Summations Only

Thanks CRR

quote:

---

Remains of one of the oldest known marsupials have been recovered in Charente-Maritime by a palaeontologist team from the Musum national d'Histoire naturelle (CNRS) and the University of Rennes 1. This discovery raises a new hypothesis about the dispersal route of the earliest marsupial mammals.

​

Arcantiodelphys marchandi improves our knowledge of the earliest stages of the marsupial history, so far known mostly from North American fossils. Its main significance is that the beginning of the marsupial history also involved Europe. Furthermore, it confirms faunal links between North America and Europe during the mid-Cretaceous. It is from these primitive marsupials from the "Euramerican" Cretaceous that the modern marsupials colonized the southern landmasses, South America and mainly Australia where they are nowadays well diversified. Opossums and kangaroos are extant representatives of this very old northern origin of the marsupials.

---

Curious that they say marsupials started in North America, so I'll have to look into this some more.Enjoy

Ok, so I've looked into this and cannot find any reference that says it was used in making the vaccine.What I did find was that it was useful in understanding how these diseases originated and were spread -- because of the genetic similarity between humans and apes and pigs.This genetic similarity is due to descent from common ancestor, which is known from the genetic markers that are non-coding sections of DNA that are common in the same places and can only come from inheritance ... unless you like billion to 1 odds repeated hundreds of times or a jester god that make it look like common descent.Enjoy

The product of millennia of generations of sexual selection, which also selects your reaction to her beauty ... Irreducible complexity has been scientifically falsified. See Irreducible Complexity, Information Loss and Barry Hall's experiments for a thread on this.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

And yet the genetic similarity is due to common descent, which is shown by the genetic markers that serve to purpose but show up in the same locii in different species. Having one such common marker is highly unlikely -- different mutations randomly occurring in the same place, two become astromomically squared, three becomes insanely improbable. You could indeed, however that means you believe in a god that provides false evidence and tries to make fools of people. A jester god like Loki? Somehow I don't believe that is your goal.Enjoy

Including the genetic evidence in the non-coding 'junk' sections where their existence and preservation can only be explained by (a) evolution or (b) a jester hoodwinking god.Enjoy

I've already admitted this. So I did a google search on practical use of common descent and I got a number of results, among them: Talk Origins Claim CA215

quote:

---

Claim CA215: The theory of evolution is useless, without practical application.
Source: Lindsey, George. 1985. Evolution -- Useful or useless? Impact 148 (Oct.). The Institute for Creation Research
Wieland, Carl. 1998. Evolution and practical science. Creation 20(4) (Sept.): 4. Missing Link | Answers in Genesis

​

Response:

​

1. Evolutionary theory is the framework tying together all of biology. It explains similarities and differences between organisms, fossils, biogeography, drug resistance, extreme features such as the peacock's tail, relative virulence of parasites, and much more besides. Without the theory of evolution, it would still be possible to know much about biology, but not to understand it.
   ​
   This explanatory framework is useful in a practical sense. First, a unified theory is easier to learn, because the facts connect together rather than being so many isolated bits of trivia. Second, having a theory makes it possible to see gaps in the theory, suggesting productive areas for new research.
   ​
2. Evolutionary theory has been put to practical use in several areas (Futuyma 1995; Bull and Wichman 2001). For example:
   • Bioinformatics, a multi-billion-dollar industry, consists largely of the comparison of genetic sequences. Descent with modification is one of its most basic assumptions.
   • Diseases and pests evolve resistance to the drugs and pesticides we use against them. Evolutionary theory is used in the field of resistance management in both medicine and agriculture (Bull and Wichman 2001).
   • Evolutionary theory is used to manage fisheries for greater yields (Conover and Munch 2002).
   • Artificial selection has been used since prehistory, but it has become much more efficient with the addition of quantitative trait locus mapping.
   • Knowledge of the evolution of parasite virulence in human populations can help guide public health policy (Galvani 2003).
   • Sex allocation theory, based on evolution theory, was used to predict conditions under which the highly endangered kakapo bird would produce more female offspring, which retrieved it from the brink of extinction (Sutherland 2002).
   ​
   Evolutionary theory is being applied to and has potential applications in may other areas, from evaluating the threats of genetically modified crops to human psychology. Additional applications are sure to come.
   ​
3. Phylogenetic analysis, which uses the evolutionary principle of common descent, has proven its usefulness:
   • Tracing genes of known function and comparing how they are related to unknown genes helps one to predict unknown gene function, which is foundational for drug discovery (Branca 2002; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003).
   • Phylogenetic analysis is a standard part of epidemiology, since it allows the identification of disease reservoirs and sometimes the tracking of step-by-step transmission of disease. For example, phylogenetic analysis confirmed that a Florida dentist was infecting his patients with HIV, that HIV-1 and HIV-2 were transmitted to humans from chimpanzees and mangabey monkeys in the twentieth century, and, when polio was being eradicated from the Americas, that new cases were not coming from hidden reservoirs (Bull and Wichman 2001). It was used in 2002 to help convict a man of intentionally infecting someone with HIV (Vogel 1998). The same principle can be used to trace the source of bioweapons (Cummings and Relman 2002).
   • Phylogenetic analysis to track the diversity of a pathogen can be used to select an appropriate vaccine for a particular region (Gaschen et al. 2002).
   • Ribotyping is a technique for identifying an organism or at least finding its closest known relative by mapping its ribosomal RNA onto the tree of life. It can be used even when the organisms cannot be cultured or recognized by other methods. Ribotyping and other genotyping methods have been used to find previously unknown infectious agents of human disease (Bull and Wichman 2001; Relman 1999).
   • Phylogenetic analysis helps in determining protein folds, since proteins diverging from a common ancestor tend to conserve their folds (Benner 2001).
   ​
4. Directed evolution allows the "breeding" of molecules or molecular pathways to create or enhance products, including:
   • enzymes (Arnold 2001)
   • pigments (Arnold 2001)
   • antibiotics
   • flavors
   • biopolymers
   • bacterial strains to decompose hazardous materials.
   ​
   Directed evolution can also be used to study the folding and function of natural enzymes (Taylor et al. 2001).
   ​
5. The evolutionary principles of natural selection, variation, and recombination are the basis for genetic algorithms, an engineering technique that has many practical applications, including aerospace engineering, architecture, astrophysics, data mining, drug discovery and design, electrical engineering, finance, geophysics, materials engineering, military strategy, pattern recognition, robotics, scheduling, and systems engineering (Marczyk 2004).
   ​
6. Tools developed for evolutionary science have been put to other uses. For example:
   • Many statistical techniques, including analysis of variance and linear regression, were developed by evolutionary biologists, especially Ronald Fisher and Karl Pearson. These statistical techniques have much wider application today.
   • The same techniques of phylogenetic analysis developed for biology can also trace the history of multiple copies of a manuscript (Barbrook et al. 1998; Howe et al. 2001) and the history of languages (Dunn et al. 2005).
   ​
7. Good science need not have any application beyond satisfying curiosity. Much of astronomy, geology, paleontology, natural history, and other sciences have no practical application. For many people, knowledge is a worthy end in itself.
   ​
8. Science with little or no application now may find application in the future, especially as the field matures and our knowledge of it becomes more complete. Practical applications are often built upon ideas that did not look applicable originally. Furthermore, advances in one area of science can help illuminate other areas. Evolution provides a framework for biology, a framework which can support other useful biological advances.
   ​
9. Anti-evolutionary ideas have been around for millennia and have not yet contributed anything with any practical application.

---

Oh look, they list the use of common descent. Which includes vaccines and fighting diseases like HIV.This is on Talk Origins PRATT list.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : revised last commentEdited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : ..

Now that's what I call a smack-down response.Enjoy

Especially not the references ...

quote:

---

(Branca 2002; Eisen and Wu 2002; Searls 2003). (Bull and Wichman 2001). (Vogel 1998). (Cummings and Relman 2002). (Gaschen et al. 2002). (Bull and Wichman 2001; Relman 1999). (Benner 2001).

​

References:

