Study Explains Evolution's Molecular Advance 477
pnewhook writes "The New York Times is reporting that 'by reconstructing ancient genes from long-extinct animals, scientists have for the first time demonstrated the step-by-step progression of how evolution created a new piece of molecular machinery by reusing and modifying existing parts. The researchers say the findings, published today in the journal Science, offer a counterargument to doubters of evolution who question how a progression of small changes could produce the intricate mechanisms found in living cells.'"
Matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I'm glad they're finding more and more of how biology works. I don't want to get into a creationist debate, but it has always astounded me that people would argue that life is too complex for it to have been made "naturally" and that a higher being must have helped along the way. But, by saying that, they're saying that God is not powerful enough to create such a universe in which evolution can happen, that a universe created by God could not possibly work by itself.
How dare they...
We see tiny things becoming more complex everyday. (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, I realise most people here have never had a chance to partake in this activity after they were born, but you get the picture.
Re:The truth shall set you free. (Score:3, Insightful)
That should be: Can God create a stone so heavy he can't lift it, if he can, he's not all powerful because he can't lift the stone, if he can't he's not all powerful because he can't create the stone in the first place.
Simon
Re:God created everything... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is nothing without God.
This is a science discussion - proselytizing has no place here.
Molecular Biology Leads the Way (Score:4, Insightful)
It is amusing that religions touting a Creator God are excellent examples of Evolution in Action. The Creator God is the equivalent of the alpha male of a troop of primates. The idea of the Creator God speaks not to the present alpha male but to an idealized father founder of the tribe. The sense of history inherent in a Creator meshes with our sense of our own history. The concept of history, partially embodied in burial rites, points to the ideas of teleology and the status quo ante that underpin many religions. The idea of death as examplified in burial and a belief in a life after death are ideas that need to be examined as they define us as a species.
Religions posing an alpha male Creator Father have evolved through many generations of selective mating. Those who strongly believed in the tribe's faith were more likely to find suitable mates. Those who couldn't bring themselves to believe in a Creator God were often killed outright as heretics or were driven from the tribe. Many generations of mating based upon religious beliefs should give us a population the majority of which advocate a belief in God. Religion is Evolution in Action.
Re:God created everything... (Score:4, Insightful)
The most common people to claim otherwise seem to be the more rabid IDers and creationists. Go figure.
And for the most rabid athiests, I would point out that lack of proof is not proof of lack -- eg: Just because you'll never find the body doesn't mean I never killed mikie (don't tell the cops). Similarly: the fact that a 'missing link' is currently missing doesn't mean that it will never be found.
no (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Annoying.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's truly an intellectually dishonest practice and it speaks directly to the kind of Doctor Behe is. This is the guy who testified in that 'lets put ID into the classroom' trial in Dover, PA. His testimony was an embarrassement and I'm surprised he has enough credibility left that the NY Times would include him in their article. I guess it's the whole "two sides of an argument" theme again.
Here's a great astronomy example of almost the exact same thing.
http://www.anomalist.com/commentaries/claim.html [anomalist.com]
Re:Matter of time (Score:2, Insightful)
allso, if god is personal, why do one need a church to act as a bridge? are "we" not all directly linked? ah, theology, creating debate for over 2000 years...
The disbelievers will really be in trouble when (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:God created everything... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, it was pretty easy demonstrating what a moron you are. You have demonstrated an inability to think beyond what most 5 or 6 year olds can achieve.
I'd dismiss you as a troll but as I've seen so much evidence that many people do 'think' like you I'm taking you seriously.
Re:Why do we still care about the doubters? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Near-high-school dropouts"?
From the article:
Dr. Thornton said the experiment refutes the notion of "irreducible complexity" put forward by Michael J. Behe, a professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University.
We care because these yahoos get control of school boards and muck about with the science curricula in public schools. It's 2006, and it would be inexcusable not actively oppose them, because they have no intention to stop inflicting kids with "near-high-school dropout" level of science education.
Re:Matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I don't believe in God, but I bear no grudges against those who do, and as long as a belief doesn't involve scientific claims or attacking good science with falsehoods, but I applaud those who are taking their beliefs forward and refining them to make them more honest rather than simply defending dogma. If there were a God, the only kind I can possibly imagine would reward the former, not the latter.
Re:Molecular Biology Leads the Way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The truth shall set you free. (Score:4, Insightful)
Omnipotent
Omniscient
and Good
all at the same time
Fact: the world contains evil.
Fact:Creation of evil is an evil act
Conclusions:Either God performs evil acts and cannot be trusted, God is bound by some greater force requiring balance, or God cannot accurately predict the consequences of it's own actions.
