How much evidence [for human evolution] is ever enough, and is your "bar of skepticism" set as high towards your religion as towards paleoanthropology? Isn't skepticism about witholding belief until suitable evidence substantiates it? What position does CalvinDude stand on in order to say that the evidence from evolutionary science is not yet sufficient to garner his belief? Is he standing on admitted ignorance? Or in some creationist myth?
Is he saying, "I don't know, and I don't know if science does either," or "I already believe and know X, and since scientific evidence contradicts X, I remain skeptical of science"? If X is based on solid evidence, and so is science, then fine, stay skeptical, but if X = the Hebrew creation myth...then...I'm afraid this is called "dogmatism", and not "skepticism".
Next, a more critical comment from nanosplit:
Like every claim in the past this too will turn out to be b.s.My reply in full follows:
Heres the question--How does matter give rise to coded information? How does information evolve? How does personality evolve?
And you got the arrogance to say your not in la la land. Dig a little deeper pal.
Dear nanosplit,
Your questions were entirely based on arguments from ignorance -- posturing that if I don't know the answer to a question, that this means the question is either: 1) unanswerable via science, or 2) answered by your religion by default.
Since you have yet to demonstrate (nor your religion) any grasp of answering the sorts of questions you've posed to me in intelligible terms (saying, "God did it!" is not an explanation), I must laugh at the idea of (2). So, all you've done here is attempt to posit that these sorts of questions are out of the scope of science's powers, which I strongly disagree with, but, even if you're right, what does that mean? Should we throw our hands up in the air and go back into caves with stones and flints? Should we abandon the pursuit of knowledge via science, and go back to your ancient superstitions? Should we sprinkle bird blood on lepers again (via Leviticus 14) instead of using modern medicine?
Q: What knowledge has your religion, your faith, your set of dusty scrolls of unknown origins and unknown authorship, ever given to the world?
A: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
On to your comment:
Like every claim in the past this too will turn out to be b.s. [nanosplit is here referring to the "claim" that a beautifully-preserved afaresnis child was found]
Man, I agree! Over a thousand of those common creationist claims have turned out to be complete and utter bullshit! The good news is that TalkOrigins has compiled all of this utter bullshit into one big stinking pile, called "The Index to Common Creationist Claims". Even better news is that the paperback version of this index is almost available!
Wait...you were talking about creationist claims, right? Cause after all, the claims and evidence of human evolution have grown and solidifed over time, so if you're referred to hominid evolution...then I guess you'd be a dishonest person, and you're not one of those, right?
Heres the question--How does matter give rise to coded information?
I'll answer your question, after seemingly contradicting the question itself.
First, you need to understand that "code" is a very human concept. And, like the "code" of human language, there are physical limitations upon the interplay of gene and genetic code. Consider your vocal cords -- they always fall into a range of lengths and sizes. Thus, human beings could only possibly make certain sounds, and so language is restricted to those sounds.
In the same way, the laws of physics and chemistry restrict the "genetic code" to be what it is, within a range of possibilities. Consider, for instance, that AAU/AAC did not HAVE to code Asp. However, due to thermodynamics and energy efficiency, a forty-six-letter system is completely out of the question for correspondence between gene and code. And so we might start to ask some preliminary questions: why are there 20 amino acids? Why do we have a triplet system? Are those two interconnected? [Take a wild guess]
Now, can you tell me, using solely physical laws, what "coded information" means? For starters, which of the following two sequences contains "more" information, and how do you go about determining it?
Sequence 1: cag tgt ctt ggg ttc tcg cct gac tac gag acg cgt ttg tct tta cag gtc ctc ggc cag cac ctt aga caa gca ccc ggg acg cac ctt tca gtg ggc act cat aat ggc gga gta cca agg agg cac ggt cca ttg ttt tcg ggc cgg cat tgc tca tct ctt gag att tcc ata ctt
Sequence 2: tgg agt tct aag aca gta caa ctc tgc gac cgt gct ggg gta gcc act tct ggc cta atc tac gtt aca gaa aat ttg agg ttg cgc ggt gtc ctc gtt agg cac aca cgg gtg gaa tgg ggg tct ctt acc aaa ggg ctg ccg tat cag gta cga cgt agg tat tgc cgt gat aga ctg
Please use your 'procedure', whatever it may be, to measure the 'genetic information' content of these two sequences. Please write down the step-by-step process by which you measured the 'genetic information' content of these two sequences, being as clear and/or specific as you can.
I'll hold my breath waiting...
Now, since I know that you are not an expert, I'll do you one better -- read what the experts write about this sort of question, and/or actually send it off to your favorite pseudoscientist, aka "Creation Scientist", and have them answer it for you.
I'll hold my breath waiting on that one, as well...
Now, since the methodology by which we establish information is crucial to answering the question of "how matter gives rise to it", then I think you ought to qualify your question, and tell me exactly what it is you really want me to answer for you.