1. Arnold, Frances H. 2001. Combinatorial and computational challenges for biocatalyst design. Nature 409: 253-257.
2. Barbrook, Adrian C., Christopher J. Howe, Norman Blake, and Peter Robinson, 1998. The phylogeny of The Canterbury Tales. Nature 394: 839.
3. Benner, Steven A. 2001. Natural progression. Nature 409: 459.
4. Branca, Malorye. 2002. Sorting the microbes from the trees. Bio-IT Bulletin, Apr. 07. http://www.bio-itworld.com/news/040702_report186.html
5. Bull, J. J. and H. A. Wichman. 2001. Applied evolution. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 32: 183-217.
6. Cherry, J. R., and A. L. Fidantsef. 2003. Directed evolution of industrial enzymes: an update. Current Opinion in Biotechnology 14: 438-443.
7. Conover, D. O. and S. B. Munch. 2002. Sustaining fisheries yields over evolutionary time scales. Science 297: 94-96. See also pp. 31-32.
8. Cummings, C. A. and D. A. Relman. 2002. Microbial forensics-- "cross-examining pathogens". Science 296: 1976-1979.
9. Dunn, M., A. Terrill, G. Reesink, R. A. Foley and S. C. Levinson. 2005. Structural phylogenetics and the reconstruction of ancient language history. Science 309: 2072-2075. See also: Gray, Russell. 2005. Pushing the time barrier in the quest for language roots. Science 309: 2007-2008.
10. Eisen, J. and M. Wu. 2002. Phylogenetic analysis and gene functional predictions: Phylogenomics in action. Theoretical Population Biology 61: 481-487.
11. Futuyma, D. J. 1995. The uses of evolutionary biology. Science 267: 41-42.
12. Galvani, Alison P. 2003. Epidemiology meets evolutionary ecology. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 18(3): 132-139.
13. Gaschen, B. et al.. 2002. Diversity considerations in HIV-1 vaccine selection. Science 296: 2354-2360.
14. Howe, Christopher J. et al. 2001. Manuscript evolution. Trends in Genetics 17: 147-152.
15. Marczyk, Adam. 2004. Genetic algorithms and evolutionary computation. Genetic Algorithms and Evolutionary Computation
16. Nesse, Randolph M. and George C. Williams. 1994. Why We Get Sick. New York: Times Books.
17. Relman, David A. 1999. The search for unrecognized pathogens. Science 284: 1308-1310.
18. Searls, D., 2003. Pharmacophylogenomics: Genes, evolution and drug targets. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery 2: 613-623. Nature - Not Found
19. Sutherland, William J., 2002. Science, sex and the kakapo. Nature 419: 265-266.
20. Taylor, Sean V., Peter Kast, and Donald Hilvert. 2001. Investigating and engineering enzymes by genetic selection. Angewandte Chemie International Edition 40: 3310-3335.
21. Vogel, Gretchen. 1998. HIV strain analysis debuts in murder trial. Science 282: 851-852.

---

After all they are just scientists, what do they know. Much better to ignore and insult from a strong stand on ignorance. Your cognitive dissonance is showing.Enjoy

Your cognitive dissonance is showing.

quote:

---

... In practice, people reduce the magnitude of their cognitive dissonance in four ways:

​

1. Change the behavior or the cognition ("I'll eat no more of this doughnut.")
2. Justify the behavior or the cognition, by changing the conflicting cognition ("I'm allowed to cheat my diet every once in a while.")
3. Justify the behavior or the cognition by adding new cognitions ("I'll spend thirty extra minutes at the gymnasium to work off the doughnut.")
4. Ignore or deny information that conflicts with existing beliefs ("This doughnut is not a high-sugar food.")

---

Creationists are typically very good at the latter way.One of the additional methods is to discredit the source of dissonant information so you feel justified in ignoring it. Unfortunately pretending you have discredited it only fools yourself and your co-deluded willingly ignorant cohorts.Don't bother to check the references, that would be too much like work. To say nothing about actually challenging your beliefs ...EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .

Hello Aristotle, and welcome to the fray Nope. Curiously your choosing this icon demonstrates ignorance of how science works. You have a lot to learn, it appears, and this is a good place to learn it ... if you are willing to learn. The essential difference between religion and science is a willingness to learn and change beliefs through evidence. As I have said many times, the closest fit to "kinds" as the term is used by creationists is clades. They form a nested structure where all descendants come from the parent clade population by breeding within their populations. Evolution occurs in those populations in response to ecological challenges leading to gradual changes in each population, isolation leads to different changes and thus to speciation. Some do, some don't. You are talking about punctuated equilibrium. Not all evolution occurs through that mechanism. Every individual is a transitional, however the fossil record in often incomplete. We do have some examples though, such as Pelycodus:

quote:

---

A Smooth Fossil Transition: Pelycodus, a primate

​

​

Pelycodus was a tree-dwelling primate that looked much like a modern lemur. The skull shown is probably 7.5 centimeters long.

​

​

The dashed lines show the overall trend. The species at the bottom is Pelycodus ralstoni, but at the top we find two species, Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus. The two species later became even more distinct, and the descendants of nunienus are now labeled as genus Smilodectes instead of genus Notharctus.

​

As you look from bottom to top, you will see that each group has some overlap with what came before. There are no major breaks or sudden jumps. And the form of the creatures was changing steadily.

