very fun thread. I hope that there are no hard feelings about any of this. Coming from a mixed faith family, I can appreciate the frustration that can come when trying to communicate very different world views.
Cheers,(Skol!)
jimbob
[ December 13, 2002, 04:46: Message edited by: jimbob ]