Conference on Evolution

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First chimp fossil unearthed

“This means we need a better explanation of why and how chimps and humans went their separate evolutionary ways, McBrearty says. The discovery that chimps were living in semi-arid conditions as well as in the jungle seems to blow apart the simplistic idea that it was the shift to savannah that led to humans walking upright.”
 
mpartyka said:
Macroevolution. Basically, I believe that the genetic evidence that is available to us today is sufficient to prove that human beings and chimpanzees are descended from a common ancestor species.

In other words, there used to be no humans or chimpanzees, only this ancestor species, but about five million years ago, two portions of this original ancestor species got separated from each other and also from the rest of their kind. One of these separate portions eventually developed into humans, and the other separate portion eventually developed into chimpanzees. The rest of that original ancestor species died out completely, leaving humans and chimpanzees as the only surviving descendants.

–Mike
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A common ancestor species? Wonder where the sense of honesty came from?
 
ricmat said:
I believe in evolution. I believe that the earth is 14 billion years old (give or take a few). I believe that more primitive life forms lived in the distant past, and the more advanced lifeforms live today. I believe that a rearrangement of DNA is required for lower forms of life to become higher forms of life.

I am actually not proposing that there is a barrier prevent more primitive lifeforms from changing into more advanced lifeforms.

Where I differ from StA, and some others is that I don’t believe that totally RANDOM mutations can accomplish the task from lower forms of life to more advanced forms in only 4 billion years. I can accept that it can be done by an intelligent agent (whom I think is God) intervening at key points and times.

If you called me on the phone from Hawaii, and then 30 seconds later, you were at my front door, a theory that “You walked here” is not viable. You could counter argue that “Ricmat saw pictures of Mike actually walking in Hawaii, so it is theoretically possible that Mike walked to Southern California in 30 seconds.” But it doesn’t work because of the timeline. In my mind, that’s where “random” evolution sits right now. The time line doesn’t work. Also, the fact that DNA has built in features to prevent mutations…and, a few other minor points.

Your comment about “Somehow I got from Hawaii to Alaska (or So Cal)” is what I’ve been complaining to the random evolution folks all along. Their explanation is that evolution “did it somehow”. It requires DNA evidence really to prove it. But there is none.

I don’t claim to have all the answers. But their answers are not answers either.
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If the earth is 14 billion years old, at which point in time in all those years did Adam & Eve live?
 
Namesake said:
You don’t have to believe in evolution. It’s a fact that should be accepted because of the evidence.
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I accept most of it despite the lack of evidence. Which means that at least I have an open mind for other possibilities.
 
ricmat said:
I accept most of it despite the lack of evidence. Which means that at least I have an open mind for other possibilities.
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Scientists accept it because of the huge amount of evidence. Do you refute the evidence?
 
Namesake said:
This is essentially gibberish. No where can I find materials and methods. Materials and methods are an essential part of scientific publication. So, if you cannot produce materials and methods it means nothing at all. That’s just how science has to be done.
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I don’t think it’s gibberish. First of all this is a paper published in very respectable peer reviewed journal whose authors are also well known molecular geneticists (from Stanford and Oxford University). But secondly, and more to the point, if you’d read the paper you would have discovered that you can find the materials and methods in a companion paper:
Shen et al, Population genetic implications from sequence variation in four Y-chromosome genes, *PNAS *97, 7354 - 7359 (2000).

So it’s not gibberish, but I am not sure what point buffalo was trying to make.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
hecd2 said:
And your point is?
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I am not buffalo, but I suspect that he has read the abstract and saw “Here we show that although dual coding is nearly impossible by chance, a number of human transcripts contain overlapping coding regions.”

If dual coding exists and dual coding is “nearly impossible by chance” then I suspect that he is seeing this as evidence for design instead of chance.

The faulty assumption is that evolution as a whole is a chance process. It is not; natural selection ensures that the results of evolution are not chance. Dembski allows chance, regularity and design as part of his explanatory filter; both chance and regularity have to be eliminated before design can be inferred. Evolution works on a combination of chance and regularity. You cannot correctly infer “not chance, therefore design” because that argument does not take account of regularity.

rossum
 
rossum said:
I am not buffalo, but I suspect that he has read the abstract and saw “Here we show that although dual coding is nearly impossible by chance, a number of human transcripts contain overlapping coding regions.”

