Request Assistance - Adaptation, Mutations, etc.

Hi all,I'm a layman and new here seeking assistance in responding to a creationist that I'm in a debate with. Since his post is rather lengthy and not wanting to clutter the Evolution Forum with such long posts containing several topics, I thought I would post it here in the Free for All. But if it needs to be moved, please do.I can point out his arguments of incredulity, it's more the first four paragraphs or so that deals with adaptation, mutation, and the part on DNA that I'm not clear on and need help with. I don't think some of his claims are accurate and if anyone can identify the errors, please let me know. In the meantime, I'll be doing some mining and researching on my own. Tks in advance for any assistance./JasonHere's his post:

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I believe [poster] may have been poking a little fun at the belief that skin color types evolved from causes of various exposure levels to the sun, over time, as if getting a tan was something you could pass the effects of - to your offspring. Just getting a tan wont produce darker children from the parents, we know we only inherit traits from germ cells - the cells involved in reproduction. So I think [poster] was maybe poking some fun, because darker skin would only result from genetic changes within germ cells themseles, not our skin cells. This kind of leaves evolutionists without a real explanation for the varoius colors of skin for the races - besides vague and ambiguous "just so" stories. It would seem reasonable to me, that a wise creator, put in the original humans - enough genetic variation ... that would allow time and reproduction and isolated populations, to cause these to be expressed. This would still mean we do not know what specific environmental factors caused the genetic variations to be expressed resulting in the various races and skin colors being produced ... but based on our findings of other pathways for adapation, I believe these could be found one day.

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Adaptation has been found to happen related to various inducers in the environment - signaling in various ways for genes to turn on and off, sometimes whole arrays of genes, or reversible point mutations in a nucleotide chain of a gene. Since these changes can be reversed in the absence of a specific inducer - adaptation - minus all the evolutionists word games and shell games, really has nothing to do with 'evolution'. There is a great book out on this whole matter by a Biophysicist named Lee Spetner, his book is called "Not by Chance". I suggest it. He also shows how known mutation rates in germ cells (the only cells that pass on heritable information) are too low to provide the required 'raw material' evolution would hypothetically require to end up producing all the new traits that it would need to explain. Critical examination of evolution claims that go deeper than evolutionists simplistic apologetic defenses of their belief - leave one wondering why they believe it at all.

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When I look into 'adapation' examples, I find evidence instead for a creator who made life with the capacity to adapt to varoius climates and food souces. Brilliant indeed. I do not find evidence adaptation occurs because of any evolutionary process that can be translated into some kind of evidence for believing all life evolved.

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Is there really scientific evidence that mutations have accumulated over time and then been ordered via natural selection to produce brains, wiring of the brain and everything attached to the brain ? Is there evidence accumulated mutations can even change a single celled life form into multicellular life forms where different type cells cooperate as part of a system ? Is there one example of speciation due to accumulated mutations ? Is there evidence evolution could even produce the simplest of cell structures or machinery ?

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Well, that evolution would take a long time is understood, if it was even a valid idea to begin with - but of course just saying we cant expect to see it truly operate in ways that would validate the hypothesis in our life time - well that kind of removes it from being 'science' doesnt it ? The scientific method is dependant upon testing, experiment, and reproducing results. So its not very scientific for an evolutionist to claim something to the effect that mutations did accumulate over long periods of time, and natural selection used these, ordered these - so that new body plans, systems, senses, organs, etc, ... were produced.

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Mutating a cells DNA will not really give you evolution - since the DNA must specificaly interact with the cells machinery, the DNA transcription process involving different types of RNA, the cells protein transport system (to transport proteins made from DNA) - mutating the DNA beyond a very small margin would make the whole system grind to a halt since much of it is lock and key type. The DNA copying and transcription process even includes error checking for the whole process, this is very complex. Though some mutations do get through the error checking process - who would really believe that natural selection was used to build a mutation error checking system (multilevel) to weed out mutations, while at the same time evolutoin is dependant on mutations for raw material to "evolve" things ?

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Mutating DNA will not give you classical evolution as defined by evolutionists, because the DNA must interact with the cells machinery in very specific 'lock and key' type operations (another reason to read Lee Spetners book) ... instead ... it would require not JUST mutating DNA, but also mutating the very structure of the cell, its transport systems, microtubules (which transport specific proteins - not just any kind).

