Dino/bird evolution: new evidence

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The analysis shows that T-rex collagen makeup is almost identical to that of a modern chicken - this corroborates a huge body of evidence from the fossil record that demonstrates birds are descended from meat-eating dinosaurs," said Angela Milner, the associate keeper of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London. "So, it is very satisfying that the molecules have provided a positive test for the morphology."

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I'm curious as to how creationists will dispute this new evidence... the probababilty of a theory being correct is made much greater when very different strands of evidence lead to the same conclusion.

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assuming that there are still serious scientists who beleive in creationism

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Good point, since scientists who ignore evidence are off course not real scientists. No pun intended,

Cheers

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And upon analysis of these ancient proteins, they have been found to most closly resemble proteins found in the modern chicken....

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First of all I always have a good laugh when I think of trex devolving into chickens. The very idea is so funny. Especially when you consider the pure ferocity and killing power of the tyrasnnasaurus rex compared to the "run like hell" battle plan of the domestic chicken.

Second I wonder how they found proteins in a dinosaur that was supposed to exist 225 to 160 million years ago. How was it preserved for so long?

Third they also found proteins which matched a newt and a frog, are you telling me that on the trex's evolutionary path to a chicken, he evolved from a newt to a frog also?

Fourth it makes no sense for a trex to evolve into a chicken. Presupposing that evolution even works outside of species, which it doesnt, but presupposing it did, what selective advantage would a trex have for becoming a small chicken? The trex already was at the top of its foodchain, it did not have selective pressure to evolve so.

Fifth, the dinosaurs dissapeared rapidly, there are no links to trex de-evolution. Please show the diagram which shows all of the connections between the trex and the chicken, that would be a funny one.

sixth, the chicken itself is a contradiction to selection, what possible survival benefit does a chicken have? To be eaten? What is this, survival of the yummy?

Its ridiculous. Im eating an egg & cheese sandwich right now. Yay T rex! Your eat em eggs are tasty!

The entire dino to bird thing is stupid. Basically they have two un-explainable facts that they need to put together:

1)There is no account of the origin of birds
2)The dino's dissappeared all at once

Someone with very weak logical skills has tried to connect these two facts. If you can beleive that then they can pretty much get you to believe anything.

Hello....your stupid! Heh heh heh How does it feel??

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what selective advantage would a trex have for becoming a small chicken?

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Nitro was that a serious post?... i hope not..

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Even a little boy knows that the survival of the fittest must not be understood in terms of dimensions , claws and ferocity
If a Trex must eat a ton meat a day to survive while a chicken is happy with some seeds then a chicken can survive in certain enviromental conditions while the trex is bound to die

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For two such widely independent species,it could even mean independent evolution of that collagen makeup

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The entire dino to bird thing is stupid. Basically they have two un-explainable facts that they need to put together:

1)There is no account of the origin of birds
2)The dino's dissappeared all at once

Someone with very weak logical skills has tried to connect these two facts. If you can beleive that then they can pretty much get you to believe anything.

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That's not true at all, there are dozens of fossils of dinosaurs with birds traits,

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even right up to having feathers and being able to fly.

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let me let you in on a little biological secret: if they have feathers and can fly...they are probably birds.Shhh, dont tell anyone

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Wether this means the 'bird-dinos' were already enough steps evolved to survive loose from their dinosaur ancestors is very likely. If you're thinking about T-rex-sized birds, that's not what they were, infact after the meteor mostly mammal species and small species survived

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The entire dino to bird thing is stupid.

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Basically they have two un-explainable facts that they need to put together:

1)There is no account of the origin of birds
2)The dino's dissappeared all at once

Someone with very weak logical skills has tried to connect these two facts.

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the notion of dinosaur mass extinction comes only from the fossil record...don't you and other creationists reject the fossil record? If not, why are some parts reliable and not others? Are only those parts of the record that go against your narrow interpretations of history wrong?

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don't you and other creationists reject the fossil record?

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It doesnt seem likely that terrible diseases like plague and typhus are caused by tiny invisible creatures...how can a tiny animal hurt a big animal like that?

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While it is true that most dinosaurs do disappear at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, this doesnt mean much for the bird evolution question as the development/evolution of the avian line had already taken place by the time of the K-T boundary.

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so all the bunnys and chickens survived?

