The theory of Evolution! (simple)

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Originally Posted by North Star

On the evolution of blood clotting:

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/ev.../Clotting.html

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Ahhh. Mutation (subtly inserted) saves the day again! I think the OP is on the right track after all...

And this goes back to my comment about faith. I would wager that 90% of folks who believe all life on earth evolved from a puddle of protein do not understand what the heck that guy is talking about.... Yet they believe. That = faith

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Originally Posted by Clopin

The answer to dinosaurs growing wings is supposedly that they started jumping and the ones with half wings (or one one thousandth of wings I guess) were more efficient at it until they learned to fly.

I know that reproduction is difficult to reconcile with evolution from single celled organisms because two different and complimentary reproductive systems had to evolve at the same time randomly and randomly work together to produce offspring, instead of just through cell mitosis. Generally when something (you mentioned sight) is an all or nothing, either it works or it doesn't, proposition, I find it hard to see the evolutionary explanation for how it came about, but obviously I'm no biologist.

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Works with lactose intolerance too. In a population where a mutation is beneficial to the rate of surviving descendants, the mutated genome will become more common.

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Originally Posted by easy75

And this goes back to my comment about faith. I would wager that 90% of folks who believe all life on earth evolved from a puddle of protein do not understand what the heck that guy is talking about.... Yet they believe. That = faith

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But that faith is rather better placed than faith on a creationist belief, none of which are supported by any factual data. Belief in reason and scientific method is not the same thing as blind religious faith.

Bacterial hypermutation raised by YesNo isn't relevant when discussing multi-cell organisms reproducing sexually, as the mutation would have to happen in the gametes, and then it wouldn't affect the individual itself in any way. Mutations do happen in the gametes of course, but it is a fact that how our environment affects us doesn't affect our children's genes (apart from e.g. radiation-induced mutations of course).

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4) After decoding the human genome, one would expect, if the theory were correct, that we would see genetic based cures by now. Rather emphasis seems to have shifted to "epigenetics" which seems to signal a failure of the original genetics approach. This makes me think that there is more going on in species change than genes can account for.

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The obvious answer to this is that human genome isn't even close to being completely decoded. The study of epigenetics is far from being an indicator of a failure, as it is a crucial part to understanding how genes function. Would you say that airplanes are a failure since aerodynamics are still studied a hundred years afterwards?

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5) Philosophically, the reductionism of life to an unconscious gene has lead some philosophers of mind such as Thomas Nagel to reject neo-Darwinism. Basically biology needs to account for the awareness of the individual member of any species.

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By gene you mean genome, as a gene is just a segment of it.

As for awareness vs genome, the genome is just a sort of blueprint for all the different types of cells in a body. Studying how the genome affects the build of a single neurone to figure out how consciousness is possible is like studying how modern society works and was built by studying the domestic life of Scottish chimney sweeps.

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Originally Posted by Ecurb

The problem you are referring to, Clopin, is called the problem of "irreducible complexity", and it's an issue evolutionary science has been dealing with for years. Flight is not generally the biggest problem: we all know that flying squirrels and flying snakes can glide -- and so over millions of years, it's possible to see how flight evolved. More problematic issues in "irreducible complexity" involve the development of the eye (and vision) and the development of sexual reproduction. I don't have time to look up anything about these issues (and I don't know any answers off the top of my head) -- but if you google "irreducible complexity" you will probably come up with some answers (or at least a discussion of the subject).

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Bloody hell... "irreducible complexity" is spouted by Intelligent Design nitwits, who likely haven't read a recent book on evolution, or ever read a book on evolution. There is not so much mystery as you'd like to believe concerning the eye/vision; it shows up remarkably early in the fossil record, early Cambrian Period to be exact during the "Cambrian Explosion", some 500 million years ago. There were even creatures that had elaborate eyes, but no central nervous system. Furthermore, these creatures lived in our oceans and scientists suspect that a clear membrane developed over eyes to protect them, this later developed into a lens of sort. Indeed, I have a fossil of a trilobite on one of my bookshelves that had eyes... it's dated at 350 million years. And btw, some creatures developed eyes, and further down the evolutionary path lost them.
Did you people really attend university?

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Originally Posted by North Star

As for awareness vs genome, the genome is just a sort of blueprint for all the different types of cells in a body. Studying how the genome affects the build of a single neurone to figure out how consciousness is possible is like studying how modern society works and was built by studying the domestic life of Scottish chimney sweeps.

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Some of the articles I've read in the last while on human consciousness, how it comes to be and exactly what it is, are coming at the problem from a different direction. Scientists have long been looking for what part of the brain houses/governs our consciousness... but it may be that consciousness is created by the vast network and interconnectivity of all parts of the brain.
Anyhow, for those who care, this article will make you think...
http://www.livescience.com/47096-the...ciousness.html

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Originally Posted by Iain Sparrow

Bloody hell... "irreducible complexity" is spouted by Intelligent Design nitwits, who likely haven't read a recent book on evolution, or ever read a book on evolution. There is not so much mystery as you'd like to believe concerning the eye/vision; it shows up remarkably early in the fossil record, early Cambrian Period to be exact during the "Cambrian Explosion", some 500 million years ago. There were even creatures that had elaborate eyes, but no central nervous system. Furthermore, these creatures lived in our oceans and scientists suspect that a clear membrane developed over eyes to protect them, this later developed into a lens of sort. Indeed, I have a fossil of a trilobite on one of my bookshelves that had eyes... it's dated at 350 million years. And btw, some creatures developed eyes, and further down the evolutionary path lost them.
Did you people really attend university?

