Hi Nigel,
Thanks again for your reply but it seems like you were answering someone
else's query. I did not remotely suggest recent creation and did not
think that I promoted alien impregnation. The alien impregnation that I
spoke of was of the sexual variety and is a well known case that even
the Wikipedia "defenders of the faith" cannot build much of a case against.
Evolution really can't even get started until you have a
self-replicating cell, so evolution as such cannot have any explanation
for where the first self-replicating cell came from. Many (if not most?)
mainline scientists accept this fact and some well known ones go so far
as to even suggest an off-world (ie "alien") source. I am not concerned
whether the source was "alien impregnation" or whatever other mechanism
you happen to think might have produced the first self-replicating
cell. This is something we may never know. But if even one of the
alien visitation cases turns out to be true (and it would seem that this
could happen any day if certain governments would allow it), then I
think it must have an enormous impact on the theory of evolution and
thus maybe even impact your job.
So my hope was that you might follow this possibly impending scenario
through to a logical conclusion. Suppose tomorrow that we find out that
there really was a crash at Roswell, and we really did meet live aliens
or have dead alien bodies to dissect (the sort of stuff that this list
enjoys dreaming about), it either points to the process of evolution
being incredibly convergent (and how could that work!), or that the
process was largely programmed into the first self-replicating cell.
So my question again is: from your knowledge of the DNA of the earliest
known forms of life, is there sufficient information content to almost
guarantee that humanoid life-forms (very similar to us and even sexually
compatible) will finally evolve? Or does the minimal state of the DNA
of early life forms strongly suggest that there must be some "emergent
phenomenon" or meddling along the way in order to produce in the end
such similar humanoid life forms?
John
On 27/08/2014 4:08 PM, Nigel Dyer wrote:
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
