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Author Topic:   Questioning The Evolutionary Process
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 151 of 160 (433497)
11-12-2007 9:43 AM
Reply to: Message 149 by Elmer
11-11-2007 10:00 PM


Re: response part 1 reply 1 & 2 response
Elmer writes:
quote:
Simply because the topic is biological evolution of living organisms, so it would be irrelevant to talk about rocks but not irrelevant to only talk about "that part of nature that is alive" ... and the evidence of past life (fossils, genetics, history, etc).
That's fine. Let's not talk about genes and other chemical molecules either, then, since in this sense they are no different from rocks.
Interesting. So in a discussion about transportation you would rule out mention of transmissions, engines and headlights?
You do not utterly change a word meaning by putting a modifier in front of it--you only qualify it.
Word meanings are not fixed, they change over time. I would question your etymology for the word "selection", but whether you're right or wrong, today the word "selection" has a very clear meaning within biology. If you want to debate past heists of word meanings you should go to another site, this one is for discussing creation/evolution. Even if you were correct about the original meaning of "selection" and Darwin committed the crime of the century in co-opting it for his own use, it is now a fait accompli, and the current definition of selection in biology is just something you'll have to accept.
quote:
In modern biology
By which I take you to mean, 'darwinism'.
Darwinism is not synonymous with modern biology. It is isn't even synonymous with the modern theory of evolution, more properly known as the modern synthesis because it combined (synthesized) Darwin's theory with genetics.
quote:
This is the terminology used by scientists in discussing the science. Not using this terminology means you are not talking about the science but something else, and in logic this is known as the logical fallacy of equivocation.
Actually you are using the old, 'fifty million frenchmen can't be wrong' fallacy. The belief that truth is a function of popularity. I am discussing the reality, the truth of evolution, which is not necessarily what darwinists think it is. There is no acceptable reason to accept the lingo that they have devised to support their dubious notion.
Whether you accept the terminology of modern biology or not, in order to understand what we're saying and what biology books and websites are saying you have to use the proper definitions of that terminology. You can't take a sentence out of a biology book and interpret it using different definitions than the author originally used to compose the sentence, because obviously the result will be nonsense.
What Darwin said in his analogy entailed, (as analogies must if they are to be the least bit accurate), the chief aspects of the subject of that analogy, in his case, 'artificial selection', meaning human selection; meaning intelligent, aware, intentional choice-making according to a pre-set and universally applied criterion. That is what 'selection', as an act, entails. Therefore, if his analogy was valid, his "NS" had to possess these same characteristics.
You've misunderstood the analogy, in fact, misunderstood analogies in general. An analogy is employed to illustrate unfamiliar principles using a familiar example that in some way shares some of those principles. So you would say to someone who never saw a pedal car, "A pedal car is like a real car, only instead of an engine you have to pedal it yourself."
So in Darwin's analogy he was saying, "Natural selection is like the artificial selection of breeders, only instead of the breeder making reproductive decisions, the environment influences those choices."
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Minor grammar fix.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 149 by Elmer, posted 11-11-2007 10:00 PM Elmer has not replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 152 of 160 (433505)
11-12-2007 10:47 AM
Reply to: Message 149 by Elmer
11-11-2007 10:00 PM


Re: response part 1 reply 1 & 2 response
Elmer writes:
Which is why when I demonstrate, logically and linguistically, that I am right and you are wrong, only to have you repeat the same wrong opinions on the subject, willy-nilly, it can get quite depressing.
You've demonstrated nothing logically or linguistically. In the English language, words like select and choose do not automatically mean sentience on the part of the selector or chooser.
A stream can choose its course, and nature can select, love, hate, abhor, instruct and do many other things, in English. On this site, we use English, not Elmerish.
Whether you know it or not, the reason you're playing word games is that there's no evidence for this "theory" that you call neo-Lamarkism. You haven't presented any, and you won't, will you?
Show me I'm wrong.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 149 by Elmer, posted 11-11-2007 10:00 PM Elmer has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 153 by Wounded King, posted 11-12-2007 11:16 AM bluegenes has not replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 153 of 160 (433509)
11-12-2007 11:16 AM
Reply to: Message 152 by bluegenes
11-12-2007 10:47 AM


Re: response part 1 reply 1 & 2 response
Is anyone else getting flashbacks to Syamsu with Elmer's weird approach based on using totally inappropriate interpretations of terms?
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 152 by bluegenes, posted 11-12-2007 10:47 AM bluegenes has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 154 of 160 (433524)
11-12-2007 12:38 PM
Reply to: Message 149 by Elmer
11-11-2007 10:00 PM


