H
HRE
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Are you talking just about mutations? If so: mutations happen because the inner workings of the cell are a storm of activity. Things are whipping all over the place, and sometimes things go wrong. Mutations are mistakes, plain and simple. Something screwed up. As it turns out, though, these mistakes come in very handy.
Think about a large scale military operation, like Normandy. There were (I'm positive) friendly-fire casualties, missed shots, and so on. Mistakes in the pure chaos.
If you're talking about the actual replication/translation process -- you have a good point. I have no idea how these proteins could have evolved, but I have seen the fantastic power of natural selection and random mutation in engineering applications. We have systems now that literally no human being can understand because we gave a computer a few lines of code and let it fly. If you want me to, I can show you a few examples. I don't understand how these proteins evolved, but it does not surprise me one bit that they did.
It doesn't exclude a creator at all; nor does it preclude a creator -- evolution has nothing to do with atheism or theism.
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rmwilliamsll
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who said anything about a Creator?
biology doesn't talk with these terms, not to include him/her/it/them or to exclude them. They are not useful nor agreed upon explanatory actors in the field.
study metaphysics and religion not modern science if you want to talk about Creators and such.
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Lisa0315
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I fell into a fallacy, didn't I, and I was trying so hard not to. I apologize to you and everyone else here who believe in evolution and are atheists or are Christian. You are correct. One has nothing to do with the other.
Lisa
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rmwilliamsll
avid reader
don't apologize---attack *grin*
it is not that evolution and a Creator do not have anything to do with each other. it is that biology can't and doesn't talk about the potential relationships, however metaphysics and religion does. the only thing to remember is at what level are you discussing things? most of the time Dawkins is a metaphysican, not a biologist in his writings.
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TeddyKGB
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That begs the question who "we" are. Are "we" humans, hominids, great apes, primates, mammals? In other words, where is the barrier beyond which phenotypes do not change? And how are those barriers instantiated?
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Depends on what you call "living".
Basically, a bacteria is just a bunch of interacting molecules.
a rock is also just a bunch of interacting molecules. We have defined the bacteria to be living, and the rock to be dead, but they're basically the same thing, with the bacteria being a bit more dynamic.
Ofcourse, we've included reproduction in the definition of living. Everything that many (most?) biologists currently call "life" reproduces with modification (via DNA), and so is subject to evolution.
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Lisa0315
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Thanks! Next question, and I really appreciate this y'all. I hope this was the aim of the OP to educate someone. Well, I guess I am that someone...
According to the biologist definition of life then, what reason is given that ALL life is subject to evolution? Why aren't some forms of life that NEVER change?
Lisa
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Well, reproduction is a vital part of the definition of life. All living species reproduce (a living individual may not reproduce, but other members of that individuals species will)
All lifeforms on earth that meet that reproduction requirement, and the others listed here, reproduce with the aid of DNA as the carrier of "blue prints" for the creation of new individuals. No creature can reproduce without having DNA.
Naturally, if you have one organism with one set of DNA, and that organism wants to reproduce, the DNA also needs to be reproduced (otherwise there would be no DNA for the new organism).
DNA reproduction always goes wrong. Sometimes it's just a few letters switched around, and other times it's entire genes or even chromosomes being added or deleted.
That, and DNA is constantly getting damaged by harmful radiation, certain chemicals, etc. Letters can be changed to other letters, or removed all together.
"Higher animals" have quite a large machinery that tries to correct most of these damages, but it isn't perfect yet. A number of mistakes will always be given to the offspring. Note that in theory it is possible that a creature has such a good repair system that it will make perfect copies of itself.
But a creature who makes perfect copies of itself will also not be able to survive changes in it's enviroment, and will most likely die out.
So all in all, all living creatures reproduce (by definition), and all reproducing creatures reproduce with errors (that is both an observation, and a prediction from the Theory of Evolution, since perfect replicators would soon die out)
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I'm totally lost. Can someone please tell me where all this is coming from? The illustrations on the first page, the term "neutral traits" in post 11. Are these subjects taught in High School these days?
I can't remember having any biology courses at my HS in the early 1970s. I am unable to follow this 101 course. There is so much that is not defined or explained.
I can't remember having any biology courses at my HS in the early 1970s. I am unable to follow this 101 course. There is so much that is not defined or explained.
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The illustration is to show the flaw in the argument that evolution is "survival of the luckiest."
It is true that an organism less fit to survive may reproduce, or vice-versa, so the argument was that natural selection doesn't work.
The counter-argument was that selection is a statistical thing - of course, there will be cases where it doesn't hold true, but it only needs to hold true for more than half the time for it to work.
Neutral traits are traits that do not affect the chance of survival of the organism, I believe.
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Thank you, but that doesn't answer my question. Where are you and the other people in this thread learning these things? Are there courses in school that teach all these details or are you getting them from somewhere else?
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Split Rock
Conflation of Blathers
Genetic Drift is random change in the frequencies of two or more alleles within a population.
-DJ Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 1979
If a gene's effect is neutral, its allele frequency can change do to chance alone. This is more pronounced in small populations.
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Well, to be frank, I thought the illustration was kind of self evident - I wasn't "taught" it per se, it just seemed... obvious! No offense!
Neutral trait, to an extent, was the same - Take the meanings of the words and... there you go!
As for the rest of the stuff here, there certainly are classes about them, I was thinking about doing biochemistry at university, but I plumped for Maths + Philosophy instead - that would've taught me vast amounts about the inner workings of this kind of thing.
Nowadays there is a wealth of information on the internet. Wikipedia is always a shockingly interesting place to start.
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Hydra009
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It doesn't, in the same way that chemistry and mathematics neither deny nor affirm the existence of a deity. The methodology of science is methodological naturalism (not to be confused with metaphysical naturalism, the view that supernatural beings do not exist)
That would be called theistic evolution. It's a possibility, though not one I hold.
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It's not obvious to me. I would never come up with that sort of thing on my own.
I'm not offended at all. I just can't follow any evolution/creation discussions because I don't have sufficient background.
I'm looking for book titles, starting with the basics. Books that assume I don't know anything, so all terms used in the books are clearly defined.
Yes, but I don't know what questions to ask, where to start searching.
This thread is supposed to be 101, yet I can't understand what is being said.
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