Their survival rate?
was the extra digit, etc. passed on?
was it new or shuffled/damaged genetic info?
was it still a pig/cow/human?
[QUOTE=samhouch]
was the extra digit, etc. passed on?QUOTE]
… to their offspring?
My point is that the article is a classic bait-and-switch - start off citing a few (largely irrelevant) Science articles, making sure to explicitly mention that the article comes from a secular source, then start slipping in other cites that actually side with the presented argument, but only really get around to mentioning in the small print that the source of these cites is an in-house publication.
I’ve been relying on a little bit of understanding on the reader’s part. Genesis states it as “kind,” so I’ve been using that term. People with more bilogical understanding than me have failed to draw a straight line between different life forms, and I am opting out of the task myself. Yes, cats from dogs generally alludes to my point. On a genetic level, a certain combination that makes a animal will not accumulate b information and become a+b, a different animal, which is what would be necessary to move from microbe to man.
I’m sorry if you felt that happened. I’ve been able to tell who was “talking” each time I’ve gone there to read (“listen”). So I hope it was a misunderstanding on your part and nothing deliberate on theirs.
Well that’s your problem there. You might as well call it a ‘flibbertyjibbit’ for all the sense it has in biology.
The answer is, that it doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in small steps, or sometimes large ones, with environmental pressure (I lean towards punctuated equilibrium, but IANAB and the exact method is still hotly debated). Speciation has been observed. The things that you seem to be calling for as evidence of evolution are not predicted by it. It’s a common error of scope.
For any given line you draw (stating that on this side, organisms A and B are related, whereas on the other side, organisms X and Y are not related, it will be possible to find a third pair of organisms, P and Q, that are on the X and Y side, but appear related in just about all the same ways as A and B.
There is no clear natural line dividing organisms that can reasonably be described as related and organisms that cannot reasonably be described as related - what there is is a continuum of diversification (or at least one so finely granular that it might as well be a continuum). Any line you may try to draw will be arbitrary.
Speciation as I understand it, is not an issue.
What makes a pig a pig? What makes a pig? A pig. Where did pigs come from? Pigs. Different species of pigs are…? Pigs. New species of pigs are… ? Pigs.
Um, yes, but if you have continued speciation over 10,000 generations, what results? A pig? Even though if it has feathers, flippers and gills?
How about this:
I’d categorize this as “but it could happen!” After 6000 years, pigs still can’t fly, they’re still pigs. Feathers would require additional genetic information. Additional info doesn’t happen naturally through mutation or by accident.
I think that your problem is that you’re still envisioning feathers randomly appearing in some baby pig one day. That ain’t how it works. We’ve been through this.
Believing that it doesn’t happen doesn’t make it not happen. I mean, how do you explain amphibians in the middle state of lungs and gills? Or is everything in the middle stages just because “God made it that way to trick us”?
OK, let’s nix the feathers, since that seems to be your main catching point in the above example. I added them on for humor, and that was probably wrong. Let’s concentrate on flippers. Why would they not be able to evolve flippers?
Science does no such thing. I’m saying that things that might appear random have causes that are explained by the laws of physics. I think this article gives some good examples of “order” stemming from “disorder” without outside interference.
I am unclear on what you mean by additional information. DNA is a sequence of four base pairs that can only combine in certain ways. Nothing “new” is created when a microbe evolves into a man. Base pairs just recombine in different ways and in different orders (may be oversimplified, IANA Biologist). If you mean that no new genes can be created, that is untrue as well. A gene is simply a segment of DNA that is responsible for a certain trait or function. A mutation is defined as a change in genetic material that is not inherited. Does that qualify as new information? It should also be emphasized that while you are correct that most mutations are harmful, some are most certainly beneficial.
Something else that may be of interest. The same organic compounds that are the basis of life on earth and that are believed to have formed in the “primordial soup” have also been detected in outer space. Scientists may be making assumptions about conditions on the newly formed earth, but when the same compounds are known to have formed without human intervention I think it is reasonable to say that they could have formed here as well.
Downhill? So you think that unsuccessful mutations should succeed? You figure an ancestor born, say, missing an enzyme necessary to digest food should proliferate more than one born with a greater ability to fight infection?
Very good example of the order shown in the world. Clouds are not created by chaos, but by the cooperation of the elements of this world.
I asked for randomness that turned into order without intelligent direction. Like scientists say happened when the world was created.
Love
(I don’t even know why I bother.)
And it has been given, several times. Whether you accept it or not is irrelevant, the evidence exists. If you can show that there was, in fact, intelligent direction in the examples given I would very much like to hear it. If you cannot, then there isn’t much left to discuss.
This seems contradictory to your previous statements. The ordered structures in clouds are created by the cooperation of their various elements and not by intellignet direction? This is exactly what science teaches. That is how the earth and every other body in the universe formed, from the interactions of their constituent elements governed by the laws and principles that science tries to define.
So, are you saying that a snowflake exhibits no more order than a cloud? That’s not logical, that’s just denial.
The Challenge:
and then you said:
Perhaps you should stop paraphrasing yourself.
You seem to be interchanging “randomness” and “chaos” in order to refute the examples you asked for.
I thought the Snowflake was a good example. The pattern of a snowflake cannot be predicted before it takes on it’s crystalline state, that sounds random to me. The combination of water droplets being suspended in the atmosphere against gravity, subjected to the wind and cold sounds like chaos to me. There is no intelligent direction in creating a snowflake, but perhaps the process isn’t chaotic enough to suit your request…
Is there anything more chaotic than a supernova? even if the Rings created from the blast aren’t enough order for you, the Heat from the blast will undoubtedly liquify matter into a molten state. In a gravity free vaccuum the molten matter will form a perfect sphere before it cools and hardens. The sphere is simple orderly design, again no intelligent direction
[nitpick]In fact, it’s simpler than that; a gene is a segment of DNA that is responsible for the creation of a protein, enzyme or some such; diffeerent genes produce different chemicals; a point mutation in a gene causes it to produce a different chemical. Traits and functions are an emergent phenomenon, resulting from the complex web of interaction between the chemicals.