Short of that (since you won't be able to do this), I'll get into a more general approach to save you some face:
You do understand that the nucleic acid triplet system has nothing to do with a "CODE", in the sense that as it developed, the coevolution (it had to happen over time and a piece at a time) of gene and code wasn't "fixed" to some syntax, don't you? It's just chemistry, my silly creationist friend, and "CODE" is what humans try to make to help them understand it. The laws of thermodynamics give a range of possibilities within which the evolution (of everything, including of the components of transcription and translation) takes place, and it can do no other. Now, the code that we observe, as I pointed out above, is not some "had to be this way" necessity -- indeed, we can imagine life existing with 20 amino acids, or 10, or 100. Life would certainly be different, but it would still exist. And so can we say that our system is one out of a number of chance possibilities? Yes and no.
We can imagine life existing with our triplet system, a different triplet system (different letters for each AA), a possible quartet system, or even just a two-digit code. The code that exists is the result of deterministic physical laws, but run the whole thing over again, with slightly different conditions, and not only should we not expect the same result, but I can guarantee a different one. So in that sense, chance does play a part in the way that our code developed. But chance also plays a part in the way that each animal develops from the moment of fertilization on.
Don't believe me? Well, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, since you've probably never taken a university course on biochemistry (I have a BS in it from Virginia Tech).
However, since we pointed out already that there are restrictions, the determination of the code via chemistry and physics wasn't "purely random" in that sense. For one thing, we have to consider whether or not we're discussing a "metabolism first" approach, since using certain metabolites restricts the sort of molecules that would end up making up our code. Indeed, DNA is composed of these nucleotides that you're familiar with, but is that also necessary? Could it have been, say, sulfates rather than phosphates that connect the bases? Or could it have been all purines, or all pyrimidines, or different ones? Yes. It could.
So when we even start to look at *how* to answer these questions, we see that it gets quite complex to attempt to give an answer
Now, to answer your question, here are two really good peer-reviewed papers on the origin of the genetic code, if you are actually interested in some testable, practical models to answer your question:
1) Selection, history and chemistry: the three faces of the genetic code (1999)
2) The origin of the genetic code: theories and their relationships, a review (2005)
The major models are (from paper #2):
1. The stereochemical theory
2. The physicochemical and ambiguity reduction theories
3. The coevolution theory
Please note that these models are not mutually exclusive and represent three different possibilities for "driving forces" that we know from chemistry and physics that certainly did play a role in at least part of the development of the "code". The question is how much for each one, and whether or not one is dominant.
Quoting the second paper:
(Model 1.) The stereochemical theory claims the origin of the genetic code must lie in the stereochemical interactions between anticodons or codons and amino acids (Crick, 1968). The theory suggests, for example, asparagine must have been codified by the codons AAU or AAC as asparagine is somehow stereochemically correlated with these codons. Several models have been proposed which indeed seem to define a stereochemical relationship between anticodons or codons and amino acids (Gamow, 1954, Pelc and Welton, 1966, Welton and Pelc, 1966, Dunnill, 1966, Woese, 1967, Black, 1973, Black, 1995, Melcher, 1974, Nelsestuen, 1978, Balasubramanian et al., 1980, Marlborough, 1980, Hendry et al., 1981, Shimizu, 1982, Yarus, 1991 and Szathmary, 1993).
(Model 2.) The physicochemical theory claims that the force defining the origin of the genetic code structure was the one that tended to reduce the deleterious effects of physicochemical distances between amino acids codified by codons differing in one base (Sonneborn, 1965 and Woese et al., 1966). In particular, Sonneborn (1965) identified the selective pressure reducing the deleterious effects of mutations as the force defining the amino acid allocations in the genetic code table (Ardell and Sella, 2001 and Sella and Ardell, 2002). Whereas, Woese et al. (1966) maintained that the driving force defining genetic code organization must lie in a selective pressure tending to reduce the translation errors of the ancestral genetic message.
A similar theory is the ambiguity reduction hypothesis. This theory claims that group codons differing in one base were assigned to groups of physicochemical similar amino acids, and the genetic code reached its current organization through the lowering of the ambiguity in the coding within and between groups of amino acids (Woese, 1965 and Fitch and Upper, 1987). Only one study conducted on 300 tRNAs sequences specific for 8 amino acids (Fitch and Upper, 1987) is in favour of the ambiguity reduction theory (Woese, 1965 and Fitch and Upper, 1987). Other and equivalent analyses are in favour of the coevolution theory (Di Giulio, 1992a, Di Giulio, 1994a, Di Giulio, 1995, Chaley et al., 1999 and Bermudez et al., 1999).
(Model 3.) The coevolution hypothesis of the origin of the genetic code (Wong, 1975) suggests that the origin of the genetic code should be sought in the biosynthetic relationships between amino acids. In particular, this hypothesis maintains that early on in the genetic code few amino acids (perhaps five) were codified: the precursors (Wong, 1975). As the other amino acids arose biosynthetically from these precursors, part or all of the codon domain of the precursor amino acid was passed to the product amino acids (Wong, 1975).
