Chimp genome again

[Asyncritus]

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Repeating your assertions doesn't make them more persuasive. Why are you convinced that evolution can't account for these differences?

Your assertions that my assertions are assertions are no more convincing!

Can we give up that line of discussion, and examine the evidence I have presented? Those are facts, and not interpretations, inferences or other guess work parading as science.

As a supporter of evolution being a theory of origins, the onus is upon you to establish (scientifically, of course - meaning with evidence) that any one of those anatomical differences could have originated as a consequence of the genetic similarities you are touting

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I gave you a sketch of how a scientist would start thinking about whether evolution could be the right explanation -- based on evidence. What's the basis of your thinking? Have you ever looked at evidence relating to any of these questions, beyond reading things attacking evolution?

[FONT=&quot]I haven't found any - these facts are universally ignored by the evolutionists - and would be grateful if you could point me towards facts which would convince anyone that such differences can be accounted for.

Note the insistence on facts.



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That's a highly implausible scenario from an evolutionary perspective. A single mutation does not produce complex, functional changes like the one you're talking about. That kind of change takes multiple mutations, and will be spread out over a long period of time. Small physical changes, no one of which changes function dramatically, make it quite possible for behavioral changes to keep up.

[FONT=&quot]SFS, this is pure assertion, and worse, an ignoring of the Law of Asynctropy, which essentially states that no organ is of any use until the powering instincts are present in the genome.

The change from the forward semi-crouching gait of say, chimpanzees, to the upright bipedal gait of the normal human is not a small thing. There are very serious medical consequences of that straightening up, some of which were outlined in the articles I quoted. Just to remind you:

[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Many clinical papers in the current literature on posture indicate that stance defects may result ultimately in a variety of malfunctions including lessened respiratory efficiency, prolapse of the abdominal viscera, impairment of digestion, pressure and derangement of the pelvic organs, dysmenorrhea, haemorrhoids, varicose veins, constipation, cyclic vomiting, foot strain, backache, neuritis, and arthritis. Barring orthopedic disabilities, few of the etiologic associations are based on demonstrable fact....[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]That the chimps etc are perfectly well designed, is proven by their success and continued existence over millions of years. That any alterations such as you are proposing would be extrmely damaging and destructive is obvious from the above quotation. So where do you go from there? Again I point out that these are observable facts, not speculation and 'inferences'.

You may not realise it, but what appear to be minor physico-anatomical changes, have enormous consequential results.

Take, for example an alteration in the opposability of the toes of the chimpanxee.

The opposable great toe of the chimp foot is powered by a certain arrangement of the musculature and the tendons. (Our great toes could not even begin to support our weight by gripping a branch. The muscles and tendons of our great toes are simply not designed to do any such thing.)

These in turn require a certain structure of the knee and hip joints and the degree of flexion that they permit.

This in turn requires a different set if innervations, and consequent alterations in the structure of the spinal cord, and ultimately the brain.

I may point out that the law of Asynctropy comes into play again when the opposable toes and arboreal habit were being designed. No matter how perfectly the foot of the animal was designed for gripping the branches, unless and until the instincts powering the employment of sush feet were in place, the foot itself would be useless.

So this unhappy and misguided notion held by optimistic evolutionists, that a mutation or two could change one functioning organ or structure into another is quite nonsensical. For organ A to be transformed into organ B requires a zillion mutations, all at the same time.

Which, of course, doesn't happen, since they are all either neutral or deleterious anyway.

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Even more likely, in this case, is that the behavior changed before the morphology did. Based on the fossil record, human ancestors started walking upright before they lost their opposable toes. So your imagined situation, with the poor primates trying to grasp branches and dropping out of trees, is just that -- imaginary.

Why is it 'even more likely?' Can you point me to where the fossil record gives any such indication?

I would also like to see evidence that the opposable toe was lost AFTER they started walking.

You may have forgotten the differences between the gait of a primate and a human. Here they are again:

The first toe of the ape is opposable to the others. Those four are bound together by a broad band of fibre known as the transverse metatarsal ligament. In man, this ligament includes the big toe, and so binds all 5 toes together.

No intermediate is possible, such as four and a half being bound together.
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[/FONT][FONT=&quot]5 Man is the only fully plantigrade primate.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

The foot presses on the ground at three points which form the pillars of a double arch.

In the anthropoids, only the outer edge of the foot presses on the ground when the animal is standing.

again, no intermediates are really possible. [/FONT][FONT=&quot]

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[Asyncritus]

What makes you think we lost our hair while we were still in trees, or that we weren't already carrying our babies in our arms by then? As I said above, upright posture appears early in the human lineage.

