User talk:Charon.sk

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[[User:Sam Spade|Sam Spade Wants you to vote!]] 17:37, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

questions about evolution

Hi Charon. Here's my answers to your questions: 1.) Is outdated information that also evolutionists consider false still used in some school textbooks (eg. the embryos series or the horse evol.stages sequence)?

Almost certainly yes. In the best of cases, even college-level textbooks are several years behind the current cutting-edge research, simply because it takes time to produce a textbook and it is impossible to keep it up-to-date before publication. In the case of high school texts, this will be exacerbated by the fact that the books are written by non-specialists and are small portions of a much larger text, and might be using older texts as a model. However, this failure is hardly a reflection on the quality of science in the field of evolution.

2.) Did some parallel similar structures evolve independently? (eg. eyes of mammals and cephalopods or some microbiological structures)

Yes - this is convergent evolution. A single problem may have a single optimal solution, and if it is easy to arrive at it may come up many times independently. I don't think convergence could be used as an argument either for or against evolution. However, divergence of function from form is more parsimoniously explained by evolution (e.g. the well-known vertebrate limb homology).

3.) Are similar homologic structures in related organisms sometimes encoded by groups of genes located in completely different places of the genome?

Yes, but we shouldn't find this surprising, since chromosomes rearrange themselves. In fact chromosome rearrangement is hypothesized to be a significant mechanism for speciation, since it would prove a fairly effective barrier to mating. Check out this image of the mouse genome labeled according to synteny (homology) of chromosome regions with the human genome to get an idea of how much rearrangement has occurred between the mouse and human genomes. Also in general the human genome doesn't have functional "operons" like yeast does, where related genes are transcribed as a single unit, so there's no reason for location to be conserved.

4.) respose to behe's arguments about irreducible complexity

Behe's arguments about irreducible complexity can be easily dismissed as lack of imagination. The general thrust of his argument is "this system could not have existed without every one of these components, and therefore the system could only have been constructed out of whole cloth, not through an evolutionary process." The obvious response is that scaffolding processes could exist; that is, an intermediate state may have existed previously that provided some other benefit. People have done this in detail for example for the flagellum, one of Behe's primary examples. See this, for instance.

5.) isn't the design hypothesis just a call to the most reasonable explanation based just on our observation? (eg. what is the difference between claiming that the paintings in caves are painted by intelligent artists and claiming that the brain (or cell or any complex structure in nature) is designed by an intelligent designer?)

Well, in the instance of the cave paintings, the hypothesis is consistent with a great many other facts. We believe that humans existed at the time, that humans have the capacity to create paintings and may have had the inclination. It's entirely plausible for us to believe that a cave painting was created by a human because it's consistent with everything else we know. "Sure, that makes sense. Humans like to paint, I can imagine a human painting this thing," is a reasonable shorthand. The same cannot be said for the designer. The design hypothesis is empty of framework; it does not bother to posit what the designer was or how it operated. It offers no model of the history of life, which would go a great way towards allowing its propositions to be tested. Since we can say nothing about the designer (while we can say a great deal about the cavemen painters) forming such a hypothesis is not the most reasonable course.

6.) are there any complete series of transitional fossils documenting all slight step-by-step changes found?

I'm not that familiar with the paleontological record, since this is not my area, but I wouldn't expect there to be a complete series of transitional fossils. Fossilization is a rare process and usually occurs only for specific tissue-types like bone which are prone to sedimentation replacement. If even in the case of bones, fossilization is rare, why would we expect to see a complete series of fossils documenting all changes in an evolutionary line? Furthermore, drastic evolutionary changes should occur in a shorter number of generations and in relatively small populations, making the probability of finding a complete series of fossils smaller. However, I think in some instances there is a pretty well-documented record and nearly complete, for example in the evolution of the modern horse's foot from its three-toed ancestor.

5.) are there any examples of imperfect not-fully-formed ancestors of the complete and fully formed fossils usually found? how did they survive if they were not fully formed?

This betrays an incorrect understanding of the way selection operates. Proto-forms most likely had purpose; just not the same purpose that modern forms (what you call "fully formed") may have. For example, the recently discovered feathers on dinosaurs like T. rex - since T. rex obviously didn't fly, why the feathers? Well, the simple answer is that the feathers could have provided some other benefit to T. rex, like cooling him down, or helping him to attract mates (which is a strong driving force behind a lot of natural selection) - only later did they also start to become useful for other things and develop into the pinions that enable modern birds to fly (as dinosaurs became smaller, more interested in running fast/leaping, etc.). Nature is inventive, and more to the point, re-inventive. It is constantly taking existing structures and adapting them to new uses. We are used to thinking in straight lines and imagining direct chains of progression. Evolution does not work this way. Graft 19:56, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Charon - sorry I'm so slow at responding, I'm in California visiting my sister. 1.) I was not talking about missing cutting edge research, but including tens of years old information that causes informed evolutionists to hide in shame. The information in textbooks plays a vital role in the controversy because it keeps the public uninformed and might even be called by some brainwashing or propaganda.

Surely if evolutionists were interested in propagandizing the population, they'd want to present the best, cutting-edge information, not outdated material open to attack. In any case, it would be difficult to argue that they're successful, since the US population views evolution far more skeptically than other developed nations.

