Interesting article, Dawkins shocked! His face cracks me up.

So I really enjoyed the article. There is a link to a discussion which in my opinion was very interesting. With that said enjoy the read, and looking forward to hearing your thoughts:

www.evolutionnews.org...

I'm not too interested in pavlova recipes.

Can you link to something like, pizza?

I have no idea where that link goes, or what content to expect, and you said he had a funny face, yet not even a picture.

I'd feel bad if I were you.

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
So I really enjoyed the article. There is a link to a discussion which in my opinion was very interesting. With that said enjoy the read, and looking forward to hearing your thoughts:

www.evolutionnews.org...

Dawkins says "[it] is the same 64-word dictionary wherever you look in the living kingdoms (with one or two exceptions too minor to undermine the generalization)."

The article then says "Simple counting question: does "one or two" equal 17?"

I say "It sure does when the 'living kingdoms' consist of 8,700,000 species!"

If it is the same 64-word dictionary for 99.9998% of 'the living kingdoms', I would say Dawkins' statement is fine.

Nothing wrong here. He is just shocked that a geneticist is trying to go against years of established research. Dawkins has admitted that there will always be a species that will be an exception to the rules. That is the beauty of life/nature. It always finds a way.

Why are you on such a website? To find proof of intelligent design? Does this article prove you are correct? Does this prove to you that evolution is "just a theory" and that intelligent design is more concrete? Or just another science bashing thread?

originally posted by: sn0rch
I'm not too interested in pavlova recipes.

Can you link to something like, pizza?

I have no idea where that link goes, or what content to expect, and you said he had a funny face, yet not even a picture.

I'd feel bad if I were you.

Troll much? Perhaps being on topic and and saying something relevant to the topic was too hard for you?

Anyway, the OP seems to think Dawkins is something special. He isn't a scientist, he's a writer who writes books about his opinions. I don't think any amount of science will actually deflect him from doing so. He has a vested financial interest in maintaining his opinions in the face of fact.

Also, what the article neglects to mention is that the geneticist dos not just shoot down the idea of the branching out of life (which is the point of the tree analogy). He clarifies and say that it is more like bushes of life, and his point is that there is a lot of lateral gene transfer and that it should be factored in.

You all know of bacterial antibiotic resistance, right? Well that is primarily due to this "sideways" DNA transfer. That is is point; that is why he sees bushes as a better analogy.


But somehow the article in OP's link forget to include that part.

originally posted by: rossacus
Nothing wrong here. He is just shocked that a geneticist is trying to go against years of established research. Dawkins has admitted that there will always be a species that will be an exception to the rules. That is the beauty of life/nature. It always finds a way.

Why are you on such a website? To find proof of intelligent design? Does this article prove you are correct? Does this prove to you that evolution is "just a theory" and that intelligent design is more concrete? Or just another science bashing thread?

Craig Venter is doing real scientific work (you know, actual experimental stuff) and disagrees with Dawkins (who doesn't do any real scientific work).

I would not describe this as a "science bashing" thread.

originally posted by: DupontDeux

Also, what the article neglects to mention is that the geneticist dos not just shoot down the idea of the branching out of life (which is the point of the tree analogy). He clarifies and say that it is more like bushes of life, and his point is that there is a lot of lateral gene transfer and that it should be factored in.

You all know of bacterial antibiotic resistance, right? Well that is primarily due to this "sideways" DNA transfer. That is is point; that is why he sees bushes as a better analogy.

But somehow the article in OP's link forget to include that part.

Yes, but lateral gene transfer is NOT actually part of the modern evolutionary synthesis.

a reply to: chr0naut

He isn't a scientist, he's a writer who writes books about his opinions.

What? I think your mistaking Dawkins with Hitchens.

Dawkins absolutely is a scientist, he's a ethologist & evolutionary biologist. He also has quite a few books based on science rather than philosophy, like 'the selfish gene', 'The Greatest Show on Earth' and 'The Ancestor's Tale', for example.

Simple counting question: does "one or two" equal 17?

Not in a pool of 100, but out of 10 million, its effectively the same thing. Way to take things entirely out of context.

originally posted by: DupontDeux

originally posted by: ServantOfTheLamb
So I really enjoyed the article. There is a link to a discussion which in my opinion was very interesting. With that said enjoy the read, and looking forward to hearing your thoughts:

www.evolutionnews.org...

Dawkins says "[it] is the same 64-word dictionary wherever you look in the living kingdoms (with one or two exceptions too minor to undermine the generalization)."

The article then says "Simple counting question: does "one or two" equal 17?"

I say "It sure does when the 'living kingdoms' consist of 8,700,000 species!"

If it is the same 64-word dictionary for 99.9998% of 'the living kingdoms', I would say Dawkins' statement is fine.

