Can Randomness and Chance cause the Evolution of life?

[Thermos aquaticus]

Eugenics - Wikipedia
The idea of a modern project of improving the human population through a statistical understanding of heredity used to encourage good breeding was originally developed by Francis Galton and, initially, was closely linked to Darwinism and his theory of natural selection.[16] Galton had read his half-cousin Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which sought to explain the development of plant and animal species, and desired to apply it to humans. Based on his biographical studies, Galton believed that desirable human qualities were hereditary traits"


it's not really all that controversial a connection

Neither is the connection between the theory of gravity and throwing people off of tall buildings. All they were doing is misapplying a theory to try and justify their already existent xenophobia and racism. Evolution no more inspires eugenics than the theory of gravity inspires us to throw people off of tall buildings.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

All species use the same genetic hardware such as ribosomes, transfer RNA's, and so forth. That is what I was referring to.

okay- hardware not software- I would agree, and of course the hardware architecture cannot be designed by randomly mutating DNA... neither can the software was my point

randomly mutate variables for text here- no problem, randomly mutate the software which supports this feature, and it crashes entirely

Also, epigenetics is not capable of producing the diversity we see among species. Epigenetics won't allow a bird to give birth to a coyote, as one example.

right, it's part of the equation, but it's all turning out to be a lot more complex that it first seemed, big surprise!

It detects light in a way that allows the animal to make judgements, such as moving into areas with shade or moving into sunlight to allow for more photosynthesis. Even an indented eyespot allows for crude system that allows the animal to detect which direction light is coming from, as is the case for planaria:

is the spot itself making judgements? moving the organism?

Calling science a religion doesn't make the facts go away.

My point exactly, tell that to Fed Hoyle, - or Richard Dawkins!

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Neither is the connection between the theory of gravity and throwing people off of tall buildings. All they were doing is misapplying a theory to try and justify their already existent xenophobia and racism. Evolution no more inspires eugenics than the theory of gravity inspires us to throw people off of tall buildings.

I take your point, but think there is a fundamental distinction here:

gravity and nuclear physics are demonstrable practical things, which may be directly used and abused- throwing someone off a building is using gravity, but inspired by something else- something that caused hate- right?

Darwinism is an idea, a philosophical speculation - 'inspire' is all it can do- for good or bad

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

I take your point, but think there is a fundamental distinction here:

gravity and nuclear physics are demonstrable practical things, which may be directly used and abused- throwing someone off a building is using gravity, but inspired by something else- something that caused hate- right?

First, the truth of a theory isn't determined by how practical it is.

Second, xenophobia and racism had existed for all of human history leading up to the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution didn't inspire hate.

Darwinism is an idea, a philosophical speculation - 'inspire' is all it can do- for good or bad

No, the theory of evolution is a scientific theory. It explains observations in biology, such as the nested hierarchy and the genetic divergence between species. It adds to our knowledge of how species change over time and how species are related.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

okay- hardware not software- I would agree, and of course the hardware architecture cannot be designed by randomly mutating DNA... neither can the software was my point

Why can't the hardware be designed by random changes and selection? You seem to make these big claims but never describe the evidence that backs them.

randomly mutate variables for text here- no problem, randomly mutate the software which supports this feature, and it crashes entirely

That's why computer code is a poor analogy for DNA, evolution, and biology in general. Also, you left out selection in your analogy.

right, it's part of the equation, but it's all turning out to be a lot more complex that it first seemed, big surprise!

There's a lot of new complex stuff that is being discovered in biology all of the time. Another example is micro-RNA. However, epigenetics has very little impact on the long term evolution of species. The main drivers of evolution are still changes in DNA sequence, not the methylation of those sequences.

is the spot itself making judgements? moving the organism?

In the case of the planaria, the eyespot is part of its rudimentary nervous system. In the case of Euglena, light dependent chemical reactions in the eyespot itself directly influence the motion of its flagella. If memory serves, when the Euglena hits a patch of light the chemical reactions in the eyespot cause the flagella to stop moving which allows the Euglena to stay in lit areas and increase the rate of photosynthesis.

