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The Origin of Specious Nonsense. Twelve years on. Still going. Answer soon.
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I think that he is wrong on this ... because functionality is observed to be related to a specific sequence that is neither produced deterministically nor randomly.
To illustrate, a word in the English Language is neither a repeat of letters (HHHHHHHHHH) nor a pattern of letters (THTHTHTHTH) it is specific sequence of letters (HAT AND CAT)
... and there are similar specific sequences of base pair 'letters' within the language of DNA.
It's nice to see that you think a creationist can be wrong about something but in this instance he isn't. You see as many problems as there are in Dembski's CSI notion between maths, logic and the applicability of information theory to biology, the idea of algorithmic specified complexity just isn't one of them. Dembski's finalised concept is this:
-log2[2^500 x ɸs(T) x P(T|H)]
where ɸs(T) = 2^[K(T|H)]
However, Dembski's idea is unnecessarily convoluted and can be restated much more simply as:
C(T|H) - K(T|H) - 500
where C(T|H) is the physical complexity of the sequence given background hypothesis H, K is the algorithmic specified complexity given background hypothesis H and 500 is the UPB expressed in bits.
As you can see, although Dembski's filter takes into account sequences which match his particular specification by using an appropriate (from his perspective) background hypothesis, the quantification of specified complexity still relies on the efficiency of description of the sequence K(T). Without K(T) you wouldn't have any way to exclude chance or regularity from the search space.OK ... so are you agreeing with me on this, then?
No, as I demonstrated in my last post and again above, efficiency of description is a necessary step in Dembski's idea. The fact that you reiterated the point twice doesn't make it any less wrong the second time.... but we are talking about Human Beings ... and were effectively stuck back somewhere around short-chain biochemicals, using random processes, before we reach the UPB.
OK, two points here.
Firstly, like I said you are either accidentally or deliberately conflating two distinct and mutually exclusive creationist arguments, one dealing with the supposed probability of proteins being assembled by chance on primordial Earth and the second dealing with the current supposedly "tightly specified information" that is present in the human genome and how mutation destroys this. In the context of the point you were replying to we were talking about the first argument, not the second.
Secondly, with specific regard to the point you were replying to, you were saying that taking the number of actors as 10^6 and attempts as 10^7 does nothing to dent the vast improbability of tossing 1000 heads in the coin toss example. I then pointed out that although the numbers are small in the coin toss example, in real examples the numbers get very big very fast. I then demonstrated that the number of possible actors and attempts make the naturalistic abiogenesis argument only slightly, not highly, improbable. And this is if we accept the two creationist restrictions i.e. that the proteins form by chance and that they are of length similar to modern proteins. When we look at a more plausible scenario the creationist chance argument crumbles completely.
However, when I demonstrated this explicitly, your only response is "but we are talking about human beings". Please try to be less wrong JC, it's very time consuming going back over these mistakes of yours.... and the 'set of instructions' were your words, that I borrowed to make my point that deterministic or random natural/spontaneous processes are incapable of producing these instructions ... and the only known sytem for doing so is intelligent action - so the best available explantion for how these tightly specified instructions came about originally, was through the appliance of intelligence.
No, again as I pointed out in post 2672, RNA which is the set of instructions used by a cell to assemble proteins can be formed from simple chemicals by purely naturalistic chemical processes. Each step of this process including the base assumptions has been backed up by hard evidence including research papers. At the same time you haven't meaningfully engaged with any of the evidence, instead choosing to label the whole process as "highly speculative" without anything to support your baseless assertions.Yes RNA could be produced artificially, using very significant inputs of intelligent design ... but it would be very difficult if nit impossible to produce spontaneously ... and the instructions carried on it can only be produced by intelligence.
Except we're not talking about artificial RNA, we're talking about a scientifically sound mechanism for a naturalistic process by which we can go from a plausible abiotic Earth to self-replicating RNA sequences.
