Faith

Jar, you made me laugh {snicker}!Actually, aside from a few annoying fundamentalist types attempting to convert me, my experience of christians is quite good. Some are friends, some are relatives, or members of the community helping people. I don't have a problem with christians, or jews, or muslims, or mormons, or quite a range of beliefs for that matter.I'm more annoyed by the claims, philosophy and history which don't appeal to my sense of what is possible, logical, or sometimes even good.lfen

Riverrat,Okay, this statement indicates to me that you really don't understand the basics of genetics, and if you don't understand genes and how they work ToE is going to be incomprehensible to you. We can't post books to this board and really it will take at least a small book or a couple of chapters in a text.But I'll give a bit of an outline. Individuals develop from the divisions of one cell. The DNA in that cell replicates before dividing and it's "daughter cells" contain identical or near identical DNA. This is for the life of the individual. DNA is arranged as chromosomes and the chromosomes are paired. Looking at organisms that use an egg and sperm to create offspring each organism carries eggs and/or sperm which are cells having only 1 each of chromosomes instead of a pair.An individual once matured contains millions of cells. Mutations in those cells might result in cancer or something but that ends with the individual and as they are already grown they aren't going to be changing much.It's in the germ cells, the eggs and sperm that if a mutation occurs, say due to a cosmic ray altering one of the amino acids, then every cell thereafter [edit: this is assuming those cells result in a fertilized cell that develops into an adult] contains a copy of that mutation including that offspring's germ cells which will be inherited by its offspring. That is how mutations enter the general population. Only mutations in sperm and egg will do this.Individuals develop but they don't evolve. Changes are passed on to offspring. I've simplified this and overlooked exceptions. The role of chromosomes, genes, DNA, RNA, in cell developement and division is something that is not hard to understand compared to say calculus but it will mean taking a few hours to read over and ponder the material in the book. There is fairly simply probilities involved.Of course I find this subject interesting so reading about it fun for me, I would hope you would find it enjoyable also but everyone has there own tastes.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 09-06-2004 06:11 PM

I can't say that I am right now, nothing major anyway. But every few years yea.

Isn't that different than the actual odds on the back of the ticket, which we were talking about?

Thats what I'm saying.
But! that still doesn't it make it your personal odds of winning or losing. Because some people can win more than others, most loose though.
How would explain that? and don't say luck.I really don't have much problem with mathematical odds, its odds that are based a bunch of unknowns that bother me.

Plus Murphy's law.I know its not a technical term, but they do use it, I know a few people in the industry. If it can happen it will, they have learn this through the scientific method of objective observation.In other words, if the odds are 100 to 1 that something could happen within a given year, they would look at it and say its more likely that the odds will get beaten, and we will lose, so lets bump up the premiums to cover, just in case.

I pretty much understood all that already.But what you described to me happened in an individual. So the individual started it, and then a population came from it. The way schraff explains it, one would think that the population as a whole would evolve at the same time.To me it is possible that once mutated, the individuals offspring can then make a new population, not that the whole population would evolve identical to one another. This is how I understand it.So if this is true all DNA from a given population can be traced back to one individual. Do have this right?Thanks for your time.

Oh one other question. I'm sure you know about the bacteria in the petri dish evolving experiment. It seemed to me the way it was explained, that they evoloved on the spot, after the were developed, by exposing them to an attacking bacteria, and not during the development stage. The offspring did carry on the mutation.I'm guessing the evolution between bacteria and humans is very different. Why is that, other than the obvious differences between humans and bacteria?

Well, you still need to spend a little time with a text. After the cell and division etc comes population genetics. A population will typically have a range of individuals. There are cases where the individuals are very similiar but usually there is a range and since a group of interbreeding individuals defines a population there will be differing genes in next generation's offspring.If there are differnce in the reproduction rates of individuals that mix of the population will vary over time. But I don't want to write a textbook and I'm running out of time. But yes the population changes over time as different individuals die or fail to reproduce and others reproduce more.Once you understand genetics you can then look at the arguments for evolution because mutations in the genes and the increase of those mutations in the population of the descendents is the hypothesized mechanism of evolution.lfen

I'd have to read the study. Bacteria are single cells and I forget what it's called but they will sometimes swap genetic material across their cell membranes and they divided very fast so they go through a lot of generations in a day so mutations can spread much faster.On the other hand it's DNA that is being changed, mutated, in both bacteria and humans. All life uses DNA, well, except for some viruses that use RNA but that is still related to DNA.lfen

Quick qestion, so do we really know if mutations can stand the test of time? Is this proven? Other than the evidence of the fossil record, which shows changes in species that can easily be reconized as steps of evolution.

RNA are the building blocks of DNA, a blueprint more or less?

This is really where a good book, even text book with illustrations of the cell, and of DNA, etc will be so much better.DNA is not used to construct proteins. Instead it's used to make an RNA copy, and it's been so long and I've not time to look up spellings and such, but ribonucleic acid is involved vs Deoxyribonucleic acid. At any rate RNA is used as the template on which amino acids are attached to build the chains of proteins that are used in the building and functioning of the body. I prefer the concept of a template to blueprint, the proteins are assembled on the RNA.DNA is built of nucleic acids, and so is RNA, it's sort of a copy of the DNA that is taken out of the nucleus to where the proteins are assembled. Cells are just amazing little things all that they do on a molecular scale is incredible.Public libraries or used books stores will have a range of books on this. Just look for a book on the cell and they will treat of this.lfen

Well, DNA is a long sequence of amino acids. Three sequences are used to uniquely specific one of the (22?) amino acids that are used to make the proteins in our bodies. Mutations can change one or more of the amino acids which changes the protein that would fit there. Now DNA has some self repairing features. But I don't know much about that. But if the mutation stands it's copied and thus inherited.You've heard of the human genome project? As the genes are sequenced so we know the sequence of amino acids then we can compare the sequences between people, species, etc.I'm not sure what you mean by "standing the test of time" but mutations are passed on and we can map them, so yes they endure because they are what make the changes.lfenThis message has been edited by lfen, 09-07-2004 12:16 AM

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And thanks for all your time, but I pretty much understood all that already. Its when people start telling me that I don't know whats going on, then I start asking questions like the ones I asked you to make sure I do really understand.