Originally posted by OliviaG:
Hey, let's all chill:
Darwin's compatible with Christianity
![[Cool]](cool.gif)
OliviaG ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
Thanks for the animal trials link. Poor things! Now-a-days it's generally summary execution for critters on the grounds of general peskiness. And I take your point about YEC's connection to apocalyptic thinking. As you point out, not everybody has embraced evolution, somehow hitched to theism. quote:Oh, I think I see. I agree with you that it does appear that such a switch in belief appears to have occurred.
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
The OP rather sprawls, but I guess my main point is about the switch in thinking about people from a golden moment of perfect-in-God's-Image to always a work-in-progress.
quote:In order to answer any of those questions, we have to decide to what extent our notions of evolution are bound up with the associated teleological view of social and technological progress, in my opinion.
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
When did we begin to hear God? Is that when we began to gain a moral sense? What evolutionary traits in ourselves are needful now? If they are not needful but rather in some ways inhibit us, is that sin? And what about the fact that many of them are to a degree hardwired into our genes- is that the actual "original sin"?
quote:I'd half-agree with this. I think the myth of creation and fall is very powerful, but I also think it's been grossly distorted by the application of anachronistic and unhelpful expectations of literal historical precision. Stripped right down to the basic story, it speaks of a deep sense of unease with the state of the world, and a feeling that things shouldn't have to be like this.
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
The OP rather sprawls, but I guess my main point is about the switch in thinking about people from a golden moment of perfect-in-God's-Image to always a work-in-progress. So Genesis is a metaphor. Okay. But how do we use it, when our current POV is that there never was moral perfection (or, in fact, morality) until there was self-awareness? We have a tendency to sin, call it Original Sin or not. I'm more and more of the opinion that this a matter of growing pains, of dumping behavioral traits that don't reflect where God wishes us to go.
quote:Might that be mixed with a bit of empathy? It seems to me that self-awareness would not inspire conscience or a Golden Rule if we had no idea how other creatures are made to feel by our actions.
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Whether you think we can eventually overcome our circumstances and become an idealised image of ourselves is a matter of opinion and unprovable either way, but this new-found self-awareness is the way I understand the Fall.
quote:Absolutely. I lumped intelligence and empathy in with self-awareness earlier on, which is more or less what I was more casually referring to here, because I think there's a whole cocktail of things that are very, very hard to separate in terms of how we developed and what effect that had on our view of the world. The main thing is that we changed, and that dramatically altered our view of the world.
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:
quote:Might that be mixed with a bit of empathy? It seems to me that self-awareness would not inspire conscience or a Golden Rule if we had no idea how other creatures are made to feel by our actions.
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
Whether you think we can eventually overcome our circumstances and become an idealised image of ourselves is a matter of opinion and unprovable either way, but this new-found self-awareness is the way I understand the Fall.
quote:I agree with you. Indeed, I think that the story of the ejection from the Garden of Eden can be seen as a reflection of a sense of unease with the world, even if it is not seen as a creation story.
Originally posted by The Great Gumby:
I'd half-agree with this. I think the myth of creation and fall is very powerful, but I also think it's been grossly distorted by the application of anachronistic and unhelpful expectations of literal historical precision. Stripped right down to the basic story, it speaks of a deep sense of unease with the state of the world, and a feeling that things shouldn't have to be like this.
quote:Agreed. My view is that you win some, you lose some.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
I think that has to be the starting point, and it involves the recognition that a lot of the pre-modern theologising re creation and the human condition was wrong. Not because it was insincere, but because the world, as it happens, is unimaginably old and the development of life within it has taken an unimaginably long time. These things are counter-intuitive, as is, to some extent the understanding that sun does not rise, the earth revolves.
Some folks will leave any journey of understanding at this point, fearing the loss of something very dear to them. So the journey in the direction of some kind of harmonisation probably involves self-selecting companions. I think we just have to accept that.
quote:Does anyone think that the question of perceived cultural antiquity might have some relevance?
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
I'd like to start a discussion on reconciliation of evolution, creation, and theism.
First, in my little liberal arts trained knowledge of biology, life in a world of natural selection means species gaining physical, social (and in higher cognitive species) mental tools to push their genes into the next generation. Or if not at some point, they go the way of the dodo. Animal and plant species have a lot of tricks up their sleeves to make this happen. All sorts of physical traits appear and disappear- size, color, strength, immunity to disease and poisons. Social traits like being loners, being in herds and flocks and hives, producing zillions of eggs and sperm and deserting offspring at the egg stage, or raising the lot of them, producing a few well protected and well nurtured offspring, raising offspring alone or in groups for days or years. Some creatures are more often on offense than defense with their own species or other species, or vice versa.
quote:Yes - but that's still a paragraph and a half more than what is given to any ancient Hebrew or Egyptian philosophers.
Originally posted by ken:
There is often a nod to Aristotle in histories of biology, but that would be a paragraph and a half in the first page of the first chapter of a book that was onto the Arabs in the middle ages by page two and talking about Malphigi and Steno by page three.
quote:Thing is, if Plato was such a bad influence, then how does anyone think that the study of biology ever got over it?
Originally posted by ken:
Those few writers about Biology who do think of ancient philosophy regard it as something we had to escape from before the science could get going. Ernst Mayr, whose book "A History of Biological Thought" is more or less the summation of this attitude, thought that Platonism was an anti-scientific disaster that infected thought with the disease of Essentialism which devastated science for centuries. He rather likes Aristotle but thinks that mediaeval Aristotelianism was actually Platonism in disguise. As indeed, from his point of view, is just about every wrong theory ever put forward.
quote:Interesting point. So perhaps it's not so much about playing Greek antiquity off against Hebrew antiquity, as much as it's about saying that people back then didn't know very much, and that all antiquity is worthless.
Originally posted by ken:
But on the whole English-speaking scientists regard philosophers as somewhere between a mostly harmless irrelevance and a complete waste of time. The semi-compulsory lecture on the Philosphy of Science which we get at the start of most courses is likely to include a ritual denigration of all ancient Greeks and mediaevals as just plain wrong, a few words about Bacon, the Royal Society, and practical Englishmen inventing experimentalism, then some misunderstood second-hand accounts of Popper and Kuhn who are usually conflated with each other, and finally get onto the real business of the lecture which is to indoctrinate the students with Fisher's methods of induction and disproving the Null Hypothesis. Though none of the students, and probably not even the lecturer (unless perhaps this is an evolutionary genetics course) will ever have read Fisher or maybe even heard of him.
quote:Ah - but do they rate it over the Egyptian?
Originally posted by ken:
And yes, of course Christians rate the Jewish part of our cultural background over the Greek. Because almighty God chose that people to manifest himself to us. That's kind of important.
quote:It's not just a question of when did we begin to hear God - but also, who heard God first? The Hebrews, or the Egyptians?
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
And now we can look in a mirror and think about ourselves. When did we begin to hear God? Is that when we began to gain a moral sense?
quote:
Evangelicalism has a tendency to devour its young," says Daniel Harlow, a religion professor at Calvin College, a Christian Reformed school that subscribes to the fall of Adam and Eve as a central part of its faith.
"You get evangelicals who push the envelope, maybe; they get the courage to work in sensitive, difficult areas," Harlow says. "And they get slapped down. They get fired or dismissed or pressured out."
quote:Well might it, but young-earth creationism isn't part of that egg. Catholics and their theology have done without it for a long time. One thing Evangelicals might learn in looking at the Catholics is how they manage without that supposedly essential tenet.
"When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face," Giberson says. "The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it."
quote:My my, such a painful trail to blaze-- as though no one has ever been there before. If an Evangelical starts balking at a belief that his fellow Evangelicals force him to accept, why doesn't he just become Episcopalian (or Lutheran, or Methodist, or... there are plenty of options)?
"Evolution makes it pretty clear that in nature, and in the moral experience of human beings, there never was any such paradise to be lost," Schneider says. "So Christians, I think, have a challenge, have a job on their hands to reformulate some of their tradition about human beginnings."
quote:My understanding is that the Catholic Church admitted quite some time ago that Galileo was right. Not sure how long ago, but long enough not to be a total embarrasment.
"When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face," Giberson says. "The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it."
quote:The problem there is that even though the majority of Catholics have 'done without' Creationism for the past 50 years (perhaps 100 years), Catholic theology - based on Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium - permits at most only a subset of what constitutes evolutionary theory.
Originally posted by Alogon:
Well might it, but young-earth creationism isn't part of that egg. Catholics and their theology have done without it for a long time. One thing Evangelicals might learn in looking at the Catholics is how they manage without that supposedly essential tenet.
quote:Those seem to be theological categories, rather than scientific ones. What's your reason for thinking that the traditional Catholic view is more "scientifically sound"?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The thought that the first human beings would have been born to a different species (in the sense of the child possessing a rational soul and a human body as opposed to the sensitive soul and animal body of their parents)...
quote:But the problem there arises purely from a confusion of terms. There’s no need to posit, on catholic, protestant or atheist theology, that on scientific terms there ever was a ‘human’ born to ‘non-human’ parents (obviously they were animals, but then you, me, and Jesus Christ are all animals, scientifically speaking).
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
A human child born to animal parents is, like it or not, disturbing to most people and, indeed, raises more questions than it answers.
quote:You need to read some Richard Dawkins.
1)The extreme rarity of what may be described as 'transitional forms' and the lack of agreement of evolutionists on even those forms that they regard as transitional.
2)The lack of an empirically observed method whereby genetic information can increase across generations. In fact, what is observed is the loss of genetic information across generations through deleterious mutations and errors in copying genetic information. The Second Law of Thermodynamics operates at the level of the genome and we see order slowly turning to disorder, in fact due to mutations being passed on we are seeing a rise in genetic diseases from generation to generation in every species on the planet. I'd recommend The Mystery of the Genome: Genetic Entropy by Dr. John Sanford of Cornell University.
quote:I understood that this was not the case (although maybe it was some years ago) and whoever contributed to the Wikpedia article on transitional fossils seems to agree.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
With regards to scientific evidence, I think evolutionary theory falls down in at least two main regards:
1)The extreme rarity of what may be described as 'transitional forms' and the lack of agreement of evolutionists on even those forms that they regard as transitional.
quote:Again, my understanding was contrary to this, although I admit I've not read that book by John Sanford. Haven't we observed things like fruit flies and viruses mutating and gaining a survival advantage? And who says the Second Law of Thermodynamics operates at the level of the genome? I thought a system has to be closed in order for the Second Law to apply; so it doesn't apply to the genome because DNA replication uses energy, i.e. it brings something in to the system.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
2)The lack of an empirically observed method whereby genetic information can increase across generations. In fact, what is observed is the loss of genetic information across generations through deleterious mutations and errors in copying genetic information. The Second Law of Thermodynamics operates at the level of the genome and we see order slowly turning to disorder, in fact due to mutations being passed on we are seeing a rise in genetic diseases from generation to generation in every species on the planet.
quote:Although the Second Law of Thermodynamics postulates that as a whole the universe is losing order, at the same time pockets of it gain order. Example: nebular gases pulled together by gravity may become new stars. And, yes, entropy will work on them, too. But the new star does arise amongst the overall increase in disorder.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics operates at the level of the genome and we see order slowly turning to disorder, in fact due to mutations being passed on we are seeing a rise in genetic diseases from generation to generation in every species on the planet.
quote:Well, let's take this point first. I think I understand you to say that there may have been a gradual development (from which I understand that you would hold to the more classical Darwinism of Dawkins rather the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould) during which there may have been a moment, perhaps during the adult life, when one of our ancestors awoke spiritually. Have I understood you correctly, eliab?
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:But the problem there arises purely from a confusion of terms. There’s no need to posit, on catholic, protestant or atheist theology, that on scientific terms there ever was a ‘human’ born to ‘non-human’ parents (obviously they were animals, but then you, me, and Jesus Christ are all animals, scientifically speaking).
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
A human child born to animal parents is, like it or not, disturbing to most people and, indeed, raises more questions than it answers.
You might have a theology that requires a single point at which God gifts a hominid with a rational soul for the first time, but no reason to suppose that the event was detectable scientifically, or would have looked as odd as one species giving birth to a radically different one in a single generation. A spiritual awakening moment, though it might make us ‘human’ theologically, need have very little correlation with the moment that we became human zoologically (not least because there was no such moment, evolution doesn’t work like that).
quote:Gladly. It is absolutely true that there is something called speciation, or microevolution. Under certain environmental pressures the phenotype displays certain traits that were lacking in the parent organism. This brings us back to the philosophical question of how the perfections contained in an effect can be contained in a cause. Certainly we would not say that the perfection - say resistance to antibiotics - was contained in the parent organism formally but, rather, virtually that is in potentia. In material terms we can say that the genetic data required for these added capabilities are present in the parent but is only through natural selection caused by the aforementioned environmental pressures that they are then exhibited in the phenotyope.
