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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
 Posted - 02/01/2006 : 15:09:47 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by byhisgrace88
This is a very interesting idea, that I have heard before. I see it as a logically sound argument within what I believe is an un-logical point of view. I would ask you this one question to clarify. This is basicly saying the idea that; even though a brand new Mustang Covertible appears to be "better" than one of those old Chevy Caprice tank like cars from the 80's. The Caprice would be "better" if you were in a demolition derby.
If you can excuse the terrible analogy...Am I correct in thinking that is what you are saying?
No. It would be more like asking which is a "better" vehicle, a submarine or jet airplane? The answer of course depends on what environment you want to take it in.
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"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman
"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie |
| Edited by - H. Humbert on 02/01/2006 15:54:16 |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 02/01/2006 : 17:41:02 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by byhisgrace88
Here's my thought....
When I hear about the simalarities between the DNA of humans and apes, I think less of "We must be the same thing, only slightly more evolved", and more "We must come from the same place/person."
When I hear about the similarities, I also think less "we're only slightly more evolved" and more "We must come from the same place". However that is not because I believe in creation, but because "only slightly more evolved" is a misunderstanding/misrepresentation of evolutionary theory. Both humans and chimpanzees are more evolved than our common ancestor, we just made different turns on the road to where we are today. We have evolved differently, but the number of mutations in our genomes compared to our common ancestor are roughly the same.
Given this imagery, we both came from the same place. |
Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 02/01/2006 : 17:54:34 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Hawks
quote:
Also: When discussing this very topic with a friend recently; he threw out the idea that we also share 50% of our DNA with a Banana. Can anyone confirm or deny the validity of this statement. Because at least in my un-educated point of view; this would take much of the puch out of the 97% that we share with Apes. I look forward to hearing some of your thoughts.
I think I've heard somewhere that we are 50% similar to bananas at the DNA level. I haven't seen a scientific paper stating this, though, so we can file this under unasserted claims for now (if you find a paper I would be happy to read it).
I can't give you a science paper directly, but I have copied a nice picture of my Astro-biology textbook "Our Cosmic Origin" by Armand Delsemme, which give the phylogenic tree according to Cytochrome-C.
Cytochrome-c is large enough to give a basic "map" of genetic relationships between species.
The numbers represent the %-difference in DNA between each node (or species, living or extinct).
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2006 : 11:32:42 [Permalink]
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The phrase "more evolved" is extremely misleading.
It implies that there is some ultimate goal of evolution, beyond survival.
The platypus is "more evolved" than humans, you could say, because it has been around in its almost exact present form for something like a million years.
Or you could use some other arbitrary characteristic, like intelligence, and claim that humans are "more evolved".
The only real objective way to evaluate the evolutionary "progress" of a species is to evaluate how well adapted to it's particular ecological niche it is. When you do that, no eukaryote compares to the prokaryotes.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2006 : 15:33:25 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
The phrase "more evolved" is extremely misleading....
I understand your point but I think depending on what you are addressing, more evolved can refer to more or less "primitive" and usually refers to functions. It can refer to intelligence as well. There is a need for some terminology addressing such an issue. |
| Edited by - beskeptigal on 02/02/2006 15:34:25 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2006 : 17:28:52 [Permalink]
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quote:
I understand your point but I think depending on what you are addressing, more evolved can refer to more or less "primitive" and usually refers to functions. It can refer to intelligence as well. There is a need for some terminology addressing such an issue.
There is plenty of terminology to describe how well a specific organism is adapted to their specific ecological niche.
If two species do not share a similar niche, then drawing comparisons between them is pointless in the context you are suggesting. What criteria do you use to determine "more evolved" from "less evolved" between prokaryotes who live in deep sea hydrothermal vents, and humans? Answer: You don't, because there is no meaningfull way to make such a comparison.
Now, if two species share the same niche... then you could make some comparisons. Which one is found in greater abundance, does one species out-compete the other, for example. Even then, you'd say that one species is better adapted, not "more evolved".
The idea that greater complexity = "more evolved" is simply incorrect. In fact, it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what evolution is.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2006 : 21:30:05 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by beskeptigal
I understand your point but I think depending on what you are addressing, more evolved can refer to more or less "primitive" and usually refers to functions. It can refer to intelligence as well. There is a need for some terminology addressing such an issue.
Actually, to biologists the word "primitive" largely means nothing more than "ancestral to," and so doesn't carry any real implications regarding number (or type) of functions, or intelligence. For example, the appendix in many "primitive" mammals is much larger than in humans (proportionally), and serves a useful function in those "primitive" mammals. For another example, whatever species of fish got trapped in a cave and lost its eyesight over time was more "primitive" than the blind cave fish we know today, despite having functioning eyes.
