Article on The origin of complex life

a lot of scientists dont buy Punctuated Equilibrium. Gould and Eldredges own field area in which they followed several"spiriferoid" brachiopod species through the Lower Devonian was actually a hiatus in time. As it was later discovered, their own field site was a truncated stratigraphic sequence which was separated by paraconformities and other types of unconformities (usually erosion features). SO, the actual data points they chose to study actually leave much to be explained (It was later found that, from strat sequences that the stratigraphy was actually fully time inclusive in other nearby areas (within 100 mils of their field sites, where it was found that many"missing" species and huuuge amounts of specimen exist. (Spirifers shells are piled up in high energy environments an each one represents a potential mass of variability data.


. I dont wanna cut this off but I think you just mde that up from thin air. EVERY individual of a species represents a certain amount of genetic variability, from "Shuffling due to fertilization" to environmental mutations PER INDIVIDUAL).

Im interested in how the religious worldview of life on earth (ie ID or Creationism) boldly interjects such stuff without even a smidgen of concern whether your assertions are potentially possible or is it, as I think, often a use of smart sounding "Scientistic language"?
Ive been quite open with data and evidence an all Im getting from you nd LEadfoot and one or two others is a paucity of data and more of just "This is what I think it oughta be an thats good enough for me"

You dont seem to understand how genetic variability "piles up" from generation to generation qnd how the delta of evolutionary changes may take many generations to become expressed. Using the wooly mammoth as an example, these things didnt appear in the fossil record as a major contributor of fossils until the Pliocene an they lasted till late Pleistocene. Yet, as they became isolated in the late Pleistocene in the Channel Islands of California,(nd in the Wrangels), the entire species, in the space of several generations became "Midgets" as they adapted to the limited acreage. Genetic studies showed that thir varibility was just as xpressed as were the full sized specimens of Woolies an Columbian Mammoths. AND they were the same genetically with varibility being expressed as is any family where mendelian genetics pertain.

I have a feeling that youre being evasive for no reason than to not consider the implications of such "Fossil genes"

Jack Horner of the Rocky Mtn nat Hitory Museum of the Rockies had a proposal funded to ressurect a chicken lizard ancestor by "REawakening" these fossil genes. It was nixed by several institutions , many of which expressed religious beliefs that may (IMHO) be threatened.
SCience is often willing to try even some dumass stuff to move knowledge. As we further and further delve into the genome, we find that most of this formerly considered "junk DNA" may be mere fossil genes.

In summary, all I can do is reiterate by paraphrasing what Gould, Elldredge, Carroll, Raup, and many others have stated Mutations generate variations , whereas natural selection "sorts out" the winners and losers. This is generally accepted and evidenced through Paleontology (except for maybe the die hard "Neutral theorists" who totally ignore paleo evidence) , and even those guys Like Kimura said in the 1960's and Nie says today" DNA can be plotted in its expected changes through timeIf no other forces intervene" Noone denies such things as genetic drift or divergent drift (or convergent drift) . They are a fact. Theyre just not the driver of evolution

I know the Creationists love to dispose of Natural Selection because Creation can deal with species appearing "Fully Formed" in time.The fossil record does NOT support fully formed anything xcept where theres a hiatus in the record as Darwin himself observed from his trip to the Patagonian desert

I am not a Creationist. I do not believe in a young Earth, nor sudden appearance of complete organisms. I believe in evolution over a long period of time. The fossil evidence appears to say that, most scientists agree with that and so do I.You are correct. Could you explain this. I think this requires an answer supported by Biogentics and statitical anlysis.I think the genetic studies you are talking about here are proof that selective breeding can change the way a species looks. Man did that with dogs by isolating characteristics to develop Great Danes and Chihuahuas. Nature did it by isolating mammoths. That supports an argument for selecting traits already in the DNA, not mutating to create new traits, or mutating to cause massive changes in morphology like new organs or limbs.There is a lot of statistical analysis on the internet to support my statement. They are easy to understand, and easy to verify the calculations. Very little legitimate scholarly articles from either point of view are available. You would think I could check the math of scholars proving Darwinian evolution is statistically possible, but I can't find any. Maybe you could help me there. Paleontology tells us very little about the mechanisms causing evolution. Fossils are snapshots in time telling us where we are in the evolutionary process. Just like movie frames in a film. A friend of mine took a picture of a car, then pushed it forward 1 foot and took another picture. He did this over and over until the car was moved from the grocery store to his garage. He then made a film of it. A guy named Farmerman( I chose that name because I like you and to inject humor.) found it, and said he had proof a Car had driven itself from the grocery store to the garage, all he did is make sure it was full of gas and the battery was charged, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. Now he can argue that there was always a rock in the road to hit the tire, or a wind came up, to cause it to turn and stay on the route. But we all know they weren't the driver of the car, my friend was even though there is no record of it, or does common sense imply there really is a pretty good record caught on film if we use our brains to fill in the blanks between the frames of film. I don't think we need to argue about whether or not evolution ever happened anymore than I need to argue with my friend whether or not the car got from the grocery store to the garage.