Re: response part 1 reply 1&2 response reply response
Wow, RAZD, yours has got to be the longest post I have ever seen on a debating bulletin board!! I'll work my way through it, but you will have to temporarily confine your posts to other people until I can catch up, and that might take all week!!
Well that is what happens when you post a lot of stuff that is just wrong, and full of logical errors, misrepresentations, and then -- rather than learn from your mistakes -- you repeat them.
You also need to reply to Message 134 - the second part of my response to your Message 82, and Message 148 - my response to Message 145, the third of your replies to my Message 128.
What you may want to do is sit down with all those responses and glean from them what you consider to be the critical elements for your argument, and then restate your argument in as clear and concise a manner as possible -- short and to the point eh? Support it with evidence and provide clarification on points where your assertions have been refuted.
The other alternative is for you to blunder on with the false assumption that what you are saying is still valid. This has been your approach so far, and it fails to deal with the evidence that you are -- to put it kindly -- wrong.
That's fine. Let's not talk about genes and other chemical molecules either, then, since in this sense they are no different from rocks.
Red herring fallacy. The topic of discussion is biological evolution, so of necessity it involves biological life, not rocks or molecules or any other things that don't replicate and change.
Irrelevant?!?! You have got to be kidding.
Not at all. When a new term is defined in science - say punctuated equilibrium or the big bang - the definition used in science is the one given to it. This applies to Lamarck's definition of acquired traits and to Darwin's definition of natural selection. Failure to understand this has led you to waste a lot of bandwidth railing against something that is really irrelevant to evolutionary biology.
You do not utterly change a word meaning by putting a modifier in front of it--you only qualify it. A natural fountain and an artificial fountain are both still fountains. The meaning of fountain is not changed. It still means water jetting out of the ground. A 'natural' child and a 'legitimate' child are both still babies, the one defined as a baby in exactly the same way as the other. The natural electricity of lightning from the clouds and the 'artificial' electricity from a generator are both the same physical thing. Whereas changing 'selection' from an activity 'performed by' a sentient being into something 'done to' a sentient being is changing the word's meaning entirely, and creating equivocation by giving it two antithetical meanings at once. And that is exactly what darwinists have done to 'selection'.
The same applies to "acquired traits" and "punctuated equilibrium" nor does the use of "natural" completely change the meaning of "selection" -- there is still selection going on, not some other process -- rather the meaning is modified to mean only the selection that occurs naturally.
quote:
In modern biology
By which I take you to mean, 'darwinism'.
No, I mean modern biology, the field of study that has continued to develop since before the time of Darwin. If you don't want to be painted with the same brush as ignorant creationists, then you would be advised to stop using the terminology of ignorant creationists. "Darwinism" -- if the term means anything in the science of biology -- is a subset of evolution which is a part of biology. Modern biology includes genetics, which is not a part of Darwin's work.
quote:
selection is defined as:
se·lec·tion -1.a. The act or an instance of selecting or the fact of having been selected.
- b. One that is selected.
Well, there you are then. It's just as I've been telling you. I rest my case. QED.
Nowhere do those definitions require a selector. Again your poor logic fails you. From Message 147:
quote:
Perhaps you are familiar with the way lottery numbers are selected in some states:
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/luck.html
quote:

Who selects the winning numbers? This has nothing to do with biology, but it still involves selection.
There is no selector being or entity or consciousness that selects the lottery numbers, yet they are selected, and they are selected according to the definitions 1.a. and 1.b. you listed. Note that this simple example completely invalidates your claim of a special meaning to selection, and that continuing to make such a claim is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
Please note the difference between using 'selection' as an act of choice, contrasted with referring to 'a selection' as a thing chosen. The first sense is active, the second passive. Note that the first sense refers to an act, the second sense to a thing. If "natural Selection" is to take the first sense of the word, it has to take the active, dynamic sense of 'making a choice', and that is the only sense in which it can be considered a causal mechanism.
The passive sense refers only to a thing chosen, that is, an effect brought about by a chooser. Now a book may be the 'selection of the month', but it did not 'select' itself. If Darwin meant 'natural selection' to mean the effects, (i.e.,the traits/organisms) we find in the biosphere after the passge of time, then he did no more than point at what is there, he offered no explanationas to how it came to there, i.e., its origins.
But I do not think that Darwin was using 'selection' in the passive sense, the sense that might apply to a cat or a dog at a show, or a tie on a rack, or an entree. I think that Darwin fully intended his "Natural Selection" to mean exactly the same kind of active, dynamic selection as that practiced by stockbreeders like himself, show judges, and restaurant patrons. All of whom are sentient beings actively making choices based upon their personal goals and the criteria established for arriving at those goals. I do not know of any earthquakes, floods, inanimate objects, or abstract notions that can make choices. So either admit that "Natural Selection" is a corruption of the word 'selection', by which an intentional and intelligence-based act, choice, is attributed to a non-sentient abstraction,'nature', [personification], or show that your "Natural Selection" is the causal behaviour of some specific, concrete and empirical entity that is just like us human 'selectors', 'judges', 'inspectors', and the like.
Or adopt the later, neo-darwinist, corruption of its meaning.
Note that this whole rant is invalidated by the lottery example. In addition "natural selection" existed before Darwin's use. See
Edward Blyth - Wikipedia
quote:
Edward Blyth accepted the principle that species could be modified over time, and his writings had a major influence on Charles Darwin. Blyth wrote three major articles on variation, discussing the effects of artificial selection and describing the process of natural selection as restoring organisms in the wild to their archetype (rather than forming new species). These articles were published in 'The Magazine of Natural History' between 1835 and 1837.[3][4] He was among the first to recognise the significance of Wallace's paper "On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species" and brought it to the notice of Darwin in a letter written in Calcutta on December 8, 1855:
Or another source
GenNet.org
quote:
Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution were anticipated in nearly every essential detail by several of his predecessors including his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) ... published a two-volume work titled Zoonomia (subtitled The Laws of Organic Life) in which he speculated on the chance evolution of all life by a purely materialistic mechanism involving adaptation through natural selection.
Again, you keep repeating nonsense instead of dealing with reality, and this is counterproductive.
Actually you are using the old, 'fifty million frenchmen can't be wrong' fallacy. The belief that truth is a function of popularity.
Not at all, I am saying that the terms are defined in scientific publications, and that to use different definitions is to equivocate.
http://onegoodmove.org/fallacy/equiv.htm
quote:
Equivocation
Definition:
The same word is used with two different meanings.
Examples:
1. Criminal actions are illegal, and all murder trials are criminal actions, thus all murder trials are illegal.