Originally posted by Eliab:
The second looks like a more solid objection, but as I understand it, new capabilities are observed in bacteria in experimental conditions pretty frequently, so I suspect you’d need to qualify your first statement substantially to make it at all true.
quote:No, I am not citing the Second Law of Thermodynamics to disprove evolutionary theory but to say that it operates in all material operations, including the copying of genetic information across generations. I would say that it is precisely the claim that previously non-existing complexity can increase through progeny that has not been proven. As I said, it violates the principle of sufficient reason.
Originally posted by Eliab:
I’m not sure what you are trying to prove from the Second Law of Thermodynamics: not, presumably, that evolution can be proved a priori to be impossible. That local conditions can result in an increase in ordered complexity is, I suggest, uncontroversial, and that’s all that is needed for evolutionary theory.
quote:Again, the theory that the universe evolved from particles released by a 'Big Bang' is exactly that - a theory. An effect cannot be greater than the sum of its causes and order cannot come by itself from disorder. Again, we would need to invoke God as a cause in bringing stars out nebular gases to make up the 'shortfall' in the material causes. But what astrophysicist would accept that?
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Although the Second Law of Thermodynamics postulates that as a whole the universe is losing order, at the same time pockets of it gain order. Example: nebular gases pulled together by gravity may become new stars. And, yes, entropy will work on them, too. But the new star does arise amongst the overall increase in disorder.
quote:Craigmaddie, are you denying the occurrence of genetic mutations that lead to an environmental advantage? Natural selection, where the genes for two or more different characteristics are present within a species has, I think, been observed many times (for example with the peppered moth). But where did the genotypes for those different characteristics come from? To deny that they can arise from favourable mutations is, as I understand it, to go against the opinion of the vast majority of people active in this scientific field.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
It is absolutely true that there is something called speciation, or microevolution. Under certain environmental pressures the phenotype displays certain traits that were lacking in the parent organism. This brings us back to the philosophical question of how the perfections contained in an effect can be contained in a cause. Certainly we would not say that the perfection - say resistance to antibiotics - was contained in the parent organism formally but, rather, virtually that is in potentia. In material terms we can say that the genetic data required for these added capabilities are present in the parent but is only through natural selection caused by the aforementioned environmental pressures that they are then exhibited in the phenotyope.
In short there is no new genetic information, just the manifestation of information that was contained in the genome of the parent but not visible in its phenotyope.
quote:This is not controversial and is called speciation or microevolution: the manifestation in the phenotype of the child organism of genetic information that is contained in the genome of the parent organism but not necessarily in its phenotype. Natural selection (which is a non-controversial occurence) under environmental pressures manifests this genetic information in the surviving variations.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Again, my understanding was contrary to this, although I admit I've not read that book by John Sanford. Haven't we observed things like fruit flies and viruses mutating and gaining a survival advantage?
quote:All material things are subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics insofar as the only truly closed system is the universe itself and all material things are contained within the physical universe. There is increasing entropy in the human genome which is worrying as we are seeing a consequent increase in the 'genetic load' across generations with inherited mutations leading to increasing cancer rates etc (not to discount environmental factors, of course).
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
And who says the Second Law of Thermodynamics operates at the level of the genome? I thought a system has to be closed in order for the Second Law to apply; so it doesn't apply to the genome because DNA replication uses energy, i.e. it brings something in to the system.
quote:Given the ongoing nature of evolution it could be argued that all fossils are transitional. One wag made the comment, in the wake of the discovery of the Tiktaalik roseae, that creationists had "discovered two new gaps in the fossil record on either side of it". The biggest problem with the "no transitional fossils" argument is that it never seems to put forward a criterion for what makes a fossil "transitional" that doesn't either include a whole bunch of fossils or reduce the term to meaninglessness.
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:The first is a non-issue. “Transitional” forms can be identified only in hindsight. There was absolutely nothing exceptional, at the time about the most recent common ancestor of any two species. It’s only after we observe two lines of descent that have subsequently diverged that the event is noteworthy. A form can only ever be transitional in retrospect.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
1)The extreme rarity of what may be described as 'transitional forms' and the lack of agreement of evolutionists on even those forms that they regard as transitional.
quote:This is just a blatant falsehood. All kinds of methods of changing or increasing genetic information have been observed. Point mutations, insertions, amplifications, translocations, etc. have all been empirically observed.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
2)The lack of an empirically observed method whereby genetic information can increase across generations. In fact, what is observed is the loss of genetic information across generations through deleterious mutations and errors in copying genetic information.
quote:Not a biologist (and I don't even play one on TV, but the classic example of this sort of thing is Lenski's work with long-term bacterial evolution. Here's the official website for those who want to get into the details. Short version: twelve related strains of E. coli were grown in a mostly citrate medium, which they couldn't eat. One of those strains eventually adapted to be able to metabolize citrate, allowing those colonies to grow explosively. None of the other strains were able to adapt this, nor were growths taken from the adapted lineage before generation 20,000 (being able to freeze past generations and "re-run" their evolution from that point forward is an advantage of working with bacteria). This indicated a unique adaptation which seems to have been contingent upon a previous, survival neutral adaptation somewhere shortly after the twenty thousandth generation.
Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Calling biologists: any examples out there of observed, nature-driven, positive genetic change within the time of modern science?
quote:The second law of thermodynamics is an ancient canard of creationist, most of whom don't understand how it works. Under their strained conception, all life violates the second law. A small seed organizes surrounding molecules into a huge tree? Can't happen, second law! Colony of bacteria converting surrounding medium into more bacteria? Sorry, that's an increase in organization. Given the number of ways commonplace biological processes seem to violate the standard creationist understanding of the supposedly inviolable second law of thermodynamics, perhaps they should question whether their understanding is flawed.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:All material things are subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics insofar as the only truly closed system is the universe itself and all material things are contained within the physical universe. There is increasing entropy in the human genome which is worrying as we are seeing a consequent increase in the 'genetic load' across generations with inherited mutations leading to increasing cancer rates etc (not to discount environmental factors, of course).
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
And who says the Second Law of Thermodynamics operates at the level of the genome? I thought a system has to be closed in order for the Second Law to apply; so it doesn't apply to the genome because DNA replication uses energy, i.e. it brings something in to the system.
quote:I certainly do not deny genetic mutations leading to a survival advantage! That is simply not an issue of contention. I do deny that such mutations ever lead to an increase of genetic information whereby a more complex species emerges, such as macroevolution claims.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Craigmaddie, are you denying the occurrence of genetic mutations that lead to an environmental advantage? Natural selection, where the genes for two or more different characteristics are present within a species has, I think, been observed many times (for example with the peppered moth).
quote:The characteristics that emerge under natural selection are contained in the genome of the parent organism:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
But where did the genotypes for those different characteristics come from?
quote:No, I meant mutation to create new genetic information, not simply favouring of what is already there due to some change in the environment. As Croesos has already said.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:This is not controversial and is called speciation or microevolution: the manifestation in the phenotype of the child organism of genetic information that is contained in the genome of the parent organism but not necessarily in its phenotype.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Again, my understanding was contrary to this, although I admit I've not read that book by John Sanford. Haven't we observed things like fruit flies and viruses mutating and gaining a survival advantage?
quote:But order can increase at a local level and over a limited timescale, as per LydaRose's point about star formation. Do you have a link to explain what you mean by 'There is increasing entropy in the human genome'? I don't think I follow your point, sorry!
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
All material things are subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics insofar as the only truly closed system is the universe itself and all material things are contained within the physical universe. There is increasing entropy in the human genome which is worrying as we are seeing a consequent increase in the 'genetic load' across generations with inherited mutations leading to increasing cancer rates etc (not to discount environmental factors, of course).
quote:This seems to be contradicted by the Lenski experiment (see above). After all, if the citrate-metaboliziing gene were present in the parent strain, wouldn't all twelve bacterial lineages have developed Cit+?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
This is not controversial and is called speciation or microevolution: the manifestation in the phenotype of the child organism of genetic information that is contained in the genome of the parent organism but not necessarily in its phenotype. Natural selection (which is a non-controversial occurence) under environmental pressures manifests this genetic information in the surviving variations.
quote:Do you have a link to back this claim up?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
...the genome of the wolf is far richer in genetic information and contains in itself the possibility of different varieties emerging, either through natural selection or deliberate breeding on the part of humans.
quote:What about a point mutation or a transpose error? Those certainly represent a change in genetic information. And what if such a point mutation occurs within a section of genetic code that had previously been the result of an amplification (a section of code being copied twice or more instead of once)? That would certainly seem to be an increase in genetic information: two different genes where there had previously been one.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I certainly do not deny genetic mutations leading to a survival advantage! That is simply not an issue of contention. I do deny that such mutations ever lead to an increase of genetic information whereby a more complex species emerges, such as macroevolution claims.
quote:I think you raise a very good point. When we look at the natural world we see a certain kind of thing that seemingly violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics: organic life. The development of the embryo is an increase of order and complexity over time.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The second law of thermodynamics is an ancient canard of creationist, most of whom don't understand how it works. Under their strained conception, all life violates the second law. A small seed organizes surrounding molecules into a huge tree? Can't happen, second law! Colony of bacteria converting surrounding medium into more bacteria? Sorry, that's an increase in organization. Given the number of ways commonplace biological processes seem to violate the standard creationist understanding of the supposedly inviolable second law of thermodynamics, perhaps they should question whether their understanding is flawed.
quote:Sorry, but I have to reject any argument that water is alive, and thus not subject to second laws of thermodynamics. After all, under your understanding isn't the formation of water molecules into a crystalline structure like a snowflake as it freezes a violation of the second law? Increasing order and all that?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:I think you raise a very good point. When we look at the natural world we see a certain kind of thing that seemingly violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics: organic life. The development of the embryo is an increase of order and complexity over time.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
The second law of thermodynamics is an ancient canard of creationist, most of whom don't understand how it works. Under their strained conception, all life violates the second law. A small seed organizes surrounding molecules into a huge tree? Can't happen, second law! Colony of bacteria converting surrounding medium into more bacteria? Sorry, that's an increase in organization. Given the number of ways commonplace biological processes seem to violate the standard creationist understanding of the supposedly inviolable second law of thermodynamics, perhaps they should question whether their understanding is flawed.
As I said, all material things are subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But isn't an organism such as an acorn not a material thing and therefore wholly subject to the SLT?
No. Because an organism as a substance is compromised, as all substances are, (again founding my argument on the Realist tradition that goes back through St Thomas Aquinas, St Augustine of Hippo, to Aristotle) of two principles: substantial form and prime matter. The form of an organism is its animating principle and is what informs its signate matter to make it what it is.
quote:Again, LydaRose's point about star formation is a theory for which there is no proof as such. We have no evidence that stars developed from nebulae.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
But order can increase at a local level and over a limited timescale, as per LydaRose's point about star formation. Do you have a link to explain what you mean by 'There is increasing entropy in the human genome'? I don't think I follow your point, sorry!
quote:Well, obviously I'm not saying that water is an organism! But I think that's an interesting point you make about water freezing as there is certainly a gain in order. Very tired now (wee small hours here) so let me ponder on it!
Originally posted by Crœsos:
Sorry, but I have to reject any argument that water is alive, and thus not subject to second laws of thermodynamics. After all, under your understanding isn't the formation of water molecules into a crystalline structure like a snowflake as it freezes a violation of the second law? Increasing order and all that?
quote:You mean aside from watching it happen? If watching it happen doesn't count as an acceptable level of proof, what would you consider sufficient?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:Again, LydaRose's point about star formation is a theory for which there is no proof as such. We have no evidence that stars developed from nebulae.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
But order can increase at a local level and over a limited timescale, as per LydaRose's point about star formation. Do you have a link to explain what you mean by 'There is increasing entropy in the human genome'? I don't think I follow your point, sorry!
quote:
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I think you raise a very good point. When we look at the natural world we see a certain kind of thing that seemingly violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics: organic life. The development of the embryo is an increase of order and complexity over time.
As I said, all material things are subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But isn't an organism such as an acorn not a material thing and therefore wholly subject to the SLT?
No. Because an organism as a substance is compromised, as all substances are, (again founding my argument on the Realist tradition that goes back through St Thomas Aquinas, St Augustine of Hippo, to Aristotle) of two principles: substantial form and prime matter. The form of an organism is its animating principle and is what informs its signate matter to make it what it is.
Aristotle describes three types of animating principle (or "soul" as he describes it): vegetable, animal, and rational. Being immaterial this animating principle is not subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and explains why there is growth and the creation of order from disorder in every organism.
quote:See, this is why I can't take your argument seriously. You seem to say that organisms aren't subject to the second law of thermodynamics . . . except when they are.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
What I mean by increasing entropy in the human genome is that over generations there has been a loss of genetic information leading to an increase in genetic diseases. Please refer to the Sandford book.
quote:I see an interpretation of the cloud as a "stellar nursery" but no evidence that stars are being formed. The article assumes what remains to be proved.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You mean aside from watching it happen? If watching it happen doesn't count as an acceptable level of proof, what would you consider sufficient?
quote:Then I may not be explaining myself very well or you're not trying to understand what I am saying.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
See, this is why I can't take your argument seriously. You seem to say that organisms aren't subject to the second law of thermodynamics . . . except when they are.
quote:From your link:
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I'm pleased to say that you have proven me wrong about the question of material things in some cases decreasing in entropy as a result of natural processes. My point about the Second Law of Thermodynamics should have been that the total entropy of the material universe increases over time. Entropy can decrease - that is, order can increase - as a result of a purely material process in an open system within the universe.