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yes

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Very good. Why? Because they were the most fit?

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yes

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How?

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Diet

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And how does the turkey and the duck fit into all this?

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see above

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tell me all about this meteor, where did it strike?

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Yucatan coast off shore

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What evidence do you have for it?

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Dive

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I find this whole thing hilarious. Ladies and gentlemen, the cream of evolution evidence. Lets hope people with a slightly larger IQ than a 4 year old will realize how ridiculous this is.

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Kinji, I respect you, but please don't go around promoting religeon...

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We walk by faith and not by sight. Ohter than that I would suggest that you search for God as hard as you searched for evidence that He does not exist

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Apart from that , nobody claimed that chicken come from trex

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However the likelihood of identical proteins occuring in totally unrelated organisms is very low

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Indeed, which explains why these proteins are barely more than half alike.

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By a creationist approach, one could say
"oh, how rediculus that the "yorkshire terrier" is a decentent of the wulf,
such a small dog, this is rediculus"

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Comparative anatomy is not evidence for a common ancestor, but a common designer.

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No, not at all, evidence for a designer would be finding his tools or something, but not finding a comparative anatomy. Evolution isn't random, but there's no 'design' either, unless 'adaptation through natural selection' can be considered 'design'. But that's designs without a designer, and that's not 'designing'.

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Wolves and dogs are the same kind of animal.

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'Family' and 'species' are not the same thing... The dog family, Canidae, is a diverse group of 34 species ranging in size and proportion from squat, dachshund-like bushdogs to the long-legged maned wolf...

http://www.kc.net/~wolf2dog/wayne2.htm

Cheers

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matt, you dont understand your own theory. Evolution does not predict or require comparative anatomy or genetic similarity.

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Birds and reptiles have very different designs

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it seems that every new piece of evidence is treated with contempt by creationists; being incapable of looking at data objectively, they are merely hacks who distort or dismiss evidence they dont like.

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Likewise, it seems like evolutionists like to overexaggerate basically irrelevant data such as this for the reasons you listed.

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It's not even possible to be more ignorant than this Irish ... geesh .. talking about h o p e l e s s. What ever happened to your way of replying with arguments anyways?

Cheers

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basically irrelevant data

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I started this thread to see if any creationists had some real arguments about this, but its seems they dont.

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Also, considering the many morphological similarities between therapods and modern birds, the chances of the relationship being coincidence go down dramatically--making the evidence very strong.

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Apart from that , nobody claimed that chicken come from trex
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exactly! i didn't read the whole thread and only a short german news article about the topic but it was about dinosaurs being the ancestors of birds and not trex being the ancestor of chicken.

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The whole chicken->t.rex thing is definitely the central issue of this research, these articles, and this thread. The larger issue of dino->bird evolution is being strengthened by this specific research. So your absolutely wrong and it is actually a pet peeve of mine when someone comes into a thread like this with some one liner like this without having read the whole thread or even made a small effort to understand the issue at large. Apparently you come from the Arnold Swartzeneggar one-liner school of evidence.

The chicken->t.rex connection is VERY specific in this article which has as its title: "T.Rex Related to Chickens" It doesn't get plainer than that.

@Alberto

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Well I make you laugh again

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Elephants come from a mammal as big as a mouse
There are fossils and genetic evidence to support this theory

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You simply seem to ignore the key factor : Time

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If our mouse inreases in weight, let's say 1% each generation , thanks to favourable conditions, than in 1000 generations, a fraction of time in the history of evolution, our mouse increases in weight about 21.000 times

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Apart from that , nobody claimed that chicken come from trex

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Big dinos died, very likely, because of the fall of a huge meteorit near Yucatan
The concentration of dust in the atmosphere increases consequently the irradiation of the sun decreases

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Big dinos died while small mammals and small dinos could survive thanks to their lower energy consumption ( better diet )

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The descendece of birds from some type dinos ( not the trex ) is proved by thousand fossil evidences

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yeah brilliant insight.. anyhting you dont like or understand is irrelevant. I started this thread to see if any creationists had some real arguments about this, but its seems they dont.

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The chicken->t.rex connection is VERY specific in this article which has as its title: "T.Rex Related to Chickens" It doesn't get plainer than that.

