why DID we evolve into humans?

But evolution isn't "something coming from nothing". It's all life coming from life, descent with modification. There's relatively little novelty in the evolutionary process. Every step it's just tiny changes to already-existing organs and systems. Why? Life is just a special kind of chemistry. There's nothing magic about life. Says you. Anyway, as it turns out, evolution is a far better creator than human design. After all, if it wasn't, why would so many engineers and circuit designers use evolutionary algorhythms to design circuits and jet planes? Not so. You have this idea that the only mutation that occured in the population was the resitance to penicillin. That's not the case. When the population was introduced to the penicillin substrate, yes, some individuals in the population had a mutation that conferred resistance. But guess what? Other individuals had a mutation that conferred resistance to (for instance) higher levels of salinity. Other individuals had a mutation that made them larger, or breed faster. There were thousands of mutations already in the population, all with differing degrees of potential usefulness. It's just that, in the penicillin environment, the mutation for resistance was the only one that was selected for. All other individuals without that mutation - but with their own, different mutations - died.Mutation is happening all the time, randomly. Once again you're mistaking directed natural selection for the random mutation and ignoring all the random mutations that didn't allow bacteria to survive. It's funny you mention that, because engineers use evolution to design jets. Says you. On the other hand, Mark article says it can and does happen, and you've presented no rebuttal except "I can't believe it works like that." Well, guess what? What you will or won't believe has nothing to do with it.

rabair, Yes it did. It is insufficient for you to simply wave away evidence without explanation.The Lederbergs showed that penicillin resistance was acquired by one or a few members of a clonal population at some point after the reproduction of the first cell. The trait can be inherited, is therefore genetic in nature, & therefore was the result of a mutation. New function was therefore created by mutation. QED. "Come on" what? This is what occurred. You think it that unlikely that in a population numbering in the billions, one or more individuals got lucky enough to have a mutation that conferred penicillin resistance?If you think you have a better supported explanation, then I’m all ears, but until then your incredulity counts for nought. The FACT is that a single individual that was not penicillin resistant gave rise to a population in which one or a few were. Like I say, the trait can be inherited, is therefore genetic in nature, & therefore was the result of mutation. Bad thing that billions died because they weren’t resistant. I’m not sure what you hope to achieve with this line of argument, were it a directed mutation, it certainly wasn’t very effective at saving the population, since 99.99% recurring of the population croaked. What leads you to believe it was anything but a random mutation that pre-existed the environment? But new function arose from a condition where it never existed before. Penicillin resistance arose from no penicillin resistance. I’ll say it again, the study PROVED, to use your own lagnguage, that penicillin resistance was gained where it never previously existed.That you don’t accept it is apparent, that you justifiably don’t accept it, is less so. And yet it happened anyway. The likelihood of it’s occurrence is 1. That is very likely indeed, I think you’ll agree. No, that would be moving the goalposts. I think we’ll stick to this one example & see if you can justifiably deny that penicillin resistance arose from non-penicillin resistance. But penicillin resistance arose from non-penicillin resistance. It seems a bit churlish to claim something is impossible, when the evidence that it had has been available for fifty years. But it did, rabair, it did. Despite your junkyard analogy, despite your protestations to the contrary. Sticking your fingers in your ears & going LALALALALALA will not help your case. You can make as many analogies as you like, protest as much as you like, make as many baseless assertions as you like, there is solid evidence that contradicts you, & it is infinately superior.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

Okay Okay, I'll concede that I used a wrong term. I used the word "beneficial".... Aparantly these E. Coli, benefited from a mutation. But You still keep avoiding the main issue. Nothing was added to them, and you haven't show any evidence of anything beeing added. Here it is: Compare these E. Coli to us (humans).... Now, if we were that E. Coli, pretend that the reason we die from the Penicillin is the way it smells (just an analogy). So because everytime we smell it it kills us. So there might be a random mutation out of those billions of individuals, that may be born lacking a nose and would be able to survive in the presence of Penicillin. Again, the nose and everything is just an analogy, so don't try to argue that, you get what I mean... I'm just trying to make it simple. So, because there were billions of individuals, and they all should have died from the Penicillin, one survived because he couldn't smell it because his mutation caused him to not have a nose. Great.... But he didn't gain something... He lost it. That's my whole point. To evolve into greater things from, amoeba to present day human, we would have had to gain something... Just based on size even.... on going from something microscopic to having some of us that are 8 feet tall. Anyway, back to the point... Again I will say, although one may benefit from a mutation, it certainly DIDN'T gain anything. Nothing was there that wasn't before, and more than likely there was less. You have not even attempted to argue that, you've cleverly dodged it everytime. I see I was letting you get away with it by using the word "beneficial" before, because clearly it isn't impossible to "benefit" from a mutation... But it isn't the result of gaining anything. It is your own science that shows no gaining of anything new out of mid-air. Simple as that.[This message has been edited by rabair, 09-07-2003][This message has been edited by rabair, 09-07-2003]

