[asking]

if mutations are a major a means of evolving as you have stated the majority are "nasty"... nasty enough that you would not CHANCE it by intentionally subjecting your descendents to mutations. So if that were the case why would you think that pure random chance mutations would be "better" or not nasty.

I've already answered this and explained about mutations as best I can. Sorry it doesn't make sense to you that some mutations can be useful, some not, depending on circumstances. For example, the mutations that give some people white skin are valuable in northern latitudes, but dangerous in the tropics. They are dangerous in the tropics becauses pale skin allows the sun light to destroy folic acid in our blood, which if you are a woman carrying a baby, can cause the baby to have neural tube defects like spina bifida, which is often fatal. Is white skin good or bad? That depends on where you live (and I'm not talking about racism here!) A mutation for long hair might be good if it showed up in a bear living in the far north. The same mutation might be fatal for an animal living in a hot desert or a steamy jungle. Everything is a matter of context.

The sickle cell is analogy is a base change - genetic information is not added it is altered..

So you no longer think this disproves evolution?

How about adding a hundred base pairs and see what happens?

It would depend on where you added them. If you put them in the middle of the gene for hemoglobin, a valuable protein, that would be a problem. But if you put them somewhere less important, you would just have some new DNA that could mutate and be selected for or against. In once case it could be lethal and anyone who got it would die and never pass it on to any future generations. In the other case it might turn out to be useful, or not.

I am skeptical that mutations and natral selection would be able to add genetic information in a beneficial manner.

I understand that you feel skeptical.

It is interesting that you use God, faith, miracle in your last post. Faith and belief in miracles would be consistent with believing evolution is a fact.

I was pointing out that there is room for a sense of wonder while still accepting the facts of evolution. Appreciating the amazing way in which life has evolved on Earth over billions of years leaves room for people with a spiritual life.

and the computer analagy validly proves a purposeful design.
even though windows may not be perfect , hundreds of intelligent human computer techs are tinkering with code to make it better.

An analogy is not proof. It helps us understand and think about good questions to ask, but it is not the thing itself. The circulatory system is a little like the metal pipes in a house. But veins and arteries are not in fact metal pipes.

Playstaion 1 did not just sit on a shelf and randomly become play station 3.

That's right. But butterflies and oak trees are not playstations. And they did not sit on a shelf and "randomly become" butterflies or oak trees. They evolved over millions of years from earlier life, one step at a time.

Likewise, Australopiths did not sit on a shelf and randomly become humans. They walked and looked for food and loved and had children, some of whom had more children if they happened to run faster (when fleeing leopards) than their cousins who were, alas, a bit slow. And some of the fast children's children had more children because they were quite a bit smarter than their third cousins, who never could remember to carry a stone to throw at a leopard...

[ordinaryguy]

I was pointing out that there is room for a sense of wonder while still accepting the facts of evolution. Appreciating the amazing way in which life has evolved on Earth over billions of years leaves room for people with a spiritual life.

I'd just like to second this, and say "Hear Hear!!". So much of the resistance and argument put up by religious people seems to arise from the fear that if they allow any divergence at all from their established interpretation of the biblical story, their whole spiritual life will crumble to dust.

All I can say is that I myself have lived through such a transformation (evolution, if I might use the word) of my beliefs, and that my spiritual life is much richer, fuller, more meaningful, more practically useful, and more comforting than it was while was clinging to my literal fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.

[asking]

All I can say is that I myself have lived through such a transformation (evolution, if I might use the word) of my beliefs, and that my spiritual life is much richer, fuller, more meaningful, more practically useful, and more comforting than it was while was clinging to my literal fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible.

I am always fascinated by stories like yours.

[inthebox]

Science/AAAS | Science Magazine: Sign In


For now, we know the profile of gene resistance to lateral transfer in one organism, but the existence of a prokaryotic Tree of Life remains an open question. Sorek et al. do not address the issue of horizontal transfer and genomic fusions in eukaryotes. However, recent analyses show that eukaryotes have a chimeric nature (9, 10). When eukaryotes are included in our considerations of evolution, the phylogeny of life seems better represented by a network than a tree, making any core genes-based argument in favor of the TREE OF LIFE ESSENTIALLLY Irrelevant.

----------------------------------------------

So science contradicts Darwin's "tree of life" - everything comes from a single cell.

read the entire article - there are many difficulties in manipulating [ human intelligence ] the prokaryote genome. How about human genome. How unimmaginably and impossible would it be for mutations, selection, random chance to alter or add genetic information that would be viable and reproducible?



The resistance to the scientific questions that evolution cannot answer by those who believe in evolution truly is religious. ;)

[inthebox]

ScienceNOW -- Sign In

There's no shortage of anatomical evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs. But paleontologists have still had to contend with a SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSING gap in the fossil record: The oldest known bird fossil, Archaeopteryx, is MUCH OLDER than fossils of its closest dinosaurian relatives [ that it was suppose to evolve from? ]

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Remember we were told that archaeopteryx WAS the missing link between birds and
Dinosaurs.

"About 60% of the skeleton is preserved" and based on this

"Like the later troodontids, the proportions of the feet and limbs suggest it was terrestrial rather than tree-dwelling, further SUPPORTING the idea that flight evolved from the ground up, Hartman says."

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Is this science or guessing at a hypothesis to fit into the evolutionary mindset?