Because real science takes the high road... (Score:3, Insightful)
As the article points out, near-high-school-dropouts aren't the only ones who have questions about evolution, and I'm not just talking about proponents of intelligent design.
But maybe it's not so much that we care about what those who "question evolution" think as that good science doesn't simply stick to whatever the prevalent dogma is. Maybe it's that good science continues to come up with and test hypothesis after hypothesis and continually refine its case.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with questioning evolution or even our current conception of how evolution works.
Re:Matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simply not true. Evolutionary biologists find flaws in existing theories of evolution fairly often, and the theories are adjusted accordingly over time. This is simply how all science, including biology, works; there is no crisis of faith as you claim.
Re:Matter of time (Score:3, Insightful)
Why?
What if the myriad quantum fluctuations that we observe as "random" are, every single one of them, directed by just such a god? What could be more "intimately concerned with all of our activities" than directing every single subatomic event?
"Random" is a description, not an explanation. What if the statistical probabilities that we observe that say that particle X will deteriorate with Y frequency are subtle indicators of a divine plan? What if the exact moment of deterioration of said particle is not in fact random, as quantum physics describes it, but precisely chosen with some consequence millennia hence in mind?
Or suppose that the apparent randomness is eventually demonstrated to be wholly explainable by strict and invariably deterministic law. What if the entire universe is wholly deterministic, without requiring the intervention moment-by-moment of any deity -- but it's that way because the deity set it up to be so, knowing full well exactly how every event, from quarks to quasars, would play itself out?
Speaking as a Christian who fully acknowledges that evolution by natural selection fits all the available evidence, I heartily applaud every elucidation of the evidence and every logically sustainable proposal to bolster the theory.
However, the likelihood that God is intimately concerned with our lives is a question completely independent of science, and cannot be considered to have been demonstrated to be more or less likely, no matter what science discovers.
Re:Why do we still care about the doubters? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a high school dropout and I'm both an athiest and I subscribe to evolution. I know a lot of college graduates who are very sharp and intelligent and yet don't accept evolution and believe in god.
Really, I think that the choice on this matter is often dicated by emotion, which overrides any intellectual consideration or presentation of facts. Some people are afraid of there not being a god, or don't like the feeling of not knowing the purpose of life, or just like sharing beliefs with their friends and families, or don't like to admit they've been wrong for the past forty years, etc.
And these people are important: they make up more than half of the voting population in my estimation so they have a profound effect on you and I. So don't dismiss them. And don't bother trying to convert them. But find a way to live with them. You may even find some of them make good friends.
Cheers.
Re:In the brave new world (Score:3, Insightful)
I rejoice in science framing the what of existence in increasing detail.
Still not doing much for the why of existence.
Nor are the various religions and philospies, Christianity among them. It remains subjective.
I'll just relax and watch the show.
Re:Matter of time (Score:5, Insightful)
It's easy to make this accusation, but intellectually lazy.
I'd say that scientists spend more time picking apart each others flaws and mistakes than in almost any other realm of life. What they get testy about is people who haven't bothered to actually study the debates, who know next to nothing about the subjects they are talking about, spreading falsehoods or gross misrepresentations of science. Worse, even when these ideas are debunked or even admitted as wrong by the people making them, they then still get brought up over and over again to new audiences. How many times have you heard the "evolution can't add new information" or "if we evolved from apes, how come there are still apes" nonsense? If people seemed determined to spread lies and falsehoods about me personally, I'd certainly get "testy." But not because anyone was questioning my "faith."
So I think your accusation is in very poor form.
Not going to dissuade the intelligent designers (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason the NYT is giving this the "doubters of evolution" spin is that there's this guy, Michael Behe, who wrote a book around 1995 somewhere called "Darwin's Black Box". The central idea of that book was the allegation that evolutionary science treats the cell like a "black box" that nobody attempts to look inside or explain. Evolutionary science, said Behe, only concerns itself with larger structures, and only assumes the stuff inside the cell "just works". Because evolution can't explain, subcellular structures, evolution lacks a foundation, is built on nothing, and is wrong.
This is, of course, silly if you're actually familiar with the science, because to whatever extent scienists ever treated the cell like a "black box", it was because we didn't know how to look inside yet. Viewing machinery the size of a molecule is really hard. Scientists could analyze things, but have only relatively recently gained the ability to view the full picture of things, much as they might have wanted to.