Eyespot apparatus - Wikipedia

My point exactly, tell that to Fed Hoyle, - or Richard Dawkins!

I don't remember Hoyle or Dawkins calling evolution a religion.

 

[ArtieE]

Every time I see this from creationists, I never understand what point they're trying to make. "Darwinism inspired eugenics, therefore.........."?

"Eugenics is the idea that you can engineer a better human population by breeding for certain genes.
eugenics - Dictionary Definition

I always thought that idea was taken directly from the Bible? When God preserved the genes of his chosen people letting them breed and murdered the rest? And drowned the whole planet while preserving those with the best genes on a boat to keep on breeding?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Why can't the hardware be designed by random changes and selection? You seem to make these big claims but never describe the evidence that backs them.

as above, if you understand why you can never write another software application, by randomly tweaking the text options in the boxes above- you understand, in principle at least, why you cannot automatically extrapolate a capacity for variation into a design mechanism- particularly a design mechanism for that very capacity you are using to make the changes!

So one problem is the hierarchy in the information system, the other is simply the improbability of producing a significantly superior design by chance v the overwhelming odds in favor of chnages being significantly deleterious.

That's why computer code is a poor analogy for DNA, evolution, and biology in general. Also, you left out selection in your analogy.

"The machine code of the genes is uncannily computer-like. Apart from differences in jargon, the pages of a molecular biology journal might be interchanged with those of a computer engineering journal. " Richard Dawkins

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Bill Gates

^ Any analogy has it's limits, but I agree with these two guys- a rare thing for me to agree with Dawkins!

There's a lot of new complex stuff that is being discovered in biology all of the time. Another example is micro-RNA. However, epigenetics has very little impact on the long term evolution of species. The main drivers of evolution are still changes in DNA sequence, not the methylation of those sequences.


In the case of the planaria, the eyespot is part of its rudimentary nervous system. In the case of Euglena, light dependent chemical reactions in the eyespot itself directly influence the motion of its flagella. If memory serves, when the Euglena hits a patch of light the chemical reactions in the eyespot cause the flagella to stop moving which allows the Euglena to stay in lit areas and increase the rate of photosynthesis.

Eyespot apparatus - Wikipedia

so it's not just a light sensitive spot.

without also having some sort of optic nerve, a way to gather, transmit, process the information in a way that can produce a significantly advantageous result, in this case halting the flagellar motor... you don't have a fully functioning eye. All of these things have to work in tandem

and that's WITH granting the eye spot as a given, as early Darwinists granted the protoplasm as a simple chemical substance that presented no particular difficulty being produced by natural mechanisms - no idea about DNA

-a little bit of the detail involved in eyespots is mentioned in your link

The eyespot apparatus of Euglena comprises the paraflagellar body connecting the eyespot to the flagellum. In electron microscopy, the eyespot apparatus appears as a highly ordered lamellar structure formed by membranous rods in a helical arrangement.[3]

In Chlamydomonas, the eyespot is part of the chloroplast and takes on the appearance of a membranous sandwich structure. It is assembled from chloroplast membranes (outer, inner, and thylakoid membranes) and carotenoid-filled granules overlaid by plasma membrane. The stacks of granules act as a quarter-wave plate, reflecting incoming photons back to the overlying photoreceptors, while shielding the photoreceptors from light coming from other directions. It disassembles during cell division and reforms in the daughter cells in an asymmetric fashion in relation to the cytoskeleton. This asymmetric positioning of the eyespot in the cell is essential for proper phototaxis.[4]


^ all this the result of a single instance of genetic mutation? remembering we are talking about irreducible complexity- how you get to the FIRST simplest possible but functional eye by utterly random copying errors


sorry for long post, must run for now but I appreciate your thoughtful responses

 

[Hockeycowboy]

The fossils and formations of the Cambrian explosion are just evidence of evolution from the fossils of simpler animals before the Cambrian explosion to the more complex animals after the Cambrian explosion.

No....earlier fossils discovered, such as the Ediacaran, simply don't "fit" to be considered precursors by most biologists.

