Question on arbitrary lines

If you don't intend to respond to any of the reasonable questions I've put to you, you are wasting my time. Good riddance. I don't put faith in anything. I think the evidence points towards an inflationary universe.What caused the big bang? I dunno. I can't know. That question may not even have meaning since it's not clear that causality has meaning outside of linear time. These are things that I can't use science to prove, only speculate.On the other hand, science can speak to explanations for the diversity of life on earth. I see no reason to complicate things with some intelligent designer simply because your personal incredulity doesn't allow for natural explanations of life. How do you calculate the "dds of our universe" when our universe is the only one we can observe? You can't specify odds from a sample size of one. For all you know our kind of universe - with all it's so-called "fine tuning" - is the only kind that can exist. Prove me wrong. Like what, exactly? How do you tell the difference between something we can't explain naturally yet and something we'll never be able to explain naturally? The one thing unique about humans is our ability to form very complex sounds, as well as huge amounts of brain devoted to language processing. It's my personal belief that our conciousness, social strutcture, moral sense, and even religious beliefs can be explained as natural results of high-order, symbolic language. I have only a little evidence, and I'm certainly not a cognitive scientist, but I believe it to be true. Maybe I'd be honest, and tell them "Maybe there's a heaven, where your mother is now, and where we'll see her again. But I don't know that for sure." Or maybe "Bad people killed your mom even though she didn't do anything." Or maybe I'd lie and tell them fairy tales to make them feel better. I dunno. I hope I never have to find out. So it's better to lie to ourselves to make us feel better? I might lie to somebody I didn't think could handle the truth, but I won't lie to myself. No matter how much you might hate a universe with no sky-man to watch out for you, that doesn't change the fact that it might be true.Anyway, atheism is ultimately a very empowering worldview. It teaches us that the responsibility for making this world a better place for everybody is on our own collective shoulders, not some all-powerful god who's going to swoop down to fix things for us.

And, back quite a few years, the first paws were simply less-fused flippers, or maybe more accurately, fins. Look at Acanthostega.

It does nothing of the sort. It's a very weak worldview with the sole purpose of teaching the doctrine that there is no deity. It gives authority to nothing at all, except perhaps to the conscience of an individual to do as it pleases knowing it has nothing to answer to, except the law if caught. It serves us no standard whatsoever and promotes one thing and one thing only and that is a disbelief in the existence of deity.I thought you wouldn't lie to yuorself?Respectfully, Paul.

Uh, as an atheist I think I'm qualified to say what atheism does and does not promote. Also associations such as American Atheists take a differing view than you as well.I wouldn't claim to tell you what you're beliefs are; why would you attempt to do the same for me?

Your criticisms of atheism seem to center around authority and standards. Why are these important to you?

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Since they do not show up fully formed, can you explain to me how half a lung (or claw, or flipper) could present a clear advantage for natural selection to act upon.

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Yes, but only because I read Darwin, and he did it for me. Swim bladders hold air for floating. Living tissue has the marvelous ability to be able to absorb nutrients from the substances it is in contact with. Some fishes can use their swim bladders to collect oxygen. This confers an obvious survival benefit.Other fishes have tubes (I'm sure there's a more technical term, but I can't seem to think of it right now) in their swim bladders. This provides more surface area and makes the swim bladder a better organ for the intake of oxygen from the air in it.Oh, I forgot to mention the first step, which is an opening to the outside of the fish, which allows it to intake air into the swim bladder. Some fishes have to provide their own air, pulled from the water, and this obviously is pretty useless for breathing. Many fishes do have an outlet for their swim bladder to take in it's own air.Obviously, at this point, we don't need much else. The tubes multiply, the surface area multiplies, and the swim bladder becomes quite efficient at absorbing oxygen, allowing the fish to survive in situations where it can't breathe water. At that point, it may still occasionally be used as a swim bladder, but it's a lung, too.The claw works like this, as Darwin also explained. The second segment of the front leg develops a ridge. This allows the first segment, furthest from the lobster, to press things against the ridge. This is a grasping mechanism, and it confers obvious benefit, and it needs no more than a bump.Believe it or not, now all that has happened is that ridge/bump has grown so large that it meets the first segment of the leg along the entire length of the segment, allowing it to work very well for grasping. As that happened, shape changes made the grasping effects even better, as the end part of the limb and the ridge gained the correct shape to be an efficient claw.All the steps I've outlined above are seen in nature, are small enough that even you would allow such mutations, and they lead to the claw and lung.I'll let someone else take a shot at the hand to flipper lineage, but I suspect even you could find the intermediate steps with a little thought.Funny, it turns out you can line up those kind of steps even with something as complex as an eye, and show the steps in living creatures today!

