Two challenges for KL – (fossil) Lucy’s defender

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 3, 2011

Human evolution}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

A most interesting discussion has got started here at “But ‘Lucy’ herself is mostly an artifact”. Commenter KL got it going, I suspect, by observing that

I certainly don’t consider you hicks. However, my spouse and associates are primate researchers, physical anthropologists, geologists and archeologists. It’s strange to come here and see their work dismissed as a just so story. Some of them have been in the field extensively and have published many, many papers. Are you guys saying that somehow all these people are simply mistaken?

Yes, it is quite possible.

My question is, is there anything fronted by “evolution researchers” that KL wouldn’t believe? How about the Big Bazooms theory of human evolution? Or Marc “Well, the monkeys talk to me!” Hauser? How about any single item on this list? Is there nothing that KL would even wonder about? Does he know that E. O. Wilson has retracted his own kin selection theory?

Two things: The public of a free society is not stupid. When we see a parade of amazing nonsense – marketed as evolution – we wisely don’t believe any of it. I don’t bother sorting through it for the same reason as I don’t scan the tabloids to see if anything in them is true.

It is no use berating us, let alone blaming us for low science scores. Revisit your strategy.

And second, would KL be willing to read The Nature of Nature, to understand what the controversy is really about? Then we could have a serious discussion.

(Note: KL has a spouse and associates in primate research, and I have a number of relatives and friends in medicine. That does not commit me to any particular theory, no matter how widely espoused, and a good thing too: Look how much medicine has changed. )

