Irreducible complexity and Evolution

a reply to: cooperton

Aww and here I thought you were "out"...

Why is it you and your creationist friends imply mood in posts, when you are fully aware that is terrible netiquette, and usually wrong.

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: Cogito, Ergo Sum

The scientific community understandably accepts evolution as a common fact because it is a fact.

It is this type of chauvinism that has anchored the scientific community in a meaningless dead end in the labyrinth of life

Evolution does happen and has been observed. This is a fact. Often religious people try to get around this by claiming it is only "micro evolution". You seem to be confusing this fact with the overall theory of evolution and the idea that everything shares a common ancestor. That organisms/species evolve, is an observed fact. Do you really think it isn't?

a reply to: Cogito, Ergo Sum

Que the "Oh yeah we've seen Micro evolution, I admit that but not Macro" fallacy followed by some quotes from the bible .....

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: Cogito, Ergo Sum

Que the "Oh yeah we've seen Micro evolution, I admit that but not Macro" fallacy followed by some quotes from the bible .....

Yes, sorry about that, should have known better. lol

To Cooperton.

Evolution is both fact and theory. Evolution itself occurs. This is a fact. Speciation itself has been observed. Therefore arguing that evolution doesn't occur at all is the same as arguing that apples don't fall from trees or that the earth doesn't revolve around the sun (though perhaps evolution is less obvious in an everyday sense). The theories explain why apples fall from trees (ie. theories of gravity), why earth revolves around the sun (heliocentric theory) and the fact of evolution gives us the biological diversity we see in the world today (ie. natural selection).

There are good scientists who are also creationists. They never let their belief bias their work. Whatever they find they simply prefer to believe there is a god behind it all, originally. Evolution says nothing about whether a god exists. Why aren't you at least open to the idea that species evolve?

originally posted by: cooperton
in context, your Caps lock LOL is more like an exasperated laugh rather than the healthy laughing proven to relieve all sorts of stress and what not.

LOL is an acronym. Proper grammar says you capitalize acronyms.

originally posted by: ChaoticOrder
a reply to: SaturnFX

I think in most cases things do evolve gradually but there are also cases where several different systems evolve at the same time and they just happen to form a more complex system when put together.

The best example of this is probably the very first single celled organisms, there are many parts required for a cell to have reproductive capabilities, and the very first self-replicating cell would have come together based on pure chance because there wasn't yet any evolutionary pressure. And unless the exact right parts came together in exactly the right way, the replication process would fail or not work at all. It is possible for complex systems with multiple irreducible components to spontaneously arise, it's why we see a punctuated equilibrium in the fossil records.

But the replication process (or a precursor to a biological replication process) may have existed before life itself existed.

That is to say, systems that could replicate, but are not considered "life" may have come first, and that replication process may have been a pre-existing part of what became the first living organism.

The first example I can think of is a virus. Viruses are not usually considered "living organisms" (not by most definitions), but a virus has the ability to replicate its protein structure. Perhaps a self-replicating virus gained the ability to form cellular membranes, and that virus-with a cellular membrane eventually led to a other cellular structures that can self-replicate -- one that would be considered life.

Prions are another example of non-living protein structures that can self-replicate.

So the ability to self-replicate need not to have been something that only started the exact same moment the first living organism sparked into being.

originally posted by: Cogito, Ergo Sum
To Cooperton.

There are good scientists who are also creationists. They never let their belief bias their work. Whatever they find they simply prefer to believe there is a god behind it all, originally. Evolution says nothing about whether a god exists. Why aren't you at least open to the idea that species evolve?

This is continual chauvinism. You act as if everyone who doesnt agree with the theory of evolution must be some blindfolded fundamentalist christian who has not addressed empirical evidence. This is so narrow-minded and is the fuel for mostly all posts I see that are ridiculing anyone who dismisses the religion of evolution.

Just like the rest of you zealous self-proclaimed mutant apes I at one time fully bought into the idea of evolution. I was a young high school AP bio student who thought he knew everything and I mocked my "ignorant religious friends" for ever believing such baseless drivel.

"'The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.'" -Werner Heisenberg

I wanted more answers and I knew the best approach was an open mind. Upon researching the empirical evidence in an unbiased manner, I began to realize the house of cards we had been dealt our whole lives. The school system and their acolytes will lead you to believe that the random working of matter created the universe and consciousness. yet experiments in Quantum physics clearly demonstrated matter is naught without the observer - indicating that matter, therefore, could not have been the generator of consciousness. Matter only exists in a probabilistic waveform until the observer substantiates it into matter Copenhagen Interpretation

The universe is much more amazing than the sterile story of meaninglessness that was spoon-fed to us by the state.

a reply to: cooperton

That is a great deal of woo you just typed there. You are yet to show evidence evolution is not something that has happened. You just flap your gums, and throw things in that show nothing.