---

That's a lot of transitional populations. Even more can be seen with foraminifera. How much change are you expecting to see? This is an important question because a lot of creationists seem to have false expectations.Is a black mouse different enough from a tan mouse to make it a new species? What we usually see from creationists is the use of the term "kind" to be a vaguely defined clade system of hierarchical phylogenetic structure, and the issue is not clades and hierarchies of nested clades, but how far back in time that system runs. For the creationist it has to stop at a time of creation with a distinct number of original "created kinds" all appearing suddenly at the same time. The fossil record does not show this -- what it does show the nested clades not stopping until you get back in time to the first life forms 3.5 billion years ago, single celled life forms.Enjoy Edited by RAZD, : .

All theories are unprovable by definition, but they are based on facts, facts are what are proven, and theories are designed to explain those facts.The theory of gravity is "unprovable" but it explains why we don't fly off the surface of the earth and it explains the orbits of planets around the sun.The process of evolution is observed in every generation, the theory of evolution explains the fossil evidence and the genetic evidence. For someone who "studied evolution a long time, learned a lot about it" you should know that this statement is an incorrect portrayal of evolution. There is no "most evolved" organism -- all life on the planet has evolved the same amount.Similarly your statements re "survival of the fittest" in your proposed topic are inaccurate at portraying how evolution works.Evolution occurs through those that survive and reproduce. They don't have to be the best at it, they just need to be good enough to get by. This process is observed to occur and thus it is demonstrated documented fact.This is a two-step feedback response system that is repeated in each generation: Like walking on first one foot and then the next.What is demonstrated is that those that survive, reproduce and create the next generation that repeats the cycle of the evolutionary process, they pass on their genes and the new generation adds new mutations. Speciation has been observed in the fossil record, in the genetic record and in the world today, it is a fact that speciation occurs. When you have speciation you have a clade, composed of the parent population and the two daughter populations. Evolution occurs whether "information" is added or not. And you just used a term that is not defined anywhere in a way that is scientifically useful. So you're going to ignore the evidence of transitions I posted -- will that make the evidence go away? If by saltation you mean "abrupt evolutionary change; sudden large-scale mutation" then yes that does not occur by natural selection. We do however have some novel instances of polyploidy which causes new species that can't interbreed with the parent population.Is that "one genetic variation at a time" or several all at once?According to evolution as used in biology, speciation usually occurs over many generations of accumulated changes caused by the process of evolution in response to different ecologies. Thus you are likely to see many small variations occurring within breeding populations before speciation occurs. Study of mutations shows that they can cause such small variations. Bully for you. You didn't answer my question ("Is a black mouse different enough from a tan mouse to make it a new species?"), so let's talk about what happens in the real world: is a mutation that causes black fur in tan mice sufficient to create a new species or is it just a variation? They can interbreed. One variety lives in lava beds the other in surround sandy soil areas. We have two population of black mice with different mutations that have been identified as causing the black fur. We observe that the black fur mice survive and reproduce better in the lava bed ecology and the tan mice survive and reproduce better in the surrounding sandy soil ecology.Similarly a mutation in Peppered moths has been identified that caused the dark variety that survived and reproduced better in a sooty environment than the typical white variety.Thus we have organisms with single point genetic variations that lead to their "current form." Because we can observe generation by generation the changes in the frequency of traits in the breeding populations and we don't see the sudden change of saltation ... except in the cases of polyploidy.We can measure those populations and record all the mutations that occur in each individual in each generation (they are actually rather numerous) and we can determine which are beneficial, and with are neutral and which cause death or inability to breed.For someone who said "I have studied evolution a long time, learned a lot about it" you seem to make a lot of incorrect assertions.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : .Edited by RAZD, : image link