The mechanism through which the precursor amino acids passed part or all their codon domain to the precursor amino acids is postulated by the coevolution theory as occurring on tRNA-like molecule on which this theory suggests the biosynthetic transformation between amino acids took place (Wong, 1975). If the biosynthetic pathways linking up the amino acids took place on tRNA-like molecules, then a tRNA-like molecule bearing a product amino acid evolving from the biosynthetic transformation of a given precursor amino acid must clearly have recognized some of codons belonging to the precursor. Therefore, this molecule was able to evolve naturally towards a tRNA specific for that particular product amino acid and its reassigned codons.
You will have to follow up with references to the specific papers for detailed evidence of each model, and a discussion of how the evidence supports the model. That is assuming that you actually want to know...
Now, there are some answers to your question. What do you do with these answers? Ignore them and continue to present argumentum ad ignorantium attacks on the validity of science and evolutionary theory? Yes, you will. Because the truth is, you don't want science to answer these questions, you want to believe that they are rendered unknowable by some divine action, that since God is involved, that man cannot know such things. Well, the church has said this for generations, and all the while, the church's God has shrunk and shrunk in size. It used to be that the church opposed anatomical studies on human beings, saying that the workings of the body are "divine" and shouldn't be messed with.
Every fence of ignorance the church has erected, science has torn down. Thankfully. And your prospects are getting any brighter in the area of genetics.
To your next (God of the gaps) question:
How does information evolve?
If you're one of the creationists who thinks that you understand information theory and that it somehow refutes evolutionary theory, please allow Mark Chu-Carroll to correct you HERE.
You'll note he takes on information theory directly in opposition to Dembski's silliness in many different posts, but hits the nail on the head in posts like this one: creationists don't understand information theory, and real mathematicians never have and never will use it as the basis of a challenge to evolution.
Contrary to your muddled way of looking at things, disorder in a string of characters actually produces more information for coding systems -- explained here.
And now, for your last God-of-the-gaps-question:
How does personality evolve?
Ask Freud, Jung, Spotnitz and Sullivan. What do I look like, a freaking psychologist? I'm a chemist, for heaven's sake!
If you're interested in one component of personality, in particular, then altruism is a good one to study, since we observe it in other animals. A new book just came out on this very question -- The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness. See a review of the book HERE
Now, it's my turn to ask questions:
Assuming that matter is not the fundamental substance of our universe, and that it cannot explain the questions you've asked above--
How does some invisible, immaterial, "spirit" substance contribute to any of the questions you've asked above? How does it interact with matter?
Why is it that I can take away specific parts of your brain and alter specific parts of your personality (language, long-term memory [amnesia], short-term memory, impulse control, erratic behaviors, compulsivity...etc), if the personality is not, itself, a function of the brain?
Should you recognize that your system of belief proffers you absolutely nothing, nil, in the way of answers to these same questions, why consider it a "superior answer"? God apparently didn't find it necessary to explain anything to you in the Bible concerning the workings of the physical world, so why not leave that to the physicists and chemists, and not your local preacher, who likely knows diddly-squat-shit in the way of science? Just leave him to his mystical ramblings and inanities.
And now to your last comment:
And you got the arrogance to say your not in la la land. Dig a little deeper pal.
What I say is that creationists are wallowing in ignorance and ignoring what we know to be reality. It is quite different to say, 1) that a body of knowledge is solid and contradicts your religious myths, and 2) that I have the answer to every question, and I know everything personally, or that this body of knowledge (science) is complete, absolute, and total. I never said (2), just (1). Now, which of us, on the other hand, claims to know God and what God wants and says and does? Which of us claims that they know the way to gain admission into God's heaven? Which of us thinks that the other is damned for eternity, since the other doesn't believe that kissing divine ass is a logical belief? What kind of arrogance does that require?
When you don't profess to have any answers yourself, appealing to ignorance is a dangerous thing. Dig a little deeper, and you might realize you aren't even standing on anything [faith?] at all.
________________
Technorati tags: Evolution, Creationism
Your questions were entirely based on arguments from ignorance -- posturing that if I don't know the answer to a question, that this means the question is either: 1) unanswerable via science, or 2) answered by your religion by default.
Since you have yet to demonstrate (nor your religion) any grasp of answering the sorts of questions you've posed to me in intelligible terms (saying, "God did it!" is not an explanation), I must laugh at the idea of (2). So, all you've done here is attempt to posit that these sorts of questions are out of the scope of science's powers, which I strongly disagree with, but, even if you're right, what does that mean? Should we throw our hands up in the air and go back into caves with stones and flints? Should we abandon the pursuit of knowledge via science, and go back to your ancient superstitions? Should we sprinkle bird blood on lepers again (via Leviticus 14) instead of using modern medicine?
