Hi John et al
It can be shown logically that it is impossible to argue against the
hypothesis that God created the world in 4004 BC such that it had all
the appearance of there having been Darwinian Evolution up until that
point, as I have discovered previously. The possibility that life
appeared in various other ways (actions of elves, visits from aliens) is
also difficult/impossible to argue against. From my perspective, all
of the evidence that I work with does not require such outside
interference in order to explain what we have found so far. We cannot
explain everything, but each time we get to the bottom of some new
aspect of what we find, it fits into the self-contained evolutionary
hypothesis. If we find something that does not, I will be one of the
first to spread the news as I am more than happy to consider alternative
ideas (water, bio-photons, cold fusion etc). So far, the theory of
evolution does not seem to require any significant additons. I regard
punctuated equilibrium as a minor tweak which I now see as almost having
been proposed by Darwin. The bit that will (imho) require something
new is our understanding of how evolution stores distributed information
in the DNA. But if creationists and alien impregnators want to get all
hung up on evolution then I am quite happy to leave them be: I have DNA
sequences to analyse.
We can see the impact of the first land animals in the genetics of
plants. They have many defence mechanisms to deal with pests etc, but
it can be shown that land plants spent millions of years not having to
deal with the problem of animals eating them as the defence mechanisms
that exist today as defence against animal action in land plants evolved
comparitively late on. During this period the plants just died and
became coal. The phylogenetic trees suggest a time that is consistent
with the best understanding of when the animals arrived on land and
started eating the plants. This can be shown by looking at the
relationship between the different proteins that are involved in this
process. This is one of countless bits of information that I work with
on a daily basis where everything fits snuggly together based on
evolutionary ideas.
But God could have created the whole thing in 4004BC such that
everything had the appearance of having evolved like this. Who am I to
argue?
Nigel
On 27/08/2014 04:40, jwin...@cyllene.uwa.edu.au wrote:
Hi Nigel,
Thanks for your erudite and interesting answers. However I don't
think you really answered the question I was interested in because you
are so saturated with the current paradigm. I sense from your answer
that you are happy with the idea that given an *actually* simple (in
comparison to later more complex) self-replicating life form, random
mutations and selection is sufficient to generate all life as we know
it. I don't wish to argue against that view, even though for myself I
find it impossible to believe.
If you could momentarily put aside the current paradigm and consider
the possibility that we have been visited by aliens who although
evolving completely independently on another planet have, incredibly
as it may seem, ended up with compatible DNA to our own - so that a
case of hybrid sexual intercourse such as Antonio Vilas Boas
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B4nio_Vilas_Boas> case could
occur. The implications to evolution of this type of case being true
are I think quite revolutionary. It means for instance that the final
human DNA outcome from the whole evolution process must be completely
determined from the very beginning!!!
I really don't want to hear arguments about how this is impossible and
the Vilas Boas case must be fake - I appreciate them fully. What I
would like is if you could withhold disbelief sufficiently to consider
whether there you can see an argument from within your field of
evolutionary genetics? For instance, is it possible that there is
sufficient information programmed into the simplest life forms (or at
least the ones that unfolded into the forms of life that finally
resulted in us) to at least allow, if not ensure, that the final
result would be human?
Also I wonder what is the current guess at the first (and ongoingly
successful) animal to emerge from the sea? I saw some large carnivore
types that were proposed - but how would they live on land without
other animals to eat? And if they had to go back into the sea to eat
(which is their main daily and lifelong task) why not simply stay
there. I think it would need to be an animal that could live well on
land plants and/or insects (which I believe long preceded the
vertebrates).
John
On 27/08/2014 6:49 AM, Nigel Dyer wrote:
To my mind there are two separate evolution question problems that need
to be addressed. The first, which you pick up on, is the evolution of
the complex folding proteins, and the second is the evolution of the
information that is used to define the complex structure of multi celled
organisms (such as us). There are countless examples which show how
duplication of whole or parts of genes genes, mutation of parts of genes
can create complex proteins from simple proteins. Indeed the
relationship between equivalent proteins in different organsisms can
often be used to produce a 'family tree' or phylogentic tree which
closely mirrors the accepted evolutionary relationship between the
species, and shows how a simple ancestral protein gave rise to lots of
complex variants in different plants/animals.
The evolution of structure/form and instincts which is what Darwin talks
about, because he knows nothing of proteins, is very different because
we still understand very little about how this is encoded into the DNA,
although there is absolute evidence that it is. This is increasingly
looking to be encoded in the 'junk' DNA in a much more distributed and
robust way (like a hologram). These can change and mutate and give rise
to variations in the organism without being lethal. A lot of the
statistics that creationists use to show that evolution is improbable is
based on the sequences in genes that encode for proteins, where small
changes are frequently lethal. The statistics for the rest of the DNA
is completely different, and I beleive completely compatible with the
evolutionary model.
So, I see no need for additional injection or meddling in order that DNA
could go from producing simple lifeforms to complex lifeforms, but I
dont think this can be proved mathematically yet because we dont
understand the 'junk DNA' coding rules yet. However, my hunch is that
we are in for a big surprise when we finally work out what the coding
rules are, but that is a different topic entirely.
And the first animal to emerge from the sea was not a frog, but probably
shared some aspects of the way that it breathed with frogs.