Regarding your point about water I found Ice and the Second Law of Thermodynamics which appears (to my poor brain) to prove that the freezing of water is wholly consistent (and thus not a violation) with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And, so, my point that it is only organisms that violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics stands.
quote:Essentially it's not a violation of the second law because the water is exchanging energy with its environment, so a local decrease in entropy is offset by an overall entropic increase. But you've nonetheless concluded that organisms still violate the second law because there's no way living things could absorb energy from their environment? Have you ever come across any living things?
- Freezing is an exothermic process; energy is lost from the water and dissipated to the surroundings.
- Therefore, as the surroundings get hotter, they are gaining more energy and thus the entropy of the surroundings is increasing.
- The amount by which the entropy of the surroundings has increased can be determined using the following principle: the entropy of the surroundings increases by an amount equal to the heat energy they gain divided by the temperature at which it happens
quote:How does a cell know that it's undergoing meiosis rather than mitosis, so that it knows it has to follow the second law of thermodynamics?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The growth of an organism qua substance violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics inasmuch as order develops from disorder.
The copying of genetic information from parent to the child does not fall under this process of individual growth and is thus subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
quote:I note you avoided answering the question. What would you consider sufficient evidence?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:I see an interpretation of the cloud as a "stellar nursery" but no evidence that stars are being formed. The article assumes what remains to be proved.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You mean aside from watching it happen? If watching it happen doesn't count as an acceptable level of proof, what would you consider sufficient?
quote:Probably one of the proto-suckers lighting itself up and winking at the universe might do the trick.
What would you consider sufficient evidence?
quote:As I said, I am not using the Second Law of Thermodynamics as an argument against evolutionary theory but as an explanation of genetic entropy.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
But you've nonetheless concluded that organisms still violate the second law because there's no way living things could absorb energy from their environment? Have you ever come across any living things?
quote:Showing a photograph of nebulae and stars proves absolutely nothing unless you can demonstrate that what is happening is actually the formation of stars. Unless you can do that then all you have is one theory amongst many others. Calling such a gas cloud a "stellar nursery", as I said, assumes what remains to be proved.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:I note you avoided answering the question. What would you consider sufficient evidence?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:I see an interpretation of the cloud as a "stellar nursery" but no evidence that stars are being formed. The article assumes what remains to be proved.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You mean aside from watching it happen? If watching it happen doesn't count as an acceptable level of proof, what would you consider sufficient?
quote:You are confused about the distinction between information and the medium in which that information is contained. They are not the same thing. No more than Finnegan's Wake consists in the paper and ink with which it is printed.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
And what if such a point mutation occurs within a section of genetic code that had previously been the result of an amplification (a section of code being copied twice or more instead of once)? That would certainly seem to be an increase in genetic information: two different genes where there had previously been one.
quote:You seem to be asking for a very high level of 'proof' for a scientific theory. And, for that matter not appreciating what 'theory' means in a scientific context - it isn't somthing that's without significant evidence (both in measurement and compatibility with other relevant theories), indeed it's the exact opposite in that there is compelling evidence to accept that the theory is (largely) correct. Strictly speaking in science there is no such thing as 'proof', there is no such thing as 'empirical evidence' that can be stated without dispute - all evidence is gathered on a foundation of an understanding of the way the universe is, a body of theories. Take the stellar nurseries; the data we have has been collected by telescopes (optical, radio and other frequencies) which rely on theories of optics and EM-propogation to work - it is possible that the data collected by these instruments is flawed because the theories that underly their function are wrong. Possible, but highly unlikely. We trust the theories of optics to be correct - not just in astronomy, but everytime you go to the opticians to get a pair of glasses; do you avoid driving because you think the other driver in glasses can't actually see because his glasses are produced according to a mere theory of how light passes through curved glass?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Showing a photograph of nebulae and stars proves absolutely nothing unless you can demonstrate that what is happening is actually the formation of stars. Unless you can do that then all you have is one theory amongst many others. Calling such a gas cloud a "stellar nursery", as I said, assumes what remains to be proved.
So what would I require? Well, let's try a little thing called 'empirical evidence'. Your attitude appears to be less scientific as so much philosphical since you make so many assumptions.
quote:I'm not sure you've understood the point about duplication of genes. What happens (so I gather from that book I mentioned I've been reading) is that sometimes a section of DNA can be duplicated through a mistake in the process of DNA replication. The organism now has two copies of this DNA section. Mutations in one copy of the DNA section are now much less likely to be disastrous (because the function can be carried out by the non-mutated copy), and just sometimes a mutation will happen which will be beneficial to the organism. This is an increase in genetic information, isn't it?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
You are confused about the distinction between information and the medium in which that information is contained. They are not the same thing. No more than Finnegan's Wake consists in the paper and ink with which it is printed.
If a sentence is accidentally repeated whilst copying a book that is not an increase in the information contained in that book. If anything, it represents a decrease in the readability of that book and increases the chance of further error and confusion.
quote:I think the analogy is fair. The difference being just that experiments on optics are easier to do than experiments on stars (which, with our present technology, are really only observations of what happens naturally). The basic point is still the same.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Alan,
That analogy limps rather badly, I'm afraid. We give credence to the theory of optics insofar as they apply to opthamology because we observe that the theory is not falsified by repeated experiments i.e. by people driving cars with glasses on who don't crash due to problems with their sight.
The theory of star formation from gas clouds requires that a process be observed whereby the gas accumulates mass and becomes a star. There is no such documented observation of such a process as far as I am aware and, so, the theory of the "stellar nursery" remains conjecture, unlike your example of the usefulness of opthamology which we observe as being confirmed every day.
quote:I'm afraid what you're doing is identifying DNA with genetic information. They are two distinct things. DNA is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions for the development of an organism. Although there is now a duplication of a section of DNA, which may or may not be beneficial for the organism, there is no increase in information. Information is not material - in the same way that a book cannot be identified with ink on paper.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
I'm not sure you've understood the point about duplication of genes. What happens (so I gather from that book I mentioned I've been reading) is that sometimes a section of DNA can be duplicated through a mistake in the process of DNA replication. The organism now has two copies of this DNA section. Mutations in one copy of the DNA section are now much less likely to be disastrous (because the function can be carried out by the non-mutated copy), and just sometimes a mutation will happen which will be beneficial to the organism. This is an increase in genetic information, isn't it?
quote:But with DNA, the amplification process (a gene being duplicated) does increase the functionality of the genome; it allows the organism to do more than it could previously.
If a sentence is accidentally repeated whilst copying a book that is not an increase in the information contained in that book. If anything, it represents a decrease in the readability of that book and increases the chance of further error and confusion.
quote:You are only partly right. Genetic information cannot exist with the existence of DNA. But it is simply not identical with it. An increase of DNA by duplication does not mean more information, but the loss of DNA almost certainly does.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
And I think it is fair to identify DNA with genetic information. Each organism’s genome is a long strip of DNA with the four base molecules (G, C, A and T) pairing up to make the rungs of the double helix ‘ladder’. The genetic information is in what those base pairs do; what proteins they code for. And mutations can lead to losses, gains or modifications to the proteins produced, can’t they?
quote:You've misunderstood Aristotelian philosophy. To be made up of a form and of matter is what it is to be a material thing. The presence of a substantial form does not mean an acorn is not only a material thing: the acorn's substantial form makes the acorn a material thing.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
No. Because an organism as a substance is compromised, as all substances are, (again founding my argument on the Realist tradition that goes back through St Thomas Aquinas, St Augustine of Hippo, to Aristotle) of two principles: substantial form and prime matter. The form of an organism is its animating principle and is what informs its signate matter to make it what it is.
quote:I feel that the word 'information' is being used ambiguously here, and it will not bear the weight being put upon it.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I think the analogy with a book is a good one, as far as any anaology goes. Rip a page out of a book and you almost certainly have a loss of information; but accidentally repeat a page and you do not necessarily have an increase of useful information.
quote:It's not at all obvious that duplicating instructions in that kind of thing isn't a change in the information provided.
In the development of a complex organism like an animal, once cells are committed to a particular role, they work by a sort of itinerary or script. There is no central plan or design document. It is as if you organised the manufacture of a complex structure like an aircraft or a skyscraper by giving each of thousands of workers a copy of the same script that told them what to do in given circumstances. Its not so much a blueprint as a massively multiplayer Fighting Fantasy Gamebook where the players are billions, if not trillions of individual cells, each with their own individually edited version of the same book: "Walk five metres forward, wait for 60 seconds, then look to see if the person nearest you on your left is holding a metal panel or not - if they are not then go to page 1876; if they are then take the panel from them tear pages 935-1049 out of your script and read on till the next instruction highlighted in red..."
quote:I'm not using opthalmology as the example, but optics. The theory of optics describes what happens to light as it moves between media, among other things. That is, a process is posited; that light moving from one medium to another experiences a change in velocity and, if the interface is not normal to the direction of the light, a change in direction related to the differences in refractive indices of the two media. Opthalmology is the practical application of that theory to correct poor eyesight through the use of glasses and contact lenses. There isn't really an analgous application of stellar theory, since we're not in the habit of forming our own stars.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Sorry, Alan, your analogy is still limping. There is an important difference between opthamology and the currently popular hypothesis of star formation: the latter posits a process, that is, a change from one state into another. The correctness of the theories of opthamology, on the other hand, can be verified by simply getting someone to look at a chart in an opticians whilst wearing glasses. No process is posited but, rather, a state of clarity of vision.
quote:Only an animal soul, or sensitive soul, is the principle of animation of the substance. By definition.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I would argue that the three types of soul do differ from other types of forms since they are the principle of animation of the substance. I think there may be a difficulty in language here (and that may be on my side) but I would assert that an acorn is a very different kind of substance from water since it contains in itself a principle of growth - the vegetative soul which is immaterial, although incapable of existing separated from the matter which it informs since its operations are entirely material.
quote:It's not an insult, it's a legitimate question. Your assertion that entropy must increase in organisms (and your resort to an explanation that boils down to "it's magic!") shows either a colossal misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics or a basic unfamiliarity with how living things work (i.e. they're not thermodynamically closed systems). I was just trying to figure out which.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:As I said, I am not using the Second Law of Thermodynamics as an argument against evolutionary theory but as an explanation of genetic entropy.
Originally posted by Crœsos:
But you've nonetheless concluded that organisms still violate the second law because there's no way living things could absorb energy from their environment? Have you ever come across any living things?
I must say you seem to be very ready to throw out insults. Are you not able to discuss this issue calmly?
quote:If we want to analogize DNA to written language, there are some stipulations needed for accuracy.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
I feel that the word 'information' is being used ambiguously here, and it will not bear the weight being put upon it.
There is an obvious difference between a book and a sequence of DNA, which is that in a book one looks things up. If you want to find something in a book, you go through the pages until you find what you want.
quote:Yes. That is exactly what goes on. It is (almost certainly) the main way we have managed to inherit large numbers of slighly different versions of the same gene for so many things. The other one would be gene transfer from other organisms - which even more clearly adds to genetic information. There really is an increase in the complexity and information-carrying capacity of genomes over time.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
What happens (so I gather from that book I mentioned I've been reading) is that sometimes a section of DNA can be duplicated through a mistake in the process of DNA replication. The organism now has two copies of this DNA section. Mutations in one copy of the DNA section are now much less likely to be disastrous (because the function can be carried out by the non-mutated copy), and just sometimes a mutation will happen which will be beneficial to the organism. This is an increase in genetic information, isn't it?
quote:I did some searches using the web tools here. No hits!
Originally posted by Crœsos:
START-Ile-Gln-Ile-Phe-Tyr-STOP | START-Ala-Leu-Asp-Arg-Tyr-STOP
I have no idea what these proteins would do, if anything. They're just randomly generated sequences to make a point.
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![[Overused]](graemlins/notworthy.gif)
Thanks ken, that was really interesting. I'm tempted to read up on basic genetics now...
quote:Thanks, ken. A specific, scientific example even I could (mostly
Calling biologists: any examples out there of observed, nature-driven, positive genetic change within the time of modern science?
) understand. And it convincingly made the case for new genetic information being created.
quote:[tangent]I’m actually of the (probably minority) view that there isn’t a whole lot of conflict between Dawkins’ and Gould’s theories, and such differences as there are have been exaggerated and misunderstood (to some extent, by the gentlemen themselves). If I were a biologist, and not a lawyer, I’d be tempted to try by hand at writing a harmony of their views – based on the thesis that they don’t so much disagree as find different things interesting. Dawkins is principally interested in adaptive complexity, and explaining that, which of necessity arises gradually. Gould is interested in the whole richness and diversity of life, and the changes he cares about can happen (in geological time) suddenly, or not, according to historical contingency. [/tangent]
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I think I understand you to say that there may have been a gradual development (from which I understand that you would hold to the more classical Darwinism of Dawkins rather the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould) during which there may have been a moment, perhaps during the adult life, when one of our ancestors awoke spiritually. Have I understood you correctly, eliab?
quote:No, that’s no part of my argument.