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yes, "t.rex related to chicken" in some way!

but you creationists were like: "imagine a t.rex evolving into a chicken! muhahaha! impossible!" in these articles (i read some more) of course no one claimed that t.rex evolved into chicken.

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Very nice post Nitro.

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So what you need to do is put your "evidence" in perspective.

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The extent to which evolutionists on this forum today exercise faith, out of things that they can only hope to believe, is a much less sure foundation than that of the faith we Christians place in the intelligent design which is readily seen and observed throughout biological nature and throughout the stars.

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Well, no, intelligent design suggest a designer, a creator and thus divine interference, those are all things for which there is ZERO evidence, there's no reasonable argument nor motive to assume there's a designer either.

Complexity says nada, just look at the difference between a egg and a full grown baby duck. You're practically claiming that because the egg looks so different, that a fullgrown duck can't possibly have grown out of it.

Also, explain to me why a 'intelligent' designer would create all those intermediate species? You already admitted in other threads that evolution ís happening, but you made an artificial distinction between 'macro' and 'micro' evolution. A lot of 'micro' evolutions make up the 'macro' evolutionary 'stages'. It's all a bit gradient, so infact those percentages make perfect sense. They are evidence of exact the opposite of what you believe.

I really have yet to see good arguments for ID or a creator.

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Morphological facts indicate similarity and that is all.

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You're practically claiming that because the egg looks so different, that a fullgrown duck can't possibly have grown out of it.

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This is not true at all. Look at amphibious species, look at all the dog species, look at cats and tigers, look at elephants and rinos, look at the dozens of birds species, look at horses and zebras and donkeys and their historical intermediates.

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IDifferent types of cats, dogs, horses, etc proves nothing for evolution.

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You look at everything through the evolution-spectacle set.

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It seems like you dont understand how the genome works.

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Please tell me your joking... your not that stupid...

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"not by chance"

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This seems to base on a not-understanding of how chance in combination with restricting conditions and repetition in time and space leads to measurable probabilities which can be observered even in short-range processes and which is already used in many creative processes.

Or, you cannot bear the possibility of 'senseless' chance as one of the ingredients of life and creativity, at all.

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I dont really understand your "measurable probablitites" and "repetition in time and space", but you are correct in stating that it is "chance combined with restricting conditions"

I am sorry to see this thread degrade into what some of you have made it. Obviously some of you are so flustered that you cant seem to think straight. However, none of this rhetoric is intelligent at all. Concentrate on the facts. What do you know about evolution really?

No answer? Thats ok I will try to bring you up to speed with as much patience and kindness as I can muster. The first issue: Chance and probability. How is chance involved? Are mutations random? What causes mutation?

Mutations occur either from 1)inheritance from parents (mom and dad are mutants) or 2)acquired during the lifetime by environmental factors(radiation,etc) or through copying errors made during cell division.

Chance or random? Yes mutation is random if it has been acquired during your lifetime, but mutation is not so random if you have acquired it from your parents through inheritance.

So we can clearly see that mutation itself is very well explained as "random"

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Now natural selection is not_random_at_all. Natural selection is a very real, testable, observable scientific phenomena which arises from every species struggle for existence and survival. Natural selection is the process whereby favorable inheritable characteristics are selected as a result of whatever conditions of the environment would allow that species to survive.

**However you must understand the relationship between natural selection and mutation, if you do not understand this relationship, you will never understand evolution and creationists which accuse you of "not knowing your own theory" will be quite correct. So it is very important to understand that natural selection cannot work without mutation Why? Because natural selection can only select for traits which exist in the "gene pool". As an example, the galapagos finch cannot select for different beak shape without the genes for that beak shape existing in its own gene pool to begin with. How did the genes get in there to begin with? Through mutation.(as the theory states)

So you are going to appear stupid to creationists and evolutionists alike if you dont understand that evolution is really part random/part natural selection.

To recapitulate. The mutations themselves arise randomly, the selection is based on environment and other factors.

This is just the very beginning of it. A basic definition of the term "genome" is in order. The "genome" of an organism is the sum total of all of its parts, including all of its chromosomes, genes, and nucleotides.

The genome really is the instruction manual which specifies life. There is no information system which is designed by man that can begin to compare with it.

The reductionism seen by some evolutionists on this forum is staggering. Phemox had told me that "complexity means nada". To me that really can be interpreted to mean that you simply dont know anything about the genome and the real peices of this puzzle.