How about proposing how to get from terrestrial feet and limbs to those that are flight ready?

[asking]

"Now, that gap has been PLUGGED."--Science magazine, October 21, 2005
Sounds pretty clear to me.
And 60% of a skeleton tha told is a lot! Skeletons rarely if ever remain fully intact for 150 million years. You are talking about a time that is more than twice as long ago as when T. rex went extinct...

"Paleontologists had expected such fossils would eventually be discovered, and they're pleased that this one begins to fill the time gap between bird fossils and their closest dinosaur relatives. "This is seriously cool," says Jim Kirkland of the Utah Geological Survey, who has studied birdlike dinosaurs." ----Science magazine, October 21, 2005

Sounds seriously cool to me too. What's not to like?
Evolutionary biology predicted that this creature would exist and someone found one, confirming one more prediction of evolutionary biology. This has happened thousands and thousands of times. If you read the story more carefully, it should become clear why this confirms evolution instead of undermining it.

The bit about "from the ground up" is a reference to a running dispute among paleontologists about whether birds evolved flight from dinosaurs that ran on the ground or from dinosaurs that lived in trees and perhaps glided from tree to tree, like flying squirrels. This animal suggests maybe the ground dinosaur theory is the right one. But either way, birds evolved from dinosaurs.

The fact they scientists don't already know everything there is to know about things that happened 150 million years ago doesn't mean they don't know anything at all. That's kind of a silly argument if you don't mind my saying so. I think it's amazing that paleontologists know as much as they do about the past. Thanks for posting this article.

ScienceNOW -- Sign In

[HarajukuGirl]

Theorys are ideas... doesnt mean there true...

So it isn't a 100% true fact we evolved from apes.

People are people.
Animals are Animals.
That's my side of the story.

[amolu]

Here's an interesting quote from Darwin: Copied from Darwin's Racism (by Harun Yahya) - Media Monitors Network

Darwin claimed that the "fight for survival" also applied between human races. "Favored races" emerged victorious from this struggle. According to Darwin the favored race were the European whites. As for Asian and African races, they had fallen behind in the fight for survival.

' At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes … will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla'

[Smoked]

Which theory of gravitation do we have absolute proof for?
Newton?
General Theory of Relativity?

Absolute proof doesn't reside in science ... only in religion.
In science, theories are abandoned when they conflict with reality

QFE.. This is my new sig... BTW if any of it was anything more then a theory it would be stated as such.

The·o·ry- a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.

[jillianleab]

Smoked, you're using the wrong definition.

Here's the (more) correct one:

A coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity.

Also, please read this link for more information: Definition of Scientific Theory

[excon]

Hello smoked

Nope, that's not the meaning of scientific theory. It's OK, though.

excon

[Smoked]

Hello smoked

Nope, that's not the meaning of scientific theory. It's ok, though.

excon

Dictionary definition of theory big guy.. alt c alt v.. its OK though..

Here you go for your definition.. please read carefully

Scientific theory

Noun
A theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable"

[excon]

a theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable"

the·o·ry- a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.

Hello again, Smoked:

Keep trying. You're making headway.

excon

[jillianleab]

I do not think your sig means what you think it means...

[Smoked]

so.. when did we test millions of years of evolution? Did you put a monkey in a lab and sit and watch? Or is a matter of looking at a couple bones. Realizing "oh look they have some similarities" it must be where we came from. The fact of the matter, and the only fact for that matter, is that no one really knows. Is it excepted in some scientific circles? We except a lot of concepts at face value. Does that make them irrefutably true? They are only "true" until the next great theory comes along..

[michealb]

scientific theory

noun
a theory that explains scientific observations; "scientific theories must be falsifiable"

What this means is that a scientific theory can't be a unprovable negative. For example I can't have a scientific theory that states god exist but is beyond our reach because I can't be proven wrong. How ever if I was to say god lived in my closet and you could talk to him that could be a hypothesis. If I indeed had god in my closet that could be called a theory. If it was proven beyond any doubt that god was in my closet and everyone knows that you can talk to him that would be a law.

Hopefully this clears things up for you a little bit. If there is any direct questions of why you don't understand evolution feel free to ask. We have enough people that have taken advanced science classes that we should have no problem answering them or at least pointing you in the right direction to get those answers.

[LifePaparazzi]

Simply put,

It depends on if you believe the biblical account of creation of if you believe in evolution. So it's a matter of opinion, rather then a right or wrong. There are arguments to support both view points. However, I must say, there is much more evidence to support creation.

[michealb]

Simply put,

It depends on if you believe the biblical account of creation of if you believe in evolution. So its a matter of opinion, rather then a right or wrong. There are arguments to support both view points. However, I must say, there is much more evidence to support creation.

The problem is it isn't a matter of opinion, it's a matter of right and wrong. The other problem with what you said is that there are mountains of evidence that supports evolution, while there is no I repeat no scientific evidence that supports creation. If you can point me to a repeatable experiment that supports creation I'll shut up.

[MOWERMAN2468]

NO! We did not come from apes, although some resemble them greatly. God made both man and also apes.

[michealb]

NO! we did not come from apes, although some resemble them greatly. God made both man and also apes.

Your right we didn't come from apes. We came from animals like apes but not apes as we know them today.

Apes are modern animals just like we are. At some point we shared a similar ancestor but they took one path that lead them to where they are today while we took a different one.