You either use the terminology as defined in the science in question or you are equivocating, which leads to meaningless statements not founded on facts or reality.
I am discussing the reality, the truth of evolution, which is not necessarily what darwinists think it is. There is no acceptable reason to accept the lingo that they have devised to support their dubious notion. The only equivocation in evolutionary terminology--
"equivocation ...
--originates entirely with them, not me, as I have very clearly demonstrated.
Please refer to the definition used by logic, as this was noted as "the logical fallacy of equivocation" -- see above. You want to use a definition of selection that is different from the definition used by science and this necessarily is "the logical fallacy of equivocation." Once again your poor logic fails you and you are illogical, foolhardy, silly and just plain wrong to insist otherwise.
Well, that is exactly what I have just said that he said. Where is this "false" assertion that you claim ?!?! Nobody denies that Darwin created an analogy between human stock breeding and plant cultivation with what happened to organisms in the wild. Unless you deny it that. Do you?
What Darwin said in his analogy entailed, (as analogies must if they are to be the least bit accurate), the chief aspects of the subject of that analogy, in his case, 'artificial selection', meaning human selection; meaning intelligent, aware, intentional choice-making according to a pre-set and universally applied criterion. That is what 'selection', as an act, entails. Therefore, if his analogy was valid, his "NS" had to possess these same characteristics.
Now "Nature", meaning the biosphere as such, does not in fact, as an abstraction, possess those features. But "Nature", figuratively or superstitiolusly taken to be some sort of semi-divine spirit entity, could.
But 'spirit entities' didn't go over well in Darwin's set, and by the time of his death his "Natural Selection" was headed for the scientific rubbish heap; although it remained popular among those who embraced it for religious and political reasons. Eventually it was saved from scientific oblivion by Mendelian inheritance theory, genetics, and the metaphysical speculation that genetic mistakes and accidents could originate and determine the adaptations, novel bioforms, and added complexity and productivity found in the biosphere. Origin by accident. But that's another issue.
Oh please, RAZD. The personification is there. It's undeniable. Darwin drew an analogy between the works of nature and the works of man. An analogy is a comparison based upon finding similarities between different things. Such as stock breeding and evolution. When the comparison/analogy seeks to establish a similarity between something non-human and that which is human, that effort is called personification. That's a plain fact. You cannot "read into something" that which is a plain fact. It is there, whether you like it or not.
This nonsense has already been refuted, and repeating falsehoods is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
That's true. Which is why when I demonstrate, logically and linguistically, that I am right and you are wrong, only to have you repeat the same wrong opinions on the subject, willy-nilly, it can get quite depressing.
Except that you have not provided any evidence that what you say is correct. None. Not one whit. Zero. Nada. Zilch. You have also used poor logic that has failed you every time, logic that has been shown to be false and misleading. You say:
Message 82
I've proved that facts and logic can change my mind. So bring on your facts and logic.
Yet all you have proved is that you ignore evidence, facts and logic whenever and wherever it contradicts what you want to believe. This in reality is delusion:
de·lu·sion -noun1. an act or instance of deluding.
2. the state of being deluded.
3. a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.
4. Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.
What level of delusion is yet to be determined.
Not true. Darwin simply asserted that he believed that not all 'selection' is directed. He was wrong to do that, because it just isn't true. By definition. All acts of 'selection' are directed by goals, values, awareness, and intention. There is no other kind, except in the notional world of Darwin and his disciples.
Now, if you want to talk 'mechanical sorting'-- (as in wind and water distribution of stone particles)-- instead of 'selection', that's another matter. Non-sentient agencies can do that.
Do you mean "natural sorting" as opposed to "artificial sorting"?
Again, just to belabor the point one more time, from Message 147:
quote:
Perhaps you are familiar with the way lottery numbers are selected in some states:
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/luck.html
quote:

Who selects the winning numbers? This has nothing to do with biology, but it still involves selection.
There is no selector being or entity or consciousness that selects the lottery numbers, yet they are selected, and they are selected according to the definitions 1.a. and 1.b. you listed. Note that this simple example completely invalidates your claim of a special meaning to selection, and that continuing to make such a claim is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
Note further that this is NOT an example of "sorting" in any way, and to make such a claim would be foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
You simply do not understand the concept of 'personification', for some reason. Just as soon as you attribute a human property to a non-human entity, such as the biosphere, (here refering to the biosphere as 'nature'), and then assign a human ability [selection] to it, here via the word, 'natural', you have made up a personification. Go back and re-read the definition of the word that I supplied you earlier on, and then justify how you can continue to deny that Darwin personified, anthropomorphised the biosphere, with his "Natural Selection".
And then you'll see why that didn't go over, and why the word 'selection' then had to be given a totally new meaning by the neo-darwinists, going from 'the act of selecting' to 'the experience of being selected'.
Except that this whole premise is STILL FALSE. "Natural" does not mean "nature did it, ... and btw, 'nature' is some kind of supernatural boogyman" - that you keep repeating this falsified claim means you are not learning.
Therebye propping up the materialist notion that live organisms are essentially no different from dust in the wind, and that everything that happens, 'just happens, that's all'. Very metaphysical stuff. But at least you finally admit that the meaning of 'selection' was altered in order to suit a metaphysical assumption.
Except that conclusions based on false premises are false conclusions. Very ordinary logical stuff.
Well, you can go on asserting that, but I have clearly shown that it is just not true. Sticking 'natural' in front of 'selection' does not cause that word to legitimately go from 'directed act of choosing' to 'experience of being chosen'. Added to which if "NS" means 'selection' in the orignalsense, then it means 'a directed act of choosing from among alternatives, based upon criteria linked to values and goals'. I defy you to find me any abstraction that is not quasi-religious, or any inanimate object that is not a human artefact, that can do that. Therefore, if you say "NS" can do that, then you make it quasi-religious, a mystical 'spirit' of some kind. But if you opt for the neo-darwinian version of 'selection', i.e., 'the passively received experience of being chosen', then you've just chucked "NS" as a causal mechanism/explanation, religious or scientific, right out the window.
Repeating false assertions does not make them true. The fact remains that "Natural Selection" is well defined in the science of evolutionary biology and that no amount of equivocation or outright falsehood on your part will change that fact. The natural world will continue to ignore your opinion as irrelevant and immaterial, and evolution will continue to occur via, among other processes, natural selection.
Message 148
Evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.
Natural Selection - the differential success of various phenotypes in a specific population and ecology in passing hereditary traits on to the next generation.
No matter what you say these processes will not be affected, nor will their meaning in the science of evolutionary biology change.
Enjoy.