Look it's been said before on this thread, sometimes in jest, sometimes not but I would honestly and earnestly recommend that you buy one or all of these books and at least get a handle on the topic under discussion.
Physical Chemistry
Physical chemistry - A Very Short Introduction
Atkins' Physical Chemistry
Biochemistry/Molecular Biology
Lehninger Principles of Biochemistry
Molecular Biology - A Very Short Introduction
I've tried to include a pop-sci book along with an early (i.e 1st/2nd year) university textbook for each of the two main categories.... all still very specualtive ... but they aren't them main issue ... even granting, for the sake of argument that they could be produce ... there is no theory, no matter how speculative, on how the vast quantities of high quality tightly specified information was infused onto the DNA and, in turn, RNA molecules ... and the information in the Human Genome, if printed out on standard sheets of paper would result in a stack of paper with a height greater than the Statue of Liberty
http://bio4.us/biotrends/human_genome_height.html
Comparisons with the Windows 10 programme on a CD, pale into comparison with the Human Genome.
I've highlighted a section of your argument in bold above because is exemplifies everything which is dishonest, idiotic and downright wrong about creationist arguments. Everything about the statement is wrong and each component of it is as wrong as the overall idea.
Firstly, and going in reverse order, it has been explained on thread before that the amount of information is actually meaningless since it is in no way related to the specificity or complexity of the information or the organism. The human genome, for example, has 3x10^9 base pairs. Your woefully out-of-date link makes the human genome seem ridiculously large but then that was 2005 when a 3gb file would have seemed massive given people were still using zip disks and the first perpendicular magnetic recording HD was only just introduced. However, in today's reality 3gb is relatively insignificant given that streaming 4K content from Netflix uses 7gb/hour and an increasing amount of current gen AAA games are around 80gb. Also, by comparison with the human genome, a whisk fern has around 2.5x10^11 base pairs or around 80 times more information in its genome. The amount of information in a genome isn't an argument for anything.
Oh, and another thing, the windows 10 analogy fails completely. It doesn't pale into comparison with the human genome. A text document listing all the base pairs in the human genome is 3.16gb (3.15576 if you want to be precise). Windows 10 isn't sold on a CD because it's also 3gb in size:
"An internet connection is required to perform the upgrade. Windows 10 is a large file -- about 3 GB -- and Internet access (ISP) fees might apply."
Even then we're only talking about the installer size. The install size of Windows 10 is about 16gb (12, if like me, you trim it down manually). Of course, even a direct comparison fails because the Windows 10 download is a compressed file compared with an uncompressed text document. You could probably get the data size of the human genome down to 300MB or so if you finesse the compression.
Secondly, your point that "the vast quantities of high quality tightly specified information was infused onto the DNA and, in turn, RNA molecules" is doubly wrong. First, it gets the science backwards in that it was, in all likelihood an RNA first world. The process detailed in my post (2672) details a mechanism for starting with an abiotic chemical soup and ending with self-replicating RNA molecules. DNA is a later development. The idea of RNA first has gained widespread support because of the increasing amounts of research evidence to support it. Like these:
The "strong" RNA world hypothesis: fifty years old
The origin of the RNA world: co-evolution of genes and metabolism
The RNA World and the Origins of Life
Second, your making this really awful ontological argument by assuming information as some kind of separate entity which was grafted onto the chemical structure of DNA and RNA. It isn't. The "information" in RNA and DNA is it's chemical structure.
Finally, with regard to your idea that no theory exists even a speculative one, you're wrong. Firstly, a hypothesis does exist, I've outlined it for you already. There are also many other less successful but well thought-out abiogenesis hypotheses, like panspermia, for example. Secondly, we are not really talking about how the information arises at all, we are talking about how the small amounts of information on something like a primordial Earth can become the large amounts of information we see today. There are two ways to look at this idea.
