DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution

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There's no such thing as "supernatural"; just **** that we don't understand yet...

AHEM, an announcement. Gunga wants it 2 ways. On Thursday he was quoting how evolution is inconsistent with Christianity. Today he wants to sound like a true "Intelligent Designer". Gotta take a side gunga.
As Ive said to you lotsa times. You dont really understand what ID is. Its separate from Creationism (but we all know that its being manufactured by the same snakeoil salesmen). Which, oddly enough, makes your avatar quite appropriate

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All his creationist quotables , like Denton , forgot about URACIL in RNA.

Well, one might argue that U isn't in DNA because of the magic number thing -- instead, as is more feasible -- because T is so much more stable than U, and can't go through a pair of reactions that turn it into C.

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There's no such thing as "supernatural"; just **** that we don't understand yet...

That's not all you can find to respond to, is it?

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Good point, but in an evolution sense, I was harkening back to Nirenbergs research on polynucleotide strings and how UUU in mRNA was found to code for polyphenylalinine and that started the search for the other 63 amino acids.

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Ah, so...

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gungasnake wrote:

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...So how could the genetic information of bacteria gradually evolve into information for another type of being, when only one or a few minor mistakes in the millions of letters in that bacterium's DNA can kill it?

Interesting question...

Not really. Those animals die out. The improvements tend, statistically, to survive better.

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gungasnake wrote:

patiodog wrote:
So, you're looking for my epistemological viewpoint...

I see no evidence of supernatural intervention in the natural world, nor do I see the need for it.

There's no such thing as "supernatural"; just **** that we don't understand yet...

Thanks, gunga, for providing yet another irrational statement to be overcome.

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Well famerman you really are a jack-of-all-trades. I appreciate how knowledgable you seem to be in almost ALL areas of science.

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patiodog wrote:

So, you're looking for my epistemological viewpoint...

I see no evidence of supernatural intervention in the natural world, nor do I see the need for it.

I was making a point in relation to your previos comment:

patiodog wrote:

But to act like that's an answer rather than a speculation is to put oneself on shaky ground, and to leave an opening for the charge of "You say you know when you don't really know!" That charge is an excellent one to level against the dogmatic, and I'd hate for it to lose its effectiveness because I engage in it, as well.

The point being that we may not know the details of how life originated, but in as much as we "know" that evolution happened, we also "know" that life originated naturally. And *that* is the bullet I think we should stop dodging, otherwise there is an inconsistancy in what we say we "know" about science and evolution and origins.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

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farmerman wrote:

Quote:
There's no such thing as "supernatural"; just **** that we don't understand yet...

AHEM, an announcement. Gunga wants it 2 ways. On Thursday he was quoting how evolution is inconsistent with Christianity. Today he wants to sound like a true "Intelligent Designer".

The vast majority of ID'ers are Creationists, but I think Gunga is a snake of a different slther. I could be mistaken, but I think that Gunga goes more for the extraterrestrial influence than the Old Man With A White Beard.

Which also explains his "no supernatural, just sh*t we don't understand" comment.

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El-Diablo wrote:

Well famerman you really are a jack-off-all-trades. I appreciate how knowledgable you seem to be in almost ALL areas of science.

I can't understand why you would dis the farmerman so. I find his posts quite scholarly, certainly not "jack-off"

http://web4.ehost-services.com/el2ton1/poke.gif

I may not always agree with his conclusions, but I certainly can't fault his research.

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Aha wow. Ya that was typo...

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rosborne wrote:

The point being that we may not know the details of how life originated, but in as much as we "know" that evolution happened, we also "know" that life originated naturally. And *that* is the bullet I think we should stop dodging, otherwise there is an inconsistancy in what we say we "know" about science and evolution and origins.

Do you see what I'm getting at?

I definitely see what you're getting at. I just think that we have more actual evidence for evolution than for natural origins, and so we "know" it better. I'm a bit of an idealistic naif, I suppose, to think that origins needn't come into the argument.

I suspect that as the behaviors of RNA are better explicated, we'll have a much better picture of what might have happened in the very early hundreds of millions of years. That I find very interesting. Far more interesting than haggling over this stuff -- which is why I'm glad there are good people in the trenches.

I'd like to think the recent recurrence of fundamental babble is the noisy death rattle of superstition in the modern world, but I fear it ain't. Ah, well.

(random thoughts)

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El-Diablo wrote:

Aha wow. Ya that was typo...

Of course; but a weirdo like me just couldn't resist!

http://web4.ehost-services.com/el2ton1/torch.gif

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patiodog wrote:

I just think that we have more actual evidence for evolution than for natural origins, and so we "know" it better.

We may understand the details of one thing more than the other, but I'm not sure that means that we "know" one any better than the other, because we've already ascertained that you "know" that life had a natural origin.

In other words,

We don't know every little detail about the process of evolution, and yet we know it happened.

We don't know every little detail about the origin of life, and yet, we know it was a natural event.

You are comfortable saying that evolution happened, even though you don't have all the details, and you are comfortable saying that the origin of life was natural, even though you don't have all the detials, but you have a greater level of comfort saying one than the other.

Which implies that there is some level of doubt in each which you are comparing.

I can understand harboring some level of doubt as to the details of each process, but I'm not sure I understand how anyone can doubt the overall validity of either thing without having to retreat to metaphysics and pure philosophy.

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I've got doubt in everything I know, ros. Absolutely everything. There's a fair amount of mental illness and fairly early dementia in my family, so I take everything I think with a grain of salt.

It's a fun ride, though.

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patiodog wrote:

I've got doubt in everything I know, ros. Absolutely everything. There's a fair amount of mental illness and fairly early dementia in my family, so I take everything I think with a grain of salt.

It's a fun ride, though.

Fair enough Patio, and I don't mean to pick on you.

I still feel that there is an inconsistency in saying that you know one thing and not the other just because of a different level of detail in the knowledge, but I can live with that.

Like you, I have doubt at a philosophical level too. But when it comes to discussions about the real world, I prefer to keep my arguments grounded in naturalism.

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It's not so much about detail of knowledge, but about evidentiary support. I cannot as readily rule out, say, extraterrestrial introduction of life to earth (though that would still necessitate its genesis elsewhere), even though I find the possibility highly unlikely.

I am more confident that there has not been external interference in the cellular epoch. (Can I coin that term?)

What you've said will rattle around in my head, though.

(And doncha worry 'bout pickin' on me. I'm a big boy, and I get bigger every day. Damn this Midwestern food...)

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patiodog wrote:

It's not so much about detail of knowledge, but about evidentiary support. I cannot as readily rule out, say, extraterrestrial introduction of life to earth (though that would still necessitate its genesis elsewhere), even though I find the possibility highly unlikely.

I can't rule out extraterrestrial introduction of life at inception either. As a matter of fact, I suspect that asteroids carrying various organic compounds may well have contributed to the origins of life on Earth. But I don't think that's what you mean by ET Smile

Still, if you're going to consider the possibility of ET starting life, then you have to figure that the same ET's could have tweaked it, ever so slightly along its way as well.

But then we're right back to Intelligent Design, and that's just not science.

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patiodog wrote:

I am more confident that there has not been external interference in the cellular epoch. (Can I coin that term?)

I like "Cellular Epoch" a lot. May I borrow it? I'll credit you as the author Smile

Does the Cellular Epoch include raw replicative mollecules, or should we also define a larger "Replicative Epoch"?

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Stay away from ET. If you believe life came about spontaneously or naturally, say so. If you hypothesize another planet, it's just a cop out, right?

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DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution

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