Why not? Bad genes = less successful animal. This is seen in all species, including humans… if man wasn’t capable of developing technology that overcame many maladies, do you think Stephen Hawking would be revered as a genius?
Heck, I’m still wondering where all these archetypes came from originally.
Arguing genes and phenotypes is great, but they had to come from somewhere.
If you believe in Creationism, then where did the Creator come from? If you don’t believe in Creationism, but some vague notion of “intelligent design”, then who or what was the intelligent designer?
Oh man, you guys are missing the sheer comedy of the link! I’m laughin’ my ass off at three AM thanks to this thing!
Useful structures, eh? Useful for what? For whom? How is a nuclear furnace “useful”? How is a chunk of rock “useful”? Useful is a word that has no meaning outside of it’s context. It is only useful because we were formed from it’s conditions, and therefor it is obviously useful. If you made a snowman, that snowman would obviously find the snow “useful”. But, it doens’t really mean a thing.
Oh man, there’s more!
This argument presupposes what it is trying to prove. Basically this argument is saying that “the way the world works is great because that is the way the world works and the world works”. We find these controling principles “great” because they are the ones that exist in our universe. If it had worked out that gravity pushed things apart and the speed of light was two miles an hour, we would think that those principles were great, because that would be the way the world works. There is nothing special about the laws of physics working- the work because that is how they happen to be. If they were different, they’d work another way, but they would still “work”. See?
My howling laughter is starting to wake up my SO. I’ve got to contain myself!
What, then, is the meaning of life?
You do realize that odds have no meaning in the face of infinity?
Aha, this time you prove yourself. If it is so hard to do, then it is reasonable to assume that it is to hard for much of anyone to do. I mean really, if no one can do it, then it must have come about some other way, yes?
Why is the sky blue? Why does the wind blow? Ahhhh…this is fun! We can sit around asking “why” all day. Too bad the question “why” has no relevence in nature.
Yes, I know I was focusing on the hilarious assumptions about the “meaning” and “use” of this world and staying away from science, but this is too easy to resist.
Asexual reproduction is still around. There are some advantages, however, to sexual reproduction. It recombines genes, creating diversity in the gene pool which helps a species to survive environmental changes.
Like all the plants out there that don’t use photosynthesis.
Because all the ones without symbiotic relationships died. I buried them in my backyard.
When is an attribute “complete”? See, unlike cars and fridges and the such, there is no real purpose to life. Natural selection doesn’t “make”, natural selection “happens”. and sometimes the stuff that happens isn’t immediately useful. But, as they say, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Because if you can’t see it you can’t believe it, right?Does your brain really still work at that infantile stage where you believe that if you can’t see it it might not be real? Sorry man, there are some things your not gonna see, even if you really want to. Your not gonna see a lump of coal turn into a diamond before your eyes. Your not gonna see a civilation form from a small tribe, and your sure as hell not gonna see evolution.
Apparently not.
Lord I hope so, because it scares me that the same God that created humans with such limited reasoning powers might have also made me.
But natural selection is not eliminated:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/modern-synthesis.html
You have been misled Hiyruu: Evolution was modified awhile ago to integrate genetics, many times your sources are slow in understanding that theories do get modified, natural selection was not repealed, it is still considered one important element of evolution.
Another question for the OP… why do assume that Evolution contradicts the possibility of a Creator? All scientists who follow Big Bang theory agree that they don’t have much of an idea what existed prior to the Big Bang. After all, an explosion the size of the universe tends to eliminate all evidence of what came before it…
Hiyruu,
Do us all a favor and quit confusing “hypothesis” with “theory” when discussing a scientific matter.
You do not have a theory; you have a hypothesis. What’s even worse is, you’ve no support for your hypothesis other than “believe.”
For about the 12-millionth time on these boards: THEORIES IN SCIENCE ARE NOT WHAT THEY ARE MATHEMATICS!
Regarding my posting just above: I am not saying that Math is not Science. I’m saying that Math Theory is to Math Theorem as a different branch of Science Hypothesis is to that branch of Science Theory.
In short: Hiyruu is equating his hypothesis with theory in the wrong branch.
Didn’t review the whole thread, so I apologize if this point has already been made. Evolution HAS been observed as it occurs, and the rate measured: see J. Weiner’s <b>The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time</b>. The measured rates are much greater than rate of evolution deduced from the fossil record. The real question in evolutionary theory is why does it happen so SLOWLY? And why are species as stable as they are?
Evolution does not occur at a constant rate. It occurs in fits and starts (punctuated equilibrium.) I won’t hijack by going too in depth, but my personal favorite expert on the subject is Stephen J. Gould: http://www.aaas.org/Communications/gould.htm . If you want more of a discussion, open a thread and I’ll be happy to jump in.
Where did it come from? If you can’t answer that, your hypothesis is in dire straits.
Um…you do realize that the phenotype is the expression of the genotype, right?
You are aware that this statement is a Lamarckism, and indicates rather strongly that you have little or no knowledge of how evolution works, right? It’s all about mutation, and natural selection. Species don’t “grow things” in response to environmental changes.
I’d make this a longer post, but I have a feeling it’d be pointless, and pretty much ignored by its intended recipient, who has pretty much ignored all valid points, and focused entirely on side issues.
Fascinating.
I tell you, biology cum evolution is so damned interesting, it makes me wonder why I didn’t pursue it as a career.
But Gaspode, is it not reasonable to assume that any mutations which eventually result in a new species may find that these triggers are now useless or harmful? As interesting as this event might be, it seems to me like every species will need to work out its own triggers. No?
Hmmm… it appears that I got carried away when I saw that “gem” about boars and their tusks, and missed that particular reference to Lamarckisms.