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The more I look into things, the more I find evolutoinists have terribly and unexcusedly oversimplified the complexity of life on all levels - in order to hand people a very simplistic idea and make it plausible. But more critical thinking and examination makes their claims look almost purposefully dishonest (in some cases) - or at least, very vague and ambiguous, enough so - that they can make GRAND claims without providing any real scientific evidence for the claims, all the while claiming evolution is 'scientific' .

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There is no evidence for your "most likely" claim to a ancient bacterium that contained all the basic properties that characterize present day life - meaning one that would lend support to the idea that plant and animal type cells both evolved from this. By the way .. bacteria is still here, and isnt changing into anything 'new'. That should tell you something. That all of life is made of cells, contains DNA (depending on who you agree with about viri being alive) made of similar substances, can ALSO be used as an argument that ONE creator made all life forms and DNA codes. This type of reasoning by evolutionists is another example of the non-scientific nature of the belief, it is instead dependant on 'reasoning' from special assumptions that they cannot provide evidence for. So, I say that all life contains DNA codes that we are still grasping the incredible complexity of - is evidence life was created by a incredible intelligence who writes fantastic CODE - and our relation to bacteria, is not in ancestry, but in being made by same multiskilled engineer / creator.

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After all ... we have no evidence life began on its own, and evolved into a bacteruim cell ... origin of life researchers do not even use Miller/Urey amino acid experiments for further research today - because of the flaws in the idea, and knowing life would not begin this way. Anyone can read the ISSOL papers online, International Society for Study of origin of life. In some respects the evidence that life began on its own is worse than 50 years ago, because those ideas have since been seen as totally flawed and as dead ends. You wont find credible evidence life began on its own, and evolved into cellular life. And ... think about it ... we do not observe life beginning on its own in todays world - from non living chemicals and evolving upwards - though life flourishes on this planet - so if it could begin on its own, it still should be - that we dont obsefve even the *hint* of it - means it never happened to begin with.

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I believe [poster] was referring to random mutations that evolutionists believe accumulate over time and then natural selection works on them. I am sure they were not suggesting chemical reactions are all random. For some reasons I gave above, and more I could give, or more detail I could give on reasons given above - there really is no evidence or reason to believe any examples provided by evolutionists, ie; bacterial resistance, insect pesticide resistance, polyploidy, etc ... no reason to see any of these as evidence that an evolutionary process could even produce the very simplest of cell structures or machines, let alone whole organs like a heart, or eventually a brain of some kind. The claims of evolutionists seriously overstep any type of real scientific evidence that is derived FROM the 'scientific method' of experimentaiton and reproducing results. Instead a flurry of 'conjecture as evidence' is thrown at people, topped with a full helping of 'most scientists believe it', and so on. I for one, want to see the 'science' , less conjecture masquerading as 'evidence' - and less rhetoric in the form of appeals to imagined authority of the scientists who believe it - since they cannot explain how their belief / evolution - even produced a simple cell structure or machine. This being the case, why believe evolution has produced 'everything' ?

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I think being open minded about the whole matter is best. Scientists who believe evolution and push it, cannot explain how it produced anything, make claims Farrrrrrrrr beyond any credible scientific evidence - and have the general public confused a bit, not being able to tell the difference between the scientists conjecture VS real scientific evidence for this hypothesis. The media is just saturated with overconfident assurances in one form or another, that evolutoin is some kind of fact. And we all know what happens if you question this, ... you do not get scientific evidence derived from the scientific method to correct your hillbilly understanding of science - your intelligence gets insulted ... then it leaves the realm of science completely, and the argument against you is just that you are uneducated, 'the scientific world accepts evolution - but religious nuts hold onto their myths', and so on.

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I'm not suggesting you are alike this at all, I dont even know you. I for one, would like to for once though, see a evolutionist defend their belief with science, scientific evidence ... and I definately separate conjecture and opinion from evidence derived from scientific method. Logical reasoning of the type you already used concerning bacteria being our ancestor ... that type reasoning can go both ways - a creationist can argue the designs and similarites are evidence for a creator of all life, while you may see it as evidence all life evolved from common ancestors. Since this can go both ways, I dont see how it would help evolution. Evolutionists claim the theory is scientific, they should provide REAL scientific evidence.

