Evolution Question...

Yeah, exactly my point. The conditions HAVE changed, and our species are reacting negatively to it. Not only are people, animals, and organisms not adapting to the pollution, but human intelligence isn't able to adapt the pollution levels to our needs.

The whole situation stinks. =\

I wish the levels weren't that high everywhere, but that isn't the case in today's world. Thousands of these chemicals alone are being scattered into the wind, and are raining down onto the Earth, getting into ALL of the soil, ALL of the streams and rivers (remember how I mentioned that fish from every single river in Pennsylvania is deemed "hazardous" and isn't safe to eat?), and all of the air we breathe.

Yes, each individual region has its own different balance; maybe a little less of this, and a little more of that. But at any given area, there is a significant amount of pollution of at LEAST a hundred different pollutants.

Today, yes, you are right. They would survive. 20 years from now? That's what I'm most worried about. That's why we're having this discussion, right?

Quite true. I can agree with you on that.

You don't have to think he made it up, it's quite obvious that he made it up to begin with.

All anti-evolutionist fundies are the same way. They can barely understand long division and suddenly they think that God is giving them statistics that work.

Here's a hint: It's not God giving you those figures. It's your twisted mind.

 

First of all my book is not 2000 years old but around 1400 and its not filled with contradictions, but rather scientific facts (atleast if we ask some of the greatest embroyologists, geologists and others) but thats another chapter.

Secondly, go ask anyone who works with biochemistry and ask them wether a cell or a city is more complex? A system that duplicates it self, runs, builds and storge information by it self under a strict scheme and controls more than trillion of different activites in just a small part of your body and it does this every picosecund!, not to even mention the whole body it self.

Thirdly: I am sorry for mentioning 99.9999%, that figure was not taken from any source and should hence not of been used and I do take it back.
But I am sure we can both agree that bad mutations, may they be anything from Downsyndrome to albinism are by far superiour (in number) to the few examples of "would be good mutations" that have been found. You do agree to this obvious fact dont you?

Fourthly: What about the pleitropic effect that happens with mutations? If it by chance happens to give a "good mutation" then it will most likely change some other parts of the body at the same time. And, hikaru, what is a half built system good for anyway?

Fifthly: What about systems that cant be created in a neo darwinistic stule such as the immune system or the blood coagulation system. Lets say, the first mammal that aquired a blood coagulation system (this is btw decribed in M.Behes book) started evolving this system by means of accumalated mutations through natural selection. What would such small mutation do to benefit when the blood coagulation system is "irruducibly complex" and must have some criterias to work, if one of these are missing the whole system is worthless! Having a half-built blood coagulation system will acually severly damage or kill the animal!


Thus -by neodarwinistic methods- will be removed by natural selection since this sick animal with a damaged system cant compete with the normal ones withing the same species. Its either all or nothing! Either the whole system which is by far one of the most compex systems in the body came about in one day or neo darwinism have been "absolutly broken down" Albeit, darwin said; "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down"

 

Hicky, yes "ofcourse" a couple of billion teists are precisly as you named them, they are ALL the same. There is no possibity on earth that anyone who is not evolutionstic can count, right?

 

Pleiotropic just means that one gene has an affect on several different parts of an organism, or different effects on different organisms.

To me, it seems like that would be expected in some mutations. Since genes are constantly replicated and duplicated and re-used over and over again, it seems fairly straightforward to me that a gene could have one effect, and then have a different effect somewhere else.

You asked the question, what is a half-built system good for anyway?

My answer: Building the other half.

Nothing in this world is irreducibly complex. Only our human ability to reduce it correctly is limited.

Whether or not you think everything can be reduced to matter, or energy, or God, or consciousness, or what have you ... nothing is irreducibly complex. Just perhaps beyond human capacity to do so.

I'm willing to bet that a system such as the blood coagulation system evolved from a less complex system that was similar. It probably wasn't blood to begin with, probably rather just some simple fluid or something that didn't need to coagulate. And eventually, that fluid had to change, and began to adopt properties like blood. And in adopting such properties (over time), the conditions for coagulation became closer and closer to what was needed to coagulate, and eventually, the conditions matched and the blood could then coagulate.