From what you say you seem to see no clear distinction between human and animal and that the awakening you speak of seems to be an attribute that is superadded to a hominid to make him human. Again, let me know if I have misunderstood you.
quote:Either that is trivially true as a tautology, or it’s a category mistake. I’m not sure which.
As a Catholic I believe that the soul is, rather, the form of the body (Council of Vienne) and that there could not be a 'human' body without a human soul since the soul informs the matter of the body to make it human.
quote:That’s fair enough, and you might be right, but holding that view doesn’t require you to reject any science whatever. All you need to do, do be an orthodox Catholic and an orthodox Darwinian, is to make a distinction between two senses of the word ‘human’. To be human theologically is an either/or condition. To be human biologically isn’t – ALL species definitions are fuzzy at the edges, and ‘human’ as designating a species is no different from any other. If you think that there is some binary divide between modern humanity and all other species, there is no reason not to think that there was some moment in the gradual development of the biological species when God flipped that particular spiritual switch and created (in one generation) a new theological entity, a creature with a rational soul. Theologically, you get the new thing arising in one generation. Biologically, you don’t. And there’s no contradiction there.
I could only see the emergence of a human being from hominid ancestry as a 'sudden' development from one generation to the next since the parent, lacking a human soul, would not be human and the child, possessing a human soul, would.
quote:A further comment. Philosophy in general has no business in pronouncing on what empirically can or can't happen. That's not what philosophy is about. It can comment on whether a given interpretation of the data is conceptually coherent, but even that's largely outside the field. I think the closest it's got to refuting a specific set of proposals in the natural sciences is the rejection of behaviourism as a scientific methodological rule. Philosophy can reject parascience, the penumbra of speculations based upon dubious interpretations of the consequences of scientific theories. The philosophy of science also comments upon methodology, although I think there there seems to have been more potential for false theories like Baconian induction or falsificationism to distort scientific research than for genuine theories to illumine it.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:Only an animal soul, or sensitive soul, is the principle of animation of the substance.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I would argue that the three types of soul do differ from other types of forms since they are the principle of animation of the substance.
quote:Again, you are confusing categories here.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Gladly. It is absolutely true that there is something called speciation, or microevolution. Under certain environmental pressures the phenotype displays certain traits that were lacking in the parent organism. This brings us back to the philosophical question of how the perfections contained in an effect can be contained in a cause. Certainly we would not say that the perfection - say resistance to antibiotics - was contained in the parent organism formally but, rather, virtually that is in potentia. In material terms we can say that the genetic data required for these added capabilities are present in the parent but is only through natural selection caused by the aforementioned environmental pressures that they are then exhibited in the phenotyope.
quote:Well, exactly. And looking at it from the other direction it is not the job of the natural world to operate according to mankind's philosophical constructs, which was Craigmaddie's problem when he suggested earlier that atheistic evolution is absurd because it offends the philosophical principle of sufficient reason (or that theistic evolution was unacceptable according to the theology of the First Vatican Council).
Originally posted by Dafyd:
A further comment. Philosophy in general has no business in pronouncing on what empirically can or can't happen. That's not what philosophy is about. It can comment on whether a given interpretation of the data is conceptually coherent, but even that's largely outside the field.
quote:According to the Classical Realist tradition i.e. the intellectual tradition that follows from Aristotle all forms are incorporeal. The form of a material substance is the principle of actuality of matter but is itself as a form incorporeal.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Likewise, the vegetative soul of an acorn/oak is not an immaterial thing either. It is simply nonsensical to say that the Second Law of Thermodynamics either does or does not apply to it.
quote:I note that you've once again embraced a definition of "living matter" that includes water (and a lot of other thing typically regarded as inanimate). You remember how liquid water freezing into ice was essentially "drinking in order from its surroundings" in the previous example? In short, living things do not "evade" the second law of thermodynamics any more than the ice in the prior example does.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The forms of vegetative and animal life are similarly incorporeal but are also the principle of nutrition and growth. It is this principle that causes the substance to evade the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Erwin Schroedinger wrote in What is Life? that "living matter evades the decay to equilibrium" by "continually drawing from its environment negative entropy", that is, by drinking in order from its surroundings.
quote:"If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and corporal, as regards their whole substance, have been created by God from nothing, let him be anathema." (Canon 4. First Vatican Council, DS 1805)
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
...which was Craigmaddie's problem when he suggested earlier that atheistic evolution is absurd because it offends the philosophical principle of sufficient reason (or that theistic evolution was unacceptable according to the theology of the First Vatican Council).
quote:I disagree. Water freezes in response to environmental forces. This is a mechanical process. An acorn develops in response to an innate drive to growth and nutrition (although, of course, environmental forces have an influence on this process).
Originally posted by Crœsos:
I note that you've once again embraced a definition of "living matter" that includes water (and a lot of other thing typically regarded as inanimate). You remember how liquid water freezing into ice was essentially "drinking in order from its surroundings" in the previous example? In short, living things do not "evade" the second law of thermodynamics any more than the ice in the prior example does.
quote:An example of a chromosome being duplicated - aneuploidy - happens, unfortunately, in the case of Downs Syndrome. This kind of duplication, like the vast majority of duplications that are manifested in the phenotype, is genetically harmful.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
But with DNA, the amplification process (a gene being duplicated) does increase the functionality of the genome; it allows the organism to do more than it could previously.
quote:As I understand it, the Dawkins' faction response to Gould and Lewontin is that they're talking utter nonsense and, besides, the stuff they're saying is trivially true and everyone's known it all along so what are they making a fuss about?
Originally posted by Eliab:
[tangent]I’m actually of the (probably minority) view that there isn’t a whole lot of conflict between Dawkins’ and Gould’s theories, and such differences as there are have been exaggerated and misunderstood (to some extent, by the gentlemen themselves).
quote:Yes, but that's just saying that the form isn't a corporeal thing in its own right. It doesn't mean that because the form isn't a corporeal thing, it must therefore be an incorporeal thing. That's a category mistake.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
According to the Classical Realist tradition i.e. the intellectual tradition that follows from Aristotle all forms are incorporeal. The form of a material substance is the principle of actuality of matter but is itself as a form incorporeal.
quote:Evade doesn't mean disobey. A calf becomes a cow by eating grass and breathing oxygen and producing cowpats and carbon dioxide (and a few other waste products). The combination cow, cowpat and carbon dioxide is taken together considerably more decayed than the combination calf, grass and oxygen. Living organisms evade the Second Law of Thermodynamics in about the same way that someone who borrows money from their family to pay off the bank evades the debt collectors.
The forms of vegetative and animal life are similarly incorporeal but are also the principle of nutrition and growth. It is this principle that causes the substance to evade the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
quote:And yet I'm betting that you don't have a crisis of faith every time you see a motor car.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
As a Catholic, I am bound to believe this infallible teaching, which has been promulgated by an ecumenical council of the Church. The creation ex nihilo of the whole substance of "things" in the world cannot admit of a theory that proposes that the substance of the majority of species came about through the naturalistic transformation from other, more primitive, species.
quote:Yes, it can. Creation ex nihilo refers to the generation of creation considered as a whole. It does not occur within time (Aquinas points out that the doctrine is compatible with the universe having no beginning in time.)
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Catholic, I am bound to believe this infallible teaching, which has been promulgated by an ecumenical council of the Church. The creation ex nihilo of the whole substance of "things" in the world cannot admit of a theory that proposes that the substance of the majority of species came about through the naturalistic transformation from other, more primitive, species.
quote:"If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and corporal, as regards their whole substance, have been created by God from nothing, let him be anathema." (Canon 4. First Vatican Council, DS 1805)
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
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quote:Strictly speaking, God is outside time and therefore there is no such thing as a moment of creation. God creates the whole shebang from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch all at one go sub specie eternitate. The Christian doctrine of creation has nothing to do with Paleyism or intelligent design.
Originally posted by Eliab:
There are quite obviously an incalculable multitude of things, and types of things, that didn't exist in their present forms at the moment of creation.
quote:A whole chromosome being duplicated is not the same as a gene being duplicated. The Wikipedia article on gene duplication seems to be fairly straightforward so I do urge you to read at least the first couple of paragraphs. From the article:
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:An example of a chromosome being duplicated - aneuploidy - happens, unfortunately, in the case of Downs Syndrome. This kind of duplication, like the vast majority of duplications that are manifested in the phenotype, is genetically harmful.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
But with DNA, the amplification process (a gene being duplicated) does increase the functionality of the genome; it allows the organism to do more than it could previously.
quote:
Gene duplication (or chromosomal duplication or gene amplification) is any duplication of a region of DNA that contains a gene... The second copy of the gene is often free from selective pressure — that is, mutations of it have no deleterious effects to its host organism. Thus it accumulates mutations faster than a functional single-copy gene, over generations of organisms.
quote:It should be noted that in some species the duplication of all chromosomes is non-fatal and sometimes advantageous. Of course, most successful polyploid species are plants so they typically fall outside the notice of most evolution denialists, whose sole concern seems to be human evolution. We are a rather self-absorbed species, after all.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
quote:A whole chromosome being duplicated is not the same as a gene being duplicated. The Wikipedia article on gene duplication seems to be fairly straightforward so I do urge you to read at least the first couple of paragraphs. From the article:
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:An example of a chromosome being duplicated - aneuploidy - happens, unfortunately, in the case of Downs Syndrome. This kind of duplication, like the vast majority of duplications that are manifested in the phenotype, is genetically harmful.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
But with DNA, the amplification process (a gene being duplicated) does increase the functionality of the genome; it allows the organism to do more than it could previously.
quote:
Gene duplication (or chromosomal duplication or gene amplification) is any duplication of a region of DNA that contains a gene... The second copy of the gene is often free from selective pressure — that is, mutations of it have no deleterious effects to its host organism. Thus it accumulates mutations faster than a functional single-copy gene, over generations of organisms.
quote:Clearly, the Church was not stating that the very blades of grass that we see outside of our window were created ex nihilo at the beginning of creation since we see that they have grown from seeds. What is meant is that the type of substance of each species was created ex nihilo. Otherwise the phrase is meaningless, since, as you noticed, the alternative interpretation is absurd.
Originally posted by Eliab:
If the decree of the ecumenical council you cite means that every single 'substance' in the world was directly created by God from nothing, then it is simply false. There are quite obviously an incalculable multitude of things, and types of things, that didn't exist in their present forms at the moment of creation. So it can't mean that, if a sane person is to believe it.
quote:It might help if there were any dividing line between macro- and microevolution that made sense in scientific terms. Once again, I refer back to the Lenski experiment mentioned above and ask why it doesn't count as an example of evolution at work?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Anyway, this is perhaps an issue for another thread since the focus of the thread has mainly been on the question of whether Macroevolution is scientific or not.
quote:The real problem here is Aristotle. He took a good shot at it given the resources he had at hand, but he just isn't relevant anymore. Constructs like "substance" and "accidents" and "essence" are simply obsolete--we know so much more about the nature of matter than Ari did that his notions about it are meaningless and should just be discarded. I'm not quite sure why the Catholic Church would require you to believe in a pre-Christian philosophy.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:According to the Classical Realist tradition i.e. the intellectual tradition that follows from Aristotle all forms are incorporeal. The form of a material substance is the principle of actuality of matter but is itself as a form incorporeal.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Likewise, the vegetative soul of an acorn/oak is not an immaterial thing either. It is simply nonsensical to say that the Second Law of Thermodynamics either does or does not apply to it.
quote:It doesn't.
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
quote:The real problem here is Aristotle. He took a good shot at it given the resources he had at hand, but he just isn't relevant anymore. Constructs like "substance" and "accidents" and "essence" are simply obsolete--we know so much more about the nature of matter than Ari did that his notions about it are meaningless and should just be discarded. [u]I'm not quite sure why the Catholic Church would require you to believe in a pre-Christian philosophy.[/u]
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:According to the Classical Realist tradition i.e. the intellectual tradition that follows from Aristotle all forms are incorporeal. The form of a material substance is the principle of actuality of matter but is itself as a form incorporeal.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Likewise, the vegetative soul of an acorn/oak is not an immaterial thing either. It is simply nonsensical to say that the Second Law of Thermodynamics either does or does not apply to it.
quote:Or alternatively, what it means is that the substance didn't come from anything that God didn't make. If they had meant type of substance, they could have said so.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Clearly, the Church was not stating that the very blades of grass that we see outside of our window were created ex nihilo at the beginning of creation since we see that they have grown from seeds. What is meant is that the type of substance of each species was created ex nihilo. Otherwise the phrase is meaningless, since, as you noticed, the alternative interpretation is absurd.
quote:You are going to have to be much more explicit about what you mean by "type of substance of each species" if you want to explain why you think that that in anyway contradicts evolution. For most of us "type of substance" means the same as "kind of stuff". And different species are made of pretty much the same kinds of stuff. All those atoms and molecules and polymers and organelles and cells and tissues and organs and things.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Clearly, the Church was not stating that the very blades of grass that we see outside of our window were created ex nihilo at the beginning of creation since we see that they have grown from seeds. What is meant is that the type of substance of each species was created ex nihilo.
quote:But the only reason you have given that it might not be true (a better word than "scientific" I think) is this business about "types of substance of species". Skip that and there is nothing to talk about.