Comments

QuiteID asks, 'is that a serious prize?' I don't know QuiteID, why don't you 'create life in the lab' and then try to claim the prize and let us know? Of course if you, or anyone else, actually created life from scratch, I'm sure the worldwide fame and fortune that would naturally follow would eclipse any ill will you would have if it is false! But something tells me that you may have much more of a problem in developing life from scratch than you may think in this endeavor; Francis Collins on Making Life Excerpt: 'We are so woefully ignorant about how biology really works. We still don't understand how a particular DNA sequence—when we just stare at it—codes for a protein that has a particular function. We can't even figure out how that protein would fold—into what kind of three-dimensional shape. And I would defy anybody who is going to tell me that they could, from first principles, predict not only the shape of the protein but also what it does.' - Francis Collins - Former Director of the Human Genome Project http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/collins-genome.html A Few Hundred Thousand Computers vs. A Single Protein Molecule - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4018233 Three Subsets of Sequence Complexity and Their Relevance to Biopolymeric Information - David L. Abel and Jack T. Trevors - Theoretical Biology & Medical Modelling, Vol. 2, 11 August 2005, page 8 "No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. Mycoplasmas are the simplest known organism with the smallest known genome, to date. How was its genome and other living organisms' genomes programmed?" http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1742-4682-2-29.pdf Systems biology: Untangling the protein web - July 2009 Excerpt: Vidal thinks that technological improvements — especially in nanotechnology, to generate more data, and microscopy, to explore interaction inside cells, along with increased computer power — are required to push systems biology forward. "Combine all this and you can start to think that maybe some of the information flow can be captured," he says. But when it comes to figuring out the best way to explore information flow in cells, Tyers jokes that it is like comparing different degrees of infinity. "The interesting point coming out of all these studies is how complex these systems are — the different feedback loops and how they cross-regulate each other and adapt to perturbations are only just becoming apparent," he says. "The simple pathway models are a gross oversimplification of what is actually happening." http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7253/full/460415a.html Life Leads the Way to Invention - Feb. 2010 Excerpt: a cell is 10,000 times more energy-efficient than a transistor. “ In one second, a cell performs about 10 million energy-consuming chemical reactions, which altogether require about one picowatt (one millionth millionth of a watt) of power.” This and other amazing facts lead to an obvious conclusion: inventors ought to look to life for ideas.,,, Essentially, cells may be viewed as circuits that use molecules, ions, proteins and DNA instead of electrons and transistors. That analogy suggests that it should be possible to build electronic chips – what Sarpeshkar calls “cellular chemical computers” – that mimic chemical reactions very efficiently and on a very fast timescale. Also of interest is that a cell apparently seems to be successfully designed along the very stringent guidelines laid out by Landauer's principle of 'reversible computation' in order to achieve such amazing energy efficiency, something man has yet to accomplish in any meaningful way for computers: Notes on Landauer’s principle, reversible computation, and Maxwell’s Demon - Charles H. Bennett Excerpt: Of course, in practice, almost all data processing is done on macroscopic apparatus, dissipating macroscopic amounts of energy far in excess of what would be required by Landauer’s principle. Nevertheless, some stages of biomolecular information processing, such as transcription of DNA to RNA, appear to be accomplished by chemical reactions that are reversible not only in principle but in practice.,,,, http://www.hep.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/QM/bennett_shpmp_34_501_03.pdf "The manuals needed for building the entire space shuttle and all its components and all its support systems would be truly enormous! Yet the specified complexity (information) of even the simplest form of life - a bacterium - is arguably as great as that of the space shuttle." J.C. Sanford - Geneticist - Genetic Entropy and the Mystery Of the Genome 'The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica." Carl Sagan, "Life" in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894 of note: The 10^12 bits of information number for a bacterium is derived from entropic considerations, which is, due to the tightly integrated relationship between information and entropy, considered the most accurate measure of the transcendent information present in a 'simple' life form. For calculations please see the following site: Molecular Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=18hO1bteXTPOqQtd2H12PI5wFFoTjwg8uBAU5N0nEQIE not to mention QuiteID, to create life from scratch, it seems you will have to learn how to master quantum entanglement on a massive scale of the 'cohered' state of at least thousands of billions of atoms; Quantum Information/Entanglement In DNA & Protein Folding - short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/ And QuiteID, mastering quantum entanglement on such a massive scale may just eclipse any fame and fortune that you would get from 'merely' creating life, 14 quantum bits: Physicists go beyond the limits of what is currently possible in quantum computation - April 2011 Excerpt: They confined 14 calcium atoms in an ion trap, which, similar to a quantum computer, they then manipulated with laser light. The internal states of each atom formed single qubits and a quantum register of 14 qubits was produced. This register represents the core of a future quantum computer. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-quantum-bits-physicists-limits.html Scientists take another step towards quantum computing using flawed diamonds - March 2011 Excerpt: Scientists have for years been intrigued by the idea of a quantum computer,,, Such a machine would dwarf the capabilities of modern computers, http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-scientists-quantum-flawed-diamonds.htmlbornagain77_{April 4, 2011
April
04
Apr
4
04
2011
07:38 AM
7
07
38
AM
PDT}

bornagain77, is that a serious prize? It just looks like a very amateurish web page.QuiteID_{April 4, 2011
April
04
Apr
4
04
2011
07:01 AM
7
07
01
AM
PDT}

MarkF:
The evidence for gradualism is all around you. Every day billions of organisms produce billions of progeny. In every single case the descendent is extremely similar to the ancestor.
Shouldn't that count against universal common descent?Joseph_{April 4, 2011
April
04
Apr
4
04
2011
05:56 AM
5
05
56
AM
PDT}

All this is most interesting, but I still haven't given up on KL, as to whether there is any theory fronted in Darwin's name that he does not think credible.O'Leary_{April 4, 2011
April
04
Apr
4
04
2011
05:42 AM
5
05
42
AM
PDT}

