Evolution for Dummies...*Edit*.....is for Dummies
POSTED BY: kaneman
UPDATED: Saturday, March 10, 2007 06:19
VIEWED: 23475
PAGE 5 of 12
But... but...
I can't believe he shot down my fish to reptiles argument so easily.
I remember reading once about how the fossil record suggests that fish existed for quite some time before the first appearance of terrestrial vertebrates...hundreds of millions of years in fact.
Perhaps I am not remembering correctly, it's been a long time since the third grade.
It's okay to leave them to die.
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He has a Nobel Prize in physics not biology. That's like saying that a Dr who has a pHD in English is capable of performing brain surgery on you. Just because you're an expert in one field doesn't mean you're an expert in another.
I'm in the final year of a genetics course and I can guarantee you that the guy in the article kaneman quoted doesn't know what he's talking about.
The information in DNA is encoded by 4 bases (mainly), sets of three bases (a codon) code for one amino acid. A run of codons code for the chain of amino acids that make up a protein. Changing just one codon can change an important amino acid in a protein, completely changing the function of a protein.
Insertion,deletion, transposition and point mutation can all change the code of a gene, changing the protein it is coding for.
Duplication causes two identical DNA sequences to form that can then diverge to give two very different sequences with very different proteins.
It's not about magically "adding data". It's about altering the sequence of bases that completely changes the code.
Saying that these things don't "add new data" is like saying that I haven't made a difference to
the word 'firefly' if I rearrange it to 'I fry elf'.
Also things like the partial evolution of a whale have been answered time and time again. A common argument that is cited by creationists is that humans can't clot their blood without half of the blood clotting system so how can an organism have existed with only a partial blood clotting system. The answer to this is, the turtle.
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Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
Cartoon:
I expect you to ignore this because you're a liar and a coward.
Wow I don't know what's going on between you two but that seems really out of order.
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Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
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Quote:Actually it's better than he deserves.
Originally posted by heb:
Wow I don't know what's going on between you two but that seems really out of order.
I still don't get why we're giving religious fanatics like Cartoon the satisfaction of discussing with them. Let them live in ignorance if that's what they want.
More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
Point of fact, one CAN be religous AND still believe in evolution. The problem with fundamentalists (and people like you) is that they (you) don't understand this concept. Hell, in the 50's we understood this. And you should know better than to say such things as I cited an article showing such in a thread just a little while ago that you participated in.
if youll notice, i said "athiest" not evolutionist. i dont dispute that a degree of evolution does occur, i just dont think it is the sole mechanism of creation in the universe. an athiest does not subscribe to any omnipresent being.. that is what im talking about
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
...and I was looking for quotes that show that.
Hi, Rue. Yes, I can give quotes, but can anyone adequately summarize a 400 page book with a few quotes? If you accept Smoot's credentials -- and he recommended it -- you would be far better off reading it, than going by a few quotes which could easily be used to misdirect you (not that I would do that). Even if you don't want to dish out $13 (or whatever it's going for now), I'm sure your library has it.
BTW, I've posted Smoot's entire foreward to the book in that other thread.
Quote:
Originally posted by Simonwho:
The trouble is that if you bring in a Nobel prize winner and say "Look, here's an expert, he believes in creationism", we can produce a dozen who don't. Pure faith overwrites basic sense.
Yes, I agree. Trouble is, people who believe in evolution are just as tainted with preconceptions.
Thing is, you're assuming that because Smoot doesn't believe in evolution that he's automatically a "believer". However, to my knowledge, Smoot has never declared that he's a "believer". I mean, he went to Berkeley!! Seriously. How many "believers" have come out of Berkeley?!?!?
And regarding Nobel prize winners, I never said believe him because he's a nobel prize winner. To quote the last two paragraphs of my above post...
Am I proposing that Nobel laureates cannot be mistaken? Obviously not. Many of them disagree with each other (not just on evolution, but on many things). What I am saying is that they cannot be readily dismissed as "idiots" by people with a far lesser knowledge in their field of expertise -- as I imagine would be a description applicable to every single person in this forum.