Anyway, this is perhaps an issue for another thread since the focus of the thread has mainly been on the question of whether Macroevolution is scientific or not.
quote:Told you the blue bottles got here first.
I read through the thread and am struck by the repetition of things I have heard discussed many times. Just to throw a couple things in...
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
quote:That's why its in Dead Horses!
Originally posted by no_prophet:
I read through the thread and am struck by the repetition of things I have heard discussed many times.
quote:Yes. Except I think they do fit. I've got a long, long, long written wibble, sorry "meditation" about Holy Saturday and Jesus being dead that wanders off into stuff about the material world being real and also evolution. But so long I doubt anyone will ever read it, including me...
I really like the intersection between evolution and faith. It forces us to try to come to understandings of things that just don't seem to quite fit. Along the lines of the Christian story working through dealing with life and death.
quote:Is it really Aristotle? Or is it neo-Platonism? I suspect that Aristotle would have had no problem with evolution or natural selection.
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
The real problem here is Aristotle. He took a good shot at it given the resources he had at hand, but he just isn't relevant anymore.
quote:Microevolution is what used to be known as 'race formation', that is, the emergence of a particular variation within a species. An example of this is the development of different breeds of dogs from the wolf ancestor. In terms of population genetics what we see here is a narrowing of the original variety of the wolf genome. That is why we can breed a beagle from a wolf (given time and the right conditions) but we cannot breed a wolf from a beagle. I'm sorry this needs to be repeated: but this represents an overall loss of productive genetic information over time, not an increase.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Good point, Croesos. Craigmaddie, what do you consider to be the difference between micro- and macro-evolution?
quote:You seem to grasp the point that the information is "in what those base pairs do" but then flee the consequence of that. Information is contained in DNA just as the meaning of a book is contained in the paper and print. Without the printed pages (DNA) there can be no information, but that information is not the same thing as the printed pages, otherwise a blind person would be able to read and understand The Brothers Karamazov just by running her fingers over the (non-braille) pages.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
And I think it is fair to identify DNA with genetic information. Each organism’s genome is a long strip of DNA with the four base molecules (G, C, A and T) pairing up to make the rungs of the double helix ‘ladder’. The genetic information is in what those base pairs do; what proteins they code for. And mutations can lead to losses, gains or modifications to the proteins produced, can’t they?
quote:Now you are teasing us! You can't say you've written something, tantalize us, and then not give us a link or at least some of the meat. Can we have either the full movie or the trailer please?
Originally posted by ken:
Yes. Except I think they do fit. I've got a long, long, long written wibble, sorry "meditation" about Holy Saturday and Jesus being dead that wanders off into stuff about the material world being real and also evolution. But so long I doubt anyone will ever read it, including me...
quote:Hi there, thanks for coming back to me on this. Hope your internet time is being restricted by good real life stuff, rather than bad!
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I'm afraid I don't have much internet time so my responses aren't keeping up with the other posts. I'll try to catch up....
quote:Okay, I think I'm with you on this point. Genetic information is bred out of the animals over several generations in order to emphasise certain characteristics.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:Microevolution is what used to be known as 'race formation', that is, the emergence of a particular variation within a species. An example of this is the development of different breeds of dogs from the wolf ancestor. In terms of population genetics what we see here is a narrowing of the original variety of the wolf genome. That is why we can breed a beagle from a wolf (given time and the right conditions) but we cannot breed a wolf from a beagle. I'm sorry this needs to be repeated: but this represents an overall loss of productive genetic information over time, not an increase.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Craigmaddie, what do you consider to be the difference between micro- and macro-evolution?
quote:But what about Ken's comment here and what Croesos said here giving examples of, apparently, macroevolution occurring? It seems to me that the scientific consensus is that both micro- and macro-evolution have been observed actually happening. If you wish to convince anyone that macroevolution is merely 'conjecture elevated to a quasi-religion' then I think you need to deal with the points raised in this thread.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Macroevolution is a hypothesis that states that given a combination of natural selection and genetic mutation new and more complex taxonomic categories can arise over time. It is thus conjectured that productive genetic information can increase over time.
The former is an observed fact. The latter is conjecture elevated to a quasi-religion.
quote:Indeed we do have to answer this question, although it is separate from questions about how there came to be such a variety of life on the earth. I'm not sure it's embarrassing to evolutionists, mind you; isn't it simply another field of scientific research in which we have much still to discover?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
A question arises: how was the first genetic information created? If we insist that productive genetic information does indeed increase over time we still have to answer how that information was generated in the first place?
quote:Sorry, I don't understand your point. The 'spine' of the DNA molecule is like the pages in a book; the bases (G, C, A and T) are like the writing; the transcription process that 'reads' the bases and makes amino acids accordingly is like the process of reading a book and making sense of it. I hope I've followed your analogy but I don't get what point you're trying to make with it.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:You seem to grasp the point that the information is "in what those base pairs do" but then flee the consequence of that. Information is contained in DNA just as the meaning of a book is contained in the paper and print. Without the printed pages (DNA) there can be no information, but that information is not the same thing as the printed pages, otherwise a blind person would be able to read and understand The Brothers Karamazov just by running her fingers over the (non-braille) pages.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
And I think it is fair to identify DNA with genetic information. Each organism’s genome is a long strip of DNA with the four base molecules (G, C, A and T) pairing up to make the rungs of the double helix ‘ladder’. The genetic information is in what those base pairs do; what proteins they code for. And mutations can lead to losses, gains or modifications to the proteins produced, can’t they?
quote:Not really relevant but those aren't quite the same thing. "Microevolution" also gets used for all sorts of changes that do not form "races" or subspecies or any kind of distinct populatuions with in a species.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Microevolution is what used to be known as 'race formation', that is, the emergence of a particular variation within a species.
quote:No, it isn't. That is selective breeding. Not the same thing at all. Its an existence proof that selection can drasrtically change the outward form of a population, its phenotype, but that doesn;t mean its the same thing that goes on in natural selection.
An example of this is the development of different breeds of dogs from the wolf ancestor. In terms of population genetics what we see here is a narrowing of the original variety of the wolf genome. That is why we can breed a beagle from a wolf (given time and the right conditions) but we cannot breed a wolf from a beagle.
quote:I'm sorry this needs to be repeated, but so what? We know that the variation within and between genomes tends to increase in time anyway, so selection might tend to balance that out.
I'm sorry this needs to be repeated: but this represents an overall loss of productive genetic information over time, not an increase.
quote:I'm not sure what you mean by "more complex taxonomic categories" but iw we just assume you mean "new taxa at the species or higher level", then yes. And its a hypothesis that has overwhelming evidence in suport of it and so is all but universally considered to be the case by people who have paid it any serious attention.
Macroevolution is a hypothesis that states that given a combination of natural selection and genetic mutation new and more complex taxonomic categories can arise over time. It is thus conjectured that productive genetic information can increase over time.
quote:Please go back and read what lots of people wrote on this thread already because this ridiculous canard had already been conclusively answered. There's no point in being repetitive.
The former is an observed fact. The latter is conjecture elevated to a quasi-religion.
quote:And the true answer to that is "no-one knows".
A question arises: how was the first genetic information created?
quote:That's easy, we've done that already, as described numerous times on this thread. We know many ways that "productive genetic information" can be generated now that we have reporducing organisms. Agreed, we do not know how the system started in any detail, but that is not the main question. We can see how it now operates.
If we insist that productive genetic information does indeed increase over time we still have to answer how that information was generated in the first place?
quote:
Putting that event back billions of years ago doesn't answer the question: how can information - an immaterial thing - arise from matter? Michael Ruse reckons that it "something to do with crystals", which demonstrates how acutely embarassing the question is for evolutionists.
Any arrangment of things could be said to carry information. Are you assuming that the universe ought naturally to be a sort of homogenous randomised soup? quote:Short version: "Microevolution" is a combination of genetic drift and selective pressures, while "macroevolution" adds mutation to the mix.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:Microevolution is what used to be known as 'race formation', that is, the emergence of a particular variation within a species. An example of this is the development of different breeds of dogs from the wolf ancestor. In terms of population genetics what we see here is a narrowing of the original variety of the wolf genome. That is why we can breed a beagle from a wolf (given time and the right conditions) but we cannot breed a wolf from a beagle. I'm sorry this needs to be repeated: but this represents an overall loss of productive genetic information over time, not an increase.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Good point, Croesos. Craigmaddie, what do you consider to be the difference between micro- and macro-evolution?
Macroevolution is a hypothesis that states that given a combination of natural selection and genetic mutation new and more complex taxonomic categories can arise over time. It is thus conjectured that productive genetic information can increase over time.
quote:Which brings us, once again, to the E. coli Long-term Experimental Evolution Project. I don't blame you for not wanting to discuss particular examples since the evidence is not kind to the argument you're making, but there's only so long you can go on ignoring this.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The former is an observed fact. The latter is conjecture elevated to a quasi-religion.
quote:Actually it's a question for the abiogenesists, not the evolutionists. Of course, scientists rarely consider unanswered questions "embarassing", but rather a source of fun and continued employment. At any rate, arguing that evolution by descent with modification doesn't answer questions of abiogenesis is akin to complaining that Newtonian gravitation doesn't say anything about electrodynamics.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
A question arises: how was the first genetic information created? If we insist that productive genetic information does indeed increase over time we still have to answer how that information was generated in the first place? Putting that event back billions of years ago doesn't answer the question: how can information - an immaterial thing - arise from matter? Michael Ruse reckons that it "something to do with crystals", which demonstrates how acutely embarassing the question is for evolutionists.
quote:The point I am trying to make is that duplication of a section of DNA does not by necessity create new productive genetic information any more than repeating a word, sentence, or a page in an instruction manual increases the amount of useful
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Sorry, I don't understand your point. The spine' of the DNA molecule is like the pages in a book; the bases (G, C, A and T) are like the writing; the transcription process that 'reads' the bases and makes amino acids accordingly is like the process of reading a book and making sense of it. I hope I've followed your analogy but I don't get what point you're trying to make with it.
quote:Now, modern evolutionists have proposed gene duplication - polyploidy, for example - as proof of an increase of useful genetic information over time leading to the emergence of new taxonomic varieties. However, the evidence shows that, with the exception of certain plants such as wheat and potatoes, polyploidy when it occurs in animals is usually harmful. The following quotes are from evolutionists:
"[T]he information contained in the genetic code, like all information or messages, is not made of matter ... The meaning is not a property of the arrangement of the symbols or alphabet of the code. The message or meaning in the genetic code is non-material and cannot be reduced to a physical or chemical property." (Overman, Dean L. "A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization" Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997).
quote:
"Spontaneous duplication of the mammalian genome occurs in approximately 1% of fertilizations. Although one or more whole genome duplications are believed to have influenced vertebrate evolution, polyploidy of contemporary mammals is generally incompatible with normal development and function of all but a few tissues. Most often, divergence of ploidy from the diploid (2n) norm results in a disease state."(Eakin, G.S. and Behringer, R.R., Tetraploid development in the mouse, Developmental Dynamics 228:751–766, 2003.)
quote:The reason that this duplication is harmful is because, even though there is an increase in DNA sections, there is not an increase in useful genetic information - on the contrary. There is disruption in the instructions for the development of the organism.
"[Polyploidy] is likely to cause a severe imbalance in gene product, and [its] chance of being incorporated into the population is small". (Li, W.-H., Molecular Evolution, Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA, p. 270., 1997)
quote:And the point you're trying desperately to ignore is that if you have two copies of something, you can make whatever changes you like to one of them without any loss of information. It's not the duplication that results in new traits, it's the fact that you can 'mark up' (mutate) a copy without losing function.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The point I am trying to make is that duplication of a section of DNA does not by necessity create new productive genetic information any more than repeating a word, sentence, or a page in an instruction manual increases the amount of useful
information in that manual
quote:You seem to have trouble with the idea that gene duplication does not necessarily involve chromosome duplication. The former is far more common than the latter and usually not harmful.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Now, modern evolutionists have proposed gene duplication - polyploidy, for example - as proof of an increase of useful genetic information over time leading to the emergence of new taxonomic varieties. However, the evidence shows that, with the exception of certain plants such as wheat and potatoes, polyploidy when it occurs in animals is usually harmful.
quote:There are two obvious misunderstandings in the above paragraph.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Further, if the gene duplication theory of macro-evolution were correct then we would expect a positive correlation between the complexity of the organism and the number and size of genes and chromosomes. That is, we would expect that as the number of genes and chromosomes increased we would see a greater complexity of form. Bacteria and single-celled organisms should have the least amount of DNA and humans beings the most. However, this is simply not the case. The bacterium Epulopiscium fishelsoni, for example, carries 25 times the amount of DNA as the human cell.
quote:Since the First World War it became increasingly unpolitic for scientists, if they wanted a career in their chosen field, to profess disagreement with the theory of macro-evolution. Nevermind that the supposed mechanism for this evolution keeps changing whenever the evidence to contrary becomes too overwhelming. The dogma of evolution must remain sacrosanct!