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But You still keep avoiding the main issue. Nothing was added to them, and you haven't show any evidence of anything beeing added.

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Insisting that something be added constructs a straw man.

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Here it is: Compare these E. Coli to us (humans)...

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What you propose suffers from a fatal flaw. You present only one alternative. In you example the survivor survived because he/she lost a nose. However, a smell is a molecule. Say, instead of losing a nose the individual had a mutation which resulted in a protein which nuetralized whatever it was about the smell that killed people. This is a gain and in real world biology there would hundreds, if not thousands, of places along the path from smelling to dying where a mutation could effect the outcome. Could it happen? New proteins show up all the time.

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To evolve into greater things from, amoeba to present day human, we would have had to gain something...

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We do. Everybody is born with three or four mutations, on average.

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Again I will say, although one may benefit from a mutation, it certainly DIDN'T gain anything.

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A bacteria that is born with a protein to digest nylon didn't gain something? None of its ancestors can eat nylon. Seems pretty damned obvious that it gained something.

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It is your own science that shows no gaining of anything new out of mid-air.

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Why in the hell would science suggest that something comes out of mid-air?------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

rabair, A phenotype that never previously existed was added. A function that never previously existed was added. The E.coli lost nothing, & gained something, geddit?Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

I can accomodate you. It might really need a new thread, and I'm not even certain whether I've posted this on this particular board. I'll copy a post of mine from another site - the discussion was actually on the specific tangent of "new information":Ref: Nature, vol 414, pp 305-308 (2001) - "Haemoglobin C protects against clinical Plasmodium falciparum malaria" , by D Modiano et al. It's not online, to my knowledge, except by paid subscription.Normal human hemoglobin ("HbA") is coded for by DNA which reads, as the 16th through 18th positions of a certain gene, GAA. This codon tells a cell's protein factory to put the amino acid glutamate at the sixth spot along the peptide that will become the beta chain of your or my hemoglobin. However, in a large number of West Africans, particularly the Mossi of Burkina Faso, this speck of DNA reads AAA. The distribution of folks with this variant looks like a bull's-eye: lots of the gene in one area of Burkina Faso, and fewer and fewer people with it as you move away from that center. The distribution is consistent with the idea that one person had the mutation about a thousand years ago, and that it spread through his or her descendants since. (Most people weren't terribly mobile in that area until nearly modern times - at least until the slave trade started.)Now this DNA change alters that sixth amino acid on the beta chain of hemoglobin to lysine, making HbC. Most people with hemoglobin C never know it - some have mild anemia, gallstones, or spleen problems. But Modiano's paper documents that Mossi children that have both genes for HbC are 7% as likely to develop malaria as their classmates who have boring old HbA. 7% as likely to get the disease that kills a couple of million kids in West Africa every year. And that's because their genome has the information to make a protein that has one amino acid that's different from the one in their neighbors, and in their ancestors, too, if you go back a ways. New information. Useful new information. (You will agree that being able to make two different proteins is "more information" than being able to make only one, won't you? Kids in the study that had the AC genotype - that had both HbA and HbC in their blood - had a 29% reduction in their chance of getting malaria.) New, useful, "information" from a mutation.Now a footnote: if your DNA reads GUA instead of GAA in this position, you get a valine in position 6 and have sickle-cell trait - the result of a different mutated hemoglobin called HbS. This protects against malaria, too, but the side effects can be severe, including fatal, especially if you have both genes for HbS. This, too, is "new information" - a different protein is being made.Mods, if you want this to have its own thread, I'd be happy to dig out my notes on it and oblige.