Firstly, let's look at language. Language is a great analog for understanding biological concepts. The "information" you keep banging on about is written in a language using letters, just like English, albeit with only 4 letters instead of 26. These letters are arranged in the genome in hierarchical groups. The human genome is a book, arranged in 23 chapters (chromosomal pairs). Each chapter contains numerous paragraphs, some of which tell a story (exons) and some of which are just ads (introns). These paragraphs are made up of sentences (genes) which are made up of words (codons). Now, in the days leading up to the publication of the first dictionary the OED estimates that there were 21,800 words in the English language between 1500 and 1575. Today there are over 600,000 words in the English language. However, there is nothing different today about the basic alphabet that we use. It's just that we have arranged new groupings in the language that weren't there before. The different sources of new words show us how information develops in biological systems too.
Firstly, there are portmanteau words like mansplaining where two words are spliced together. Similarly in evolution, human chromosome 2 was formed by the fusion of two ancestral primate chromosomes. Secondly, there are new words which have arisen through old defunct words taking on new meanings like clue. In the middle ages a clue was used to refer to a ball of twine. Similarly, in biology new uses can be found for previously defunct genes like the development of nylonase. Then you have loanwords, words borrowed intact from another language like confit or schadenfreude. Similarly in biology we have sequences like ERVs (endogenuous retroviruses) which originate from ancient viruses. In the same way that the English language has swollen over the last 500 years, the information in the human genome has, through naturalistic processes like mutation coupled with natural selection has done the same but on a much larger timeframe.
There is, as I said, another way to look at this too. Imagine you have a group of people (let's say 10) stranded on a desert island. One day these people come across an abandoned ship which is grounded but functional. None of these people have any particular speciality but basic skills like reading, writing, maths etc. This group decide to use the ship to get home. Now, let's suppose that this is a particularly slow ship or a particularly large planet and it takes them 20 years to get home. The ship is so big that one person can't do all the jobs by themselves. You need one person to steer and navigate, one person to work the engine, one person to look after the sick, one to cook etc. etc. So we started off with 10 people all with the same basic skills, but by the end of the voyage these people will be completely different. Each will have had to be responsible for a single speciality for 20 years, dealing with the nuances of, say, engine maintenance for 20 years. So by the end, none of them could swap jobs with another. They've simply accumulated too much specialist knowledge to begin again. This is what happened with life on Earth. We started with simple unicellular organisms with the ability to self-replicate. With time and the ability to respond to changes in the environment, this accumulated learning is what we now have as the biodiversity on Earth.It isn't at all ridiculous ... all specified functional information degrades as random changes are made to and random changes are never observed to improve it ... because the useless combinatorial space is almost infinitely greater than the useful combinatorial space.
... and that is why mutagenesis will rapidly kill you by degrading even a tiny number of critical DNA sequences.
You shouldn't try to linguistically weasel your way out of an argument. The point here is not about the information but the consequences of altering the information for the prospects of the organism. You're trying to escape the implication of beneficial mutations by talking about degradation to the information. For example, you mention that random changes are never observed to improve specified functional information. How would such an improvement manifest itself? Let's take an easy example. Here is the aa sequence for Trp-Cage one of the smallest observed proteins in biology (found in the saliva of Gila monsters)
N L Y I Q W L K D G G P S S G R P P P S
What would an improved sequence look like? Obviously, if your idea is correct, an improvement even if it's only hypothetical would have to be possible, otherwise your just making a fallacious unfalsifiable assertion. So how would you improve this sequence, or even another sequence of your choosing.
Getting back to the main point, it isn't about preserving the sanctity of the information. The creationist argument is that the information itself is so "highly specified" that random changes only ever lead to deleterious consequences. As I pointed out in my last post, this is doubly wrong since most mutations have no effect at all and of those that do, some are beneficial to the organism, destroying the idea that the information was perfect to begin with.... and yet mutagenesis, which alters the genetic sequence ... and therefore the aa sequence causes disease and and death.
Yes, there is a degree of 'plasticity' built into the sequences that produce proteins ... to cope with environmental assaults ... but these are limited ... and when mutagenesis occurs the results can be devastating.