No, Dawkins is wrong.

Venter was saying that the "dictionary" that makes sense of/decodes DNA is different for different lifeforms. Humans code UGA as a "stop" codon and UGG as Tryphtophan. Mycoplasma codes UGA as Tryphtophan. The word is the same, the 'dictionary definition' is different.

Mycoplasma are a very primitive and successful genus. That 99.9998% figure you suggested sounds quite suspect to me.

There is also nothing in evolution (or rather abiogenesis) to prevent the rise of life quite separately, several times. That is the science. But Dawkins has made the statement that life arose only once and then diversified from a single common ancestor. That is simply NOT the case, nor is it science.

originally posted by: Subaeruginosa
a reply to: chr0naut

He isn't a scientist, he's a writer who writes books about his opinions.

What? I think your mistaking Dawkins with Hitchens.

Dawkins absolutely is a scientist, he's a ethologist & evolutionary biologist. He also has quite a few books based on science rather than philosophy, like 'the selfish gene', 'The Greatest Show on Earth' and 'The Ancestor's Tale', for example.

E. O Wilson described Dawkins as an "eloquent science journalist". He went on to say about Dawkins, “What else is he? I mean journalism is a high and influential profession. But he’s not a scientist, he’s never done scientific research. My definition of a scientist is that you can complete the following sentence: ‘he or she has shown that…'" and "I don’t want to go on about this because he and I were friends. There is no debate between us because he’s not in the arena. I’m sorry he’s so upset. He could have distinguished himself by looking at the evidence, that’s what most science journalists do. When a journalist named Dawkins wrote a review in Prospect urging people not to read my book, I thought the last time I heard something like that I think it came from an 18th-century bishop.”

I happen to agree with Wilson's definition.

The books you quoted are popularization's of scientific subjects, not peer reviewed scientific papers.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

The article tells us that Ventner etc didn't argue with Dawkins, he merely smiled - that was not a denial of what Dawkins was saying. No sign of a funny face either - Dawkins is free to put forward his opinion surely?

a reply to: chr0naut

So what you actually meant to say then, is that you 'personally' don't respect him as a scientist, or 'personally' agree with the officially accepted theory of all life forms originating from a common ancestor?

This is common in bacterial species with reduced genomes. Take for example, Zinderia insecticola, an endosymbiotic bacterium from spittlebugs (see: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...). They also encode tryptophan from UGA. There are three stop codons in the genetic code, UGA, UAA and UAG. There seems to be a selective pressure to use UGA to encode tryptophan in organisms with highly reduced genomes (through genetic drift). It's still not fully understood why, but the fact that it's common to diverse organisms that experience the same evolutionary pressures suggests that there is in fact a mechanism for its emergence.

This in no way disproves the tree of life theory since it exists in diverse species in common niches; instead, the phenomenon highlights how organisms adapt to genome reduction and host interaction.

"The genome sequence strongly suggests that Zinderia uses an alternative genetic code, in which UGA codes for tryptophan instead of stop. This code change has been reported in certain lineages of Mollicutes, such as Mycoplasma (Yamao et al. 1985), the Alphaproteobacteria Candidatus Hodgkinia cicadicola (McCutcheon et al. 2009b), some ciliate nuclear genomes (Lozupone et al. 2001), and in several mitochondrial lineages (Knight et al. 2001). Evidence for the mapping of UGA to tryptophan in Zinderia comes from multiple sequence alignments of proteins, which show tryptophan occurring in several highly conserved positions in other Proteobacteria that are coded for by UGA in Zinderia (fig. 4). If UGA is assumed to be reassigned, 360 of 374 (96%) of the putative tryptophans encoded in Zinderia open-reading frames use the UGA codon, whereas only 14 use the standard tryptophan codon UGG. This usage pattern is consistent with that of other degenerate codon families in Zinderia, where the more AT-rich codon is always used preferentially over the more GC-rich codon (supplementary table S1, Supplementary Material online)."

you know what I'm not going to waste my time.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

me neither. next thread.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I'm out too. Crazy that I even showed up let alone posting something. This stuff is just ridiculous every time.

a reply to: ServantOfTheLamb

Hey you never finished replying to the last topic you posted. Still waiting for the ice core "evidence" and radioactive decay anomalies. First things first.

a reply to: chr0naut

That's all really well said and all except for it being entirely wrong. See, Dawkins has actually been publishing in respected peer reviewed journals since the late 60's and while he may not publish as often is some of his peers because he does work outside the realm of science as well and isn't chained to a desk that requires him to publish in a regular schedule, he still publishes a considerable amount of research. The only caveat I would give is that his last peer reviewed paper was published in 2004. Despite that, his background in zoology and evolutionary biology combined with his amount of published work is pretty staggering.

en.m.wikipedia.org...