Q: What knowledge has your religion, your faith, your set of dusty scrolls of unknown origins and unknown authorship, ever given to the world?
A: Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
On to your comment:
Like every claim in the past this too will turn out to be b.s. [nanosplit is here referring to the "claim" that a beautifully-preserved afaresnis child was found]
Man, I agree! Over a thousand of those common creationist claims have turned out to be complete and utter bullshit! The good news is that TalkOrigins has compiled all of this utter bullshit into one big stinking pile, called "The Index to Common Creationist Claims". Even better news is that the paperback version of this index is almost available!
Wait...you were talking about creationist claims, right? Cause after all, the claims and evidence of human evolution have grown and solidifed over time, so if you're referred to hominid evolution...then I guess you'd be a dishonest person, and you're not one of those, right?
Heres the question--How does matter give rise to coded information?
I'll answer your question, after seemingly contradicting the question itself.
First, you need to understand that "code" is a very human concept. And, like the "code" of human language, there are physical limitations upon the interplay of gene and genetic code. Consider your vocal cords -- they always fall into a range of lengths and sizes. Thus, human beings could only possibly make certain sounds, and so language is restricted to those sounds.
In the same way, the laws of physics and chemistry restrict the "genetic code" to be what it is, within a range of possibilities. Consider, for instance, that AAU/AAC did not HAVE to code Asp. However, due to thermodynamics and energy efficiency, a forty-six-letter system is completely out of the question for correspondence between gene and code. And so we might start to ask some preliminary questions: why are there 20 amino acids? Why do we have a triplet system? Are those two interconnected? [Take a wild guess]
Now, can you tell me, using solely physical laws, what "coded information" means? For starters, which of the following two sequences contains "more" information, and how do you go about determining it?
Sequence 1: cag tgt ctt ggg ttc tcg cct gac tac gag acg cgt ttg tct tta cag gtc ctc ggc cag cac ctt aga caa gca ccc ggg acg cac ctt tca gtg ggc act cat aat ggc gga gta cca agg agg cac ggt cca ttg ttt tcg ggc cgg cat tgc tca tct ctt gag att tcc ata ctt
Sequence 2: tgg agt tct aag aca gta caa ctc tgc gac cgt gct ggg gta gcc act tct ggc cta atc tac gtt aca gaa aat ttg agg ttg cgc ggt gtc ctc gtt agg cac aca cgg gtg gaa tgg ggg tct ctt acc aaa ggg ctg ccg tat cag gta cga cgt agg tat tgc cgt gat aga ctg
Please use your 'procedure', whatever it may be, to measure the 'genetic information' content of these two sequences. Please write down the step-by-step process by which you measured the 'genetic information' content of these two sequences, being as clear and/or specific as you can.
I'll hold my breath waiting...
Now, since I know that you are not an expert, I'll do you one better -- read what the experts write about this sort of question, and/or actually send it off to your favorite pseudoscientist, aka "Creation Scientist", and have them answer it for you.
I'll hold my breath waiting on that one, as well...
Now, since the methodology by which we establish information is crucial to answering the question of "how matter gives rise to it", then I think you ought to qualify your question, and tell me exactly what it is you really want me to answer for you.
Short of that (since you won't be able to do this), I'll get into a more general approach to save you some face:
You do understand that the nucleic acid triplet system has nothing to do with a "CODE", in the sense that as it developed, the coevolution (it had to happen over time and a piece at a time) of gene and code wasn't "fixed" to some syntax, don't you? It's just chemistry, my silly creationist friend, and "CODE" is what humans try to make to help them understand it. The laws of thermodynamics give a range of possibilities within which the evolution (of everything, including of the components of transcription and translation) takes place, and it can do no other. Now, the code that we observe, as I pointed out above, is not some "had to be this way" necessity -- indeed, we can imagine life existing with 20 amino acids, or 10, or 100. Life would certainly be different, but it would still exist. And so can we say that our system is one out of a number of chance possibilities? Yes and no.
We can imagine life existing with our triplet system, a different triplet system (different letters for each AA), a possible quartet system, or even just a two-digit code. The code that exists is the result of deterministic physical laws, but run the whole thing over again, with slightly different conditions, and not only should we not expect the same result, but I can guarantee a different one. So in that sense, chance does play a part in the way that our code developed. But chance also plays a part in the way that each animal develops from the moment of fertilization on.
Don't believe me? Well, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, since you've probably never taken a university course on biochemistry (I have a BS in it from Virginia Tech).
However, since we pointed out already that there are restrictions, the determination of the code via chemistry and physics wasn't "purely random" in that sense. For one thing, we have to consider whether or not we're discussing a "metabolism first" approach, since using certain metabolites restricts the sort of molecules that would end up making up our code. Indeed, DNA is composed of these nucleotides that you're familiar with, but is that also necessary? Could it have been, say, sulfates rather than phosphates that connect the bases? Or could it have been all purines, or all pyrimidines, or different ones? Yes. It could.