Once the technology for understanding the molecular structures that make up cells really started to take off (say, at the beginning of the 80s-ish), a revolution of sorts started in microbiology and genetics. And as this happened, Behe managed to exploit a neat trick of timing; he wrote his book just as a lot of fascinating questions were appearing through this revolution in microbiology, but before (since the questions had only just been asked) we really knew what the answers were. Behe was able to craft the illusion, since we didn't know the answers to some of those questions yet, that the questions didn't have answers or would never be answered and thus evolution was flawed-- not mentioning that work was underway or even partially completed to find answers to all of these questions. In the time since Behe wrote his book, cell microbiology has progressed by leaps and bounds, but the book itself is able to do a neat little job of making it seem like the cell really is just an inexplicable black box, because he wrote it just as science totally finished picking the lock.
Which brings us to this story: The one scientific "big idea" in Darwin's Black Box was what Behe calls "Irreducible Complexity", and the publication of Darwin's Black Box was the main way this idea was popularized. The idea behind irreducible complexity is that there exist structures that contain one or more parts, and that if you remove one of the parts, the entire thing stops working. But one would expect that evolutionary mutation can only change "one thing" at a time; the idea that a single new allele that could simultaneously create two separable and interlocking structures seems wholly unbelievable. So how did irreducibly complex structures evolve?
This is an extremely reasonable question, and one evolutionary science is obligated to answer. The problem is that Behe, and the rest of the ID crowd:
The answer to how irreducibly complex structures could evolve is pretty simple: all that would have to happen is for a structure to change its purpose over time. That is to say, it doesn't matter that irreducibly complex structures can only evolve one part at a time, because it is simple to imagine each of the small structures in an irreducibly complex system independently evolving for some other purpose than the big IC system performs, then being adapted into a bigger IC system with rube goldberg style ingenuity, then gradually losing the ability to function for their original purpose indepen
Re:Cultural Evolution, and Nationalism Reborn,Anyo (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not see how this is, in any way, an "evolutionary topic". The theory of evolution says nothing whatsoever regarding the subject of deities.
Dismissing the existence of God in no way advances the human condition.
To which "God", out of the thousans of deities worshipped and acknowledged throughout human history, do you refer and why do you reference that particular deity to the exclusion of all others?
Consider, why does one need to foolishly accept that a better adapted emergent species is not fundamentally better than a less adapted one?
I do not see that one does need to do this at all. "Better adapted" is itself a relative condition, and there is no means to judge any one species as "fundamentally better" than another in an absolute sense. I do not understand what point you are attempting to argue.
Re:The truth shall set you free. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Sabertooth Tiger (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Matter of time (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. But then, most people use the term "creationist" to refer to YECs or other denialists. There are many theistic evolutionists who could be called creationists too, but whom have no conflict with mainstream science. But I'm not sure even they would identify with a criticism aimed at creationists.
What you claim about people trolling is true, but trivial. Sure, for ANY point of view you can point to a couple of knuckleheads. But that's a pretty weak way to attack science in general, and claim that evolution is a "faith" that people are mad about anyone criticizing. Of course, if you can show me a criticism that's actually accurate and informed, I'll be very surprised. There are a number of very real hotly debated controversies within mainstream biology. But I've never, not once, seen any creationist mention them.
Re:Matter of time (Score:3, Insightful)
So there is no similarity what so ever between a theory arrived at by scientific method and one arrived at by religious inspiration. In many ways the scientific one has less value on a personal level. The point is that the scientific method is fair. So we use it when deciding things between people. Guilt in criminal cases, structuring our economy. It has also proved to be more sucessful than applying theistic methods to these problems, when you measure sucess in a scientific way. So to be fair to people we use science within a secular state to detirmine things. Not because it is true, but because it is fair, and useful.
The problem is very simple. Some religious folk, in their mad desire to propagate their faith to all corners of the Earth want scientific authority behind them. Many people believe scientific results because they are used to them being right. It is hard not to in the modern age when every electronic device is dependent on scientific advances of the past. Having a home full of proof of concepts can be very convincing that scientific ideas have at least some truth to them. So what do these folk do when their religious belief and science collide? The sensible thing and say "Religion does not require consistency with science"? Hell no. That isn't the optimal method for getting recruits and keeping the faithful. Instead they attack science in the vague hope of converting a few more people, and retaining a few more of those they have already ensnared.
The problem with certain religious folk is that they don't realise that they can, if they so choose, ignore what scientific method tells them. What they cant do is change the results of the scientific method. And that is what they desperately want to do. We are now experiencing a backlash against this, and individuals of religious persuasion want to be careful. They have lost every culture war since the turn of the 20th century and if they were sensible would hide in their churches and mosques instead of starting a fight they cant win.
Evolution is an established set of facts, and an excellent theory. And if Christian Churches want a fight on this one, I and many others with a distate for their religion relish the thought, because it will add to the long history of Christain failures and crimes against humanity, which will be used against them again and again in the future.