The genome is very complex, so complex that it can only be appreciated in terms of how much it contains. A genome is the instruction manual of life, it details how an organisms body will be built. The specified complexity of even a small bacterium's genome is arguably as great as that of the space shuttle.

Now compare that the jump from the complexity of a bacterium's genome to a human's genome is probably about the jump from a little red wagon's instruction manual to a space shuttle's instruction manual. Not only including the steps to put the parts together, also the steps required to manufacture the steel, plastic and all the peices and also to deliver them to the place of assembly. There is simply no human technology which can make an adequate analogy for the complexity of human life.

So therefore:
1)complexity does not mean nada

Now listen because Phemox has said that I havent presented any evidence of intelligent design, well now I am just beginning to give such evidence so please pay attention. This is not something your going to understand from a one-sentence reply on a forum. You have no idea how much knowledge I have about this subject, it would probably astound you. What I am going to do is just gloss over the main points of genomic complexity, and I will end the post with a question.

So the complexity of the genome itself is astounding and many scientists call it the "book of life" because it contains all of the instructions that we need to live. This "book" is a linear sequence of 4 types of extremely small molecules called "nucleotides". These nucleotides make up the individual steps of the spiral DNA staircase. These individual steps are the "letters" of the "book of life". In the human genome there are two sets of 3 billion of these nucleotides and only a small fraction of them are used to encode the roughly 100,000 functional proteins of the human body and the countless amounts of rna molecules which essentially act as these marvelously complex miniature machines.

This linear information alone is only the first dimension of complexity within the genome. The genome is not just a linear string of information, it is actually multiple linear codes which overlap and constitute an exceedingly complex information system.

It also has a self-regulating, recursive type of inbuilt management system which is full of countless loops and branches like a computer program. It has genes which regulate genes which regulate other genes. Some genes sense changes in the environment, and then instruct other genes to react by setting in motion complex cascades of events that can modify the body's environment.

To top it all off, DNA folds into two and three dimensional folds and such folding probably encodes even higher levels of information.

The bottom line is that the genomes instructions are not just a simple, static, linear set of nucleotides, but also a self-regulating, three dimensional system of the likes of which is simply not seen in any human made information system. The genome's highest level of interaction and information coding is probably beyond human comprehension The human body is filled with a galaxy of 100 trillion cells with each one carrying a complete copy of this "DNA manual" which, as Carl Sagan said, is probably the equivalent to more than all the books in the library of congress. The burning question is this:

Where did all this information come from? And how can it be maintained?

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I can reccomend dr Lee Spetners book "not by chance". A pretty good explanation on the genome, mutations and variations.

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( I could say exactly the same about Capanno here, so right back at you. )

Okey, well the reasons why I was totally unimpressed it because of the misunderstanding of statistics, the way complexity works and the evolution theory in general.

The whole book is centered around the wrong assumption that evolutionists believe mutations are the primary donor of new DNA information, whereas gene duplication (as well as other duplications) is the primary source of new information in DNA.

Let me give a quote of someone who tried to explain what's wrong with the 'statistics vs. complexity vs. evolution theory-approach (and yes it's from amazon.com);

The central tenet of Dr. Spetners book is that sophisticated mathematical and statistical analyses "prove" that Darwinian evolution by natural selection is not possible. Well, as it happens, this is exactly what one would expect from this type of analysis, and for a very simple reason.

Let's say that I get I get in my car and begin to drive down the road without any particular idea about where I am going. Every time I reach an intersection, I have a set of choices: I can turn right, left, or go straight on (Notice, my choices aren't unlimited, I can't turn "up" for example. At each intersection, I must choose from a limited set of choices). Now, every time I make that choice, not only do I determine a new direction of travel, but I also change all my future range of choices.

Now, let's say I drive for thirty days straight. What are the chances that I will arrive in Akron, Ohio at the end of those 30 days? Well, practically no chance at all. But, I have to end up SOMEWHERE. If, at the end of 30 days, I do end up in Akron, what can we deduce from this?

