Evolution versus Creationism

[sanabas]

I left "complex" deliberately vague just because of the problem in defining it. As a starting point I would say that life that is visible to the naked eye is probably "complex", perhaps, excluding the odd, giant, single-cell jelly fish and the like. I don't know enough biology to push it smaller, but I would not exclude smaller things out of hand. The idea though is not to draw a line, but to think about how "complexity" fits into evolution.

But 'complexity' isn't a trait. It's not something that gets selected for or against. If you've got two similar organisms competing for the same niche, knowing one is more complex, one is less complex (assuming you've come up with a working definition for measuring it) doesn't tell you which one will be more likely to prosper. I don't see any trend towards increasing or decreasing complexity over the last couple of hundred million years. Single celled stuff has done and still does well all over the world, multi-celled stuff has done and still does well all over the world. Mass extinctions and other events have led to empty niches that get filled again, new and improved tricks have appeared and spread, some of those new and improved tricks (eukaryotes, triploblasts, photosynthesis, flight, opposable thumbs, etc) have led to there being new niches to fill, but I don't see how to, or the point of, trying to work out if today's fast-moving, land-dwelling predators such as various big cats are more or less complex than sabretooths were, or more or less complex than dinosaurs that filled a similar niche. Or trying to work out if various native Australian mammals, such as marsupial mice, wombats, kangaroos are more or less complex than the placental mammals that fill those same niches in the rest of the world.

If you want a vaguely defined trait to look at, that there does seem to be selection pressure in favour of, efficiency makes much more sense to me than complexity does. There does seem to be a tendency for organisms to get more efficient at filling a niche, regardless of whether that makes them more complex or less complex.

 

[Simple Simon]

BirdJaguar,

the IDers can't define complexity in a meaningful way so that it is an applicable concept in evolution. Why should you fare better?

 

[peter grimes]

Nice summary, BasketCase, but I'm afraid I strongly disagree with a few minor points, and I only bring this up in the interest of granting to our skeptical friends a clear understanding of what the science of biology has learned about life on earth:

So is human life [inevitable]

Strongly disagree:
Rewind everything to Cretaceous / Tertiary Boundary, and I really doubt Homo sapiens sapiens would be arguing on the internet today. Primates would be around, and likely getting along in very similar ways to they are today, but I really don't think that all the historical contingencies that sculpted our Genome would happen the same way twice. As to the idea that Intelligent Life would arise again - I would say that there was already intelligent life around before the dinosaurs. And despite the accepted wisdom that a dinosaur had a brain the size of a walnut, I honestly don't think that size matters as much as we'd like it to: ref. birds.

Once it happens [accretion of earth under gravitational attraction], it doesn't unhappen unless something really big knocks it good and hard.

Indeed! The current best explanation of the formation of the moon proposes a massive body hitting earth (massive = roughly the size of Mars ), and yet the earth wasn't blown to the 4 corners of the sky. Stable indeed!

The formation of self-replicating organisms is rare...

Strongly Disagree:
For reasons I've stated earlier in this thread, I see the chemical reactions that lead to self-replication to be, for all we can tell, quite common. It is not necessary to plead special chemical solutions, or exotic environments. It really seems to me just about inevitable - quite the opposite of Rare!

Once it got started, the end result--us--was inevitable

Strongly Disagree:
I'll grant the language 'End Result' if and only if you are confining to the sense of 'what we see around us today'. But again, "us", or any organism alive today, is not inevitable. Every creature alive today, as well as every creature that has ever lived, is most definitely a product of historical circumstance shaping its genome. Rewind the tape, and you will most definitely NOT get a great white shark. However, I do think you will get some creature that makes its living the same way... but that's a different topic.

...the evolution of life wasn't a single event. It was lots of events. There aren't just humans--there are dogs and cats and mice and birds and snakes.

Just to be clear, these are not separate acts of evolution. That would be like saying Mars and Earth are separate acts of gravity. They are certainly two results of gravity - and in the same way, every organism we see is a distinct result of evolution. I think that's what you were trying to get across.

The process of evolution tried out EVERY SINGLE METHOD possible: two legs, four legs, fangs, wings, venom--hell, even critters with NO limbs at all. The ones that actually worked are still around. The evolutionary failures, such as dinosaurs? Gone.

Mostly disagree:
When the whole scope of the history of life is considered, it is not the case that all sorts of body plans or designs. What is the case, is that some plans flourished and lead to further refinements, while others turned out not to be as good. And, like others have pointed out, it is simply not true that the dinosaurs represent a failure of evolution. As a group, it is true that they failed to survive a rapidly changing environment - but that's as far as I'll venture on that one! One could successfully argue that any creature that lived to beget offspring is an evolutionary success; whether or not they are alive or dead today is irrelevant. Would you call your great great grandmother an evolutionary failure simply because she's not alive today? I guess another way to look at it is that dinosaurs aren't failures, they're just dead. There's a difference.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Coin tossing eh? Here's something to consider: Derren Brown tosses 10 heads

Taken out of context, that's a pretty weird sentence. Now, if you have seen "the system" you will know how he pulls it of, and how "the system" works. If you haven't seen it, go to youtube and watch it now. It's quite good actually (although an hour long). I'm not going to spoil it by telling you how it works. But if you do watch it, and you draw a parallel between us evolving the way we did and the coin flips as: success, you will realise it was inevitable that Derren Brown got 10 heads in a row, that the horses the woman bet on would win and that we would be discussing how it is that we evolved on this planet the way we did.

 

[Smidlee]

I guess what "the system" was from the beginning, it's the brutal force of trial and error. There are limits of how much trial and error can produce.