QED

You can not prove it is so.

a reply to: cooperton

You act as if everyone who doesnt agree with the theory of evolution must be some blindfolded fundamentalist christian who has not addressed empirical evidence.

You don't have to agree with it. All you have to do is prove that it's wrong. Simple.

a reply to: cooperton

You are taking the "observation" part of the Copenhagen Interpretation way too literally.

I'm pretty sure that (say, for example) there are sulfur volcanoes erupting on Jupiter's moon Io right now and nitrogen glaciers flowing on Pluto right now without anyone observing them. I'm convinced there is (at the very least) microbial life elsewhere in the galaxy, and those microbes right now are living their microbial lives without any "conscious being" observing them.

Stuff happens in the universe all the time without anyone observing it, and stuff had happened in the universe for billions of years before we were around to observe it.

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: cooperton

You can not prove evolution is wrong.

It is pointless to present you with evidence because you will blindly refute anything that defies your precious dogma. Nonetheless, here is a list for anyone seriously interested in exposing the house-of-cards:

polystrate fossils - vertical trees are commonly found to pass through multiple geological strata, indicating a fast deposition of these geological layers.

soft tissue in dinosaurs - recently, organic material has been found in dinosaur fossils. Now that scientists know where to look in the fossils, this has become common to find soft tissue in their remains. Instead of concluding the obvious, the scientific rhetoric had to backstep and claim that the decomposition process must take longer than we thought.

carbon dating dinosaurs - with the discovery of soft tissue led many researchers to consider carbon dating dinosaurs. Surely enough, carbon-dating insists on a year range between 4,000-40,000 years old. carbon dating dinosaurs

Historical depictions of dinosaurs - Dinosaur depictions in history

Historical dinosaur descriptions - see writings of Marco Polo, Herodotus, Job, and many more for those who look.. brief introduction to dinosaurs in history

Ice caps strata - a WWII plane was found in a supposed 5000 year old ice layer... Scientists looked to change the date of WWII to 5000 years ago, but failed so they just ignored this evidence.

Philosophy - Irreducible complexity is one of the many arguments, stating that a whole cannot work until all the pieces are in play - therefore evolution through natural selection is invalid because it is theorized to work in a piece-by-piece manner. Complex organelles, cells, tissue, organs, and organ systems are all interdependent, and therefore must have been created all at once in order to have a functioning organism. Darwin even claimed the impossibility of his theory if complex organ systems were to be discovered... He was also unaware of the complex interdependent system of molecules, proteins, etc. More

History - Essentially all cultures relate their history back to some sort of Higher Power. Jewish and Greek records indicate a much more interesting view on history and both claim to have information about the beginning of humanity that are very similar. Adam and Eve - Zeus and Hera

Quantum physics - The copenhagen interpretation concluded that all matter is subordinate to the observer. The tree in the woods exists in a probabilistic waveform until observed by an observer. Schroedinger's cat is neither dead or alive until someone makes an observation. We as observers are literally manifesting reality as we observe. Since this is true, matter could not have possibly generated consciousness as proposed by evolution, since matter is nothing without consciousness.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People
a reply to: cooperton
Stuff happens in the universe all the time without anyone observing it, and stuff had happened in the universe for billions of years before we were around to observe it.

This is an assumption. A big no-no in science. Empirical data in quantum physics demonstrates otherwise, and here is the big-hitter's opinion on the data:

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness." -Max Planck

The universe is materially unmanifest without the observer.

Other anomalies - supposed "neanderthals" have a higher cranial capacity than the average "homo sapien" skull. dinosaur was not a word until around the 1850s. Lucy, scientism's best attempt at finding a missing link, is missing mostly all of its bones: Lucy


No matter where your research may take you, be sure to look for empirical, observable evidence... Not theoretical hooplah by the typical parrot talk. Ignore those who dismiss evidence due to their bias.

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

The first example I can think of is a virus... a virus has the ability to replicate its protein structure.

This is not true. Viruses rely on the replication machinery of the host cell.

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: Soylent Green Is People

The first example I can think of is a virus... a virus has the ability to replicate its protein structure.

This is not true. Viruses rely on the replication machinery of the host cell.