... 9 out of 10 deleterious and 1 out of 10 beneficial ... some estimates are thousands to one beneficial ... but if, for the sake of argument, I accept this 10 to 1 figure ... it implies that you would have 'run away' deleterious effects the further along the mutagenic curve you go ... which would certainly kill you ... and the one in 10 'beneficial' mutations wouldn't save you.
OK, so now I need to explain natural selection again. Woohoo!:rolleyes:
OK, firstly we're talking about a 9 to 1 (not 10 to 1) ratio of functional mutations which are a subset which makes up less than 2% of all mutations. So this runaway idea is stretching the truth a tad. Anyway, there's a major obstacle to your runaway model, namely natural selection.
You see, deleterious mutations don't really hang around in the long term because they get weeded out of the population. For anyone interested here's a brief synopsis.
Let's say you have a population of 100 animals all the same. Let's start with some basic conditions. Each animal has a lifespan of 50 years and a fertile lifespan (i.e. time between maturity and menopause) of 20 years. Each breeding pair has a litter of 2 once per year. So one breeding pair will leave behind 40 offspring (environmental effects not withstanding) by the time they die. Now let's suppose that one of these animals undergoes a mutation which increases their muscle density (like the bone density mutation in humans I noted previously). The consequence of this mutation is that the animal can hunt faster and for longer than others in the population. Because of this the animal is better fed, taking in more nutrients than the others. Consequently, it lives 10 more years and is fertile for 10 more years than the others. This means that it leaves behind 20 more offspring than any other breeding pair. 10 of these offspring (based on the odds) will also have this mutant gene and will leave more offspring. Soon, the number of animals with the gene outpaces the number without as those with the gene leave more descendants.
Conversely, a mutation which decreases bone density has the opposite effect. Even without having to consider disease or ill-health, a negative mutation will be weeded out of the population. The negative mutation makes the animal leave behind less descendants and is more likely to be the victim of a predator thus increasing the chances that it leaves no descendants.
The only time we see deleterious mutations accumulate is where inbreeding occurs over repeated generations, where the deleterious mutations have no escape route and there is no influx of new DNA. In reality, we don't see runaway deleterious mutations either in theory or in practice because of NS.What we see with mutagenesis, is rapid degeneration and death ... and this would be even more rapid, were it not for the furious work of auto-repair mechanisms within living cells ... that are themselves tightly specified ...and therefore placed there originally by intelligence.
And we're back where we started. Again. Firstly, let's talk about DNA repair. There are many types of DNA repair such as base excision repair, nucleotide excision repair, microhomology-mediated end joining, homologous recombination, translesion synthesis etc. etc. However, these processes are mostly aimed at correcting point mutations. Like I've already said, point mutations aren't the only mode of mutation so things like gene duplication obviate your point.
Also, like I said, mutagenesis doesn't lead to degeneration, rapid or otherwise or death. Let's repeat slowly: MOST MUTATIONS ARE NEUTRAL AND THERE ARE BENEFICIAL ONES TOO.
... yes the Red Queen is a children's fable ... just like evolution allright.:)
... in the case of Sicle Cell Anaemia ... something that would kill you in it's homzygous manifestation makes you sick in its hetrozygous manifestation and protects you from Malaria ... which sounds like the 'cure' is only marginally better than the disease.:eek:
It certainly doesn't go anywhere in explaining how almost perfect Human Beings came to be Human Beings.[/QUOTE]
One minor point to begin with. The heterozygous manifestation of the sickle-cell trait doesn't make you sick. There have been rare complications but you could count those cases on one hand. Most of the time people with sickle cell trait don't even know they have it because having only one copy of the gene means that their body produces both normal and mutated cells.
The Red Queen effect doesn't explain how almost perfect Human beings came to be human beings. You're right there. But then it wasn't meant to and that wasn't my point. My point was that all mutations, beneficial or deleterious end up being watered down over time. The Red Queen effect states that organisms must constantly evolve in order to gain an advantage over their competition.