Re:Cultural Evolution, and Nationalism Reborn,Anyo (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean other than removing the need for some to kill the non-believers and heretics in "his" name?
Re:Intelligent Design-ism is a benefit to science (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Intelligent Design-ism is a benefit to science (Score:3, Insightful)
Clean up their act? They're cleaning up other people's mess!
Having throwbacks to pre-rational thinking dictate areas of research to target is a nuisance, not a boon. And they are working harder because they have to undo the harm that the ID conmen have caused, hard work that could be better spent furthering science, instead of defending it against reactionaries.
It's not an improvement: it's dammage control.
continual questioning ... that's S-C-I-E-N-C-E (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes.
I can't believe you got plus-5 insightful for that flame-bait.
If you don't question things you're not a scientist. I question evolution, I question every facet of existence that I come across.
Incidentally I've got an honours degree in Physics and Maths and an undergraduate diploma in computer science. No big guns I know but that's me. I consider myself to be a philosopher. What about you?
Re:Why do we still care about the doubters? (Score:5, Insightful)
You have no idea what you are talking about.
Genetic Algorithms are *NOT* about a million monkeys typing random garbage until you stumble upon the complete works of Shakespeare. You reveal a complete ignorance of what Genetic Algorithms are and how they work when you suggest such a thing.
I am a programmer and I have personally used Gentic Algorithms in the past. I have personally witnessed just how FAST they spontaneously generate information. How FAST they generate complex structured information. Sometimes they demonstrate slow steady improvements, and sometimes they generate huge leaps and bounds in solving problems.
The process by which evolution creates information is well understood, and has been the subject of many mathematical papers. The FACT that the evolution process can be harnessed to create information and solve problems has been extensively observed, documented, and USED in real industrial applications. In fact the Genetic Algorithms evolution process has been used to create new better more efficient jet engine designs, designs better and more efficent than any human expert has ever been able to design.
Genetic Algorithms are a powerful tool in the programmer's bag of tricks, and I highly reccommend that any and all programmers learn and explore them. Any programmer can easily witness ad understand for himself exactly how evolution is an information processessing system, and an information creation system. Can witess for themselves exactly how evolution can and does create information. Just pick up any book on Genetic Algorithms, or use Google to find any of the excellent websites on the subject.
And anyone who claims that evolution does not or cannot create information, well they are flat out Wrong and Ignorant. It's as silly as someone claiming that man can never build a heavier-than-air fling machine AFTER scientsists have understood and built and witnessed such machines working.
I've built it. I've witnessed it. And anyone who doubts it is absolutely invited to study Genetic Algorithms and understand it themselves and built it themselves and witness it themselves.
People who say evolution cannot create complex information and cannot produce the complexity of life we see today, those people warrant as much respect as someone claiming flying machines are impossible.
A sun-centered solar system explains the mechanism that divides the light from the darkness. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that a sun centered solar system in any way says or means that God does not exist. Nuclear fusion explains the mechanism that creates light for the earth. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that nuclear fusion in any way says or means that God does not exist. Optics explains the mechanism that creates rainbows. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that optics in any way says or means that God does not exist. And evolution explains the mechanism that creates the diversity of life on earth. It is absurd for anyone to suggest that evolution in any way says or means that God does not exist.
Anyone who suggests that evolution and God are in any sort of conflict is as bad as the crackpot fundamentalist idiots who had Galileo imprisoned for life when he said that the earth moves around the sun. The fact that so many people are replaying this exact same nonsense today is an absolute embarrassment.
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Personally... (Score:3, Insightful)
Either that, or at least strong proof that if there IS a god, he/she's a sadistic bastard without anything resembling our idea of morality, justice, or fairness. In other words, any god that regularly lets shit like this happen deserves our scorn, not our adoration.
Either way, religion is shit.
Re:Matter of time (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, it is just a pet peeve I have. I find that this is exactly the same thing that goes on at polical speechs/events too (Ann Coulter and Michael Moore, I'm looking at you guys.)
Re:Matter of time (Score:3, Insightful)
My point remains. You, and the GGP are both arguing that, because we don't know God's masterplan, that natural disasters could be a good thing. That's an argument to ignorance, and you're using it to justify the sufferng caused by those natural disasters.
And, yes, people have the choice to not buy into such fallacious arguments; most rational people don't since anyone with a basic understanding of logical fallacies can see the inherent flaw in such reasoning, not to mention the obvious insensitivity it shows towards other human beings. But it seems that you, and a lot of Christians do buy into it despite all of this. What does that tell you about yourself?