Originally posted by ken:
. And its a hypothesis that has overwhelming evidence in suport of it and so is all but universally considered to be the case by people who have paid it any serious attention.
quote:Yes, and for largely the same reason it's "unpolitic" for scientists to profess disagreement with the theory of a heliocentric solar system.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:Since the First World War it became increasingly unpolitic for scientists, if they wanted a career in their chosen field, to profess disagreement with the theory of macro-evolution.
Originally posted by ken:
. And its a hypothesis that has overwhelming evidence in suport of it and so is all but universally considered to be the case by people who have paid it any serious attention.
quote:I don't know what you think you're referring to here, but based on my knowledge of the history of biology in the twentieth century I would suppose that it is a mixture of normal scientific research refining what we know on the one hand and anti-evolutionist distortions and misunderstandings on the other.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Nevermind that the supposed mechanism for this evolution keeps changing whenever the evidence to contrary becomes too overwhelming.
quote:Of course it doesn't "by neccessity". I don't understand why you think that is relevant. It only has to every now and again. "Neccessity" is nothing to do with it. Evolution is contingent, historical, the product of many separate events. There is no need for predictable, neccessary, processes.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The point I am trying to make is that duplication of a section of DNA does not by necessity create new productive genetic information...
quote:Of course. Perhaps as many as 5% of plant species are polyploid, and many more -in fact all that have ever been studied - show evidence of ancestral polyploidy that is now hidden because different chromosomes have evolved differently. Its much rarer in animals. That's pretty basic genetics. But it doesn't help your argument.
... polyploidy when it occurs in animals is usually harmful.
quote:I don't think "evolutionist" is a helpful word in this context. Not only does it sound vaguely as if it is meant as an insult, it conceals the basic fact that effectively everyone who studies these things agrees that evolution occurs. There are no real "non-evolutionists" among biologists - well, hardly any. Probably not one in a thousand. Certainly not one in a hundred.
The following quotes are from evolutionists:
quote:Well, it looks correct then, because we do see exactly that. Though I would be very wary of making much of it either way without a rigorous definition of what we mean by "complexity".
Further, if the gene duplication theory of macro-evolution were correct then we would expect a positive correlation between the complexity of the organism and the number and size of genes and chromosomes.
quote:Sort of. And in fact that is exactly what we DO see.
Bacteria and single-celled organisms should have the least amount of DNA and humans beings the most.
quote:It simply is the case. In general, on the whole, statistically, yes it is. Though as always in biology there are exceptions. Because each organism and each species has its own unique history and is different from all the rest. Bacteria are not one generalised kind of simple blob. There are thousands of different types, probably millions, (some people estimate trillions) each with its own particular envornment and lifestyle. On the whole they have smaller genomes than fungi or protists, and fungi and protists have smaller genomes than plants and animals. On the whole, mostly, in general. But as usual in biology there are exceptions.
However, this is simply not the case.
quote:So it does. But that is because it has an unusually high copy number of genes. That is not 25 times the number of different genes that humans have, it has hundreds of thousands of copies of a much smaller number of genes - no-one is sure exactly how much smaller because it has never been sequenced, but it seems to be about 3.8Mb - very typical of large complex bacteria, and a tiny fraction of what we have.
The bacterium Epulopiscium fishelsoni, for example, carries 25 times the amount of DNA as the human cell.
quote:You're rather fond of the overblown analogy, aren't you?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Yes, and for largely the same reason it's "unpolitic" for scientists to profess disagreement with the theory of a heliocentric solar system.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:Since the First World War it became increasingly unpolitic for scientists, if they wanted a career in their chosen field, to profess disagreement with the theory of macro-evolution.
Originally posted by ken:
. And its a hypothesis that has overwhelming evidence in suport of it and so is all but universally considered to be the case by people who have paid it any serious attention.
quote:With that kind of totalitarian thought police on the prowl it's hardly surprising that it's unpolitic.
The all-embracing grip of macro-evolution on modern scientific thought, and especially on the thinking of academic biologists, has had an unfortunate dampening effect on open and frank discussion of problems in evolutionary theory, especially in the primary literature. As my own experience and that of many others demonstrates, there are powerful censures in academic life that sharply limit expression of doubts and dissent from evolution. These include reassignment of courses in spite of technical competence and experience, denial of research funding and laboratory space, denial of sabbatical leaves, discouraging graduate students from working with
the dissenter, ostracism, and possible denial of tenure or even loss of employment.
In such a restrictive climate it is not surprising that many in the academy who have private doubts about evolutionary theory choose not to make those doubts public.
quote:Um, no. Any researcher who found conclusive evidence disproving (some aspect of) evolutionary theory would be forever famous. Einstein and Bohr, for example, are famous, in a sense, for proving Newton was "wrong".
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Since the First World War it became increasingly unpolitic for scientists, if they wanted a career in their chosen field, to profess disagreement with the theory of macro-evolution.
quote:That's a feature, not a bug. The above suggests that change in scientific theories means somehow it was "wrong" or that the scientists were deluded or disingenuous. At one time, theories like the ether or phlogiston seemed reasonable. Now they don't, based on experimental evidence, and instead we have the theory of relativity and the theory of the covalent bond. That's how science works. It evolves, and sometimes there are gaps between the demise of an old theory and the development of a new one. During that gap, there can be a multiplicity of hypotheses being tested. As experimental evidence adds up, some are discarded and others become the new theories. Again, that's how science works.
Nevermind that the supposed mechanism for this evolution keeps changing whenever the evidence to contrary becomes too overwhelming. The dogma of evolution must remain sacrosanct!
quote:So comparing one unsupported bit of nonsense with another is an "overblown analogy", but comparing not getting tenure to Orwell's 1984 is perfectly legitimate? Do you even know what totalitarianism is?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:You're rather fond of the overblown analogy, aren't you?
Originally posted by Crœsos:
quote:Yes, and for largely the same reason it's "unpolitic" for scientists to profess disagreement with the theory of a heliocentric solar system.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Since the First World War it became increasingly unpolitic for scientists, if they wanted a career in their chosen field, to profess disagreement with the theory of macro-evolution.
From Dean Kenyon, Emeritus Professor of Biology
San Francisco State University:
quote:With that kind of totalitarian thought police on the prowl it's hardly surprising that it's unpolitic.
[various complaints complaints about how advocating evidence-free nonsense will hurt your career]
quote:Actually, gene duplication is very often responsible for genetic diseases:
Originally posted by Crœsos:
You seem to have trouble with the idea that gene duplication does not necessarily involve chromosome duplication. The former is far more common than the latter and usually not harmful.
quote:I have to say that I am surprised at the imputation of bad motives or dishonesty on my part from a few people here. I genuinely believe that macro-evolution doesn't stand up to modern science but am more than willing to be corrected just as I was on the point of order arising in a way that is conformable to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Originally posted by Justinian:
CraigMaddie,
I notice with interest but a complete lack of surprise that you are quite pointedly ignoring Croseus' example of when something you claimed was impossible actually happened.
quote:That's because The Extended Phenotype is the one where he is explicitly arguing his particular theory about the unit of selection. It's more directed towards biological practitioners than his other books are. As I understand it, there isn't yet a consensus on whether he's right or wrong. If there is a consensus developing it's that the community is sick of the academic infighting over the question.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Dawkins himself says (on the jacket) that if you only read one of his books, read The Extended Phenotype.
quote:It doesn't matter whether most instances are deleterious. It only has to be beneficial once or twice for the descendants to start having more descendants.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Actually, gene duplication is very often responsible for genetic diseases:
But to your mind this same overwhelmingly deleterious process has been responsible for the emergence of ever higher genera and taxa?
quote:If we want to talk about accusations of dishonesty, you are accusing almost every single practicing biologist in the world of dishonesty. And of a complete lack of self interest. Overturning established theories is how you become legendary. And would be worth a massive fortune from all the creationists as well as a nobel prize and a clear conscience. For your ideas to be valid, you have to accuse almost every single practicing biologist* (and a lot of non-practicing ones) of corruption and dishonesty that goes directly against their naked self interest. And before I posted you launched an accusation of "totalitarian thought police" - your own words. A tone argument that people are being mean to you by accusing you of dishonesty after you made implicit statements about honesty of almost every single practicing biologist in the world in the area they devote their life to and love, and explicit accusations of totalitarian thought police brings parables of motes and beams to mind.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I have to say that I am surprised at the imputation of bad motives or dishonesty on my part from a few people here. I genuinely believe that macro-evolution doesn't stand up to modern science but am more than willing to be corrected just as I was on the point of order arising in a way that is conformable to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
quote:Glad to see you have. And yes, Gene Duplication is very often harmful. (Actually it's most often neutral). But you know what? This isn't a problem for the species diversifying. The harmful mutations die off. Even if only one in a thousand of the duplications has a positive impact, that simply means that there are successes. The failures fail and don't get passed on. The successes succeed and do. There's no problem here.
Actually, there have been so many posts on this thread that I have probably overlooked this example. So, no, I'm not trying to avoid it. I'll have a look at his posts and find what you mean.
quote:Yes. Complete agreement.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:That's because The Extended Phenotype is the one where he is explicitly arguing his particular theory about the unit of selection. It's more directed towards biological practitioners than his other books are. As I understand it, there isn't yet a consensus on whether he's right or wrong. If there is a consensus developing it's that the community is sick of the academic infighting over the question.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Dawkins himself says (on the jacket) that if you only read one of his books, read The Extended Phenotype.
Dawkins doesn't leave his pet theories out of The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker (especially The Selfish Gene) but those books are still more directed towards explaining aspects of evolution on which there is more general agreement.
quote:Yes. I am still unclear why you think it can't be.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
But to your mind this same overwhelmingly deleterious process has been responsible for the emergence of ever higher genera and taxa?
quote:But the teaching you quoted originally (“If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and corporal, as regards their whole substance, have been created by God from nothing, let him be anathema.”) didn’t talk about ‘species’ but about ‘things’. And it is obviously, trivially, true that not all ‘things’ were created directly by God, that not even the original type of each thing was created directly by God. It is obviously the case that the sense in which God created the chicken korma was by a developmental process including natural resources and human ingenuity, and that fact doesn’t disturb Catholic theology in the slightest. The only way that the analogous gradual development of a biological type could disturb your theology is if you want it to.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Clearly, the Church was not stating that the very blades of grass that we see outside of our window were created ex nihilo at the beginning of creation since we see that they have grown from seeds. What is meant is that the type of substance of each species was created ex nihilo. Otherwise the phrase is meaningless, since, as you noticed, the alternative interpretation is absurd.
quote:Sure, but you know what I mean. Craigmaddie’s view, which is what I’m trying to engage with, seems to be that God has to create the original of every biological type in some direct special way for his church’s teachings to be true.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Strictly speaking, God is outside time and therefore there is no such thing as a moment of creation. God creates the whole shebang from the Big Bang to the Big Crunch all at one go sub specie eternitate.
quote:And I think that Dawkins misunderstands here. It’s been a while since I read him on the subject, but my recollection is that his critique is sound if one assumes that what Gould primarily wants to explain is adaptive complexity. And I don’t think that is what Gould primarily wants to explain. It’s one facet of evolution, for him. For Dawkins, it’s a consuming passion.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:As I understand it, the Dawkins' faction response to Gould and Lewontin is that they're talking utter nonsense and, besides, the stuff they're saying is trivially true and everyone's known it all along so what are they making a fuss about?
Originally posted by Eliab:
[tangent]I’m actually of the (probably minority) view that there isn’t a whole lot of conflict between Dawkins’ and Gould’s theories, and such differences as there are have been exaggerated and misunderstood (to some extent, by the gentlemen themselves).
quote:Glad to see that you're now insinuating that I look down on women and gay people as some kind of subspecies.
Originally posted by Louise:
It's really not about science at all. If you hang around on Dead Horses as long as I have, you start to notice that Genesis (including quotes from it in the NT) is brandished as a compilation of clobber texts for a lot of things - especially trying to put women and gay people in their traditional place: below heterosexual men.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
quote:What a ridiculous ad hominem accusation. Where am I accusing "every single practicing biologist in the world of dishonesty"?