While the Red Queen effect doesn't explain the origin of H.sapiens, we can, of course explain said origin without recourse to God did it. But where would you like to begin? Your starting point is this idea of almost perfect Human beings. Is it Homo ergaster or maybe Homo heidelbergensis or maybe Australopithecus afarensis. Here, I'll make it easy for you.
Here is the cladogram for the Homo genus (roughly speaking). You pick a point on it and I will explain the evolutionary changes from there to H.sapiens. Sound good?
Now as for your other points:... the psychopaths on the power trip were Adam and Satan ... both creatures lovingly created by God ... who became so egomaniacal, that they began to think they were God !!!
Since then, God has been offering man His love and mercy ... and in many cases, having His offer thrown back in His face.
I'm sure that He feels something like the 'nice guy' who has his love rejected by a woman he loves ... only to see her go off with the local 'bad boy' ... who will inevitably live up to his 'bad boy' reputation with her as well. The dynamic is something similar ... Satan is exciting and dangerous ... and God is safe and reliable.
... but God has the consolation to also be loved back by many more people than reject Him.
See, there we were having a nice, albeit meandering conversation about science and real physical evidence and then you have to start bringing fictional literary characters into the mix. Can we please leave Satan where he belongs, in the realm of myth? Besides which Satan doesn't start out in the bible story as evil, he just gets recast as the villain because Christianity needed an archetypal trickster God, so they borrowed the nascent Satan character that had been developed during the Second Temple period.
Oh, and while we're on the subject, how come Adam gets the blame? What about Genesis 3:13. Surely it's Eve's fault for listening to a talking snake in the first place.God designed Humans to be perfect and immortal (and therefore never to get cancer).
Death and Cancer entered the world at the Fall ... because immortal men and women, now with access to evil, would have made life on Earth a Hell for each other ... and if you doubt me, just think what it would be like to life on an Earth poulated by milliuons of immortal Stalin and Hitler-like people ... who could never be controlled by injuringor killing them.
We're all paying the price for Adam's Fall ... but, quite frankly, this isn't much consolation ...
However, the fact that we can look forward to immortality in Heaven, after our brief sojurn here on Earth, may provide some consolation for some, but obviously not all, people.
I know you creationist types are wedded to this "no death before the fall" but seriously? So Adam and Eve didn't eat anything before the fall. No plants, Adam didn't even get to have a nice steak before Eve ****ed everything up.
On a serious note though, do you really think that God would ever have really designed humans to be immortal? OK, let's explore that idea. If humans were immortal before the fall and God intended them to marry and have children (i.e. Genesis 2:24) then you would originally have had an exponentially increasing immortal population. Therefore you would have needed immortal resources to sustain said population. So you would need magically self-repleneshing plants and animals who are also immortal. So, if death then entered through the fall, then it also entered for plants and animals and such. After all if mutation is the genetic consequence of the fall in humans (i.e. a corruption of a once perfect template) then plants and animals, who also experience mutations and death, were also punished by God for the actions of one individual of one species. So plant species who couldn't choose to disobey God even if they wanted to are punished because a woman listened to a talking snake?
