Evolution and common genetics

Ummmmm - as an aside and completely off topic

I'm not sure that particular example is a great hallmark of intelligence

 

Thanks Rob.

The full text for the paper you listed is available at PNAS if anyone wants to take the time to read it. It is not very long.

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/100/13/7708

I enjoyed the read even if I did not understand all of it. I also followed some of the references at the bottom. One

http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/full/10/8/1065

had a box that described some of the different ways to express the genetic differences between humans and chimps as a percentage. The numbers are wildly different depending on how you count. I had read that before, but it is always more interesting to get it straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.

Thanks again.

 

Ummmmm - as an aside and completely off topic

I'm not sure that particular example is a great hallmark of intelligence </font>[/QUOTE]Actually, it is not off-topic and it was a joke based on the remarks made about my earlier post.

Based on your remark concerning intelligence, it appears that the scholarly types here, such as yourself, seem to be trying to base these debates on evolution on the intelligence of the debators. Is this true?

Also, does this mean that an intellectual who "understands" the "big picture" that the non-intellectuals (as perceived by the intellectuals) cannot see---well----does it mean that they have evolved to a higher plane?

I don't ask this in jest or as an insult...I ask this because I once knew an engineer who obtained his Phd in mathematics and held a theory that he had actually evolved to a higher plane because of HIS special awareness of the world around him.

Based on some of the posts I see, this seems to be more of a struggle based on intelligence, how many publications a person has, or their intellectual or scholarly level in the scientific society strata.

All I can see is people trying to prove who has the best credentials, who can provide the most references and who's brain has been expanded the most. I certainly hope this is not the case, but these non-creationist forums always appear to float in this direction.

If this is true, what level of security clearance do you have to have access to this superior intellect?

 

If you meet me in the alley out back, I'll teach you the secret handshake.

 

You win!!!! Do I need to palm you a couple of $100 bills, too?

 

Nope, we're trying to base it off the data, which I think anyone of normal intelligence can understand with a little application.

Oh no--I lose! I only almost have one publication!

 

Ummmmm - as an aside and completely off topic

I'm not sure that particular example is a great hallmark of intelligence </font>[/QUOTE]Actually, it is not off-topic and it was a joke based on the remarks made about my earlier post.
</font>[/QUOTE]No no, you misunderstand me! I AM THE ONE OFF TOPIC. I am off topic in that I am trying to say that making cruise missiles indicates that for all our supposed intelligence, we put our intelligence to some pretty dumb uses.

Like harming each other.

THATS ALL I WANTED TO SAY!

and of course, its off topic. I SAID i was off topic . . .

(Hmmmph. Sure spoils the point when you have to be so LITERAL about it . . . )


I know, really, a cruise missle actually takes a high degree of intelligence to make. Its really wisdom our race is lacking, not intelligence.

 

One thing is clear. Evolutionists believe that similarity means relation. In the early days of evolution many creatures were thought to be related by physical similarities.

Today evolutionists believe similarity in genes proves relationship.

But is that really true??

The evolutionists argue that creationists misinterpret the Bible.

But the Bible is clear than each creature is made after it's own kind.

It is also clear that man is not related to the animals.

Gen 2:18 And the LORD God said, [It is] not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

Comment- Note the word ALONE.

Gen 2:19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought [them] unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that [was] the name thereof.

Comment- This does not necessarily contradict Genesis Chapter 1. The order of Creation is not necessarily being described here, only the fact that God created all the animals and brought them to Adam.

Gen 2:20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.


Gen 2:21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

Comment- OK, in this one instance, God describes creating another creature from a creature that existed beforehand. And that is Woman. Woman was taken from the same substance as man.

If evolution is true and does not contradict the Bible, then why is this the only instance in all accounts of creation where God describes taking the substance of one creature to create another?

Why would God fail to tell us that man and chimps came from a common ancestor? Or that the other created animals came from a common ancestor??

Gen 2:22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Gen 2:23 And Adam said, This [is] now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

Comment- There you go. Woman was taken directly from Man. This type or method of creation is not described anywhere else in the Bible. But God did make sure to mention this method in the creation of Woman. Why would he fail to mention it in the case of Man or the animals??

I have to laugh sometimes. I think God knew you evolutionists would come along with your bogus theory. And He answers it and shows it wrong every time.

By the way, evolutionists are not so sure of themselves as those here claim. Here is two articles about chimp and human relationship from the same source, National Geographic. The article dated 2002 says we are not related nearly so much as previously thought. The 2003 article says we are so related that chimps should be considered human.

