Evolution for Dummies and Christians

you realize that is why there is so much porn on the internet -- to educate the computers ...

I`ve sprung my comp a couple of times during the night when it was supposed to be switched off. Do you think it might be chatting up a sexy little Pentium in Venezuela?

Actually I am barking up a different tree.
What I am trying to point out is a speciation event does not increase genealogical diversity. To defend evolution we/you must find events that actually increase genealogical diversity. Otherwise we would all just be sub sets of the same one celled thing.From a creationist point of view speciation event works just fine, our most intelligent God put very genome diverse birds, spiders, humans or what have you on the earth. And as time went on speciation, separation and adaptation events occurred further subdividing the species, (possibly all the way up to the Genus level). So now we have a nice diversity of ever changing (through subdivision) set of plants and animals.Of course one of the logical arguments to actual increase in genetic diversity is going to be mutation. I am assembling my thoughts on this so I can present some intelligent discussion. I just wanted to say the word first.Thure

Not everyONE, everyTHING. Meaning all dogs, cows, kelp, starfish, etc. All the same species, by his definition

In the example we've been using, one species is resistant to copper, and the pre-existing species is not. How is that not an increase in genetic diversity?Remember, we aren't looking for anything to suddenly spring into being - that's the realm of Creationism, and it's just plain silly. Evolution predicts that "new" features should simply be slightly modified versions of already existing features. The resistance to copper is a minor change in the makeup of the plant, but it was also NOT a pre-existing but "de-activated" gene in the original species.It looks to me like we have an increase in diversity here. Whether the old species dies off or not is irrelevant. So, you're moving the goalposts. Now, you say that "evolution happens, and new species arise, just not new families or at the genus level, because that's what I consider a species." In other words, you're going back to the tired old Creationist "Kinds" explanation. Why should we use your made-up definitions? Biologists use a particular definition for the word "species." The example given shows a new species arising from an old species, according to that definition. You can't just go and switch the defnition when you don't like the evidence. Yes, though somehow I doubt you understand what a mutation is, except as the popularized but inaccurate strawman of mutation.Mutation does increase genetic diversity, from the perspective that it allows features to be slightly modified over many generations until the features are markedly different from those of their ancestors.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

You'll need to define diversity We *are* all subsets. We are all subsets of prokaryotic, subsets of eukarya, subsets of animalia, subsets of vertebrata, subsets of mammalia, subsets of primates in a subset of hominidae called 'Homo Sapiens Sapiens'. This is diversification. As the number of members in each set increases its diversity, a new level of subsets is required This message has been edited by Modulous, Fri, 30-September-2005 08:57 PM

Rahvin you missed something here
A small portion of the plants survived after being exposed to copper because they were geneitcaly able to do so. Why? Because the resitant genes were some portion of the normal population, unless you are suggesting all of the plants died and some portion sprung back to life with the the resistent gene. Nothing new just elimanation of the non-resistant genes. Is this really nessessary? I am happy to discuss anything you want but if you feel it is needed to insult me to somehow support your point of view count me out.Thure

I didn't miss it, thure. The consideration of whether the original population survived or not is irrelevant. We don't know what happened to them all in any case - certainly, the entire species was not wiped out in the experiment! But even if they had been, the extinction of an ancestor species in no way invalidates the fact that the copper-resistant population is a new species, and thus is a direct observation of evolution in action!If humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor, and that ancestor is now extinct, the logic you are using would mean that both humans and the other modern great apes are all the same species. That's simply not the case.If population A cannot interbreed and produce viable offspring with population B, then populations A and B belong to seperate species. If population B consists of the descendants of population A, then we have an example of a speciation event, where a new species has evolved. Wheter population A is rendered extinct after the fact is simply irrelevant. No insult intended, and I apologize if it was taken as such. Creationist websites, as well as the average layman's understanding, woefully misrepresent mutation and evolution. Your previous posts suggest to me that you may consider one of those misrepresentations to be the actual theory.Perhaps I could rephrase:What do you think mutation is? Why do you seem to think that mutation does not add genetic diversity from the perspective that diversity consists of slight alterations to pre-existing features? Am I incorrect, and that is not your position at all?

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

I agree, the time scale factor is the only reason there is any wiggle room left in this debate. An explaination can be considered valid if there is no direct proof against it.
Again I am looking for a reasonable but very specific explainiation of the mechanisim for actual EXPANSION of the gene pool.Thure

It's not a case of looking for wiggle room. The evidence is consistent with what we expect to see. Rapid evolution in a few hundred years would agree more with the ideas put forward by some creationists. (The idea is that Noah took relatively few animals on the ark - to get them to fit - and most modern species evolved form there. e.g. there would be one lot of "elephants" and all three existing species, as well as most extinct species, including mammoths and mastodons evolved from that one small group in a few hundred years at most).Mutation is known to happen and does expand the gene pool. Horizontal transfer (i.e. the transfer of genetic material by mean other than descent) can have a similar effect but it's mainly important to bacteria.