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Out of curiosity..do you think that cladogram is complete?? rather it would look something like this imo
Well, it's complete for the moment. We may yet discover fossil evidence which may add a member to the clade or merge two existing members, swap places of two or more existing members or change the relationship between any number of members. For example, it was thought for a long time that Homo Neanderthalensis was a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens but now we know the relationship is more like a cousin than a direct ancestor. Also, no it doesn't/shouldn't/wouldn't look like the image you posted. The cladogram I included is more of an older style of diagram not used very often now but it was fairly high up on my Google image search so it was good enough at short notice. However, most cladograms are now are constructed like this:
Cladistics or systematic phylogenetics has no relationship at any level to Arthur Young's idea of "the theory of process". Cladistics is real demonstrable science as opposed to the rantings of a brilliant yet totally delusional man.I think there's far more to be said from this..Arthur young is overlooked and underappreciated
Well, no. It's a nice diagram but all the information contained in it is wrong where it's not totally out of date. Young classifies everything into a sevenfold system and yet the information we now have shows that a seven tier system is totally inadequate for Young's categories. For example, protozoa is filed under animal. This used to be true. Protozoa was, for a long time classed under animalia owing to it's motility and observed predatory behaviour. However, with the introduction of genetics and morphology protozoa was reclassified and now belongs as its own kingdom separate to animalia within the domain Eukaryota. Then there's the fact that the groups reading across the animal category are totally arbitrary. You have one kingdom outside animalia (protozoa), one superphylum (coelentera) four phyla (annelida, porifera, arthropoda and chordata) and one subphylum (mollusca). The animal level is distinguished from the vegetable level on the basis of symmetry with animals being ascribed the property of bilateral symmetry and vegetables radial symmetry. However, there is an entire class of animals which are not bilaterally symmetrical, the clade Radiata which includes two extant and one extinct phylum. This clade includes things like jellyfish, for example. Then you have bacteria categorised as a subgroup within vegetable when in reality bacteria is a separate domain, one of three primary divisions of life along with archaea and eukaryota. Then there's the fact that bacteria are placed in the vegetable column along with organisms which only have one degree of freedom in that they can grow but not move or make choices. Except that bacteria are motile and can move forward at speeds of up to 200 microns/second (that's fast if you're a bacterium). Then there's the idea that each of the seven steps in any given level represent some kind of stage of progress. But they don't. Protozoa isn't a first stage in becoming a sponge anymore than a spider is an intermediate stage in becoming a horse.
The amount of stupid in that diagram is hard to explain in a single post. It's what Alexander Pope referred to when he said "a little learning is a dangerous thing".0 -
Well, it's complete for the moment. We may yet discover fossil evidence which may add a member to the clade or merge two existing members, swap places of two or more existing members or change the relationship between any number of members. For example, it was thought for a long time that Homo Neanderthalensis was a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens but now we know the relationship is more like a cousin than a direct ancestor. Also, no it doesn't/shouldn't/wouldn't look like the image you posted. The cladogram I included is more of an older style of diagram not used very often now but it was fairly high up on my Google image search so it was good enough at short notice. However, most cladograms are now are constructed like this:
Cladistics or systematic phylogenetics has no relationship at any level to Arthur Young's idea of "the theory of process". Cladistics is real demonstrable science as opposed to the rantings of a brilliant yet totally delusional man.
Well, no. It's a nice diagram but all the information contained in it is wrong where it's not totally out of date. Young classifies everything into a sevenfold system and yet the information we now have shows that a seven tier system is totally inadequate for Young's categories. For example, protozoa is filed under animal. This used to be true. Protozoa was, for a long time classed under animalia owing to it's motility and observed predatory behaviour. However, with the introduction of genetics and morphology protozoa was reclassified and now belongs as its own kingdom separate to animalia within the domain Eukaryota. Then there's the fact that the groups reading across the animal category are totally arbitrary. You have one kingdom outside animalia (protozoa), one superphylum (coelentera) four phyla (annelida, porifera, arthropoda and chordata) and one subphylum (mollusca). The animal level is distinguished from the vegetable level on the basis of symmetry with animals being ascribed the property of bilateral symmetry and vegetables radial symmetry. However, there is an entire class of animals which are not bilaterally symmetrical, the clade Radiata which includes two extant and one extinct phylum. This clade includes things like jellyfish, for example. Then you have bacteria categorised as a subgroup within vegetable when in reality bacteria is a separate domain, one of three primary divisions of life along with archaea and eukaryota. Then there's the fact that bacteria are placed in the vegetable column along with organisms which only have one degree of freedom in that they can grow but not move or make choices. Except that bacteria are motile and can move forward at speeds of up to 200 microns/second (that's fast if you're a bacterium). Then there's the idea that each of the seven steps in any given level represent some kind of stage of progress. But they don't. Protozoa isn't a first stage in becoming a sponge anymore than a spider is an intermediate stage in becoming a horse.