I am pointing out that hair is evolutionarily advantageous. Why lose it?

No, I don't. Honestly, the arguments your offering suggest that you haven't learned much about evolutionary biology.

I think you mean that I haven't swallowed much evolutionary biology. Which is far more correct a statement.

When was that, exactly? When A. ramidus was walking upright, but still had an opposable toe?

Do read your sources more carefully:

"Even though this species probably lived soon after the dawn of humankind, it was not transitional between African apes and humans. Instead, the skeleton and pieces of at least 35 additional individuals of Ar. ramidus reveal a new type of early hominin that was neither chimpanzee nor human."

If it had an opposable great toe, then it was not human.

When later australopithecenes were chipping stone to make tools? Later still, when H. erectus was using fire? Even later than that, when Neandertals were making sophisticated stone tools and burying their dead? Or when anatomically modern humans started making widespread use of symbols?

You make all this sound cast-iron, but it's not. Whatever these things were, they prove nothing - besides the fact that the anthropologists are very likely making further stupid mistakes. Just give it some thought SFS.

If X was making fire, then:

1 It had the intellectual capacity to do so.

Where did that come from, and why?

2 It could figure out that fire was useful.

Therefore it had the intellectual capacity to do so. Where did that come from, and why?

So you open a can of worms, and they simply won't go back in the tin. Just try.

 

[shernren]

[FONT=&quot]...the Law of Asynctropy, which essentially states that no organ is of any use until the powering instincts are present in the genome.
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... I may point out that the law of Asynctropy comes into play again when the opposable toes and arboreal habit were being designed. No matter how perfectly the foot of the animal was designed for gripping the branches, unless and until the instincts powering the employment of sush feet were in place, the foot itself would be useless.[/FONT]

So, Asyncritus, is there a "Use your opposable big toe to grip tree branches" gene in the chimpanzee genome? If so, where is it, and how does it produce or influence the behavioural mechanisms we see in chimpanzee locomotion?

(And why does "www.howdoesinstinctevolve.com" link, not even to a description of an obscure self-declared "Law" with zero substantiating scientific evidence, but to a get-rich-quick-on-eBay page? Hmm?)

 

[sfs]

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Can we give up that line of discussion, and examine the evidence I have presented? Those are facts, and not interpretations, inferences or other guess work parading as science.

Sure, those are facts (except for the ones that aren't, of course), but you haven't given any reason to think that those facts have any bearing at all on whether evolution has occurred.

As a supporter of evolution being a theory of origins, the onus is upon you to establish (scientifically, of course - meaning with evidence) that any one of those anatomical differences could have originated as a consequence of the genetic similarities you are touting

Sorry, but I'm a geneticist. The onus is on me to explain how genetic data demonstrate common descent. If you want to know how human big toes could have evolved, ask an anatomist.

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[FONT=&quot]I haven't found any - these facts are universally ignored by the evolutionists - and would be grateful if you could point me towards facts which would convince anyone that such differences can be accounted for.
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Let me get this straight: I suggested that you start by looking at data on several points, for example, the observed rate of morphological evolution within a species, and you can't find any such evidence. Yet if I type "observed rate of morphological evolution within species" into Google, I get 392,000 hits. How hard have you looked, exactly? And I suggested you look at when the use of fire, the use of stone tools and the use of symbolic expression first appear in the fossil record -- and you can't find any data on those subjects either? Get serious.

Note the insistence on facts.

All of the things I suggested you look at are facts.

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[FONT=&quot]SFS, this is pure assertion, and worse, an ignoring of the Law of Asynctropy, which essentially states that no organ is of any use until the powering instincts are present in the genome.
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I'm ignoring the law because it doesn't exist. In fact, it's one of the sillier things I've read lately. What powering instincts are present in the genome for the liver, or the spleen?

And what did I write that was pure assertion? That morphological changes are almost always gradual? That evolutionary theory expects them to be gradual? That behavioral changes can keep up with gradual changes much more easily than with abrupt changes?

The change from the forward semi-crouching gait of say, chimpanzees, to the upright bipedal gait of the normal human is not a small thing. There are very serious medical consequences of that straightening up, some of which were outlined in the articles I quoted.

It's a commonplace to point out that humans suffer a great deal of pain and disability because we are not optimally designed for upright posture. These facts are readily explained by the hypothesis that our posture has changed recently in evolution, and that we are not yet fully adapted to it. This is an excellent example of how evolution works even though evolved changes are not perfect. Why you bring it up is baffling.