Let's discuss the mechanisms to get us from fossil to fossil. Evolution is no longer an argument centered on Paleontology any more than arguing with my friend about the film to explain the car's movement. No new fossil is going to prove anything anymore unless it is something like a movie frame showing a volcano erupting dropping rocks right where they need to be on the road, a frame showing somebody putting a rock in the road, or a frame showing my friend in the car turning the steering wheel in the example above.

The mechanism I am looking for is a scientific explanation that looks like intelligence but isn't or, scientists accepting the fact that there could intelligence involved, but up till now is undetected. Natural selection can choose the best alternative between the rock hitting the tire, or the wind turning the car or even my friend supernaturally jumping behind the wheel. But random mutations to me, can't explain why the right choices are always there for natural selection to select, and are in sequential order.

are you familiar with the concept f selection coefficients? Youve seemed to been going the way of "statistics piling ON natural selection" when theres a whoe baseline of math that shows its inevitable given how environments change over time.

Its not always mutations that generate daughter species its only some inserted variability or repeated alleles that "ride along" over generations that express some factor that , along with the environmental pressure and dietary needs etc. , result in evolution , micro and macro.

Ive seen evidence from the fossil record of how there are always numerous species of a group of organisms that litter the rocks of specific geologic eras. For example, maybe 15 different species of cynodont reptiles lived in the mid to late Permian. These types were an unimportant branch of synapsid reptiles (those have a single opening along each side of their temporal bone and have another spcific body style that Id hve to go look up). Came the "great dying" of the end of the Permian , the cynodonts, dicynodonts(these guys had beaks) and two other superfamilies gave rise to birds and mammals. These had several minor advances that allowed them to make it through the environmental conditions that occurred during this, the biggest mass extinction on the planet. The mass extinction served as a huge nat election event in which some animals could tolerate an others couldnt
Prior to the end of Permian huge amounts of fossil species displayed the temporal variability that gets selected for or against. and so the parade of life moves on always changing.
Yipee kayeay

Yes, I am familiar with the concept of selection coefficients. I don't have a problem with natural selection. I see examples of it every time all the Black Angus cattle keel over dead in a feedlot on a hot summer day in Kansas while all the white Charolais cattle stay a live. The Charolais have a +S coefficient for the environment because of their color. Hind sight is 20/20. The genetic code is vast and specific in its structure. Micro evolution is almost always selective breeding of inserted variability or repeated alleles. We observe today and can replicate it scientifically. I believe (because the math says so) that the inserted variability or repeated alleles must be there in too specific of a manner to have happened by chance for macro evolution to happen. If there is math I can review that says otherwise, I can't find it. (Help) And even if the math was there for some macro evolution the chances of it happening over and over to get the variability we observe is a long shot.

So,an alternative to Darwinian evolution should at least be discussed and researched alongside Darwinian Evolution with the same vigor. The Creationists must to a better job of matching their story with observation rather than some interpretation of scripture that was written thousands of years ago and passed along orally tens of thousands of years if not more longer than that. Maybe a Darwinian evolutionist would be better at developing a realistic ID guided evolutionary theory.

Think about what you said in light of evolution. Artificial selection(your charolais v Angus) does not look at survival , its a targeted outcome and wrt Angus and Charolais, it took a few generations seeking one or two particular traits.
Darwin, did a great job of puzzling over artificial selection in his leadup chapters.(He worked with pigeons primarily)

He DID say that these minor changes that result in evolution are CUMULATIVE over time. He did NOT say that they occur only one trait at a time.Haldane clared that up over 80 yars ago. Today we know that genetic variation can be loaded up on one organism or that one trait may take several genes contributed by many individuals that somehow share AND EXPRESS these trait packages. They are cumulative in that we cant develop flight fathers until we develop feathers. The Creationists would try to assert that all evolution supporting some specific functions and shapes, had to occur in one leap. Examples in the fossil record counter that assertion with hard facts (a fish developing a "neck that allows its head to move about, and come ashore, A lizard developing a post foramen "hole for muscle attachment that serves in th change of dentition (and diet and energy needs), a simean loses the chemicaL ability to produce ascorbic acid, and loses hair)


-why so? Naturalism has ways to be falsified, Looking for ID "evidence" has no way to be so evaluated. Anyway, I am equally impressed with genetics and what paleontological research is revealing. We can now see where on the breadth of time that these "Hopeful monsters" lie in the fossil record and then, the selected specie or species makes it through. No evidence of Universal Intelligence has this shown up. The Discovery Institute (they announced this in 2000 that they would be, in a three year period, be publishing all sorts of evidence of same). SO FAR 18 years later, not a peep.

I think a better understanding of what Darwin really had on his mind is in order . Then we can start looking at hardy Weinberg or variograms of jackson expansions. Dr Demski of Discovery had been tasked with "doin the math for ID" His results IMHO, have been as packed with fancy sounding "scientistic mathturbation" as anything.

Zack Blounts article in ed 105 (this year) American SCientist , has a good article about the modelling efforts in "contingency coefficients"
Its about Predicting repeatability in individual trait appearances in unrelated organisms.