Cooper & Fortey (1998) write:

"The beginning of the Cambrian period, some 545 million years ago, saw the sudden appearance in the fossil record of almost all the main types of animals (phyla) that still dominate the biota today. To be sure, there are fossils in older strata, but they are either very small (such as bacteria and algae), or their relationships to the living fauna are highly contentious, as is the case with the famous soft-bodied fossils from the late Precambrian Pound Quartzite, Ediacara, South Australia."


-- Alan Cooper and Richard Fortey, “Evolutionary explosions and the phylogenetic fuse,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 13 April, 1998: 151-156.

This is evidence that perfectly exhibits details of and supports a creative event.

 

[shunyadragon]

No....earlier fossils discovered, such as the Ediacaran, simply don't "fit" to be considered precursors by most biologists.

Cooper & Fortey (1998) write:

"The beginning of the Cambrian period, some 545 million years ago, saw the sudden appearance in the fossil record of almost all the main types of animals (phyla) that still dominate the biota today. To be sure, there are fossils in older strata, but they are either very small (such as bacteria and algae), or their relationships to the living fauna are highly contentious, as is the case with the famous soft-bodied fossils from the late Precambrian Pound Quartzite, Ediacara, South Australia."


-- Alan Cooper and Richard Fortey, “Evolutionary explosions and the phylogenetic fuse,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 13 April, 1998: 151-156.

This is evidence that perfectly exhibits details of and supports a creative event.

No it is not evidence of a Creative event, and besides this is an old source, and does not include the modern discoveries of simpler ancestors that are found prior to this. Sudden? in terms of what time scale?!?! When you include the Pre-Cambrian where the simpler ancestors are found which are not included in your reference, and the Cambrian period you are talking about hundreds of millions of years. Nothing sudden here.

 

[shunyadragon]

Exactly, and Einstein himself considered what he helped create, a menace to society.

Darwinism unambiguously inspired horrors of eugenics, which I'm sure Darwin likewise did not intend. But I am asking if, like nuclear energy, there is any hypothetical upside to the adoption of the theory?

This is not a fault relationship no more the science of evolution is responsible for Eugenics The validity of a theory, hypothesis, nor the science of evolution, nor any valid is science is responsible for the misuse of science.

Add another fallacy to your chest of medals. Non Sequitur big time

This resembles the 'original sin' accusation of the Demon Charles Darwin.

Own up to it your a right wing fundamentalist Christian Creationist Theist.

You still have continuously avoided the question 'IF not God what is the Intelligent Source for Intelligent Design.

 

[shunyadragon]

I take your point, but think there is a fundamental distinction here:

gravity and nuclear physics are demonstrable practical things, which may be directly used and abused- throwing someone off a building is using gravity, but inspired by something else- something that caused hate- right?

Darwinism is an idea, a philosophical speculation - 'inspire' is all it can do- for good or bad

Still slinging the manure of Non Sequitur. It remains a fact that science is not responsible for the misuse nor misrepresentation.

Own up to it your a right wing fundamentalist Christian Creationist Theist.

You still have continuously avoided the question 'IF not God what is the Intelligent Source for Intelligent Design.

 

[shunyadragon]

No, just a lot of evidence, like the Cambrian Explosion.

The lack of agreement among scientists regarding the specifics of CD evolution (its mechanisms and other details) is astounding, some discussions almost lead to physical confrontations! I’ve observed it!

Your argument is riddled with phony 'argument from ignorance' claiming the lack of evidence without even considering the recent research,

They have found evidence of primitive animals fossils in the Pre Cambrian like the following:

From: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-precambrianfossil-burrows-early-animal-behavior.html
In the history of life on Earth, a dramatic and revolutionary change in the nature of the sea floor occurred in the early Cambrian (541–485 million years ago): the agronomic revolution. This phenomenon was coupled with the diversification of marine animals that could burrow into seafloor sediments. Previously, the sea floor was covered by hard microbial mats, and animals were limited to standing on, resting on, or moving horizontally along those mats. In the agronomic revolution, part of the so-called Cambrian Explosion of animal diversity and complexity, vertical burrowers began to churn up the underlying sediments, which softened and oxygenated the subsurface, created new ecological niches, and thus radically transformed the marine ecosystem into one more like that observed today.