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I dislike the attitude that there can't be any dialogue on evolution except with 'creationist nitwits'. I am definitely not a creationist, by the way (and i can't spek for Ecurb but i strongly suspect he is not either) I'm just not exactly certain how a couple things (like reproduction) could have developed through random mutation.

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Originally Posted by North Star

But that faith is rather better placed than faith on a creationist belief, none of which are supported by any factual data. Belief in reason and scientific method is not the same thing as blind religious faith.

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When I hear questioning of neo-Darwinism generate discussions of creationism, I suspect neo-Darwinism has something to hide.

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Originally Posted by North Star

Bacterial hypermutation raised by YesNo isn't relevant when discussing multi-cell organisms reproducing sexually, as the mutation would have to happen in the gametes, and then it wouldn't affect the individual itself in any way.

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What I find most interesting about hypermutation is that this is evidence that mutation can occur in other ways than through a random process. Also the initiation of hypermutation is caused by the response of a group of bacteria trying to survive changes in their environment. This seems to me to undermine neo-Darwinism.

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Originally Posted by North Star

The obvious answer to this is that human genome isn't even close to being completely decoded. The study of epigenetics is far from being an indicator of a failure, as it is a crucial part to understanding how genes function. Would you say that airplanes are a failure since aerodynamics are still studied a hundred years afterwards?

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I thought the human genome project completed in 2003: http://www.genome.gov/10001772.

Genes are certainly part of an explanation of how evolutionary change occurred. I don't see the neo-Darwinist explanation being a complete explanation.

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Originally Posted by North Star

As for awareness vs genome, the genome is just a sort of blueprint for all the different types of cells in a body. Studying how the genome affects the build of a single neurone to figure out how consciousness is possible is like studying how modern society works and was built by studying the domestic life of Scottish chimney sweeps.

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I am not a member of any religious group although I identify myself with panentheism because I see no alternative to this given the "consciousness causes collapse" interpretation of quantum physics. Thomas Nagel is an atheist. Both of us, from different motivations, see a problem with neo-Darwinism since it ultimately attempts to reduce consciousness to an unconscious gene (or genonme) no matter how irrationally one claims this unconsciousness is "selfish".

Since the theory is reductionist the analysis must, at least theoretically, synthesize back up. That is, one has to be able to show how those Scottish chimney sweeps explain modern society or the reduction of modern society to chimney sweeps fails. Nagel favors a form of panpsychism which puts consciousness at the level of the genome in some unclear (to me) way. I would probably go with Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance.

Waking up this morning thinking about this thread I wonder if some sort of modified Lamarckian explanation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism) may not also be at work. The problem I have with Lamarckism is that it is focused on an organism rather than a group of organisms.

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Originally Posted by Iain Sparrow

Some of the articles I've read in the last while on human consciousness, how it comes to be and exactly what it is, are coming at the problem from a different direction. Scientists have long been looking for what part of the brain houses/governs our consciousness... but it may be that consciousness is created by the vast network and interconnectivity of all parts of the brain.
Anyhow, for those who care, this article will make you think...
http://www.livescience.com/47096-the...ciousness.html

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All one really knows are "correlates of consciousness" which the article uses as one of its headings. This does not lead to conclusions about causality. It could be that the mind causes the brain's correlated changes or that the brain causes the mind's correlated changes that we experience. It could be both depending on what one means by "mind".

All one needs is one validated out-of-body experience to give primacy to the mind.

Although I don't understand how this conclusion is derived from the theory, I do agree with the following supposed consequence of integrated information theory:

An interesting corollary of integrated information theory is that no computer simulation, no matter how faithfully it replicates a human mind, could ever become conscious. Koch put it this way: "You can simulate weather in a computer, but it will never be 'wet.'"

This tells me that we will learn valuable information about our brains from these theories leading to improvements in our lives, but they do not completely explain consciousness.

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Originally Posted by North Star

But that faith is rather better placed than faith on a creationist belief, none of which are supported by any factual data. Belief in reason and scientific method is not the same thing as blind religious faith.

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All I'm saying is that if someone personally does not understand how this all might have happened, and they are relying on another persons experience or assumptions (whether the assumptions are logical to that person or not), they are taking the same leap of faith that others are when they choose to believe alternative possibilities. It is no different. And people may argue "but.......science!"
To that I would say that, until recently, science had me avoiding eggs and bone-in sirloin steaks from the capital grill. Now eggs are great and it's not red meat but "processed" meats that are bad for you. I'll never get those meals back!! :)
Incidentally I remember reading in the Talmud that for it's size there is nothing healthier for you to eat than an egg (paraphrased).
And my only point for raising that jab at science is just to point out that we really don't know much about much. Science fluctuates and adjusts as new evidence becomes available. What bothers me is that until the new evidence becomes available the scientific community (and supporters of certain scientific claims) can be as dogmatic as any religious group. People are persecuted and derided for even looking in another direction. Check out some of the comments below "Honestly, did you people even attend university?" That sort of thing. We haven't even had electricity for very long. The Neutron wasn't discovered until 1932. The earth revolves around the sun? That idea is less than 500 years old. Why on earth someone would believe that we can definitively answer the questions of the origin of life, or the diversity of life on earth seems absolutely preposterous to me. And I don't think I am alone.