I'll start off by saying, I'm not going to lie, this new Coragyps guy is way over my head and I don't even have a clue what he's talking about... So I'm not even going to bother addressing it. But as for John and Mark...First, John... Nice spin on my example of the nose thing... Don't try debating the science of that or whatever, I think I made it pretty clear it was just an example to paint a simple picture. But I guess it's easier to say there's a "fatal flaw" because I "present only one alternative." That's irrelevant, and an excellent way to avoid the issue. And I won't acknowledge your example of the protein thing, unless you concede that it was a loss of something, because again, we simply can't gain something from absolute nothing. You like to say "New proteins show up all the time.", however you've yet to show an example of this. All you guys have done is shown that somehow some of these bacterium survived (benefited), and clearly speculated that it was generating brand new proteins that allowed it. See I put forth a possibility, because mutations can only cause things to change or usually lose stuff, so I put forth that maybe the bacterium survived because of a loss of something, that allowed them to not be affected by the Penicillin. The difference is, you clearly try to pass your guess as fact, yet you are clearly guessing. Just read your sentence that starts with "Say, instead of...." You're putting forth a guess, so don't pass that off as proof to me of anything. Because as I said, it could be a loss of something that allowed the bacterium to survive. That is un-deniable. Obviously my example isn't the true case here, but it breaks it down to childrens terms so you can get it.John, could you completely ignore everything any worse.... You go on to say:"A bacteria that is born with a protein to digest nylon didn't gain something? None of its ancestors can eat nylon. Seems pretty damned obvious that it gained something."Again, like the nose thing, I'll say, how do you know the bacteria didn't lose something that allowed it to digest the nylon. Maybe it lost some stomach acid neutralizers, therefore the stomach acid was able to easily tear through the nylon. I don't know if that's even possible, but the point is, you've totally overlooked to point made with the nose thing. I mean, there's a million things it could have lost that would allow it to do that. Not that nylon is really a beneficial thing.... But if it was beneficial, again just because one benefits from a mutation, doesn't mean it gains anything.... And then you ask - why does science suggest something comes out of mid-air. But this is exactly what you suggest when you say that a mutation occured adding something totally new from no where. Hopefully you'll just stay away, because you refuse to address the issue. I acknowledge that the bacterium may have benefited from the mutation, but I don't believe it gained anything, I believe the benefit came from a loss.... But you insist it came from a gain, when that is absolutely just your guess, and you aren't backing it up with ANY evidence. Just saying it happened doesn't make it true. I'm done with you.now to mark... you say:
"A phenotype that never previously existed was added. A function that never previously existed was added. The E.coli lost nothing, & gained something, geddit? "like John, you don't address the real issue or show evidence of your claim. You guys keep changing terms... It started out with a guy citing this study, but not even talking about protiens or phenotypes..... But all you guys' explanation is the only thing to "evolve" on this site. You can say "The E. coli lost nothing, & gained something...".... But what proof do you have? I already clearly stated (in simple form) a type of mutation where something is lost that could actually benefit. But you have yet to show any evidence of anything being added. Again, you saying it doesn't make it true......

rabair, Or maybe there was a gene duplication & it has two functional proteins instead of one. Does that meet your requirement for something to be added?Since your argument all along was a claim sans evidence that it is impossible for new information/new function/whatever-metric-you-choose-to-retreat-to, all I am required to do at this stage is show that it hypothetically can. So, why can't the mutation have occurred after a sequence was duplicated? We know such mutations occur, we know beneficial mutations occur, put the two together & you have what you say can't happen, something was added, & nothing was lost. Stay focussed, the Lederbergs study revolved around penicillin resitance, not nylon digestion. You never began, rabair, you made unsupported claims that nothing can be added without loss. Mutations can occur that make it possible, see above.Please don't tell me I haven't provided evidence of the above occurrence, all I have to so to destroy your non-empirical argument is provide empirical evidence that makes it possible. Allow me to spell it out for you, a mutation occurred in a region of Africa that introduced an extra protein without losing the old one (HbA). The HbC haemaglobin confers a strong resistance to malaria. What you said couldn't occur, did.One last thing, there is a reply button at the bottom of each post. Please use it, it makes tracking of posts much easier.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

