Wholly Natrualistic Alternative To Neo-Darwinism?

[Mojo]

There does appear to be motivation in a sense, more than in a sense...

You have failed to provide any reason beyond your own personal incredulity to think that this is the case.

 

[Patrick1000]

Well think of it this way.....

Doubled and so deleted.....

 

[Patrick1000]

Well think of it this way.....

You have failed to provide any reason beyond your own personal incredulity to think that this is the case.

Well think of it this way.....

Why make a baby by way of a mammalian type fetus? Why would that be "better" than making a baby by reptile egg? What motivates the development of a new baby making mechanism?

The reptiles do as well as people........Why the need for the fetus??????

Why the fetus to begin with?

There is nothing intrinsically better with respect to a fetus, AND, what is more, it takes you millions of years to find out there is nothing intrinsically better about a fetus than an egg....

So why would one make fetal haemoglobin, if you were not sure the fetus thing would pan out?....

Why the fetus? Any reason for it?

Why combine 2 different haemoglobins, alpha and beta to make adult Hgb? Where is the survival advantage? None evident.

Why combine haploid cells, each haploid with an alpha and beta Hgb to make a diploid cell now with Hgb chains doubled in one sense, two beta and two alpha chains, and doubled in another sense altogether by way of the 2 different Hgb types present in each of the haploid cells? Where is the survival advantage? It certainly is not obvious if there is one......

 

[Dinwar]

This thread isn't dead? I'd rather hoped we'd convinced Patrick1000 that either he wasn't going to win or (and this is pure optimism on my part) to actually learn about biology. Guess I was wrong...

Why the fetus? Any reason for it?

Careful, Patrick1000. The depth of your failure to understand is showing.

First, you have to ask yourself "better--how?" Eggs certainly are good, particularly amniotic eggs. They allow organisms to live far from water, and represent the rise of truly terrestrial organisms. For many, many organisms this will be sufficient--selection pressures won't be great enough to change that.

However, there ARE potential problems. For example, eggs are utterly defenseless. Organisms tend to eat eggs--including us. Organisms in regions of intense competition could easily find advantages in having the mother carry the eggs in her body longer, as she'd be able to defend the young much, much more easily (hard to walk away from your own body). And successive pressure in that direction could lead to the mother carrying her young to term.

This is a just-so story, but it illustrates that there are distinct advantages to live birth vs. eggs.

Second, that's actually more explanation than your question deserves. This is nothing more than the "if we evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?" question--yet again PURE Creationist arguments on your part.

There is nothing intrinsically better about a fetus than an egg

"Intrinsically better"?????? Have you studied the theory AT ALL? I'm serious about this--have you actually looked into the scientific theory even a little?

If you had, you'd realize that this statement is rediculous. Evolution DOES NOT, AND NEVER DID predict that organisms would become "objectively" or "intrinsically" better. Evolution allows organisms to become more adapted to their local, changing environment. That's it. When you start using phrases like "intrisically better", you're talking about some other theory that IS NOT the scientific theory of evolution.

Patrick1000, this is stuff they teach you in your first year as an undergrad in life sciences. The fact that you don't even understand this much of it should really make you question if you're in a possition to be dictating to scientists who understand the details of the theory what they should or should not believe. And if you say that modern biologists use this type of language I'll KNOW you're lying, because anyone who argues that evolution has a purpose or goal, or that there's some fundamental "better" to be had, has been laughed out of biology for the past fifty years or more.

 

[Dinwar]

Why combine 2 different haemoglobins, alpha and beta to make adult Hgb? Where is the survival advantage? None evident.

This is the definition of Argument from Personal Incredulity: I can't figure it out, therefore it's wrong. Sorry, but the real world doesn't work that way--sometimes things you don't understand work perfectly well.

 

[Patrick1000]

The point is rhetorical Dinwar....

This is the definition of Argument from Personal Incredulity: I can't figure it out, therefore it's wrong. Sorry, but the real world doesn't work that way--sometimes things you don't understand work perfectly well.

The point is rhetorical Dinwar....In a sense, my questions to Mojo are not "real questions". By that I mean the thread is about exploring whether we do or do not understand the mechanism whereby any major changes in living systems come about. Birds from reptiles. Warm from cold blooded. Mammalian fetus from reptile egg.

I am not incredulous. I am the first to jump on the common ancestry bandwagon. I like the idea. I have merely been pointing out that in going from point A to B, as regards the major changes, the big important ones, there is no understanding with respect to the all important details of mechanism.