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 149 by Elmer, posted 11-11-2007 10:00 PM Elmer has not replied

  
Elmer
Member (Idle past 5904 days)
Posts: 82
Joined: 01-15-2007


Message 155 of 160 (433547)
11-12-2007 2:06 PM


for RAZD
Hi again;
Only enough time for nibble. You say-
quote:
"For some reason people just stood by and watched this corruption of the language take place, and so now, here we are with it imbedded in the language like a virus that cannot be gotten rid of."
Except that it is not corruption, it is using modifiers to differentiate between different processes that actually happen.
Protest away, but the undeniable fact of the matter is that Darwin personified nature by attributing a human quality/property/trait, (the abilty to select from among alternative choices), to an abstraction, "Nature" , and then the neo-darwinsts took it a step further, and changed the meaning of the word, 'selection' altogether.
You can assert that you are talking about "different processes that actually happen", but the fact is, I can show you live organisms making individual choices, aka, acts of 'selection', but you cannot show me an abstraction that does that, nor any inanimate, naturally occuring object or system, that does that. So please stop saying that your mystical "Natural Selection", and/or your mystical, "Nature", does that.
As for the neo-darwinist corruption of the word 'selection' meaning, wherebye 'to make a choice' is turned into, 'to become one of the chosen', creating total equivocation as neo-darwinists used this as sophists, perpetually sliding from the active, causal verb form [mechanism] to the passive, noun/effect form [observation of fact], often in the same breath, in order to evangelise their metaphysic.
quote:
Natural Selection occurred before Darwin put the terms together (and he was likely not the first to recognize it), so what we are doing is ADDING to the power of language to describe reality, not corrupting it.
**
Something was happening long before Darwin, and human ideas about what was happening were in existence for as long as there were human beings around to think about what was happening, and there were people around thinking about evolution since the ancient greeks, and there were europeans speculating about the causes for evolution for some time before Darwin said a word, and some of those thinkers seemed to have been thinking thoughts very similar to Charles Darwin's [see Erasmus Darwin, et al], but the notion, "Natural Selection", did not actually come into full existence until Chuck put those words together and wrote a book about it.
Your problem here is that you cannot see that there is a vast difference between the country and a map of it. Evolution has been going on since the first day of life, and something has been driving it for all that time, and that is 'the country' we are exploring. But Darwin didn't draw his map of it until "OotS", and so "Natural Selection" did not exist before... whatever it was--1859?
quote:
This is the way language develops over time, regardless of the topic.
Language evolves, and so long as it evolves naturally, nobody complains. However, when language evolves naturally, word meanings do not become their exact opposites and retain both their original meaning and its opposite, setting up ambivalence, confusion, and communication breakdowm. It takes some "Humpty Dumpty" deliberate tampering to do that, and that tampering, that self-serving corruption, is exactly what the neo-darwinists did, and still do, to the word, 'selection'. The least darwinists could do is to alert their listeners to when it is that they are using 'selection' in the active sense, as a 'cause', and when it is that they are using it in their passive sense, as an 'effect'. But they very carefully letting anyone know that.
quote:
You can only talk about corruption if you claim that language can never change, a philosophically ridiculous position (it implies that all knowledge is known).
Good thing thing then that I have never even come close to suggesting that language can never change, isn't it? What I have said is that language can change, and does change, and changes in two very different ways. Legitimately, language changes unintentionally from one sense to another as time marches on, or brand new words [neologisms] are introduced to signify novel things or original concepts. But language can also be changed illegitimately, Humpty Dumpty style, by people who want the word to take on a new sense that is qualitatively different from the sense in common usage. Either way the language ends up changed. Our problem in the present debate is not really about the fact that 'selection' can now mean both a cause and an effect, but the deliberate equivocation of using the 'effect' sense as if it were the 'cause' sense. Make up your minds, is "NS" a causal force, a 'mechanism' that explains observed effects, or is it those effects, the results/effects of some other causal mechanism. (It cannot cause itself, since logically, a cause cannot be its own effect, and vice versa, in one and the same case.)
Anyhoo, we've clobbered this one to death, and I cannot think of anything else to add to it, so if you want to believe that it is perfectly legitimate to use the same word, 'selection', in two different senses, interchangeably, that's your prerogative, but, for reasons given and amply explained, I disagree.
[quote] Well, I don't think we should introduce 'sexual selection', which a/only applies to sexully reproducing organisms and
b/ is, in those rare instances in which it is truly present, is a dynamic, intentional activity, as opposed to the passive, accidental experience intrinsic to natural selection,
until after we have thoroughly determined the nature of 'natural selection'. So I'm going to skip down a bit."
quote:
What you think is irrelevant, nature and the universe are totally unimpressed and unaffected.
No kidding! Good thing I'm not trying to impress and affect "nature and the universe", isn't it? Merely trying trying to express my opinions to you. Not to them. What made you bring up "nature and the universe", anyway?
quote:
Sexual selection exists.
Yes, it does, although not in nearly so many cases as darwinists think that it does. But when true 'sexual selection' does take place, it totatally conforms to the pre-darwinian sense of 'selection', i.e., sentient beings make intentional choices between alternatives, based upon their ability to discriminate according to criteria based uipon values, with those values derived from their goals. Picking a sexual partner is 'selection' in exactly the same active sense as is picking out what tie you'll wear to work. It is the act of a sentient being, not an abstraction, such as Darwin's "nature".
quote:
The nature of 'natural selection' is determined, whether you think so or not, and it includes sexual selection in it.
Well, that's your opinion, and I'm sure you'll stick to it, and if you are only speaking of it as a particular ideational position, yours, then in that notional sense, you must be right. However, if you are trying to tell me that your notion and empirical reality map to each other in such perfection that you can say 'natural selection' as if it were some real and actual, physical and a tangible part of this universe, then you are equivocating. Like the song says, "It ain't necessarily so."
quote:
"What do you mean by "aspects of natural selection"? Defining characteristics? Natural properties?"
The phrase was "other aspects of natural selection" and then there was a list of other aspects, different processes by which natural selection occurs and can be viewed to occur..
Sorry, I didn't see that list. I googled 'aspects of natural selection', but couldn't find any.
quote:
"If 'natural selection' means the experiences that might befall a passive entity, then everything and anything can be an 'aspect' of 'natural selection', including both dying [being killed] right now, and not dying [being killed] right now."
Why limit it to passive entities? Natural selection involves experiences that might befall all organisms. Surviving a flood is not necessarily passive, for example.
I did not "limit [natural selection] to passive entities. I expanded the term to include passive entities, as should have been perfectly plain in context. I think that you may may be deliberately throwing up 'non sequitur' objections, just for the sake of having something to say. I hope that that is not the case, since I would like to continue our debate. The point is, does your 'natural selection' apply as appropriately to inanimate objects and immaterial concepts as it does to living organisms, or does it not? Please respond to the point I'm making, and not to some point that I very clearly am not making.
quote:
"Kind of makes the term, "NS", both nebulous and vacuous. I think that scientific terms should be a lot more specific, definite, and meaningful than that. "
Only when you keep applying your straw man version of it instead of the processes that occur to life in general, passive and active.
Well, you can call it a "strawman version" if you like. But it is not a 'strawman version', and you cannot demonstrate that it is, so your name-calling gets you nowhere.
[quote] "Well, aside from absurd truisms, such as,-- the sick are not as healthy as the hale and hearty, the stupid are not as bright as the intelligent, the old are older than the young, the slow are not as fast as the swift, the blind do not see as well as the sighted, the weak are not so powerful as the strong,-- and on and on, just exactly what is it that you are trying to say?"
And yet in spite of these truisms you haven't made the connection that this shows that natural selection happens, that it is fact, because that is what these truisms tell us."
No, these truisms only tell us that death is a fact of life, something that doesn't require a 'scientific theory' in order to be observed and accepted into our bank of knowledge. You are trying to advance the notion that a fact of life is a scientific theory about a fact of life, and that is absurd.
[quote] "The race is to the swift, the struggle to the strong--usually. We get that. "
Not really, the "race" goes to those that survive and reproduce more, to those who contribute most to following generations - by surviving from year to year and breeding more than others -- they "win" the "race" to provide the genetic material for following generations.[quote] You are still just listing facts, i.e., effects, and acting as if the existence of these facts explains the existence of these facts. Like I said, that's absurd. Until you give a causal explanation for the fact that some "win" and some "lose", you are not saying anything, you are just talking.
quote:
"We get that. It's not rocket science. In fact, it's not science at all. It's just a meaningless fact of life that is probably just as apparent to cheetahs chasing gazelles, and gazelles being chased by cheetahs, as it is to you and me."
That's what happens when you talk about facts ... or should be.
Very true, but the we are not talking about facts, but about your hypothesis, "Natural Selection". You cannot debate facts, by definition--they are what they are, no more, no less. Notions about those facts are a whole other matter, but you repeatedly insist upon conflating the facts and your explanation for them, as if they were one and the same thing. They are not. You'll just have to accept that.
quote:
"In short, anything can affect mortality, and anything that affects mortality can affect reproduction, and anything that affects reproduction affects 'evolution', and since, basically, everything that affects mortality, from birth defects to broken legs to catching a virus to being bitten by a shark is, in the vast majority of cases, a matter of pure chance, I guess we can reduce this to 'chance=evolution', right? Or is it, "chance=natural selection"? Or is it both, in which case "Chance = natural selection = evolution"?"
Again, some is chance and results in genetic drift (and the evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation) and some is not chance but related to the ability of the organism due to the hereditary traits.
If 'genetic drift' is something that results from 'natural selection', as you say here, then my reading on 'genetic drift'[i.e, Random fluctuations in the frequency of the appearance of a gene in a small isolated population, presumably owing to chance rather than natural selection."], must have been entirely wrong.
quote:
Some organisms have genetic birth defects compared to others, and these will more likely be less able to live and reproduce than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce.
Birth defects, like broken legs and meteors dropping from the sky, are facts of life. They are not a theoretical postulate called 'natural selction'. Longevity, mortality, fecundity, and chance are all facts of life. None of them are 'natural selection'. You keep on making the same mistake, i.e., mistaking the actual country for your ideational map of it. It would appear that you would happily point to every aspect of life itself, and call it 'natural selection'. Life = NS? I do not think so.
quote:
Likewise, some organisms are genetically endowed with weak bones compared to others, and these will more likely be affected by broken bones than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce.
Whether or not you can empirically demonstrate that this assertion is true, let alone demonstrate that it is a common, non-anomalous circumstance, (sufficiently common as to constitute a scientific, universal, causal mechanism for evolution), remains to be seen. But what you have admitted is that your "NS" is a negative, subtractive, non-addditive phenomenon that, as Darwin's peers pointed out to him, cannot account for the addition of novel traits to the variations already existing. Which is why Fisher and co. invented the notion of 'adaptation by genetic accident', usually referred to as "RM+NS".
Which reduces everything that your "NS" gets to 'pick'/'eliminate', into a matter of pure chance. Which, logically, reduces your "NS" to an aspect of pure chance, which is what it was to begin with, anyway.
"Chance" is not a scientific mechanism. Being, by definition, irregular and unpredictable. So there goes both "RM" and "NS" as scientific mechqanisms. Into the bin of bad ideas. Sorry.
quote:
Thus it is not pure chance rather it is affected by the differential variations in traits between the individuals within the population as a whole.
Since, according to you, these 'differential varitions' are the end product of pure chance, i.e., "random genetic mutations", then it is logically undeniable that they are chance as much a matter of pure chance as are the randomly mutated genes that produced them. Like it or not, you have reduced evolution, and life itself, to a matter of chance accident. But that's where materialism has its primary postulate, so I do not think that this conclusion is accidental, but is 'pre-determined'.
Later.