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[FONT=&quot]That the chimps etc are perfectly well designed, is proven by their success and continued existence over millions of years. That any alterations such as you are proposing would be extrmely damaging and destructive is obvious from the above quotation. So where do you go from there? Again I point out that these are observable facts, not speculation and 'inferences'.
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You seem a little unclear about what constitutes inference. Chimpanzees have survived for some unknown period of time (if you have evidence that they have been around for millions of years, you should provide it). It is an inference that they are therefore perfectly designed. Not at all a good inference, I would say. Humans have also been around for some time, and we have quite a few imperfect features, yet we still manage to get on quite well.

I may point out that the law of Asynctropy comes into play again when the opposable toes and arboreal habit were being designed. No matter how perfectly the foot of the animal was designed for gripping the branches, unless and until the instincts powering the employment of sush feet were in place, the foot itself would be useless.

Have you ever watched a actual animals for any length of time? Ever seen one doing something that it isn't exactly suited for? Like watching a dog walk up stairs or hold something in its paws? Real animals, unlike the abstract creatures you're talking about, have considerable flexibility in their behavior, and can adopt behaviors long before they have specialized anatomical features for that behavior.

So this unhappy and misguided notion held by optimistic evolutionists, that a mutation or two could change one functioning organ or structure into another is quite nonsensical. For organ A to be transformed into organ B requires a zillion mutations, all at the same time.

I don't know of any "evolutionists" who think that a mutation or two could change one functioning organ into another. Functional differences require a substantial number of mutations, but far less than a "zillion". And there's no reason that they have to happen at the same time. (If they do have to happen at the same time, then those are change that will never evolve, at least not by that route.)

Which, of course, doesn't happen, since they are all either neutral or deleterious anyway.

Sorry, but that's trivially wrong. Beneficial mutations are easy to observe.

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[FONT=&quot]Why is it 'even more likely?' Can you point me to where the fossil record gives any such indication?

I would also like to see evidence that the opposable toe was lost AFTER they started walking.
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Read the Science papers on A. ramidus. It was bipedal when on the ground -- a bipedal gait that is transitional between quadrupedal gait and modern human bipedalism, and that you claim couldn't exist. It also had an opposable toe.
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[sfs]

I am pointing out that hair is evolutionarily advantageous. Why lose it?

You pointed out one speculative reason why hair might have been advantageous. I pointed out that your speculation assumed a function for hair might easily have already vanished when humans lost their hair.

I think you mean that I haven't swallowed much evolutionary biology. Which is far more correct a statement.

No, I mean that you seem to know very little about the actual content of evolutionary biology, and to have based your beliefs on the distorted, ignorant and frequently deceptive statements of creationists. If you want to argue against evolutionary biology with any kind of success (or with any intellectual integrity), you have to know what evolutionary biology actually says.

Do read your sources more carefully:

"Even though this species probably lived soon after the dawn of humankind, it was not transitional between African apes and humans. Instead, the skeleton and pieces of at least 35 additional individuals of Ar. ramidus reveal a new type of early hominin that was neither chimpanzee nor human."

Sorry, but I read it correctly; you are the one who is confused here. The point Gibbons is making, which you seem to have missed, is that ramidus is not transitional between humans and chimps, but between humans and the chimp-human ancestor, which turns out to have been quite different from chimps. Specifically, that ancestor (if the proposed scenario is correct) did not have the same locomotion as chimps (no knuckle-walking), and so there never was a transition from chimp-like morphology to modern human morphology, at least where gait is concerned. Rather, each species evolved their own distinctive gaits from the common ancestor. This was a major finding of these studies.

If it had an opposable great toe, then it was not human.

Of course it wasn't human. It was a bipedal primate with an opposable toe that may well have been ancestral to modern humans. It was just the sort of transitional form that you deny could exist.

You make all this sound cast-iron, but it's not. Whatever these things were, they prove nothing - besides the fact that the anthropologists are very likely making further stupid mistakes. Just give it some thought SFS.

You're coming perilously close to saying that you'll just dismiss any facts that you don't happen to like. That way lies intellectual suicide.

If X was making fire, then:

1 It had the intellectual capacity to do so.

Where did that come from, and why?

From their general intellectual capacity. That intellectual ability probably arose because of its use in the complex social structures and collaborative societies of hominids, although this is certainly speculative. You don't need to have a specific mutation to figure out how fire works; you just need to be moderately intelligent. (My guinea pig has figured out that squeaking loudly when footsteps are approaching is a good way to get treats. Where do you think the intellectual capacity to do that come from?)

2 It could figure out that fire was useful.

Therefore it had the intellectual capacity to do so. Where did that come from, and why?

See above. My dog has figured out that picking up a toy and standing in front of one of us is a good way to get let outside to take a leak. Do you think there is a "pick up toy in response to need to urinate" gene in the dog genome?