So when we even start to look at *how* to answer these questions, we see that it gets quite complex to attempt to give an answer
Now, to answer your question, here are two really good peer-reviewed papers on the origin of the genetic code, if you are actually interested in some testable, practical models to answer your question:
1) Selection, history and chemistry: the three faces of the genetic code (1999)
2) The origin of the genetic code: theories and their relationships, a review (2005)
The major models are (from paper #2):
1. The stereochemical theory
2. The physicochemical and ambiguity reduction theories
3. The coevolution theory
Please note that these models are not mutually exclusive and represent three different possibilities for "driving forces" that we know from chemistry and physics that certainly did play a role in at least part of the development of the "code". The question is how much for each one, and whether or not one is dominant.
Quoting the second paper:
(Model 1.) The stereochemical theory claims the origin of the genetic code must lie in the stereochemical interactions between anticodons or codons and amino acids (Crick, 1968). The theory suggests, for example, asparagine must have been codified by the codons AAU or AAC as asparagine is somehow stereochemically correlated with these codons. Several models have been proposed which indeed seem to define a stereochemical relationship between anticodons or codons and amino acids (Gamow, 1954, Pelc and Welton, 1966, Welton and Pelc, 1966, Dunnill, 1966, Woese, 1967, Black, 1973, Black, 1995, Melcher, 1974, Nelsestuen, 1978, Balasubramanian et al., 1980, Marlborough, 1980, Hendry et al., 1981, Shimizu, 1982, Yarus, 1991 and Szathmary, 1993).
(Model 2.) The physicochemical theory claims that the force defining the origin of the genetic code structure was the one that tended to reduce the deleterious effects of physicochemical distances between amino acids codified by codons differing in one base (Sonneborn, 1965 and Woese et al., 1966). In particular, Sonneborn (1965) identified the selective pressure reducing the deleterious effects of mutations as the force defining the amino acid allocations in the genetic code table (Ardell and Sella, 2001 and Sella and Ardell, 2002). Whereas, Woese et al. (1966) maintained that the driving force defining genetic code organization must lie in a selective pressure tending to reduce the translation errors of the ancestral genetic message.
A similar theory is the ambiguity reduction hypothesis. This theory claims that group codons differing in one base were assigned to groups of physicochemical similar amino acids, and the genetic code reached its current organization through the lowering of the ambiguity in the coding within and between groups of amino acids (Woese, 1965 and Fitch and Upper, 1987). Only one study conducted on 300 tRNAs sequences specific for 8 amino acids (Fitch and Upper, 1987) is in favour of the ambiguity reduction theory (Woese, 1965 and Fitch and Upper, 1987). Other and equivalent analyses are in favour of the coevolution theory (Di Giulio, 1992a, Di Giulio, 1994a, Di Giulio, 1995, Chaley et al., 1999 and Bermudez et al., 1999).
(Model 3.) The coevolution hypothesis of the origin of the genetic code (Wong, 1975) suggests that the origin of the genetic code should be sought in the biosynthetic relationships between amino acids. In particular, this hypothesis maintains that early on in the genetic code few amino acids (perhaps five) were codified: the precursors (Wong, 1975). As the other amino acids arose biosynthetically from these precursors, part or all of the codon domain of the precursor amino acid was passed to the product amino acids (Wong, 1975).
The mechanism through which the precursor amino acids passed part or all their codon domain to the precursor amino acids is postulated by the coevolution theory as occurring on tRNA-like molecule on which this theory suggests the biosynthetic transformation between amino acids took place (Wong, 1975). If the biosynthetic pathways linking up the amino acids took place on tRNA-like molecules, then a tRNA-like molecule bearing a product amino acid evolving from the biosynthetic transformation of a given precursor amino acid must clearly have recognized some of codons belonging to the precursor. Therefore, this molecule was able to evolve naturally towards a tRNA specific for that particular product amino acid and its reassigned codons.
You will have to follow up with references to the specific papers for detailed evidence of each model, and a discussion of how the evidence supports the model. That is assuming that you actually want to know...
Now, there are some answers to your question. What do you do with these answers? Ignore them and continue to present argumentum ad ignorantium attacks on the validity of science and evolutionary theory? Yes, you will. Because the truth is, you don't want science to answer these questions, you want to believe that they are rendered unknowable by some divine action, that since God is involved, that man cannot know such things. Well, the church has said this for generations, and all the while, the church's God has shrunk and shrunk in size. It used to be that the church opposed anatomical studies on human beings, saying that the workings of the body are "divine" and shouldn't be messed with.
Every fence of ignorance the church has erected, science has torn down. Thankfully. And your prospects are getting any brighter in the area of genetics.
To your next (God of the gaps) question:
How does information evolve?
If you're one of the creationists who thinks that you understand information theory and that it somehow refutes evolutionary theory, please allow Mark Chu-Carroll to correct you HERE.