Replies to this message:
 Message 156 by RAZD, posted 11-12-2007 4:04 PM Elmer has not replied
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 156 of 160 (433587)
11-12-2007 4:04 PM
Reply to: Message 155 by Elmer
11-12-2007 2:06 PM


Re: for RAZD - response
Looks like you are just going to ignore a lot of comments that refute your position, while you keep stating falsehoods, misrepresentations and the like. That means I will just have to keep repeating the facts that refute your position.
Protest away, but the undeniable fact of the matter is that Darwin personified nature by attributing a human quality/property/trait, (the abilty to select from among alternative choices), to an abstraction, "Nature" , and then the neo-darwinsts took it a step further, and changed the meaning of the word, 'selection' altogether.
You can assert that you are talking about "different processes that actually happen", but the fact is, I can show you live organisms making individual choices, aka, acts of 'selection', but you cannot show me an abstraction that does that, nor any inanimate, naturally occuring object or system, that does that. So please stop saying that your mystical "Natural Selection", and/or your mystical, "Nature", does that.
As for the neo-darwinist corruption of the word 'selection' meaning, wherebye 'to make a choice' is turned into, 'to become one of the chosen', creating total equivocation as neo-darwinists used this as sophists, perpetually sliding from the active, causal verb form [mechanism] to the passive, noun/effect form [observation of fact], often in the same breath, in order to evangelise their metaphysic.
It has already been demonstrated that this is irrelevant refuted nonsense, and continuing to make such claims is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong. Nowhere do the definitions of selection require a selector. Again your poor logic fails you. From Message 147:
quote:
Perhaps you are familiar with the way lottery numbers are selected in some states:
http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/luck.html
quote:

Who selects the winning numbers? This has nothing to do with biology, but it still involves selection.
There is no selector being or entity or consciousness, metaphysical or otherwise, that selects the lottery numbers, yet they are selected, and they are selected according to the definitions 1.a. and 1.b. you listed. Note that this simple example completely invalidates your claim of a special meaning to selection, and that continuing to make such a claim is foolhardy, illogical, silly and just plain wrong.
Regardless of what you say, claim, assert or espouse, evolution and natural selection are defined by the science and those definitions are used when discussing the science or you are equivocating or worse.
quote:
Message 148
Evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.
Natural Selection - the differential success of various phenotypes in a specific population and ecology in passing hereditary traits on to the next generation.
Something was happening long before Darwin, and human ideas about what was happening were in existence for as long as there were human beings around to think about what was happening, and there were people around thinking about evolution since the ancient greeks, and there were europeans speculating about the causes for evolution for some time before Darwin said a word, and some of those thinkers seemed to have been thinking thoughts very similar to Charles Darwin's [see Erasmus Darwin, et al], but the notion, "Natural Selection", did not actually come into full existence until Chuck put those words together and wrote a book about it.
Your problem here is that you cannot see that there is a vast difference between the country and a map of it. Evolution has been going on since the first day of life, and something has been driving it for all that time, and that is 'the country' we are exploring. But Darwin didn't draw his map of it until "OotS", and so "Natural Selection" did not exist before... whatever it was--1859?
And yet, aside from being false, this is still totally irrelevant to what evolution in general and natural selection in particular mean. As noted in Message 154
quote:
In addition "natural selection" existed before Darwin's use. See
Edward Blyth - Wikipedia
quote:
Edward Blyth accepted the principle that species could be modified over time, and his writings had a major influence on Charles Darwin. Blyth wrote three major articles on variation, discussing the effects of artificial selection and describing the process of natural selection as restoring organisms in the wild to their archetype (rather than forming new species). These articles were published in 'The Magazine of Natural History' between 1835 and 1837.[3][4] He was among the first to recognise the significance of Wallace's paper "On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of Species" and brought it to the notice of Darwin in a letter written in Calcutta on December 8, 1855:
Or another source
GenNet.org
quote:
Charles Darwin's ideas on evolution were anticipated in nearly every essential detail by several of his predecessors including his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) ... published a two-volume work titled Zoonomia (subtitled The Laws of Organic Life) in which he speculated on the chance evolution of all life by a purely materialistic mechanism involving adaptation through natural selection.
Again, you keep repeating nonsense instead of dealing with reality, and this is counterproductive.
The idea of natural selection was around before Darwin used it, nor did Darwin change its meaning, nor did Darwin imbue it with some false mysticism.
Language evolves, and so long as it evolves naturally, nobody complains. However, when language evolves naturally, word meanings do not become their exact opposites and retain both their original meaning and its opposite, setting up ambivalence, confusion, and communication breakdowm. It takes some "Humpty Dumpty" deliberate tampering to do that, and that tampering, that self-serving corruption, is exactly what the neo-darwinists did, and still do, to the word, 'selection'. The least darwinists could do is to alert their listeners to when it is that they are using 'selection' in the active sense, as a 'cause', and when it is that they are using it in their passive sense, as an 'effect'. But they very carefully letting anyone know that.
Yet the term is defined and used according to the definition given. Most people use that definition to understand the meaning of it's use in biology. Apparently you seem to think you need a code book. It would appear that only you have a problem, one that you have invented from misrepresenting words, history and facts.
quote:
Message 148
Evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.
Natural Selection - the differential success of various phenotypes in a specific population and ecology in passing hereditary traits on to the next generation.
Good thing thing then that I have never even come close to suggesting that language can never change, isn't it? What I have said is that language can change, and does change, and changes in two very different ways. Legitimately, language changes unintentionally from one sense to another as time marches on, or brand new words [neologisms] are introduced to signify novel things or original concepts. But language can also be changed illegitimately, Humpty Dumpty style, by people who want the word to take on a new sense that is qualitatively different from the sense in common usage. Either way the language ends up changed. Our problem in the present debate is not really about the fact that 'selection' can now mean both a cause and an effect, but the deliberate equivocation of using the 'effect' sense as if it were the 'cause' sense. Make up your minds, is "NS" a causal force, a 'mechanism' that explains observed effects, or is it those effects, the results/effects of some other causal mechanism. (It cannot cause itself, since logically, a cause cannot be its own effect, and vice versa, in one and the same case.)
Anyhoo, we've clobbered this one to death, and I cannot think of anything else to add to it, so if you want to believe that it is perfectly legitimate to use the same word, 'selection', in two different senses, interchangeably, that's your prerogative, but, for reasons given and amply explained, I disagree.
Disagree all you want, you are and still will be wrong. On the other hand reality will still consist of evolution and natural selection.
quote:
Message 148
Evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.
Natural Selection - the differential success of various phenotypes in a specific population and ecology in passing hereditary traits on to the next generation.
No kidding! Good thing I'm not trying to impress and affect "nature and the universe", isn't it? Merely trying trying to express my opinions to you. Not to them. What made you bring up "nature and the universe", anyway?
You seemed to think you had some earth shattering truth that would overturn reality. Glad you realize it is just an opinion -- one totally at ODDS with reality.
Yes, it does, although not in nearly so many cases as darwinists think that it does. But when true 'sexual selection' does take place, it totatally conforms to the pre-darwinian sense of 'selection', i.e., sentient beings make intentional choices between alternatives, based upon their ability to discriminate according to criteria based uipon values, with those values derived from their goals. Picking a sexual partner is 'selection' in exactly the same active sense as is picking out what tie you'll wear to work. It is the act of a sentient being, not an abstraction, such as Darwin's "nature"
Well, that's your opinion, and I'm sure you'll stick to it, and if you are only speaking of it as a particular ideational position, yours, then in that notional sense, you must be right. However, if you are trying to tell me that your notion and empirical reality map to each other in such perfection that you can say 'natural selection' as if it were some real and actual, physical and a tangible part of this universe, then you are equivocating. Like the song says, "It ain't necessarily so."
More falsehoods repeated. Sexual selection is still part of natural selection, and results in the same kind of selection of hereditary traits, and there is still no mystical metaphysical selector.
Sorry, I didn't see that list. I googled 'aspects of natural selection', but couldn't find any.
And you think that is an argument?