If dual coding exists and dual coding is “nearly impossible by chance” then I suspect that he is seeing this as evidence for design instead of chance.

The faulty assumption is that evolution as a whole is a chance process. It is not; natural selection ensures that the results of evolution are not chance. Dembski allows chance, regularity and design as part of his explanatory filter; both chance and regularity have to be eliminated before design can be inferred. Evolution works on a combination of chance and regularity. You cannot correctly infer “not chance, therefore design” because that argument does not take account of regularity.

rossum
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Indeed, and if you read the paper, it is clear that the method that they use for determining whether ARFs occur purely randomly on distant orthologous sequences merely excludes the likelihood of ARFs longer than 500bp arising in mouse and human that are not functional and not subject to selection; in other words all they are doing is excluding ARFs which arise through a 1bp or 2bp frameshift as a random artefact (which is actually most of them). Since they are looking at coding sequence not expression, this is the only way they can tell if ARFs are likely to be transcribed.

The dichotomy is ‘artefact or function’, not ‘chance or design’.

Alec
evolutionpages.com
 
rossum said:
I am not buffalo, but I suspect that he has read the abstract and saw “Here we show that although dual coding is nearly impossible by chance, a number of human transcripts contain overlapping coding regions.”

If dual coding exists and dual coding is “nearly impossible by chance” then I suspect that he is seeing this as evidence for design instead of chance.

The faulty assumption is that evolution as a whole is a chance process. It is not; natural selection ensures that the results of evolution are not chance. Dembski allows chance, regularity and design as part of his explanatory filter; both chance and regularity have to be eliminated before design can be inferred. Evolution works on a combination of chance and regularity. You cannot correctly infer “not chance, therefore design” because that argument does not take account of regularity.

rossum
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You left out probability theory. A very large number. And if anything similar to evolution happened, it did not happen in a lab or under controlled conditions. In a dynamic world, too much heat (a fire), or water (flood) or disease or predators could wipe out anything useful before it is theoretically passed on, raising the odds against even higher.

So no, given millions of years, it is highly unlikely it just turned out the way it did according to that theory.

Peace,
Ed
 
Namesake said:
You don’t have to believe in evolution. It’s a fact that should be accepted because of the evidence.
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This is a good thing to point out, Namesake. However, to augment what you say, perhaps it would be helpful to distinguish between two categories of belief, namely, “belief that” and “belief in.” The former involves notional assent to a proposition. Acceptance of the theory of evolution on the basis of the evidence marshalled in its favour is certainly equivalent to “belief that evolution is true.”

“Belief in,” however, carries connotations of personal trust. of placing our confidence in a person, an institution, an idea, a principle, a faith, or a deity. I don’t know of any evolutionists who claim to put their faith in Charles Darwin as one who is possessed of saving power.

As for me, I believe in God, and I believe that evolution is the best current explanation of biological diversity on Earth.

StAnastasia
 
Unfortunately, my favorite topic of a literal Adam and Eve will have to be placed on the proverbial back burner–the one on which I am constantly burning either peas or kernels of corn. I have to bow out and unsubscribe. I’m working on a major project regarding the Catholic Eucharist and need to direct my total attention span to it.

I do believe in Adam and Eve and am confident that there is a real “treasure map” to their literal place in the world. If any of you find it, please save it for my return. 😃

Blessings and good thoughts to all,
granny,

John 3: 16 & 17
 
grannymh said:
Unfortunately, my favorite topic of a literal Adam and Eve will have to be placed on the proverbial back burner–the one on which I am constantly burning either peas or kernels of corn. I have to bow out and unsubscribe. I’m working on a major project regarding the Catholic Eucharist and need to direct my total attention span to it. I do believe in Adam and Eve and am confident that there is a real “treasure map” to their literal place in the world. If any of you find it, please save it for my return. 😃 Blessings and good thoughts to all,granny,John 3: 16 & 17
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Bye, Grannymh! In case you’re still lurking, my guess is that the terrestrial Paradise was within a hundred kilometers of Baghdad, at the confluence of the Tigris and Euprhates Rivers. Best wishes on your Eucharistic project, and we shall look forward to your return to these pages.

StAnastasia
 
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