Nothing much. I am in Akron, but it would have been impossible to predict that I would arrive here in 30 days. By the same token, even though I am actually in Akron, it is still statistically impossible to show that I should be there. Statistically, I shouldn't be in Akron. When I look back at my journey, my arrival in Akron came about through hundreds of separate decisions at hundreds of separate intersections. Just one different decision might have sent me off to Orlando, Florida. Statistically, I shouldn't be in Akron. In fact, statistically, I shouldn't be, well, anywhere.

By the same token, evolution has been through millions of intersections. The chances of us arriving at this particular stage in our evolution would have been impossible to predict at the beginning. Now that we have arrived at our current location, statistics are useless in telling us if we could have gotten here through evolution. But we had to be somewhere. It just happens to be here.

It is telling, however, that despite his statistical analysis, Dr Spetner is forced to admit that there is both direct and indirect evidence for evolution. Even as he stands at the brink of declaring evolution to be a statistical impossibility, he steps back and acknowledges its truth, however grudgingly.

And another reaction this:


The progress of evolution is not random at all. The genetic mutation and variation due to sexual reproduction may be random, but the environment selects those mutations and variations that enhance the reproductive outcome for the organism. When a population of some trillions of bacteria are subjected to an antibiotic, and one of those bacterial cells happens to wind up antibiotic resistant (our figurative trip to Akron), it survives and the others die. It multiplies and the other do not. A new population of resistant bacteria arises not by the vagaries of chance, but by the hard realities of adaptation in an unforgiving environment.

To extend the "trip to Akron" metaphor, imagine trillions of drivers driving in all directions and winding up all over the map except for one thing. The guy that made it to Akron lives and the others are killed.

Convergent evolution isn't so surprising either. It may well happen, and in fact does happen, that two, three, four, or more guys make it to Akron by completely different routes. That insects, birds and bats all have wings and can fly does not require a miracle. It only requires that there be parallel evolutionary pressures on these different classes of animals, and parallel advantages to those among them that can make that increasingly long leap into the air work for them.

Again, Dr. Spetner attacks the wrong things using the wrong approach ...

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Well Im glad no evolutionist in this thread was my lawyer in some important court trial because I would lose my shirt. You guys just give up way too easily.

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I think most judges and juries would have little problems figuring out who's right actually and who's back paddling, using wrong arguments is misinformed about certain facts and sometimes even ignorant. But hey, if you ever need a lawyer, you know where to find me,

Cheers

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Where did all this information come from? And how can it be maintained?

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Mutations occur either from 1)inheritance from parents (mom and dad are mutants) or 2)acquired during the lifetime by environmental factors(radiation,etc) or through copying errors made during cell division.

Chance or random? Yes mutation is random if it has been acquired during your lifetime, but mutation is not so random if you have acquired it from your parents through inheritance.

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Makes you wonder, 'who' created this world, and why are these two rules in place(considering you accept this theory).

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This very question starts with the assumption that all this has to be created. We can see these rules are in effect indeed, but what makes you think these rules were 'made'. Why would that be the case? A lot of natural selective factors can be explained perfectly well, most of them are simply the results of reactions and co-existence of other reactions, events and what more. There are huge chains of reactions that made the world how it is now. Selective factors like climate changes, disappearing food sources for a certain adapted species and what more should be seen in it's context.

Again complexity, even complexity of the most complex kind, doesn't demand a creator. We know a lot about the weather and it's factors that influence the outcome, yet we can't predict it accurately because our knowledge is limited and bound to time (gathering info and calculating weathermodels costs time). Basically we don't know everything is what I'm trying to explain, and for example the weather system shows we can't accurately base conclusions or make assumptions like the one in the quoted text above.

It goes even further than that by the way. Just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean it's not true.

Let's say you wake up one day on a street and you know completely nothing, all you know is you exist because you're parents gave birth to you and the street you're on simply was there before you were there. You've never seen anyone make that street, nor did you see any other street being made. Basically you don't know anything about that street. Except that it was there before you were there. You can see what the street consists of, but you can't see any tools. The only legit conclusion is that the street exists, you don't know if the street was constructed and even if you think so, there's absolutely no reasonable argument to assume God made that street. The only way to know whether or not the street was made and by who, is to actually have witnessed it.

Now replace 'street' with 'universe' or whatever other extraordinary thing we can see around us for which we can not see how it came into existence...