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Originally Posted by Iain Sparrow

Bloody hell... "irreducible complexity" is spouted by Intelligent Design nitwits, who likely haven't read a recent book on evolution, or ever read a book on evolution.

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Michael Behe, a leading proponent for the idea of irreducible complexity :

Behe grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where he attended grade school at St. Margaret Mary School and later graduated from Bishop McDevitt High School. He graduated from Drexel University in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry. He received his PhD in biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 for his dissertation research on sickle-cell disease. From 1978 to 1982, he did postdoctoral work on DNA structure at the National Institutes of Health. From 1982 to 1985, he was assistant professor of chemistry at Queens College in New York City, where he met his wife, Celeste. In 1985, he moved to Lehigh University and is currently a Professor of Biochemistry.

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Originally Posted by easy75

All I'm saying is that if someone personally does not understand how this all might have happened, and they are relying on another persons experience or assumptions (whether the assumptions are logical to that person or not), they are taking the same leap of faith that others are when they choose to believe alternative possibilities. It is no different. And people may argue "but.......science!"

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This is only kind of true, I mean, I've never been to Italy, or seen Rome, the fact that Italy even exists at all is something I've accepted through other peoples experiences and assumptions. I don't think, however, that believing in the existence of Italy is quite the same as making a religious leap of faith.

Funnily enough there's a Dickinson poem which covers this but draws the exact opposite conclusion, regarding religious faith at least:

I never saw a moor;
I never saw the sea,
Yet know I how the heather looks
And what a billow be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven.
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the checks were given

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Originally Posted by easy75

Check out some of the comments below "Honestly, did you people even attend university?" That sort of thing. We haven't even had electricity for very long. The Neutron wasn't discovered until 1932. The earth revolves around the sun? That idea is less than 500 years old. Why on earth someone would believe that we can definitively answer the questions of the origin of life, or the diversity of life on earth seems absolutely preposterous to me. And I don't think I am alone.

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Good call. I've also always found it inherently contradictory that Atheists who believe in a randomly assembling universe through random mutation (and I don't mean to denigrate atheists who believe in a universe assembled through random mutations, I largely fall into that belief myself), should be so sure that human beings are even equipped to discover the mysteries of the universe. It seems oddly anthropocentric for a doctrine which states that humans only exist by chance. If ants and people can exist on the same planet and both evolved through natural selection is there any reason why there can't be creatures with brains several hundred thousand times the size of our own? Would anybody expect an ant to be able to build a nuclear power plant or a space station? I think it's likely that just as many things are as far beyond our capacity as creating suspension bridges, skyscrapers and nuclear reactors are beyond the capabilities of ants.

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Originally Posted by Clopin

This is only kind of true, I mean, I've never been to Italy, or seen Rome, the fact that Italy even exists at all is something I've accepted through other peoples experiences and assumptions. I don't think, however, that believing in the existence of Italy is quite the same as making a religious leap of faith.

Funnily enough there's a Dickinson poem which covers this but draws the exact opposite conclusion, regarding religious faith at least:

I never saw a moor;
I never saw the sea,
Yet know I how the heather looks
And what a billow be.

I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven.
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the checks were given

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Nice! I like the poem!

To what you said yes, I see your point, but.... You could conceivably get on a plain and fly to Italy and confirm what you have been told. However, you might dedicate many years to the study of the origin of life, genetics, biochemistry, etc and come to a different conclusion than the mainstream scientific opinion. Michael Behe did. See the difference?
Ultimately you end up with a scenario like the one Pompey Bum describes. A dinosaur did this and that and this and it evolved (paraphrased). But no one observed this. At a very basic level it is like someone saying that Moses parted the red sea with a staff infused with the power of God. The evolutionist might say, well it must of happened because here we are! That is the same thing the churchman would say. But for different reasons.

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Originally Posted by Clopin

Good call. I've also always found it inherently contradictory that Atheists who believe in a randomly assembling universe through random mutation (and I don't mean to denigrate atheists who believe in a universe assembled through random mutations, I largely fall into that belief myself), should be so sure that human beings are even equipped to discover the mysteries of the universe. It seems oddly anthropocentric for a doctrine which states that humans only exist by chance. If ants and people can exist on the same planet and both evolved through natural selection is there any reason why there can't be creatures with brains several hundred thousand times the size of our own? Would anybody expect an ant to be able to build a nuclear power plant or a space station? I think it's likely that just as many things are as far beyond our capacity as creating suspension bridges, skyscrapers and nuclear reactors are beyond the capabilities of ants.

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Very well said. And a very rational attitude.