You'll note he takes on information theory directly in opposition to Dembski's silliness in many different posts, but hits the nail on the head in posts like this one: creationists don't understand information theory, and real mathematicians never have and never will use it as the basis of a challenge to evolution.
Contrary to your muddled way of looking at things, disorder in a string of characters actually produces more information for coding systems -- explained here.
And now, for your last God-of-the-gaps-question:
How does personality evolve?
Ask Freud, Jung, Spotnitz and Sullivan. What do I look like, a freaking psychologist? I'm a chemist, for heaven's sake!
If you're interested in one component of personality, in particular, then altruism is a good one to study, since we observe it in other animals. A new book just came out on this very question -- The Altruism Equation: Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness. See a review of the book HERE
Now, it's my turn to ask questions:
Assuming that matter is not the fundamental substance of our universe, and that it cannot explain the questions you've asked above--
How does some invisible, immaterial, "spirit" substance contribute to any of the questions you've asked above? How does it interact with matter?
Why is it that I can take away specific parts of your brain and alter specific parts of your personality (language, long-term memory [amnesia], short-term memory, impulse control, erratic behaviors, compulsivity...etc), if the personality is not, itself, a function of the brain?
Should you recognize that your system of belief proffers you absolutely nothing, nil, in the way of answers to these same questions, why consider it a "superior answer"? God apparently didn't find it necessary to explain anything to you in the Bible concerning the workings of the physical world, so why not leave that to the physicists and chemists, and not your local preacher, who likely knows diddly-squat-shit in the way of science? Just leave him to his mystical ramblings and inanities.
And now to your last comment:
And you got the arrogance to say your not in la la land. Dig a little deeper pal.
What I say is that creationists are wallowing in ignorance and ignoring what we know to be reality. It is quite different to say, 1) that a body of knowledge is solid and contradicts your religious myths, and 2) that I have the answer to every question, and I know everything personally, or that this body of knowledge (science) is complete, absolute, and total. I never said (2), just (1). Now, which of us, on the other hand, claims to know God and what God wants and says and does? Which of us claims that they know the way to gain admission into God's heaven? Which of us thinks that the other is damned for eternity, since the other doesn't believe that kissing divine ass is a logical belief? What kind of arrogance does that require?
When you don't profess to have any answers yourself, appealing to ignorance is a dangerous thing. Dig a little deeper, and you might realize you aren't even standing on anything [faith?] at all.
________________
Technorati tags: Evolution, Creationism
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteOoops. I hope you can edit the HTML on there to fix that broken tag!!!
ReplyDeleteSorry about that!
I am reposting CalvinDude's comment:
ReplyDeleteDaniel,
First, from just a purely psychological standpoint (in other words, this is an observation, not an argument), the "obviousness" of Evolution that you see is probably the same way I am regarding the "obviousness" of God. Thus, I could ask you, "How much evidence [for the existence of God] is ever enough? Is your bar of skepticism set as high towards evolution as it is toward religion?" Etc.
In any case, if you want to know my views of Evolution, I can give 'em to ya :-)
I believe in so-called microevolution. But, as you probably know, there are limits to how far microevolution can get us. For instance, thousands of generations of intentional (i.e. "intelligent") human breeding have not been able to create a new species of animal or plant. (Of course, I guess I should put a caveat that this depends on how one defines a species too.)
One thing I am convinced of is that Darwinism is bunk. The controlling idea (Survival of the Fittest/Natural Selection) is a tautology that can be used to prove both sides of a contradiction. (For example, see blog post I wrote.) Natural Selection has no predictive power; instead, it's used pretty much the same way that atheists tend to claim Christians use God: ("Why did X happen? Because Natural Selection/God did it.")
Furthermore, I remain completely unconvinced that Darwinism works at the biochemical level.
Interestingly enough, the only theories that I think might have a shot at all are the ideas of self-organization (i.e. Kauffman & the Sante Fe Institute/Chaos theory, etc.). However, I think that ultimately while these theories make cool fractals, they don't have much explanatory power in real chemistry where you have to demonstrate why, for instance, a protein folds the way it does (the protein, after all, doesn't know math).
Now, as it specifically relates to the fossil record, the biggest problem that I have is that it's too step-wise. In other words, we put together a branch that supposedly represents evolution. It's over the course of millions of years. Yet, if we take the horse branch (which I blogged about ), we see that there are only 10 "steps" that scientists have found over the course of 55 million years. What we find is dozens of fossils at each step along the way, but no intermediary fossils.
I, personally, find it extremely unlikely that in the course of 55 million years, there would be multiple fossils for each of the 10 steps and exactly none for the gaps between the steps (i.e., there's no transitionary fossil between Orohippus & Epihippus, or Merychippus and Dinohippus, but there are (multiple, in most cases) fossils for each of those steps).
This isn't just limited to the horse fossil branch. There aren't any fossil branches that show any intermediary species. Instead, the branches are composed of whole species that seemingly appear out of nowhere and continue on without changing until they are extinct.
