Origin of the species, where do you stand?

[shropshire 0]

<> - we were never a grain of sand (silicon) ... we're carbon based

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Amazon 7]

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I'm not a creationist, but didn't Mt. St. Helens teach us nature can produce immense results in a fraction of a second?

Yup.. been there and walked all over the remains... oh by the way we were Elk Hunting up at the turn around just below Windy Pass....in nov of 1979.. so I got to see it up close before and after. We had dinner down at the lodge... Truman will make an interesting fossil...

That being said.. it was a VERY localized phenomenon...Some of the eruptions from Yellowstone made far more fossils in FAR more widespread formations.

The most interesting thing about the fossil record is that its REALLLY hard to make a fossil, you need the right conditions.. and that happens infrequently....when you go worldwide you STILL have the localized problem with the event happening on a small scale compared to the rest of the world where the event has no effect. To complicate matters you have critters who EAT the prospective fossil...and destroy it or scatter it. Instant burial is not that common.

Gaps in the fossil record exist in any locality even gaps in the deposition history occur when deposition stops and erosion occurs as conditions change over time.. but over the whole world you do get a timeline that can be followed. Species of sea creatures may have a global distribution and show little difference from the same species 15 thousand miles away but land animals have great diversity between different continental environments. Only when you have the continents coming together do you get an admixture of the species and dominance by those better able to adapt and survive.

[kallend 1,647]

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<> - we were never a grain of sand (silicon) ... we're carbon based

Sand is silica, not silicon (or even silicone).

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[steveorino 7]

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. ... Truman will make an interesting fossil...

A great restaurant (more like an upscale bar/grill) in Anchorage was "Harry's" named in honor of the old codger. I wonder if it is still there? It was near Benson & C Street.

steveOrino

[SpeedRacer 1]

well, I believe that religion is incorrect because it isn't science.

Also, Chinese is incorrect because it is meaningless in English.

And art is incorrect because it doesn't explain how to build an engine.

Speed Racer
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[wmw999 2,147]

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well, I believe that religion is incorrect because it isn't science.

Also, Chinese is incorrect because it is meaningless in English.

And art is incorrect because it doesn't explain how to build an engine.

Will you marry me?

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[billvon 2,427]

>Sand is silica . . .

. . . which is quartz, or silicon dioxide (SiO2.) That's why sand is often used to make silicon ingots for semiconductor manufacture.

[pajarito 0]

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But every once in a great while that mutation gives you a slightly better resistance to HIV or cancer. And if that new trait helps that person survive and reproduce, then it is propagated. New information has been added.

No “new” information added, therefore, no possibility to be the catalyst for change into something else altogether.

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Some microorganisms are endowed with genes that grant resistance to these antibiotics. This resistance can take the form of degrading the antibiotic molecule or of ejecting it from the cell... The organisms having these genes can transfer them to other bacteria making them resistant as well. Although the resistance mechanisms are specific to a particular antibiotic, most pathogenic bacteria have... succeeded in accumulating several sets of genes granting them resistance to a variety of antibiotics.

The acquisition of antibiotic resistance in this manner... is not the kind that can serve as a prototype for the mutations needed to account for Evolution… The genetic changes that could illustrate the theory must not only add information to the bacterium's genome, they must add new information to the biocosm. The horizontal transfer of genes only spreads around genes that are already in some species.

A microorganism can sometimes acquire resistance to an antibiotic through a random substitution of a single nucleotide... Streptomycin, which was discovered by Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz and first reported in 1944, is an antibiotic against which bacteria can acquire resistance in this way. But although the mutation they undergo in the process is beneficial to the microorganism in the presence of streptomycin, it cannot serve as a prototype for the kind of mutations needed by NDT [Neo-Darwinian Theory]. The type of mutation that grants resistance to streptomycin is manifest in the ribosome and degrades its molecular match with the antibiotic molecule.