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I find many people, looking at both sides of the coin objectively, ARE open minded about a creator. The designs in life that we study and copy and use in new applications, why cant these point to a 'designer' ? Our minds/ Brains were used to make computers, so who made brains

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{The above quote was in all "bold" typeface. Looking at it made my head hurt - so I "debolded" it - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 07-05-2003]

Yes, there's evidence for all of that. There's innumerable instances of speciation through reproductive isolation. There's unicellular organisms mutating into colonial ones, and from colonial cells into slightly specialized ones.Since we don't know what the "simplest cell" would be like, there's no way to say if it could have arisen through natural abiogenesis. I really think he's wrong about this. If you alter DNA codons you get altered proteins. That's all DNA codes for, anyway - protiens. You can alter DNA anyway you like, and get any arbitrary chain of amino acids you like. Straw man. This is only one step removed from the "if man evolved from apes, why are there still apes?" argument. Speciation happens when a population of species is divided into subgroups who are reproductively isolated from each other. So there's no reason for bacteria to cease to exist when a more complex organism comes to be.Your grandparents don't die just because you were born. And if you're from Cleveland, Cleveland doesn't disappear when you move to Chicago. Naw, it's really not - when you look at multiple designs from the same designer, they rarely are anything alike, unless they're designed for the same thing. Dean Kamen invented both the wearable insulin pump and the Segway scooter. There's nothing about these two things that are the same. No Segway parts appear in the insulin pump, or vice-versa.If I saw a submarine, and it had the exhaust manifold and suspension from a Chevy, it's reasonable to conclude that it was built from Chevy parts, because that's what the builder had. It is however not reasonable to conclude that it was specifically designed by a Chevy engineer, because no reasonable engineer would include those uesless parts by design.Whales have useless leg and hip bones. Why would a designer have included those? It's much more reasonable to conclude that whales have those bones because their ancestors had legs. Not really. I mean, we don't have evidence of god acting in the world, but I assume this guy wouldn't take that as evidence against god creating life? I detect a double standard.Anyway, it could simply be that abiogenesis can only occur under circumstances (atmosphere, etc) that don't exist on a world already full of life. I don't like creationists trying to judge what is and is not science. Maybe they should start with their own position. A belief that a supernatural entity created everything can never be a scientific proposition.

Thanks crashfrog for your input. A question - Does environmental factors cause genetic variation?

Your creationist's paragraph one is a misunderstanding, or misrepresentation, of evolution. What he describes is lamarckian evolution-- the inheritance of aquired traits. And he is right. This doesn't happen. Good thing this isn't what the ToE proposes. Take the example of skin color. If I go to the beach and get a tan, I don't pass that along to my kids ( via one of the beach bunnies who invariable flock to me ). However, I was born with a particular 'tan-factor.' Every one is. One's tanning ability is roughly one's ability to withstand the damage caused by sunlight, and this is related to skin color. Ok. Put me and a thousand other people on the beach. Some of those people will die within a few days or weeks, from massive sunburn. Others will be weakened but survive. Others will thrive. Now, think about what happens when we beach people mate. Those that died early don't reproduce. Those that were weakened by the sun reproduce poorly-- ie. infrequently. Those that thrive make the most babies. Thus, in the next generation, the average 'tan-factor' of the population has gone up-- skin color has darkened. There is no inheritance of acquired traits, just survival of the more functional traits.

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Adaptation has been found to happen related to various inducers in the environment

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I think he is equivocating on the word 'adaptation.' Some of the body's systems do change in response to environment. Red blood cell count increases if you move to higher altitude, for example. This isn't the same 'adaptation' meant in evolutionary theory. The increase in red blood cell count is not heritable, while it is a response to the environment. The ability to modify that count is heritable, but is not a response to the environment ( except when discussing whole populations over time ).Genetic mutation is triggered by environmental factors-- exposure to the sun tends to promote skin cancer, for example. This is not adaptation, just mutation. Adaptation only occurs when one of those mutations happens to be useful and heritable.

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Is there evidence accumulated mutations can even change a single celled life form into multicellular life forms where different type cells cooperate as part of a system ?

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Sure. There is a whole range of life forms from single celled through various stages of symbiosis to what we call multicellular-- arguably just highly complex symbiosis. Take a look. Google: symbiotic life

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Is there one example of speciation due to accumulated mutations ?

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Sure. Lots... Google: observed speciation

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Well, that evolution would take a long time is understood, if it was even a valid idea to begin with - but of course just saying we cant expect to see it truly operate in ways that would validate the hypothesis in our life time - well that kind of removes it from being 'science' doesnt it ?