Hello, thure.You haven't yet replied to my previous message to you. Perhaps you felt that that discussion has played out, or maybe you find that you are too busy responding to too many people, and that's fine. I'm just bringing it up in case you just didn't see it.At any rate, the reason I am bringing it up is that I am reading the discussions that you are currently engaged in, and it seems that your argument is that you do not understand how "macroevolution" can be possible. Even if you do not understand how evolution can produce the diversity that we see around us, how do you deal with the great amount of evidence that exists that evolution has occurred?That is one of the points in my message -- in the message to which I was responding you were focussing on a very minor, irrelevant detail and ignoring the broader implications of the evidence. How do you deal with the actual evidence?

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"Intellectually, scientifically, even artistically, fundamentalism -- biblical literalism -- is a road to nowhere, because it insists on fidelity to revealed truths that are not true." -- Katha Pollitt

I would contend both groups are guilty of saying "the evidence I see supports my point of view because......." I know this point is difficult to see when the other sides argument seems so rediculus. I respect the fact anyone is willing to actually discuss this and not just say "your an idiot, what do I care what you think" I am going to push for a specific explanation of how mutation actually enters the gene pool and expands it, because I will contend it doesn't happen that way.

Chiroptera,
Sorry for not responding to your input, way too much to say not enough time. Well stated.
I am approaching this from the point of view that if we were created instead of evolved; Where are the faults in the evolution theory? Even though the evidence is very compelling, I still contend that macro evolution does not exist and there are significant holes in the theory.

thure, I'm sorry, but this statement is flawed from the outset. You are, in effect, saying "I don't know what the evidence or mechanism are, but I know they aren't right." You're starting from a conclusion (that "it doesn't happen that way") and working backwards (trying to explain away evidence you aren't yet aware of, and thus could not possibly be in a position to understand its validity or falsehood).As for the explanation of mutation and how it works...in-depth, that's the topic of another, ongoing thread, which you can find here. Some actual biologists are posting there, and they give an excellent overview on the actuall mechanisms of mutation and how it really works.A very basic description would be that our DNA does not self-replicate perfectly, for a variety of reasons (including environmental factors like ultraviolet radiation, etc). The changes during replication are very, very small, and often have no real effect on the organism. Occasionally, however, a very slight change in the genetic code and produce a different protein, for example, than the species typically uses in a particular way. Such a change, in this example, could cause a strain of bacteria to be highly resistant to a certain antibiotic that attacks the typical protein, but not the accidentally miscoded new one.DNA is made up of a chain of combinations of only four bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C), and guanine (G). Different combinations in certain orders code for different proteins. Replication errors can include a chain of ATG, CTA being miscoded into TGC, TAG simply by missing the replication of the adenine base in the first sequence - this can fundamentally change an entire sequence of proteins with only a minor error. Similarly, a mistake in replication could cause the code for "stop" to be coded where the chain was supposed to continue. Bear in mind - this is an overly simplified example.In this way, simple replication errors can make entirely new combinations and thus increase the diversity of the gene pool. In the example of the copper-resistant flower, a single protein was likely altered by random mutation, and the new protein does not react with copper like the original. Note that I'm guesing in this example, and only using it as an illustration of what mutation actually is and what its effects are.Over many, many generations, these replication errors can add up to make significant changes. It really is very much like a game of telephone - simple errors int he repetition of the original message will, eventually, result in the message being almost completely altered from the original. The difference is that living things will rarely have only a single offspring and exist as multiple populations (allowing for "branching off," so that evolution results in a tree structure rather than a simple line of descent), and the alterations are guided by natural selection so that more beneficial changes will thrive while others die out (either due to predators or simply competition for resources with better-adapted species).Evidence for mutation can be observed in many places, but the easiest is the example used in the first pages of the "Some mutations sound too good to be true" thread that I linked to: bacteria. Bacteria reproduce very quickly and, more importantly, asexually. Without mutation, every bacteria would simply be a clone of its parent. Experiments with bacteria involve using a single bacterium, just one cell, and growing a very large population from the individual organism. Then, an antibiotic is applied. Most die - but a few are resistant, and some are even immune! These resistant and immune bacteria similarly pass the new traits on to their offspring, showing that the resistance/immunity is genetic. Since bacteria reproduce asexually, the only way a genetic immunity could have formed is by a replication error - otherwise they would all be genetically identical and all die.Does this help explain mutation? I tried to be brief, and I think I've failed in that, but is there anything in this evidence that does not involve increasing genetic diversity? So long as you undertand that we are talking about baby steps, and not an organism suddenly being born with an extra limb, I don't think this evidence is possible to refute.Biologists in the house, please feel free to correct me on any errors in my understanding of genetics.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

At the risk of beating a dead horse. What I am trying to point out is that this speciation event did not expand the gene pool at all, it was derived from it. The significants of this point is the heart of the creation / evolution debate. The creationists say the genetic starting place was put here by God so all genetic events are derived from there. The evo's say it grew out of nothing. I say the evidence fits the creationist model not the evo model. I know that makes you think I am stupid but if you all are willing I would like to make you prove it to me. (Evolution, not that I am stupid...... ha ha) I agree 100%.
Show me the money, show me the expansion of GENETIC diversity, oh so nessessary for evolution. I think true mutation, GENETIC mutation..... heck my car mutates from a fine automobile to a piece of junk......... as congruent with the definations presented here......Thank God for google ......does exists and is meaningful but I will attempt to show it cannot, does not, will not account for everything you see around (alive that is, the big bang is for another day )