Alright Mark... please read before you respond. Almost all of what you responded to from my last post was stuff directed at John. Then I go on toward the end to address you. So when you tell me to "stay focussed" it's a nice space filler and to try to make it look as if I'm dodging.. But infact, that whole thing was brought up by your buddy John. Not me. I was REPLYING to it, and it was pretty obvious I was talking to him, not you. Go back and read the posts. As was the statement "I'm done with you".... Because he didn't prove that anything happened, he clearly acknowledges that my nose example was possible but says that I needed to point to more possibilities... .Which is irrelevent. My point was, yes mutations can be beneficial, neither of you have shown where anything was gained. Benefit and Gain (added to) are 2 different things. So he comes up with a "what if instead" of my nose example. And tried using that as proof. Well, the bottom line is, he didn't prove that his guess is what happened or even could happen by saying he thinks it's a possibility. That is a ridiculous claim. Much like my nose thing was an example... I wouldn't say that proves that something was lost just because that is a simple example I used, to show that benefits can happen from losses. And I know you guys don't refute that, because that is obvious. Then he brought up some nylon thing, and insisted that because some bacteria could digest nylon, that means it gained something in mutation. How ignorant can a person get. NO EVIDENCE and just saying that it gained something because it benefited by being able to digest nylon, doesn't make it true. So I said, it's the same as the other example you guys have been using... Maybe he lost stomach acid neutralizers that allowed the acid digest the nylon, or any number of little losses could cause this. By the way, you quote yourself in your last post, but it was something John said about the Nylon.... Then later you condemn me for not staying focussed.... Nice..... This leads me to why I don't reply to one particular post at a time... Number one, I don't care if you can't keep track easily, two it's because there are always more than one of you, and you spend the majority of your post dodging and going off on other things instead of staying on point, that I don't have time to sit here and reply to every little thing. So I try to lump it into one. Again, go back and read my post, and read all of your replies.... again most of what you are replying to totally has nothing to do with you, but it's a good way for you to dodge the real issue once again. You can't insist that because the bacterium benefitted, that something was added. It's simply irresponsible. Now, you can believe that it's possible, but you can't pass it off as fact that something was added, without evidence. You've proven only that there was a benefit. And I've shown that benefits can come from losses. But you haven't shown that anything can be added. Does that spell it out now?!?! Let me address another thing you say.... First you quote where I said "I'm done with you." Which again if you ACTUALLY READ the post was clearly directed at John, so stop with the dodging and trying to argue about other things than the issue. This again is why I can't respond in separate posts, because it's like most of what you want to debate is not even the topic. It's ridiculous. Anyway, you go on to say:
"You never began, rabair, you made unsupported claims that nothing can be added without loss."
That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. When have I said anything like that? Point to it. Even if you replace the word "added" with "benefitted" in your sentence, it's still a lie. I said that things can't just be added that come from no where when a natural mutation takes place. You say things can. I said that just because something benefits doesn't mean it gained something. You haven't argued that because it's obvious. But I didn't say nothing can be added without loss, nor did I say nothing can benefit without a loss. I've asked you to prove that what benefitted the E. Coli was a gain. And you haven't shown that. Go back and read your own posts. You have not once shown that anything was gained. Thus not shown that it's possible.[This message has been edited by rabair, 09-09-2003]

rabair, Here: What did that mean if you aren't claiming nothing can be added without loss, ie no net gain? It is implicit to your argument that if there is a beneficial mutation without some sequence/function loss, there would be a net gain, right? You say this is impossible, therefore, "nothing can be added without loss", meaning "no net gain" would be a fair paraphrase of your argument if you are accepting beneficial mutations occur. If you accept beneficial mutations exist, & are claiming there is no loss, then there is therefore a net beneficial gain, & you've hamstrung yourself.But whilst were on the subject, if you'd talk about the same thing from one post to the other it would be easier to pin down what you're talking about, & paraphrasing would be unnecessary. First it's beneficial mutations & information, then it's something from nothing, then it's nothing has been added, & now it's "gain"?Will the real rabair claim please stand up!I'll say it again. It was you that claimed that, ("gain" is it now?) gain is impossible, I have shown you it is possible because gene duplications occur, & so do beneficial mutations.Your original claim was: So, a gene duplication followed by a beneficial mutation meets your criteria for "gain", doesn't it? Something has been added without something being taken away, meaning a net gain, right?For example, if humans have an HbA gene, mutations occur, & there is now an HbA, AND an HbC gene, how is that not a gain, how has nothing been added?You claimed, without any empirical support whatsoever, that information/beneficial mutation/nothing can be added/gain (delete as applicable), is impossible. I have shown it to be possible.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."

rabair, Perhaps people wouldn't get confused about who is being replied to if you had the common decency to reply to one person per post, you could also try using paragraphs.Mark