This event has long been considered to have occurred in the early Cambrian Period. However, new evidence obtained from western Mongolia shows that the agronomic revolution began in the late Ediacaran, the final period of the Precambrian, at least locally.

A team of researchers, primarily based in Japan, surveyed Bayan Gol Valley, western Mongolia, and found late Ediacaran trace fossils in marine carbonate rocks. They identified U-shaped, penetrative trace fossils, called Arenicolites, from 11 beds located more than 130 meters below the lowermost occurrence of Treptichnus pedum, widely recognized as the marker of the Ediacaran–Cambrian boundary. The researchers confirmed the late Ediacaran age of the rocks, estimated to be between 555 and 541 million years old, based on the stable carbon isotope record.

"It is impossible to identify the kind of animal that produced the Arenicolites traces," lead author Tatsuo Oji says. "However, they were certainly bilaterian animals based on the complexity of the traces, and were probably worm-like in nature. These fossils are the earliest evidence for animals making semi-permanent domiciles in sediment. The evolution of macrophagous predation was probably the selective pressure for these trace makers to build such semi-permanent infaunal structures, as they would have provided safety from many predators."

These Arenicolites also reached unusually large sizes, greater than one centimeter in diameter. The discovery of these large-sized, penetrative trace fossils contradicts the conclusions of previous studies that small-sized penetrative traces emerged only in the earliest Cambrian.

"These trace fossils indicate that the agronomic revolution actually began in the latest Ediacaran in at least one setting," co-author Stephen Dornbos explains. "Thus, this revolution did not proceed in a uniform pattern across all depositional environments during the Cambrian radiation, but rather in a patchwork of varying bioturbation levels across marine seafloors that lasted well into the early Paleozoic."



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-03-precambrianfossil-burrows-early-animal-behavior.html#jCp

 

[Guy Threepwood]

This is not a fault relationship no more the science of evolution is responsible for Eugenics The validity of a theory, hypothesis, nor the science of evolution, nor any valid is science is responsible for the misuse of science.

Add another fallacy to your chest of medals. Non Sequitur big time

This resembles the 'original sin' accusation of the Demon Charles Darwin.

Own up to it your a right wing fundamentalist Christian Creationist Theist.

You still have continuously avoided the question 'IF not God what is the Intelligent Source for Intelligent Design.

Still slinging the manure of Non Sequitur. It remains a fact that science is not responsible for the misuse nor misrepresentation.

Own up to it your a right wing fundamentalist Christian Creationist Theist.

You still have continuously avoided the question 'IF not God what is the Intelligent Source for Intelligent Design.

If you have a specific question you would like answered, just ask- without the yelling and insults if at all possible, and I will be happy to answer respectfully in kind

 

[shunyadragon]

If you have a specific question you would like answered, just ask- without the yelling and insults if at all possible, and I will be happy to answer respectfully in kind

Own up to it your a right wing fundamentalist Christian Creationist Theist.

You still have continuously avoided the question 'IF not God what is the Intelligent Source for Intelligent Design.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

No....earlier fossils discovered, such as the Ediacaran, simply don't "fit" to be considered precursors by most biologists.

Cooper & Fortey (1998) write:

"The beginning of the Cambrian period, some 545 million years ago, saw the sudden appearance in the fossil record of almost all the main types of animals (phyla) that still dominate the biota today. To be sure, there are fossils in older strata, but they are either very small (such as bacteria and algae), or their relationships to the living fauna are highly contentious, as is the case with the famous soft-bodied fossils from the late Precambrian Pound Quartzite, Ediacara, South Australia."


-- Alan Cooper and Richard Fortey, “Evolutionary explosions and the phylogenetic fuse,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 13 April, 1998: 151-156.

This is evidence that perfectly exhibits details of and supports a creative event.

Yes, if aliens compared the 'old man of the mountain' with Mount Rushmore, they'd know which showed sudden appearances of sophisticated designs, and which shows a slow steady incremental process, and what the implications are

Obviously the increasingly explosive and sophisticated nature of the Cambrian record (and other events) is problematic for Darwinism- and anyone who disagrees could have argued that with Darwin!

