I seem to have a vague recollection concerning this question, I think in regard to some of Stephen Hawking’s work. It requires some pretty abstract thinking and I suppose upper-level math to be able to understand, but there are several things we think of as having to have boundries, and there simply aren’t. Included in this would be the fact that there is no end to space, time and space are dimensions of the same thing, that time and space did not exist before the big bang (although as my beloved step-father used to say: “What banged?”), and that there has never been a time when God did not exist.
These are difficult concepts for most of us lay people to get our heads around. It’s like trying to envision a coin with only one side. But for some reason this has been relatively easy for me to accept, if not to understand. Perhaps, whether we understand it or not, there has simply never been a time when God did not exist.
A useful analogy here is meteorology. Meteorology explains changes within the atmosphere (weather), but says absolutely nothing about the origin of the atmosphere. Likewise, evolution explains changes within life, but says absolutely nothing about its origin. Meteorology is equally valid whether the atmosphere was created in a single instant, or gradually developed over an extremely long period of time. In the same way, evolution is equally valid whether life arose from nonliving matter, or if it popped into existance at the command of God. In fact, even if we had no idea whatsoever as to how life came into being, evolution would remain a valid description of the way it changes over time.
quelquechose, John Mace, thank you. I understand what you mean in that the creation of life itself is outside the realm of the discussion of evolution. I’m afraid I have to confess to misconstruing by the title of this thread that the discussion here was in relation to evolution vs. creationism, not only with regard to life as it currently exists, but in regard to the creation of life itself. My apologies.
Indeed it is. I feel in some ways as though a veil has been lifted in terms of answers to questions that have puzzled me for a long time. Thank you again.
Notwithstanding the evidence present for evolution, there is a bit that cannot be explained, even to this day. Most of it is molecular. As in, how did the clotting cascade come about? It is not as if all 13 factors sprang up at the same time, and I am disinclined to believe an organism would be more fit by having part of them, either clotting spontaneously without activation or having activators without clots. So there is some “because I said so” still going on in the field. Look in the Journal of Molecular Evolution.
Don’t worry about it. It’s an extremely common misconception that the subjects are related and non-theists make that mistake just as often as theists. Trust me, if someone came into GD and said that “evolution proves there’s no God,” or that “evolution proves that God did not create the universe,” an avalanche of corrections would immediately descend from those who are defending evolution.
Precisely my point. Your link, while fun, states itself that this is only likely. And in some ways to me much less likely than ape=>man. He points out Behe’s work, which I am mildy familiar with, it holds a nice place in the study (read bathroom). Gene duplication seems odd, why would a cell make two proteins that do the same thing. I know there are multiple pathways for each molecule, and most of the factors are serine proteases, but to me its a bit of a stretch to say “factors I and II both activated III, until II mutated and started activating I”. Just my slight little rant. I will admit I haven’t read all of the previous arguments about this pathway in the board. But evolutionists, like all scientists, have a modicum of faith in their paths. They have to, at least in my sense of the word, or their would be no point in doing experiments. To put in another way, why would I spend time setting up an electrophoresis gel if I thought there were no chance the outcome would be what I want. Ergo, I have faith that it might work, and if it doesn’t, I figure out an error or scrap it and move on.
Eggs are an advanced feature of life. Even fertilization inside the body is advanced. Some fish, and many less advanced life forms, have the mother dump unfertized eggs outside, to be fertilized by the father.
I’d advise you to run out and buy Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to all of Creation by Olivia Judson, the spiciest, raciest, juiciest book on evolution ever written. (Amazon page ) She gives an incredible range of ways creatures reproduce. It’s educational, and fun too.
It’s all bloody unlikely. Any particular outcome is unlikely. It was damn unlikely that either you or I would ever get born, right, but it happened.
The difference between scientists and creationists is what happens when their “faith” gets shattered. Creationists find some argument to explain away everything, since they have the answer. Remember some have to sign pledges that creationism is true. Scientists (painfully often) dump stuff that doesn’t work. I had a friend who was doing a PhD in physics, when he discovered that an equation everyone accepted as being correct wasn’t. Unfortunately, this discovery wasn’t good enough for a dissertation on its own, so he had to scrap a lot of his work, and got delayed a year. That’s science.
So I bet if your gel didn’t work for some new setup, and you found out it wasn’t a mistake, or an error, you’d investigate the cause, come up with an improved theory of gels, and become famous. If you were a gel creationist you’d say god hates that setup.