And (I know you didn't address this specifically, beskeptigal, this is more about the 'feel' of the thread), measures of "complexity" are necessarily ad hoc. The average human being has some 23 chromosome pairs, while some ferms have more than 600. If "number of chromosomes" is your complexity measure, then humans are pathetically simple creatures compared to many plants. On the other hand, if you pick "number of different cell types" as your complexity measure, then perhaps humans win compared to ferns, but lose out to something else. The point is that no single measure (or probably set of measures) will truly capture how "evolved" something is, especially since every species alive today has been subject to the mechanisms of evolution for the exact same four billion years as every other species. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2006 : 22:56:41 [Permalink]
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| [1/2 whispered, then withdrew: Only skeptics would have themselves a donnybrook that required the aid of diagrams.] |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
| Edited by - HalfMooner on 02/02/2006 22:59:37 |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 02/02/2006 : 23:30:04 [Permalink]
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quote:
[1/2 whispered, then withdrew: Only skeptics would have themselves a donnybrook that required the aid of diagrams.]
I liked the diagram.... hahaha!
To paraphrase:
If you can't handle the geek(-iness), stay out of the forum!
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2006 : 00:24:19 [Permalink]
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Dude expressed his mood: quote:
If you can't handle the geek(-iness), stay out of the forum!
Okay, to be honest, the profound geekiness here is one of the main things that attracted me to SFN in the first place. |
“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2006 : 01:58:29 [Permalink]
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I did agree with Dude. But your explanation adds a lot more clarity, Dave. I accept your terminology and withdraw mine.  |
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beskeptigal
SFN Die Hard
USA
3834 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2006 : 02:01:53 [Permalink]
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Here's a laterally related post with some links I dug up for a BAUT thread, in case anyone is interested in storing the links for additional discussions with the less than well informed.
[BAUT member], if you want to look at the real world rather than trying to convince others to join in your not so evidence based one, you could take the time to learn more about the science you so desire to be wrong. I can never figure out how it is a creation or ID believer thinks they are arguing from a position of strength when there is so much science they are completely unaware of.
Instead of trying to impress an evidence oriented crowd with non-evidence quotes from various people both long dead and current, I highly recommend you take the time to bring your education on the science of evolution up to current standards.
Here are some places to start:
[url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html]Species transitions from talk origins.[/url]
[url=http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html]Tree of Life web project[/url] All the transitions in neat little order.
[url=http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml]Evolution of the human eye:[/url] A look at the controversy that surrounds the evolution of eyes. quote:
A frequently raised criticism of evolution in any evolution-creation debate is that of the human eye. The creationist will say something like, "How can something as marvelous as the human eye have come about by chance alone? Surely there must have been a divine creation." These types of statements show two things. First, the creationist doesn't understand how evolution's 'chance' works. (i.e., They have yet to grasp the concepts behind cumulative natural selection.) Second, they haven't bothered to really examine the human eye to look for characteristics such as design flaws.
[url=http://www.maayan.uk.com/evoeyes4.html]Evolution of eyes: a molecular and physiological background in eye evolution.[/url]
The Pax-6 gene, and how it controls development of diverse eye types. In other words, put this gene in species with different eyes and you still get normal eye development for that species. The same or very similar gene makes insect or animal eyes develop.
It is this segregation of function that allows mutations to still give you functional body parts. Ever wonder how a 6 toed cat happens? There's a gene for toe development, one for structure, one for the fur, one for the blood vessels, one for the number of toes and so on. A single mutation can now give you four new toes. Next add a mutation in the gene controlling the shape of the feet. Now you have a 6 toed webbed footed cat. Another mutation and you get a 6 toed web footed cat with no fur. And on it goes until you have something that is no longer a cat.
These are macro changes and it isn't a stretch at all to see how new species occur over time.
[url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_011_01.html]Evolution of the Eye[/url] quote:
In fact, eyes corresponding to every stage in this sequence have been found in existing living species. The existence of this range of less complex light-sensitive structures supports scientists' hypotheses about how complex eyes like ours could evolve. The first animals with anything resembling an eye lived about 550 million years ago. And, according to one scientist's calculations, only 364,000 years would have been needed for a camera-like eye to evolve from a light-sensitive patch.
[url=http://soma.npa.uiuc.edu/courses/bio303/Ch11b.html]Notes on the structure and evolution of eyes.[/url]
[url=http://www.mbl.edu/animals/Limulus/vision/Wald/vision.html]Evolution of the lens-equipped eye.[/url]
[url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vision.html]The Evolution of Color Vision:[/url] Talk Origins step-by-step guide to how color vision evolved in animals.
[url=http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html]Evolution of the flagella[/url] Behe's infamous example debunked.
And the mother of all data banks: [url=http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Main_Page]EvoWiki[/url] |
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