Mojo is not able to tell me how A becomes B. When I ask him, Mojo tends to say B is better than A in some way. I am pointing out that this is not a reasonable explanation.

 

[Mojo]

Well think of it this way.....

Why make a baby by way of a mammalian type fetus? Why would that be "better" than making a baby by reptile egg? What motivates the development of a new baby making mechanism?

The reptiles do as well as people........Why the need for the fetus??????

Why the fetus to begin with?

There is nothing intrinsically better with respect to a fetus, AND, what is more, it takes you millions of years to find out there is nothing intrinsically better about a fetus than an egg....

So why would one make fetal haemoglobin, if you were not sure the fetus thing would pan out?....

Why the fetus? Any reason for it?

Why combine 2 different haemoglobins, alpha and beta to make adult Hgb? Where is the survival advantage? None evident.

Why combine haploid cells, each haploid with an alpha and beta Hgb to make a diploid cell now with Hgb chains doubled in one sense, two beta and two alpha chains, and doubled in another sense altogether by way of the 2 different Hgb types present in each of the haploid cells? Where is the survival advantage? It certainly is not obvious if there is one......

None of this is evidence for your unnamed designer director.

Here's another guy using essentially the same argument:

So that if Darwin's theory doesn't explain it we're left with no other explanation than maybe it really was designed. That's essentially the design argument.

 

[Mojo]

Mojo is not able to tell me how A becomes B. When I ask him, Mojo tends to say B is better than A in some way.

You didn't ask how, you asked why. You even asked it in ALLCAPS:

The question as to WHY this might have occurred is the bigger and more interesting issue. How does an organsim just happen to make fetal haemoglobin with a higher affinity for O2 than the adult varieties??????

And here:

Why two different chains alpha and beta to form adult haemoglobin? Why myoglobin at all?

These are the questions you asked; these are the questions I answered.

 

[Dinwar]

When I ask him, Mojo tends to say B is better than A in some way. I am pointing out that this is not a reasonable explanation.

Because you're equating "better in some way" with "intrinsically better", which you'd know is wrong if you knew jack about evolution. "Better in some way" is the best that we can say when discussing general traits that are selected for, because "better" is a moving target that changes from organism to organism and often changes over the course of the organism's life.

And if you still don't get the whole dinosaur to bird thing, that's rather obvious proof of your lack of interest in an honest discussion. I believe I've referenced a few works on precisely that topic, and for you to still claim that we don't understand the process would require you to ignore evidence. Again, you have an annoying tendency to use the same argument tactics that Creationists use.

 

[Patrick1000]

The why is a leading question .....

You didn't ask how, you asked why. You even asked it in ALLCAPS:

And here:


These are the questions you asked; these are the questions I answered.

The "why" is a leading question .....as you seem to believe Mojo that living things change because change makes them somehow better. So I was prodding you, or trying to prod you anyway to be more soecific about that.

 

[Mojo]

"Intrinsically better"?????? Have you studied the theory AT ALL? I'm serious about this--have you actually looked into the scientific theory even a little?

If you had, you'd realize that this statement is rediculous. Evolution DOES NOT, AND NEVER DID predict that organisms would become "objectively" or "intrinsically" better.

No, but Patrick's idea of directed evolution rather implies some sort of progress towards a goal, doesn't it?

 

[Dinwar]

True--any top-down process would certainly have a specific goal in mind (it's sort of a requirement to forming a top-down process). Of course, there's a term for distorting your opponent's arguments so that you can more easily dismiss them....

 

[Mojo]

The "why" is a leading question .....as you seem to believe Mojo that living things change because change makes them somehow better.

Oh look, another strawman. You are confusing the current theory of evolution with your own claim that evolution is directed.

Populations change because of the better survival rates, and consequently more productive breeding, of those individuals whose traits best suit them to the current environment. Not because change makes them "somehow better".

So I was prodding you, or trying to prod you anyway to be more soecific about that.

"Why" is not the same as "how". If you had wanted to "prod" me to be more specific about how evolution happens you would have asked, specifically, how evolution happens, not why.

 

[Mojo]

True--any top-down process would certainly have a specific goal in mind (it's sort of a requirement to forming a top-down process). Of course, there's a term for distorting your opponent's arguments so that you can more easily dismiss them....

I don't think Patrick appreciates that the objections he keeps making to the current theory actually apply to his own idea.