Originally posted by Justinian:
If we want to talk about accusations of dishonesty, you are accusing almost every single practicing biologist in the world of dishonesty. And of a complete lack of self interest. Overturning established theories is how you become legendary. And would be worth a massive fortune from all the creationists as well as a nobel prize and a clear conscience. For your ideas to be valid, you have to accuse almost every single practicing biologist* (and a lot of non-practicing ones) of corruption and dishonesty that goes directly against their naked self interest. And before I posted you launched an accusation of "totalitarian thought police" - your own words. A tone argument that people are being mean to you by accusing you of dishonesty after you made implicit statements about honesty of almost every single practicing biologist in the world in the area they devote their life to and love, and explicit accusations of totalitarian thought police brings parables of motes and beams to mind.
quote:But you quite clearly are. And when other posters here, including myself, refuted what you said you simply igniored the replies and repeated your original points as if no-one had said anything.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
I am not placing any doubt on the empirical observations of any biologist.
quote:Observation and theory always cycle in to each other.You can't do one without the other. You don' know what questions to ask without a model to work with, there are no pure unbiased
What I am placing doubt on is the validity of their extrapolation from their the empirical observations to macroevolution.
quote:I suspect that might be your error. You are confusing scientific sttements with philosophical ones. You seem to have identified some philosophical implications of evolution which contradict what you see as some absolute claims of the Roman Catholic Church, and so you reject the science that leads people to think that evolution happens. But as you haven't yet identified what these are on this thread its very hard to know what you think the problem is.
To maintain that a biologist has come to a wrong conclusion philsophically...
quote:To start at the very beginning, are you aware of what a scientific theory is?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
What a ridiculous ad hominem accusation. Where am I accusing "every single practicing biologist in the world of dishonesty"?
quote:So far as I can understand, based on a mix of incredulity and your understanding of long dead philosophers and theologians, you are claiming that macroevolution is not part of the best explanation that we have of available facts and there is no predictive power to a theory that includes it. In short every time a biologist who knows what he is talking about refers to the Theory of Evolution then he is lying according to you.
From Wikipedia:
A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about such observations, and is put forth as a principle or body of principles for explaining a class of phenomena.
quote:Possibly you need to take a deep breath, find out what a scientific theory is (and so what you are actually claiming rather than what you think you are), read some of the evidence on macroevolution for a lot of evidence (there's plenty more and that document is seven years out of date), and then come back to me on any possible motive for this conspiracy almost all biologists would have to be in to have slipped in an invalid Scientific Theory.
I think you need to take a deep breath and try to read what I am saying.
quote:You mean empirical observations of macroevolution (really just evolution - there is no inherent difference) actually having occured? (See Croseus' post above). You can not place doubt on the validity of empirical observations of macroevolution happening to the conclusion that it does happen - you can merely call them liars or mistaken (both happen).
I am not placing any doubt on the empirical observations of any biologist. What I am placing doubt on is the validity of their extrapolation from their the empirical observations to macroevolution.
quote:All the above would be high sounding language with a little credibility macroevolution had not been demonstrated. If it has been demonstrated empirically then you're in a different ball park. If your philosophy can not handle current scientific theories then it's time to rethink your philosophy because it is almost certainly wrong.
This is where empirical science passes over into the philosophy of science. To maintain that a biologist has come to a wrong conclusion philsophically is not to accuse him or her of dishonesty. As much as you would like to accuse me of that.
quote:No. Not until you cover your eyes, ignore that which is written by Ken, Croseus, and myself (and others) both giving examples of macroevolution in action, accuse biologists of having "totalitarian thought police", and otherwise step outside the bounds of polite disagreement.
Are the arguments for macroevolution so weak that you have to fall back on vituperation?
quote:As I said, I am still working my way through the thread since I have limited internet access. Don't worry, I intend to address polyploidy, gene duplication, and Richard Lenski's findings (plus your own points).
Originally posted by ken:
But you quite clearly are. And when other posters here, including myself, refuted what you said you simply igniored the replies and repeated your original points as if no-one had said anything.
quote:Yes, some people don't like having their contributions to a debate ignored.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
By the way, the playground comments don't really add anything to the thread. I've definitely hit a raw nerve it appears.
quote:
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
By the way, the playground comments don't really add anything to the thread. I've definitely hit a raw nerve it appears.
quote:By the way, the accusations of "totalitarian thought police" make me think that you want a hell thread. You make bold plain text accusations like that and then complain about the civility of others, especially when I rub your nose into exactly how lacking in civility you are?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
With that kind of totalitarian thought police on the prowl it's hardly surprising that it's unpolitic.
OliviaG
quote:Well, let's look at random gene duplication-plus-natural selection as the supposed mechanism for the emergence of higher taxa and genera, even though the vast majority of such duplications are - despite what Croesus claimed - quite clearly harmful.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
It doesn't matter whether most instances are
deleterious. It only has to be beneficial once or twice for the descendants to start having more descendants.
quote:So, says someone in the Vatican. The concept "The Vatican" is not the same as binding Church teaching. The quote about Pius XII ("when Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans") is a misrepresentation of his views as in Humani Generis.
Originally posted by OliviaG:
Hey, let's all chill:
Darwin's compatible with Christianity
quote:He does draw a line in the sand:
Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical, fresh knowledge has led to the recognition that evolution is more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this theory.
quote:(emphasis mine)
Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. ... Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition into the spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being. But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again, of aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plans.
quote:I'm sorry: saying that a duplication or anything else is beneficial is just the same as saying that it will express itself in the phenotype in such a way that it will be favoured in natural selection. (Not guaranteed to be favoured: our young creature is not automatically immune to the attention of predators, natural disasters, etc.) I don't know what other definition of 'beneficial' we could be using.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
So, even if we were able to identify a beneficial duplication at the level of the genome, which would be extremely unusual in the face of the overwhelming proportion of deletrious duplications*, it is even more unlikely that it would be manifested in the phenotype in such a way as to guarantee that it will be favoured by natural selection.
quote:Let me see if I've understood your point. You're saying that over time the effects of any beneficial mutations must be drowned out by the effects of the near-neutral deleterious mutations.
The existence of these deletrious mutations that cannot be eliminated due to their 'near neutrality' means that there is a net loss in useful genetic information over time.
quote:The mistake here is surely on the order of supposing that because eggs need to be kept warm to incubate, putting them in a pan of boiling water will help them incubate really well?
This was demonstrated in practice in crop improvement research whereby plants were exposed to genetic mutations caused by miniature cobalt bombs. The idea was that the sheer mass of mutations would result in a number of beneficial mutations and, thus, hasten 'evolution'.
quote:Again, you haven't made it clear enough how you're using the word 'information' for anybody to address it usefully.
It's interesting that no-one has addressed my point about the non-material nature of the information in the genome since this makes it clear that there is not a direct correlation between an increase in DNA structure and productive genetic information.
quote:One more point: quoting an author with date makes you look like you've got references, but it's only of use if you give the full bibliographic reference - title, journal, etc. And, this being an internet discussion board, the responsibility is on you to provide links unless what you're referring to is on some easily available reference site such as wikipedia.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Kimura's (1979) zone of near-neutrality
(Bataillon, 2000; Elena et al, 1998)
quote:Unless the organism ends up in an environment where the deleterious mutation is actually an advantage. Then it becomes very useful information. Sickle-cell anemia is the classic example.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
... The existence of these deletrious mutations that cannot be eliminated due to their 'near neutrality' means that there is a net loss in useful genetic information over time. ...
quote:To expand on Dafyd's comment,
... It's interesting that no-one has addressed my point about the non-material nature of the information in the genome since this makes it clear that there is not a direct correlation between an increase in DNA structure and productive genetic information.
quote:I don't think this is right. All you need is for a gene duplication to not be very harmful to the organism's survival chances. Then the organism stands a fair chance of producing offspring, some or all (depending on what type of organism you're talking about) of which will also have the duplicated gene.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
While it is theoretically possible that a random gene duplication might be beneficial, such a duplication would need to be expressed in the phenotype in a manner that causes the organism to be selected over another individual of that species that does not manifest that duplication in its phenotype.
quote:And what has your above claim got to do with the price of oil in the Nantucket market? The truly harmful mutations die off.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Well, let's look at random gene duplication-plus-natural selection as the supposed mechanism for the emergence of higher taxa and genera, even though the vast majority of such duplications are - despite what Croesus claimed - quite clearly harmful.
quote:And here, with all due respect, you are talking complete Platonist bollocks. Genetic information across the population increases even with faintly deleterious mutations. A poodle style coat is not much use to a wolf in its natural environment - it is a faintly deleterious mutation. But it is still extra information in the wolf species and is useful if brought out and brought into the right condition. And strong selection (either natural or artificial) may make poodle-style fir the new ideal. That's what genetic diversity means - a collection of slightlty deleterious traits under the present conditions that might when things change be exactly what is needed.
However, this is to ignore the fact that genetic mutations of any kind do not occur in isolation but, rather, in competition with any number of other mutations. Because most genetic mutations fall into Kimura's (1979) zone of near-neutrality this means that most deletrious mutations (of which there is a massive preponderance) are not eliminated through natural selection. The existence of these deletrious mutations that cannot be eliminated due to their 'near neutrality' means that there is a net loss in useful genetic information over time.
quote:Of course. Next you'll be telling me of people who tried weight training by picking up the heaviest weights they wanted to lift and threw their backs out.
This was demonstrated in practice in crop improvement research whereby plants were exposed to genetic mutations caused by miniature cobalt bombs. The idea was that the sheer mass of mutations would result in a number of beneficial mutations and, thus, hasten 'evolution'. Most of these experiments have been abandoned because the only worthwhile products were ornamental or miniature plants that were genetically poorer than their parents.
quote:Define "useful genetic information". Here's one of the big places you fall down. Look at all the variety in the coats for dogs. Wolves as a species have that much variety - but it's not useful to them. They are genetically diverse and for them most of this variation is neutral. It only proves useful once you start either natural or artificial selection based on that factor. Is it "useful information"? Arguments both ways.
The point of all this is that duplication, whilst it results in an increase of the DNA structure, does not by any stretch of the imagination result in an increase of useful genetic information.
quote:Which is one reason it takes a massively long time and a lot of rolls of the dice. Unlikely just means it takes longer.
It is theoretically possible but extremely unlikely.
quote:What do you mean by the non-material nature of the information in the genome? Your warmed over Platonist theology which you think as a practicing Catholic outranks the Pope's?
It's interesting that no-one has addressed my point about the non-material nature of the information in the genome since this makes it clear that there is not a direct correlation between an increase in DNA structure and productive genetic information.
quote:Very good. You can research. But apparently not understand the arguments. Few mutations are beneficial; no one argues that. And that is why the cobalt experiments fail - they simply provide too many mutations. Mutations happen by chance and it's hard to improve on a design by chance. But you are entirely ignoring the function of Natural Selection on this effect.
* Gerrish and Lenski (1998) estimate the ratio of
beneficial mutations to deletrious mutations to be in the range of one million to one. Other researchers state that the rate of beneficial mutations is so low as to make any measurement impossible (Bataillon, 2000; Elena et al, 1998)
quote:Humani Generis has the following to say:
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The concept "The Vatican" is not the same as binding Church teaching. The quote about Pius XII ("when Pope Pius XII described evolution as a valid scientific approach to the development of humans") is a misrepresentation of his views as in Humani Generis.
quote:(And goes on to criticise Communism and Existentialism for misusing the ‘world is in continual evolution meme').
5. If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principle trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual evolution.
quote:Which I take as meaning (5) scientific enquiry into evolution is legitimate, and that (6) scientific enquiry into material human origins is legitimate, but that (7) it must be a fair and open-minded enquiry and (8) cannot under any circumstances be held to explain the origin of the soul and that (9) the authority of the Church trumps everything else.
36. For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church
quote:You're right that if a deleterious mutation is near neutral then it is not that deleterious. But that is precisely the point - because the vast majority of deleterious mutations are not selected against they remain in the genome and bring about the ever-increasing genetic load of that genome. This the reason for the degeneration of the genome.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Let me see if I've understood your point. You're saying that over time the effects of any beneficial mutations must be drowned out by the effects of the near-neutral deleterious mutations.
If deleterious mutations are near neutral, then they're just not that deleterious.
quote:I don't think anyone using natural language would accept the suggestion that to create nonsense is to increase information.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
The word 'information' is ambiguous in that it has at least one rigourous mathematical definition which does not quite agree with the way the word's used in natural language. For example, according to the mathematical definition if you rearrange the words of a message to create nonsense, you increase information. The concept of useful information doesn't have any kind of rigourous definition that I'm aware of.
quote:Actually, my comment about the "totalitarian thought police" concerns the censures that exist in academia against dissent against Darwinism. Someone like Eugenia C. Scott springs immediately to mind. It had nothing to do with Croesian sarcasm or anything else on this thread.