2002 Article

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/09/0924_020924_dnachimp.html

2003 Article

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0520_030520_chimpanzees.html

These guys don't know if they are coming or going.

 

UTEOTW and others argue about "junk" DNA. This is supposed to be some sort of proof that we are related to other creatures.

But scientists are finding out that this junk DNA is not junk at all and may be of great importance.

Here is an article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3703935.stm

What is funny here is that if you consider relationship from this "junk" DNA, then man is closely related to mice and rats.

"David Haussler of the University of California, Santa Cruz, US, and his team compared the genome sequences of man, mouse and rat. They found - to their astonishment - that several great stretches of DNA were identical across the three species.

To guard against this happening by coincidence, they looked for sequences that were at least 200 base-pairs (the molecules that make up DNA) in length. Statistically, a sequence of this length would almost never appear in all three by chance.

Not only did one sequence of this length appear in all three - 480 did."


What happened to the chimps??

Evolutionists are all over the place. Make up your mind, is it chimps or rats?

 

Hey, aren't both true? Take bobcats and tigers. Evolutionists earlier said hey, these have got to be closer related than cats and dogs, just based on the obvious similarities. They still say that, don't they?

And today, if a man is accused of being the father in a paternity suit, how do they make that final determination? By genetical similarities!

So the eariler science based, of necessity, on outward appearances, is confirmed and extended by our modern knowledge of genetics.

Creationists are hung up on their own literal interpretation of what is meant, in the Bible, by "after its own kind". But in truth, this is the story of evolution - because as each kind gets established in evolution, all the progeny afterward follow "after its kind".

For example, the first bilateral organism were formed and ever afterward, all their descendants, including us, followed the bilateral body shape idea "after its kind".

The first creature with a cord along its back was formed and ever afterward, all their descendants, including us, followed the backbone body idea.
After their kinds.

And the first creature with fur that nursed its young founded the mammals, and all of us afterwards have followed that body plan according to the Mammal kind.

And so forth.

Not according to the Bible:

Eccl 3:18-20

18 I said to myself concerning the sons of men, "God has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts."

19 For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity.
20 All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust.
NASU

 

Well, I have seen numerous comments saying that birds are most closely related to crocodiles according to similarity in genes.

They don't look very similar to me.

Evolutionists pick and choose. I showed several articles before. One claimed man is most similar to the chimpanzee. The other said man is very similar to mice and rats.

If God had created man from a common ancestor to apes he would have said so. No, it says God formed man from the dust of the ground, not some other creature.

But God DID mention that woman was taken and created from the same substance as man.

So, it seems very reasonable to assume that if man evolved or was made from the substance of some other creature, He would have surely mentioned it as He did in the creation of the woman.

 

JWI

I like you bro'! I just wish that I had the time to research . . . I would get a graduate degree in genetics . . . then I would show scientific support of God and His genetics.

Just ain't got the time . . . and God did not call me to fight that fight . . .

 

But, to think that man evolved from apes is plain ludicrous.

 

[sound of crickets]

The silence regarding attempts to address the actual data presented on this thread is deafening.

But let's see what we do get.

"One thing is clear. Evolutionists believe that similarity means relation. In the early days of evolution many creatures were thought to be related by physical similarities.

Today evolutionists believe similarity in genes proves relationship.

But is that really true??"

It depends on whether you properly use the data or not. Not all physical similarites imply close relationship. There is a definate method to the madness. The problem is that not many people know how science really works and can be fooled by carefully selected examples.

For example, I seem to remember a recent poster trying to make a point about homologies by pointing to the platypus. It has a bill so should it be considered closely related to birds? Well, this sounds like a good response on the surface, but not once examined. For when examined, you find that the bill of a platypus is quite unlike that of a bird, even being made from different materials.

But when using properly selected traits, homologies still make for godd indicators of common ancestry. However, as it turns out, genetics is better because there is less ambiguity. Homology has been very good for getting into the shape of the tree, but it has some difficulty in locating each little trig exactly. Genetics has been able to confirm the shape of the tree from morphology and to place the trigs more precisely.

"If evolution is true and does not contradict the Bible, then why is this the only instance in all accounts of creation where God describes taking the substance of one creature to create another?"

You are still wallowing in circular logic. You cannot use an interpretaion that is only correct if your assumption is true to support your assumption.

"Why would God fail to tell us that man and chimps came from a common ancestor? Or that the other created animals came from a common ancestor??"

Perhaps because the ultimate goal here is to tell us how to be saved. The specifics of biology do not appear to be important on how to be saved. Just like the specifics of string theory have no bearing on your walk with God and is not included.

