100 Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid (Part 1 of 11)

[Resume]

That's not what they are saying.
Explain what this is? (sdfee838KKKKsdfee838KKKK)?
Second video explains it better.
Did you view that one?
They are saying that the first DNA had to be created, because it contains information that started it all, basically. And it is machine like which had to be programmed.
Much better than computers today. They even want to model computers in the same way and are looking into that.

My thought is that evolution was set free for millions of years to a point where it was stopped at Neanderthals., we were or they were re-created to become spiritual beings able to have the first contact with the creator.
If it had not been that way we wouldn't be where we are at today.
If we were inserted into the world or re-created those same laws continue in our line and we are now evolving too but to what end.
I believe since Cro-Magnon we have evolved separate and that we are now evolving with more mind powers that are starting to show which may be considered paranormal even though they can't be proved yet because it is in it's infancy.

The ultimate would be that we draw all our energy from starlight like plants and maybe minerals from the earth, with more advanced minds capable of things that are indistinct now.
The example I am giving you does not eliminate God, and Christians have to adapt to this.

A very good example of making sheeot up.

 

[Olowkow]

I believe since Cro-Magnon we have evolved separate and that we are now evolving with more mind powers that are starting to show which may be considered paranormal even though they can't be proved yet because it is in it's infancy.

Not really. Far from being in its infancy the claims for the paranormal are ancient, we are culturally as advanced peoples "growing" out of our need and fascination with the paranormal. This has nothing to do with evolution.

 

[edge]

I sure hope you are kidding, evolution, stopped.

And Spiritual Beings, what a downgrade.

Paul

Well since they went extinct it did stop for them and they seemed to be behind, Cro-Magnon, in many respects but lived along side with them.
Neanderthals didn't change for at least,200,000 years, not their hunting tactics, possibly in art.

 

[Simon39759]

That's not what they are saying.
Explain what this is? (sdfee838KKKKsdfee838KKKK)?
Second video explains it better.
Did you view that one?
They are saying that the first DNA had to be created, because it contains information that started it all, basically. And it is machine like which had to be programmed.
Much better than computers today. They even want to model computers in the same way and are looking into that.

That's a good place to interject; as we are touching upon an interesting bit of the abiogenesis theory (please note, it is distinct from the theory of evolution), here: the RNA world hypothesis.
Many creationist uses and abuse the analogy of DNA as a code or a program without realizing where it most likely originated.

First of all, we know that the nucleotide basis that compose nucleic acids such as DNA are actually quite common in the universe. They are generated spontaneously in a variety of situation, including some that our models indicate would be present in the early earth.
These nucleotides will also react with each others, more or less randomly, forming chains.

We then turn our eyes upon RNA. It is quite similar to DNA but simpler and, contrary to DNA, the double helix it forms tend not to be stable (basically, both the RNA and DNA can form double helix, and both of these double helix will be broken between two strands as the temperature increases, the RNA just need much lower temperature for this to happen).
As such, RNA is much more flexible and the different elements within each chain can react with each other, twisting the RNA molecule in various ways (imagine a series of magnet attached to a strings), in a manner reminiscent to what the chain of amino-acids that composes a protein would do...
And, just like proteins, these shapes can confers certain enzymatic functions to the molecules as theorized by Cricks and others in the 60ies and confirmed in the early 80ies. Such molecules are called ribozyme (from ribonucleic acid enzyme).
Then, within 10 years, somebody generated a ribozyme that RNA whose enzymatic function was to duplicate itself. Furthermore, running the experience for a while, they found that this sequence started to accumulate mutation, indeed, it was not a very accurate copier but the fact is that some of these variants were actually more effective at copying itself and become predominant in the medium through a primitive form of natural selection.
From there, the hypothesis was rather obvious: among the billions of nucleotide chains to continuously form in the early condition, one was able to attract nucleotide to replicate itself. This ribozyme came near a source of heat, maybe a hydrothermal vent, that denatured it (breaking apart the two chains); now carried upward in a convection movement, the two chains rise through the water column, cooling down. In these cooler conditions, the chains were able to attract other nucleotides, replicating themselves. At this point, the convection movement brought them back toward the heat, the double helix split up until the now four chains got back in a position to replicate themselves...

There are still several problems with the idea, however.
First of all, for the moment, all known self-replicating ribozyme are long chain of RNA which make their emergence less likely (then again, how many such chain were generated in the hundreds of million years of prebiotic chemistry?).
There are also somewhat unstable and, as stated, they are poor replicators, generating a lot of crap. Then again, they would not need to be very efficient; just, in average, generate one viable copy in slightly less time than it takes for the chain to be degraded and it will soon conquer the earth (And, remember, prebiotic selection will soon produce better replicator, as shown by Green et al).
And, of course, that is only based on what few self-replicating ribozymes we know, it is very possible that a much more efficient, shorter self-replicating ribozyme still eludes us.