I did not "limit [natural selection] to passive entities. I expanded the term to include passive entities, as should have been perfectly plain in context. I think that you may may be deliberately throwing up 'non sequitur' objections, just for the sake of having something to say. I hope that that is not the case, since I would like to continue our debate. The point is, does your 'natural selection' apply as appropriately to inanimate objects and immaterial concepts as it does to living organisms, or does it not? Please respond to the point I'm making, and not to some point that I very clearly am not making.
The point is and has been that natural selection as used in modern biology applies to living organisms.
No, these truisms only tell us that death is a fact of life, something that doesn't require a 'scientific theory' in order to be observed and accepted into our bank of knowledge. You are trying to advance the notion that a fact of life is a scientific theory about a fact of life, and that is absurd.
Yet death before reproduction removes the phenotype from the gene pool. A very real effect that occurs to many organisms..
You are still just listing facts, i.e., effects, and acting as if the existence of these facts explains the existence of these facts. Like I said, that's absurd. Until you give a causal explanation for the fact that some "win" and some "lose", you are not saying anything, you are just talking.
Oh look -- you found the list.
Very true, but the we are not talking about facts, but about your hypothesis, "Natural Selection". You cannot debate facts, by definition--they are what they are, no more, no less. Notions about those facts are a whole other matter, but you repeatedly insist upon conflating the facts and your explanation for them, as if they were one and the same thing. They are not. You'll just have to accept that.
See that list again. Those are facts.
quote:
Message 147
Some organisms have genetic birth defects compared to others, and these will more likely be less able to live and reproduce than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce. Likewise, some organisms are genetically endowed with weak bones compared to others, and these will more likely be affected by broken bones than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce. And some organisms are genetically more prone to disease than others, and these will more likely be affected by disease than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce. And finally, some organisms are genetically not able to swim as fast or change directions compared to others, and these will more likely be affected by predatory sharks than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce.
If 'genetic drift' is something that results from 'natural selection', as you say here, then my reading on 'genetic drift'[i.e, Random fluctuations in the frequency of the appearance of a gene in a small isolated population, presumably owing to chance rather than natural selection."], must have been entirely wrong.
Nope. Genetic drift and natural selection are two different mechanisms. Genetic drift is the change in hereditary traits due to stochastic processes, not selection.
Birth defects, like broken legs and meteors dropping from the sky, are facts of life. They are not a theoretical postulate called 'natural selction'. Longevity, mortality, fecundity, and chance are all facts of life. None of them are 'natural selection'. You keep on making the same mistake, i.e., mistaking the actual country for your ideational map of it. It would appear that you would happily point to every aspect of life itself, and call it 'natural selection'. Life = NS? I do not think so.
Once again what you think is irrelevant. Birth defects are genetic and thus are directly subject to selection, most often resulting in death before reproduction. Broken legs can be a result of stochastic processes or it can be due to weak bones - a hereditary trait subject to selection. Meteors dropping from the sky are stochastic processes not subject to selection. Let me repeat that list of aspects of natural selection:
quote:
Message 147
Some organisms have genetic birth defects compared to others, and these will more likely be less able to live and reproduce than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce. Likewise, some organisms are genetically endowed with weak bones compared to others, and these will more likely be affected by broken bones than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce. And some organisms are genetically more prone to disease than others, and these will more likely be affected by disease than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce. And finally, some organisms are genetically not able to swim as fast or change directions compared to others, and these will more likely be affected by predatory sharks than others and thus be subject to natural selection due to their differential ability to survive and reproduce.
It is the differential success of various phenotypes - resulting from existing variations between individual phenotypes - in passing on hereditary traits to the next generation within a specific population and ecology that results in natural selection, regardless of what you think.
Whether or not you can empirically demonstrate that this assertion is true, let alone demonstrate that it is a common, non-anomalous circumstance, (sufficiently common as to constitute a scientific, universal, causal mechanism for evolution), remains to be seen. But what you have admitted is that your "NS" is a negative, subtractive, non-addditive phenomenon that, as Darwin's peers pointed out to him, cannot account for the addition of novel traits to the variations already existing. Which is why Fisher and co. invented the notion of 'adaptation by genetic accident', usually referred to as "RM+NS".
The Galapagos Finches, the Peppered Moths, the Walkingstick insects all demonstrate this fact. You can also look at any population of offspring and compare it to the population of the parents and actually measure the genetic differences.
RM+NS means random mutation plus natural selection, and not "adaptation by genetic accident' -- once again you are wrong. The random mutation is the part that adds variation to the population and natural selection is the part that removes the less successful variations for that particular population and ecology.
As we saw in the Galapagos Finches, the Peppered Moths, and the Walkingstick insects the supposed (by you) "negative, subtractive, non-additive phenomenon" acts in one way in one generation and then the other way in another generation, and thus cannot be truly "negative, subtractive, non-additive" -- instead it is just change, change that selects the phenotypes for adaptation to the ecology.
Which reduces everything that your "NS" gets to 'pick'/'eliminate', into a matter of pure chance. Which, logically, reduces your "NS" to an aspect of pure chance, which is what it was to begin with, anyway.
"Chance" is not a scientific mechanism. Being, by definition, irregular and unpredictable. So there goes both "RM" and "NS" as scientific mechqanisms. Into the bin of bad ideas. Sorry.
And again the facts show that you are wrong and your poor logic is false.
Since, according to you, these 'differential varitions' are the end product of pure chance, i.e., "random genetic mutations", then it is logically undeniable that they are chance as much a matter of pure chance as are the randomly mutated genes that produced them. Like it or not, you have reduced evolution, and life itself, to a matter of chance accident. But that's where materialism has its primary postulate, so I do not think that this conclusion is accidental, but is 'pre-determined'.
And still false. The "'differential varitions'" (sic) occur anew in each generation from random mutation, and thus are not an end product. Nor is any species or organism an "end product" but one in transition. Like it or not we are left with:
quote:
Message 148
Evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.
Natural Selection - the differential success of various phenotypes in a specific population and ecology in passing hereditary traits on to the next generation.
Any time you want to discuss your so far not provided concept of neo-Lamarckism we'll be happy to see how it stacks up. I won't be holding my breath however, seeing as you (a) have not replied to all comments on your opinion and (b) have failed to provide any substantiation for your opinions or (c) been able to refute the invalidations of your opinions by facts and substantiated arguements.
Enjoy.
Edited by RAZD, : sp

