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Vin Crosbie, on the challenges, financial and otherwise, that newspaper publishers are facing: "The real problem, Mr. Newspaperman, isn't that your content isn't online or isn't online with multimedia. It's your content. Specifically, it's what you report, which stories you publish, and how you publish them to people, who, by the way, have very different individual interests. The problem is the content you're giving them, stupid; not the platform its on."
by Vin Crosbie in Rebuilding Media
There's a problem in the drug industry that people have recognized for some years, but we're not that much closer to dealing with it than we were then. We keep coming up with these technologies and techniques which seem as if they might be able to help us with some of our nastiest problems - I'm talking about genomics in all its guises, and metabolic profiling, and naturally the various high-throughput screening platforms, and others. But whether these are helping or not (and opinions sure do vary), one thing that they all have in common is that they generate enormous heaps of data.
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Now that the Web labor market is saturated and Web design a static profession, it's not surprising that 'user experience' designers and researchers who've spent their careers online are looking for new worlds to conquer. Some are returning to the “old media” as directors and producers. More are now doing offline consulting (service experience design, social policy design, exhibition design, and so on) under the 'user experience' aegis. They argue that the lessons they've learned on the Web can be applied to phenomena in the physical and social worlds. But there are enormous differences...
by Bob Jacobson in Total Experience
Clay Shirky, in deconstructing Second Life hype: "Second Life is heading towards two million users. Except it isn’t, really... I suspect Second Life is largely a 'Try Me' virus, where reports of a strange and wonderful new thing draw the masses to log in and try it, but whose ability to retain anything but a fraction of those users is limited. The pattern of a Try Me virus is a rapid spread of first time users, most of whom drop out quickly, with most of the dropouts becoming immune to later use."
by Clay Shirky in Many-to-Many
Over the last few years we've seen old barriers to creativity coming down, one after the other. New technologies and services makes it trivial to publish text, whether by blog or by print-on-demand. Digital photography has democratised a previously expensive hobby. And we're seeing the barriers to movie-making crumble, with affordable high-quality cameras and video hosting provided by YouTube or Google Video and their ilk... Music making has long been easy for anyone to engage in, but technology has made high-quality recording possible without specialised equipment, and the internet has revolutionised distribution, drastically disintermediating the music industry... What's left? Software maybe? Or maybe not."
by Suw Charman in Strange Attractor
Derek Lowe on the news that the Nobel Prize for medicine has gone to Craig Mello and Andrew Fire for their breakthrough work: "RNA interference is probably going to have a long climb before it starts curing many diseases, because many of those problems are even tougher than usual in its case. That doesn't take away from the discovery, though, any more than the complications of off-target effects take away from it when you talk about RNAi's research uses in cell culture. The fact that RNA interference is trickier than it first looked, in vivo or in vitro, is only to be expected. What breakthrough isn't?"
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Andrew Phelps: "Recently my WoW guild has been having a bit of a debate on the merits of Player-vs.-Player (PvP) within Azeroth. My personal opinion on this is that PvP has its merits, and can be incredible fun, but the system within WoW is horridly, horribly broken. It takes into account the concept of the battle, but battle without consequence, without emotive context, and most importantly, without honor..."
From later in the piece: "When I talk about this with people (thus far anyway) I typically get one of two responses, either 'yeah, right on!' or 'hey, it’s war, and war isn’t honorable – grow the hell up'. There is a lot to be said for that argument – but the problem is that war in the real historical world has very different constraints that are utterly absent from fantasized worlds..."
by Andrew Phelps in Got Game
Derek Lowe: "So, you're developing a drug candidate. You've settled on what looks like a good compound - it has the activity you want in your mouse model of the disease, it's not too hard to make, and it's not toxic. Everything looks fine. Except. . .one slight problem. Although the compound has good blood levels in the mouse and in the dog, in rats it's terrible. For some reason, it just doesn't get up there. Probably some foul metabolic pathway peculiar to rats (whose innards are adapted, after all, for dealing with every kind of garbage that comes along). So, is this a problem?.."
by Derek Lowe in In the Pipeline
Bob Jacobson, on shopping at his local Albertsons supermarket where he had "one of the worst customer experiences" of his life: "Say what you will about the Safeway chain or the Birkenstock billionaires who charge through the roof for Whole Foods' organic fare, they know how to create shopping environments that create a more pleasurable experience, at its best (as at Whole Foods) quite enjoyable. Even the warehouses like Costco and its smaller counterpart, Smart & Final, do just fine: they have no pretentions, but neither do they dump virtual garbage on the consumer merely to create another trivial revenue stream, all for the sake of promotions in the marketing department..."
by Strange Attractor in Total Experience
Kevin Anderson: "First off, I want to say that I really admire the ambition of the Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free. It is one of the boldest statements made by any media company that participation needs to be central to a radical revamp of traditional content strategies... It is, therfore, not hugely surprising to find that Comment is Free is having a few teething troubles..."
by Kevin Anderson in strange
Corante Developments
Here you will find the latest news from Corante including updates on upcoming events, new initiatives, product and publication launches, and more.
It was with shock that I returned home from a night out last night to hear the news of Russell's passing. How terribly, terribly sad. Most of all for him, as he'd seemed buoyant, healthier, and content when I'd last seen him several months ago when he was in town - he was happy that work was busy and rewarding and was having fun with it but most of all was thrilled about how things were going with his girlfriend, Ellen.
I've known Russ for what seems like ages now (in a good way) though in fact it's only been about six or seven years since the early days of "commercial" blogging when he started working on various projects at and around Corante. He was a diligent, committed, and prolific journalist who had impressively and more ably than others been able to make the transition from the old-school way of doing things to the new. He had his quirks, as we all do, but I greatly valued that he was good-natured, collegial, reliable, quick to adopt, trustworthy, eager to learn, and earnest in his interest in helping others better understand what he wrote about.
He was also, it should be said, a kind and thoughtful soul and it was the rare conversation in which he didn't ask, with sincerity, about what he knew of my life, e.g. our new babe, and we didn't talk as seemingly old friends about our lives and respective paths. I can't say I knew him very well, of course, but in our half-dozen get-togethers over the years and dozens of conversations I got a good sense of the man: he cared about learning and sharing and his bearing was earnest and ego-less and we'll miss him for that and more.
We wanted to let you know about a discount to New Comm Forum, the annual event event put on by our friends at the Society for New Communications Research. The conference, which runs from April 22-25, will feature many of the field's leading observers and is an important event for those looking, in the words of SNCR, to "better understand new communications tools, technologies and emerging modes of communication, and their effect on traditional media, professional communications, business, culture and society."
Check out the event's website and, if you're interested in attending, be sure to use the code supplied below for a special discount.
EARLY BIRD PRICING - NOW UNTIL FEB. 15th
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Pre-conference or post-conference session - $195.
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We've been remiss in letting you know about two new independent blogs we've helped launch in the past month or so.
The first - the ConversationHub - is a companion blog to Supernova 2007, the latest edition of Kevin Werbach's excellent conference on all things connected. As the conference site says: "Supernova examines the effects of an increasingly connected world on business, life, and public policy. As disparate physical and social networks link with one another, a new societal network is rapidly evolving... The New Network is greater than the sum of its parts. It challenges us to re-create everything from the software and hardware we use...to the business models we employ...to the information and entertainment we encounter...to the ways we work and play."
Visit the ConversationHub and you'll find several dozen leading thinkers and doers, led by a few notable ringleaders, weighing in on the themes and trends of the day in technology and business. We encourage you to tune in - feel free to comment and even suggest topics and ideas for posts.
The second blog - Mobile Messaging 2.0 - convenes about a dozen top observers of the mobile messaging space for an intense discussion of the industry and where it's headed. Among its contributors are leading commentators, journalists and players in the field - tune in and you'll find them touching on topics such as mobile device design, messaging platforms, market pressures, user-generated content, interface design, and much, much more.
Also, if you visit the site, which is sponsored by Airwide Solutions, this week, you'll find live coverage and commentary from Global Messaging 2007, to which several of our contributors have traveled to hear about the latest developments from a broad spectrum of the industry's players and providers.
Be sure to catch the Office 2.0 Conference and hear from and engage with leading thinkers and doers in this exciting new market. Find out more here and be sure to use the code "GLDRK" for a special discount for Corante readers.
Check out the The AppGap - a group blog on the tools and trends that are changing the way we work.
“Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for evolution? The brain shrinks in some form of pygmy homo erectus. Thats evolution! Ancient genes survive millions of years unchanged. That's evolution?! Women have orgasms. That's evolution! Although not all women have orgasms and they still manage to reproduce hmm luckily with the right spin...That's evolution! We live in a civil society with people working for cooperative goals. That's evolution! Unfortunately some people murder and rape. Just an unfortunate side-effect, but that's evolution.
“Not only is everything evidence for evolution but evolution explains everything! No its not circular reasoning its Evolution! Thank goodness we don't need to resort to God to explain the world around. Now we have Evolution! Its the all-encompassing answer to the ultimate question (I always thought it was 42). The evolutionist has reached the omniscient nirvana. maybe we should start meeting at the biology lab on Sunday mornings. We can sing some Evolution Hymns. Do they exist? Don't worry they'll evolve. I'll just start selectively pressing some keys on the organ and type a few letters while blindfolded. Okay I'm getting a little carried away...chalk it up to evolution.” [sic]
I find that in situations like this, it helps to step back for a moment from evolution and look at the other major scientific theories of the past couple centuries that explain a lot about the natural world. You could translate Doug's complaints about evolution into complaints about any of them.
Take the theory of plate tectonics. According to this theory, the Earth is covered in plates of crust. Each plate grows along one margin with molten rock that rises from the Earth's interior. The margin on the other side of the plate is cold and sinks down into the interior, where it is remelted and mixed up with the rock down there. Continents ride on top of these plates. In some cases they crash into each other, such as India and Asia, forming mountains. In other cases, a new rift splits a plate apart, pushing continents away, as with Africa and South America.
From the 1920s to 1960s, geologists put together this theory as a way to explain patterns on the Earth. They couldn't actually see the continents crash into each other like bumper cars, because the process takes millions of years. Instead, they had to develop hypotheses that they could then test by looking at the Earth. For example, they calculated the age of rocks around mid-ocean ridges. The rocks closer to the ridges were younger than the ones further away. Years of studies both in the field and in the lab have strengthened the theory, but they've also led scientists to expand it from its original form. The original theory didn't account for what was driving hot rock up from the interior in the first place, for example. Yet new ideas for these sorts of things do not invalidate the realization that the continents move.
Now imagine a blog about plate tectonics (I wish there was one). The blog is dedicated to new research into how all the dizzying variety of landscapes on the planet, from jagged cliffs to undersea volcanoes, are produced by the Earth's geological engine. It could even have a few posts about how plate tectonics helps explain some things you might never expect geology to explain, such as why it is that some animals in Africa and South America are surprisingly similar. Answer: their common ancestors lived at a time when the two continents were still joined together.
Imagine the sort of exasperated comments such a blog would get:
"Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for plate tectonics? Continents split apart. That's plate tectonics! Continents crash into each other. That's plate tectonics?! Plates sink under other plates. That's plate tectonics. Although some plates actually slide past each other. That's plate tectonics. Not only is everything evidence for plate tectonics, but plate tectonics explains everything! No it's not circular reasoning, it's plate tectonics! Thank goodness we don't need to resort to God to explain the world. Now we have plate tectonics!"
Any theory that would explain the Earth's landscape has to be able to account for a huge variety of features. The same goes for any theory that would explain the Earth's biological diversity. Just consider fish. There are fish with eyes and fish without. Most fish only swim, but some fish can fly and some can crawl on dry land. A theory that could only shed light on one kind of fish wouldn't be much of a theory at all.
The theory of evolution explains this variety, but not in an arbitrary way. Fish descend from a common ancestor, and along the way they have been modified, primarily through natural selection, into different forms. Flying fish do not have wings made out of balsa wood. Their wings are actually modified fins. The fins that some fish use to crawl on land are also clearly modified from the fins other fish use to swim. Fish without eyes still retain the genes required to form eyes, but they have been modified so that the eyes never fully develop. If these fish really did evolve from a common ancestor, you'd expect that their DNA would reflect this common kinship. And it does. If these fish really did evolve from a common ancestor, you'd expect that the fossil record would be consistent with their descent. And it is.
As a result, the specific examples that Doug brings up are not circular, but rather are particular cases of well-studied patterns in evolution.
Dwarfing is not an idea that someone came up with when Homo floresiensis was discovered. It's been documented in many animals. Is there a compelling explanation for how full-sized elephants come to islands and then become the size of cows other than evolution? Let's hear it.
The genes Doug refers to are the ones found in jellyfish and humans. As animals, we descend from a common ancestor. We have lots of genes in common with jellyfish—genes for building cells, proteins, and DNA, for example. Now it turns out that some body-building genes are also conserved in humans and jellyfish. But these genes are not carbon copies of one another. They have been modified in each lineage, just as you'd expect if life did indeed evolve.
Doug's example of female orgasms raises another important point: an overarching theory about the history of life or the Earth does not automatically give you all the answers about that history. How did the Andes Mountains form? If a geologist simply says, plate tectonics, that's not a very satisfying answer. Yes, plate tectonics were involved, but how? It turns out that the best explanation geologists have is a staggeringly complex interplay of continental collision, flowing rivers, and climate change. But the issue is still very much in debate. Orgasms are also an open question, as are the precise evolutionary origins of many things in nature. Natural selection may well turn out not to have much to do with human female orgasms. We'll see.
If a scientific theory can explain an aspect of the natural world, withstand scrutiny, and lead to important new insights into how the world works, we really shouldn't hold its success against it. No one's asking for evolution hymns—certainly no more than they're asking for gravity hymns or hymns to the periodic table of the elements.
1. Christopher Letzelter on June 23, 2005 12:22 PM writes...
"Most fish only swim, but some fish can fly and some can crawl on dry land."
Not to be an @ss here, but I can just see some critic: "Ah-HA! Flying fish don't fly, they GLIDE! Carl's wrong!"
Anyway, you know how Creationists/IDer's will explain dwarfism - god did it, and we curious humans don't need to know why.
Thanks for the blog, I always enjoy the discussions.
Chris
When discussing evolution, people seem to confuse passive adaptation to local environments with directed, purposeful "improvement." In other words, they anthropomorphize change.
Marvellous post! As always, thank you for yet another wonderful and patient explanation of the scientific process...
An articulate and excellently written post like yours is well worth the time and effort it probably took to write in the name of all the iquisitive young minds we should battle for lest the achievements of modernity meet the same fate as the ancient library of Alexandria.
Objective reality has two characteristics that false theories lack: not only is it self-consistent, but it is well-integrated, i.e. individual facts don't exist in isolation from one another, but each has implications that relate to other facts in a complex (but consistent) network of truth. That's what makes science possible and what lets us distinguish fact from fancy. When you get a theory that matches reality, one of the signs you've got it right is that everything does fall into place.
Contrast that with theories that try to force observations to fit into certain preconceived ideas. Want the universe to be less than 10,000 years old? No problem, we'll just say that the speed of light was a lot higher in the past than it is now--except that increasing the speed of light means an exponential increase in the energy output of nuclear reactions, due to e=mc^2, and thus the Sun becomes too hot to support life on earth, unless you decrease the mass, which would cause the planets to fly off into space, unless you increase the gravitational constant, which would collapse the atmosphere, etc, etc. Everything's interconnected. Get the theory wrong, and there's no end to the cascade of special cases. Get it right, and everything should fall into place.
Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for God? The brain shrinks in some form of pygmy homo erectus. Thats God! Ancient genes survive millions of years unchanged. That's God?! Women have orgasms. That's the devil [;-)]! Although not all women have orgasms and they still manage to reproduce hmm luckily with the right spin...That's God! We live in a civil society with people working for cooperative goals. That's God! Unfortunately some people murder and rape. Just an unfortunate side-effect, but that's God.
First I must say it was pretty exciting to see that my quip of a post inspired a new blog topic.
The plate tectonics analogy falls a bit short of my point. If scientists extended plate tectonics to explain weather patterns and the tides it would come closer to becoming an overextended theory. It would really reach evolutionary proportions if it was extended even further, introducing tectonic psychology, and explained the differing personalities of Californians, who live on an active fault line and Texans who don't. I'm not condemning the theory of evolution because of its success. I'm condemning its success based on its malleability and ambiguity. When an idea carries so much perceived explanatory power yet remains so flexible that it can be twisted and adapetd to conform to seemingly contradictory evidence, there is a problem.
The problem with Evolution is that it is never defined. Rather, it is defined (or its definition assumed) based on the context of the thought. One may make a statement like: We can see evolution in action when bacteria evolves resistence to antibiotics. In the first instance of "evolution" its definition is assumed to be - common descent with modification, such that all organisms can be traced back to a common anscestor. The second instance, the word "evolves" refers to a population emerging based on "natural selection" favoring an attribute for survival. The assumption that underlies this equivocation is that given enough time the second will add up to the first. This is an erroneous assumption as selection can only choose from already existing choices and therefore has no power to explain the origin of the choices.
In the example of "fish without eyes." The fish were originally part of a population with eyes. Through some environmental condition, they gained a survival advantage when their eyes did not completely develop. The result is a population of fish without eyes. You can extend examples like this for zillions of years and you'll never explain where the eyes came from in the first place.
Investigating the theories on the origin of eyes, its remarakable what little ground has been made. Darwin suggested that perhaps a light-sensitive cell through some gradual change developed within a dimple and then got some goo over it creating a lens and poof an eye! Eyes, Part One... Posted by Carl Zimmer Apparently one can write volumes on the subject adding little more to the argument (especially if you're as verbose as Richard Dawkins). The main addition seems to be control genes (ie.Pax-6) which merely signal where the eye should go. Control genes have become the magic wands of evolution. Wave your magic hox gene and poof a leg appears. Of course anyone with a discerning mind knows that when a magician turns a handkercheif into a pigeon (or an antennae into a leg) the pigeon was already there. The entire hypothesis is a brick wall using the a priori commitment to evolution (common descent) as mortar.
"The plate tectonics analogy falls a bit short of my point. If scientists extended plate tectonics to explain weather patterns and the tides it would come closer to becoming an overextended theory."
Your argument would be valid if you were pointing to examples of attempting to have evolution explain weather patterns and the tides. But all of the examples you actually state are about evolution being used to explain biological phenomena. It is no more surprising that an overarching biological theory could be applied to a (very) wide array of biological events than it is that an overarching geological theory could be applied to a (very) wide array of geological events.
doug wrote, "The problem with Evolution is that it is never defined. Rather, it is defined (or its definition assumed) based on the context of the thought. One may make a statement like: We can see evolution in action when bacteria evolves resistence to antibiotics. In the first instance of "evolution" its definition is assumed to be - common descent with modification, such that all organisms can be traced back to a common anscestor. The second instance, the word "evolves" refers to a population emerging based on "natural selection" favoring an attribute for survival. The assumption that underlies this equivocation is that given enough time the second will add up to the first. This is an erroneous assumption as selection can only choose from already existing choices and therefore has no power to explain the origin of the choices."
There's so much wrong with that paragraph that it's hard to know where to begin, but just for starters, how about mutations for "...the origin of choices."? Doug, as is the case with most evolution deniers, is either being deliberately deceitful or is intellectually lazy, and hasn't done the reading.
9. Ginger Yellow on June 23, 2005 02:36 PM writes...
"The problem with Evolution is that it is never defined."
Um, no. The problem is that you (and creationists as a whole) pretend it isn't defined. Scientists don't change the definitioni from "descent with modification" to "natural selection" and back again. Natural selection is simply one mechanism of evolution.
10. Christopher on June 23, 2005 03:03 PM writes...
Actually you can explain weather patterns with plate tectonics. Africa and the Middle East dried out and became the deserts they are today because the Indian subcontenent slamed into Asia uplifiting the Himilayas and disrupting the flow patterns and altering rainfall distribution. Similarly Australia has slowly dried out as it has gradually drifted northward. And Antartica is a frozen waste because the mixing of warm tropical waters with cool polar waters was inhibited when South America split off.
My guess is that at the very least, doug doesn't understand what evolution is, nor what science is.
He admits he doesn't know the definition of evolution, or that a definition even exists. Not a good position from which to argue against evolution, but a common enough position unfortunately. He then brings up the tired old argument from ignorance of how "its remarakable what little ground has been made" in the study of the evolution of eyes.
I think his point, "Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for evolution?" shows a deep misunderstanding of what science is, especially what scientific evidence is, what an explanatory model is, and the relationship between the two.
12. Gladys Nightspurt on June 23, 2005 04:00 PM writes...
Tom Lehrer wrote an awesome ode to the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Maybe not a hymn ... but it's darn catchy.
In any event: great post, Carl. I've tried explaining these things to creationists with very little success. Now I'll just link to this page and tell 'em to read it and weep.
"In the example of "fish without eyes." The fish were originally part of a population with eyes. Through some environmental condition, they gained a survival advantage when their eyes did not completely develop. The result is a population of fish without eyes. You can extend examples like this for zillions of years and you'll never explain where the eyes came from in the first place."
Really, Doug?
Let's translate Doug's statement for the rubes: "You can extend examples like this for zillions of years and you'll never convince me that God didn't design fish eyes."
14. Steve Russell on June 23, 2005 04:54 PM writes...
Christopher beat me to the punch with his Himalayan uplift comment. One might add that with the drier and cooler climate attributable to that uplift, the African rain forests shrank and the open savannahs expanded, creating new problems and opportunities for the existing critturs. The timing of the geological and climatic changes SEEMS to fit well with evolutionary changes to African species--including, possibly, changes in the ape/hominid lineage.
I certainly wouldn't claim that this possible causal connection has now been "proven," or that it explains "everything" about human evolution, but the fossil record, climate record, and geological record, along with computer weather modeling, all seem to fit, so we may have found at least one piece of the puzzle.
Note that some of these predictions were made BEFORE we had gained the detailed information that is now available, and that much of it was furnished by researchers in disciplines with NO immediate evolutionary or biological ax to grind.
Had this multidisciplinary effort not coalesced in a way that seemed to make sense, then some of these related hypotheses would have been weakened and, obviously, some of the workers would have had to go back to the drawing board.
Nor do scientists take the position that the Hox genes "explain" everything. While these genes are important, long-conserved elements in an immensely complicated cascade of developmental events needed to "build" eyes or legs in the "correct" positions, there is no single gene that equates with "eye" or "leg." Thus, there was no one single incredible "long odds" mutation that needed to occur to bring all the elements of a fully-evolved eye or limb together.
These genes may very well NOT have conferred functioning eyes or limbs on the ur-bilaterian ancestor of fly and horse. The thinking now seems to be that genes like these may have originally figured into the specification of some of the early specialized cell types for multicellular life--for example, photoreceptor cells (not "fully" evolved eyes) or muscle cells (not "fully" evolved limbs).
(And, for that matter, the early photoreceptor cells and proteins may not even have been used for envisioning the environment, but may have instead played a role in fine-tuning the ancestor's behavior to the circadian rhythms (day-night cycle).)
The Hox and similar cell-fate and positioning genes again did not spring forth fully formed, but may themselves have evolved out of earlier inter-cellular signalling precursors of colonial animals. And those precursors may have evolved out of genes involved in intra-cellular signalling networks.
So once again--and I know it won't be for the last time!--none of this had to come together perfectly or all at once in some full "irreducably complex" manifestation. Each step built on the prior steps in small ways. Each gene or protein played a comprehensible role in some living creature at some point in time. "Complex" multi-celled animals arose sometime between a half-billion and a billion years ago, and that emergence was in turn dependent upon an earlier THREE-PLUS billion years of cellular evolution. This is an almost unfathomable time depth which anti-evolutionists simply can't seem to wrap their minds around (well, probably no one can, really, but scientists are at least honest with themselves about it).
18. Juke Moran on June 23, 2005 08:52 PM writes...
Gladys Nightspurt for best alias ever and Tom Lehrer mention - thank you.
-
Tangentially somewhat, there's a commonality much of the scientific community has with much of the creationist/ID community. And it's completely invisible.
Both want control of the evolutionary process to be in some paternal, anthropocentric hand. Neither wants evolution to continue as it was back when we gained all the advantages evolution conferred - the very intelligence we've turned on the process to make it plain, our social complexity, our adaptive quickness, our immune systems.
Neither side wants that process to continue, with adversity and mortality selecting the gene combinations that continue. Science continually justifies the most bizarre interventions into living creatures and systems by the resulting benefit of saved lives. Creationists follow a dogma that places mankind entirely above and outside the evolutionary flow.
Both want evolution controlled, and both want it controlled by reason and plan. One from the wizard behind the curtain, the other from the wizards in front of it.
That's not to suggest we allow plague and predation to sweep the land. For one thing that letting, by intention, would be itself control.
Balance, living within the world, not against and on top of it - we could try that again, this way clearly isn't working too well. Imbalanced living has led us to the edge of extinction. All the things we point to as proof of our superiority are imperiled by our success, by our being too successful.
The almost vicious polarity on this issue masks a rejection of balanced living, and the humility it entails, by both sides. There's no reverence for life that isn't human. In that, though neither side will admit it, they have a lot in common.
19. Pierce R. Butler on June 23, 2005 09:10 PM writes...
Why have the French and the Germans fought four major wars against each other over the last two centuries? It all goes back to their History!
Why have the French-speaking & German-speaking peoples of Switzerland cooperated successfully for the last two centuries? Well, you have to consider their History...
Why are the French & the Germans now cooperating in EU politics against the British, when usually the B & the F have allied against the Gs, except when the B & the Gs united against the F? You still claim History is behind it???
Hey, if you're going to claim this History stuff fits into all those contradictory situations, that shows me that the whole concept of History is a fraud & a delusion, and I'm not even going to agree that such a Thing exists!
Workin' at the outcrop, hundred ten in the shade
Tryin' to figure out how all those rocks got laid
I'm lookin' at the bedding it's as plain as can be
It's full of little fossils from the Tertiary
Now and then you find a layer of basalt
Take your ... and find a different strike-slip fault
(refrain)
Dooda rock rock baby (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby! (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby and you'll be-ee a red-hot lava tonight.
Muds and shale and silts and well they don't all look the same
Find volcanics if you want to play the dating game
I'll map out every overturn and anticline
To see if maybe you should dig a well or a mine
All the metamorphics they be doin' the twist
Geology is sometimes just a pile of schist
(refrain)
If you run across a big volcanic cone
You're standing on a hotspot or subduction zone
Oh this old Earth is changing at a rapid rate
California will continue when we pass the plate
Sometimes it's hard to realize that sooner or lay-tah
To dust we shall return and get made into strata
(refrain)
(bridge)
Dooda rock rock baby (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby! (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby and you'll....
Continents are dancin' to a rockin' beat
Mountain tops are jumpin', they can feel the heat
The quakes are shakin' up the lithospheric crust
And all the rocks are shiftin' like they're fit to bust
Well someday they'll be sediments and settle dow-own
And then get stoned in the underground
Dooda rock rock baby (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby! (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby and you'll be-ee...
A Red-Hot Lava Tonight.
(Words copyright 1989 by Dr. Jane Robinson, errors mine, transcribed without permission.)
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium (inhale)
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.
Isn't that interesting?
I knew you would.
I hope you're all taking notes, because there's gonna be a short quiz next period.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdinum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Paladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, and
Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (inhale)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
Tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.
As a point of interest, the other day All Things Considered actually quoted some of the Lehrer Ode to the elements, without attribution until later in the week when one of their listeners wrote to call them on it. Now, it could be that the lack of attribution was deliberate.
24. Peter Ellis on June 24, 2005 04:15 AM writes...
Is there a compelling explanation for how full-sized elephants come to islands and then become the size of cows other than evolution? Let's hear it.
Overly hot spin cycle?
More seriously, that sentence is a bit of a hostage to the ID folks as it doesn't make clear the time scales involved - it looks almost like the individual elephants shrank.
"Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for evolution?"
Isn't that how evidence works? The more evidence you collect, the more it converges to a solution? Would you say to Columbo, "Isn't it amazing that all your evidence points to this suspect?"
Thanks, Carl, it's a good post that explains the situation so clearly that creationists are sure to NOT understand it. Keep in mind that Doug thinks ICR and Answers in Genesis are reliable sources, so don't waste too much effort on him - you can't reason someone out of a position when they didn't use reason to get there in the first place.
For example, in an earlier thread, Doug writes:These are the exact type of changes observed. This is the evidence presented for evolution but as you can see its exactly what the creation model predicts. The Bible itself, in Genesis, tells of Jacob who was tending another man's sheep. The population contained black, white and mixed sheep. In the deal Jacob was allowed to keep the mixed sheep for his own flock. He did a little genetic manipulation by ensuring that the best and biggest white and black sheep mated so that his mixed flock would be grand. Thus in the earliest book of the Bible we have an example of a change in gene frequency.
This is hilarious. If you read the passage, you'll see that the bible is positing that putting striped patterns (using peeled tree branches) in front of mating animals caused the offspring to be speckled and spotted. What Doug refers to as Jacob performing "genetic manipulation" is biblical superstition that apparently is considered science by Young-Earth creationists. When I've pointed out this visual-pattern-affecting-genes biblical error in previous discussions, my creationist opponents typically retreated to miraculous intervention to "explain" it. Of course, someone who considers Answers in Genesis or ICR to be reliable needs all the genetic miracles they can get, considering the classic creationist blunders of Sarfati's chicken claim and Gish's bullfrog claim.
Doug also refers to the creation "model" - as if creationists could agree on one cohesive hypothesis - and its supposed predictions. This alleged creation "model" must encompass the Earth being round and flat (like a pizza) for the Flat-Earth creationists (Charles and Marjorie Johnson, etc.), a spheroidal Earth resting motionless and being orbited by the rest of the universe to satisfy the Geocentric creationists (Gerardus Buow, Marshall and Sandra Hall, etc.), an Earth about 6,000-12,000 years old for Young-Earth creationists (Carl Baugh, Duane "Bullfrog" Gish, Morris, Hovind, Sarfati, etc.), and an Earth 4 1/2 billion years old for the Old-Earth creationists (Hugh Ross, Phil Johnson, William Dembski). That's quite a model - of contradictory creationist claims, on even this small topic. It doesn't even cover the loonier creationist cryptozoology, including Baugh's fire-breathing dragons sleeping at the bottom of the sea, or the multiple locations claimed for Noah's Ark.
Doug, be sure to let us know when creationist "geneticists" have duplicated Jacob's "genetic manipulation" by changing animal genetics by having them mate in front of striped patterns, and published it in a peer-reviewed science journal (of good reputation - not anything like Sermonti's pseudoscience journal).
Evolution is a loaded word. I feel that the emotions and debate behind the word EVOLUTION fogs the scientific theory and supporting evidence that evolutionists stand behind. I propose that we develop a new term, such as was done with "intelligent design" replacing "creationism". Any suggestions?
32. Torbjorn Larsson on June 24, 2005 11:46 AM writes...
"The main addition seems to be control genes (ie.Pax-6) which merely signal where the eye should go." Not really, as you will see if you read the post. Different eyes have evolved independently a couple of times. Just as different body plans have developed out of some pretty general genetic machinery, if I understand it correctly.
"Evolution is a loaded word." Only if you make it so. The undertext was long gone before creationism put it back. You should take your concern to them, perhaps they will stop arguing against fact? ;-)
On the other hand, your use of 'evolutionists' is loaded and wrong. Wikipedia says: "Evolutionism is any one of a number of theories... An evolutionist is a proponent of evolutionism."
So it is not specific enough and also "Scientists object to the terms evolutionism and evolutionist because the -ism and -ist suffixes accentuate belief rather than fact. Conversely, creationists use those same two terms partly because the terms accentuate belief, and partly perhaps because they provide a way to package their opposition into one group, ..."
But then it _is used by scholars outside physical and life sciences "these terms are used to refer to theories about the development of cultures and civilisations."
While ID is deserving of whatever mocking can be dished out (well, for civility perhaps it should be witty) there is a certain aspect of the philosophy of science that is universally hard, even for the scientifically trained. Scientific theories aren't "True": they are are conceptual structures, self consistent (for particular definitions of terms), consistent with observation, and modified when found to be inconsistent on either count. Terms like "evolution" define a mechanism for the, ah, evolution of a system over time.
If one assumed the term "Evolution" is meaningful in itself, instead of as a label then the circularity argument follows through definitional tautaology. This is the sort of confusion that puts the sophomore into endless sophomoric debates. Sophomores may get over it. But, terms that have intrinsic meaning are closely assocated with the notion of intrinsic, context free Truth, which are often spelled "God". With all of these Truths in hand we can add some conceptual terms like Inteligent and Design to explain to those who don't like the obvious terminology. Acomodationist cultural relativism at its worst, but there you are.
Perhaps the real problem is in the fact that 'capital "T" Truth' seems to be close to Lackoff's embodied concepts. It is simply hard to compare a sophisticated absract conceptual structure, no matter how useful with language attached to hard wired associations.
If this does indeed have anything to do with the problem, the Zen approach of cracking the ID thought pattern through exhibition of "same thing but make no sense" stories is unlikely to work because there is no conceptual edifice to crack. The only hope is patient and painstaking construction of any edifice at all. Or, simply mocking them works too.
35. Torbjorn Larsson on June 24, 2005 12:14 PM writes...
Sorry, Joe, I can not resist:
It is the rest of us who can remove creationists by being superior so they are selected out.
But, wait a minute! They do not care about known facts, they talk a lot of ... (insert your preferred description here), they do not make much sense, and they are not afraid of authority (well, God and Genesis, but not _real_ authority).
So they will probably get the girls... Did someone say that evolution was guided by intelligence? I think not! :-)
Its astounding the way virtually everyone posting here has resorted to personal attack. Perhaps you were offended by my original post. Perhaps that's a sign your holding your science a bit too close to your heart rather than your mind (although which neuron or patch of neurons constitutes "the mind").
No one has proposed a definition of "Evolution." One popular definition is: a change in gene frequency over time. This definition is popular because it is provable and demonstrable. Unfortunately its also ridiculously incomplete and simple. Everytime a baby is born, of any species, the gene frequency changes. Over longer time one might find evidence that the stature of the population has decreased. One finds evidence of pygmie elephants and dwarfed humans but all you've really uncovered are more elephants and more humans. When fish lose their eyes they are still fish. Why is this so hard to understand.
A second possible definition of evolution is: The hypothesis that ALL biological systems have ascended from a common ancestor through genetic changes such as mutation. I chose the word ascended rather than descended because I believe it is more appropriate and descriptive when implying that a single celled "something" gradually evolved through many intermediates into a dolphin or horned beetle.
Some may object to parts of this definiton. Some might want to include more than "mutation" after the "such as." Currently - after reading books by Dawkins, Gould, Zimmer, Lewtonin and articles or book excerpts by countless others - mutation seems the only way of producing "new" genetic information. Organisms may pick up genetic information that is "new to them" but that doesn't make it new. When you dress your quickly growing son in his brothers hand-me-downs, he may object saying "I want new clothes." You'll counter cleverly with, "Its new to you," but you and he both know that answer is unsatisfying.
Of the 2 definitions only the second is in dispute. There may be those who dispute the first definition but they would be wrong. Contrary to one of the more ridiculous posts I do not need to propose a creation model that encompasses all of the beliefs of every one not subscribing to evolution (definition 2). And just for the record the myth that Christians believe or believed in a flat-earth was began by Washington Irving (and some french guy whose name escapes me). There may be some misguided folks on the fringe that want to make a case for it but the misstatement only survives to be used by evolutionists in an attempt to discredit creationists since it is easier than debating based on facts that support evolution. This practice goes all the way back to Thomas Huxley.
I've made the distinction on earlier posts between what I call "up" and "down" evolution. This is not the same as Micro and Macro as they are ambiguous terms. Down evolution includes the examples discussed on this sight. Homo Florensis is a small homo erectus that descended from "regular" population of the same. Fish without eyes descended from a population of fish with eyes. Bacteria have gained resistance to anti-biotics by losing enzyme activity or losing a regulatory protein, etc. These are all cases of natural selection acting upon already existing genetic information. None of these changes can be extended to support Definition 2 of evolution. None of these cases show how genetic information originated, they all demonstrate the opposite.
As I've said before I cannot provide an example of "Up" evolution. I'm not even saying they don't exist I've just never come across an example. To be specific I'm not talking about "beneficial mutations." All the examples above, if caused by mutation, might be cited as beneficial. The qualifying examples must include new genetic information and novel function.
It would have been more appropriate for Carl Zimmer to begin a new blog entry on this topic with links to the numerous examples that qualify but to this request he and everyone else was silent. I would hope that future entries be directed at this perceived shortcoming of evolution rather than personal attacks against me. They don't hurt my feelings they're actually entertaining. My wife wonders why I'm not bothered by the attack and ridicule. I told her that it only means the attackers have nothing intelligent to offer.
Well, after reading this mess, I have to write in support of Doug.
I’m a non-biologist working in information-science-related topics, and I consider the issues Doug raises similar to those referred to, in my domain, as framing problems or, sometimes, as the problem of induction. This general problem references how we get truly new and innovative forms from (merely) the combination of old and conventional forms. Consideration of this problem has prompted some philosophers (Fodor, for instance) to argue that there are, in fact, no truly new and innovative concepts; rather, all concepts (whether superficially considered innovative or not) are innate.
To press this position into the current discussion, the argument would be that all possible biological forms in some sense already exist and, thus, that all evolution is of the “Down” sort rather than of the “Up” sort.
In order to argue against this position, it seems you must engage some definition of emergence (far) beyond our current understanding of the phenomenon. There is, in information science and particularly in AI studies, the belief that emergent properties of complex systems will rescue us from currently stagnant AI algorithms. But, while the belief is strong, the evidence in support of that belief remains largely circumstantial.
For this reason, I find the problem posed by Doug more interesting than I do the solution by analogy offered in response.
Hi doug! Perhaps you can address the comments that aren't personal attacks, but instead very patiently and carefully explained that you just don't know what you are talking about? You don't appear to know what evolution is. You don't appear to know what science is. It gets very old very fast. If you expect arguments from ignorance to be treated with respect, I suggest posting where somewhere where logic is not respected.
Doug: 'As I've said before I cannot provide an example of "Up" evolution. I'm not even saying they don't exist I've just never come across an example. To be specific I'm not talking about "beneficial mutations." All the examples above, if caused by mutation, might be cited as beneficial. The qualifying examples must include new genetic information and novel function.'
Please take an extra 2 minutes in your response to point out the flaw in the 2nd definition I've proposed - "The hypothesis that ALL biological systems have ascended from a common ancestor through genetic changes such as mutation."
You don't appear to know what science is.
I know that when a hypothesis is so broad and maleable it can find support in completely contradictory examples it ceases to be science and must be called dogma. How might the hypothesis of evolution (as defined above) be refuted? When evidence arises that appears to contradict the theory, the interpretation of the evidence is spun with an evolutionary bias to make certain it adheres to the theory. All that spinning may have made you dizzy.
The reference to Talkorigins.com doesn't actually contain any examples, it merely says they exist.
Engineer-Poet's haiku will only direct you to bacterial resistance to antibiotics which don't meet the requirements because the resistance comes from mutation causing a loss of data/function, regardless of any benefit provided.
I'll highlight the parts of the above-cited abstract that Doug didn't read, failed to understand or cannot admit exist:
"Fusidic acid resistance resulting from mutations in elongation factor G (EF-G) of Staphylococcus aureus is associated with fitness costs during growth in vivo and in vitro. In both environments, these costs can be partly or fully compensated by the acquisition of secondary intragenic mutations. Among clinical isolates of S. aureus, fusidic acid-resistant strains have been identified that carry multiple mutations in EF-G at positions similar to those shown experimentally to cause resistance and fitness compensation."
And you wonder why we call you stupid, or liars, or both. It's the simple truth.
So a mutation occurs in Staphylococcus Aureus that eliminates the expression of the fmt gene thereby making it resistant to an antibiotic. The side effect is a dramatic loss of relative fitness and a significant growth impairment.
After all of this some of the "costs" may be compensated by acquiring genetic information from another source. Just in case that isn't clear the information already existed, it was acquired from another source.
Next you'll probably wave a poor decrepit child afflicted with sickle cell anemia in my face. You'll say look at this wonderful example of evolution in progress. Then you'll call me stupid for being so blind to the obvious.
The main point is the very few examples that are forthcoming are not clear cut. They require pages of defense and are yet debated, not between creationists and evolutionists, but between evolutionists themselves. Does this make sense? If evolution is legitamate shouldn't there be countless examples? Is it really intelligent to say "Well we can't actually show you any really strong candidates but if we had a billion years in the laboratory, we're very confident that we can make the case."
doug writes: "No one has proposed a definition of "Evolution." One popular definition is: a change in gene frequency over time. This definition is popular because it is provable and demonstrable. Unfortunately its also ridiculously incomplete and simple."
It's simple in the same way a Turing machine is simple. A Turing machine is a theoretical construct of computing which consists of a 'read/write head' and a tape which can store binary values. All it can do is read a value, write a value, or move the tape back and forth.
A Turing machine is a very simple construct, yet it can do anything today's vastly complicated, powerful computers can do.
A Turing machine could be used to render a Pixar movie. A Turing machine could be used to simulate weather systems. A Turing machine could run today's latest video games. A Turing machine could convert music into MP3 files. A Turing machine could run a web server.
It would do these things really, really, really slowly, but it could do them, despite being several million times simpler than today's PCs and mainframes.
The point I'm getting at is that simple steps can be combined to produce arbitrarily complex results.
49. Christopher on June 25, 2005 12:50 AM writes...
"So a mutation occurs in Staphylococcus Aureus that eliminates the expression of the fmt gene thereby making it resistant to an antibiotic. The side effect is a dramatic loss of relative fitness and a significant growth impairment."
No you're wrong! Its a dramatic gain of fitness releative to normal Staph Aureus within the environment of the antibiotic.
Evolution is not about progress, it does not allways produce a mutation which is benificial under all circumstances. I'll repeat that: Evolution is not about progress. Evolution is and only is adaptation to a local environment. Everything elese you think that evolution is, is either a mechanisim or a special case of evolution.
It does not matter if sickle cell results in a dibilitating condition, all that matters is that the mutation enables the recipiant the ability to survive long enough in a malarial environment so that he/she can reproduce with more success relitive to those without the mutation. Like it or not we Humans with all our fancy self awareness are just animals and our sole purpose is to survive long enough to reproduce.
So a mutation occurs in Staphylococcus Aureus that eliminates the expression of the fmt gene thereby making it resistant to an antibiotic. The side effect is a dramatic loss of relative fitness and a significant growth impairment.
Badly mis-read to completely wrong on all points:
The FMT gene is essential to the bacterium; that's why fusidic acid kills the wild strain.
The initial mutation to EF-G confers resistance to fusidic acid, which is a large advantage in that environment.
Later mutations, observed both in clinical settings and in the lab, remedy the impact of the initial mutation on growth rate without losing the resistance to fusidic acid.
The result is a bacterium just as fit as the wild strain, but it's immune to fusidic acid too. This is not one but two mutations which caused gains in function... in just one bacterium tested against one substance.
This phenomenon is so widespread as to be completely unremarkable among biologists, from the talk I hear (I'm not a biologist).
Doug writes: "I know that when a hypothesis is so broad and maleable it can find support in completely contradictory examples it ceases to be science and must be called dogma."
These are all different models based on different assumptions. By your reasoning you too need a Theory of Evolution that encompasses comet seeded abiogenesis, alien seeded abiogenesis, Raelian programed evolution, theistic evolution and of course purely naturalistic abiogenesis ex nihilo. Your theory must encompass both the single universe and the infinite universe theories. The great thing about Evolution it can probably bend to make fit every single one of the above mentioned. The point is these different models all begin with different assumptions to explain the areas impossible to know. This set of assumptions becomes the glasses through which one views their world, call it their worldview or call it their religion. Science can only tell the story to a point but it is always subject to its initial assumptions be they large or small. In the study of gravity, one basically assumes that the observed laws of gravity will still be there today, an assumption subject to very little error. But an assumption that can change as Einstein would tell you. Evolution is subject to huge and many assumptions. It proposes to explain what can not be directly observed. For example not long ago the proposed introductory date for eukaryotic cells was pushed back 1 billion years. This blasts away many assumptions about the rise of organisms vastly more complex than their prokaryotic predesseors. When one is attempting to explain 4.6 billion years for the earth or 15 billion years for the universe based on the obsevations of the last 200 years you can bet the assumptions stack up as high as the evidence and the interpretation of the evidence is entirely based on one's assumptions, which is a product of one's world view.
And since you seem to have little else to offer but the constant interjection of the mythical Flat-earth ridicule I will respond.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Professor of History, Emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara wrote a book on this very subject. The simple truth is that since the 3rd century BC the world has been regarded as spherical. This belief didn't change with the onset of Christianity.
Where did the myth come from? Well if you heard it like I did, something to do with Christopher Columbus risking sailing right off the edge of the earth to prove the world was round, then you got it from Washington Irving's account of Christopher Columbus written in 1828.
The idea was also put forward very soon after in 1834 by Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices. His desire was to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers.
The myth continued to be propogated by anti-christians in an effort to portray Christians as stupid and to make science and Christianity appear at odds with eachother.
Not much has changed.
For a more complete treatment visit: http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html
Your Staphylococcus Aureus doesn't seem convincing. It seems obvious that the FMT gene is not absolutely essential or the entire population would die before there was a chance to mutate. In fact it also seems likely that the ability to survive the fusidic acid is selected from genes that exist prior to its introduction. This would only show natural selection not evolution. But I digress as all articles I come across come at a hefty price and the abstracts are quite...umm what's the word, ah yes, abstract.
Luckily there must be countless, billions of other examples piled up that you might suggest to keep me interested. Okay maybe only millions. Thousands? hundreds? ten?
Your Staphylococcus Aureus doesn't seem convincing.
You mean you refuse to consider the evidence which has proven it as far as all professional biologists are concerned, not to mention physicians, agronomists....
It seems obvious that the FMT gene is not absolutely essential or the entire population would die before there was a chance to mutate.
It seems obvious to people who've spent the least amount of time studying the issue (like, ten minutes) that there is a dose-response relationship for the antibiotic action. Medication in a body does not travel to all infection sites equally, so a dose which kills some bacteria will reach others in sufficient strength only to slow them down. Resistant mutations which arise in these stressed populations will be selected for if the fitness cost of the resistance is less than the damage caused by the antibiotic; the greater the concentration of antibiotic, the greater the advantage of the resistant mutants.
This is why one should always take the full course of a prescribed antibiotic: the drug needs to be allowed to reach its full concentration so that partially-resistant types are killed rather than being allowed to proliferate afterward. That's how resistant bacteria arise. (Of course, you will probably ignore this because you don't believe in evolution. I'd argue that it would be fitting for you to die of some bug that laughs at antibiotics due to your own refusal to take your medicine properly, save that you would likely pass it on to others and endanger innocents.)
In fact it also seems likely that the ability to survive the fusidic acid is selected from genes that exist prior to its introduction.
The S. Aureus genome has been sequenced. Show me where genes for fusidic acid resistance exist in the wild type. Repeat for penicillin, erythromycin, methycillin, and other antibiotics for which we've observed resistance. You need to cover ALL of them, because it's your argument that such genes do not evolve.
Luckily there must be countless, billions of other examples piled up that you might suggest to keep me interested.
That's the Beggar's Argument. You've made assertions, such as genes pre-existing; the burden of proof is on you. Go back them up with facts. Permalink to Comment
56. Christopher on June 25, 2005 05:08 PM writes...
"It seems obvious that the FMT gene is not absolutely essential or the entire population would die before there was a chance to mutate"
The mustation to the gene which encodes elongation factor G (EF-G), happens long before the Staph ever see the antibiotic.
57. Christopher on June 25, 2005 06:05 PM writes...
So Doug cannot spin things play word games or claim that I'm contradicting what Engineer-Poet said between the time I hit reply and the time I got around to writing said reply, I'll add this:
Engineer-Poet is entirerly correct about the dose-response relationship for the antibiotic action and the acquisition of resistance but so am I in that the mutation doesnot nesicarily have to be acquired insitu. It could be aquired in a random mutation that neither harms nor helps the bacterium under normal conditions. It all depends on the specific nature of the mutation.
True, Christopher, but the initial mutation for fusidic acid tolerance has a substantial fitness cost. Unless the environment had fusidic acid, such mutants would be selected against very strongly and would probably not have enough time to develop one of the secondary mutations which offset the penalty.
My patience with doug is at an end. So it's not a total loss, here are a couple of sources on the basics being discussed here that doug doesn't understand in the least:
60. Doug Rebok on June 26, 2005 12:28 AM writes...
I think a problem of both Ron and engineer poet is they take this whole debate too personally. You don't know me. I'm sure you don't care about me. If we sat down next to each other at the coffee house and our identities were revealed, would you sock me in the mouth? No i'm sure you'd, at the very least, treat me with complete indifference. The fact that you're participating in the debate shows it interests you and hopefully that you enjoy it. Do you honestly care if my mind is changed? You likely believe that my mind cannot be changed but that is not the case. My faith in Jesus doesn't rest on this issue. The logical basis for my faith began with: the indisputable life of Jesus and the overwhelming evidence for His ressurection; the historical reliability of the Bible and; the remarkable record of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible. My faith came just as my foundation was getting started. As I've studied more, and drawn closer to Jesus we've forged a relationship based on much more than the factual foundation. I pray that you'll devote a small amount of your time to investigating for yourself. I promise you it will be well worth it. Lee Stroebel has written a couple of good books to help you get moving. I'd suggest The Case For Christ for starters, as it had a profound effect on my life.
I assure you I understand what science is. I also understand its limitations. I understand the theory of evolution. My decision to be skeptical does not come from ignorance. I stood on your side of the fence for 10 or 15 years. I read a couple books that hinted there may be some doubt. At first I thought it was as ridiculous as you do. I read some basic books on evolution but didn't find adequate answers to the criticism. I then began reading more and more from both sides. I find it remarkable that the argument I've made on this site, the same argument made by almost all skeptics of evolution, cannot be easily squashed. Why aren't there pages devoted to listing and describing the countless examples of evolution that everyone claims exist. You don't need to send me to Talkorigins I've seen all it has to offer on the subject and it is quite evasive yet it still claims the evidence is vast. There is no question evolutionists would welcome an end to the debate (except maybe Dawkins and Ken Miller who might then be out of work). I've even tried to make it easy on you leaving out the argument of irreducible complexity. As hard of time as you're having in delivering the simple examples I'm requesting imagine your difficulty in putting together a large number of mutations simultaneously to produce an irreducibly complex system.
Just as a final note, I've said before that I believe resorting to personal attacks only demonstrates the weakness of your argument. Remember the bully in school? People didn't run away from him because of his brains. The funny thing is given the amount of time I've put into studying this subject, I think its pretty dumb to put so much faith in a hypothesis with so many shortcomings. I'm just too polite and noble to use those debating tactics.
Doug, if you find Strobel to be persuasive, then I can't give you much credit for a critical investigation of the Bible, let alone an understanding of science.
I assure you I understand what science is. I also understand its limitations. I understand the theory of evolution. My decision to be skeptical does not come from ignorance.
Is that so?
If you are not talking through your hat, you should have no difficulty describing an experiment to prove what you have asserted above regarding the genetics of S. Aureus (which I notice you have not supported with any cites yet).
You should also have no difficulty whatsoever describing an experiment designed to test the evolutionary hypothesis of antibiotic resistance.
I'll save what I have to say about your theology until after you've had a chance to respond to the above two challenges. (For the record, I expect you to evade, dissemble, and do anything but show a true understanding of science or a willingness to deal in straight talk. Go ahead, prove me wrong... and know in advance that you're a proxy for all self-styled "Christians".)
Carl,
Like the theory of evolution, the theory of plate tectonics is really made up of two components. One component is the process, and the other is the mechanism. In both cases, the process has been confirmed. Living organisms have changed over time and those that are extant today are different from those that lived in the past.
There are also significant similarities in the morphological and molecular structure of all organisms demonstrating a profound relatedness. No reasonable person denies this.
In plate tectonics, the process has also been confirmed. The earth is made up of huge plates that move slowly and this movement has caused the sea floor to spread and the continents to change their relative positions. No reasonable person denies this.
But in both cases, the mechanism is in question and has not been clearly established. Those who promote "evolution" are really defending a well supported process and a less well supported mechanism. The same is true in plate tectonics. While we can state with certainty that it occurs, details of the mechanism are still under debate.
So, would you be correct to pose the question to a geologist "do you believe in plate tectonics?" He would probably reply "I believe that it has occurred, but I'm unsure of the exact mechanism." The same is true for evolution. The question "do you believe in evolution"? depends on whether you're talking about the process of evolution or the mechanism. I believe that the process has occurred but I question the currently popular mechanism.
Intelligent design is perfectly compatible with evolution because it is a mechanism, not a process. It is one of many possible explanations of how evolution has proceeded. No one mechanism has been clearly established as the correct mechanism. Certainly, Darwin's explanation (and the modern synthesis) require a huge leap of faith that connects the trivial changes in gene frequency that occur under natural selection with the emergence of highly organized, complex processes, systems and adaptations.
I have noticed a distinct trend in recent times to de-emphasize the role of natural selection in evolution and concentrate more on the notion of common descent. That's a good trend and I welcome it. Common descent is readily supported by a large body of molecular and physiological data and I would find few arguments against the idea that all organisms share a common origin.
On the other hand, the advocacy of the theory of mutation and natural selection as the mechanism of evolution remains what it always has been, a just-so story fabricated by Darwin and disseminated by his successors. It lacks any kind of empirical (read "scientific") support and should be recognized as the fairy tale that it is.
"in the bitter contests of values and political rhetoric that characterize our times, 90% of the uproar is noise and 10% is what the scientists call "signal" or solid, substantive information that will reward study and interpretation. If we could eliminate much of the noise, we might find that actual, meaningful disagreements are on a scale we can manage." -Jeff Limerick
"Next you'll probably wave a poor decrepit child afflicted with sickle cell anemia in my face. You'll say look at this wonderful example of evolution in progress."
No. I think this must definitely be attributed to the work of a Beneficient Designer.
67. Torbjorn Larsson on June 26, 2005 02:09 PM writes...
"Its astounding the way virtually everyone posting here has resorted to personal attack." There is 1 personal attack - and it was rather funny. :-)
"I've made the distinction on earlier posts between what I call "up" and "down" evolution." It would be surprising if they are useful, since after all "Evolution is not about progress".
"I pray that you'll devote a small amount of your time to investigating for yourself." Promotion of religion is way OT.
"Why are so many people feeding the troll?" Because creationism is dangerous; it is used to kick fact and science out of schools.
"But in both cases, the mechanism is in question and has not been clearly established." This is wrong; and only a crackpot would go against established facts.
"Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for plate tectonics?"
in john mcphee's book, "basin & range," he describes
travelling with some mainstream geologists who make
just this complaint. they argue that referring all
geological conundrums to tectonics has become the
lazy
1. Christopher Letzelter on June 23, 2005 12:22 PM writes...
"Most fish only swim, but some fish can fly and some can crawl on dry land."
Permalink to CommentNot to be an @ss here, but I can just see some critic: "Ah-HA! Flying fish don't fly, they GLIDE! Carl's wrong!"
Anyway, you know how Creationists/IDer's will explain dwarfism - god did it, and we curious humans don't need to know why.
Thanks for the blog, I always enjoy the discussions.
Chris
2. PacRim Jim on June 23, 2005 12:24 PM writes...
When discussing evolution, people seem to confuse passive adaptation to local environments with directed, purposeful "improvement." In other words, they anthropomorphize change.
Permalink to Comment3. Peter on June 23, 2005 12:29 PM writes...
Marvellous post! As always, thank you for yet another wonderful and patient explanation of the scientific process...
An articulate and excellently written post like yours is well worth the time and effort it probably took to write in the name of all the iquisitive young minds we should battle for lest the achievements of modernity meet the same fate as the ancient library of Alexandria.
Permalink to Comment4. Mark Nutter on June 23, 2005 12:38 PM writes...
Well put, Carl!
Objective reality has two characteristics that false theories lack: not only is it self-consistent, but it is well-integrated, i.e. individual facts don't exist in isolation from one another, but each has implications that relate to other facts in a complex (but consistent) network of truth. That's what makes science possible and what lets us distinguish fact from fancy. When you get a theory that matches reality, one of the signs you've got it right is that everything does fall into place.
Contrast that with theories that try to force observations to fit into certain preconceived ideas. Want the universe to be less than 10,000 years old? No problem, we'll just say that the speed of light was a lot higher in the past than it is now--except that increasing the speed of light means an exponential increase in the energy output of nuclear reactions, due to e=mc^2, and thus the Sun becomes too hot to support life on earth, unless you decrease the mass, which would cause the planets to fly off into space, unless you increase the gravitational constant, which would collapse the atmosphere, etc, etc. Everything's interconnected. Get the theory wrong, and there's no end to the cascade of special cases. Get it right, and everything should fall into place.
Permalink to Comment5. Carl Manaster on June 23, 2005 12:41 PM writes...
Turn it around:
Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for God? The brain shrinks in some form of pygmy homo erectus. Thats God! Ancient genes survive millions of years unchanged. That's God?! Women have orgasms. That's the devil [;-)]! Although not all women have orgasms and they still manage to reproduce hmm luckily with the right spin...That's God! We live in a civil society with people working for cooperative goals. That's God! Unfortunately some people murder and rape. Just an unfortunate side-effect, but that's God.
Permalink to Comment6. doug on June 23, 2005 01:43 PM writes...
First I must say it was pretty exciting to see that my quip of a post inspired a new blog topic.
The plate tectonics analogy falls a bit short of my point. If scientists extended plate tectonics to explain weather patterns and the tides it would come closer to becoming an overextended theory. It would really reach evolutionary proportions if it was extended even further, introducing tectonic psychology, and explained the differing personalities of Californians, who live on an active fault line and Texans who don't. I'm not condemning the theory of evolution because of its success. I'm condemning its success based on its malleability and ambiguity. When an idea carries so much perceived explanatory power yet remains so flexible that it can be twisted and adapetd to conform to seemingly contradictory evidence, there is a problem.
The problem with Evolution is that it is never defined. Rather, it is defined (or its definition assumed) based on the context of the thought. One may make a statement like: We can see evolution in action when bacteria evolves resistence to antibiotics. In the first instance of "evolution" its definition is assumed to be - common descent with modification, such that all organisms can be traced back to a common anscestor. The second instance, the word "evolves" refers to a population emerging based on "natural selection" favoring an attribute for survival. The assumption that underlies this equivocation is that given enough time the second will add up to the first. This is an erroneous assumption as selection can only choose from already existing choices and therefore has no power to explain the origin of the choices.
In the example of "fish without eyes." The fish were originally part of a population with eyes. Through some environmental condition, they gained a survival advantage when their eyes did not completely develop. The result is a population of fish without eyes. You can extend examples like this for zillions of years and you'll never explain where the eyes came from in the first place.
Investigating the theories on the origin of eyes, its remarakable what little ground has been made. Darwin suggested that perhaps a light-sensitive cell through some gradual change developed within a dimple and then got some goo over it creating a lens and poof an eye!
Permalink to CommentEyes, Part One... Posted by Carl Zimmer Apparently one can write volumes on the subject adding little more to the argument (especially if you're as verbose as Richard Dawkins). The main addition seems to be control genes (ie.Pax-6) which merely signal where the eye should go. Control genes have become the magic wands of evolution. Wave your magic hox gene and poof a leg appears. Of course anyone with a discerning mind knows that when a magician turns a handkercheif into a pigeon (or an antennae into a leg) the pigeon was already there. The entire hypothesis is a brick wall using the a priori commitment to evolution (common descent) as mortar.
7. Jeff on June 23, 2005 02:30 PM writes...
"The plate tectonics analogy falls a bit short of my point. If scientists extended plate tectonics to explain weather patterns and the tides it would come closer to becoming an overextended theory."
Your argument would be valid if you were pointing to examples of attempting to have evolution explain weather patterns and the tides. But all of the examples you actually state are about evolution being used to explain biological phenomena. It is no more surprising that an overarching biological theory could be applied to a (very) wide array of biological events than it is that an overarching geological theory could be applied to a (very) wide array of geological events.
Permalink to Comment8. Jim Wynne on June 23, 2005 02:33 PM writes...
doug wrote, "The problem with Evolution is that it is never defined. Rather, it is defined (or its definition assumed) based on the context of the thought. One may make a statement like: We can see evolution in action when bacteria evolves resistence to antibiotics. In the first instance of "evolution" its definition is assumed to be - common descent with modification, such that all organisms can be traced back to a common anscestor. The second instance, the word "evolves" refers to a population emerging based on "natural selection" favoring an attribute for survival. The assumption that underlies this equivocation is that given enough time the second will add up to the first. This is an erroneous assumption as selection can only choose from already existing choices and therefore has no power to explain the origin of the choices."
There's so much wrong with that paragraph that it's hard to know where to begin, but just for starters, how about mutations for "...the origin of choices."? Doug, as is the case with most evolution deniers, is either being deliberately deceitful or is intellectually lazy, and hasn't done the reading.
Permalink to Comment9. Ginger Yellow on June 23, 2005 02:36 PM writes...
"The problem with Evolution is that it is never defined."
Um, no. The problem is that you (and creationists as a whole) pretend it isn't defined. Scientists don't change the definitioni from "descent with modification" to "natural selection" and back again. Natural selection is simply one mechanism of evolution.
Permalink to Comment10. Christopher on June 23, 2005 03:03 PM writes...
Actually you can explain weather patterns with plate tectonics. Africa and the Middle East dried out and became the deserts they are today because the Indian subcontenent slamed into Asia uplifiting the Himilayas and disrupting the flow patterns and altering rainfall distribution. Similarly Australia has slowly dried out as it has gradually drifted northward. And Antartica is a frozen waste because the mixing of warm tropical waters with cool polar waters was inhibited when South America split off.
Permalink to Comment11. Ron Zeno on June 23, 2005 03:19 PM writes...
My guess is that at the very least, doug doesn't understand what evolution is, nor what science is.
He admits he doesn't know the definition of evolution, or that a definition even exists. Not a good position from which to argue against evolution, but a common enough position unfortunately. He then brings up the tired old argument from ignorance of how "its remarakable what little ground has been made" in the study of the evolution of eyes.
I think his point, "Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for evolution?" shows a deep misunderstanding of what science is, especially what scientific evidence is, what an explanatory model is, and the relationship between the two.
Permalink to Comment12. Gladys Nightspurt on June 23, 2005 04:00 PM writes...
Tom Lehrer wrote an awesome ode to the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Maybe not a hymn ... but it's darn catchy.
In any event: great post, Carl. I've tried explaining these things to creationists with very little success. Now I'll just link to this page and tell 'em to read it and weep.
Permalink to Comment13. Gregor on June 23, 2005 04:03 PM writes...
Doug
"In the example of "fish without eyes." The fish were originally part of a population with eyes. Through some environmental condition, they gained a survival advantage when their eyes did not completely develop. The result is a population of fish without eyes. You can extend examples like this for zillions of years and you'll never explain where the eyes came from in the first place."
Really, Doug?
Let's translate Doug's statement for the rubes: "You can extend examples like this for zillions of years and you'll never convince me that God didn't design fish eyes."
Welcome to the world of honesty, Doug.
Permalink to Comment14. Steve Russell on June 23, 2005 04:54 PM writes...
Christopher beat me to the punch with his Himalayan uplift comment. One might add that with the drier and cooler climate attributable to that uplift, the African rain forests shrank and the open savannahs expanded, creating new problems and opportunities for the existing critturs. The timing of the geological and climatic changes SEEMS to fit well with evolutionary changes to African species--including, possibly, changes in the ape/hominid lineage.
I certainly wouldn't claim that this possible causal connection has now been "proven," or that it explains "everything" about human evolution, but the fossil record, climate record, and geological record, along with computer weather modeling, all seem to fit, so we may have found at least one piece of the puzzle.
Note that some of these predictions were made BEFORE we had gained the detailed information that is now available, and that much of it was furnished by researchers in disciplines with NO immediate evolutionary or biological ax to grind.
Had this multidisciplinary effort not coalesced in a way that seemed to make sense, then some of these related hypotheses would have been weakened and, obviously, some of the workers would have had to go back to the drawing board.
Nor do scientists take the position that the Hox genes "explain" everything. While these genes are important, long-conserved elements in an immensely complicated cascade of developmental events needed to "build" eyes or legs in the "correct" positions, there is no single gene that equates with "eye" or "leg." Thus, there was no one single incredible "long odds" mutation that needed to occur to bring all the elements of a fully-evolved eye or limb together.
These genes may very well NOT have conferred functioning eyes or limbs on the ur-bilaterian ancestor of fly and horse. The thinking now seems to be that genes like these may have originally figured into the specification of some of the early specialized cell types for multicellular life--for example, photoreceptor cells (not "fully" evolved eyes) or muscle cells (not "fully" evolved limbs).
(And, for that matter, the early photoreceptor cells and proteins may not even have been used for envisioning the environment, but may have instead played a role in fine-tuning the ancestor's behavior to the circadian rhythms (day-night cycle).)
The Hox and similar cell-fate and positioning genes again did not spring forth fully formed, but may themselves have evolved out of earlier inter-cellular signalling precursors of colonial animals. And those precursors may have evolved out of genes involved in intra-cellular signalling networks.
So once again--and I know it won't be for the last time!--none of this had to come together perfectly or all at once in some full "irreducably complex" manifestation. Each step built on the prior steps in small ways. Each gene or protein played a comprehensible role in some living creature at some point in time. "Complex" multi-celled animals arose sometime between a half-billion and a billion years ago, and that emergence was in turn dependent upon an earlier THREE-PLUS billion years of cellular evolution. This is an almost unfathomable time depth which anti-evolutionists simply can't seem to wrap their minds around (well, probably no one can, really, but scientists are at least honest with themselves about it).
Permalink to Comment15. Bobbo on June 23, 2005 04:56 PM writes...
There is a blog about plate techtonics (or at least it has a section devoted to plate techtonics) at http://careo.elearning.ubc.ca/weblogs/rockblog/
Permalink to Comment16. Aaron on June 23, 2005 05:44 PM writes...
"No one's asking for evolution hymns—certainly no more than they're asking for gravity hymns..."
Gin a body meet a body
Flyin' through the air,
Gin a body hit a body,
Will it fly? and where?
"...or hymns to the periodic table of the elements."
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium...
I suppose it's true that nobody asked... :)
Permalink to Comment17. GBrundage on June 23, 2005 08:33 PM writes...
Interesting quip on plate techtonics. The resultant geology of plate techtonics does, of course, go a long way in explaining weather patterns.
Permalink to Comment18. Juke Moran on June 23, 2005 08:52 PM writes...
Gladys Nightspurt for best alias ever and Tom Lehrer mention - thank you.
Permalink to Comment-
Tangentially somewhat, there's a commonality much of the scientific community has with much of the creationist/ID community. And it's completely invisible.
Both want control of the evolutionary process to be in some paternal, anthropocentric hand. Neither wants evolution to continue as it was back when we gained all the advantages evolution conferred - the very intelligence we've turned on the process to make it plain, our social complexity, our adaptive quickness, our immune systems.
Neither side wants that process to continue, with adversity and mortality selecting the gene combinations that continue. Science continually justifies the most bizarre interventions into living creatures and systems by the resulting benefit of saved lives. Creationists follow a dogma that places mankind entirely above and outside the evolutionary flow.
Both want evolution controlled, and both want it controlled by reason and plan. One from the wizard behind the curtain, the other from the wizards in front of it.
That's not to suggest we allow plague and predation to sweep the land. For one thing that letting, by intention, would be itself control.
Balance, living within the world, not against and on top of it - we could try that again, this way clearly isn't working too well. Imbalanced living has led us to the edge of extinction. All the things we point to as proof of our superiority are imperiled by our success, by our being too successful.
The almost vicious polarity on this issue masks a rejection of balanced living, and the humility it entails, by both sides. There's no reverence for life that isn't human. In that, though neither side will admit it, they have a lot in common.
19. Pierce R. Butler on June 23, 2005 09:10 PM writes...
Why have the French and the Germans fought four major wars against each other over the last two centuries? It all goes back to their History!
Why have the French-speaking & German-speaking peoples of Switzerland cooperated successfully for the last two centuries? Well, you have to consider their History...
Why are the French & the Germans now cooperating in EU politics against the British, when usually the B & the F have allied against the Gs, except when the B & the Gs united against the F? You still claim History is behind it???
Hey, if you're going to claim this History stuff fits into all those contradictory situations, that shows me that the whole concept of History is a fraud & a delusion, and I'm not even going to agree that such a Thing exists!
Permalink to Comment20. Engineer-Poet on June 23, 2005 09:46 PM writes...
Since talk has turned to geology....
Workin' at the outcrop, hundred ten in the shade
Tryin' to figure out how all those rocks got laid
I'm lookin' at the bedding it's as plain as can be
It's full of little fossils from the Tertiary
Now and then you find a layer of basalt
Take your ... and find a different strike-slip fault
(refrain)
Dooda rock rock baby (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby! (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby and you'll be-ee a red-hot lava tonight.
Muds and shale and silts and well they don't all look the same
Find volcanics if you want to play the dating game
I'll map out every overturn and anticline
To see if maybe you should dig a well or a mine
All the metamorphics they be doin' the twist
Geology is sometimes just a pile of schist
(refrain)
If you run across a big volcanic cone
You're standing on a hotspot or subduction zone
Oh this old Earth is changing at a rapid rate
California will continue when we pass the plate
Sometimes it's hard to realize that sooner or lay-tah
To dust we shall return and get made into strata
(refrain)
(bridge)
Dooda rock rock baby (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby! (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby and you'll....
Continents are dancin' to a rockin' beat
Mountain tops are jumpin', they can feel the heat
The quakes are shakin' up the lithospheric crust
And all the rocks are shiftin' like they're fit to bust
Well someday they'll be sediments and settle dow-own
And then get stoned in the underground
Dooda rock rock baby (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby! (dooda rock rock)
Dooda rock rock baby and you'll be-ee...
A Red-Hot Lava Tonight.
(Words copyright 1989 by Dr. Jane Robinson, errors mine, transcribed without permission.)
Permalink to Comment21. Don S on June 23, 2005 11:34 PM writes...
I would really love to hear an Ode to the Periodic Table of the Elements. Anyone?
Permalink to Comment22. Carl Manaster on June 24, 2005 12:39 AM writes...
Here you are, Don, completing what Aaron started:
http://chemlab.pc.maricopa.edu/periodic/lyrics.html
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium (inhale)
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.
Isn't that interesting?
I knew you would.
I hope you're all taking notes, because there's gonna be a short quiz next period.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdinum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Paladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, and
Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (inhale)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
Tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered.
Permalink to CommentFollow the link to hear it sung.
23. Linkmeister on June 24, 2005 02:08 AM writes...
As a point of interest, the other day All Things Considered actually quoted some of the Lehrer Ode to the elements, without attribution until later in the week when one of their listeners wrote to call them on it. Now, it could be that the lack of attribution was deliberate.
Permalink to Comment24. Peter Ellis on June 24, 2005 04:15 AM writes...
Is there a compelling explanation for how full-sized elephants come to islands and then become the size of cows other than evolution? Let's hear it.
Overly hot spin cycle?
More seriously, that sentence is a bit of a hostage to the ID folks as it doesn't make clear the time scales involved - it looks almost like the individual elephants shrank.
Permalink to Comment25. NelC on June 24, 2005 05:18 AM writes...
Man, a plate tectonics hymn! That rocks!!!
Permalink to CommentSorry, somebody had to say it.....
26. ts on June 24, 2005 05:27 AM writes...
Great article, though clearly wasted on Doug. God works in mysterious ways, so any demystification must be denied.
Permalink to Comment27. NelC on June 24, 2005 05:53 AM writes...
"Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for evolution?"
Isn't that how evidence works? The more evidence you collect, the more it converges to a solution? Would you say to Columbo, "Isn't it amazing that all your evidence points to this suspect?"
Permalink to Comment28. vairitas on June 24, 2005 08:48 AM writes...
and if you doubt that this is possible, how is it there are pygmies+dwarves?
Permalink to Comment29. Ediacaran on June 24, 2005 09:22 AM writes...
Thanks, Carl, it's a good post that explains the situation so clearly that creationists are sure to NOT understand it. Keep in mind that Doug thinks ICR and Answers in Genesis are reliable sources, so don't waste too much effort on him - you can't reason someone out of a position when they didn't use reason to get there in the first place.
For example, in an earlier thread, Doug writes:These are the exact type of changes observed. This is the evidence presented for evolution but as you can see its exactly what the creation model predicts. The Bible itself, in Genesis, tells of Jacob who was tending another man's sheep. The population contained black, white and mixed sheep. In the deal Jacob was allowed to keep the mixed sheep for his own flock. He did a little genetic manipulation by ensuring that the best and biggest white and black sheep mated so that his mixed flock would be grand. Thus in the earliest book of the Bible we have an example of a change in gene frequency.
This is hilarious. If you read the passage, you'll see that the bible is positing that putting striped patterns (using peeled tree branches) in front of mating animals caused the offspring to be speckled and spotted. What Doug refers to as Jacob performing "genetic manipulation" is biblical superstition that apparently is considered science by Young-Earth creationists. When I've pointed out this visual-pattern-affecting-genes biblical error in previous discussions, my creationist opponents typically retreated to miraculous intervention to "explain" it. Of course, someone who considers Answers in Genesis or ICR to be reliable needs all the genetic miracles they can get, considering the classic creationist blunders of Sarfati's chicken claim and Gish's bullfrog claim.
Doug also refers to the creation "model" - as if creationists could agree on one cohesive hypothesis - and its supposed predictions. This alleged creation "model" must encompass the Earth being round and flat (like a pizza) for the Flat-Earth creationists (Charles and Marjorie Johnson, etc.), a spheroidal Earth resting motionless and being orbited by the rest of the universe to satisfy the Geocentric creationists (Gerardus Buow, Marshall and Sandra Hall, etc.), an Earth about 6,000-12,000 years old for Young-Earth creationists (Carl Baugh, Duane "Bullfrog" Gish, Morris, Hovind, Sarfati, etc.), and an Earth 4 1/2 billion years old for the Old-Earth creationists (Hugh Ross, Phil Johnson, William Dembski). That's quite a model - of contradictory creationist claims, on even this small topic. It doesn't even cover the loonier creationist cryptozoology, including Baugh's fire-breathing dragons sleeping at the bottom of the sea, or the multiple locations claimed for Noah's Ark.
Doug, be sure to let us know when creationist "geneticists" have duplicated Jacob's "genetic manipulation" by changing animal genetics by having them mate in front of striped patterns, and published it in a peer-reviewed science journal (of good reputation - not anything like Sermonti's pseudoscience journal).
Permalink to Comment30. SciNerd on June 24, 2005 10:21 AM writes...
Evolution is a loaded word. I feel that the emotions and debate behind the word EVOLUTION fogs the scientific theory and supporting evidence that evolutionists stand behind. I propose that we develop a new term, such as was done with "intelligent design" replacing "creationism". Any suggestions?
Permalink to Comment31. kharris on June 24, 2005 10:51 AM writes...
Doug was writing without the benefit of your response. Your response clears up the orgasm business pretty handily...
The earth move. Plate tectonics.
Permalink to Comment32. Torbjorn Larsson on June 24, 2005 11:46 AM writes...
"The main addition seems to be control genes (ie.Pax-6) which merely signal where the eye should go." Not really, as you will see if you read the post. Different eyes have evolved independently a couple of times. Just as different body plans have developed out of some pretty general genetic machinery, if I understand it correctly.
"Evolution is a loaded word." Only if you make it so. The undertext was long gone before creationism put it back. You should take your concern to them, perhaps they will stop arguing against fact? ;-)
On the other hand, your use of 'evolutionists' is loaded and wrong. Wikipedia says: "Evolutionism is any one of a number of theories... An evolutionist is a proponent of evolutionism."
So it is not specific enough and also "Scientists object to the terms evolutionism and evolutionist because the -ism and -ist suffixes accentuate belief rather than fact. Conversely, creationists use those same two terms partly because the terms accentuate belief, and partly perhaps because they provide a way to package their opposition into one group, ..."
But then it _is used by scholars outside physical and life sciences "these terms are used to refer to theories about the development of cultures and civilisations."
Permalink to Comment33. Joe on June 24, 2005 11:49 AM writes...
Doug. You are an idiot. Please remove yourself from the gene pool. Now THAT'S evolution!
Permalink to Comment34. apthorp on June 24, 2005 12:04 PM writes...
While ID is deserving of whatever mocking can be dished out (well, for civility perhaps it should be witty) there is a certain aspect of the philosophy of science that is universally hard, even for the scientifically trained. Scientific theories aren't "True": they are are conceptual structures, self consistent (for particular definitions of terms), consistent with observation, and modified when found to be inconsistent on either count. Terms like "evolution" define a mechanism for the, ah, evolution of a system over time.
If one assumed the term "Evolution" is meaningful in itself, instead of as a label then the circularity argument follows through definitional tautaology. This is the sort of confusion that puts the sophomore into endless sophomoric debates. Sophomores may get over it. But, terms that have intrinsic meaning are closely assocated with the notion of intrinsic, context free Truth, which are often spelled "God". With all of these Truths in hand we can add some conceptual terms like Inteligent and Design to explain to those who don't like the obvious terminology. Acomodationist cultural relativism at its worst, but there you are.
Perhaps the real problem is in the fact that 'capital "T" Truth' seems to be close to Lackoff's embodied concepts. It is simply hard to compare a sophisticated absract conceptual structure, no matter how useful with language attached to hard wired associations.
If this does indeed have anything to do with the problem, the Zen approach of cracking the ID thought pattern through exhibition of "same thing but make no sense" stories is unlikely to work because there is no conceptual edifice to crack. The only hope is patient and painstaking construction of any edifice at all. Or, simply mocking them works too.
Permalink to Comment35. Torbjorn Larsson on June 24, 2005 12:14 PM writes...
Sorry, Joe, I can not resist:
It is the rest of us who can remove creationists by being superior so they are selected out.
But, wait a minute! They do not care about known facts, they talk a lot of ... (insert your preferred description here), they do not make much sense, and they are not afraid of authority (well, God and Genesis, but not _real_ authority).
So they will probably get the girls... Did someone say that evolution was guided by intelligence? I think not! :-)
Permalink to Comment36. doug on June 24, 2005 01:55 PM writes...
Its astounding the way virtually everyone posting here has resorted to personal attack. Perhaps you were offended by my original post. Perhaps that's a sign your holding your science a bit too close to your heart rather than your mind (although which neuron or patch of neurons constitutes "the mind").
No one has proposed a definition of "Evolution." One popular definition is: a change in gene frequency over time. This definition is popular because it is provable and demonstrable. Unfortunately its also ridiculously incomplete and simple. Everytime a baby is born, of any species, the gene frequency changes. Over longer time one might find evidence that the stature of the population has decreased. One finds evidence of pygmie elephants and dwarfed humans but all you've really uncovered are more elephants and more humans. When fish lose their eyes they are still fish. Why is this so hard to understand.
A second possible definition of evolution is: The hypothesis that ALL biological systems have ascended from a common ancestor through genetic changes such as mutation. I chose the word ascended rather than descended because I believe it is more appropriate and descriptive when implying that a single celled "something" gradually evolved through many intermediates into a dolphin or horned beetle.
Some may object to parts of this definiton. Some might want to include more than "mutation" after the "such as." Currently - after reading books by Dawkins, Gould, Zimmer, Lewtonin and articles or book excerpts by countless others - mutation seems the only way of producing "new" genetic information. Organisms may pick up genetic information that is "new to them" but that doesn't make it new. When you dress your quickly growing son in his brothers hand-me-downs, he may object saying "I want new clothes." You'll counter cleverly with, "Its new to you," but you and he both know that answer is unsatisfying.
Of the 2 definitions only the second is in dispute. There may be those who dispute the first definition but they would be wrong. Contrary to one of the more ridiculous posts I do not need to propose a creation model that encompasses all of the beliefs of every one not subscribing to evolution (definition 2). And just for the record the myth that Christians believe or believed in a flat-earth was began by Washington Irving (and some french guy whose name escapes me). There may be some misguided folks on the fringe that want to make a case for it but the misstatement only survives to be used by evolutionists in an attempt to discredit creationists since it is easier than debating based on facts that support evolution. This practice goes all the way back to Thomas Huxley.
I've made the distinction on earlier posts between what I call "up" and "down" evolution. This is not the same as Micro and Macro as they are ambiguous terms. Down evolution includes the examples discussed on this sight. Homo Florensis is a small homo erectus that descended from "regular" population of the same. Fish without eyes descended from a population of fish with eyes. Bacteria have gained resistance to anti-biotics by losing enzyme activity or losing a regulatory protein, etc. These are all cases of natural selection acting upon already existing genetic information. None of these changes can be extended to support Definition 2 of evolution. None of these cases show how genetic information originated, they all demonstrate the opposite.
As I've said before I cannot provide an example of "Up" evolution. I'm not even saying they don't exist I've just never come across an example. To be specific I'm not talking about "beneficial mutations." All the examples above, if caused by mutation, might be cited as beneficial. The qualifying examples must include new genetic information and novel function.
It would have been more appropriate for Carl Zimmer to begin a new blog entry on this topic with links to the numerous examples that qualify but to this request he and everyone else was silent. I would hope that future entries be directed at this perceived shortcoming of evolution rather than personal attacks against me. They don't hurt my feelings they're actually entertaining. My wife wonders why I'm not bothered by the attack and ridicule. I told her that it only means the attackers have nothing intelligent to offer.
Permalink to Comment37. Mike Nilsen on June 24, 2005 03:50 PM writes...
There *is* a blog on Plate Tectonics, but they only post once every 100,000 years or so.
Sorry.
Permalink to Comment38. dmyers on June 24, 2005 03:53 PM writes...
Well, after reading this mess, I have to write in support of Doug.
I’m a non-biologist working in information-science-related topics, and I consider the issues Doug raises similar to those referred to, in my domain, as framing problems or, sometimes, as the problem of induction. This general problem references how we get truly new and innovative forms from (merely) the combination of old and conventional forms. Consideration of this problem has prompted some philosophers (Fodor, for instance) to argue that there are, in fact, no truly new and innovative concepts; rather, all concepts (whether superficially considered innovative or not) are innate.
To press this position into the current discussion, the argument would be that all possible biological forms in some sense already exist and, thus, that all evolution is of the “Down” sort rather than of the “Up” sort.
In order to argue against this position, it seems you must engage some definition of emergence (far) beyond our current understanding of the phenomenon. There is, in information science and particularly in AI studies, the belief that emergent properties of complex systems will rescue us from currently stagnant AI algorithms. But, while the belief is strong, the evidence in support of that belief remains largely circumstantial.
For this reason, I find the problem posed by Doug more interesting than I do the solution by analogy offered in response.
Permalink to Comment39. Ron Zeno on June 24, 2005 04:02 PM writes...
Hi doug! Perhaps you can address the comments that aren't personal attacks, but instead very patiently and carefully explained that you just don't know what you are talking about? You don't appear to know what evolution is. You don't appear to know what science is. It gets very old very fast. If you expect arguments from ignorance to be treated with respect, I suggest posting where somewhere where logic is not respected.
Permalink to Comment40. it's simple IF you ignore the complexity on June 24, 2005 04:57 PM writes...
Oh but there *is* a song about the periodic table of the elements (circa 1955)
The great Tom Lehrer - now set to flash animation!
http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html
and I think "The New Math" is something of a hymn :-)
Permalink to Comment41. Kevin on June 24, 2005 05:11 PM writes...
Doug: 'As I've said before I cannot provide an example of "Up" evolution. I'm not even saying they don't exist I've just never come across an example. To be specific I'm not talking about "beneficial mutations." All the examples above, if caused by mutation, might be cited as beneficial. The qualifying examples must include new genetic information and novel function.'
I guess you haven't looked very hard:
Permalink to Commenthttp://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/Parts-is-Parts.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html
42. doug on June 24, 2005 05:28 PM writes...
You don't appear to know what evolution is.
Please take an extra 2 minutes in your response to point out the flaw in the 2nd definition I've proposed - "The hypothesis that ALL biological systems have ascended from a common ancestor through genetic changes such as mutation."
You don't appear to know what science is.
I know that when a hypothesis is so broad and maleable it can find support in completely contradictory examples it ceases to be science and must be called dogma. How might the hypothesis of evolution (as defined above) be refuted? When evidence arises that appears to contradict the theory, the interpretation of the evidence is spun with an evolutionary bias to make certain it adheres to the theory. All that spinning may have made you dizzy.
Permalink to Comment43. Engineer-Poet on June 24, 2005 05:29 PM writes...
Doug was heard to cry
Permalink to Comment"Evolution don't go up!"
He wasn't looking.
44. doug on June 24, 2005 06:03 PM writes...
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/DI/Parts-is-Parts.html
This is a classic example put forth by Miller in refutation of Behe but it has been addressed by Behe himself. For the rest of the story go here.
The reference to Talkorigins.com doesn't actually contain any examples, it merely says they exist.
Engineer-Poet's haiku will only direct you to bacterial resistance to antibiotics which don't meet the requirements because the resistance comes from mutation causing a loss of data/function, regardless of any benefit provided.
Permalink to Comment45. Engineer-Poet on June 24, 2005 06:40 PM writes...
I'll highlight the parts of the above-cited abstract that Doug didn't read, failed to understand or cannot admit exist:
"Fusidic acid resistance resulting from mutations in elongation factor G (EF-G) of Staphylococcus aureus is associated with fitness costs during growth in vivo and in vitro. In both environments, these costs can be partly or fully compensated by the acquisition of secondary intragenic mutations. Among clinical isolates of S. aureus, fusidic acid-resistant strains have been identified that carry multiple mutations in EF-G at positions similar to those shown experimentally to cause resistance and fitness compensation."
And you wonder why we call you stupid, or liars, or both. It's the simple truth.
Permalink to Comment46. Engineer-Poet on June 24, 2005 10:04 PM writes...
Steve Dutch has this to say to people like Doug:
If you hear something that conflicts with what you think you know, and you don't bother to check it out, you shouldn't feel stupid. You are stupid.
People who have it placed right in front of their noses, read it, and still don't get it deserve some kind of superlative, though.
Permalink to Comment47. doug on June 24, 2005 11:18 PM writes...
So a mutation occurs in Staphylococcus Aureus that eliminates the expression of the fmt gene thereby making it resistant to an antibiotic. The side effect is a dramatic loss of relative fitness and a significant growth impairment.
After all of this some of the "costs" may be compensated by acquiring genetic information from another source. Just in case that isn't clear the information already existed, it was acquired from another source.
Next you'll probably wave a poor decrepit child afflicted with sickle cell anemia in my face. You'll say look at this wonderful example of evolution in progress. Then you'll call me stupid for being so blind to the obvious.
The main point is the very few examples that are forthcoming are not clear cut. They require pages of defense and are yet debated, not between creationists and evolutionists, but between evolutionists themselves. Does this make sense? If evolution is legitamate shouldn't there be countless examples? Is it really intelligent to say "Well we can't actually show you any really strong candidates but if we had a billion years in the laboratory, we're very confident that we can make the case."
Permalink to Comment48. Jon H on June 24, 2005 11:36 PM writes...
doug writes: "No one has proposed a definition of "Evolution." One popular definition is: a change in gene frequency over time. This definition is popular because it is provable and demonstrable. Unfortunately its also ridiculously incomplete and simple."
It's simple in the same way a Turing machine is simple. A Turing machine is a theoretical construct of computing which consists of a 'read/write head' and a tape which can store binary values. All it can do is read a value, write a value, or move the tape back and forth.
A Turing machine is a very simple construct, yet it can do anything today's vastly complicated, powerful computers can do.
A Turing machine could be used to render a Pixar movie. A Turing machine could be used to simulate weather systems. A Turing machine could run today's latest video games. A Turing machine could convert music into MP3 files. A Turing machine could run a web server.
It would do these things really, really, really slowly, but it could do them, despite being several million times simpler than today's PCs and mainframes.
The point I'm getting at is that simple steps can be combined to produce arbitrarily complex results.
Permalink to Comment49. Christopher on June 25, 2005 12:50 AM writes...
"So a mutation occurs in Staphylococcus Aureus that eliminates the expression of the fmt gene thereby making it resistant to an antibiotic. The side effect is a dramatic loss of relative fitness and a significant growth impairment."
No you're wrong! Its a dramatic gain of fitness releative to normal Staph Aureus within the environment of the antibiotic.
Evolution is not about progress, it does not allways produce a mutation which is benificial under all circumstances. I'll repeat that: Evolution is not about progress. Evolution is and only is adaptation to a local environment. Everything elese you think that evolution is, is either a mechanisim or a special case of evolution.
It does not matter if sickle cell results in a dibilitating condition, all that matters is that the mutation enables the recipiant the ability to survive long enough in a malarial environment so that he/she can reproduce with more success relitive to those without the mutation. Like it or not we Humans with all our fancy self awareness are just animals and our sole purpose is to survive long enough to reproduce.
Permalink to Comment50. Christopher on June 25, 2005 12:59 AM writes...
For clarity, I should add:
...relitive to those without the mutation in the same environment.
Permalink to Comment51. Engineer-Poet on June 25, 2005 10:34 AM writes...
Doug blathers:
Badly mis-read to completely wrong on all points:- The FMT gene is essential to the bacterium; that's why fusidic acid kills the wild strain.
- The initial mutation to EF-G confers resistance to fusidic acid, which is a large advantage in that environment.
- Later mutations, observed both in clinical settings and in the lab, remedy the impact of the initial mutation on growth rate without losing the resistance to fusidic acid.
The result is a bacterium just as fit as the wild strain, but it's immune to fusidic acid too. This is not one but two mutations which caused gains in function... in just one bacterium tested against one substance.This phenomenon is so widespread as to be completely unremarkable among biologists, from the talk I hear (I'm not a biologist).
Are you ready to admit that you are wrong yet?
Permalink to Comment52. Ediacaran on June 25, 2005 10:43 AM writes...
Doug writes: "I know that when a hypothesis is so broad and maleable it can find support in completely contradictory examples it ceases to be science and must be called dogma."
Young-Earth creationism, Old-Earth creationism, Geocentric creationism, Flat-Earth creationism ...
Permalink to Comment53. doug on June 25, 2005 02:57 PM writes...
Young-Earth creationism, Old-Earth creationism, Geocentric creationism, Flat-Earth creationism ...
These are all different models based on different assumptions. By your reasoning you too need a Theory of Evolution that encompasses comet seeded abiogenesis, alien seeded abiogenesis, Raelian programed evolution, theistic evolution and of course purely naturalistic abiogenesis ex nihilo. Your theory must encompass both the single universe and the infinite universe theories. The great thing about Evolution it can probably bend to make fit every single one of the above mentioned. The point is these different models all begin with different assumptions to explain the areas impossible to know. This set of assumptions becomes the glasses through which one views their world, call it their worldview or call it their religion. Science can only tell the story to a point but it is always subject to its initial assumptions be they large or small. In the study of gravity, one basically assumes that the observed laws of gravity will still be there today, an assumption subject to very little error. But an assumption that can change as Einstein would tell you. Evolution is subject to huge and many assumptions. It proposes to explain what can not be directly observed. For example not long ago the proposed introductory date for eukaryotic cells was pushed back 1 billion years. This blasts away many assumptions about the rise of organisms vastly more complex than their prokaryotic predesseors. When one is attempting to explain 4.6 billion years for the earth or 15 billion years for the universe based on the obsevations of the last 200 years you can bet the assumptions stack up as high as the evidence and the interpretation of the evidence is entirely based on one's assumptions, which is a product of one's world view.
And since you seem to have little else to offer but the constant interjection of the mythical Flat-earth ridicule I will respond.
Jeffrey Burton Russell, Professor of History, Emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara wrote a book on this very subject. The simple truth is that since the 3rd century BC the world has been regarded as spherical. This belief didn't change with the onset of Christianity.
Permalink to CommentWhere did the myth come from? Well if you heard it like I did, something to do with Christopher Columbus risking sailing right off the edge of the earth to prove the world was round, then you got it from Washington Irving's account of Christopher Columbus written in 1828.
The idea was also put forward very soon after in 1834 by Antoine-Jean Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of strong antireligious prejudices. His desire was to misrepresent the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers.
The myth continued to be propogated by anti-christians in an effort to portray Christians as stupid and to make science and Christianity appear at odds with eachother.
Not much has changed.
For a more complete treatment visit:
http://id-www.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html
54. doug on June 25, 2005 03:16 PM writes...
Your Staphylococcus Aureus doesn't seem convincing. It seems obvious that the FMT gene is not absolutely essential or the entire population would die before there was a chance to mutate. In fact it also seems likely that the ability to survive the fusidic acid is selected from genes that exist prior to its introduction. This would only show natural selection not evolution. But I digress as all articles I come across come at a hefty price and the abstracts are quite...umm what's the word, ah yes, abstract.
Luckily there must be countless, billions of other examples piled up that you might suggest to keep me interested. Okay maybe only millions. Thousands? hundreds? ten?
Permalink to Comment55. Engineer-Poet on June 25, 2005 04:38 PM writes...
You mean you refuse to consider the evidence which has proven it as far as all professional biologists are concerned, not to mention physicians, agronomists....It seems obvious to people who've spent the least amount of time studying the issue (like, ten minutes) that there is a dose-response relationship for the antibiotic action. Medication in a body does not travel to all infection sites equally, so a dose which kills some bacteria will reach others in sufficient strength only to slow them down. Resistant mutations which arise in these stressed populations will be selected for if the fitness cost of the resistance is less than the damage caused by the antibiotic; the greater the concentration of antibiotic, the greater the advantage of the resistant mutants.This is why one should always take the full course of a prescribed antibiotic: the drug needs to be allowed to reach its full concentration so that partially-resistant types are killed rather than being allowed to proliferate afterward. That's how resistant bacteria arise. (Of course, you will probably ignore this because you don't believe in evolution. I'd argue that it would be fitting for you to die of some bug that laughs at antibiotics due to your own refusal to take your medicine properly, save that you would likely pass it on to others and endanger innocents.)
The S. Aureus genome has been sequenced. Show me where genes for fusidic acid resistance exist in the wild type. Repeat for penicillin, erythromycin, methycillin, and other antibiotics for which we've observed resistance. You need to cover ALL of them, because it's your argument that such genes do not evolve.That's the Beggar's Argument. You've made assertions, such as genes pre-existing; the burden of proof is on you. Go back them up with facts.Permalink to Comment
56. Christopher on June 25, 2005 05:08 PM writes...
"It seems obvious that the FMT gene is not absolutely essential or the entire population would die before there was a chance to mutate"
The mustation to the gene which encodes elongation factor G (EF-G), happens long before the Staph ever see the antibiotic.
Permalink to Comment57. Christopher on June 25, 2005 06:05 PM writes...
So Doug cannot spin things play word games or claim that I'm contradicting what Engineer-Poet said between the time I hit reply and the time I got around to writing said reply, I'll add this:
Engineer-Poet is entirerly correct about the dose-response relationship for the antibiotic action and the acquisition of resistance but so am I in that the mutation doesnot nesicarily have to be acquired insitu. It could be aquired in a random mutation that neither harms nor helps the bacterium under normal conditions. It all depends on the specific nature of the mutation.
Permalink to Comment58. Engineer-Poet on June 25, 2005 06:27 PM writes...
True, Christopher, but the initial mutation for fusidic acid tolerance has a substantial fitness cost. Unless the environment had fusidic acid, such mutants would be selected against very strongly and would probably not have enough time to develop one of the secondary mutations which offset the penalty.
Permalink to Comment59. Ron Zeno on June 25, 2005 08:25 PM writes...
My patience with doug is at an end. So it's not a total loss, here are a couple of sources on the basics being discussed here that doug doesn't understand in the least:
http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/ncisla/muse/models/
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/
http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html
Permalink to Comment60. Doug Rebok on June 26, 2005 12:28 AM writes...
I think a problem of both Ron and engineer poet is they take this whole debate too personally. You don't know me. I'm sure you don't care about me. If we sat down next to each other at the coffee house and our identities were revealed, would you sock me in the mouth? No i'm sure you'd, at the very least, treat me with complete indifference. The fact that you're participating in the debate shows it interests you and hopefully that you enjoy it. Do you honestly care if my mind is changed? You likely believe that my mind cannot be changed but that is not the case. My faith in Jesus doesn't rest on this issue. The logical basis for my faith began with: the indisputable life of Jesus and the overwhelming evidence for His ressurection; the historical reliability of the Bible and; the remarkable record of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible. My faith came just as my foundation was getting started. As I've studied more, and drawn closer to Jesus we've forged a relationship based on much more than the factual foundation. I pray that you'll devote a small amount of your time to investigating for yourself. I promise you it will be well worth it. Lee Stroebel has written a couple of good books to help you get moving. I'd suggest The Case For Christ for starters, as it had a profound effect on my life.
I assure you I understand what science is. I also understand its limitations. I understand the theory of evolution. My decision to be skeptical does not come from ignorance. I stood on your side of the fence for 10 or 15 years. I read a couple books that hinted there may be some doubt. At first I thought it was as ridiculous as you do. I read some basic books on evolution but didn't find adequate answers to the criticism. I then began reading more and more from both sides. I find it remarkable that the argument I've made on this site, the same argument made by almost all skeptics of evolution, cannot be easily squashed. Why aren't there pages devoted to listing and describing the countless examples of evolution that everyone claims exist. You don't need to send me to Talkorigins I've seen all it has to offer on the subject and it is quite evasive yet it still claims the evidence is vast. There is no question evolutionists would welcome an end to the debate (except maybe Dawkins and Ken Miller who might then be out of work). I've even tried to make it easy on you leaving out the argument of irreducible complexity. As hard of time as you're having in delivering the simple examples I'm requesting imagine your difficulty in putting together a large number of mutations simultaneously to produce an irreducibly complex system.
Just as a final note, I've said before that I believe resorting to personal attacks only demonstrates the weakness of your argument. Remember the bully in school? People didn't run away from him because of his brains. The funny thing is given the amount of time I've put into studying this subject, I think its pretty dumb to put so much faith in a hypothesis with so many shortcomings. I'm just too polite and noble to use those debating tactics.
Permalink to Comment61. scott on June 26, 2005 12:55 AM writes...
Why are so many people feeding the troll?
Permalink to Comment62. Jim Lippard on June 26, 2005 01:21 AM writes...
Doug, if you find Strobel to be persuasive, then I can't give you much credit for a critical investigation of the Bible, let alone an understanding of science.
See, e.g., http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/strobel.html
and
http://edwardtbabinski.us/skepticism/stroble.html (yeah, Strobel's name is misspelled in the URL).
Permalink to Comment63. Engineer-Poet on June 26, 2005 01:34 AM writes...
Is that so?If you are not talking through your hat, you should have no difficulty describing an experiment to prove what you have asserted above regarding the genetics of S. Aureus (which I notice you have not supported with any cites yet).
You should also have no difficulty whatsoever describing an experiment designed to test the evolutionary hypothesis of antibiotic resistance.
I'll save what I have to say about your theology until after you've had a chance to respond to the above two challenges. (For the record, I expect you to evade, dissemble, and do anything but show a true understanding of science or a willingness to deal in straight talk. Go ahead, prove me wrong... and know in advance that you're a proxy for all self-styled "Christians".)
Permalink to Comment64. a maine yankee on June 26, 2005 07:20 AM writes...
Maybe Doug should read:
Permalink to CommentJesus the Magician: Charlatan or Son of God? by Morton Smith.
65. Charlie Wagner on June 26, 2005 09:41 AM writes...
Carl,
Like the theory of evolution, the theory of plate tectonics is really made up of two components. One component is the process, and the other is the mechanism. In both cases, the process has been confirmed. Living organisms have changed over time and those that are extant today are different from those that lived in the past.
There are also significant similarities in the morphological and molecular structure of all organisms demonstrating a profound relatedness. No reasonable person denies this.
In plate tectonics, the process has also been confirmed. The earth is made up of huge plates that move slowly and this movement has caused the sea floor to spread and the continents to change their relative positions. No reasonable person denies this.
But in both cases, the mechanism is in question and has not been clearly established. Those who promote "evolution" are really defending a well supported process and a less well supported mechanism. The same is true in plate tectonics. While we can state with certainty that it occurs, details of the mechanism are still under debate.
So, would you be correct to pose the question to a geologist "do you believe in plate tectonics?" He would probably reply "I believe that it has occurred, but I'm unsure of the exact mechanism." The same is true for evolution. The question "do you believe in evolution"? depends on whether you're talking about the process of evolution or the mechanism. I believe that the process has occurred but I question the currently popular mechanism.
Intelligent design is perfectly compatible with evolution because it is a mechanism, not a process. It is one of many possible explanations of how evolution has proceeded. No one mechanism has been clearly established as the correct mechanism. Certainly, Darwin's explanation (and the modern synthesis) require a huge leap of faith that connects the trivial changes in gene frequency that occur under natural selection with the emergence of highly organized, complex processes, systems and adaptations.
I have noticed a distinct trend in recent times to de-emphasize the role of natural selection in evolution and concentrate more on the notion of common descent. That's a good trend and I welcome it. Common descent is readily supported by a large body of molecular and physiological data and I would find few arguments against the idea that all organisms share a common origin.
On the other hand, the advocacy of the theory of mutation and natural selection as the mechanism of evolution remains what it always has been, a just-so story fabricated by Darwin and disseminated by his successors. It lacks any kind of empirical (read "scientific") support and should be recognized as the fairy tale that it is.
"in the bitter contests of values and political rhetoric that characterize our times, 90% of the uproar is noise and 10% is what the scientists call "signal" or solid, substantive information that will reward study and interpretation. If we could eliminate much of the noise, we might find that actual, meaningful disagreements are on a scale we can manage." -Jeff Limerick
Permalink to Comment66. Arun Gupta on June 26, 2005 11:05 AM writes...
Doug wrote:
"Next you'll probably wave a poor decrepit child afflicted with sickle cell anemia in my face. You'll say look at this wonderful example of evolution in progress."
No. I think this must definitely be attributed to the work of a Beneficient Designer.
Permalink to Comment67. Torbjorn Larsson on June 26, 2005 02:09 PM writes...
"Its astounding the way virtually everyone posting here has resorted to personal attack." There is 1 personal attack - and it was rather funny. :-)
"I've made the distinction on earlier posts between what I call "up" and "down" evolution." It would be surprising if they are useful, since after all "Evolution is not about progress".
"I pray that you'll devote a small amount of your time to investigating for yourself." Promotion of religion is way OT.
"Why are so many people feeding the troll?" Because creationism is dangerous; it is used to kick fact and science out of schools.
"But in both cases, the mechanism is in question and has not been clearly established." This is wrong; and only a crackpot would go against established facts.
Permalink to Comment68. Engineer-Poet on June 26, 2005 05:54 PM writes...
... and if there is anything in which ol' Doug can be said to have expertise, it's psychoceramics. ;-)
Permalink to Comment69. don davis on June 26, 2005 08:29 PM writes...
"Isn't it amazing how everything seems to provide evidence for plate tectonics?"
in john mcphee's book, "basin & range," he describes
travelling with some mainstream geologists who make
just this complaint. they argue that referring all
geological conundrums to tectonics has become the
lazy