I find this explanation as likely as it is elegant... But, wait, the coolest part starts now: There are evidences for all of that, within our own cells.
Indeed, our cells, and that of every living organisms, are still carrying ribozymes. Not only are they remarkably prevalent, and similar, among all organisms, hinting as a tremendous ancientness, but they are almost always associated with nucleic acid functions, the most famous among them being the ribosome and tRNA that allow the translation of the mRNA into proteins...
Exactly what you'd expect if the genetic code once started as rough and RNA based with DNA being a later improvement tacked on top of it.

Now; this is only one aspect of abiogenesis; the apparition of the cell would be the next step and I might address the subject later if people are interested. Right now, there is some 'Dr. Who' that needs watching.

Also, as I stated before, our understanding of abiogenesis is still quite rough, and our RNA world model is still imperfect.
Nonetheless, we have fairly common reagents that we expect to found in these particular circumstances, reacting as we know they do and forming a molecule similar to the ones we have already produced in the laboratory and that leave vestiges that we can still find today in our own cells...
So, really, there seems to be little reason to magical 'DNA coder', right now, fairly mundane biochemistry seems to be the explanatory trick just well...

My thought is that evolution was set free for millions of years to a point where it was stopped at Neanderthals., we were or they were re-created to become spiritual beings able to have the first contact with the creator.

Hum, Neanderthals were not our ancestors. They were another human branch that run in a close parallel course with us, crossing just a few times for some prehistoric kinkiness, apparently, before being cut short.

If it had not been that way we wouldn't be where we are at today.
If we were inserted into the world or re-created those same laws continue in our line and we are now evolving too but to what end.
I believe since Cro-Magnon we have evolved separate and that we are now evolving with more mind powers that are starting to show which may be considered paranormal even though they can't be proved yet because it is in it's infancy.

I am really not sure of what you are saying here...
Yes, we did evolve after the split, quite recently even (the allele distribution of the Europeans was affected by the black plague, leaving them more tolerant to some infections) but I am not convince that we are doing much evolving (in the commonest sense) right now, technological progress kinda cut the legs out of natural selection...

And, of course, there is no reason to believe that psy powers are possible or how they would be selected for...

The ultimate would be that we draw all our energy from starlight like plants and maybe minerals from the earth, with more advanced minds capable of things that are indistinct now.
The example I am giving you does not eliminate God, and Christians have to adapt to this.

I will leave that alone...

 

[154]

With great pleasure!
Somebody mentioned the evolution of the lung and limb and I do not believe it has been answered yet.

The story of the evolution of the lung is actually quite ancient and start in the middle of the silurian, around 420 million years ago.
At that time, Osteichthyan are just on the verge of branching out between the actinopterygians (ray-finned fishes) and the Sarcopterigian (lobe-finned fish).

This is also the time were fish are colonizing fresh waters for the first time. It's a new environment, and quite a rich one at that, so it is a pretty good move, but there is a problem with that...
You see, freshwaters mean shallower bodies of water and these can become quite hot and the ideal gaz law tells us that warmer temperature contain less dissolved oxygen than cooler one. So, the fish were often confronted to oxygenation problem.
One thing they did to compensate that, and contemporary fish are still doing it, is to go to the surface to "gulp" some air. Air above the surface was at a roughly constant level, one significantly higher than in the hot waters.
So the fishies swallowed big gulp of air. This air came into contact with the mucosa of the digestive track and started to diffuse into the blood vessels, after all, the mucosa had already evolved as an optimal area for the diffusion of small molecules from nutrients.
Clearly, that wasn't a very efficient way to do so, but it allowed the fish enrich their blood-stream in sweet, sweet oxygen and that gave them an advantage.

Over time, the digestive track started to invaginate, slowly, into a pocket. This allowed to keep more air at a time, and allowed more gaseous exchange to take place.
Not surprisingly, this invagination took place rather high in the digestive track, just by the heart, in order to provide this very important muscle in oxygen.