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Two problems. 1) All of the major components of evolution are observable in one lifetime-- mutation, adaptation, speciation-- and the long term history isn't just made up, but is inferred from volumes of data. 2) Restricting 'real' science to what can be observed in one lifetime rules out a LOT of science. We can't even talk about the rise and fall of the Roman empire because we can't observe it. Silly...

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Mutating a cells DNA will not really give you evolution - since the DNA must specificaly interact with the cells machinery, the DNA transcription process involving different types of RNA, the cells protein transport system (to transport proteins made from DNA) - mutating the DNA beyond a very small margin would make the whole system grind to a halt since much of it is lock and key type.

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BS. It is very easy to show in a lab that mutating DNA does cause changes that do not always destroy the systems. Think about it. What the guy is saying is that changing one component means changing many other components as well. This isn't true. I can replace the battery in my car and not change all of the related systems. I can change the tires, the alternator, the brakes... Very few changes actually require alterations to other systems.

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Though some mutations do get through the error checking process - who would really believe that natural selection was used to build a mutation error checking system (multilevel) to weed out mutations, while at the same time evolutoin is dependant on mutations for raw material to "evolve" things ?

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Most mutations are harmful. Weeding them out makes perfect sense. In other words, if you have too many mutations in the same organism it dies before reproducing. This selects for organisms with slower mutation rates.And, evolution doesn't know it is dependent upon mutations. It isn't thinking things through and evaluating the consequences. This kind of personification of evolution is pretty typical of creationists.

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There is no evidence for your "most likely" claim to a ancient bacterium that contained all the basic properties that characterize present day life

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The earliest bacteria wouldn't likely be much like what we see today. Several billion years have passed.

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By the way .. bacteria is still here, and isnt changing into anything 'new'.

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Lol... this from someone who was just complaining that evolutionists oversimplify! Bacteria are constantly evolving and doing so damned quickly too.

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can ALSO be used as an argument that ONE creator made all life forms and DNA codes.

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With no evidence for said creator, it is a moot point. You could equally well argue for aliens or gnomes as being the creators.

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This type of reasoning by evolutionists is another example of the non-scientific nature of the belief, it is instead dependant on 'reasoning' from special assumptions that they cannot provide evidence for.

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Actually, there is evidence for all of evolution's tenants. Your poster has a problem with the 'direction' of inference. Your poster, being first a believer, assumes God at the beginning and builds a top-down view of life based on that assumption. Evolutionary scientists look at life today and try to infer what happened in the past, not, as implied, assume the past and derive the present.

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So, I say that all life contains DNA codes that we are still grasping the incredible complexity of - is evidence life was created by a incredible intelligence who writes fantastic CODE - and our relation to bacteria, is not in ancestry, but in being made by same multiskilled engineer / creator.

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Yes, a designer who would flunk out of engineering school...

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After all ... we have no evidence life began on its own, and evolved into a bacteruim cell

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But we do have evidence of evolution and no evidence of a creator.

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origin of life researchers do not even use Miller/Urey amino acid experiments for further research today - because of the flaws in the idea, and knowing life would not begin this way.

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This is just false. There are very similar experiments ongoing. If the criticism is aimed at the M/U experiment specifically, the objection is just comical. It was performed fifty years ago. We've learned a lot since then.

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Anyone can read the ISSOL papers online, International Society for Study of origin of life.

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Why he would cite ISSOL is beyond me. The first article on the page is about the prebiotic synthesis of an amino acid. This is is supposed to show that no one believes it is possible?

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that we dont obsefve even the *hint* of it - means it never happened to begin with.

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This is silly. There is one major difference between conditions now and conditions while life's precursors were forming. That difference? Life. Living things take up all the niches. Where would a fragile molecule find the peace to exist? The by-products of life have also radically altered the whole planet-- oceans, atmosphere, you name it. Conditions are not the same.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com{Fixed one quote box. John had used "url" when he meant to use "quote" - Adminnemooseus}[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 07-05-2003]

Crash- he asked about "wiring" and as John went thru to talk of Lamarkianism it IS possible to discuss this but one would need to be prepared to address some of Faraday's thoughts on fish for instance intstead of cells as you remarked in a chemistry of the environment etc under some topological conditions but even then the word "wire" may not come thru the neturalizable interpretation. All this IS possible. I dont know that I will have the time to create the "mock" discussion if asked however.