MF: You know or should know that family resemblance of parents and children is not the same as evidence of the claimed descent with modification from a common ancestor through fine gradations across time to yield the darwinian tree of life; especially when it comes to origin of novel body plans. In particular, the fossil evidence is notoriously (and since Darwin -- he knew of the suddenness of the appearance of life forms in Cambrian strata) one of Gould's "sudden appearances, stasis and disappearance." In 2002, he wrote in his The Structure of Evolutionary Theory:
. . . long term stasis following geologically abrupt origin of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists. [[p. 752.] . . . . The great majority of species do not show any appreciable evolutionary change at all. These species appear in the section [[first occurrence] without obvious ancestors in the underlying beds, are stable once established and disappear higher up without leaving any descendants." [[p. 753.] . . . . proclamations for the supposed ‘truth’ of gradualism - asserted against every working paleontologist’s knowledge of its rarity - emerged largely from such a restriction of attention to exceedingly rare cases under the false belief that they alone provided a record of evolution at all! The falsification of most ‘textbook classics’ upon restudy only accentuates the fallacy of the ‘case study’ method and its root in prior expectation rather than objective reading of the fossil record. [[p. 773.]
The evidence -- from protein folds, to fossil records, and the observations of current life forms -- directly and strongly supports islands of function for diverse body plans, not a smothly branching tree of life from common ancestors. This last is an inference imposed on the actual facts, on a priori assumptions of what "must" have happened on evolutionary materialistic premises. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
11:06 PM
11
11
06
PM
PDT}

#12 Gil The evidence for gradualism is all around you. Every day billions of organisms produce billions of progeny. In every single case the descendent is extremely similar to the ancestor.markf_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
10:17 PM
10
10
17
PM
PDT}

further notes for 'quantum proteins'; This following new paper provides further confirmation that quantum information/entanglement is involved along the entirety of protein structures. (Though inexplicably, the researchers, without any warrant, attributed this ‘chemical impossibility’ to Darwinian evolution) Scientists get glimpse of how the 'code' of life may have emerged - March 2011 Excerpt: Rodriguez discovered that when she made these changes to the enzyme, the binding of the amino acid to the protein was strengthened, even though the amino acid binds far away from the positions where the changes were made. "It is totally counterintuitive," ,,, In all, Rodriguez found that separately removing seven different "gears" from a distant part of the molecule each caused the amino acid to bind more tightly to the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase. Perona explained that this provides the first systematic analysis demonstrating long-range communication in an enzyme that depends on RNA for its function. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-scientists-glimpse-code-life-emerged.html f/n Quantum Information In DNA & Protein Folding - short video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5936605/bornagain77_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
07:42 PM
7
07
42
PM
PDT}