As you'd predict, this innovation was selected upon for many generations of fish that stayed in shallower water; mud ponds or swamp environments. Indeed, some probably started to wonder at the surface, maybe to escape predators, or to go look for some food they wouldn't have to share with other fish species, or to move away from a pond that started to dry up and into a safer one. Progressively, their primitive lungs grew and became more vascularized allowing them to stay for longer and longer periods of time.
And, the fish that did best at staying out of the water did better, they could find more food, or avoid predators better (remember the old joke, 'I don't have to outrun the lion, I just need to outrun YOU'; these fish didn't have to stay out of the water all their life, they just had to stay longer than the neighbor and only get back when the big bad predator was no longer hungry...).
Today, several species of catfish have adopted a similar behavior, wandering, sometime for miles at a time, in the night. Some other species, such as the Australian mudfish, are able to bury themselves in the mud and wait for several weeks for the return of the rains...

On the other hand, some among these fish actually moved away from these shallow waters. They did not loose their "proto-lung", however, instead, in these species, the organ took a different evolutionary root and started moving toward a more dorsal position.
There, it allowed the fish to equilibrate himself in the water without having to constantly swim. Not only was it great to save energy, it allowed the fish to become more stealthy, wonderful for ambushing preys.
This was so useful that this swim bladder soon become dominant among bony fishes (the condrichtyan, sharks and rays, and the agnathean don't have it, though, as the organ appeared after their split from the osteichthyan lineage).
After a while, however, one more evolutionary innovation took place in the swim bladder. Rather than going to the surface to gulp air, some fish started reversing the initial gas diffusion process. Rather than a breathing organ where the gas diffused from the organ to the blood stream, the same diffusion laws allowed the gas to diffuse from the blood stream toward the organ. This allowed the fish to adjust its swim bladder without going back to the surface (and also allowed the 'closing' of the swim bladder, hence isolating from pathogens). This is the beginning of the physoclistic fish but, even among them, the organ start, during the embryological stages, as an invagination of the digestive track.
Neil Degrasse Tyson wonders in his funny examples of stupid design video about why the design of our respiratory track is such that we can choke on our food, but there is a very good reason for that and, as usual, the reason is evolutionary.





The story of the limbs is actually quite boring in comparison, I think.
As we have seen, we had fish using their primitive lung and starting to wander in the muddy banks of the swamp they live it.
It is also likely that some species did not actually live the
These fish had most of the features required to make a reasonably efficient land animal, they had ribs, they had a pectoral girdle and they had limbs connecting to this pectoral girdle. More importantly, they had little predators to worry about and only had to out-compete their cousins.
So, the pectoral girdle reinforced itself, and the hyelomedular bone decreased in size, allowing for a better mobility of the neck. More strikingly, the fins reinforced itself, gaining new bones allowing for a better support, and these bones progressively evolved into something strikingly similar to ours:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2006/04/tiktaalik_limb_lg.jpg

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/upload/2006/04/tiktaalik_limb_lg.jpgTiktaalik is probably a good example of what the first primitive tetrapod limbs looked like...

Boy, that sounds smart so it must be the truth.

I doubt that many here are willing or able to even recognize and admit the litany of assumptions, speculations and leaps of faith accepted in this nice story.

 

[Resume]

Boy, that sounds smart so it must be the truth.

I doubt that many here are willing or able to even recognize and admit the litany of assumptions, speculations and leaps of faith accepted in this nice story.

I doubt there are many here that do not understand your inability to understand the difference between scholarship and bald assertion.

 

[edge]

Not really. Far from being in its infancy the claims for the paranormal are ancient, we are culturally as advanced peoples "growing" out of our need and fascination with the paranormal. This has nothing to do with evolution.

Brainpower and evolution is interesting and they are speculating that more layers might turn up as we evolve.
I remember seeing Uri Geller bending spoons and metals and such telekinesis I think also involved with moving of objects.
I always thought it was bunk.
Till it happened to me once and once only and I can’t repeat it but it was witnessed to an extent.
It was the strangest thing I ever seen, if it didn’t happen in my hands I still wouldn’t believe it.
Can’t repeat it or at least I don’t think I can, and it was years ago.
It was the weirdest thing I have seen at least up close.

 

[Sun Countess]

Now, the main reasons I wrote this is that, it's bloody ****in' interesting! I love to read about this stuff, and I love to write about it. If I can share this love with some other nerd, all the best! My love for science is a fully open, polyamourous even, relationship!

I hope you don't mind if I horn in on this polyamorous relationship. Thank you (and others) for your enlightening posts. I know the big bits of evolutionary theory, but I am fascinated by some of the nitty gritty details. One of my new years resolutions has been to educate myself more in the science fields, so I'm doing lots of reading, and I really enjoy what I'm able to learn right here at JREF.

