Cheerful Charlie
Contributor
For more great evolutionary fun and games, check out Horizontal Gene Transfer.
en.m.wikipedia.org
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Nope. A population of imperfect self replicators is a PREREQUISITE for evolution, just as mass is a prerequisite for gravity. Why isn’t the origin of matter “included” in gravitational theory?
Evolution is always 'step two' in the sequence to life process!
For proof of historical evolution and common ancestry see endogenous retrovirus.For more great evolutionary fun and games, check out Horizontal Gene Transfer.
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Horizontal gene transfer - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Fascinating stuff -- thanks for the links! But it doesn't really affect my point. As one of your links says, "Genes responsible for antibiotic resistance in one species of bacteria can be transferred to another species of bacteria through various mechanisms of HGT ... Horizontal gene transfer is recognized as a pervasive evolutionary process that distributes genes between divergent prokaryotic lineages and can also involve eukaryotes." The bacteria are going to keep right on conjugating no matter how much they evolve in our labs, so we won't be able to use inability to conjugate to prove new species have formed. Better to stick with animal examples when we find ourselves arguing with creationists."They reproduce asexually"? Not quite. Google for bacterial conjugation.
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Bacterial conjugation - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
You appear to be assuming that arguing that no creator was necessary is the point of evolutionary theory. I guess maybe it seems that way to people who care a lot about gods but don't much care about plants and animals. But gods or their absence were never the point. The point was for people who cared a lot about plants and animals to understand the patterns they were seeing. The whole theory of evolution happened in the first place because 18th- and 19th-century anatomists starting with Linnaeus compared different kinds of organisms and figured out that the resemblances formed a huge tree structure: a nested hierarchy of natural categories. That was an interesting observation -- the pattern didn't have to be that way -- so they wanted to figure out why. And the simplest explanation was that the shared features of two similar animals were inherited from the same ancestor. All the people who put that together believed in God. Even when Darwin came along later and proposed natural selection as a mechanism for how evolution happened, cutting God out of the picture was never the purpose. People forget the theory of natural selection was actually coinvented by Darwin and Wallace -- Darwin is more famous only because he wrote a popular book while Wallace wrote scientific papers -- and Wallace believed in God.Noted: this thread is about evolution. Just need to respond to one post besides this one.This thread is about evolution, i.e., it's about the origin of species, not the origin of life. If you're stipulating that intelligent agency isn't necessary for the origin of new species from earlier species and are only invoking it for the origin of the first cell, that's great; it means you aren't rejecting science. We do not yet have a solid scientific explanation for how the first cell came to be.
As I see it, the 'origin of life' ideally should be part or inclusive with 'evolution' as a whole process package in one' (which would of course, give a 'much better' solid demonstration to argue that "no creator was necessary").
Most definitions of evolution (in biology) that I have seen include something to the effect of "a change of allele frequencies within a population", and of course differential reproductive success is the filter that causes divergence, so "beneficial" mutations are inevitably accumulated until the fitness landscape changes and those mutations become neutral or negative. But stasis is not an option.One of the creationist canards, perhaps more sophisticated than some, is the assertion that the “information” carried in a strand of DNA can never be augmented, only reduced. This is the equivalent of the claim that mutations can only be destructive and never constructive, except it sounds more sciency because it deals with maths such as Information Theory and such. This objection has been refuted many times, but always the creationist comes back with the claim that we haven’t actually observed a mutation adding anything positive to a strand of DNA in real time, just inferred it.
If I understand the article correctly, DNA actually mutating to augment its functionality has now been observed.
It's like how angels may be pushing the planets around, but they still do it following Kepler's Laws. And Kepler's Laws can be derived from Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. Those angels are pretty disciplined.You appear to be assuming that arguing that no creator was necessary is the point of evolutionary theory. I guess maybe it seems that way to people who care a lot about gods but don't much care about plants and animals. But gods or their absence were never the point. The point was for people who cared a lot about plants and animals to understand the patterns they were seeing. The whole theory of evolution happened in the first place because 18th- and 19th-century anatomists starting with Linnaeus compared different kinds of organisms and figured out that the resemblances formed a huge tree structure: a nested hierarchy of natural categories. That was an interesting observation -- the pattern didn't have to be that way -- so they wanted to figure out why. And the simplest explanation was that the shared features of two similar animals were inherited from the same ancestor. All the people who put that together believed in God. Even when Darwin came along later and proposed natural selection as a mechanism for how evolution happened, cutting God out of the picture was never the purpose. People forget the theory of natural selection was actually coinvented by Darwin and Wallace -- Darwin is more famous only because he wrote a popular book while Wallace wrote scientific papers -- and Wallace believed in God.Noted: this thread is about evolution. Just need to respond to one post besides this one.This thread is about evolution, i.e., it's about the origin of species, not the origin of life. If you're stipulating that intelligent agency isn't necessary for the origin of new species from earlier species and are only invoking it for the origin of the first cell, that's great; it means you aren't rejecting science. We do not yet have a solid scientific explanation for how the first cell came to be.
As I see it, the 'origin of life' ideally should be part or inclusive with 'evolution' as a whole process package in one' (which would of course, give a 'much better' solid demonstration to argue that "no creator was necessary").
Thank you for that link. Most interesting.For more great evolutionary fun and games, check out Horizontal Gene Transfer.
![]()
Horizontal gene transfer - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Most definitions of evolution (in biology) that I have seen include something to the effect of "a change of allele frequencies within a population", and of course differential reproductive success is the filter that causes divergence, so "beneficial" mutations are inevitably accumulated until the fitness landscape changes and those mutations become neutral or negative. But stasis is not an option.One of the creationist canards, perhaps more sophisticated than some, is the assertion that the “information” carried in a strand of DNA can never be augmented, only reduced. This is the equivalent of the claim that mutations can only be destructive and never constructive, except it sounds more sciency because it deals with maths such as Information Theory and such. This objection has been refuted many times, but always the creationist comes back with the claim that we haven’t actually observed a mutation adding anything positive to a strand of DNA in real time, just inferred it.