"By the way, evolutionists are not so sure of themselves as those here claim. Here is two articles about chimp and human relationship from the same source, National Geographic. The article dated 2002 says we are not related nearly so much as previously thought. The 2003 article says we are so related that chimps should be considered human."

Did you actually read the articles? If you did not, then I will just implore you, once again, that when you get something from someone else, it might be a good idea to actually read what they gave you to see if it really says what they claim.

If you found this all on your own, then why are you misrepresenting the results to us? Can't come up with a factual argument?

The second article basically says that genetic data shows that we are more closely related to chimps and that our line diverged from the line leading to chimps more recently than other species which are put into the same genus. The ultimate goal here is conservation. If people were to realize just how closely reltated to us the great apes are, then there might be more support to save their habitat from complete destruction and the extinction of these species.

The first article talks about how previous estimates of the genetic homology between humans and chimps was only able to measure single necleotide substitutions. They completely missed insertions and deletions, shortened to "indels."

More recent studies have shown that the previous estimates of differences by substitution were accurate but that there is also an additional difference accounted for by the indels. This inclusion takes the difference from about 1.5% to about 5%. But there is an important result to be noted. The change from the indels is only found in the non-functional stretches of DNA. They are not found in the coding DNA and the coding DNA still has the same small differences as before. To quote the article.

So once again, what sounds like a promising YE argument on the surface is found to be merely a misrepresentation of the data.

Surprise!

 

"UTEOTW and others argue about "junk" DNA. This is supposed to be some sort of proof that we are related to other creatures.

But scientists are finding out that this junk DNA is not junk at all and may be of great importance.

Here is an article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3703935.stm

What is funny here is that if you consider relationship from this "junk" DNA, then man is closely related to mice and rats."

Once again, I must ask if you have read the actual article and if you have read any of my actual posts. If you have read both, why are you misrepresenting the results here?

First off, science (and I in my posts) have been clear that some of the stretches of DNA that have been considered to be "junk" because they are non-coding have been found to actually have some use, for instance in the regulation of the expression of coding DNA. Now that this is known, it is not surprising to find bits and pieces of non-coding DNA that have function. But this also has no bearing and things that are known to be junk like pseudogenes and retroviral inserts. Some of the junk can even mutate into useful DNA like we saw earlier in the thread with the retroposons.

Since this non-coding DNA is highly conserved, it is reasonable to assume that it has some unknown function. The article even describes an experiment to determine its function.

The next thing that needs to be addressed is you claim that this means that humans are more closely related to a rat than to a chimp. I read the article and I did not see where they compared this sequence to any chimps. So without knowing if this sequence is present in chimps, you cannot draw such a conclusion.

But let's delve into this a little more deeply. When you are trying to determine phylogenic relationships from DNA, it is common to use a few outgroups in your analysis. This gives you something that you know is not closely related with which to compare.

Look at what else the study did. "The regions largely matched up with chicken, dog and fish sequences, too; but are absent from sea squirt and fruit flies." Look at that pattern. THe pattern fits what one would expect based on common descent. For two such sequences to be shared, the simplest explanation is that they shared a common ancestor. Now when you start grouping the tested species in the ways in which they shared common ancestors, you come to a sharp dividing line where lines that split off from the others earlier than a certain time are missing the sequence in its entirety while those that split off later all have the sequence.

That fits common descent. Since you brought it up, can you explain it in terms of your paradigm. With testible evidence. (If you want to test it in terms of common descent, then you should generally expect to find the sequence in most animals that share fish as a common ancestor. Not necessarily every one as there could have been some deletions. But if there are deletions, they should be in related groups of species. And since the sequence is so highly conserved, it seems to be important and would be unlikely to have been deleted.)

"What happened to the chimps?? "

They were not tested. Did you read the article?

But I can predict that you would find the same sequence in chimps if tested. What do you think? What would be your prediction on this and why?

"Evolutionists are all over the place. Make up your mind, is it chimps or rats?"

Fallacy of the false dilemma.

It is both, though we share a more recent common ancestor with chimps than with rats.

 

"Well, I have seen numerous comments saying that birds are most closely related to crocodiles according to similarity in genes.

They don't look very similar to me. "

They do not look very similar to you. That is why I love the example.

If I take a fox and a wolf and show them to be closely related genetically, then you will just say that they have very similar bodies and lifestyles and therefore they were commonly designed with similar building blocks.

So I like to go for animals that appear dissimilar but which have clear evidence of a close relationship.