grizzfan, just a little further comment on your seeming gullibility to so readily accept the gene duplication scenario without first establishing a proper scientific foundation. First grizzfan, you, nor any of your atheistic/materialistic comrades, have shown proteins to be 'variable' in the first place; Severe Limits to Darwinian Evolution: - Michael Behe - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: The immediate, obvious implication is that the 2009 results render problematic even pretty small changes in structure/function for all proteins — not just the ones he worked on.,,,Thanks to Thornton’s impressive work, we can now see that the limits to Darwinian evolution are more severe than even I had supposed. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/severe_limits_to_darwinian_evo.html#more Stability effects of mutations and protein evolvability. October 2009 Excerpt: The accepted paradigm that proteins can tolerate nearly any amino acid substitution has been replaced by the view that the deleterious effects of mutations, and especially their tendency to undermine the thermodynamic and kinetic stability of protein, is a major constraint on protein evolvability,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19765975 “Mutations are rare phenomena, and a simultaneous change of even two amino acid residues in one protein is totally unlikely. One could think, for instance, that by constantly changing amino acids one by one, it will eventually be possible to change the entire sequence substantially… These minor changes, however, are bound to eventually result in a situation in which the enzyme has ceased to perform its previous function but has not yet begun its ‘new duties’. It is at this point it will be destroyed - along with the organism carrying it.” Maxim D. Frank-Kamenetski, Unraveling DNA, 1997, p. 72. (Professor at Brown U. Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering) Second grizzfan you have not shown novel proteins to be 'non-rare' Estimating the prevalence of protein sequences adopting functional enzyme folds: Doug Axe: Excerpt: Starting with a weakly functional sequence carrying this signature, clusters of ten side-chains within the fold are replaced randomly, within the boundaries of the signature, and tested for function. The prevalence of low-level function in four such experiments indicates that roughly one in 10^64 signature-consistent sequences forms a working domain. Combined with the estimated prevalence of plausible hydropathic patterns (for any fold) and of relevant folds for particular functions, this implies the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as 1 in 10^77, adding to the body of evidence that functional folds require highly extraordinary sequences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15321723 Grizzfan It is interesting to note that the 'optimistic' 1 in 10^12 (one in a trillion) estimate for functional proteins (Szostak) from evolutionists, is still very rare and of insurmountable difficulty for a materialist to use in any evolutionary scenario; How Proteins Evolved - Cornelius Hunter - December 2010 Excerpt: Comparing ATP binding with the incredible feats of hemoglobin, for example, is like comparing a tricycle with a jet airplane. And even the one in 10^12 shot, though it pales in comparison to the odds of constructing a more useful protein machine, is no small barrier. If that is what is required to even achieve simple ATP binding, then evolution would need to be incessantly running unsuccessful trials. The machinery to construct, use and benefit from a potential protein product would have to be in place, while failure after failure results. Evolution would make Thomas Edison appear lazy, running millions of trials after millions of trials before finding even the tiniest of function. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-proteins-evolved.html but grizzfan there is a even more crushing thing now for your materialistic conjecture that random mutations and natural selection operating on a duplicate gene can produce a novel functional protein; ,,,proteins have now been shown to have a 'Cruise Control' mechanism, which works to 'self-correct' the integrity of the protein structure from any random mutations imposed on them. Proteins with cruise control provide new perspective: "A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order." http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S22/60/95O56/ Cruise Control permeating the whole of the protein structure??? This is an absolutely fascinating discovery. The equations of calculus involved in achieving even a simple process control loop, such as a dynamic cruise control loop, are very complex. In fact it seems readily apparent to me that highly advanced mathematical information must reside along the entirety of the protein structure, in order to achieve such control. This fact gives us clear evidence that there is far more functional information residing in proteins than meets the eye. Moreover this ‘oneness’ of cruise control, within the protein structure, can only be achieved through quantum computation/entanglement principles, and is inexplicable to the reductive materialistic approach of neo-Darwinism! For a sample of the equations that must be dealt with, to 'engineer' even a simple process control loop like cruise control for a single protein, please see this following site: PID controller A proportional–integral–derivative controller (PID controller) is a generic control loop feedback mechanism (controller) widely used in industrial control systems. A PID controller attempts to correct the error between a measured process variable and a desired setpoint by calculating and then outputting a corrective action that can adjust the process accordingly and rapidly, to keep the error minimal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller It is in realizing the staggering level of engineering that must be dealt with to achieve 'cruise control' for each individual protein that it becomes apparent even Axe’s 1 in 10^77 estimate for finding specific functional proteins within sequence space is in far, far too generous. In fact since quantum entanglement falsified reductive materialism/local realism (Alain Aspect) then finding quantum entanglement/information to be 'protein specific' is absolutely shattering to any hope that materialists had in what slim probabilities there were, since a 'transcendent' cause must be supplied which is specific to each unique protein structure. Materialism is simply at a complete loss to supply such a transcendent cause!bornagain77_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
07:16 PM
7
07
16
PM
PDT}

Well, folks, between spending hours in moderation and finding that no one is able to answer the original question, I guess it's time to move on. Metaphysical arguments against evolution is not the same as explaining the evidence from a different paradigm. In science, if your explanation is better than the last, you should be able to show it, and no one is willing to do so here. I have to conclude that you all are a long way from providing anything that can remotely challenge evolution as the reigning paradigm. I had hoped you would have something. Perhaps you need to find an anthropologist to join you? A anyway, good luck. I think I'll stick with my spouse and associates on this one, as they can address the specifics about the distribution, age and features of the fossils. You can't ignore that they exist, so explaining them can't be avoided. One final point-unless you fix your moderation system, you'll not have many here offering a different perspective. 8,10,12 hours or more before a post appears is just too long; it disrupts the conversation and makes posts appear out of context.KL_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
07:10 PM
7
07
10
PM
PDT}

