Evidence for evolution

Oh, I like that one. So clean and simple.

Not at all. I understand about converging proofs. Ned already gave me more than sufficient proof that TOE is 99.9% valid. I was just curious about this proof that Quetzel had, which seemed different from the others. It may have been the same thing and I just didn't understand his terminology. No big deal. My acceptance of evolution doesn't depend on it.Who is "handwaving" away anything, Crashfrog? The very first post I made on this topic said that I accept evolution on authority.Try to have an open mind--which questions everything.

Thank you, you have been useful in exposing some reactions that we have based on stereotypes rather than who we are actually talking to.This message has been edited by NosyNed, 12-15-2004 03:15 PM

Thank you, Ned for taking the trouble to explain things to me. I have learned a lot.

Anyone who asks for single examples for the purpose of dismissing them, and through singly dismissing each example, claims there's no evidence for evolution.Is it your intent to do that? We'll see. You can "disprove" anything with that method, but at the end of it, all you have is an enormous pile of ad-hox explanations, and your opponents still have a coherent theory that explains a whole lot of data, all at once. It's one thing to question everything. It's quite another to never accept any of the answers. I have questioned everything, by the way. And the answers were given, and were acceptable to me. That took a long fucking time to do, and that I'm not willing to repeat that entire process again just to appear to you to be "open-minded" should not be taken as evidence that I don't question things.I do. I did already, and until you show me something I haven't seen before, I see no reason to repeat the questioning process when I can be pretty sure what the answers are, already.It's good to have an open mind, but not one so open that your brains fall out.

I think you are mixing up the Abiogenesis question and the evolution question.Robin agrees that there is compelling evidence for evolution.Robin is much,much less convinced about the origin of life.That is not, to my mind, a too unreasonable a position.

Since my post addresses neither of those questions, nor makes reference to either of those terms, I don't see how you would come to that conclusion.

It looks like you directly addressed the evolution question. Which RR has agreed is well supported.

Did you miss my immediate next sentence, where I made it clear that I was speaking in the abstract, not to any specific case?

What nonsense, Crashfrog. There's nothing unreasonable about being uncertain about abiogenesis and certain about evolution. That is my position.

Maybe I don't understand. When you say "abiogenesis", what are you talking about?Whether or not the origin of life is entirely chemical, or the result of supernatural intervention breathing the spirit of life into the nostrils of a man shaped from clay; it's still life from lifelessness, or "abiogenesis". So when you say that you don't believe in abiogenesis, to me you're saying that you don't believe life has an origin at all, which would be stupid, because we know that life is here now, but has not always been. Therefore it must have an origin.What do you really mean?

I'm uncertain about the cause of abiogenesis. I'm uncertain that non-life by itself can produce life. It probably happened, but I like to keep an open mind about things that are not certain.

Well, hell, when it comes to that, so am I. But that's not at all the impression your previous posts have given me. I guess we just had a failure to communicate.

Hello Mammuthus, http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/4/615?ck=nck seems to suggest that another sequence has been recovered by a different group working on the same formation. The two sequences total about 2200 bp, recovered from Miocene plants.They do mention that other articles have called their original results into question on theoretical grounds, so they published these two additional sequences. The article also cites another article ( Soltis P. S., D. E. Soltis C. J. Smiley 1992 An rbcL sequence from a Miocene Taxodium (bald cypress). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 89: 449-449[Abstract]) that did something similar as well.(All should be able to read the abstract. I can temporarily read the whole thing because my proxy account with the university I graduated from last year has not yet been disabled. That should soon change. The article as a whole I could sorta follow but, as my last bio class was in high school, I fear that I might have missed some of the key points that would leap out to someone with experience in the field, so I would appreciate you taking a look and telling me what you think.)ChrisThis message has been edited by cmanteuf, 03-31-2005 04:14 PM

Unfortunately, I can't access the article either (I am in a virology institute and we don't have subscriptions to the botany lit..I can order it but it won't get to me before January). However, I already see two problems in the abstract. 1) They are not confirming the sequence from the same sample as Golenberg analyzed. This is part of what killed off amber as a few groups reported they had sequences from different pieces. But nobody could reproduce the work (one group tried and failed). Austin did a systematic approach and failed. 2) The lengths of sequence they report are outrageous. I had a bear of a time recently generating 1,180 bp of cyt b from a muskox sample that was 18,000 years old. They get larger fragments from a sample millions of years old?The other problem is that groups such as Svante Pbo's have done everything from amino acid racemization studies to DNA analysis from Clarkia and came up with absolutely nothing.Until the same sample can be analyzed independently and the sequence reproduced, it will be met with a great deal of skepticism.Althought the title and some of the recommendations in the article are crap, the overall scheme of authentication of ancient DNA in this article have to be met for the sequeunce to be taken seriouslyCooper A, Poinar HN. Related Articles, Links
Ancient DNA: do it right or not at all.
Science. 2000 Aug 18;289(5482):1139. No abstract available.