KevinK
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[__ Science __ ] Evolution and Harmless Mutations
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Barbarian
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Kekule did:
In 1890, at the 25th anniversary of the benzene structure discovery, Friedrich August Kekulé, a German chemist, reminisced about his major accomplishments and told of two dreams that he had at key moments of his work. In his first dream, in 1865, he saw atoms dance around and link to one another. He awakened and immediately began to sketch what he saw in his dream.
Later, Kekulé had another dream, in which he saw atoms dance around, then form themselves into strings, moving about in a snake-like fashion. This vision continued until the snake of atoms formed itself into an image of a snake eating its own tail. This dream gave Kekulé the idea of the cyclic structure of benzene1.
KevinK
Member
I know. Hence my lame attempt at a joke.
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But I believe we could say that they're more intelligent than the average person. If even he, and others like him, are having a problem with evolution...why do the science-minded, or indeed scientists tell me I'm a naiive creationist?
I DO believe some science is desperate to prove that God does not exist so they could be proven right in their atheism.
Thanks for the above Barb.
It's pretty much what I believe to be the case....
That some scientists are having problems with it...
And it's nice to note Darwin believed in a creator,,,most scientists did back then.
Barbarian
Member
Being smart isn't useful, if you don't know what you're talking about. In a lot of ways, PhDs are more prone to assume they know everything than the average person.
Perhaps you didn't show them how competent you are in biology.
Can't be. Science, by its very methodology, can't support or deny the existence of God.
Last time I checked, most scientists believed in some form of God.
Barbarian
Member
I kinda suspected. It was an odd comment, if you intended anything else.
That's interesting.
Darwin spawned many atheists it seems, and he was not one?
I didn't know this. Even Einstein said there must be a creator.
Some scientists say that Christians are afraid of evolution because to them it would prove the non-existence of God.
I just feel that before I, personally, can accept a "theory" it must be solidly proven. I'm just waiting for some declaration to be made that ALL science agrees to.
IOW, if you're two posts to me are correct, I don't understand why not all science has accepted evolution.
But you don't have to convince me...I'm just spinning on the merry-go-round, as John Lennon said.
Hope all is well with you.
LOL
You're funny.
Scientists on these sites list themselves as atheist.
One calls himself a Deist.
And one calls himself Other Religion.
But I'll take your word for it since that's the circle you travel in.
Barbarian
Member
I can't think of an atheist Darwin produced. When he wrote On the Origin of Species, he was an orthodox Anglican. So much so, that the officers of the Beagle had joked about it.
Late in life, Darwin said he was inclining to agnosticism. The death of a beloved child devastated him.
Einstein's vision of "der Alt" was deistic. He believed in Spinoza's God.
It might be incompatible with some modern conceptions of God. But nothing in evolution denies orthodox Christianity.
No scientific theory is ever proven. Science is mostly inductive,and therefore, can only accumulate evidence. Proof is possible when you know all the rules and deduct the particulars. Science observes the particulars and infers the rules.
Not likely. There is no decider in science. When a theory has predictions that have been repeatedly verified, it's accepted by consensus as true. But only provisionally, depending on future discoveries.
I took a look at that some time ago. Based on the data from the Discovery Institute's "scientists who doubt Darwin" and Operation Steve, it turns out that about 0.3% of scientists with doctorates in biology or a related field, don't accept current evolutionary theory.
I doubt if any established theory would do much better than that.
Now retired and free to pursue my own projects. So is Mrs. Barbarian. We took a road trip across the South last summer. We intend to do that for New England this summer, to reconnect with Mrs. B's childhood places.
My phototography is doing well and Mrs. B. turns out to be a talented photographer herself. She often shames me with her images.
Built a shed, or rather had to pay someone to build it.; Mrs. B. doesn't like me climbing any more. Thinks I'm an old man.
But afterwards, when she wasn't paying attention, I built a loft in it for her storage boxes.
Barbarian
Member
Both. For example, "inheritance is in the blood" was a failed hypothesis. "how do variations survive in a population?" was an unresolved question.
No. That's not a hypothesis of evolutionary theory. In fact, speciation may be purely random. Survival of that species will not be random, however.
Mutations appear randomly. We discussed whether or not it would be possible for some organisms to evolve a mechanism for increasing mutations when conditions are hard (and therefore mutations are more likely to be useful). Some prokaryotes can do this.
Is it possible that circumstances could result in a higher frequency of useful mutations, or specific mutations arise in response to need? That remains to be determined.
Not a hypothesis of evolutionary theory, which only assumes DNA organisms, and describes how they vary over time. That's part of abiogenesis, a different theory.
It's not always the same. Such a basic feature of life, would be highly conserved, as cell membranes or cytochrome C, but it does vary a little.
Not if common descent is a fact. If it wasn't, we would indeed expect to see significant differences in DNA, and we see only very slight ones.
There are two schools of thought in abiogenesis.
1. There's really only one effective way of coding heredity.
2. There were likely a number of different kinds of replicating molecules, early on, and DNA happened to eclipse all the others, which disappeared before living things appeared.
That was done a long time ago. One of the predictions, was genetically all living things should form a family tree similar to the one produced by Linnaeus, based on phenotypes.
Turns out that they do.
Common descent is not even a prediction of Darwin's theory. It's a prediction of the Modern Synthesis, after genetics was rediscovered. And yes, DNA analyses have confirmed it. Darwin wrote at the end of his book that life was created by God, with one or several kinds of life giving rise to modern living things. He didn't know which of those was true. Molecular biology says common descent.
No. Often evolution results in less complexity. Humans, for example have simpler lower jaws, shoulder girdles, and ribs than reptiles. Complexity often increases, but it can also decrease in evolution.
No. Each useful mutation tends to increase and harmful ones tend die out. But time and chance happen to them all.
Nope. As you just learned, sometimes things get simpler. And for highly conserved things, it might not change very much at all.
It's not quite. For example, cnidarians (which includes sea anemones) have linear mitochondrial DNA. But close. As you'd expect from highly conserved and primitive functions. It would be extremely difficult to evolve significant differences in such basic function.
They aren't. They lack an iris, ability to resolve an image, focusing mechanism, etc.
Chimps are as evolved as we are from our common ancestor. They just evolved in a different direction. But their development shows how hominin evolution proceeded, a point first noted by D'Arcy Thompson over a hundred years ago:
Turns out, our development can be shown in terms of coordinate changes. Humans are neotonous; retaining many juvenile traits into adulthood. That includes larger skulls, smaller faces, and a much longer period of brain growth and learning.
No. If there is no harm to a mutation, it can persist for a very long time. As you learned, such mutations tend to either disappear or become fixed over millions of years. The GULO gene in primates used to be useful for producing vitamin C. Since primates were fruit-eating organisms, it wasn't necessary, and at some point, a mutation occurred, that broke it. Over a long time, it became fixed in the population, replacing the functional version. It's still there.
Nope. See above.
Given many millions of codons in DNA, I don't see how it could be otherwise. Even in funtional DNA, that happens. For example, long stretches of code for cytochrome C are identical in all living organisms.
For reasons you learned earlier.
Yes, much non-coding DNA is, like the GULO gene, non-functional but conserved. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find identical stretches, given the vast amount of non-coding DNA.
When more than half of vertebrate DNA is the same as that of a banana, you expect that to be true.