This change in the surface of the microorganism's ribosome prevents the streptomycin molecule from attaching and carrying out its antibiotic function. It turns out that this degradation is a loss of specificity and therefore a loss of information. The main point is that Evolution… cannot be achieved by mutations of this sort, no matter how many of them there are. Evolution cannot be built by accumulating mutations that only degrade specificity. -- Dr. Lee Spetner

There is no evidence of mutation (even those that turn out to be beneficial for survival and propagation of a species) that develops the new genetic information which would be required for Neo-Darwinian evolutionary change. Mutation results in a varied form of a pre-existing gene (e.g. variation within a kind). Evolution needs something to increase the quantity and quality of genetic information. Neo-Darwinians use the mysterious idea to fill in the gaps that “billions of years” can account for any improbabilities. New genetic sentences would have to be written in order for one species to change (even slowly over billions of years) into another. This does not happen even in your example.

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Multiply that by a few billion years, and you have fish evolving into people.

There’s the magic... We have no evidence to support this but “billions of years” make it so it might have, probably did, could have, and maybe happened that way. “Fish to people” without evidence on how the mechanism of change “does” work (observable) at the most basic level doesn’t sound like good science to me. It sounds like faith in a theory.

[jcd11235 0]

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No “new” information added, therefore, no possibility to be the catalyst for change into something else altogether.

New information is not necessary for mutation. DNA strands can mutate as they synthesize, such that the base pairs do not line up the same way as they did in previous versions.

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[pajarito 0]

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No “new” information added, therefore, no possibility to be the catalyst for change into something else altogether.

New information is not necessary for mutation. DNA strands can mutate as they synthesize, such that the base pairs do not line up the same way as they did in previous versions.

It may be a new sequence but there's no new information added that wasn't already there before. There is speciation within a kind driven by natural selection, however, the leap hasn't been demonstrated as possible for anything beyond that.

[Andy9o8 0]

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There’s the magic... We have no evidence to support this but “billions of years” make it so it might have, probably did, could have, and maybe happened that way. “Fish to people” without evidence on how the mechanism of change “does” work (observable) at the most basic level doesn’t sound like good science to me. It sounds like faith in a theory.

All this does is parrot the standard Creationists' oversimplified dismissal of the fact of evolution.

[jcd11235 0]

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No “new” information added, therefore, no possibility to be the catalyst for change into something else altogether.

New information is not necessary for mutation. DNA strands can mutate as they synthesize, such that the base pairs do not line up the same way as they did in previous versions.

It may be a new sequence but there's no new information added that wasn't already there before. There is speciation within a kind driven by natural selection, however, the leap hasn't been demonstrated as possible for anything beyond that.

If you look at it that way, then the information in our DNA is no different than the information in a single celled organism. It's all just As and Ts, Cs and Gs. What matters is how the information is arranged.

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[shropshire 0]

-Whoops..... Knew it has an S in it

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[kallend 1,647]

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>Sand is silica . . .

. . . which is quartz, or silicon dioxide (SiO2.) That's why sand is often used to make silicon ingots for semiconductor manufacture.

Silica is to silicon what carbon dioxide is to diamond or rust is to iron. Not the same thing.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[pajarito 0]

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If you look at it that way, then the information in our DNA is no different than the information in a single celled organism. It's all just As and Ts, Cs and Gs. What matters is how the information is arranged.

More or less... and that is why there is such diversity among us within a species. However, the information for the Neo-Darwinian kind of change just isn't there. New information would have to be added for one species to (even gradually) change into another.

[jcd11235 0]

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If you look at it that way, then the information in our DNA is no different than the information in a single celled organism. It's all just As and Ts, Cs and Gs. What matters is how the information is arranged.

More or less... and that is why there is such diversity among us within a species. However, the information for the Neo-Darwinian kind of change just isn't there. New information would have to be added for one species to (even gradually) change into another.

You evidently misunderstood what I wrote. Your assertion has no basis in fact. There is more than one way to cause the mutations required for evolution to take place. They can even be caused by damage from light. Not only are such mutations possible, they are probable.

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[pajarito 0]

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You evidently misunderstood what I wrote. Your assertion has no basis in fact. There is more than one way to cause the mutations required for evolution to take place. They can even be caused by damage from light. Not only are such mutations possible, they are probable.

Sure. They happen all the time. What's the point?