Cheers

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By the same token, evolution has been through millions of intersections. The chances of us arriving at this particular stage in our evolution would have been impossible to predict at the beginning. Now that we have arrived at our current location, statistics are useless in telling us if we could have gotten here through evolution. But we had to be somewhere. It just happens to be here

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Dr Spetner is forced to admit that there is both direct and indirect evidence for evolution. Even as he stands at the brink of declaring evolution to be a statistical impossibility, he steps back and acknowledges its truth

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I didnt read the book and I dont agree with the ID crowd with their "guided evolution" fallacy. But it seems as if your guy has a good point here as far as ID'ers go, but not according to me because I dont acknowledge either direct nor indirect evidence for evolution.

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The progress of evolution is not random at all. The genetic mutation and variation due to sexual reproduction may be random

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I think most judges and juries would have little problems figuring out who's right actually and who's back paddling, using wrong arguments is misinformed about certain facts and sometimes even ignorant.

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What any judge needs is evidence and you cannot provide evidence. If you say I am ignorant or backpaddling that is not enough evidence without proofs. Yet I am giving the judge one peice after another in a steady stream and all you guys do is ignore it. Why? Because you cannot admit when your wrong. The precise reason why you cannot accept a God, because that would mean admission of guilt. You are basically so stuck on yourself that you cannot ever foresee yourself being wrong. However, this type of ignorance is exactly what will assure that you will never do anything substantially in science because you have no ability to learn. Learning involves throwing out what you currently know to replace it with things that you did not know. The quicker you can learn, the quicker you can adapt and overcome. Think about it. This is my general opinion of some people, I am definitely not saying Phemox or anyone specifically. I think that our ability to learn and the speed in which we learn really is the definition of intelligence.

I understand completely and I wasn't saying the question itself is strange, I was merely pointing out how biased we tend to be in asking such questions.

We can't explain, so we all speculate instead.

True and so do I, but it strikes me every time how biased people are in their 'wondering about' things. It's not a critique towards the basic curiosity at all. I do wonder about the same things.

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What is this search, searching?? And why search in the first place. To me, I can't get it out of my mind that someone triggered this search. Logically, by looking at the NA itself, we should someday be able to solve this. Which makes this ever more interesting.

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Another good example of this bias I was talking about.

It's no critique, but these selective rules can't be seen as one sort of being pushing life (and us) around, how ever coherent the effects and the fact that apparently it happens on all scales, a lot of beings are being filtered out. What we are looking at is not the result of ONE species dodging the selective factors, no, what we are looking at is the result of adaptation through the system that filters on specific qualities in specific situations. I wouldn't call that 'search'.

Ignore if you like, since it's a linguistic/interpretative kind of thing but "search" would also suggest some sort of 'motive', right? But eventhough everything is trying to survive, some branches of evolution, some species, some beings don't really have a choice.

Evolution of life is not so much a search, but more so simply the result of survival.

Let's look at it this way, you've got 5 fish species in one basin and in order to survive they have to swim through 1 hole. Unfortunately, only 1 species of the 5 is small enough to be able to swim through. You can hardly call that 'search of life to survive', it's just the others are filtered out.

Common expressions like "life will find a way" are biased, because for some of life there won't even be a way.

The existence of the whole processes of evolution really is the only reason why 'life' hasn't died out already on this planet. These processes are complex and make that some of life per generation that get's 'filtered' will survive, but some branches of evolution come to dead-ends too, others split into several species and what more. My point being ...? The survival of life is to complex for a generalization of this kind.

Cheers

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This statement is idiotic. In the first statement he says evolution is not random at all and in the second sentence he says that "...variation due to sexual reproduction may be random

So that is ridiculous, and I see it in both camps, for evolution AND creation. The alleged process is neither random nor directed, it is both. So creationists are entirely correct when we say that genetic information arises by chance. It indeed arises by chance mutation. It is selected by other processes.

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It's not idiotic. Ask yourself this, what causes a mutation? An error of some kind, right? Are errors random? If something is damaged they are the result of the damaging factor, if there has been made a 'mistake' of some kind in any of the processes it could appear as if 'random'. However if something has a cause it is not random, if it has a cause which get's influenced by an awful lot of factors then it would be more accurate to say it's random. If something ultimately happens to be unpredictable, I'd say it's random. It's not a black and white world.

Cheers

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To answer your question, the information was evolved with the method you have just described

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1. a population of organisms which have a lifetime and which can reproduce in a challenging/changing environment
2. a way of continually generating diversity in new 'child' organisms.