The bottom line is that establishing ancestor-descendant relationships from the fossil record is impossible. Paleoanthropology has nothing to do with hard science. It is wishful speculation based on a conclusion that has been reached in advance, and that is that the Darwinian mechanism of random errors filtered by natural selection can produce, by a step-by-tiny-step process, new living forms of astronomically superior and progressive sophistication. This reeks of massaging and creatively interpreting the evidence to fit an a priori assumption. Such a process represents the antithesis of the scientific method, which requires admitting that the evidence is insufficient to support the hypothesis, when this is obviously the case. The overwhelming evidence of the fossil record is profound and consistent discontinuity. For the Darwinist, this is not a problem: The Darwinian hypothesis of gradualism must be correct, because the alternative (discontinuity and therefore design) is philosophically unacceptable, therefore, the evidence must be in error and must be reinterpreted to fit a previously-arrived-at conclusion, which is coincidentally and conveniently compatible with the "researcher's" materialistic worldview that design could not possibly have been present in the origin of life or the evolution of living systems. The history of "science" is full of this kind of thing -- defense of the indefensible and denying or reinterpreting the evidence, because the defenders have too much to lose: careers, income, prestige among their peers (not to mention castigation, vilification, and excommunication from the "scientific consensus"), a sense of self-worth, and most importantly, fear that they have wasted their lives on a lie. Who would want to lie on his deathbed and realize that he wasted his entire professional life adding a few more epicycles to Ptolemaic cosmology after Copernicus? Such is the plight of the Darwinist, and it's an extremely saddening and disturbing phenomenon to observe.GilDodgen_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
06:02 PM
6
06
02
PM
PDT}

Hey but grizzfan,,, if you still disagree with all that, you can settle the matter once and for all 'scientifically' by violating the principle of genetic entropy,, by passing the 'fitness test', since I hold all rapid beneficial adaptations are 'designed' as well all rapid beneficial adaptations come at a loss of information that was already present in the parent species!!!!; Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? - 'The Fitness Test' - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3995248 Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria - 2008 http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/darwin-at-drugstore Thank Goodness the NCSE Is Wrong: Fitness Costs Are Important to Evolutionary Microbiology Excerpt: it (an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/thank_goodness_the_ncse_is_wro.html List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria: http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.aspbornagain77_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
05:51 PM
5
05
51
PM
PDT}