[jcd11235 0]

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You evidently misunderstood what I wrote. Your assertion has no basis in fact. There is more than one way to cause the mutations required for evolution to take place. They can even be caused by damage from light. Not only are such mutations possible, they are probable.

Sure. They happen all the time. What's the point?

Such mutations are the "building blocks" of evolution.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[billvon 2,427]

>No “new” information added . . .

Like I said, new information gets into the genome every time you have a meiosis/fertilization event. It's usually useless. That's just plain fact, so not really worth debating.

>There is no evidence of mutation (even those that turn out to
>be beneficial for survival and propagation of a species) that develops
> the new genetic information which would be required for Neo
>Darwinian evolutionary change.

A few months back, a human child was born with an apparently functional third arm. It was removed to make her development easier, but it was there, and it was functional. If your premise was correct, that would be impossible. It _is_ possible because evolution makes use of existing structures and alters them to achieve a new purpose.

A good case in point is the HOX gene, which controls body segmentation. We all have it. In starfish, it controls the division of the embryo into five arms. In us, it controls verterbral development, and thus which end is "up." Same gene, used to do two very different things. Occasionally an error in its expression will cause an extra arm, or extra leg, or a tail. No radically new genetic information, just a minor change to what we have now.

>New genetic sentences would have to be written in order for one
>species to change (even slowly over billions of years) into another.
>This does not happen even in your example.

Of course it does. It happens every time you fertilize an egg - you get new 'sentences' that didn't even exist before.

Occasionally, we even spontaneously add whole new chromosomes. Trisomy-21 (Down syndrome) is an example of the spontaneous creation of a third chromosome in what is normally the 21st pair. This is an example of a bad mutation; the resulting child is generally impaired to at least some degree. But it does demonstrate that we can add whole new chromosomes essentially spontaneously.

However, number of chromosomes doesn't really mean much overall. We have 46 chromosomes (23 pairs.) Kangaroos have 12. Chickens have 78. Carp have 104. Alfalfa have 16; algae have 148. That doesn't mean that algae have more genetic information than we do, it's just how the genome is divided up. Indeed, since translocation generally builds much larger chromosomes before losing the fragments of the previous chromosome, reducing the number of chromosomes is generally associated with a larger genome.

We've seen the numbers of chromosomes change through cases where we "force" rapid evolution by selective breeding. Wild horses have 66 of chromosomes; domesticated horses have 64.

We've seen the same thing in recent hominid evolution as well. Humans have 46 chromosomes; chimpanzees have 48.

Anyway, this isn't an example of brand new structures being created, just evidence that new genetic material gets written (and deleted!) all the time in normal sexual reproduction.

On to the new structures thing -

Evolution does not create purpose-built new structures. No 'designer' thought about human blood clotting and decided to put in place a complex series of steps that would result in a blood clot to stop traumatic bleeding. Instead, old structures are used for new things. In the blood clotting example, some digestive enzymes (which are present in the stomach, and to a much smaller degree in the blood) turned out to be a good thing to have when you got injured; the proteases tended to break down blood in the area of the injury, which led to fibrinogen 'sticking' in the resulting mess, leading to a clot. The first few organisms that had such a system could barely stop even a small laceration from bleeding. But the fact that they could do it at all was a huge evolutionary advantage, and resulted in the genes for liver secretion of those digestive enzymes as well as pancreatic (or whatever those organ-analogs were in our predecessors.)

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/clot/Clotting.html

Keep in mind that wasn't someone "installing" a blood-clotting system. It was a small change to a system the organism already had that let it do something new with the same material, which is how evolution works.

Some other examples of repurposed old structures:

-Beetle wing covers. In dragonflies they are a second set of wings; in beetles they just protect the wings. Indeed, because all animals share the same basic "toolkit" you can fairly easily cause mutations in flies that produce four wings (although that's not an advantage to a fly, which has evolved musculature and control systems to fly with two.)

-Halteres. Using the above example again, flies have balancing organs called halteres that extend out of their bodies to help them balance in flight. Rather than these being "created" out of nothing, they are built with the same genes that make the second set of wings in dragonflies. Same genes, used a different way.