And that's the only two rules that 'govern' our universe. Even the survival of the fittest principle has emerged by these two rules(organisms which tend to have healthy, fertile children will dominate(i.e. their descendents will).

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Yes. Pretty much the standard theory. It is even axiomatic is it not? However, if you or I found that this process did not work as a universal law(or governing 'rules' as you so aptly stated), or if we even cast a shadow of doubt upon it, we would placed under much disdain by Dr.David Corne and many other theorists. It would be intellectual suicide to blaspheme this rule in our education system. However, dont worry, while it is WAY too late for me (for I questioned it a looong time ago) I dont think its too late for you.

ok. All kidding aside.

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Just want to clarify here, that mutations are always random, and never biased or inherited. I'm sure we're on the same page but maybe someone else would find this post informative..

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through copying errors, although i wouldn't call them errors per se..

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Here is the point of your error. You think that mutations are a 'good' thing. However it is a very serious thing, many people die from mutation. The amount of families hurt by genetic birth defects is tragically high. So mutation is a real catastrophic problem in our society and is not merely an academic problem. I dont see anyone hopping underneath an x-ray machine hoping to get a mutation.

But from a evolutionary perspective, as you have suggested, are mutations good?

For the last 100 years scientists have been trying to find mutations which have caused new, novel information, and I have to say that from what I have seen, there really havent been any mutations which have been seen to have unambigously created information. There certainly have been mutations which have been considered "beneficial" which however resulted in a loss of information rather than the creation of it. For illustration purposes some people might consider a broken car alarm to be "beneficial". However, even though such changes may be considered "beneficial", they still represent a "breakdown" of the car. This is an actual case, for example, in chromosonal mutations for for antibiotic resistances in bacteria. That bacteria has not evolved, it has become defective.

Yet evolutionists are persistent in believing that mutation/selection is the building block process responsible for all life. So we have to look at mutations closely. We specifically need to look at what kinds of effects mutations have on organisms. Limiting ourselves to point mutations as it relates to the amount of damage they can do they can come in three different flavors:

1)No effect at all
2)Subtle effects
3)dramatic effects

For current evolutionary theory to work, the mutations have to be relatively subtle (2) or have no effect (1) because a dramatic effect would be selected out fairly quickly.

(here is where some mathematicians come in and start to calculate the probabilities of mutations adding novel complexity to the genome)

To break it down to an analogy it does not take a genius to understand that most mutations are NOT going to add new protein building information, and there are huge amounts of harmful(3) or subtle effect (2) mutations for every one theoretical mutation which adds anything new.

So current evolutionary theory holds that these "harmless mutations" will not be selected out while the organism "waits" for all these good mutations to come together. Why wont they be selected out? Because they are harmless right? Wrong. They are harmless as individuals, but not in the huge numbers that they occur. Here is where the complexity issue comes in.

Basically I have a bunch of people here that are saying that complexity does not matter and that simple reductionist thinking that it all just somehow "works" with the amazing machine of mutation/natural selection, yet they really have no idea why it doesnt work, why it cant work, and why it has never been observed to work. Well Ive got some news for you, most of you dont know anything about how mutations act on organisms and on populations, yet you depend on the mutation/selection scheme to create the new information needed to produce an eye. Its crazy. And Larry_Laffer, as I will show you given enough time(for this post is just an abbreviated version just lightly skimming on some facts)your evolutionary computing is just a theoretical dream which makes very little sense in the light of real genetics research.(edit:well perhaps I shouldnt say in that way, because I know nothing of that kind of thing evolutionary algoritms are not something I ever really learned about) I am just saying that I am 99% positive that there are things involved with population genetics and genetic research which are definitely not considered in most evolutionary computing algorithms.

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It's not idiotic. Ask yourself this, what causes a mutation? An error of some kind, right? Are errors random? If something is damaged they are the result of the damaging factor, if there has been made a 'mistake' of some kind in any of the processes it could appear as if 'random'. However if something has a cause it is not random, if it has a cause which get's influenced by an awful lot of factors then it would be more accurate to say it's random. If something ultimately happens to be unpredictable, I'd say it's random. It's not a black and white world

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1)I definitely didnt say you or the guy is idiotic, I just think his statement is because he says in one breath "its not random" in the next he says "its random"

But you are right about cause and effect, nothing is random considering that a dice will fall based on real physical properties. However for the purposes of this discussion the word "random" should suffice.