Ms. O'Leary, please excuse me, not to distract from the main point of the thread, but to address the blatant fallacy that 'gene duplication has been shown to produce new genes" @ post 2; What does the empirical evidence actually say? Is gene duplication a viable explanation for the origination of biological information and complexity? - December 2010 Excerpt: The totality of the evidence reveals that, although duplication can and does facilitate important adaptations by tinkering with existing compounds, molecular evolution is nonetheless constrained in each and every case. Therefore, although the process of gene duplication and subsequent random mutation has certainly contributed to the size and diversity of the genome, it is alone insufficient in explaining the origination of the highly complex information pertinent to the essential functioning of living organisms. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity, 2011 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.20365/abstract Evolution by Gene Duplication Falsified - December 2010 Excerpt: The various postduplication mechanisms entailing random mutations and recombinations considered were observed to tweak, tinker, copy, cut, divide, and shuffle existing genetic information around, but fell short of generating genuinely distinct and entirely novel functionality. Contrary to Darwin’s view of the plasticity of biological features, successive modification and selection in genes does indeed appear to have real and inherent limits: it can serve to alter the sequence, size, and function of a gene to an extent, but this almost always amounts to a variation on the same theme—as with RNASE1B in colobine monkeys. The conservation of all-important motifs within gene families, such as the homeobox or the MADS-box motif, attests to the fact that gene duplication results in the copying and preservation of biological information, and not its transformation as something original. Does Gene Duplication Perform As Advertised? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/01/does_gene_duplication_perform_042381.html Michael Behe Hasn't Been Refuted on the Flagellum! Excerpt: Douglas Axe of the Biologic Institute showed in one recent paper in the journal Bio-complexity that the model of gene duplication and recruitment only works if very few changes are required to acquire novel selectable utility or neo-functionalization. If a duplicated gene is neutral (in terms of its cost to the organism), then the maximum number of mutations that a novel innovation in a bacterial population can require is up to six. If the duplicated gene has a slightly negative fitness cost, the maximum number drops to two or fewer (not inclusive of the duplication itself). http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/03/michael_behe_hasnt_been_refute044801.html The Limits of Complex Adaptation: An Analysis Based on a Simple Model of Structured Bacterial Populations Douglas D. Axe* Excerpt: In particular, I use an explicit model of a structured bacterial population, similar to the island model of Maruyama and Kimura, to examine the limits on complex adaptations during the evolution of paralogous genes—genes related by duplication of an ancestral gene. Although substantial functional innovation is thought to be possible within paralogous families, the tight limits on the value of d found here (d ? 2 for the maladaptive case, and d ? 6 for the neutral case) mean that the mutational jumps in this process cannot have been very large. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2010.4/BIO-C.2010.4 The GS (genetic selection) Principle – David L. Abel – 2009 Excerpt: No increase in Shannon or Prescriptive information occurs in duplication. What the above papers show is that not even variation of the duplication produces new information, not even Shannon “information.” http://www.scitopics.com/The_GS_Principle_The_Genetic_Selection_Principle.html Simulating evolution by gene duplication of protein features that require multiple amino acid residues: Michael J. Behe and David W. Snoke Excerpt: The fact that very large population sizes—10^9 or greater—are required to build even a minimal [multi-residue] feature requiring two nucleotide alterations within 10^8 generations by the processes described in our model, and that enormous population sizes are required for more complex features or shorter times, seems to indicate that the mechanism of gene duplication and point mutation alone would be ineffective, at least for multicellular diploid species, because few multicellular species reach the required population sizes. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2286568 Experimental Evolution of Gene Duplicates in a Bacterial Plasmid Model Excerpt: In a striking contradiction to our model, no such conditions were found. The fitness cost of carrying both plasmids increased dramatically as antibiotic levels were raised, and either the wild-type plasmid was lost or the cells did not grow. This study highlights the importance of the cost of duplicate genes and the quantitative nature of the tradeoff in the evolution of gene duplication through functional divergence. http://www.springerlink.com/content/vp471464014664w8/ This recent paper also found the gene duplication scenario to be highly implausible: The Extinction Dynamics of Bacterial Pseudogenes - Kuo and Ochman - August 2010 Excerpt: "Because all bacterial groups, as well as those Archaea examined, display a mutational pattern that is biased towards deletions and their haploid genomes would be more susceptible to dominant-negative effects that pseudogenes might impart, it is likely that the process of adaptive removal of pseudogenes is pervasive among prokaryotes." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/08/on_reductive_evolution_and_the037581.html further note: “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain - Michael Behe - December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/bornagain77_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
05:47 PM
5
05
47
PM
PDT}

Well, I am happy to answer questions to the best of my ability, but the reason I came to this site was because of the statements made on the other thread, and I would really like an answer to my original question before we proceed, as that will direct my thoughts in the correct way. No offense meant, but the topic of physical anthropology and the fossil record came first.KL_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
05:07 PM
5
05
07
PM
PDT}

KL.you are out of moderation, I am told. Do you want to answer my questions above? We are starting a new thread for reasons that will, of course, be apparent to you: I want to know if there is any proposition that supposedly flows from human evolution that you would reject. What specific type of proposition it would it be? This is without prejudice as to whatever happened on the other thread: I would like some answers to the questions posed in this post.O'Leary_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
05:01 PM
5
05
01
PM
PDT}

H'mm: I wonder, is this my "friend" old Ms Akismet at it again? (Rapid, multiple posts by a new account does look like a pattern a spamming filter is likely to pick up. Also, there may have been trigger words used.) Over to the moderators. GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
03:30 PM
3
03
30
PM
PDT}