-Panda 'thumbs.' Pandas needed a way to strip leaves from bamboo branches. Rather than evolution 'creating' a bamboo stripper, a bone in the wrist just elongated a bit, giving the panda a second "thumb" if you will; this created a handy notch to pull bamboo branches through. No new structure, just old structures being used in a new way.

-Plantaris muscle. It's a calf muscle that does nothing at all in us; surgeons regularly harvest it when they need to replace muscle somewhere else. But back when our ancestors grabbed things with their feet, it was pretty important. That's an example of a structure basically being rendered unneccesary by other evolutionary changes.

>We have no evidence to support this but “billions of years” make it
>so it might have . . .

And we have no evidence that the Grand Canyon was created by the Colorado river; all we can see is how erosion works over the course of a few hundred years and extrapolate to the millions of years it would take for that to happen. Yet we pretty commonly accept that erosion causes things like canyons. That's part of science - using existing observations to extrapolate longer-term behaviors.

>“Fish to people” without evidence on how the mechanism of
> change “does” work (observable) at the most basic level doesn’t
> sound like good science to me.

We've seen speciation happen dozens of times in labs over the course of only a few hundred years. Fact, not faith. We know we share the same "toolkit" genes with every other complex animal on the planet, and that that toolkit can, through very simple modifications, produce significantly different structures (like extra legs, extra eyes, no eyes etc.) We know that modifications to these toolkit genes can and do happen in nature.

We can watch organisms that are in the process of evolving. Flying squirrels are not very good flyers yet, but their ability to sorta fly helps them survive, and thus they keep their 'wings.' And again, no designer glued wings to their back - they just used what they had (extra skin and longer arms and legs) to create wings, over the course of millions of years.

If we were to revisit that flying squirrel in 100 million years, we might well see a creature very much like a bat. And someone like you might ask "how could that have possibly developed without a creator to give him wings?" The reason that future person would ask that question would be that he had not seen a flying squirrel; he didn't see the steps that led from a regular squirrel to a flying squirrel to something like a bat. That's a problem for all of us, since no one lives 100 million years.

Fortunately, every once in a great while, those transitional species are preserved in fossils. And we see just what we expect to see - transitional fossils showing a gradual change in skeleton formation as existing traits are emphasized/deemphasized to create the new structure.

We can also watch evolution happen on a greatly accelerated scale when we force it to do so. We created great danes and chihuahuas by forced selection from a single species (gray wolf) within a few thousand years. If, within a few thousand years, you can get a great dane and a chihuahua from the same ancestor, it makes sense that in a few million you can get an elephant and a mouse from the same ancestor. Now multiply that change by another million times, and you see the complexity we observe all around us.

[billvon 2,427]

>Silica is to silicon what carbon dioxide is to diamond or rust is to
>iron. Not the same thing.

Oh yeah? Well, it's currently 3:43pm.

[pajarito 0]

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Such mutations are the "building blocks" of evolution.

Prove it.

[jcd11235 0]

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Such mutations are the "building blocks" of evolution.

Prove it.

See BillVons' post above. He explained it far, far better than I could.

Math tutoring available. Only $6! per hour! First lesson: Factorials!

[Royd 0]

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We can also watch evolution happen on a greatly accelerated scale when we force it to do so. We created great danes and chihuahuas by forced selection from a single species (gray wolf) within a few thousand years. If, within a few thousand years, you can get a great dane and a chihuahua from the same ancestor, it makes sense that in a few million you can get an elephant and a mouse from the same ancestor. Now multiply that change by another million times, and you see the complexity we observe all around us.

Now, there's a fairy tale that I can put a lot of stock in!

[billvon 2,427]

>Now, there's a fairy tale that I can put a lot of stock in!

That's progress of a sort!

[Andy9o8 0]

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Such mutations are the "building blocks" of evolution.

Prove it.

<>
I mean you disrespect, really I don't, but it's almost as if you simply did not read the long post Bill just wrote. I know you'll simply say (or think) "Neither do you, but: your mind is totally closed on this subject.