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Kurgan
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20 Sep 2012, 11:42 am

Radian wrote:
It's just plain ridiculous to be having this kind of debate while molecular biologists in every corner of the world are busy reading and cataloguing the genomes of different species. One of the most striking discoveries is that of the same short but vital DNA sequence turning up in the cellular machinery of everything that has cells (and also the odd large virus such as mimovirus IIRC). Genomic analysis is now virtually a diy activity and the evolution of life is a totally open book to anone who cares to read it.


Did anyone deny the existence of genes or evolution?

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When read, the story shows a fascinating series of kludges worked out to solve very early problems with rogue cellular mechanisms. It is clearly not an elegant designer-solution but is typical of the pragmatic fixes arrived at by the blind force of natural selection.


What exactly isn't elegant? Pretty much any gene in the human body has a function; there's no such thing as "junk DNA". We just do not know the function of the entire human genome yet.


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This is, to me, by far the best analogy. If we take programs written by different students to solve the same problem we soon recognize it when someone has written concise, elegant code. And we also see instantly when someone else has gone about it somewhat more haphazerdly and has painted themselves into a design corner that takes bridges of extra code as a workaround.


Amateur code is actually easier to decipher than profesaional code, given that it contains a lot of if-statements with copy paste code, few (if any) complex algorithms and little communication betweeen the classes. Seeing the pattern is easy, but editing it can be extremely tedious.

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This is precisely what is being found in the core code of all living things and conclusively rules out any sort of intelligent overview of the design selection process.


Please give examples on how genetics are similar to copy-paste code, objects that aren't properly implemented and wasteful code that could be implemented easier with less resource use. Einstein once said that the most incomprehensible about the universe is that it's entirely comprehensible. By looking at features such as the four forces, the universe is very orderly.

Don't get me wrong, I do not advocate the God of gaps—nor am I a follower of intelligent design creationism (as this disputes evolution, the Big Bang and many natural laws).

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I understand that this is so much so that people are also working on improvements that are obvious when seen with the benefit of oversight. The pay-dirt for this could be improved efficiency in photosynthesis for example. As more examples become available the nonsensical idea that God was the original author should fade gracefully away.


In pre-industrial times, full efficiency might actually upset the CO_2 balance.



TheBicyclingGuitarist
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20 Sep 2012, 11:56 am

TallyMan wrote:
Fundamentalist Christians/Muslims etc sometimes pick up a smattering of knowledge and try to use that to defend their belief system but invariable display their ignorance due to their lack of grasp of the principles involved in evolution or their lack of knowledge of the scientific method and their ignorance of the sheer volume of facts about evolution.


An example of this is many creationists failing to understand that evolution happens in breeding populations, not individual organisms. Within a population, shifts in the relative frequencies of alleles occur. If part of the population is on the outer fringes of the area that species can tolerate and becomes isolated from the rest of the breeding population, then those traits which make surviving in those new conditions easier are favored. When one understands that POPULATIONS EVOLVE, then questions such as asking which gender came first are understood to be meaningless questions. (joke)Usually the male came first.(/joke)

It might be that some other questions not just pertaining to evolution but to existence itself may be meaningless. When one does not understand a subject or has faulty assumptions or incomplete or incorrect information, then one might ask a question that cannot be answered not because it is a really good question but because it is meaningless. Alan Watts gave a few good examples of such questions such as "Try to draw a square circle" or "Try to arrange everything in this room so everything is up and nothing is down."

TallyMan wrote:
Full credit to those Christians and Muslims who do their research openly, without bias and deeply into evolution such as TheBicyclingGuitarist and even today's Catholic church, who fully acknowledge that evolution is a fact.


Thanks for the mention, but most Christians would not say I am one of them and I no longer identify myself as one either. I was born Catholic, and I respect their position on this subject, but even most Protestant denominations accept the fact evolution happens. A very vocal minority of Biblical literalists are SO vocal that many Christians who are members of churches that don't have a problem with evolution are not sure about it.

I have studied this subject intensely for more than forty years. It is mind-boggling that so many people can be so misinformed about a subject where ALL the evidence is on one side and NO evidence supports the other. IF any scientific evidence were found that falsified evolution (not likely, it's just as likely we'd find that there is no such thing as gravity!) or that supported a young earth creationist viewpoint, don't you think that evidence would have been presented in at least one of the dozen major court cases of the past forty years where well-meaning but misguided people tried to legislate reality to be something other than what it is?


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Radian
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21 Sep 2012, 3:54 am

Kurgan wrote:
Did anyone deny the existence of genes or evolution?


Hi Kurgan, you must realise that these things are not in the Christian Bible therefore they will certainly be denied by some Christians :lol: But I'm quite sure your world-view embraces them wholeheartedly!

Kurgan wrote:
What exactly isn't elegant? Pretty much any gene in the human body has a function; there's no such thing as "junk DNA". We just do not know the function of the entire human genome yet.


Sure, and this has been in the news quite a bit lately - but I am referring to the commonality found deep down in workings of the cell where people are examining the very first bit of evolution that resulted in LUCA. By the time we study an entire genome we're looking across a broad swathe of contingencies but by studying a genome that is involved in the basic recipe for making RNAs and proteins we are looking at the first "baby steps" taken by evolution. Some 100 or so genes can be traced back to LUCA and with these we can be pretty objective about the "design decisions" that were taken - however we view them as having been decided.

Kurgan wrote:
Please give examples on how genetics are similar to copy-paste code, objects that aren't properly implemented and wasteful code that could be implemented easier with less resource use. Einstein once said that the most incomprehensible about the universe is that it's entirely comprehensible. By looking at features such as the four forces, the universe is very orderly.

Don't get me wrong, I do not advocate the God of gaps—nor am I a follower of intelligent design creationism (as this disputes evolution, the Big Bang and many natural laws).


Well then, I think you might be interested in the kind of work Eugene V. Koonin is doing at the National Center for Biotechnology Information in Maryland (that guys name!). For a quick overview here's a reprint of a recent New Scientist article I found on tumblr
Also, you might be interested in an example of what's going on in the Bio-Hacking scene that I mentioned as being a DIY hobby thing these days.