Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
7 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,815 Year: 3,072/9,624 Month: 917/1,588 Week: 100/223 Day: 11/17 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Ready When Made
Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 35 of 73 (61266)
10-16-2003 7:18 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by mike the wiz
10-16-2003 11:09 AM


However, my argument is evolution would not have time to happen, because .......time is the enemy(extinction). That is message 1. Nothing said so far has disproven it.
How about 450 species of ciclids in 2 MY, is that fast enough? Oh yeah, that's just in one lake, Lake Malawi in Africa. In all of East Africa, 1500 species from 1 common ancestor in 10 MY. This is just cichlids, little inconspicous fish. What rate of speciation are you requiring Mr. Wiz? Faster or slower than the cichlids?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by mike the wiz, posted 10-16-2003 11:09 AM mike the wiz has not replied

  
Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 40 of 73 (61307)
10-17-2003 1:55 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by Trump won
10-16-2003 10:26 PM


My theory is that life was better, people better health etc in the beginning and it was that way for awhile, then health started to decrease again, and today it's starting to increase again.
Where is the evidence that people used to be in better health? Long ages in the bible are at best an allegory, if not total hyperbole. Increased health today is the result of science (using the supposed cursed naturalistic methodology). We took the evil spirits out of medicine and inserted antibiotics. The latter seems to be working better.
Well this not including intelligence level of course.
Intelligence has probably been at a steady state for quite sometime. Recently watched a show on PBS about Archimedes (sp?) who lived around 200 BC I believe. His mathematics were destroyed during the Dark Ages, except for one transcript labelled "The Method." It had been written over with prayers by monks. In "The Method" Archimedes laid down proofs that are quickly looking a lot like the first proofs of calculus, more than a thousand years before Newton came up with it. He had solved how to measure volume by summing infinite slices, the hallmark of calculus. He was also the first to calculate pi, at least to the second decimal. Before this turns into a total diatribe, intelligence by itself has not changed, IMO, but rather knowledge has slowly built. The two shouldn't be confused.
Just to get back towards the topic, if everything was healthier, including plants, we should find fossilized trees with amazing ages as measured by growth rings. If this is limited to the animal kingdom, one can measure age by looking at bone growth as has been done to many mummies and the "Iceman" found in the Alps. These don't show increased age or anything suggesting superiour health. Sticking to the YEC timeline and your theory, they should show these attributes.
[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 10-17-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by Trump won, posted 10-16-2003 10:26 PM Trump won has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 43 by Trump won, posted 10-19-2003 12:40 AM Loudmouth has replied

  
Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 44 of 73 (61626)
10-19-2003 2:42 PM
Reply to: Message 43 by Trump won
10-19-2003 12:40 AM


I just don't know much of how to learn how life was like back then, especially since my theory has been slightly thrashed, as I see its flaws, I will continue to ponder all this.
The few anthropologists I have talked to seem to agree that art, religion, death rituals, and social hierarchy give special insight into daily lives of ancient civilizations. It pretty much comes down to what people did with their extra time outside of gathering food and giving shelter to their families. As an example, recent theories on pyramid building in Egypt state that the builders were not slaves, but rather citizens who gave up their free time between harvests as an offering to the pharoah. For a society to do this you would need societal and agricultural organization in order to support such a large population as well as a unified religion. We can never be absolutely sure exactly what went on in the past, but archaeology is helping us make a very reliable educated guess.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 43 by Trump won, posted 10-19-2003 12:40 AM Trump won has not replied

  
Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 51 of 73 (61776)
10-20-2003 12:38 PM
Reply to: Message 45 by defenderofthefaith
10-20-2003 6:16 AM


How would you interpret the acquired ability of flavobacterium to digest nylon. This ability came about due to a frame shift mutation and allowed the bug to take over a niche that was previously devoid of life. This example, IMO, describes an increase in "genetic information" that is counter to the belief in deterioration.
[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 10-20-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 45 by defenderofthefaith, posted 10-20-2003 6:16 AM defenderofthefaith has not replied

  
Loudmouth
Inactive Member


Message 70 of 73 (62153)
10-22-2003 2:13 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by defenderofthefaith
10-21-2003 5:22 AM


I completely agree with everything balyons said, except that no mutation can be beneficial. Mutations can be beneficial - depending on what criteria you're using - but they can't add information.
Explain how a new open reading frame whose product digests material only around since the early part of this century is not new information.
Although that may have looked like new genetic information, or macroevolution, at first, it's more likely to have been a loss of information in that the enzyme catalysis processes became less specific. By a loss of information, the enzymes would be less effective but more general in what they digested, allowing the enzymes to remove any inbuilt inhibition they may have had against chewing up nylon.
You are switching from one gene product to a "catalysis process". The old catalysis process, a complete glycolysis pathway, has been turned off due to lack of carbohydrates. The genes for the glycolytic pathway are still there. What has been produced, by a single mutation, is a novel pathway that supplies energy to the cell from a substrate that was up until this time unused.
Also, explain how the flavobacterium was inhibited in its ability to digest nylon. You seem to be suggesting that the bacteria had the ability to digest nylon before but another protein/chemical was preventing this.
Proteins and nylon are digested in a very similar manner (which is why nylon is the first substance you'd notice being catalysed if these mutations began).
Is there another example of a protein digesting enzyme that also digests nylon? I haven't heard of any, but I could be wrong. Could you please cite any examples.
Degeneration again - beneficial for the moment, mind you, depending on whether nylon is good for bacteria, but such losses of information would eventually create an enzyme that is permitted to digest a wide range of substances but is not good at it.
Explain how taking advantage of an unused niche is bad for a bacterium. Also explain how further mutation will cause the enzyme to be less specific, citing examples of other mutations to nylonase genes. Explain how digesting nylon is bad on principle alone.
Such bacteria would not survive when pitted against bacteria with substrate-specific very efficient enzymes.
In a solution of nylon, the new flavobacterium will kick the butt of any other bacteria out there. If you don't think so, cite another bacterium that can survive on nylon alone. Also, cite any other nylonase genes that are more nylon specific than that found in the flavobacterium.
But new evidence actually suggests plasmids may be responsible for the nylon digestion. Other bacteria have the same property and could have passed this information to the flavobacteria. See e.g. K. Kato, et al., ‘A plasmid encoding enzymes for nylon oligomer degradation: Nucleotide sequence analysis of pOAD2’, Microbiology (Reading) 141(10):2585—2590, 1995.
The nylC gene on the plasmid has been known from the start. What you are missing is that the identical plasmid, minus the frameshift mutation, is present in the wild-type carbohydrate only flavobacterium. Horizontal gene transfer may have contributed the plasmid in the past, but gene mutation that occurred could have been in the chromosomal genome as easily as in the plasmid. Frameshift mutations can occur in the chromosome as easily as in the plasmids.
If you think there is a disctinction, please explain how mutation to extrachromosomal DNA does not count as being beneficial or an increase in information.
In general, could you also explain what new information, in a genetic sense, would look like? Before you can explain away a negative, I think it would only be fair to define a positive as well. To simply say new information can not arise through mutation is a priori dismissing it without first defining what new information would look like.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 56 by defenderofthefaith, posted 10-21-2003 5:22 AM defenderofthefaith has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024