Originally posted by Justinian:
And before I posted you launched an accusation of "totalitarian thought police" - your own words. A tone argument that people are being mean to you by accusing you of dishonesty after you made implicit statements about honesty of almost every single practicing biologist in the world in the area they devote their life to and love, and explicit accusations of totalitarian thought police brings parables of motes and beams to mind.
quote:Well, you are running against the law of excluded middle then. If a thing is not material then it must, by definition, be non-material.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Also, I think I did point out that unless you're careful it's easy to make a category mistake and so think that because universals or forms or information aren't material things they must therefore be non-material things. Which they are not.
quote:According to Haldane's Dilemma it takes about 300 generations to fix a beneficial random mutation. In the meantime that beneficial mutation is effectively drowned out by the overwhelming number of deleterious mutations that are not eliminated through natural selection.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
quote:I don't think this is right. All you need is for a gene duplication to not be very harmful to the organism's survival chances. Then the organism stands a fair chance of producing offspring, some or all (depending on what type of organism you're talking about) of which will also have the duplicated gene.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
While it is theoretically possible that a random gene duplication might be beneficial, such a duplication would need to be expressed in the phenotype in a manner that causes the organism to be selected over another individual of that species that does not manifest that duplication in its phenotype.
quote:Kevin, let's get something clear about beneficial mutations. A mutation is defined as 'beneficial' if it brings about some benefit to the organism. Most commonly a beneficial mutation represents a useful degeneration of the genome. For example, the oft-cited example of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics is due to beneficial mutations where there has been a loss of function i.e. a loss of genetic information. What we see is adaptation not macroevolution. The new strain of bacteria is invariably genetically poorer than the parent strain and has a selective disadvantage over the parent when the antiobiotic in question is no longer present.
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
Remember it's likely that this duplicated gene is not necessary for the organism's functioning, so mutations that stop the duplicated gene from working will probably not reduce the organism's likelihood of producing offspring. And when, by the odd chance in a million (or whatever), a mutation or series of mutations happen that produce a beneficial effect, evolution has occurred. The gene duplication in itself does not have to be beneficial at all, just not disastrous to the organism's survival chances.
Correct me if I'm wrong, of course.
quote:That's simply not true, and neither is it relevant to anything we've been discussing here. I think either you misunderstand what its about, or maybe you are quoting someone who is mispreresenting it. But rather than go into that irrelevance are you going to explain some of the things or answer any of those questions? Its very difficult to carry on a debate with someone who resolutely refuses to reply but just carries on quoting from other irrelevant sources.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
According to Haldane's Dilemma it takes about 300 generations to fix a beneficial random mutation. In the meantime that beneficial mutation is effectively drowned out by the overwhelming number of deleterious mutations that are not eliminated through natural selection.
quote:In practice this doesn't happen in most real populations for all sorts of reasons. And we have observed animal populations such as flies for many hundreds of generations and bacterial populations for tens of thousands.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
You're right that if a deleterious mutation is near neutral then it is not that deleterious. But that is precisely the point - because the vast majority of deleterious mutations are not selected against they remain in the genome and bring about the ever-increasing genetic load of that genome. This the reason for the degeneration of the genome.
quote:Neither of those is true.
The two problems with the adult's fairytale of macro-evolution is that (1) there is no evidence that beneficial mutations can increase productive genetic information over time and (2) the genome of all species are actually degenerating.
quote:As no-one is suggesting that, how is it relevant?
I don't think anyone using natural language would accept the suggestion that to create nonsense is to increase information.
quote:You are going to have to explain that. What has she done that makes you think "totalitarian thought police" is a remotely appropriate of her? It is insulting, untrue, and unneccesary.
Someone like Eugenia C. Scott springs immediately to mind.
quote:But most of the "ugliness" is coming from you! You are being quite insulting.
Admittedly, I have to confess that I have been quite surprised by the ugly tone of this thread.
quote:You seem to be conducting this thread as if there was no point in listening to what others contribute or replying to it because there is no need to take them seriously, their ideas cannot possibly be true. That is genuinely insulting. I mean seriously, I feel as if I am being insulted, because you are treating me and others here as people not worth listening to or replying. You seem to be starting to engage in some conversation of discussion then drop it. Its like being "cut" at a party. There are posters here who are routinely rude or aggressive but you aren't normally one of them. It feels odd.
But, on reflection, I understand that people can have a very great emotional investment in Darwinism and, so, shouldn't have been surprised.
quote:So what? That in no way contradicts what Kevin said. Again, you would have to go into a lot more detail before we could understand wqhy you think that in any way disproves the fact of evolution by natural selection.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Most commonly a beneficial mutation represents a useful degeneration of the genome.
quote:That is simply untrue. There are all sorts of different ways bacteria evolve antibiotic resistance. Sometimes it is somethign being deleted, sometimes a new function for an old gene, very often its genes taken in from other bacteria. They aren't very much like us genetically and their evolution can proceed very differently.
For example, the oft-cited example of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics is due to beneficial mutations where there has been a loss of function i.e. a loss of genetic information.
quote:Actually in bacteria adaptation, behaviour, growth, reproduction, and evolution aren't really separate categories.
What we see is adaptation not macroevolution.
quote:That's a commonly held belief, and very plausible, though we now have some real observations of newly antibiotic-resistant strains that are not outcompeted by parental populations. So "invariably" isn't an accurate word. It rarely is in biology.
The new strain of bacteria is invariably genetically poorer than the parent strain and has a selective disadvantage over the parent when the antiobiotic in question is no longer present.
quote:Let me repeat: you need to tell us how you're using the words 'productive genetic information', and what you mean by saying that genomes are 'degenerating'. 'Degenerating' in what sense: producing more non-viable offspring? But that would be selected against.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:The two problems with the adult's fairytale of macro-evolution is that (1) there is no evidence that beneficial mutations can increase productive genetic information over time and (2) the genome of all species are actually degenerating.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
You're saying that over time the effects of any beneficial mutations must be drowned out by the effects of the near-neutral deleterious mutations.
quote:If a thing is not material then it is a non-material thing. But forms, information, etc are not things, and therefore are not non-material things.
quote:Well, you are running against the law of excluded middle then. If a thing is not material then it must, by definition, be non-material.
Also, I think I did point out that unless you're careful it's easy to make a category mistake and so think that because universals or forms or information aren't material things they must therefore be non-material things. Which they are not.
quote:I don't think anyone thoughtful using natural language would accept the suggestion that the genome literally contains information.
I don't think anyone using natural language would accept the suggestion that to create nonsense is to increase information.
quote:If they're not being eliminated through natural selection, then they don't drown out the beneficial mutation.
In the meantime that beneficial mutation is effectively drowned out by the overwhelming number of deleterious mutations that are not eliminated through natural selection.
quote:I do not see what difference you think that there is between 'macro'evolution and adaptation. Evolution just is adaptation. Birds have a selective disadvantage over fish in cases where the birds need to breathe underwater.
Most commonly a beneficial mutation represents a useful degeneration of the genome. For example, the oft-cited example of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics is due to beneficial mutations where there has been a loss of function i.e. a loss of genetic information. What we see is adaptation not macroevolution. The new strain of bacteria is invariably genetically poorer than the parent strain and has a selective disadvantage over the parent when the antiobiotic in question is no longer present.
quote:"Adult's fairytale of macro-evolution"? "Emotional investment in Darwinism"?
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
... Admittedly, I have to confess that I have been quite surprised by the ugly tone of this thread. But, on reflection, I understand that people can have a very great emotional investment in Darwinism and, so, shouldn't have been surprised. The comment from Louise was particularly crass.
Is that the ugly tone you are referring to? quote:No. If a mutation is not selected against, it's not deleterious. You've just described a neutral mutation.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
quote:You're right that if a deleterious mutation is near neutral then it is not that deleterious. But that is precisely the point - because the vast majority of deleterious mutations are not selected against they remain in the genome and bring about the ever-increasing genetic load of that genome. This the reason for the degeneration of the genome.
Originally posted by Dafyd:
Let me see if I've understood your point. You're saying that over time the effects of any beneficial mutations must be drowned out by the effects of the near-neutral deleterious mutations.
If deleterious mutations are near neutral, then they're just not that deleterious.
quote:Constant repetition is not the same as constructing an argument or producing evidence. As near as I can tell you seem to think that simply repeating this mantra in response to any evidence presented to the contrary is sufficient refutation. It's a week later and I'm still waiting for your thoughts on Lenski's work, which clearly shows the contingent evolution of a new trait. So far all you've said can be summarized as "nuh uh".
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
The two problems with the adult's fairytale of macro-evolution is that (1) there is no evidence that beneficial mutations can increase productive genetic information over time and (2) the genome of all species are actually degenerating.
quote:You have found time, however, to graciously lecture us on decorum and polite discourse, and to imply that Eugenie Scott feeds Creationist's faces to rats.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Actually, my comment about the "totalitarian thought police" concerns the censures that exist in academia against dissent against Darwinism. Someone like Eugenia C. Scott springs immediately to mind. It had nothing to do with Croesian sarcasm or anything else on this thread.
Admittedly, I have to confess that I have been quite surprised by the ugly tone of this thread. But, on reflection, I understand that people can have a very great emotional investment in Darwinism and, so, shouldn't have been surprised. The comment from Louise was particularly crass.
quote:Going back to my also unaddressed example from two weeks ago, which would represent a "degeneration", the insertion of the cytosine in the original example, or a later mutation that omits it again? In short, you seem to be defining any change as a "degeneration" even if it's something helpful or useful to the organism.
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Kevin, let's get something clear about beneficial mutations. A mutation is defined as 'beneficial' if it brings about some benefit to the organism. Most commonly a beneficial mutation represents a useful degeneration of the genome. For example, the oft-cited example of bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics is due to beneficial mutations where there has been a loss of function i.e. a loss of genetic information. What we see is adaptation not macroevolution. The new strain of bacteria is invariably genetically poorer than the parent strain and has a selective disadvantage over the parent when the antiobiotic in question is no longer present.
quote:I see, so all these wonderful and knowledgeable people who've been posting round the boards about scientific issues for years don't actually know anything, they're just so emotional, poor dears. Nothing crass about that comment and its smear on a number of intelligent posters who show a consistently excellent grasp of these subjects...
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
Admittedly, I have to confess that I have been quite surprised by the ugly tone of this thread. But, on reflection, I understand that people can have a very great emotional investment in Darwinism and, so, shouldn't have been surprised. The comment from Louise was particularly crass.
quote:It is not that deleterious in the circumstance that is being tested for. Such traits are assessed only in that condition. And when conditions change, traits that had been horrible can become extremely useful or vise-versa (see sickle cell anemia for something that's useful in a malarial country and pretty deleterious in a country without malaria).
Originally posted by Craigmaddie:
You're right that if a deleterious mutation is near neutral then it is not that deleterious.
quote:Most species are adapted for the environment they are in. But environments change over time and what was the best evolutionary combination is often not after the environment has shifted. A textbook example of this is the Peppered Moth - the dark colouring is a slightly deleterious mutation in the original environment but an extremely useful one once the environment shifts. However because it is a slightly deleterious mutation, you would term it "degeneration of the genome". Despite it being anything but deleterious in a different environment. And that's what the benefit of a lot of these slightly deleterious mutations are. The potential to adapt to different niches; most species in a stable environment are adapted to that environment well enough to out-produce everyone else. But if the peppered moth had a genome that didn't "degenerate" then it's possible the species would have been dead meat in the polluted environment.
But that is precisely the point - because the vast majority of deleterious mutations are not selected against they remain in the genome and bring about the ever-increasing genetic load of that genome. This the reason for the degeneration of the genome.
quote:Croesus has given you a case where beneficial genetic mutations have increased productive genetic information over time. You now say that there is no evidence that beneficial mutations can increase productive genetic information over time. Evidence has been presented right on this very thread not just that they can, but that they have. And that they have observably. So when you make statements like the above either you are dishonestly cherry picking the thread, or you are lying, or you are incapable of understanding the evidence presented on this thread. Any other possibility except an outright accusation of lying against Croesus and the scientists he linked and every other case (including the theoretical ones, which are sufficient to show "can") would mean that you wouldn't make as stupid a statement as to say that there is "no evidence".
The two problems with the adult's fairytale of macro-evolution is that (1) there is no evidence that beneficial mutations can increase productive genetic information over time and
quote:You seem to be back on your Platonist kick, wanting one pair of ideal representatives of each species and cloning perfectly from there. I've illustrated above a case where a slightly deleterious mutation in one environment made the species much stronger when the environment changed. If things like that are what you mean by "degenerating" - actively more able to handle different environments - then we have different views.
(2) the genome of all species are actually degenerating.
quote:And here you are assuming that what is created is nonsense. It often is. But not always.
I don't think anyone using natural language would accept the suggestion that to create nonsense is to increase information.
quote:That's because scientific academia* has a strong dislike for people who are more full of shit than used colostomy bags. And a belief in creationism (note not "dissent against Darwinism") ranks up there with Holocaust Denial. The evidence for evolution is of that sort of strength, the dissenters are repeating points that have been debunked as hard, and are advocating for things that are as dangerous (scrapping large chunks of modern medicine).
Actually, my comment about the "totalitarian thought police" concerns the censures that exist in academia against dissent against Darwinism.
quote:As I have pointed out, and you are doing your level best not to take onboard, you are the one dragging matters into the gutter.
Admittedly, I have to confess that I have been quite surprised by the ugly tone of this thread.
quote:And still politer than you have managed.
But, on reflection, I understand that people can have a very great emotional investment in Darwinism and, so, shouldn't have been surprised. The comment from Louise was particularly crass.