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 155 by Elmer, posted 11-12-2007 2:06 PM Elmer has not replied

  
molbiogirl
Member (Idle past 2642 days)
Posts: 1909
From: MO
Joined: 06-06-2007


Message 157 of 160 (433654)
11-12-2007 6:04 PM
Reply to: Message 155 by Elmer
11-12-2007 2:06 PM


If you're going to lie...
...at least make sure that proving you a liar isn't one google away.
Sorry, I didn't see that list. I googled 'aspects of natural selection', but couldn't find any.
The third hit. Understanding Evolution - Your one-stop source for information on evolution.
Seriously, Elmer.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 155 by Elmer, posted 11-12-2007 2:06 PM Elmer has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 158 by RAZD, posted 11-12-2007 6:30 PM molbiogirl has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 158 of 160 (433666)
11-12-2007 6:30 PM
Reply to: Message 157 by molbiogirl
11-12-2007 6:04 PM


Re: If you're going to lie...
Elmer wants a cookbook ... a list of all possible aspects.
Another site is A Population Genetics Model of Natural Selection:
quote:
Now that you've learned the basic model, let's consider some more aspects of natural selection as it affects situations such as those you have modeled: natural selection occurring because of different fitnesses of genotypes for a single gene with two alternate alleles in a diploid, sexually reproducing population. Depending on the traits being studied, and the environment, fitness relationships among genotypes vary. They also depend on just how the traits are coded -- whether one allele is completely dominant to the other (recessive) allele or whether there is some form of codominance or incomplete dominance such that the heterozygote has a different phenotype from either homozygote. (If these terms -- dominance, recessiveness, incomplete dominance, codominance -- are not completely familiar to you, be sure to review some genetics before proceeding!)
An important point to remember is that fitness depends on the phenotype -- the appearance, structure, function of an organism. If two different genotypes result in the same phenotype (as when one allele is dominant) then both of those genotypes will have the same fitness -- they look, act, function just like each other, so they survive and reproduce just like each other.
Although it might be a little too technical for one who can't distinguish between natural and nature ...
Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 157 by molbiogirl, posted 11-12-2007 6:04 PM molbiogirl has not replied

  
pumaz
Junior Member (Idle past 5885 days)
Posts: 4
Joined: 02-16-2008


Message 159 of 160 (456272)
02-16-2008 7:16 PM


Yikes this thread is somethin.
My post will be short and sweet.
Just a little interesting tidbit on mutation to stir things up.
Rates of mutation actually vary throughout areas of the genome. For instance, in the region that codes for your immune system the rate of mutations is much higher. This is because your immune system needs to be highly adaptable in order to continually protect you from new diseases.

Replies to this message:
 Message 160 by bluegenes, posted 02-16-2008 8:13 PM pumaz has not replied

  
bluegenes
Member (Idle past 2477 days)
Posts: 3119
From: U.K.
Joined: 01-24-2007


Message 160 of 160 (456283)
02-16-2008 8:13 PM
Reply to: Message 159 by pumaz
02-16-2008 7:16 PM


Stir up?
pumaz writes:
Just a little interesting tidbit on mutation to stir things up.
Rates of mutation actually vary throughout areas of the genome. For instance, in the region that codes for your immune system the rate of mutations is much higher. This is because your immune system needs to be highly adaptable in order to continually protect you from new diseases.
I participated in the thread at various points, but can't remember too much about it. I knew at the time that rates of mutation vary on different parts of the genome, and I can't see how that would stir things up. But I hope it does. We don't want to get bored on this site.
It certainly makes sense for the rate of mutation to be high in the immune system area, as variety within the population would increase the chances of a species surviving an attack by a new pathogen.
The main thing I remember on this thread was someone claiming that the phrase "natural selection" somehow implies sentience behind the process of evolution. It was pretty silly!
Welcome to EvC.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 159 by pumaz, posted 02-16-2008 7:16 PM pumaz has not replied

  
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