Okay, I'm tired of wasting my time Mark... It's as simple as this. In my original post, said nothing can be benefitted. I admitted that was a mis-characterizaiton. I have since not changed my point... Maybe alternating words such as "gain" and "add"... But the point remains... You have just spent most of another post avoiding the point... Let me spell out my point so you can stop lying and mis-representing it.Nothing new can be naturally added to something that wasn't already present. I AGREE for like the 50th time, benefits can be had from mutations... But that isn't the same as something being added or gained. That is why I made the analogy of the nose thing... Then responded with the nylon analogy to the thing John said. And you clearly don't disagree that it's possible to benefit by loss. (ie, losing a nose, causes one not to die from something that would normally kill them if they smelled it. BENIFIT, not gain/adding).... I have made this very clear over, and over. I know you can benefit, but new things don't come from no where. The "A" on my keyboard didn't just appear, and allow me to then have a complete keyboard. But taking away the box the keyboard came in benefits me because I was unable to type on it until it was out of the box. Don't try to argue that, I'm aware it is un-related, but I can't seem to get the simple point through to you. Although I know you will spend your next post arguing about my keyboard, because that's your way of avoiding.Again, my point is that I have shown that benefit doesn't always mean gains/additions.... Obviously you agree that you can benefit from a loss. But you want me to believe that it is irrefutable that it wasn't a loss that benefitted the E. Coli... You keep saying it was a gain/addition but you haven't shown that. Just because you say it doesn't make it true. Again, I didn't say it lost something to cause this beneficial mutation, I'm just saying it's a possibility. I don't believe it could have gained something out of no where... You need to show that is what happened to prove that it's possible. Because otherwise you've never shown any evidence that it can happen. I still feel that it's so obvious my point, but you choose to just avoid that and go off about every other stupid little thing and avoid proving what you claim as fact. You haven't even attempted to prove that it's possible to gain from natural mutation.... Whatever, please just actually stay on the topic instead of spinning out of control so I have to spend this whole time clearing things up for anyone who might read just the latest posts. You just want to argue about every stupid little thing instead of showing evidence of your claims.

Hey, Mark, I was just curious.... What is that picture of that shows up under your name?

rabair, Stop being a prat, rabair. You changed your terms with almost every post, as detailed in my last but one post, I can hardly be lying, can I? If you are being misrepresented then you only have yourself to blame. I agree, but all evolution requires is that things are added naturally to something that is already present. You appear to be constructing some sort of straw man. Who told you that evolution didn't work this way?I've seen some creationist equivocation in my time, but now I think it's time you defined "added", & "gained" (only relatively can you say nothing was gained, & even then you have insert he word "net"), because I have provided a plausible scenario where, under normal usage of the words, something was added, & was gained. Getting a new stretch of DNA without losing any, & that stretch of DNA having new beneficial function sure sounds like something was "added" to me. It also sounds like something was "gained". I can only assume that you have a very different meaning of these words compared to the rest of us. It is when there is no loss elsewhere. Strictly speaking, not using your own personal definition of added or gained, a beneficial mutation HAS been added, a beneficial mutation HAS been gained, because the sequence is a duplicate & the original is unaffected. And in making this argument you have completely ignored my example. You are saying gain is impossible, I provided an example where it was possible.If new sequences can be added, & non lost, & new function can be added without loss, then there is a net gain. I, nor evolutionary theory could care less over your equivocation of "nothing", "nowhere", "added", or "gained". All I have to show is that genomes can display a net increase in function, & you have nowhere to go.So,Condition A/ A particular DNA sequence had one function, Y.Event 1/ The DNA sequence is duplicated, into sequences A & B.Event 2/ Sequence B mutated giving it a beneficial mutation & new function, Z, sequence A is unaffected.Condition B/ A particular DNA sequence labelled A & B has 2 functions, Y & Z.Even though sequence B lost function Y & gained function Z, the genome as a whole GAINED function between conditions A & B.Please tell me how nothing was added between condition A & B, please tell me how nothing was gained.Mark------------------
"I can't prove creationism, but they can't prove evolution. It is [also] a religion, so it should not be taught....Christians took over the school board and voted in creationism. That can be done in any school district anywhere, and it ought to be done." Says Kent "consistent" Hovind in "Unmasking the False Religion of Evolution Chapter 6."[This message has been edited by mark24, 09-10-2003]

rabair,An artists impression of Acanthostega gunnari.Mark