If I understand the article correctly, DNA actually mutating to augment its functionality has now been observed.
FWIW, I have seen studies for years that claim to document lamarckian-type effects, but have yet to see that there's significant consensus about that. I do suspect there's something going on there though (<$0.02).
Apologies if it appeared that way, but that wasn't on my mind.You appear to be assuming that arguing that no creator was necessary is the point of evolutionary theory.Noted: this thread is about evolution. Just need to respond to one post besides this one.This thread is about evolution, i.e., it's about the origin of species, not the origin of life. If you're stipulating that intelligent agency isn't necessary for the origin of new species from earlier species and are only invoking it for the origin of the first cell, that's great; it means you aren't rejecting science. We do not yet have a solid scientific explanation for how the first cell came to be.
As I see it, the 'origin of life' ideally should be part or inclusive with 'evolution' as a whole process package in one' (which would of course, give a 'much better' solid demonstration to argue that "no creator was necessary").
In the OP, the first line with 'creationist' in it (quoted below), does hint the invitation to include some aspects of God or creation into the conversation:I guess maybe it seems that way to people who care a lot about gods but don't much care about plants and animals.
," evolution can be demonstrated. Checkmate creationists,"
But gods or their absence were never the point. The point was for people who cared a lot about plants and animals to understand the patterns they were seeing. The whole theory of evolution happened in the first place because 18th- and 19th-century anatomists starting with Linnaeus compared different kinds of organisms and figured out that the resemblances formed a huge tree structure: a nested hierarchy of natural categories. That was an interesting observation -- the pattern didn't have to be that way -- so they wanted to figure out why. And the simplest explanation was that the shared features of two similar animals were inherited from the same ancestor. All the people who put that together believed in God. Even when Darwin came along later and proposed natural selection as a mechanism for how evolution happened, cutting God out of the picture was never the purpose. People forget the theory of natural selection was actually coinvented by Darwin and Wallace -- Darwin is more famous only because he wrote a popular book while Wallace wrote scientific papers -- and Wallace believed in God.
As far as "no creator was necessary" goes, the reasons for that conclusion are completely different in evolution from in origin of life theories. With evolution it's a matter of observation -- we can look at how living things work today and look at three billion years' worth of fossils, and understand how species transmutation happens and recognize that it's bound to happen whether there's a creator supervising the process or not. With origin of life it's a completely different situation -- there's no observational evidence, and until we can make it happen in the lab all ideas about how it might have happened in the wild are mere speculative guesses. We conclude "no creator was necessary" on logical grounds, not scientific grounds.
I wanted to respond to Steve's post about the idea of a eternal universe. In short (squinting my eyes )...the complicated things as you mentioned, having ALL the time to develope, originating from a very rare momentary abiogenesis. I would think (simple terms) that with an eternal universe, logically this would be a regular occurrence.Physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy and so forth are all the study of simple things. The study of complicated things is biology. And the greatest unanswered question in biology is "Everything complicated we see came from something else that was already complicated, so why is there anything complicated at all? Why isn't everything simple?". As a matter of logic, "There are complicated things because a complicated thing made them." is not a substantive answer. It's a circular explanation. That is why we conclude "no creator was necessary".
Yes of course, I know the 'whole package' isn't currently feasible. I was alluding to the idea that it would be ideal for the 'no creator' argument.Anyway, that's why "whole process package in one" isn't a practical idea yet. Science hasn't progressed enough for that. You might as well tell Galileo what we need from him is the Unified Field Theory.
Is there any reason to think it’s not? Even if the universe is only 13 billion years old?I would think (simple terms) that with an eternal universe, logically this would be a regular occurrence.
^This.Is there any reason to think it’s not? Even if the universe is only 13 billion years old?I would think (simple terms) that with an eternal universe, logically this would be a regular occurrence.
Take an iPhone, fully charged. Type a decimal point (period) then type zeroes until the phone runs out of charge, and put a “1” in the last place.
That is the approximate percentage of the known universe from which we have observationally eliminated the possibility of current life. And our temporal window is a vanishingly small slice of the time the universe has been around. For all we know, life could be quite ubiquitous.
In D&D the wizard class has two aspects to which spells they may cast at any given point in time: they have both "spells known" and "spells prepared".Most definitions of evolution (in biology) that I have seen include something to the effect of "a change of allele frequencies within a population", and of course differential reproductive success is the filter that causes divergence, so "beneficial" mutations are inevitably accumulated until the fitness landscape changes and those mutations become neutral or negative. But stasis is not an option.One of the creationist canards, perhaps more sophisticated than some, is the assertion that the “information” carried in a strand of DNA can never be augmented, only reduced. This is the equivalent of the claim that mutations can only be destructive and never constructive, except it sounds more sciency because it deals with maths such as Information Theory and such. This objection has been refuted many times, but always the creationist comes back with the claim that we haven’t actually observed a mutation adding anything positive to a strand of DNA in real time, just inferred it.
If I understand the article correctly, DNA actually mutating to augment its functionality has now been observed.
FWIW, I have seen studies for years that claim to document lamarckian-type effects, but have yet to see that there's significant consensus about that. I do suspect there's something going on there though (<$0.02).
That’s basically the speculation about ERVs … the pieces are already there, just waiting for some external event to cause them to be put to use. There is so much geneticperhaps exposure to stress in a part of the body associated with reaching, there can be genetic linkages to activate a genotype for growing taller that was previously methylated and dormant.