Why multiply entities? Couldn’t the universe (or, well, the “multiverse” to use the sci fi term, or “nature” to stick to reality) have always existed? Maybe not the universe as we know it (which may have begun at the big bang), but the “wrapper” we’re putting it in. Why couldn’t that “wrapper”, including some fundamental laws of physics, have always been around? Why does there have to be a creator?
Note: I don’t have any faith that this is the case. It’s just one of the “maybes” that makes it impossible for me to worship a deity. Sure, maybe there’s a God, but maybe there isn’t, and maybe if there is, He gets pissed off when people assume He exists. Why believe in this one thing I don’t have evidence for, when I don’t believe in other things that I don’t have evidence for?
I don’t think this statement should be made so strongly. Sure, biological evolution doesn’t care how life began, but the core tenets of evolution (variation, competition, and natural selection) work before true “life” actually existed. If molecules are randomly forming (which will happen in any system, especially when energy is being added, such as at an oceanic vent or sitting in sunlight), and some of these molecules catalyze the formation of similar molecules (essentially “survive to reproduce”), those molecules will be selected for. We don’t know exactly when or where these molecules were going through this process, but there are some pretty good hypotheses.
The current leader is the “RNA world” hypothesis. In this hypothesis, RNA molecules (which we already know are capable of both storing genetic information and acting as enzymes) formed (see next paragraph), and some were randomly able to catalyze their own replication. Fast forward 4.5 billion years or so, and you have an organism sitting in front of a machine created by his species, wondering about the origin of life.
How did these seemingly complex RNA molecules form? This is the current probable point of “abiogenesis”–anything after the formation of the RNA molecules is evolution, anything before is simply chemistry. One theory holds that some sort of membrane self-organized (which surfactant molecules commonly do) around a bunch of chemicals, including nucleotides. This held the nucleotides in a high enough concentration to allow for some “experimentation” (random combinations, with the self-replicating surviving). It is also possible that the origin took place on clay, which has been shown to catalyze polymerizatoin of nucleotides. Still others contend that the origin took place near deep-sea ocean vents, iron and nickel sulfides might catalyze some of the necessary reactions (I’m not certain, but I think the intense pressures might also make chemistry that’s difficult at the surface more likely; I can’t remember how water behaves at such pressures, and whether its state is different enough from normal “surface” water to make a difference). The review article on the RNA world that I linked to above touches on some of the other ideas (and gives references).
While my wording would have been construed, my implied message was “Why would a cell with two copies of an identical gene be more fit than a cell with one copy” I know gene duplication exists. As does noncoding duplication. Think Huntingdons. However, to say duplication, then mutation is a stretch, to me. Plus, most cells, if they have a duplication of something, either limit expression of said device or bad things happen. IE tumors from overexpressed MDR proteins, or mental retardation from multiple X Chromosomes (more than two, specifically in men). Why would this have not been true in primordium? And yes, I know not all duplications are bad, but with limited energy, almost all of them would be (energy wasted on 2 A’s versus 1 A and 1 U). See my point?
Good morning from Hong Kong. One problem with living in a different time zone to most of the posters here is that we’re out of synch for all but a few hours and questions inevitably get missed. Anyway, for those of you returning from work on the West Coast, perparing to go to bed on the East Coast (or insomniacs elsewhere), here are the two questions I raised yesterday. Implicitly the first question seems to have been answered in the negative by intermediate posts, but the second hasn’t been touched on.
The talkorigins site: “[O]ur species and chimpanzees are both the descendants of a common ancestor that was distinct from other African apes. This common ancestor is thought to have existed in the Pliocene between 5 and 8 million years ago, based on the estimated rates of genetic change.”
A couple of questions that came to mind as I read this. Are there any fossils of this common ancestor? Do fossil records for chimps show a similar number of intermediate forms as is deemed to exist for humans?
That much at least is easy to answer. More copies of a gene means that more of the protein is produced. One of the simplest techniques for genetically moidifying crops is simply to insert multiple copies of existing genes into the genome, often oin different chromosomes. Each copy of the gene gets expressed at the same rate leading to an increase production if the protein.
That may be correct, but bad things usually simply consists of expending energy unnecessarily, it only very rarely means tumours or mental retardation. And as you say, cells have numeorus mechanisms to prevent over-expression if proteins that are harmful.
The point here is that all cells do indeed have multiple copies of most genes, so the idea of a multiple copy of a clotting factor is hardly improbable is it?
Quite frankly, no.
Most cells do have multiple copies of most genes and it causes no problems whatsoever. There may be a slight energy increase but the again gene expressionmay be controlled by a negative feedback system and there is no negative outcome whatoever.
The fact is that duplicate genes is the mnorm for most eukarotic cells so clearly there is no major disadvantage.