I needs to hit the bed, we loaded 150 sheep today an sent them to market. We are tired and feeling a bit guilty

Genotype "responds"to an environment only at the population level. The genotype of an individual biological unit is a product of reproduction and undirected, random genetic change-mutation. Such change can be directly influenced by the environment only to the extent that some environs may induce greater mutation rates. A mutation expressed as phenotype may favor an individual in specific environment thereby magnifying the population with that genotype through preferential survival/reproduction.

I think a reasonable person believes that mathematically that has happened because random mutations statistically is unlikely to provide the correct menu of the mutations necessary to cause macro evolution in a consistent enough way to get the variability we observe in living organisms today. I gave you the example of making the film frame by frame to show how we could replicate macro evolution today. Paleontology has nothing to offer because it can't fill in between the frames. Biogenetics, Information Technology, and studying how information enters living matter by thought is the only place to find the answers. Examples of micro evolution given do not even require mutations, the chacteristics were already there. If we quit isolating cattle, pigeons, or dogs then all the dogs go back to being mutts, and cattle will once again look like they did a few hundred years ago.

I believe we are both reasonable people. I believe Darwinists, Creationists, IDer's are all reasonable people. You seem to have what appears to me is unreasonable faith in random mutations providing the menu for natural selection, even though the math says unlikely.

The creationists have not put up any good science because the few times they attempt, they are met with huge resistance by scholarly communities (like at Baylor university) but also because they were piss poor biased scientists (like at Baylor university). We need good people like you in Paleontology, Information Technology, Quantum Biology, and Biogenetics (without so many wrong preconceived religious 6,000 year old Earth requirements) to do the honest research. If a Bible first Creationist wants to play this game they have to figure out how to get the clock of the Bible to match the undeniable clock of Paleontology, Geology, and Physics. But I say why not just look at how our intelligence manipulates living matter in our brain and bodies, to get possible answers on how intelligence could possibly manipulate DNA sequences when necessary to fill in between the frames in the film of the fossil record. I suggest reading "Quantum Biology" by Alessandro Sergi

The mind boggles with implications! : )

If a new species is the result, I think it implies Intelligent Design, since we all would agree farmerman is intelligent. (Sorry Farmer I couldn't let that one hang over the plate)

Hit it out of the park...

Im way past my breeding success date. Foul ball.

you still seem to want to believe that genetic variables apply in "lockstep" onto evolution. Now that we better understand how genes really work or are even turned "on" we can see multiples of traits being fixed randomly.
Think about the vast numbers of breeding opportunities for the lowly (over 500) species of mice or even annelids. (Whose own genomes are 100's of times bigger than ours-could it be that we are merely looking at the paleohistory of the worms?)

You say you arent an IDer yet you seem to wish to bring ID and biology together , why is that even a point of discussion?
I find it a bit of a waste of time since our scientific methods work pretty damned good dont you think?.
If ID is rally there, it may become obvious at some date (or not). I prefer to understand the science behind evolutionary change rather than look at drove it.

That may be an artifct of how we are able to measure it. I think it was Dawkins who said that "whatever the mechanism in play, it first needs a single host"

Of course scientific observations are subject to measurement bias and limits as are derived theories.

"Measurement bias". . .

Ah-hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha . . .

This place is precious . . . you can't make up sh*t that funny.

Understanding how genes work and turn off and on doesn't tell us how the perfect genes to get turned off and on actually ended up in the genetic code in the first place. I am pretty damn sure that random mutations cannot provide enough code for natural selection to work with. I know this to be more than likely true because, we can't replicate with a model, a highly ordered end product that was made by selecting randomly generated options. People have made some computer simulations that can do it, but they don't take into account that an intelligent person built the computer and wrote the program. Those are always necessary for the model to work, an intelligently built platform for natural selection to work off of. That has to be accounted for.
These mice and worms have all these traits waiting to be turned off and on and you say these were fixed randomly. You are looking at a completely developed species. You don't know if they were fixed randomly. There is know evidence of what happened between fossils in the fossil record. Paleohistory cannot answer that question. The answer is in biogenetics and statistics.

I said I didn't believe in creationism as defined by you and creationists themselves. I also, don't believe random mutations can provide for the traits necessary for natural selection to result in macro-evolution.

What does that leave me? ID? Is there something else when random can be logically omitted because it is statistically unlikely? I would like to call myself a random mutation denier because the analysis of the data supports that position, rather than an ID supporter for this discussion. What people support as an alternative is a different discussion for a different, and/or maybe new discipline of science and philosophy. For that discussion to develop scientifically the truth about random has to be faced, and alternative proposed. At least quit assuming and teaching random is an accepted fact because of the scientific data, and admit it is an accepted fact because of a bias in world view of the scientific community that leads them to accept random as the only possibility.

Exactly! That conclusion does not necessarily require any religious preconceptions.

Since its a matter of chemistry and environmental interaction, why are you pretty sure of that?

How bout if NO genes are in effect?
How bout one gene affecting many traits.

What do you mean? How does that lead to macro evolution.Can you give me examples, or explanations of how this can lead to macro evolution.