Till it happened to me once and once only and I can’t repeat it but it was witnessed to an extent.
It was the strangest thing I ever seen, if it didn’t happen in my hands I still wouldn’t believe it.
Can’t repeat it or at least I don’t think I can, and it was years ago.
It was the weirdest thing I have seen at least up close.

Did you ask the spoonbender to bend the spoon back to its original position? They never seem to manage that second bit. You do know that even young children can be trained to do such illusions, don't you?

 

[Tricky]

Boy, that sounds smart so it must be the truth.

I doubt that many here are willing or able to even recognize and admit the litany of assumptions, speculations and leaps of faith accepted in this nice story.

Assumptions? Why don't you research some of these "assumptions" then get back to us. Just dismissing it shows us how little you understand anything about evolution or science, and how desperately you want no challenges to your fairy tale.

 

[Olowkow]

Brainpower and evolution is interesting and they are speculating that more layers might turn up as we evolve.

It is very important to ask who the "they" are.

I remember seeing Uri Geller bending spoons and metals and such telekinesis I think also involved with moving of objects.
I always thought it was bunk.

That's a safe bet still, Edge.

Till it happened to me once and once only and I can’t repeat it but it was witnessed to an extent.
It was the strangest thing I ever seen, if it didn’t happen in my hands I still wouldn’t believe it.
Can’t repeat it or at least I don’t think I can, and it was years ago.
It was the weirdest thing I have seen at least up close.

Remember, there are only 4 forces in nature that anyone knows of, and three of them are pretty much ruled out for bending spoons. If you describe exactly what happened, I'm sure lots of us would give an honest shot at explaining it for you.

 

[154]

I'm desperate for nothing.

A constant refrain of the Evolutionarily Faithful is that to disagree is to not understand because, of course, there can be no legitimate dissent from the orthodoxy. To not believe can only be to not understand.

 

[Resume]

I'm desperate for nothing.

A constant refrain of the Evolutionarily Faithful is that to disagree is to not understand because, of course, there can be no legitimate dissent from the orthodoxy. To not believe can only be to not understand.

I am truly sincere when I say I am sorry that you don't understand the difference between evidence and anecdote, science and dogma. Truth and wish thinking.

 

[Olowkow]

I'm desperate for nothing.

A constant refrain of the Evolutionarily Faithful is that to disagree is to not understand because, of course, there can be no legitimate dissent from the orthodoxy. To not believe can only be to not understand.

This is what Darwin in his sacred teachings has instructed us to do. If we don't, we will go to the great bone pile. He is our hope and our salvation. We must crush dissent from orthodoxy, or we will all perish, and evolution will wither and die. We are helpless to change this.

 

[RoboTimbo]

what difference does it make?

You believe that there is an intelligent designer to the universe and it makes no difference to you whether it's the god you believe in or not?

 

[edge]

Here's another one who doesn't understand evolution.

Evolution by natural selection is a process. It has no goals.

If it didn't have a goal then why do we improve?
If a single cell grows into a man over millions of years then that seems to be an improvement.

 

[Olowkow]

If it didn't have a goal then why do we improve?
If a single cell grows into a man over millions of years then that seems to be an improvement.

It sure seems that way if you're a man, but not if you're a woman.
Strike that, not funny.

It sure does seem an improvement, but only because we are humans. It is actually just "better suited" to an environment that exists. A lot of posters have made the point that there are a lot of real defects in humans too. The point is, if the changes were detrimental in general and not helping for survival, then the species just goes extinct.

 

[edge]

You believe that there is an intelligent designer to the universe and it makes no difference to you whether it's the god you believe in or not?

Lets get past the God thing first.
If you viewed my links back a ways they are saying that DNA is a machine that was programed and work like machines, information has to be there.
It had to come from some where.
I'll have to watch it again.

 

[kerikiwi]

I doubt that many here are willing or able to even recognize and admit the litany of assumptions, speculations and leaps of faith accepted in this nice story.

How about you just point out one of each (or even just one of one), and we'll take it from there.

 

[kerikiwi]

If it didn't have a goal then why do we improve?
If a single cell grows into a man over millions of years then that seems to be an improvement.

As I explained earlier, 'we' (all living things) 'improved' because we survived better. Those that didn't survive better didn't 'improve'.
That is what 'improvement' is. Blind cave fish have improved by losing their sight. Tapeworms have improved by being able to steal nutrients from their hosts.

 

[iknownothing]

A constant refrain of the Evolutionarily Faithful is that to disagree is to not understand because, of course, there can be no legitimate dissent from the orthodoxy. To not believe can only be to not understand.

Or it could be, if people keep telling you that you don't understand something, that it's because you have demonstrated a lack of understanding.