Researchers Show How Cellular Complexity Can Evolve 140
ananyo writes with an excerpt from a Nature news release: "By bringing long-dead proteins back to life, researchers have worked out the process by which evolution added a component to a cellular machine. ... In a paper published in Nature, researchers recreated an 'ancestral' version of a cellular machine called the V-ATPase proton pump, which channels protons across membranes and is vital for keeping cell compartments at the right acidity. Part of this machine is a ring of six proteins that threads through the membrane. Animals and most other eukaryotes have a ring composed of two types of protein component; fungi are alone in having a ring with three. The researchers used computational methods to work backwards and find the most likely sequences of these proteins hundreds of millions of years ago. The team inserted the DNA into yeast and found that just two mutations can turn the simple 2-protein ring into the more complex 3-protein ring."
Error in post (Score:3, Informative)
The research was published in PLoS Biology, not in Nature.
Wrong paper? (Score:3, Informative)
Second link points to wrong paper, Nature paper is here. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10724.html
Old News? (Score:3, Funny)
"The researchers used computational methods to work backwards and find the most likely sequences of these proteins hundreds of millions of years ago."
So why are we just hearing about it now?
Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pat Robertson: "Science perverting resurrection is an abomination, and God's wrath will strike us most likely in the form of a random earthquake or hurricane or tornado sometime within the 12 months."
I'd add the /sarcasm tag just to show I'm just making fun of him, but I actually think my prediction of what will show up on YouTube from him next is pretty accurate.
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Richard Dawkins should be jealous of Robertson, who has converted far more Christians to athiesm than Dawkins ever dreamed of. But what, exactly, does Pat Robertson have to do with researchers working out the process by which evolution added a component to a cellular machine?
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Richard Dawkins should be jealous of Robertson, who has converted far more Christians to athiesm than Dawkins ever dreamed of. But what, exactly, does Pat Robertson have to do with researchers working out the process by which evolution added a component to a cellular machine?
Pat Robertson's involvement with protein goes back a long time: http://www.cbn.com/communitypublic/shake.aspx [cbn.com]
Error in summary (Score:5, Interesting)
From a biochemical perspective, it is also worthwhile to point out that the enzyme is powered by ATP hydrolysis - hence the name V-ATPase. It is a motor, and ATP is the fuel. Without ATP you get no useful work.
Link to the Nature Article (Score:3)
It was just published online today, I don't see any other copies available yet. However, the primary author of the paper is supported by an NIH grant, so the paper should be released in its entirety as a non-paywalled article fairly soon to comply with the NIH funding rules.
No, they did not. (Score:2)
"researchers have worked out the process by which evolution added a component to a cellular machine"
No, they did not.
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What could a creationist do with this?
Would not an intelligent designer re-use the most efficient design in all the lifeforms? Unless someone can demonstrate that the 3 ringed design is better for fungi but only for fungi; but even in that case that just shows limited random mutation combined with selection of the fittest works. I just don't get how this can be used for ignorance.
Although arguing against creationism is kind of like arguments against flat Earth...
Re:inb4 (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way.
It isn't science.
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Re:inb4 (Score:5, Funny)
I'm fine with people saying evolution is the method, with a deity being the driving force. The issue is when they say that god created everything from nothing in six days around 6,000 years ago and any evidence to the contrary was put here by the devil to lure us away from the truth.
So, you're saying, really that the Devil is in the details?
(sorry)
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I'm fine with people saying evolution is the method, with a deity being the driving force. The issue is when they say that god created everything from nothing in six days around 6,000 years ago and any evidence to the contrary was put here by the devil to lure us away from the truth.
Then your position is no more supportable or rational than the people you claim to have a problem with. Both of you are wrong. Degrees of wrong is interesting from an academic standpoint, or when you want to mock someone, but wrong is, in fact, black or white. But you're drawing a line in a non-rationally-supportable position, so you're already on the wrong side of it.
Re:inb4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Nonsense. Most models are wrong. They're still enormously useful compared to something that's more wrong. Newtonian mechanics is wrong, but it was -- and still is -- very useful for the overwhelming majority of situations.
It is very wrong to say the earth is flat. There are many, many ways of demonstrating its wrongness and assuming the earth is flat will lead you to wildly incorrect conclusions for many problems.
It is less wrong to say the earth is a sphere. However, it's harder to demonstrate that it's wrong, and you can do many useful calculations assuming a sphere for simplicity.
It's also wrong, but not very much, to say the earth is a slightly squashed sphere. It requires very careful measurement to demonstrate this, and it's such an accurate approximation to make that it's rare to see someone actually model the earth's correct shape.
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"The Relativity of Wrong" by Asimov (Score:2)
This is a great (and very short) essay by Asimov on that very subject:
http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm [tufts.edu]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Relativity_of_Wrong [wikipedia.org]
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It is very wrong to say the earth is flat. There are many, many ways of demonstrating its wrongness and assuming the earth is flat will lead you to wildly incorrect conclusions for many problems.
Even that isn't that wrong. The earth being flat is actually a very good model for the overwhelming majority of human day-to-day activities. I can't think of a single instance where my personal actions have been directed by anything but a flat earth model.
That's of course not to say that I don't depend on satellites, have flown in aircraft that used great circle navigation etc. etc. but on a personal level, I can't think of a single instance where my actions would have been different given the flat earth mo
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It is very wrong to say the earth is flat. There are many, many ways of demonstrating its wrongness and assuming the earth is flat will lead you to wildly incorrect conclusions for many problems.
Even that isn't that wrong. The earth being flat is actually a very good model for the overwhelming majority of human day-to-day activities. I can't think of a single instance where my personal actions have been directed by anything but a flat earth model.
That's of course not to say that I don't depend on satellites, have flown in aircraft that used great circle navigation etc. etc. but on a personal level, I can't think of a single instance where my actions would have been different given the flat earth model and another one.
When they built the arch in St. Louis back in the '60s, they started from the two bases and built up to meet in the middle. The bases were far enough apart and the height great enough that they had to allow for the curvature of the earth. In other words, a plumb line over one base was not parallel to one over the other.
So, if you were an engineer on a project of that scale, you might need to consider the "not quite flat" Earth model.
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That's an interesting example. Reading up on it (and bridges) it's not a very big difference, but it's there.
I still get away though, as I said my personal actions, and even though I'm an engineer, I'm not a civil engineer. The largest thing I've designed (playing a mechanical engineer at work) would fit comfortably in your trunk. So even though the holes didn't line up in the end, I can't blame the curvature of the earth. :-)
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Oh, it's still not a bad model for many reasonably simple actions. But it's an easy limitation to run in to, and it's also easy to notice. For example, objects disappear over the horizon differently between flat and curved surfaces. It's also why there are different time zones.
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Yes, I'm not saying the earth is flat. If you want to explain time zones then a spherical earth comes in handy, but if you just want to live with them a ribbon or better yet route memorisation does just as well (as they don't follow geometry anyway, too much politics involved). China even does without, and they still start school at 8.00 whether that's in the middle of the night or close to lunch. So you don't strictly need them. :-)
So, I'm not sure about "easy to notice" or "run into". As Asimov said, even
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"I'm fine with people saying evolution is the method, with a deity being the driving force."
That is an rationally unsupportable stance.
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As a Christian, I have to say the biggest frustration I find is the fact that so many Christians are so insistent on 6 24 hour days when there wasn't even the concept of a modern day for the first several days. Even more direct, Jesus said he would come again "soon". I'm pretty sure that rules out the idea of our idea of time being anything like what God considers time so I have no idea why someone would insist it MUST be 6 24 hour days. Could God have made things look like they do and do it in 6 days if
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All of the people I've spoken with that are biblical literalists have to perform bizarre menta
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Yeah, but the actual Greek words aren't so clear. The word for day also can translate as age. The word for morning can translate as soon or dawn and the word for evening can translate as twilight. Roughly they mean start and stop to an age. It's still a somewhat poetic read, sure, but Jesus himself spoke in parables that clearly were not literal events.
And don't get me wrong, personally, I still am fairly convinced that the Biblical creation story can be accurate as recorded, but I don't think that even
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I think of the creation story as written from a naive perspective that was plausible at the time but is not very believable with current scientific knowledge. The flood is baldly impossible, probably based on verbal tales of a large regional flood that was exaggerated over time. People then didn't understand how large the world was, or even t
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It states a word that is frequently translated as age. It isn't clearly 24 hour day at all. You can't even argue that having it be 7 days makes it obvious as our week isn't based on any type of natural cycle. It's simply chosen because it matches up with the number of ages in creation. I wouldn't bet money that it isn't literal days, but I wouldn't bet money that it was either since the terms are anything but concrete.
As for the shape of the planet, there are several accounts in the Bible that only make
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What's really ridiculous is taking these mythologies seriously at all, and then arguing over the meaning of a particular word that was written down thousands of years ago by some storyteller, who got it from some other storyteller, and so on.
And doing this while claiming that it's religious truth, but all the other origin stories from around the globe and throughout history are false. I guess it was just too much trouble for God to get the same story to all people for all of history. Or maybe it was just mo
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Yeah, my bad, thanks for the correction. I wasn't thinking straight when I was looking at that today.
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Let's say a "day" is the time it takes for the earth to rotate 360 degrees. (Interesting all by itself since such a concrete measurement was unavailable before the earth was created, but whatever.) And then let's say that it took 6 such days for God to create a proto-earth, i.e., the earth the way it was 3.5 billion years ago or whatever.
And then let's say, at the end of day 6, God popped this proto-earth into his cosmic-sized Time Accelerator Machine, closed the lid, programmed the machine such that th
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Let's say...
Let's say a giant bird had indigestion and threw up a planet-sized rock from it's gizzard! It then took a crap on the planet, making it ready for life. The bird took a seed from a neighboring planet and dropped it in its own dung and then flapped it's wings causing a tachyon inversion that sped up time 1,000,000,000-fold and caused the plant to evolve into the plants, creatures, and people we know today.
Wow! Anyone can play this game and this "theory" sounds just as likely!
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Let's say...
Let's say a giant bird had indigestion and threw up a planet-sized rock from it's gizzard! It then took a crap on the planet, making it ready for life. The bird took a seed from a neighboring planet and dropped it in its own dung and then flapped it's wings causing a tachyon inversion that sped up time 1,000,000,000-fold and caused the plant to evolve into the plants, creatures, and people we know today.
Wow! Anyone can play this game and this "theory" sounds just as likely!
You forgot to re-modulate the warp coils and reverse polarity on the thrusters.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
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The guy who wrote it never thought anyone would take it seriously!
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Matthew chapter 16: "Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom."
So you've been contradicted by Jesus as reported via Mathew.
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And one of them was even dead (Judas Iscariot).
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Yeah, this also makes it far more clear how the concepts of eternity or God being all knowing could make sense. If you could see time as we see things in three dimensions, then it becomes trivial to see the "future". A lot of the Bible makes far more sense if you assume that God isn't bound by time. (And really, I don't think it is much of an assumption to make.)
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Yeah, this also makes it far more clear how the concepts of eternity or God being all knowing could make sense. If you could see time as we see things in three dimensions, then it becomes trivial to see the "future". A lot of the Bible makes far more sense if you assume that God isn't bound by time. (And really, I don't think it is much of an assumption to make.)
Well, if He exists outside of the universe, then it's no stretch to accept that He exists outside of time as well, since that whole spacetime thing means that time, like space, is a part of the universe, and they only exist because each other does, or something like that.
I just wonder if that doesn't mean that we're basically His 6th grade science project.
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It's not really all that confusing to the people he was speaking to. Their scriptures that they had at the time already spoke that way. I am not sure off the top of my head if there are other cases that use similar timescale, but for that matter I can't think of many situations in general where a timescale is given.
Either way, it's a bit off topic to the original discussion which was that the term day as used in Genesis doesn't give any strong reason to suspect that it was 24 hours. If Jesus in fact had
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The issue is when they say that god created everything from nothing in six days around 6,000 years ago
What I think is hilarious is that I've never, not once, heard anyone actually say that "six days" was exact (and in the original Hebrew "period of time" is translated to "day" in the modern texts) and nothing existed more than 6000 years ago -- except at slashdot.
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I'll bet your sister's preacher wears a necktie. Inform her that a Christian told you to tell her that the necktie is the symbol of wealth and power, and her pastor is a wolf in sheep's clothing. She should find a different church, preferably a nondenominational one.
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What I think is hilarious is that I've never, not once, heard anyone actually say that "six days" was exact
Good for you. But I've met plenty of fundamentalists with that view. They're typically called "Young Earth Creationists" [wikipedia.org]. And they're common -- the linked poll claims that 40% of Americans believe that the Earth is less than 10K years old. [pollingreport.com] It was the basis of the Scopes Trial [wikipedia.org], and has been in an issue in a number of court decisions since then. [ncse.com] This is very much an ongoing issue.
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linked poll claims that 40% of Americans believe that the Earth is less than 10K years old.
Jesus, that's pathetic if true. Of course, half the population has lower than median intelligence, so it shouldn't be too surprising. The wolves in sheep's clothing find these poor folks easy pickings. It's a shame.
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Except it doesn't just mean day. It can also mean epoch. It's not quite that cut and dried. It's not like "day".
The Darmok problem occurs far more often than not.
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The Darmok problem occurs far more often than not.
Entirely true. When I was stationed in Thailand in the Air Force in my youth, cultural differences still got in the way of communication even after I learned Thai and was speaking with a Thai person. The Darmok problem almost got me shot once! Let me tell you, someone sticking a gun in your face is a little unpleasant.
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This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way.
It isn't science.
And more importantly, it isn't rational.
But its just an arbitrary bar. Once you've stepped off the rational, any opinion is suspect. It doesn't matter if you pray to "god" when you're having a shitty day, believe in "intelligent design" or live in a compound having incestuous relations with 9 year old girls ... its all a matter of degree. The path of rationality is very narrow, and once you step off it, and aren't willing to step back onto it, the rest is just haggling over price, as they say.
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This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way.
It isn't science.
And more importantly, it isn't rational.
But its just an arbitrary bar. Once you've stepped off the rational, any opinion is suspect. It doesn't matter if you pray to "god" when you're having a shitty day, believe in "intelligent design" or live in a compound having incestuous relations with 9 year old girls ... its all a matter of degree. The path of rationality is very narrow, and once you step off it, and aren't willing to step back onto it, the rest is just haggling over price, as they say.
Of course the square root of -1 isn't rational either, but we couldn't do a lot of physics without it.
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This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way.
It isn't science.
You, too, would have lost the Scopes Monkey trial. You forget the initial premise that neither "God" nor "Science" have intrinsic value.
pro- and anti- camps both demonstrate biases (Score:2)
This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way. It isn't science.
"Scientists" don't always follow science either. With respect to religion the pro- and anti- camps have both let personal biases interfere with the scientific process. For example leading scientists of the day dismissed the big bang theory because it "smelled like creationism". These eminent scientists were biased because the big bang theory was introduced by catholic priest.
"Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître ( lemaitre.ogg (helpinfo) 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgi
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"Scientists" don't always follow science either. With respect to religion the pro- and anti- camps have both let personal biases interfere with the scientific process. For example leading scientists of the day dismissed the big bang theory because it "smelled like creationism". These eminent scientists were biased because the big bang theory was introduced by catholic priest.
And yet it's accepted by almost every scientist today.
That's what makes science difference from other "ways of knowing" - evidence always wins the argument in the end.
Also, I'm curious about how many scientists rejected it because it was introduced by a priest. Almost all of them? A lot of them? A few? One?
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"Scientists" don't always follow science either. With respect to religion the pro- and anti- camps have both let personal biases interfere with the scientific process. For example leading scientists of the day dismissed the big bang theory because it "smelled like creationism". These eminent scientists were biased because the big bang theory was introduced by catholic priest.
And yet it's accepted by almost every scientist today.
And various Christian churches accept the Copernican model (the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system), that the earth is billions of years old, etc. Scientists are not the only ones able to change their view based upon scientific study and observation.
That's what makes science difference from other "ways of knowing" - evidence always wins the argument in the end.
I believe the catholic church has explicitly stated that scientific observations are not in conflict in faith, including those observations related to evolution. Also the scientific "way of knowing" - observe, hypothesize, predict, test - was
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It isn't science.
No, it isn't. It's philosophy, and it shouldn't be in a science story, but somehow the athiests on this board insist on bringing it up anyway.
Logic won't convince a a religious person that there's no god any more than you can convince me that my computer doesn't exist, but no argument can sway anyone into believing, either. The religious person has percieved his god, so he doesn't need faith to believe any more than I need faith to know that this computer is real (although I could be locked
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The athiest needs faith.
Technically, no, he does not. There are gnostic and agnostic atheists, just as there are gnostic and agnostic theists.
A gnostic atheist "knows" there is no god(s), an agnostic atheist does not believe in the existence of a god(s), but will claim they cannot know for certain.
Admitting the lack of certain knowledge -and- the lack of a belief in what are essentially unsubstantiated rumors don't require much faith in anything other than one's own powers of obs
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Not my original quote,
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You are entirely correct that athiesm isn't a religion, although there are an awful lot of evangelical athiests. However, my hobby is indeed not collecting baseball cards, and I will ridicule anyone who dares profess a belief in baseball card collecting as an acceptable hobby!
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The only logical position is agnosticism.
I disagree.
The world is full of religions, none of which can offer any better supporting evidence than any of the others. Therefore the only logical positions are to set a low standard of evidence and accept them all, or set a high standard of evidence and reject them all.
However, most of them make claims that contradict the others, so accepting them all isn't logical unless you're willing to accept that reality is inherently contradictory.
Ergo, the only logical position is to reject them all... sometimes
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I try to find a short, concise rebuttal that utterly defeats that argument.
The best I've found is, "Science is about the ability to test a claim. You cannot test the claim that God did it, therefore it is irrelevant to science and as such irrelevant to my life." If anyone wants a shot at wording this more succinctly or effectively, go for it - I'd love to hear it. (I'd also love to hear any potential counterarguments).
It is an unfortunate byproduct of being an Atheist that people generally challenge my beli
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It seems to me that this pre-supposes a particular type of God and/or particular limitations on science.
I think if God did (and even more clearly if it continues to) interact with the world then science should certainly (though the necessary tools may not currently exist) be able to address particular questions about God relating to that interacti
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> So, anything which is untestable given the current state of technology is inherently irrelevant to your life?
I will up the ante.
It doesn't matter if each and every scientific "truth" is contradicted tomorrow. It simply doesn't matter.
Science does not exist to give you some sort of warm fuzzy or a sense of continuity.
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I should rephrase that last bit. Rather, it's not relevant to my day-to-day life.
Philosophical ventures aside, whether or not God exists doesn't affect what video card I purchase or whether I end up going for a walk in the park or just down the block.
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Exactly. Religion is not science, but so is any unverifiable theory, including theory of origin of different things.
The paper gives you an idea how things _might_ have happen.
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It's not an argument if it's meant to be an open philosophical discussion, especially if creationism is being portrayed as some sort of quasi science.
It's all good until religiously motivated busy bodies try to distort public policy.
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Their "battle cry" against Evolution is "Irreducible Complexity" meaning some biological systems are so complex that if a single part is removed the system fails.
It's the equivalent of saying "if i remove the cam shaft from a vehicle it can't function, therefore GOD must have created vehicles"
(Crap car analogy but can't be arsed thinking like a "new earth Creationist")
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Their "battle cry" against Evolution is "Irreducible Complexity" meaning some biological systems are so complex that if a single part is removed the system fails.
It's the equivalent of saying "if i remove the cam shaft from a vehicle it can't function, therefore GOD must have created vehicles"
(Crap car analogy but can't be arsed thinking like a "new earth Creationist")
No, it is not. But then again, somebody or something did create vehicles.
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Not quite. You'd conclude that vehicles were created by intelligence, which would be true (for some manufacturers).
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It seems to be that there are two main problems with "Irreducible Complexity".
Firstly it seems difficult to prove irreducibility, ie to prove the organism isn't viable in a simpler form under all conditions.
Secondly it assumes all evolution involves increased complexity. An irreducibly complex organism could have evolved from a more complex organism that itself evolved "up" from organisms that weren't irreducible. A reaso
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A creationist would probably argue about this being proof against macroevolution, since such increasing complexity violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The fact that the most efficient design is seen across multiple species would be turned into an argument that the Maker's mark is on all creation, and not an argument for divergent evolution.
Oh, wait. You wanted this to be a rhetorical question. The fact is, that many forms of creationism are still based on a rational mind trying to apply logi
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Which--as I hope you know but I feel should be pointed out for others who might read this and think it has some merit--is complete nonsense.
Second Law of Thermodynamics [wikipedia.org]
The key word in the first sentence is "isolated".
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Right, but it's still a baffling thought to imagine increasing orders of complexity with no intelligent input. Still baffles me.
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Agreed, though I find the complexity and mystery that unavoidably surrounds a hypothetical creator-intelligence to be significantly more baffling.
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Have you never come across the game of life:
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/ [bitstorm.org]
or the mandelbrot set: from very simple rules you can get some remarkably complex behaviour.
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increasing complexity violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Lets start with a simple block of ice. The sun shines on it, melting it into chaotic water which flows into the ocean. The sun shines on the ocean evaporating the water into even more highly random water vapor. In the winter the water vapor cools in a cloud, and falls as highly ordered and complex snowflakes.
You are completely misapplying the 2nd law of thermo. It does not prohibit things from becoming more complex or more ordered. In fact, as noted above with snowflakes, when there is an energy flow it is
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Right, but it's still a baffling thought to imagine increasing orders of complexity with no intelligent input. Still baffles me.
Why?
What is the link between complexity and intelligence?
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We make complex things. We are intelligent (to varying degrees). Our own ego says that nature can't do better than us by blind guessing.
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We make complex things. We are intelligent (to varying degrees). Our own ego says that nature can't do better than us by blind guessing.
We also make simple things. In fact, we deem simplicity as one of the hallmarks of good design.
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What could a creationist do with this?
I once pointed out to a creationist that an intelligent designer probably could have done a better job with the human sinus cavity, and he attributed the problems with it to the imperfections in creation introduced after Adam and Eve's fall (that is, eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil).
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Hell, I'm still looking for a better Eve. Look at their problems, two chesticles that have a tendency to get cancer, a plumbing system that is in constant need of vigilance. And if that's an easy way to give birth, try pulling your upper lip over your head (Carol Burnett's response to an audience member asking her what giving birth is like).
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I thought that was Bill Cosby.
I give you 4 words (Score:2)
the camps are split by 4 words
In The Beginning ? (GOD|BANG)
You can't say that SOMEONE didn't create everything since you can't prove that a Supreme Someone does not exist.
AIG and ICR are 2 sites that gather the details of things that should make Macro-Evolutionists go Oh Really?? (simple stuff that is not simple and problems with dating and the order of fossils are 2 examples)
did you know that there are Fossils with BioMatter included??
also the non-wackadoodle Creationists attribute The Great Flood with mak
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You can't say that SOMEONE didn't create everything since you can't prove that a Supreme Someone does not exist.
Sure I can:
Someone didn't create everything.
See? Easy!
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inb4 anyone mentions Creationism.
That's nothing... you were even nb4 anyone claimed "first post".
I didn't claim it because I'd already done that, back in '98 or '99, and gotten it out of my system.
'course that +1, Funny I was aiming for seems to be eluding me, and the humorous responses I'd anticipated are conspicuous by their absence as well.
Gave coldwetdog a nice springboard, though.
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So this is not about cell phone networks?
Nope, it's biology. Biology manages to make lemonade out of lemons. Cell phone networks make vinegar out of cider.
How do like them apples for a mixed metaphor?
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But back to reality ...
tl;dr - you can make complex machines out of simple ones. Even with biologic 'machines'. Not something anyone who has thought about molecular evolution would find surprising, but it's nice to see some reasonable experimental evidence to show that it's real.
Thorton's lab has done some interesting work in the past. Nice to see he is getting some exposure. It does bother me a bit that Nature (the journal, not the mom) is continuing to take a very politically polarized editorial stanc
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What is political about taking the piss out of people who are afraid to face up to the inevitable reality of their death? And who (largely) live in a foreign country? Egging on Creationists to slaver and scream and soil themselves in their cages is just a permissible blood sport. It's on about the same level of "
Re:So this is not... (Score:4, Informative)
We need to have a nice sit down talk with all the folks involved. Sort of explain the basic rules for playing the game. The guys on the left. What you do is not science. It has no basis in science. Its belief... faith... it needs no foundation in science, because its about your mythos and the stories you tell about the creator. You absolutely have a right to that, and in this country the freedom to celebrated and express that faith any way you see fit, save acts that harm or risk harm to others. Stop trying to crib you faith into some psuedo-scientific theoretical framework. When you try to force facts to fit theory, you end up with something contrary to the very nature of science and anyway, its klugie, smells like feet and you've gone and dressed it funny.
You, yes, all y'all on the right. Stop poking at the folks on the left. They aren't stupid. They are practicing a perfectly natural human behavior and if it doesn't pass the muster of your process for validating truth and reality, tough, it isn't meant to, they have the right engage in magical thinking, and in some very interesting conversations, may well have things to say a human beings and metaphysics that will take the scientists among us a very long time to determine one way or the other. I mean its nonsense to mess with intangibles that way, would you try to quantify the elements of your healthy emotional life? There are parts of the human experience and behavior that are illogical, and presuppose completely unprovable assertions. Trying to logic your way through them will only irritate the natives and undermine your ability to communicate or demonstrate the amazing power of your rigorous intellectual process for determining reality when the general populace will some day most need that bright thinking.
Please, play nice and stop trying to break each others toys. Its irritating. I know some of you get your hackles up when you see Cavemen riding on the backs of Apatosaurs at the Christian Museum in Kansas City (a la Flintstones.) It wasn't so long ago you believed in St. Nick. Stop trying to screw up the others kids Christmas morning, its not your place. Maybe some day soon, somebody will squish something big at the LHC and what quirts out displays a message that says "Jesus is here too!", until then, cut each other a little slack and try to enjoy the toys you have.
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they have the right engage in magical thinking
And others have the right to try and dispel that magical thinking. If people want to go around preaching that crap, I find it completely justified to counter it.
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And where do you put yourself in this scheme?
What we see is a common property of humanity; the constant attempt to establish a pecking order, with oneself at top and others below. The reason there isn't a dialog is not because the two sides are incomprehensible to each other. It is because the two sides simply reject the other.
I've known a lot of people for whom the facts they accept are just a convenient club with which to beat others. This happens in other human pursuits, too: some people use the law cyni
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Except scientists aren't usually trying to invade churches.
This is quite commonplace for "the other side".
It's hard to achieve "peaceful coexistence" with Ghengis Khan. Temujin just won't let you.
They like to play the victim but they aren't really.
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Re:Actually it not evolution but degeneration... (Score:5, Informative)
It may have had an advantage at one time (such as viral resistance).
However it could also be a no-benefit/no-cost change, which can also happen, it isn't degeneration (a weakening of the creature), and even degeneration would be a subset of evolution, since it would involve changes over time which are influenced by natural selection, genetic drift, etc.
There's no such thing as degeneration (Score:2)
Evolution does not *necessarily* imply an increase in complexity.
If complexity is expensive and is not providing an advantage to the organism, the mechanism in question may mutate "back" to a state that an ancestor of that organism already expressed/had. But you're still "evolving" because you're better able to compete *now*.
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Proceed.
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"The result, they say, is a challenge to proponents of intelligent design who maintain that complex biological systems can only have been created by a divine force."
Oh, come on! You aren't even trying to be honest at this point! No one who can access the Internet has any excuse to give such a sloppy definition of Intelligent Design.
OK, say it with me: "Irreducible Complexity." Do you understand the words coming out of my keyboard? Apparently not! The term is IC, not just C. Even though some evolutionists deny that any complex system is irreducibly complex, that is not justification for distorting the ID position.
I think it would be fair to say that the blog post is more of an excuse for highlighting some mind-blowingly good molecular biology and the ID is an after-thought. As it should be to anyone with a fair grip on biology. Ananyo
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Verizon sneaks in a new charge, they see who complains. If no one they leave it, if people do they remove or reduce it.
This process is repeated as often as possible.
Cellular complexity is the result
I really could have used having this appended to my original post* (the first one, as it happens) before I got hit with all the off-topic mods.
*http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2611690&cid=38639404