That may not be the case. Some researchers hypothesize that viruses (or maybe proto-viruses) existed before cells, and were possibly the first self-replicating (although non-living) system:

The Virus-First Hypothesis

The progressive and regressive hypotheses both assume that cells existed before viruses. What if viruses existed first? Recently, several investigators proposed that viruses may have been the first replicating entities. Koonin and Martin (2005) postulated that viruses existed in a pre-cellular world as self-replicating units. Over time these units, they argue, became more organized and more complex. Eventually, enzymes for the synthesis of membranes and cell walls evolved, resulting in the formation of cells. Viruses, then, may have existed before bacteria, archaea, or eukaryotes (Figure 4; Prangishvili et al. 2006).

Excerpted from This Source.


The point is that there may have been self-replicating systems constructed of proteins that existed before life existed. Self-replication is not necessarily limited to life. The ability for living cells to self-replicate did not need to be an ability that spontaneously appeared out of nothing; the ability could have been a gradual process that started on a small scale with proteins in non-living units and gradually became more complex over time, and eventually was incorporated into the first life.

a reply to: cooperton

You know you should really do some research homework. The C14 story is a lot of bs:

The research by Miller et al. A research team from the CRSEF, or Creation Research, Science Education Foundation, led by Hugh Miller, has claimed to have dated dinosaur bones using radiocarbon methods, determining them to be no older than several dozens of thousands of years old. Let's look at their research methodology in detail (indicated by bullet points): As it turns out, Miller's research group obtained their sample in quite a remarkable way. In fact, the creationist posed as chemists in order to secure a number of fragments of fossilized dinosaur bone from a museum of natural history, misrepresenting their own research in the process of doing so. When the museum provided the bone fragments, they emphasized that they had been heavily contaminated with "shellac" and other chemical preservatives. Miller and his group accepted the samples and reassured the museum that such containments would not be problematic for the analysis at hand. They then sent it to a laboratory run by the University of Arizona, where radiocarbon dating could be carried out. To get the scientists to consider their sample, the researchers once again pretended to be interested in the dating for general chemical analysis purposes, misrepresenting their research. Let's take a little pause to consider the general issue of misrepresenting your own research. It is understandable that Miller et al. did this, since there would have been a slim chance (at best) of the museum curator providing them with any dinosaur bone fragments if he or she had known what the true intent of the supposed chemists was. In particular, it is implausible that it would have been considered worthwhile to try to use radiocarbon dating methods on these bones, since the rocks that they were taken from were determined to be 99+ million years old, as shown in this paper by Kowallis et al. Now, it is known that 14C14C decays at a fast enough rate (half-life ~6000 years) for this dating method to be absolutely useless on such samples. Thus, it appears that Miller et al. would not have been able to obtain this sample, had they been honest about their intent. This, of course, raises some ethical questions, but let's brush these aside for now. We proceed with the examination of the research done by Miller and his fellow researchers from the CRSEF.

physics.stackexchange.com...

The "chemists", who were frauds, knew that the samples had seen a lot of hands and were contaminated. You can find anything you want in a contaminated sample.

Perpetrating fraud is immoral. Do your homework.

a reply to: cooperton

Quantum physics - The copenhagen interpretation concluded that all matter is subordinate to the observer. The tree in the woods exists in a probabilistic waveform until observed by an observer. Schroedinger's cat is neither dead or alive until someone makes an observation. We as observers are literally manifesting reality as we observe. Since this is true, matter could not have possibly generated consciousness as proposed by evolution, since matter is nothing without consciousness.

Where did you get that choice piece of logic? Is it yours? Can you cite a research paper that came to this same conclusion?

You're really off the wall now. Sorry, but that's my final diagnosis.

a reply to: cooperton

None of that counts as evidence regarding evolution. You do understand we are in the era of DNA now right? We can use molecular clocks to wind time bakc to see how evolution has worked. Or compare how species are related?

Here I thought you had an education

a reply to: cooperton

None of the stuff you're posting has any solid evidence. It's totally fabricated by illusionists. You ignore the real evidence because you're scared to death that you might be wrong and your ego would suffer. How about your reputation? Doesn't that matter? Why perpetrate fraudulent information? You're like a bank robber who insists he's owed the money he's stolen. No logic, no honesty.

I think we need to ask the Mods to insist that people provide credible evidence for their posts. If you're talking about science, then you need scientific evidence. If you don't agree with the evidence, no problem. Produce peer-reviewed evidence from a recognized journal that supports your case.

Opinion is one thing. Everybody has one. Evidence is something else. Perpetrating fraud should be against the rules of behavior.

a reply to: Phantom423

That would be nice. I don't see that happening to be honest, as this forum (the creation and evolution one) seems to allow Creationists to run riot.