Ad 6.) Could you name the exact stages and specimen (location/date found) of horse evolution you referred to?

No - I don't know much about this. You can look it up if you like. talk origins has a page on it here: [1].

Ad 7.) Now I see that I misnumbered my questions and you copied it :) It is true that some arguments of that sort are just a lack of imagination. The problem is that your objection would be valid in the area of philosophy, not science. In science, the proponen of the theory has to supply evidence and to say that "there must be some purpose for those not-fully formed structures" is similar to a "god of the gaps" explanation and would be circular reasoning in the big picture.

Actually, no, this isn't how science operates. Science operates by developing models that explain the world and looking for things that contradict or support that model. So, if you've developed a model and there's good reason to disbelieve it, then that's something to stand up and take notice of. Science doesn't try to find explanations for everything, because some things simply can't be explained, for lack of evidence. Only things that fly in the face of your model, or large gaps, should cause interest. An interesting example is human evolution - the human line is presumed to have diverged considerably from the great ape line (e.g. erect posture, greater intelligence, no fur, etc. etc.), and there is as of yet no plausible explanation for what drove this event. Such a rapid transformation is obviously of interest to us in understanding our own species, but none of the models proposed (the aquatic ape theory, moving from the forest to the savannah, and recently, the "running ape") have really bourne out conclusively based on evidence. Some of them are circumstantially compelling (many find the aquatic ape theory to be one such), but not enough that anyone could say that this is definitively the case.

In any event, the feathered T. rex example is still relevant. Regardless of the purpose of feathers on T. rex, the fact is that it (or rather, its ancestor) had them. There was a proto-form of the modern feathers on birds, and we can safely assume that it was not used for flight. Thus, it seems obvious that evolution hijacked feathers for another purpose. I don't see where this deduction goes wrong.

Ad the feathered Trex: Are you referring to a specific article or specimen? Could you give a reference?

Look up articles on 'dilong paradoxus'

Graft 08:22, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hi Charon - I'm curious to know, other than your faith (which, actually, I'm only assuming), what exactly convinces you that the theory of evolution is bunk? Graft 22:23, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I was interested in something more specific - i.e., what do you percieve to be lacking in mechanistic terms? Why do you feel the currently laid-out mechanisms are incorrect? What do you mean by "builds on the pre-darwinian knowledge"? What are the circular errors on which the theory is founded? Graft 19:32, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

no mechanism: it is a shear unproved speculation that mutation+selection could account for the changes that evolution requires. I would say that what has been experimentaly proved only strenghtens this point.

It's not unproved speculation - there's been a good amount of work done to demonstrate that mutation and selection CAN account for the changes that evolution requires. Mutation rates are well-characterized, the evolutionary changes in proteins on a sequence level are easy to determine by comparative sequence analysis, the effect of selective pressure on the distribution of allele frequencies in a population can be measured - these things together allow us to measure the strength of selective effects (in addition to many other methods). There are plenty of papers predicting where selection has operated on a per-gene basis, based on available evidence. A fair amount of simulation has been done showing that mutation and selection is enough to drive adaptive effects. There are models of speciation based on this understanding that are simple and robust. I'm not clear on why you would say it's unproved speculation.

pre-darwinian knowledge: darwin built his theory whithout the knowledge of current genetics and cell microbiology and biochemistry. what we have today is only a sligtly modified darwinist theory trying to incorporate the new fact into an old structure based on old ways of thinking. For example in physics, Einstein did not simply add some formulas to the newtonian mechanics. It is completely rebuilt. However in the evolution case, there might be metaphysical implications which evolutionists are not willing to face, so they have to keep the old way of thinking. This way a big structure is being built on weak foundation and the more we know the more unstable it will be. The sad thing is that evolutionosists are balancing on the top, closing their eyes and ears and saying "there is no debate, the theory is not in crisis, etc."

Einstein started from the ground up because it was necessary to do so - that's not true in this case. Genetics and microbiology did not repudiate Darwin, they filled in the gaps and provided mechanistic confirmation for his theories - how variation occurs and is propagated from generation to generation, how new variation arises, etc... Also, why do you say the foundation is weak? Graft 17:37, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi Charon,

All of this work IS publically available. You can read a number of books written about the subject. They're simply written for knowledgable audiences; that is, they are not accessible in the sense of language and ability. This is unfortunately true of a lot of fields; if you want detailed justification you must crawl through subtle arguments made in scientific papers that laymen will not appreciate. For example I am frustrated by the fact that many of the arguments over global warming are beyond my ken; they exist, they are written up in journals I can access at any college library. But they require a better understanding of the field.

If you DO want to read some stuff, as a single book I'd probably recommend John Gillespie's "The Causes of Molecular Evolution". If you're interested in understanding "macroevolution", check out "Speciation", by Jerry Coyne et al. Both of these are very dense and technical works, but if you can work through them you will have a much better idea of the mathematical and observational justifications underlying modern evolutionary theory.

On another note, I'm still interested in knowing WHY you think genetics and microbiology repudiate Darwin. Graft 20:51, 6 Jan 2005 (UTC)