Thanks, markf. Didn't know. Just got back to my desk.O'Leary_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
02:24 PM
2
02
24
PM
PDT}

You should be aware that for some reason KL has been put into moderation and his comments are not being released for viewing.markf_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
01:49 PM
1
01
49
PM
PDT}

Also, your comment above is at 9AM. My last comment on the Lucy thread was at 6AM and as of right now it is still "awaiting moderation", as are my comments above. What does that mean, and why does it take so long?KL_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
11:33 AM
11
11
33
AM
PDT}

PS-why are we starting a new thread on this?KL_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
11:10 AM
11
11
10
AM
PDT}

You are still going on about molecular biology. My comment is about physical anthropology and the fossil record. Could you please apply your paradigm to explain the distribution, age and features of the hominid fossils found? Do you need another link to the website that had the searchable list?KL_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
11:08 AM
11
11
08
AM
PDT}

Gene Duplication A gene duplication produces a new *copy* of an existing gene, which may or may not have differences in the new copy. If the new copy is *identical*, you could argue that this, *by itself* is not "new" information. But coupled with *ANY* other kind of mutation ... a point mutation, a frameshift error, a repeat expansion, a substitution, deletion, insertion, inversion, translocation, ... a gene duplication together with any of these other kinds of mutations can produce a *new gene*. http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/mutation… (Note the gene duplication, and the second kind of mutation, do not have to occur *at the same time*. The gene duplication can occur at one point, and then perhaps thousands of generations later, one of the two copies can experience a second mutation, which changes the *properties* of one of the two copies.) There are MANY documented examples of new genes produced by gene duplication, and involved in evolution. Here are just a few: "The evolution of trichromatic color vision by opsin gene duplication in New World and Old World primates." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10413… "The birth of new genes by RNA- and DNA-mediated duplication during mammalian evolution." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19803… "Further examples of evolution by gene duplication revealed through DNA sequence comparisons." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/78961… "The evolution of functionally novel proteins after gene duplication." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/80292… "Molecular evidence that the H-2D and H-2L genes arose by duplication." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23519… "Rapid evolution of goat and sheep globin genes following gene duplication." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/65999… "Genomic evolution of the placenta using co-option and duplication and divergence." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18340… "Duplication of accelerated evolution and growth hormone gene in passerine birds." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18048… "Gene duplication and the adaptive evolution of a classic genetic switch." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17928… "Characterization and evolution of the novel gene family FAM90A in primates originated by multiple duplication and rearrangement events." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17684… "Two gene duplication events in the evolution of the human heat-stable alkaline phosphatases." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34433…grizzfan_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
08:47 AM
8
08
47
AM
PDT}