And unless anyone thinks Smoot was a "fringe lunatic" who just happened to slip past the Nobel committee... Stephen Hawking called Smoot’s 1992 discovery of small ripples in the fabric of the early universe as "the discovery of the century, if not of all time." So, apparently, Hawking doesn't think Smoot's an "idiot", either.
Quote:
Originally posted by Heb:
He has a Nobel Prize in physics not biology.
Hi, Heb. No. I can understand you're saying this, and you are correct -- if indeed, Smoot was endorsing a book about "biology". He wasn't. Heeren's book ("Show Me God") is not about the origin of "life", but is about the origins of the cosmos, its make-up, and fine-tuning (something about which Mr. Smoot is eminently qualified to comment). (BTW, Heeren's second volume is going to be about the origin of life.)
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This is what annoyed me about the article Kaneman cited:
He says the following:
"There are at least five concepts of evolution that the evolutionist speaks of as one. They are:
1. Cosmic Evolution – Their Cosmology or how the Universe came into being.
2. Stellar Evolution – How the stars, galaxies etc. formed
3. Earth’s Evolution – How the Sun and the planets formed in our solar system.
4. Macroevolution – The postulate that says all life formed from earlier organized non-life and through some form of mutation, natural selection, and enormous amounts of time.
5. Microevolution – The limited variation that takes place in a species or families complex gene pool or genome."
No-one I know who calls themselve an evolutionist would say that they deal with those first 3. Evolutionists, in the normal sense of the word, study biologial evolution.
The two arguments are getting confused which is why I assumed he was commenting on evolution in the traditional sense sorry.
...................
Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
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Quote:
Originally posted by heb:
The two arguments are getting confused which is why I assumed he was commenting on evolution in the traditional sense sorry.
No need to apologize.
You had no way of knowing the gist of Heeren's book. The second volume of his series was supposed to deal with the subject about which you are referring. After reading the first volume (5 years ago), I contacted his publisher, eager to get the second volume, and was informed that the second volume was essentially already "finished", and merely awaiting some updates and revisions. Well, I'm glad I didn't hold my breath, waiting for it.
Some of the first volume deals with the "conditions" necessary to sustain life in the universe, however, particularly a lengthy section called "Bottlenecks on the Road to Intelligence" (in chapter 2). It discusses 12 major requisites necessary for life to form, and how exactly fine-tuned things would have to be in order for them to form anywhere in the universe.
If your library has this book, you'd probably enjoy it.
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I haven't read the book but I'll check it out if they've got it. But one answer to this problem is the Anthropic principle.
The gist of it is that factors must have been fine-tuned to allow life to evolve, otherwise we wouldn't be here to discuss this. So there may an infinite number of other universes out there, but we have to be in the one that happened to have the right constants to be fine tuned for life because otherwise we wouldn't be here.
Also I'd ask how fine tuned things would have to be in order for a Creator to come into existence that could fine tune these constants, I think the same argument would apply.
...................
Well, my sister's a ship... we had a
complicated childhood
.................
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
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Quote:
Originally posted by heb:
I haven't read the book but I'll check it out if they've got it. But one answer to this problem is the Anthropic principle.
Yes, I've heard of that. But certainly, you aren't proposing there's any "evidence" for any such theory. It takes a far greater degree of faith to believe in the occurrence of an infinite number of alternate universes than it does to believe that an infinite God exists who made everything "just right" to sustain life.
Quote:
Originally posted by heb:
Also I'd ask how fine tuned things would have to be in order for a Creator to come into existence that could fine tune these constants, I think the same argument would apply.
The Creator (as the scriptures teach) was Himself never created, and beyond all of creation. Yes, I admit it's nearly impossible for our finite minds to comprehend an always-existing entity, but I'm sure an amoeba can't comprehend us, either -- and in relation to things, we've far more in common with an amoeba than we have with our Creator.
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on Heeren's book, once you've had a chance to read it.
If nothing else, I believe that Smoot's award of the Nobel Prize for physics (given his prior endorsement of the book) will make others (who might've previously been inclined to dismiss the book outright) now take a look at it for themselves, and not have to take someone else's word for what it says (pro or con).
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