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A good starting point is this English translation of an early Chinese article: http://dawning.iist.unu.edu/...a/bjreview/97Apr/97-13-7.html

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The time frame in that article is 3-5 million years, not 2-3. That still makes it very rapid, but it is nearly double the time frame you gave.It seems to me, as a real amateur at all this, that with every niche of life open to the evolving species of the Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian era, it's no wonder evolution was so rapid. Even after the extinction of the dinosaurs, mammals filled most of the niches of life in 10-20 million years, which is an extremely rapid explosion of evolution due to lack of competition. Many avenues of development were open to the new organisms.The Cambrian explosion was a perfect period for the same sort of development, and it's not real surprising, due to the way we label things and the way life tends to "fill the niches" that no new phyla have developed since. There was a discussion on a different thread about the way we classify life forms, and we would not be prone to creating a new phyla in which to put some new life form we found today.

vr_junkie writes:

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What remains to be seen is: new, additional, and functional genetic information for new structures which were not already present.

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I am open to this - but am very skeptical that it will be shown/discovered.

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Then I suggest you do some research: Remold SK, Lenski RE.
Contribution of individual random mutations to genotype-by-environment interactions in Escherichia coli.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Sep 25;98(20):11388-93.
PMID: 11572987 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]"Beneficial mutations are generally thought to be rare but, surprisingly, at least three mutations (12%) significantly improved fitness in maltose, a resource novel to the progenitor." Elena SF, Ekunwe L, Hajela N, Oden SA, Lenski RE.
Distribution of fitness effects caused by random insertion mutations in Escherichia coli.
Genetica. 1998;102-103(1-6):349-58.
PMID: 9720287 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]Imhof M, Schlotterer C.
Fitness effects of advantageous mutations in evolving Escherichia coli populations.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001 Jan 30;98(3):1113-7.
PMID: 11158603 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]Rozen DE, de Visser JA, Gerrish PJ.
Fitness effects of fixed beneficial mutations in microbial populations.
Curr Biol. 2002 Jun 25;12(12):1040-5.
PMID: 12123580 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]Okada H, Negoro S, Kimura H, Nakamura S.
Evolutionary adaptation of plasmid-encoded enzymes for degrading nylon oligomers.
Nature. 1983 Nov 10-16;306(5939):203-6.
PMID: 6646204 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]Negoro S, Kakudo S, Urabe I, Okada H.
A new nylon oligomer degradation gene (nylC) on plasmid pOAD2 from a Flavobacterium sp.
J Bacteriol. 1992 Dec;174(24):7948-53.
PMID: 1459943 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]Prijambada ID, Negoro S, Yomo T, Urabe I.
Emergence of nylon oligomer degradation enzymes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO through experimental evolution.
Appl Environ Microbiol. 1995 May;61(5):2020-2.
PMID: 7646041 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]What about this experiment you can do right now in your own bio lab?Take a single E. coli bacterium of type K. This means that it is susceptible to T4 phage. Let it reproduce until it forms a lawn. Then infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do you think will happen? That's right...plaques will start to form and the lawn will die since, after all, all the bacteria are descended from a single ancestor who was genetically susceptible to T4 phage.But what we actually see is that while the majority of the lawn dies, we see a colony or two surviving happily in the midst of all this virus. How can this be? Remember, all the bacteria in the lawn are descended from a single one that can't fend off T4. If these survivors were capable of fending it off because of some pre-existing genetic capability, then the entire lawn should be able to do so, too, since they all have the same genome.The only answer, of course, is that they don't have the same genome. These bacteria that are surviving are mutants. And, indeed, they are called K/4 because they can fend off T4 phage.But wait, we're not done. Take one of these K/4 bacteria and again, let it reproduce until it forms a lawn. Then, infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do you think will happen? Well, the lawn should survive without any trouble because the entire lawn is descended from a single bacterium that was immune to T4 phage.But what we actually see are plaques starting to form. How can this be? Remember, all the bacteria in the lawn are descended from a single one that is immune to T4. If that one could fend off T4, then the entire lawn should be able to do so, too, since they all have the same genome.But wait a second...did the bacteria evolve or did the phage? A little thought shows that it had to be the phage that generated a mutant, not the bacteria. That is, suppose there were a reversion mutation in one of the divisions of the bacteria to wild type. Well, that bacterium would be infected by T4 phage and die, but it would then open up space for the K/4 bacteria that is surrounding it to fill in. Thus, we'd never seen any plaques...as soon as a K-type bacteria died, it'd be replaced with K/4 bacteria which are immune.Thus, we necessarily conclude that the T4 phage is the organism that mutated. And, indeed, they are called T4h because of this mutation.So there you go: Beneficial mutations right before your eyes.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

I don't doubt the veracity of your experiment, but I had a question. I'm no microbiologist so some of the terms confuse me.What exactly is a "lawn" in this context? I think I understand but I'd like to be sure.

Nice list of references. But it's all bacteria. And beneficial mutations out of bacteria are (in my experience) useless against creationists.Got any examples of observed beneficial mutations in eukaryotes? Or maybe humans?