To my knowledge, the answer is "kind of." I understand that, when a population of some organisms find themselves under great survival stress - starvation, etc - it causes their DNA to accrue more mutations. So environmental factors can increase mutations, but they never (to my knowledge) directly cause specific adaptations to any environment.I mean, stuff in the evironment, like chemicals or radiation, can sure cause mutations. No problem. But never does the environment "shape" an organism in heritable ways. (That's Lamarkian evolution, which doesn't exist.) Remember adaptation and evolution aren't things that happen to individuals, they're things that happen to populations.

I originally misunderstood this. I thought adaptation did apply to single organsims.-John, thanks for you comments. Great clarification.-Brad, I can't quite follow your comments, but appreciate them nonetheless.

Don't sweat it. It was a big deal (in my mind, at least) when this little truth dawned on me. I think the problem stems from living in a special-effects culture - we all too easily envision evolution as one organism morphing from a salamander to a rodent to an ape to a human.Just remember that an organism is born with all the heritable adaptation it'll ever have. It's either adapted or it dies without reproducing. The change that evolution refers to only happens to populations.

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Most mutations are harmful.

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Really?I thought most mutations were neutral.

Ouch! You're right. I should have said 'most non-neutral mutations are harmful'-- the point being that most mutations which are acted upon by natural selection are harmful. It is far more likely that a mutation will break something than that it will provide some advantage.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Well- indeed you hit the "motherload" for TAHT is the problem I had with elite biologists who for reasons of anglo-saxon philosophy and some agenda in the HUMANTIES (as best I can guess) they suppressed or repressed much fundamental THINKING about sub cellular adapations. Indeed SINGLE CELLS could. The light shown"" when I was reading an old zoology book of my grandfather's and I notices that the case for heritability was made at the colony betwen single cell and multicellular life and in an instant I realized that the adaptive/nonadaptive issue that CONTROLS the writing of history of biology at corneLl was dependent ON NOT REVEALING this bias agaisnt, what you correctly thought you needed to correct, YOU DID NOT....If one now reads Gould's position on D'Archy Thompson to where he rejects final cause of morphology I hope you can get this drift. It IS crystal clear and shows only a biased approach to the MATH of diffusion. Evolutionary theory as the best we got hangs by a very, very thin thread.This is why I have re-framed my own investigation of the matter in terms of the question. Are topobiology cell collectives cell death toxin-antidote modules changED genetically? for by asking all of my evo question in triplicate this way (topobiology, endosybiont mitochondrial apoptosis, genetic difference) I DO permit and actively investigate what in 92 I called "molecular adapations" when first I saw UNDER THE SCOPE the differnt FORMS of spindle shapes across the mammals to which the "reductionists" in the lab (ANIMAL SCIENCE CU) failed to appreciate the phenomenological difference of...I think that the sentence you quoted is actually FALSE but I did not want to start a "flame" so I wrote a bit perhaps too conservatively and made it even harder to understand me which I guess is hard enough.

Dear John,You say And suggest googling 'symbiotic life' as a good way of finding out about the evolution of multicellularity, having done so I can assure you the first page of hits is by no means of obvious use. Why not google 'evolution multicellularity' instead?I'm not sure this is the best way to approach it. It is true that you could argue that mulitcellularity is just a complex form of symbiosis, but this is not an approach I have come across much in the literature. Symbiotic events have certainly been vital in the establishment of the eukaryota, and there are obvious symbiotic interactions with bacteria in most organisms, such as in our own guts.The actual origin of multicellularity as a symbiotic phenomenon would depend to some extent on your view on symbiosis. I don't tend to think of interactions within a species as symbiotic. Therefore a cooperative colony of genetically similar algae with specialised functions, such as Volvox, would not strike me as a an example of symbiosis. There is some evidence that multicellularity in the Volvocaceae has a likely polyphyletic origin with several species of chlamydomonas giving rise to multicellular forms.

I thought you meant to imply expressed mutations rather than all mutations. I could always be wrong about a great many things, so I asked.Thanks for clarifying.

The process of selection for genetic differences in skin colour is thought to be a result of the folate, vitamin D trade-off. Resent research has suggested the effect of uv on folate to be minimal so perhaps carcinogenic properties can be considered. Certainly dark skinned individuals located in areas of poor sun exposure are more likely to develop vit D deficiency. quite to the contrary of the post you quoted dark skin is likely to be the ancestral trait that was moderated in response to vit D deficiencies as our species ventured away from the equator.