This is simply not true. The problem may be more in the definition of the process than the observation of it. What is your definition of the process of evolution? Mine is This is sometimes called microevolution, however this is the process through which all species evolve and all evolution occurs at the breeding population level.Mutations to existing hereditary traits (ie for eyes and ears) can cause changes in the composition of hereditary traits for individuals in a breeding population, but not all mutations are expressed (and many are in non-hereditary areas). In addition there are many different kinds of mutations and they have different effects (from small to large), especially if they affect the developmental process of an organism.Natural Selection and Neutral Drift can cause changes in the frequency distribution of hereditary traits within a breeding population, but they are not the only mechanisms known that does so. Selection processes act on the expressed genes of individual organisms, so bundles of genetic mutations are selected rather than individual genes, and this means that non-lethal mutations can be preserved. The more an individual organism reproduces the more it is likely to pass on bundles of genes and mutations to the next generation, increasing the selection of those genes.The ecological challenges and opportunities change when the environment changes, when the breeding population evolves, when other organisms within the ecology evolve, when migrations change the mixture of organisms within the ecology, and when a breeding population immigrates into a new ecology. These changes can result in different survival and reproductive challenges and opportunities, affecting selection pressure, perhaps causing speciation, perhaps causing extinction.Mutations of hereditary traits have been observed to occur, and thus this aspect of evolution is an observed, known objective fact, rather than an untested hypothesis.Different mixing of existing hereditary traits (ie Mendelian inheritance patterns) have been observed to occur, and thus this aspect of evolution is an observed, known objective fact, rather than an untested hypothesis.Natural selection has been observed to occur, along with the observed alteration in the distribution of hereditary traits within breeding populations, and thus this aspect of evolution is an observed, known objective fact, and not an untested hypothesisNeutral drift has been observed to occur, along with the observed alteration in the distribution of hereditary traits within breeding populations, and thus this aspect of evolution is an observed, known objective fact, and not an untested hypothesis.Thus many processes of evolution are observed, known objective facts, and not untested hypothesies.Evolution as defined and described here has occurred. Why? It can see perfectly well for it's needs. Desirable to whom? To you?So the tan mice don't survive well in the lava beds, and the black mice don't survive well outside the lava beds ... which variety is more desirable? Just as it follows that those able to reproduce would reproduce. Natural selection is not all there is to evolution, if it were we wouldn't need to call it evolution, just natural selection.Likewise organisms don't have an "ability to adapt" -- adaptation occurs through mutation providing variations and selection favoring the ones better suited to the current ecology. Actually we know the opposite, that it is the ecology that controls the survival of all the breeding populations within the ecology, the interaction of the organisms with each other and with the (changing or unchanging) environment. That is why some species go extinct. When two daughter populations stop interbreeding you have a speciation event, but more important you have increased diversity and the opportunity for each population to further diverge. Whether we call them species is irrelevant to what is happening. Species names are just tags we use for clarity of discussions. Even non-coding repeats? If a mutation removes a segment of DNA and that a loss, then if a mutation inserts a segment of DNA isn't it a gain? If a mutation changes an "A" to a "T" is that a gain or a loss? All such mutations have been observed. What's an "advancement?" As similar as the hominids? Just curious. Are these all one species too? You mean that you expect to see, possibly because you have false expectations? Curiously I have no problem with the observed evidence thoroughly supporting evolutionary processes. No, we observe them in the living world today all around us, in every species. That demonstrates the processes involved, and the theory of evolution says that these observed processes are sufficient to explain the fossil record and the genetic record and the historic record.Nothing else is needed.EnjoyEdited by RAZD, : image link

In 150 years of desperate creationist trying the ToE has not been invalidated.Meanwhile Newton's theory of gravity had to be superseded by Einsteins theory of relativity, because relativity explained the orbit of Mercury and Newton's theory did not accurately model that orbit.But the theory of gravity cannot be proven ... so if you think this aspect of theories is a serious evisceration of the ToE, jump off the Empire Stated building and see what happens. As an unabashed open-minded skeptic, I did (it was the first step, but still I fell to the pavement). Another cheap "gotcha" attempt ... sad.If you have a better testable evidence based scientific theory that explains all the evidence, then trot it out and we'll look at it. I'm not holding my breath (like I did at the Empire State Building).The Theory of Evolution is the predominantly accepted scientific theory that explains the diversity of (all) life on earth, past and present. Accepting the best available explanation is not dogmatic (lack of) thinking, it is the practical use of available information for understanding "life, the universe, and everything" (Douglas Adams). Curiously, denial is not a substantiated argument. Curiously, opinion has been demonstrated to be quite ineffective at altering reality.Enjoy

Can you define "genetic information" and then show this to be the case?Or are you just parroting creationist pseudoscience because it conforms to your beliefs and that makes you feel comfortable?In case you missed it, science uses defined terms and metrics that can actually be measured.Enjoy

Actually it is an attempt at cognitive dissonance reduction -- what they are saying can't be true ... therefore they must be lying atheists ... yeah, they're lying atheists so I don't have to believe a word they say ... there it's resolved ...Sadly evidence is not dependent on people, it is fact, it is real, and it will still be fact and real years from now.Enjoy