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Actually you can 'keep' an alteration in the genome that has no advantages right now but might confer them later. Such a thing is called a neutral (mutation/insertion/duplication/rearrangement/etc).
As long as such a genomic alteration does not have negative effects it will be transferred to offspring indefinately or until an event removes it from a lineage again.
Every single organism has a number or even a lot of genes or even genetic regions that are active but have no essential function.
Mutations in such regions are common and often can lead to genes with new functions over short (geologic) periods of time.

 

[Dinwar]

I don't think Patrick appreciates that the objections he keeps making to the current theory actually apply to his own idea.

It always depresses me how often that happens.

Populations change because of the better survival rates, and consequently more productive breeding, of those individuals whose traits best suit them to the current environment. Not because change makes them "somehow better".

Well, to be fair some biologists, paleontologists, and others have used the term "better", in the sense of "better adapted" or "better suited" to the local environment. The thing is, the term better in this sense merely means that the organism is able to have more offspring that survive. There is an objective criteria by which any organism can be measured in evolution--it's just nothing like what Patrick1000 would have us believe. To be honest, bacteria are far better in the evolutionary sense than we are--we still live in a bacterial world, and can be thought of as overgrown bacterial collonies.

As long as such a genomic alteration does not have negative effects it will be transferred to offspring indefinately or until an event removes it from a lineage again.

I'd go even further: even if the gene did have some detrimental quality, it may still be passed on if the organism as a whole is good enough to continue. Our own vitamin C gene is proof of that--we survive just fine, despite having an obviously flawed gene, because the flaw isn't bad enough to counter-act all the advantageous adaptations we have (tool using, social groups, that kind of thing).

 

[Mojo]

Actually you can 'keep' an alteration in the genome that has no advantages right now but might confer them later. Such a thing is called a neutral (mutation/insertion/duplication/rearrangement/etc).
As long as such a genomic alteration does not have negative effects it will be transferred to offspring indefinately or until an event removes it from a lineage again.
Every single organism has a number or even a lot of genes or even genetic regions that are active but have no essential function.
Mutations in such regions are common and often can lead to genes with new functions over short (geologic) periods of time.

Ah, but that wasn't quite the strawman that Patrick used:

You cannot "keep" a potentially advantageous mutation because 10,000,000 years from now it will be shown to be advantageous.

My emphasis.

Of course, with the intentionality implied by Patrick's directed evolution you probably could keep a bit of genetic material because it is needed for a later stage of the plan. Once again he is setting up a strawman and then attacking it with an argument against his own position.

 

[Fast Eddie B]

Because you're equating "better in some way" with "intrinsically better", which you'd know is wrong if you knew jack about evolution. "Better in some way" is the best that we can say when discussing general traits that are selected for, because "better" is a moving target that changes from organism to organism and often changes over the course of the organism's life.

And if you still don't get the whole dinosaur to bird thing...

Speaking of birds, we can all agree that being able to fly is "intrinsically better" than not being able to fly, right? Why else have wings?

Unless you're a...

<insert picture of a penguin here>

...or a...

<insert picture of a ostrich here>

(On any other site I frequent, I would have linked to photos for effect, but I've been chastised for that before.)

Evolution has no direction. There's no reason the common ancestor of men and chimps couldn't have been more man-like, with chimps "devolving" to better suit their ecological niche.

I still don't read Patrick1000's posts, but its clear from the responses to them that there are many fundamental flaws in his conception of evolution, and none of them are likely to ever be addressed here to his satisfaction.

 

[Mojo]

To be honest, bacteria are far better in the evolutionary sense than we are...

...and just as evolved as we are, which is another thing that I don't think Patrick gets.

 

[Dinwar]

There's no reason the common ancestor of men and chimps couldn't have been more man-like, with chimps "devolving" to better suit their ecological niche.

Actually, this gets to the mechanism of human evolution. One common way to speciate/evolve as a population is to retain immature traits into adulthood. The reduced rostrum, the more domed forhead, the proportion of the limbs--humans really do look remarkably like immature members of other ape species. We have our own adaptations, to be sure, but a lot of our morphological evolution can be explained as the loss of those genes which lead to "mature" ape traits. Find out what those genes are, and you know at least part of the suite of genetic changes that makes us human.

You're right, there's no reason why something can't become more simple via evolution (many parasites in fact do this--tapeworms, for example, have no digestive systems, because they simply don't need them). Your post just reminded me of a known mode of evolution that's pretty facinating, and which cuts to the core of Patrick1000's issues with evolution.