 

[classical_hero]

I do have a question how multicellularity evolved? One of the big problems is how a single cell managed to control the cells from going to far which is what happens in a multicellular creature, since if you have too many of one type of cell it causes problems for thw whole organism, whereas in single cellular creatures, this i not a problem, since have mre of the same tye of cell is just reproduction.

 

[AngryZealot]

Origin of multicellularity.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Very nice video AZ.

 

[El_Machinae]

That was a really good video.

I'll point out that the ToE had predicted the results of statistical analysis of genetic sequencing. The sequencing was done recently

 

[Flying Pig]

It should; although recent developments have improved on it; it is a good theory.

 

[Smidlee]

I assume that evolution didn't predict this from the scientist reaction :

"We were absolutely stunned," says Manning. [Monosiga brevicollis] commands a signaling network more elaborate and diverse than found in any multicellular organism higher up on the evolutionary tree, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have discovered.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080707171748.htm
This video seems to show why they were so shunned at this discovery.
Also Darwin's tree is one of those evolution predictions that seems to only exist in the human mind. (human has a lot in common with a sea plant)
It's also remarkable how similar monosiga brevicollis to the sponges counterpart when the world was change around them for all those millions of years. How did it keep it figure for such a long time?

The chlorella vulgaris trait could have existed in the past become damaged then reappear in the lab. As other algae that groups together when a predictor in present then go back to solo afterward. Exactly what is the cost of being grouped together? I wonder how well these grouped chlorella vulgaris would survive outside of the lab.
Noted: I saw where Cdk007 mention when the unicellular algae will out compete the multicellular when the predictor is absent.

 

[El_Machinae]

So, um, you are aware that genes can replicate and diversify in a genome, right?

 

[Perfection]

The fact that evolution didn't predict everything doesn't mean it can't make predictions.

 

[AngryZealot]

The chlorella vulgaris trait could have existed in the past become damaged then reappear in the lab. As other algae that groups together when a predictor in present then go back to solo afterward. Exactly what is the cost of being grouped together? I wonder how well these grouped chlorella vulgaris would survive outside of the lab.
Noted: I saw where Cdk007 mention when the unicellular algae will out compete the multicellular when the predictor is absent.

The video covered reasons why they know the trait did not simply "re"appear in the lab. These algae did not go back to solo afterward; they stayed multicellular for as long as the scientists continued to study them. If it were an already present defense mechanism, they should go back to single cellularity some number of generations after the predator was removed, but they did not.

Anyway,

I assume that evolution didn't predict this from the scientist reaction

Of course not. Since random mutation is the genesis of diversity, it's impossible to predict what might, can, or will exist in the future, or in the present if the traits in question are unique to a previously unstudied group. You can't predict what is truly random. The true predictive power is in phylogenetics and the tools that brings to studying biology and biochemistry. It's why we can test drugs on mice and chimpanzees before trying them on humans. It's why scientists knew exactly what drugs to pursue when they first discovered HIV, cutting development time from a decade or more to just a few years. Evolution lets you apply homologies in a productive manner that you couldn't otherwise do.

 

[Smidlee]

I believe you missed the point as quoted; "what is a single-celled organism doing with all this communications gear? "We don't have a clue!" " This is not just something evolution didn't predict it was something the evolutionist wouldn't have ever predicted. They haven't figure out how to put this one into their evolution story yet. Even single cell life is not really all that simple.

 

[Simple Simon]

I believe you missed the point as quoted; "what is a single-celled organism doing with all this communications gear? "We don't have a clue!" " This is not just something evolution didn't predict it was something the evolutionist wouldn't have ever predicted. They haven't figure out how to put this one into their evolution story yet. Even single cell life is not really all that simple.

You know, it might help if you'd provide sources for your stuff. And actually word things so that they become understandable. What 'communications gear'? There is nothing, really, that doesn't either serve other functions or serves inter-individual 'communication'.

 

[Smidlee]

I'm referring to the "Can you hear me now?" article above.

 

[Simple Simon]

I'm referring to the "Can you hear me now?" article above.

Well, in that article it does not say anywhere that kineases are 'communications gear' in that single-cell organism. And, as you by now should know well, just because they serve that function in multi-cell organisms doesn't mean they do in single-cell organisms. Ever heard of 'hijacked' systems? This has the smell of one.

btw, from the point of view of the multi-cell organism this would be called a preadaptation sucks how well the theory of evolution can deal with facts, in contrast to creationism. or how would y creationist explain this? 'Uh, God just made this funny thing so that we are amazed by it!'

 

[El_Machinae]

Smidlee, do you think that we can describe the birth and formation of volcanos, using completely naturalistic mechanisms? Now, we don't know everything about geology, not even close. Does that mean you think there's a non-naturalistic mechanism involved?

Secondly, does Creationism have any predictions about the organism you reference? Does it have any descriptive mechanism by which those kinases formed, and what their function is? All I've seen in this thread is nitpicking at a (mostly strawman) conception of the ToE. If you cannot think of a way to figure out their functions, can you pray and ask God to tell you?

 

[AngryZealot]

I believe you missed the point as quoted; "what is a single-celled organism doing with all this communications gear? "We don't have a clue!" " This is not just something evolution didn't predict it was something the evolutionist wouldn't have ever predicted. They haven't figure out how to put this one into their evolution story yet. Even single cell life is not really all that simple.

In science it's ok to shout loud and clear, "I don't know!" You've found one single organism that went a little crazy with gene duplication events or horizontal transfer and you are trying to use that to attack the entire theory. It doesn't work that way.

Kinase cascades integrate extracellular signals so that the cell can respond in an appropriate manner. This bacteria responds to a few more signals. So what? I should point out that the Theory of Evolution is the primary reason the scientists were able to predict this bacteria had that number of tyrosine kinases in the first place.