This is true even with the fossil of the "ape/human" skull just found, which is (as the article you quotes said): "a baby of the same species as the famed 'Lucy' fossil found in 1974." In other words, they found merely another fossil on the same step; not a transitional fossil between steps.
In a way, the fossil record reminds me of quantum theory (I can't help it; at heart, I'm a closet physist!). Electrons, for instance, exist at certain levels and they have to do a quantum leap between steps without traversing the distance between the levels. In the same way, fossils seem to do quantum leaps between steps in the evolutionary chain.
This, of course, is tantamount to the "hopeful monster" theory, where a bunch of evolution just magically happens all at once. Such is, as Dawkins points out, absurd to believe (which is why he sticks with the gradualism of Darwin). But it is what the fossil record shows.
So I suppose if you want to prove evolution to me, you'd need to take into account how species could evolve in a quantum leap fashion without any design involved. But even if you do so, it still would not be Darwinism. So I'd say while it might be possible for some form of evolution to be true, it is most certainly obvious that Darwinism cannot be true.
Anyway, I hope that's sparked some thoughts on your end at least. :-)
Calvindude,
ReplyDeleteI would only ask you exactly what you mean by,
"we see that there are only 10 "steps" that scientists have found over the course of 55 million years. What we find is dozens of fossils at each step along the way, but no intermediary fossils."
?
You do realize that these "steps" are intermediates, themselves, in looking backwards through time?
I understand your main point, but you seem unwilling to concede that these "steps" themselves represent a clear divergence through time from ancestral species?
Your main point is a good one, and has a good answer: the intermediates of the intermediates (the "steps") are likely unsuccessful in the long term -- that is, those species which we find lots of in the fossil record represent "success" in the sense that the organism survived for milennia and its adaptations were extremely well-suited for its environment. The short answer, IOW, is that the "missing links" (which already are bracketed by other "links" and those by others, ad nauseum) you are asking about are simply underrepresented because they did not survive as discrete units in the long-term. When we show phylogenic trees, these would represent the main branches, off of which the "steps" you refer to shoot, which terminate in successful adaptation (which can futher bifurcate, of course).
Does this make sense? So there are two main rebuttals:
1) The "gaps" are ever-closing. Consider the very recently discovered fish-tetrapod intermediate, Tiktaalik. Back in the day, someone was making the same argument you're making now about that particular transition -- but it has been further evidenced. How many "gaps" must be filled, and how many of the remaining holes, before gradualism is not just inferred, but plainly obvious? When A to B is filled by A', then do you want to see A to A' and A' to B? How far is the regress?
2) The selection pressures that Darwin characterized, and biology has further explained for decades, work best upon organisms which have not yet well-adapted to their environments -- thus, "organisms in change" will be those which have not yet successfully coped with the pressures of survival in their respective environment, and we do not expect them to leave a lasting legacy -- only their continually-changing offspring, etc.
Anyway, I'm not a biologist, but these are the two simple replies I would give to your "quantum" question.
I'd love to hear your biochemical questions more at length, since that's my specialty, but I have to run, and I'll read your blog post later.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, thanks for reposting that with the fixed link. For some reason, when I switch between the "preview" and the "posting" screens, it often drops my ending [/a] tag even though I type it in.
As to what you wrote in response, you asked for clarification for my "stepwise" argument. Basically, it's like this (I'm going to overly simplify for illustration, of course):
Let us suppose that we have a chart between 1 and 10. We have three "fossils" that fit in this chart. Fossil 1 is the oldest (it starts at number 10 on the chart). Fossil 3 is the youngest at number 1. We'll put an intermediate fossil (Fossil 2) at 5 on the chart.
Now for this example, homologically speaking, Fossil 1 appears to be a predecessor of Fossil 2; and Fossil 2 appears to be a predecessor of Fossil 3. Let us further suppose that we have 7 copies of Fossil 1, 5 copies of Fossil 2, and 12 copies of Fossil 3. Thus, the chart looks like this:
10 ******* [Fossil 1]
09
08
07
06
05 ***** [Fossil 2]
04
03
02
01 ************ [Fossil 3]
---------------
* = # of fossils for that step.
The evolutionist looks at this and concludes that this shows a step-wise evolution from Fossil 1 to Fossil 3. However, there is a big gap between step 10 on the chart and step 5. While we have 7 fossils at step 10 and 5 at step 5, we have ZERO between the steps.
Thus, there are no intermediates between Fossil 1 and Fossil 2. Likewise, there are none between Fossil 2 and Fossil 3. Instead, what the fossil record shows is that we have one species (Fossil 1) that is perfectly formed in Step 10. It dies out. Later, in Step 5, a completely new species that looks similar appears; but there are no transitionary fossils between Fossil 1 and Fossil 2. The assumption that they are decendents can only be made by homology and by the dates where they appear (simulated in the example by the Steps of the chart). There is no direct evidence in the fossil record to indicate that Fossil 2 has decended from Fossil 1 though; it can only be assumed.