' Punctuated equilibrium' merely acknowledges, finally, what skeptics have said for decades, it does not offer a random-chance-driven solution- those are holding up less and less well in the information age and many scientists of all stripes are giving up on this antiquated notion

 

[ArtieE]

okay- hardware not software- I would agree, and of course the hardware architecture cannot be designed by randomly mutating DNA... neither can the software was my point

randomly mutate variables for text here- no problem, randomly mutate the software which supports this feature, and it crashes entirely

Imagine there's a DNA "program" in a cell called "bread". The cell divides and you have two cells but there's a duplication error in the DNA and the second cell has the same program twice. "bread bread". That cell divides and there's another error two letters change places. Now you have "bread beard". That cell divides and there's another duplication error. Now you have "bread beard bread beard". The cell divides and you have another mutation. You lose two letters in a word. Now you have "bread beard bread bed". The programming writes itself and those mutations that don't code for anything don't matter since you already have a good copy of the same program anyway. The DNA language only has 4 letters and 64 words made up of 3 letters each. Just imagine the number of different cells on Earth dividing and mutating for millions and millions of years, add other gene changing methods like horisontal gene transfer and you end up with all the different genomes.

 

[shunyadragon]

If you have a specific question you would like answered, just ask- without the yelling and insults if at all possible, and I will be happy to answer respectfully in kind

Again, again and again . . .

I have a specific question, which you continuously avoid answering.

You still have continuously avoided the question 'IF not God what is the Intelligent Source for Intelligent Design.

 

[shunyadragon]

Yes, if aliens compared the 'old man of the mountain' with Mount Rushmore, they'd know which showed sudden appearances of sophisticated designs, and which shows a slow steady incremental process, and what the implications are

Obviously the increasingly explosive and sophisticated nature of the Cambrian record (and other events) is problematic for Darwinism- and anyone who disagrees could have argued that with Darwin!

' Punctuated equilibrium' merely acknowledges, finally, what skeptics have said for decades, it does not offer a random-chance-driven solution- those are holding up less and less well in the information age and many scientists of all stripes are giving up on this antiquated notion

I have responded to the phony baloney theist 'argument from ignorance' concerning the problem of the Cambrian Revolution. which is not really a problem, and not as sudden as Fundamentalist Creationists like you assert based on a religious agenda. First, the Cambrian Revolution is not sudden and takes place over a period of hundreds of millions of years. Second, I have cited on good reference that demonstrates that simpler animals related to the Cambrian animals extended well into the Paleozoic. I will cite more.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Again, again and again . . .

I have a specific question, which you continuously avoid answering.

You still have continuously avoided the question 'IF not God what is the Intelligent Source for Intelligent Design.

I've certainly answered this one before a few times, maybe just for people who were asking nicely!

Like most, my money would be on God, hardly a controversial position.. but not the only one

Dawkins considers alien intelligence a possibility (not where his money is obviously), & atheist Hoyle considered a 'super intellect'

If one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design. No other possibility I have been able to think of...

— Fred Hoyle[29]


It is also possible to refute Darwinism without invoking intelligent design though, just as the Big Bang and quantum mechanics did not force people to accept the theistic implications some complained of- the point is similarly, that life depends on a vast amount of preexisting specified information to determine how, when and where it developed- not a handful of immutable laws and random chance. So one can pencil in the multiverse as the 'designer' of this information, if they prefer to avoid intelligent agency for some reason.

But if the only remaining alternative to ID is 'an infinite probability machine'- that would also apply to the creation of a functioning watch. So it is as good a test as any, for an object that probably was intelligently designed

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I have responded to the phony baloney theist 'argument from ignorance' concerning the problem of the Cambrian Revolution. which is not really a problem, and not as sudden as Fundamentalist Creationists like you assert based on a religious agenda. First, the Cambrian Revolution is not sudden and takes place over a period of hundreds of millions of years. Second, I have cited on good reference that demonstrates that simpler animals related to the Cambrian animals extended well into the Paleozoic. I will cite more.

as a reminder, any comments including ad hominem attacks are ignored, just to save you wasting your own time- I am always happy to answer any substantive questions