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Yep thanks, that would be the answer I was looking for, and I can go one step further in saying that it would be the standard answer. Just about every technically oriented college student in America would probably answer the same way. Because this is what is taught as standard evolutionary theory here and I am sure elsewhere.

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However, if you or I found that this process did not work as a universal law(or governing 'rules' as you so aptly stated), or if we even cast a shadow of doubt upon it, we would placed under much disdain by Dr.David Corne and many other theorists.

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However, dont worry, while it is WAY too late for me (for I questioned it a looong time ago) I dont think its too late for you.

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well...no, but thats ok, its an irrelevant point, and we are probably saying the same thing in different ways.

inherited mutations

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How would you go to solve this? You could try to reason what the best orginization could look like, or you could do an exhustive (brute force) search of ALL POSSIBLE COMBINATION OF EVERYTHING, or use some other search algorithm, such as.. NA.

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Considering there may be a creator, or group of creators, that actually made our world happen isn't stupid.. It's actually pretty reasonable to think like that.

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I see, now I understand where you're coming from. I tend to agree, however the selective factors are constantly changing so would life be possible in any other way but the 'brute force' way? I don't think so.

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On tues. you said the fittest human is the one who re-produces
> more. So i guess it's safe to say that if we figure out which people
> reproduce the most, we have our fitness criteria. With the minesweepers,
> we intervene every minute and choose which mineswepers would re-produce
> according to who collected more mines. And the criteria is always the same
> until we find a solution. Looking at human history however, the human that
> would re-produce more seems to change all the time! I mean, thousands of
> years ago, the physically strongest man would be the one that would
> survive all dangers(i'm talking pre-historic times..) and probably knock
> the most women unconsious before mating with them. However, in our times,
> it's mostly about the more socially successfull people, or the most
> atractive one. Attractive itself is also an issue that is never the same.
> "Attractive" women today would be considered to be ugly, years ago. So
> what helps if more attractive women are breeded by nature's GA algorithm,
> if at some point in the future, they are not considered to be attractive
> anymore? So to me, it looks like there's another level of abstraction on
> the fitness criteria, that we don't enforce in AGA's yet.. But to be
> honest, i'm just comfused..

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- what natural evolution actually *optimises* is still under hot debate,
but it is just as much to do with what's good for the species as it
is to do with number of fertile children.
- personal fitness (e.g. what an individual human wants to attain
or improve in him/herself) is entirely separate from evolutionary
fitness. Evolution measures you in one way, you are free to measure
yourself in any way you like, and that may be quite different.
- Evolution is pretty damn good at what it does, but it is most
certainly very far from perfect. In many cases, it adapts too
slowly in relation to changes in the environment. This is why
dinosaurs are gone, why polar bears will follow them, and so on.
So we shouldn't (as many people do) bring it up in a context
like "this is what evolution "says" " so it must be right.

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I have no interest in arguing with you whether Natural Evolution is correct or not. All I'm doing is repeating how it works, and how it is defined. If you don't agree with something I'm saying, I don't care to hear what you don't like about it. You could maybe take this arguement to some scientist forum or whatever, that are willing to defend the theory. I'm merely stating what it says. You're free to believe whatever you want

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oh sorry I didnt realise you were so touchy. You probably just dont know me that well, I am confrontational by nature. So it is no problem for me to disagree with others or to be disagreed with. As a matter of fact I really do enjoy debating and fighting in general, it is simply my nature. While I certainly have plenty to say about mutations Im afraid you might interpret it as some type of hostility, which I certainly dont try to "make it about you and me", so I think I'll refrain

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I thought we were having a serious discussion about how Natural Algorithms work here, and by definition, mutations are beneficia

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Just one thing...as I said in my previous post I really know nothing about evolutionary computing or natural algortims except what I can read in wikipedia So I think I'd be useless in any such discussion.

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I thought we were having a serious discussion about how Natural Algorithms work here, and by definition, mutations are beneficia

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Just one thing...as I said in my previous post I really know nothing about evolutionary computing or natural algortims except what I can read in wikipedia So I think I'd be useless in any such discussion.

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