The amount of stupid in that diagram is hard to explain in a single post. It's what Alexander Pope referred to when he said "a little learning is a dangerous thing".
Oh yes indeed...I must apologise I did not explain the context in which I posted that...actually it was based on the "fall" that you spoke of
In that sense, I was referring to the whole... Not the details.. If you want to look for information about the "fall" of man...I'd be more inclined to picture that second diagram as a ladder going from light right down to being man..
Tell me, Are you of the opinion that there is plant DNA in humans??0 -
Oh yes indeed...I must apologise I did not explain the context in which I posted that...actually it was based on the "fall" that you spoke of
In that sense, I was referring to the whole... Not the details.. If you want to look for information about the "fall" of man...I'd be more inclined to picture that second diagram as a ladder going from light right down to being man..
Tell me, Are you of the opinion that there is plant DNA in humans??
Well, that would depend on what you mean by plant DNA. All plant species are members of the kingdom plantae which is a separate kingdom to animalia where we are. However, both kingdoms are part of the domain eukaryota in that our cells are nucleic (as opposed to prokaryotes like Bacteria and Archaea). The exact relationship looks like this:
There is a degree of shared heritage between plants and animals, so yes there are some shared DNA sequences between plants and animals. But since these are shared sequences it would not be correct to say that it is plant DNA in humans anymore than you could say that there's human DNA in plants. The shared DNA between plants and animals would mostly consist of DNA related to cell structure and development to DNA replication and repair, things that we would have shared before the two taxa diverged.
I hope this explains things but you're touching on a subject which straddles genetics, systematic phylogenetics and about 1.5 billion years of evolution. If you'd like me to clarify anything or explain something in more detail let me know.0 -
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"The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”(10) thanks from:
Delirium, Mark Hamill, MrPudding, oscarBravo, PopePalpatine, robindch, Samaris, spacecoyote, Timberrrrrrrr, timbyr
... and BTW that was from Shakespeare (Hamlet) ... just in case somebody starts accusing me of plagarising The Bard. :eek:0 -
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I haven't been drinking ... why, have you been 'hitting the bottle' yourself?It could also, and much more likely, indicate that your fellow forum posters respect the effort which somebody puts in to refuting the nonsense you write.
BTW, have you been drinking?
You're starting to sound like a policeman gearing up to administer a sobriety test !!!:)0 -
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oscarBravo wrote: »I don't know how Dawkins could make it any clearer in The Selfish Gene that he's using artistic licence in anthropomorphising genes. I'd go so far as to say he labours the point.
According to biologist Denis Noble poor old Dawkins doesn't know what a metaphor is, as Nobles mentions here at 8:40
The video outlines why Neo-Darwinism/The Selfish Gene as the primary explanation of evolution is specious nonsense. Denis Noble's main conclusions are the following:
"The ‘Modern Synthesis’ (Neo-Darwinism) is a mid-20th century gene-centric view of evolution, based on random mutations accumulating to produce gradual change through natural selection. Any role of physiological function in influencing genetic inheritance was excluded. The organism became a mere carrier of the real objects of selection, its genes. We now know that genetic change is far from random and often not gradual. Molecular genetics and genome sequencing have deconstructed this unnecessarily restrictive view of evolution in a way that reintroduces physiological function and interactions with the environment as factors influencing the speed and nature of inherited change. Acquired characteristics can be inherited, and in a few but growing number of cases that inheritance has now been shown to be robust for many generations. The 21st century can look forward to a new synthesis that will reintegrate physiology with evolutionary biology."0 -
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AYIcTVizM4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMVfafAYTMg
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