"Craig Venter Kills Sacred Cow of Evolution"

[dogjones]

This is what IDist people I know are crowing. Dawkins proved wrong! Tree of life is fiction! Based on the following:

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/03/venter_vs_dawkins_on_the_tree_044681.html

Of course the source's bias is clear, but is there anything to the claims within the article? I can't see the video.

Dog

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I think the answer is, "So what?" Also, "Interesting" and possibly "Fascinating".

If some living creatures have different DNA encoding, it just means that the so called "Tree of Life" has more than one branch located down near its roots.

 

[Dinwar]

Confusion of observation with the theory. We OBSERVE that all of life is related, but it is NOT necessary for the theory to function. In fact, I've always been surprised by it.

 

[Joey McGee]

It's like the Dawkins and Gould disagreements that led Boteach to say that Gould didn't believe in evolution. It's also unfair because it's a panel and Venter didn't get the chance to to reply, so it's impossible to really find out where the disagreement is! Doesn't stop the creations from declaring the tree of life theory is dead though.

 

[Halfcentaur]

Does this suggest multiple instances of the emergence of life in any way? Or just very radical variation?

 

[dogjones]

Friend of mine managed to watch the video:

Venter’s answer (selectively referred to in the article) at the 10:30ish mark ends with this bit (conveniently not mentioned in the article): “...but it’s still DNA-based…we’re going to find the same molecules and the same base systems wherever we look.”

Controversial man!

 

[icerat]

the existence of multiple trees of life in no way would invalidate evolutionary theory - indeed it probably enhances it

so certainly no killing of any sacred cows!

 

[TragicMonkey]

so certainly no killing of any sacred cows!

Cow DNA was found to be encoded with the divinity gene. Clearly it's possible to kill cows, but they almost instantly reincarnate. That's because they evolved from a separate tree. In a tree, actually: cows are naturally arboreal, when left to nature. This is scientifically proven in Exodus, and Numbers, and Leviticus.

 

[This Guy]

Interesting take on the subject from an unexpected source:Dueling Scientists and the Tree of Life: Analyzing the ID Response

I hesitate to summarize but this response seems, to me at least, to prove that once again the creationist/IDers have totally distorted truth and created fiction.

Well worth the read IMHO.

 

[nathan]

Um, I thought it was already established that some organisms use different mapping of base pairs to amino acids. In fact, I thought there was evidence that the encoding itself had evolved -- the 'common' encoding is robust against errors and that would be quite remarkable to have happened by accident.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Cow DNA was found to be encoded with the divinity gene. Clearly it's possible to kill cows, but they almost instantly reincarnate. That's because they evolved from a separate tree. In a tree, actually: cows are naturally arboreal, when left to nature. This is scientifically proven in Exodus, and Numbers, and Leviticus.

Don't be ridiculous.

Everyone knows the references to arboreal cows in Leviticus are just a literary device.

 

[Cainkane1]

I'm no biologist but if this is a plug for creationism they fall far short.

 

[ThunderChunky]

I dont know all of the 17 differences, but replacing the use of a stop codon for some amino acid (like the example from mycoplasma) would be the easiest change in the code to make. We have done this manually in some organisms and allowed them to incorporate novel amino acids into proteins. Not far fetched for this to evolve.

 

[Joey McGee]

Interesting take on the subject from an unexpected source:Dueling Scientists and the Tree of Life: Analyzing the ID Response

I hesitate to summarize but this response seems, to me at least, to prove that once again the creationist/IDers have totally distorted truth and created fiction.

Well worth the read IMHO.

Indeed. From the article...

"The truth of the matter is that the brief exchange between Venter and Dawkins was not about common descent, but about the best metaphor for the connectedness of life—whether it is more like a tree or a bush. As we shall see, the context makes this clear."

I watched the whole panel, it came up later, and no one else agreed with Venter anyway!

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Does this suggest multiple instances of the emergence of life in any way? Or just very radical variation?

Yes.

 

[bokonon]

Does this suggest multiple instances of the emergence of life in any way? Or just very radical variation?

I don't think it suggests multiple instances of the emergence of life.

Most of the differences are in mitochondrial DNA, and we already knew that the mitochondrial code differed from the nuclear code.

Most of the differences also involve codons being interpreted as "start" or "stop" codons rather than coding for an amino acid, or codons which are not used, or codons which code for a different (but chemically similar) amino acid.

If we found an organism which didn't use nucleic acids to code genetic information, that would suggest multiple instances of the emergence of life. In this case, I'd say it suggests variation, but not especially radical variation.

 

[blutoski]

I don't think it suggests multiple instances of the emergence of life.

It could imply multiple emergence - but the point is that abiogenesis is not a 'sacred cow of evolution'

In fact, evidence of multiple abiogenesis events only suggests it's less rare than we originally assumed.

Multiple abiogenesis events does not challenge evolution in any way.

It doesn't even challenge abiogenesis.

 

[bokonon]

It could imply multiple emergence - but the point is that abiogenesis is not a 'sacred cow of evolution'

In fact, evidence of multiple abiogenesis events only suggests it's less rare than we originally assumed.

Multiple abiogenesis events does not challenge evolution in any way.

It doesn't even challenge abiogenesis.

Multiple events would suggest it's less rare than we assume, but I'm one of those who still assumes it's rare.

The code is still remarkably consistent -- out of 64 possibilities, at most 5 or 6 are different from the "standard" in any of these variations. To me, these minor differences don't make it any more likely that there were multiple events -- if multiple events could converge to this degree, they could just as easily have converged to the point of no variation at all. It seems more likely that the differences are due to divergence from a common origin than incomplete but highly correlated convergence from diverse origins.

I agree with you that multiple events would not challenge evolution, even if we discovered a life form in a cave or a vent which didn't use DNA at all.

 

[Beerina]

Confusion of observation with the theory. We OBSERVE that all of life is related, but it is NOT necessary for the theory to function. In fact, I've always been surprised by it.

It's interesting that two independent arisings of life (assuming that's what it is) is being mis-interpreted as support for the Bible, when in fact it shoots down the "incredibly unlikely" status of natural (as opposed to supernatural) formation of life.

In other words, contrary to the argument here, it makes the non-supernatural formation of life even more likely, and thus is not helping the Bible's case any.

 

[This Guy]

I've had a little more time to spend reading the link I gave above, and I've actually watched the entire video. It is interesting actually.

What Venter actually says is (copy/pasted from the link I gave earlier):

"Well, I think the tree of life is an artifact of some early scientific studies that aren’t really holding up so the tree, you know—there may be a bush of life…[laugher, joking]…So there is not a tree of life. In fact from our deep sequencing of organisms in the ocean, out of now, we have about 60 million unique gene sets, we’ve found 12 that look like a very, very deep branching, perhaps fourth domain of life that obviously is extremely rare that it only shows up out of those few sequences. But it’s still DNA-based…we’re going to find the same molecules and the same base systems wherever we look."

bolding mine.

Again, it seems to me the creationist/IDers have taken a comment out of context and made fiction that sounds good to them, but has no true basis in reality. This is a story in the same way those tales of Darwin's death bed conversion, any given proponent of evolution speaking out against it, or any of the other BS these folks come up with in their attempts to support their fairy tales.

IMHO Dembski is displaying either his inability to conduct research (he only had to watch the video himself), or his ability to distort the truth in an attempt to support his religious beliefs.

But what do I know?