KL, if you are still around, to prove that neo-Darwinian evolution is even plausible, 'scientifically', you must demonstrate the capacity of purely material processes to generate functional information. Although you may think this will be a fairly easy task since all of life is filled to the brim with functional information that far, far, surpasses, in sophistication, anything man has ever achieved in his most advanced computer programs, the fact is that no one has ever, in all the history of science, seen purely material processes, whether in life or out of life, generate any 'non-trivial' functional information over and above what was already present! notes; there is a one million dollar prize if you, or anyone else, is successful in this endeavor; "The Origin-of-Life Prize" ® (hereafter called "the Prize") will be awarded for proposing a highly plausible natural-process mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life. The explanation must be consistent with empirical biochemical, kinetic, and thermodynamic concepts as further delineated herein, and be published in a well-respected, peer-reviewed science journal(s). http://www.us.net/life/ The Law of Physicodynamic Insufficiency - Dr David L. Abel - November 2010 Excerpt: “If decision-node programming selections are made randomly or by law rather than with purposeful intent, no non-trivial (sophisticated) function will spontaneously arise.”,,, After ten years of continual republication of the null hypothesis with appeals for falsification, no falsification has been provided. The time has come to extend this null hypothesis into a formal scientific prediction: “No non trivial algorithmic/computational utility will ever arise from chance and/or necessity alone.” http://www.scitopics.com/The_Law_of_Physicodynamic_Insufficiency.html Three Subsets of Sequence Complexity and Their Relevance to Biopolymeric Information - David L. Abel and Jack T. Trevors - Theoretical Biology & Medical Modelling, Vol. 2, 11 August 2005, page 8 "No man-made program comes close to the technical brilliance of even Mycoplasmal genetic algorithms. Mycoplasmas are the simplest known organism with the smallest known genome, to date. How was its genome and other living organisms' genomes programmed?" http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1742-4682-2-29.pdf “The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero.” Ilya Prigogine, Gregoire Nicolis, and Agnes Babloyantz, Physics Today 25, pp. 23-28. Signature In The Cell - Review Excerpt: Even if you grant the most generous assumptions: that every elementary particle in the observable universe is a chemical laboratory randomly splicing amino acids into proteins every Planck time for the entire history of the universe, there is a vanishingly small probability that even a single functionally folded protein of 150 amino acids would have been created. http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/reading_list/indices/book_726.html Francis Collins on Making Life Excerpt: 'We are so woefully ignorant about how biology really works. We still don't understand how a particular DNA sequence—when we just stare at it—codes for a protein that has a particular function. We can't even figure out how that protein would fold—into what kind of three-dimensional shape. And I would defy anybody who is going to tell me that they could, from first principles, predict not only the shape of the protein but also what it does.' - Francis Collins - Former Director of the Human Genome Project http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/collins-genome.html Dr. Don Johnson lays out some of the probabilities for life in this following video: Probabilities Of Life - Don Johnson PhD. - 38 minute mark of video a typical functional protein - 1 part in 10^175 the required enzymes for life - 1 part in 10^40,000 a living self replicating cell - 1 part in 10^340,000,000 http://www.vimeo.com/11706014 Professor Harold Morowitz shows the Origin of Life 'problem' escalates dramatically over the 1 in 10^40,000 figure when working from a thermodynamic perspective,: "The probability for the chance of formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 in 10^340,000,000. This number is 10 to the 340 millionth power! The size of this figure is truly staggering since there is only supposed to be approximately 10^80 (10 to the 80th power) electrons in the whole universe!" (Professor Harold Morowitz, Energy Flow In Biology pg. 99, Biophysicist of George Mason University) Perhaps KL, you say that is just the origin of life, but once we get life, no matter how improbable that was, its all down hill from there for we got 'natural selection' now baby! Well that is not nearly as helpful as you would presuppose; Nature Paper,, Finds Darwinian Processes Lacking - Michael Behe - Oct. 2009 Excerpt: Now, thanks to the work of Bridgham et al (2009), even such apparently minor switches in structure and function (of a protein to its supposed ancestral form) are shown to be quite problematic. It seems Darwinian processes can’t manage to do even as much as I had thought. (which was 1 in 10^40 for just 2 binding sites) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/10/nature_paper_finally_reaches_t.html The Sheer Lack Of Evidence For Macro Evolution - William Lane Craig - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4023134 Even more problematic for evolutionists is that even within the 'bacterial world' there are enormous unexplained gaps of completely unique genes within each different species of bacteria: ORFan Genes Challenge Common Descent – Paul Nelson – video with references http://www.vimeo.com/17135166 further notes; Do you believe Richard Dawkins exists? Excerpt: DNA is the best information storage mechanism known to man. A single pinhead of DNA contains as much information as could be stored on 2 million two-terabyte hard drives. Bill Gates, in recognizing the superiority found in Genetic Coding compared to the best computer coding we now have, has now funded research into this area: Welcome to CoSBi - (Computational and Systems Biology) Excerpt: Biological systems are the most parallel systems ever studied and we hope to use our better understanding of how living systems handle information to design new computational paradigms, programming languages and software development environments. The net result would be the design and implementation of better applications firmly grounded on new computational, massively parallel paradigms in many different areas. etc.. etc...bornagain77_{April 3, 2011
April
04
Apr
3
03
2011
08:05 AM
8
08
05
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 … 8 9 10

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply