99 Quotes against "Evolution"?

[random_guy]

R-i-g-h-t. Knowing in detail the exact order of the blood clotting cascade has little to do with the hypothesis of how such an elaborate process came to be. Knowing the steps of the krebs cycle does little in showing why evolution favored the citric acid cycle as the dominant process for metabolism. In fact knowing anything about biology doesn't give anyone a single clue as it its origin via the goo to you method! But since creationists are such ignoramouses when it comes to biology in terms of evolution - why don't you school us.

Understanding how the process evolved actually helps us understand how things can go wrong and how one might treat it and find new treatments. For example, different animals have different clotting factors, but by looking at the evolutionary relationiships between the animals, we can understand more about how blood clotting works. Or do you believe that discovering about how things evolved gives us no useful information about now? If so, that's extremely short sighted and extremely anti-science.

EDIT TO ADD: Here's an example of using evolutionary theory to look for how blood clotting may have orginiated, by Ken Miller

Even a general scheme, like the one I've just presented, leads to a number of very specific predictions, each of which can be tested. First, the scheme itself is based on the use of well-known biochemical clues. For example, most of the enzymes involved in clotting are serine proteases, protein-cutting enzymes so-named because of the presence of a highly reactive serine in their active sites, the business ends of the protein. Now, what organ produces lots of serine proteases? The pancreas, of course, which releases serine proteases to help digest food. The pancreas, as it turns out, shares a common embryonic origin with another organ: the liver. And, not surprisingly, all of the clotting proteases are made in the liver. So, to “get” a masked protease into the serum all we'd need is a gene duplication that is turned on in the pancreas' “sister” organ. Simple, reasonable, and supported by the evidence.

Next, if the clotting cascade really evolved the way I have suggested, then the clotting enzymes would have to be near-duplicates of a pancreatic enzyme and of each other. As it turns out, they are. Not only is thrombin homologous to trypsin, a pancreatic serine protease, but the 5 clotting proteases (prothrombin and Factors X, IX, XI, and VII) share extensive homology as well. This is consistent, of course, with the notion that they were formed by gene duplication, just as suggested. But there is more to it than that. We could take one organism, humans for example, and construct a branching “tree” based on the relative degrees of similarity and difference between each of the five clotting proteases. Now, if the gene duplications that produced the clotting cascade occurred long ago in an ancestral vertebrate, we should be able to take any other vertebrate and construct a similar tree in which the relationships between the five clotting proteases match the relationships between the human proteases. This is a powerful test for our little scheme because it requires that sequences still undiscovered should match a particular pattern. And, as anyone knows who has followed the work in Doolittle's lab over the years, it is also a test that evolution passes in one organism after another.

There are many other tests and predictions that can be imposed on the scheme as well, but one of the boldest was made by Doolittle himself more than a decade ago. If the modern fibrinogen gene really was recruited from a duplicated ancestral gene, one that had nothing to do with blood clotting, then we ought to be able to find a fibrinogen-like gene in an animal that does not possess the vertebrate clotting pathway. In other words, we ought to be able to find a non-clotting fibrinogen protein in an invertebrate. That's a mighty bold prediction, because if it could not be found, it would cast Doolittle's whole evolutionary scheme into doubt.

Not to worry. In 1990, Xun Yu and Doolittle won their own bet, finding a fibrinogen-like sequence in the sea cucumber, an echinoderm. The vertebrate fibrinogen gene, just like genes for the other proteins of the clotting sequence, was formed by the duplication and modification of pre-existing genes.

 

[Willtor]

It doesn't really matter what I think or know about evolution as much as it matters to me that the level of pride and smugness of those who claim to be right no matter what the facts are - and both sides of the debate are very guilty of this. From experience its been quite clear that no one really likes to be corrected or be told they are wrong when it comes to matters of science particulary in that of evolution.

I don't know. It seems to me such a claim (that nobody wants to be corrected) can only be made about a person who has never changed his/her views on the matter. Even then, I'd say it's speculative at best regarding someone else's mind.

 

[muaxiong]

Understanding how the process evolved actually helps us understand how things can go wrong and how one might treat it and find new treatments.

Anticipation of something going wrong doesn’t help one to fix it when it does go wrong. Understanding how something works however will ensure that measures can be taken to repair and prevent further damage.

For example, different animals have different clotting factors, but by looking at the evolutionary relationiships between the animals, we can understand more about how blood clotting works.

Don’t know about other animals but that of humans from what I remember is around 30. I would agree that different blood clotting factors exists in different animals – the only practical conclusion which can be made is that a specific clotting cascade only works well in that organism in which it was designed for.

Or do you believe that discovering about how things evolved gives us no useful information about now? If so, that's extremely short sighted and extremely anti-science.

All I am saying is that knowing how something works does not allow one to make the conclusion that by that knowledge it is enough to conclude how it came to be in the first place. And no I am not against useful and practical science which one can actually put to use, only evolution, which we only dream about.

EDIT TO ADD: Here's an example of using evolutionary theory to look for how blood clotting may have orginiated, by Ken Miller

Keeping in mind of course that “may have” doesn’t necessarily equal “must have”. Personally I would have used Doolittle’s explanation - he is probably considered most knowledgeable in the area of blood clotting, nevertheless... [snipped Miller’s scenario on the origin of blood clotting which can be found here] …except for the last paragraph which is the most honest IMO.

“Now, it would not be fair, just because we have presented a realistic evolutionary scheme, supported by gene sequences from modern organisms, to suggest that we now know exactly how the clotting system has evolved. That would be making far too much of our limited ability to reconstruct the details of the past. But nonetheless, there is little doubt that we do know enough to develop a plausible and scientifically valid scenario for how it might have evolved. And that scenario makes specific predictions that can be tested and verified against the evidence.”

I don’t know about what Miller would consider as a valid explanation of what he thinks occurred during the evolution of the blood clotting cascade but not only is using gene sequences from present day systems and mechanism of gene duplication that are already in use destroys his scenario but it doesn’t really explain anything since it assumes already that those mechanisms were already present and functioning properly. I would however like to see documented sources on how Miller has actually performed his alleged tests and verification to see if his scenario actually works (i.e. in living organisms) - as oppose to only in his imagination.

 

[random_guy]

Anticipation of something going wrong doesn’t help one to fix it when it does go wrong. Understanding how something works however will ensure that measures can be taken to repair and prevent further damage.

Of course, but part of understanding how something works is to understand how it came into being.

Don’t know about other animals but that of humans from what I remember is around 30. I would agree that different blood clotting factors exists in different animals – the only practical conclusion which can be made is that a specific clotting cascade only works well in that organism in which it was designed for.

But we can examine similarities between different clotting factors and examine the sequential differences to understand how these differences affect different animals. Or do you believe that animal trials give us no information, since animal systems are all different from each other?

All I am saying is that knowing how something works does not allow one to make the conclusion that by that knowledge it is enough to conclude how it came to be in the first place. And no I am not against useful and practical science which one can actually put to use, only evolution, which we only dream about.

But knowing how things works, we can draw inferences on the relationships and see what evidence supports certain theories. Of course, we'll never have 100% knowledge of how something came into being, but we can have testable theories on how it might have come into being. That's the best we can do in science.

Okay, what about this quote from the American Botany Society on studying the origins of wheat?

To make progress, to learn more about botanical organisms, hypotheses, the subcomponents of theories, are tested by attempting to falsify logically derived predictions. This is why scientists use and teach evolution; evolution offers testable explanations of observed biological phenomena. Evolution continues to be of paramount usefulness, and so, based on simple pragmatism, scientists use this theory to improve our understanding of the biology of organisms. Over and over again, evolutionary theory has generated predictions that have proven to be true. Any hypothesis that doesn’t prove true is discarded in favor of a new one, and so the component hypotheses of evolutionary theory change as knowledge and understanding grow. Phylogenetic hypotheses, patterns of ancestral relatedness, based on one set of data, for example, base sequences in DNA, are generated, and when the results make logical sense out of formerly disparate observations, confidence in the truth of the hypothesis increases. The theory of evolution so permeates botany that frequently it is not mentioned explicitly, but the overwhelming majority of published studies are based upon evolutionary hypotheses, each of which constitutes a test of an hypothesis. Evolution has been very successful as a scientific explanation because it has been useful in advancing our understanding of organisms and applying that knowledge to the solution of many human problems, e.g., host-pathogen interactions, origin of crop plants, herbicide resistance, disease susceptibility of crops, and invasive plants.


For example, plant biologists have long been interested in the origins of crop plants. Wheat is an ancient crop of the Middle East. Three species exist both as wild and domesticated wheats, einkorn, emmer, and breadwheat. Archeological studies have demonstrated that einkorn is the most ancient and breadwheat appeared most recently. To plant biologists this suggested that somehow einkorn gave rise to emmer, and emmer gave rise to breadwheat (an hypothesis). Further evidence was obtained from chromosome numbers that showed einkorn with 14, emmer with 28, and breadwheat with 42. Further, the chromosomes in einkorn consisted of two sets of 7 chromosomes, designated AA. Emmer had 14 chromosomes similar in shape and size, but 14 more, so they were designated AABB. Breadwheat had chromosomes similar to emmer, but 14 more, so they were designated AABBCC. To plant biologists familiar with mechanisms of speciation, these data, the chromosome numbers and sets, suggested that the emmer and breadwheat species arose via hybridization and polyploidy (an hypothesis). The Middle Eastern flora was studied to find native grasses with a chromosome number of 14, and several goatgrasses were discovered that could be the predicted parents, the sources of the BB and CC chromosomes. To test these hypotheses, plant biologists crossed einkorn and emmer wheats with goatgrasses, which produced sterile hybrids. These were treated to produce a spontaneous doubling of the chromosome number, and as predicted, the correct crosses artificially produced both the emmer and breadwheat species. No one saw the evolution of these wheat species, but logical predictions about what happened were tested by recreating likely circumstances. Grasses are wind-pollinated, so cross-pollination between wild and cultivated grasses happens all the time. Frosts and other natural events are known to cause a doubling of chromosomes. And the hypothesized sequence of speciation matches their observed appearance in the archeological record. Farmers would notice and keep new wheats, and the chromosome doubling and hybrid vigor made both emmer and breadwheat larger, more vigorous wheats. Lastly, a genetic change in breadwheat from the wild goatgrass chromosomes allowed for the chaff to be removed from the grain without heating, so glutin was not denatured, and a sourdough (yeast infected) culture of the sticky breadwheat flour would inflate (rise) from the trapped carbon dioxide.


The actual work was done by many plant biologists over many years, little by little, gathering data and testing ideas, until these evolutionary events were understood as generally described above. The hypothesized speciation events were actually recreated, an accomplishment that allows plant biologists to breed new varieties of emmer and bread wheats. Using this speciation mechanism, plant biologists hybridized wheat and rye, producing a new, vigorous, high protein cereal grain, Triticale.


What would the creationist paradigm have done? No telling. Perhaps nothing, because observing three wheat species specially created to feed humans would not have generated any questions that needed answering. No predictions are made, so there is no reason or direction for seeking further knowledge. This demonstrates the scientific uselessness of creationism. While creationism explains everything, it offers no understanding beyond, “that’s the way it was created.” No testable predictions can be derived from the creationist explanation. Creationism has not made a single contribution to agriculture, medicine, conservation, forestry, pathology, or any other applied area of biology. Creationism has yielded no classifications, no biogeographies, no underlying mechanisms, no unifying concepts with which to study organisms or life. In those few instances where predictions can be inferred from Biblical passages (e.g., groups of related organisms, migration of all animals from the resting place of the ark on Mt. Ararat to their present locations, genetic diversity derived from small founder populations, dispersal ability of organisms in direct proportion to their distance from eastern Turkey), creationism has been scientifically falsified.

Again, using evolution to study the origins of bread crops and see what factors may have lead to the increase yield. I don't consider it useless knowledge any more than I consider history to be useless knowledge.

Keeping in mind of course that “may have” doesn’t necessarily equal “must have”. Personally I would have used Doolittle’s explanation - he is probably considered most knowledgeable in the area of blood clotting, nevertheless... [snipped Miller’s scenario on the origin of blood clotting which can be found here] …except for the last paragraph which is the most honest IMO.

Again, nothing in science is 100% certain. Everything is a may have, however, not everything is equally likely. The Earth is not required to continue in its orbit tomorrow. However, it's extremely likely to do so. I think the problem is that you expect evolution to be 100% certain, when nothing in science is 100% certain. What Miller presented is a possible scenerio, and then gave evidence to back it up. Of course, you just as free to believe that is it wrong, like Behe did at the Dover trial, even though he was presented with hundreds of papers on the evolution immune systems, only to reject them all as insufficient. However, science will continue to ignore your beliefs just like they ignore Behe's beliefs and continue to do research in areas such as evolution of blood clotting.

 

[JM]

Thanks for the link.