And I must say that Gaspode has officially piqued my curiosity. Is there a chance that you could provide us with a link to a site that offers more information on what you said? I was quite surprised when I read that.
Thanks in advance.
“The Zaphod Beeblebrox?”
“No, just a Zaphod Beeblebrox, didn’t you hear I come in six packs?”
[hijack]Oh my goodness! This place has two of me? This is the froodiest place ever![/hijack]
I was aware of this in principle (though maybe not the details) - this is the process whereby atavisms (or, the recurrence of previously-lost characteristics, a number of generations after their original loss) occur, is it not? There is, however, a significant difference between the re-acquiring of lost traits through the re-activation of existing genes and the pre-existence of any potentially new traits. The implication is that all “new” traits are therefore atavisms, even though such traits remained unexpressed in the archetype!
The pig example that Hiryuu mentioned could be easily explained as an atavism, should his example play out as predicted. But in the context of evolving new characteristics, how would the genome “know” that these pigs were suddenly wild, and that tusks were required? Traditional Darwinism, of course, necessitates a trial-and-error period, during which mutations occur and those which prove advantageous (or, at the very least, those which do not prove disadvantageous) are kept - tusks may or may not be among these. Hiryuu’s proposal is that such a period does not occur, and the new traits simply appear because they are needed. So, again, how would the genome “know” which traits are required if such were true?
These statements and questions, alas, betray that you do not know enough about evolution to meaningfully criticise it.
Chance is involved in evolution, as one of the sources of variation on which selection operates. The overall process of evolution is not random process.
There is no “god of evolution” or anything in the theory remotely close to the concept of a god. The theory of evolution does not address the question of the existence of a god or gods. Individuals may wrongly claim that it does when they are trying to support one position or another, but such individuals are wrong no matter what position they want to support.
Evolution does not assume competition. Competition may and does happen, but evolution does not require it. Evolution merely says that a population will change in response to its environment. If the environment changes, the population (not specific members of the population) will change, whether or not there is competition. There are many studies showing that altruism and cooperation between individuals can have an overall beneficial effect on the population, and that selecion can increase altruism and cooperation.
Moving on to some of your other posts, your theory of un-expressed inherant variation has been tested and found wanting. Any part of an organism’s genome is subject to mutations. You’re a mutant. I’m a mutant. Depending on whose numbers you choose, the average number of unique mutations per human is between eight and 60. Mutations happen, and they happen lots. If an organism has the genes for some un-expressed characteristic in its genome, over generations there will be mutations in that gene. Since the gene is not expressed, there will be no selection pressure to remove the mutant gene from the pool. The mutant gene will spread through the population until the majority or all of the population have a non-operative gene for that characteristic. The characteristic will never be expressed. This has been verified experimentally (in organisms with reasonably short generation times) and mathematically (in the field of population genetics).
In organisms such as bacteria, the introduction of new functionality as a result of a mutation has been proved many times over, and is regularly proved in introductory level biology courses. Take a bacteria culture which is known to be killed by antibiotic X. Extract one bacterium from that culture, grow into a colony all descended from that one bacterium, and briefly expose it to antibiotic X. Extract one bacterium from the survivors and repeat. After a few of these cycles, you will have a population of bacteria that are not affected by antibiotic X. If you are interested or are doing reserch, compare the genome of the original population to the genome of the new resistant population and identify the mutation that causes the new population to be resistant. Another, more complex, example of such is discussed at A True Acid Test. Several examples of new functionality in other organisms, including humans, due to identified mutations at Are Mutations harmful?
I would like to comment on the thermodynamic arguments at the page to which you originally referred. The thermodynamic section at that page is utter garbage, and it’s been done to death already, but briefly:
[ul][li]The 2Lot does not say that “systems become more disordered over time, unless energy is supplied and directed to create order”. The 2LoT deals with entropy, and order is equivalent to entropy only in a few special situations that are not relevant to the question of evolution. The 2LoT does not say anything about “direction” or the process by which entropy can decrease; entropy is a property (a technical term with a specific meaning) that does not depend on the path by which a system moves from one state to another. We know that processes are required, but the 2LoT is silent on that subject. The known processes of chemical interactions and energy transfer are sufficient to account for all evolutionary mechanisms, and are very likely to be sufficient to account for abiogenesis.[/li][li]Although some “evolutionists” do “object that the Second Law applies to closed, or isolated systems” they are incorrect; the 2LoT applies to all systems. This error on the part of “evolutionists” appears to be becoming less common. The more common objection (often accompanied by calculations sucn as Life on Earth - Flow of Energy and Entropy) is that the Earth is an open system in which the net entropy flux across the boundary compensates or more than compensates for the entropy generated inside.[/li][li]"…all systems, whether open or closed, tend to deteriorate" is close but to true but incorrect. Many open systems do not deteriorate over the time frame of interest. If the statement I quoted were true for all cases, babies would be impossible. Yes, we are all doomed eventutally; in some billions of years the Solar System and any life in it will disappear. However, over periods of millions to a few billions of years, the energy input from the Sun and the loss of heat from the Earth to space are quite sufficient to maintain or decrease entropy on the Earth.[/li][/ul]
This galaxy ain’t big enough for two presidents. One of you steal a spaceship and bugger off, hmm?
Natural selection involves more than just a population’s response to gross climatic or ecological changes - don’t let the “nature” part fool you. Natural selection encompasses changes, and the response to those changes, at all levels, from gene to population.
**
Ah, but it is. It is, in fact, the genotype for a given phenotype that is being selected for! Genes, not the expression of those genes, are passed from one generation to another. If a given phenotype is advantageous for an organism, it will pass the genes responsible for that phenotype on to its offspring.