Coagulation is not a very complex process. You can coagulate the protein in an egg by exposing it to heat (frying), or even by adding acid such as hydrochloric acid to it. You can coagulate your own eye if you get sulfuric or hydrochloric acid in it as well.

I suppose my point is, nothing in evolution was ever "half-built". It was only simpler, and naturally tended towards complexity.

And all or nothing, repeated trillions of times per second, over billions of years ... is going to produce many many "nothings," and still a lot of "alls."

And when those alls get to a certain point, they can think for themselves. They can repair themselves. They can better stave off disease, and malformation, and mutation.

Eh, perhaps what I said is a little too heated. Let me rephrase ...

The vast majority of times, anti-evolutionists do not have any special knowledge in mathematics, or science. They like to claim "facts" that the math doesn't work, without having actually done the math themselves.

The whole problem is this: Anti-evolutionists go about finding one example of math that doesn't work, and then they stop, and start griping about how evolution is wrong.

Evolutionists never said "our math is perfect," evolutionists merely said that "the mathematics we are discovering, show a TENDENCY toward this specific idea of evolution, and although we don't understand all of the math, we will continue to research the math and fill in the missing links." This is why evolution is only a theory. It isn't fact. And no evolutionists is claiming that it is.

Anti-evolutionists often claim things as "factual" and "non-factual" when, in fact (pun intended), nobody that supports evolution is claiming either of those ideas, because it isn't black and white like that.

 

Found an interesting article, from the NY Times, on the changes in the human genome in the last 5-15 thousand years. Humans are still evolving.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/07/science/07evolve.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

 

A cell is not a city. A mutation is not an earthquake. It just doesn't work the same way, and the simile is not accurate.

The vast majority of mutations have no effect at all. You are being mutated every second, by the sun, your computer screen, the cell phone in your pocket, and mutagens in your food, water, and air. But you aren't all lumpy with tumors (I am SO SORRY if you are). Most mutations that have a visible effect on the organism that sustained it are bad. Huge majority. The mutations that cause evolution, however, are only in reproductive cells. When those mutate, it also is usually either ineffective, or bad. A large number of people (larger than you think) are born with mutations such as webbed feet, tails, and both (nonfunctional) genitalia. Just keep in mind, though...a mutation that would cause cancer will not and would not have affected evolution(in a passed-on-to-offspring sense). Unless it's cancer of the sperm or egg or something crazy like that which doesn't exist.

As Hikaru said, Pleiotropy is just one gene affecting multiple traits. You may have noticed that people with black skin have facial features and hair accompanying that. Or Native Americans don't have facial hair. I'm not sure if those are pleiotropy, but pleiotropy is like that.

Ah ha! Here's a popular misconception. There is no gene (I'm saying this with confidence) for half a blood coagulation system. Here's the deal. Evolution and mutation can build up long sequences of inactive DNA. This DNA is not used for anything, as far as we know. It at least is not used to make protein. So over time, mutations such as long tandem repeats, copying errors, transposons, crossing-overs, and nucleotide inserts build up large masses of harmless but useless DNA. This DNA may very well encode for something, but is not used by the cell. There are certain markers, like the origin, the promoter, the TATA box, and the TTGACA box, which initiate use of a segment of DNA by the cell for making protein(which is all DNA is used for). So, gene may be in place, mutation may occur, suddenly some of these pieces are present, and the cell can use this DNA (or at least the next generation can), and presto! Lots of stuff that may seem "irreducibly complex." Undoubtedly this took a long time to come about, but think of the competetive advantage when it did!! The organism could sustain wounds much better than any other member of its species, could kick any dominant male out of office, and then...Look out, 'cause it's time to mate with the females and pass on some awesome genes that'll give all the kids an awesome advantage.

Ignoring what I said above, you're assuming that the animal with half a system is sick and damaged. Who knows? I certainly don't, but I would postulate that any small form of such a system couldn't hurt.

Ahh, I love debating evolution. Even when I should be sleeping.

 

Here's to that! *raises a glass*

Still, I am glad that we are doing this with someone like cabdirrazaq, and not somebody like Erasmus. Cabby here has a good head on his shoulders if nothing else.

I could just imagine if Erasmus were here ... "Ohhh but hikaryui lord darwinn got his maths wrong! YOU MORON ... [pointless rant]" hehe.