What I find interesting isn't so much that there are missing steps in the above, though. What I find interesting is that in the typical fossil record, you'll find hundreds of fossils at each step and still find none between the steps.
Again, evolution is left only to be assumed by the homologous structures involved.
Since you're a biochemist, though, I think you can see the problem with the argument from homology :-) On the molecular level, for instance, there are only a certain finite number of ways that a protein can fold. Or to go even more basic, there are only certain elements that can bind together. The elements of life are basically C, O, H, N, and P. Each of these can only combine in a limited number of ways.
Due to the limits of the chemical foundation, all life is going to share some similarities regardless of whether it occurs "naturally" or by design. In other words, as a Creationist (don't read Y.E.C. in that though), I do not argue that God created special atoms for each creature He created so that humans get human atoms, fish get fish atoms, etc. Instead, He uses the same atoms (and higher atoms are basically just permutations of Hydrogen to begin with).
Anyway (not to ramble too far off topic there), since atoms have a limited number of variations, and since functions necessary for life require specific things to occur at the biochemical level, then it should not be a surprise that the foundations of life are going to be similar. Since these small building blocks are then grouped in a finite manner of groupings (based again on physics and chemistry), there are only a certain number of different structures that could be formed from those smaller building blocks.
Thus, homology on a higher level (e.g. the hand of a man, a bat, and a mole) is ultimately related to homology at a lower level (which I assume you agree with since if it wasn't true then gradualistic evolution could not explain it either), then this is the sort of thing that one would expect from both a designer using the same building blocks for different organisms and "naturalistic" explanations. In short, homology does not necessitate Darwinism.
But homology is really the only argument to explain the fossil gaps: It appears that Fossil 2 is a descendant of Fossil 1 because they look so similar, so it must have occured due to Darwinism. This, however, isn't certain.
Add to that the fact that the homology of fossils is based strictly on the physical appearance of the fossils, which isn't very helpful since two different physical processes could be involved to create the homology. (The reason that two different physical processes can produce similar-looking things is again due to the fact that there are only a finite number of ways that the building blocks can be structured.) Thus, Process 1 could have formed Fossil 1 while Process 2 forms Fossil 2. In such a case, gradualism is inadequate to form a link between Fossil 1 and Fossil 2 unless it can be demonstrated between the two processes, not the physical structure (and the way to tell what these processes would be are, unfortunately, almost always destroyed during the making of the fossil).
In order for gradualism to be demonstrated, it is insufficient to rely on physical homology; one must demonstrate it step by step chemically. But since we can't get to that level, we instead have people who start with their presuppositions about what should be the case and then interpret the information to ensure that their assumptions come out right.
Anyway, my lunch break is now over so I have to actually go do some work now :-D
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI actually just posted a blog entry regarding daughter species here. The basic problem is this:
1) I am aware that evolutionary theory states certain species have been uniquely adapted to their environment for a long time.
2) Thus, their daughter species that branch out and then go extinct are not as adapted to the environment.
3) As such, those mutations provide no survivability advantage for the daughter species. Darwinism, however, is predicated on Natural Selection which requires a survivability advantage to be given the new species.
4) In point of fact, these mutations must be detrimental, for it is not only the case that the new species dies out but it does not even affect the original species in the least. If the two species were near equals, then odds are they would each have an equal shot of surviving.
5) Thus, we must conclude that the gaps in the fossil record requires us to state that evolution actually occurs in species that, for the most part, are failures, but which after a sufficient amount of failure manage to accidentally bring forth a species that is adequately suited to the new environment to live for a long enough time to enter the fossil record.
Regarding the sub-optimum environments for fossil creation, that makes it all the more unlikely that you would find multiple fossils of the same species. I would find it more likely that you'd find a bunch of singular fossils up and down the chart, not clusters of them (remember, these fossils of the same species are around for millions of years in the same environment that doesn't allow fossil creation of other types of related species).
Your questions about why God wouldn't create in this manner seem, to me, to be similar to the whole God wouldn't do X fallacy. Ultimately, deciding why God did something the way He did is completely unrelated to discovering whether or not it could have happened naturalistically anyway.
As to convergent evolution, that seems to help prove my point about homology :-) Take, for instance, the marsupials versus placental animals. Supposedly, both evolved from the same shrew-like creature. Yet there are marsupial wolves that are identical to placental wolves except for the process of birth. Their skeletons are so similar it takes an expert to tell the difference. But again these both arose under completely separate environments from a shrew-like creature. If this isn't an argument for design, at the least it's an argument for the lack of variety allowed in a living system. In short, living creatures look similar because they can't look radically different anyway.
Anyway, I look forward to reading your thoughts.
I haven't forgotten you I've just been busy. I'll reply tonight.
ReplyDeleteI spent an hour typing up a post which Blogger swallowed in response to this comment and I got so pissed I decided to wait a few days to retype it. Patience. I will reply.
ReplyDelete