It would be impossible for you to build a convincing case that birds and crocs are so similar in build and lifestyle that you would expect them to have been more closely designed to each other than to anything else.

Yet I can, and have, easily build a convincing case of them being closely related through common descent. I then point out the genetic similarites and show that they support the evidence from other areas and is to be expected.

The next step is to challenge the YEers to account for this specific result in their paradigm. Just why such a close relationship between these two specific groups should be expected, why and how to test that idea.

You'll notice a distinct lack of a response.

"Evolutionists pick and choose. I showed several articles before. One claimed man is most similar to the chimpanzee. The other said man is very similar to mice and rats."

Only after you misrepresented the data.

But if we do like to pick and choose then you should have no trouble falsifying evolution by providing real data that contradicts evolution.

"If God had created man from a common ancestor to apes he would have said so."

Why would you make such an assumption? It does not seem important to the purpose of the Bibleand therefore does not need to be mentioned. Just like there is no mention of quantum chromodynamics. Quantum chromodynamics is pretty important to you and me but not to our salvation and our walk with God. So no Biblical mention.

 

Finally, let's take this as an opportunity to make some of those common designer predictions that can be tested.

Let's look at two aspects of coding proteins.

Now genes are made of three letter codons. Each sequence of three letters corresponds to a particular amino acid. Now there are more combinations than there are amino acids, so each amino acid can be represented by one than one codon.

What this means is that you can have the same protein made by different series of codons. As it turns out, it is the third letter in each codon that can be changed nad that will often result in the same amino acid.

So, let's put yourself in the position of a common designer. You want to use the same protein for some function across mutliple "kinds" whatever that may be. If you are just reusing genetic parts, as is claimed, then you would stick in the same sequence where you needed the same protein.

But this is not observed. Instead, these "silent" mutations are present in the genes where different species can make the same protein with the exact same amino acid sequence, yet the genes that make the proteins are different. And when you look at the patterns of the differences, they match the expectation of common descent.

There is another case. Some proteins are very insensitive to their exact structure. Some of these are found in almost every living organism but are present in a wild variety of forms. Interstingly, when you will substitute these insensitive genes between widely varied organisms, like between a plant and a mammal, they work just the same.

Now again, when you look at the patterns of how the variations are distributed, they match the expectations of common descent. SO put yourself in the position of a common designer. The claim is that sequences are the same because of a common designer. Now if you need a particular gene in each organism and if the exact form does not matter, why would you not just put the same sequence in each? Even if you decided or needed some variety, how does it happen that the variety takes exactly the form that would be expected from common descent.

These are the kinds of expectations that you should be able to come up with if you want to include the superantatural in your expectations. They can even be tested. They are also wrong.

Anyone want to make different predictions on what you would expect and to tell us why you would expect such?

 

Thanks, UTEOTW. I'm feeling under the weather and not up to repeating myself once again!

I will repeat one item--the genetic differences between species among conserved genes that UTEOTW discussed above once again supplies evidence that mutation is not always detrimental and does not always result in loss of specificity.

 

I'm not sure why any such simularities in and of themselves are evidence of evolution. Indeed, one could just as well say that any simularities in genetics is proof that the "designer" was using the same building blocks.

Lets start with Monkeys and Humans. I believe it has been said that 95% of of our genetics is indentical. But this in and of itself doesn't say we evolved from a common ancestor. It could just be as likely that God thought "Hmm, I plan on making humans and monkeys look pretty similar so I will use much of the same DNA!" To be honest, I would expect our DNA to be very similar, we look a lot alike! Our hearts and lungs and kidneys probably work in the exact same fashion so I would expect the DNA coding their constrution and DNA coding the proteins that facilitate their use would be indentical.

But now lets go to your question. Why would we EXPECT a crocondille and a bird to be more similar (in genetic structure) then other animals. Well, we probably wouldn't expect it one way or another. I we may find this a very interesting surprise. But once again, it just would no more prove evolution then prove that God wished these two animals to share many characteristics (most of which we obviously couldn't recognize on the surface).

Anyway, just a thought. </font>[/QUOTE]Implicit in UTE's statement is the premise that "God wouldn't have done it that way"... a purely metaphysical assumption.

So his proof is this: a) The result is consistent with evolution though he omits analogous factors that mitigate against an evolutionary relationship and leave no relationship a very real possibility, b) since parsimony in this case generally supports an evolutionist conclusion it is to be preferred (though parsimony like uniformitarianism can be discarded when necessary to come to a conclusion consistent with evolution), and c) he has determined that there is no reason for God to have done it this way... therefore evolution must be true.