How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

[Purple Knight]

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.





This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

[brunumb]

Rebutting Genesis Apologetics

Just to get a dose of genuine science to refresh and clear the head after some of the nonsense presented here.

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #1306]

This is the simplest known life on earth:

This is an organism living today after 4 billion years of evolution. We have no idea what the first population of replicating "things" were and they may well have been far simpler. This old Talk Origins article goes through some possible scenarios:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

We have no idea what the actual steps were from collections of chemicals in the presence of liquid H2O, heat, lighting, winds, mixing, etc. for hundreds of millions of years, to the first replicating thing that cold be called "living." But there's no reason to believe the first entity was as complicated as something that is alive 4 billion years later.

No doubt there is a lot of complexity involved, but there's no evidence that it didn't arise naturally rather than having been "created' by a hypothetical god being of some sort. The very fact that we don't know the mechanism and especially the initial steps is what allows all kinds of speculation about it. The Talk Origins article claims that Mycobacterium genetalium is the simplest known genome. Maybe one of the biologists can chime in, but I have no trouble believing that the first living populations could have been far less complicated than anything around today.

Kindly note I was trying to discuss some of the things that catch my attention with all this. I did not even mention "creation" by a "God being" - if you persist in dragging this kind of thing in then we have no real prospect of discussing what are aspects of science.

So moving on, James Tour does point out that chemicals do not show any tendency to form the kinds of structures that are necessary for life to form. Evolution presupposes an already function pretty sophisticated nano-machine that has the ability to replicate and construct proteins from the amino acids that themselves are described by the DNA code, the data I was speaking of.

[The Barbarian]

[Replying to The Barbarian in post #1209]

The human nervous system looks more like an inverted tree than like a jellyfish. The human nervous system has a central axis from which nerves branch out.

Jellyfish have a ringlike structure with tentacles arranged around the ring:

Just to re-visit this - Trees also have a ring-like structure with branches arranged around the main trunk.

Branches are extensions off of other branches. Same "design" as rivers, roots, lightning and and many other things. T


Flow is important for trees. Jellyfish tentacles have little flow,so they don't have to have a tree-like structure. On the other hand,l human nervous systems are all about flow, so they do have a tree-like structure.

[The Barbarian]

So moving on, James Tour does point out that chemicals do not show any tendency to form the kinds of structures that are necessary for life to form.

Not knowing much about biology, Tour missteps again. Phospholipids, chemicals that would form from readily available lipids and phosphates, form cell membranes. They are also the simplest organelle in living things. In water, phospholipids spontaneously form sheets of bilayered structures that will spontaneously form vesicles.


This isn't about evolution, of course, but it shows that the most important organelle was almost certainly the first to appear. Scientificially, we aren't sure how life began, but Christians know it came from nature. God says that the earth brought forth living things as He created it to do.

Evolution presupposes an already function pretty sophisticated nano-machine that has the ability to replicate and construct proteins from the amino acids that themselves are described by the DNA code, the data I was speaking of.

Yep. And science is indifferent to the way that happened. If God magically poofed it into being or if nature produced living things as He says in Genesis, it makes no difference at all to evolutionary theory.

[Sherlock Holmes]

The very fact that we don't know the mechanism and especially the initial steps is what allows all kinds of speculation about it.

Of course we know the mechanism.

God creating bacterial DNA:

Where does DNA come from? It comes from already functioning biological cells - without DNA we cannot generate DNA.

These are important and striking facts, I think it's important to at least acknowledge this and reflect on the abstruse problem it presents.

[Sherlock Holmes]

So moving on, James Tour does point out that chemicals do not show any tendency to form the kinds of structures that are necessary for life to form.

Not knowing much about biology, Tour missteps again. Phospholipids, chemicals that would form from readily available lipids and phosphates, form cell membranes. They are also the simplest organelle in living things. In water, phospholipids spontaneously form sheets of bilayered structures that will spontaneously form vesicles.


This isn't about evolution, of course, but it shows that the most important organelle was almost certainly the first to appear. Scientificially, we aren't sure how life began, but Christians know it came from nature. God says that the earth brought forth living things as He created it to do.

Evolution presupposes an already function pretty sophisticated nano-machine that has the ability to replicate and construct proteins from the amino acids that themselves are described by the DNA code, the data I was speaking of.

Yep. And science is indifferent to the way that happened. If God magically poofed it into being or if nature produced living things as He says in Genesis, it makes no difference at all to evolutionary theory.

Why the personal slur? why write "Not knowing much about biology, Tour missteps again"? Why not stick to the science, critique what you think are errors in his arguments. You cannot successfully attack an argument by attacking the person presenting the argument. We were discussing biochemistry, the picture you posted representing a phospholipid is biochemistry, organic chemistry not biology.

James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University.

So, moving on:

Cellular and organelle bilayers, which were once thought of as simple vesicles, are anything but. They are highly functional gatekeepers. By virtue of their glycans, lipid bilayers become enormous banks of stored, readable, and re-writable information. The sonication of a few random lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins in a lab will not yield cellular lipid bilayer membranes.

Mes frères, mes semblables, with these complexities in mind, how can we build the microsystem of a simple cell? Would we be able to build even the lipid bilayers? These diminutive cellular microsystems—which are, in turn, composed of thousands of nanosystems—are beyond our comprehension. Yet we are led to believe that 3.8 billion years ago the requisite compounds could be found in some cave, or undersea vent, and somehow or other they assembled themselves into the first cell.

Could time really have worked such magic?

Many of the molecular structures needed for life are not thermodynamically favored by their syntheses.

and

The lipids are just the beginning. Protein–lipid complexes are the required passive transport sites and active pumps for the passage of ions and molecules through bilayer membranes, often with high specificity. Some allow passage for substrates into the compartment, and others their exit.

The complexity increases further because all lipid bilayers have vast numbers of polysaccharide (sugar) appendages, known as glycans, and the sugars are no joke.

These are important for nanosystem and microsystem regulation. The inherent complexity of these saccharides is daunting.

Six repeat units of the saccharide D-pyranose can form more than one trillion different hexasaccharides through branching (constitutional) and glycosidic (stereochemical) diversity. Imagine the breadth of the library!

Does this suggest to you that Tour does not know anything about lipids?

From: An Open Letter to My Colleagues by James Tour.

[The Barbarian]

So moving on, James Tour does point out that chemicals do not show any tendency to form the kinds of structures that are necessary for life to form.

Not knowing much about biology, Tour missteps again. Phospholipids, chemicals that would form from readily available lipids and phosphates, form cell membranes. They are also the simplest organelle in living things. In water, phospholipids spontaneously form sheets of bilayered structures that will spontaneously form vesicles.


This isn't about evolution, of course, but it shows that the most important organelle was almost certainly the first to appear. Scientificially, we aren't sure how life began, but Christians know it came from nature. God says that the earth brought forth living things as He created it to do.

Evolution presupposes an already function pretty sophisticated nano-machine that has the ability to replicate and construct proteins from the amino acids that themselves are described by the DNA code, the data I was speaking of.

Yep. And science is indifferent to the way that happened. If God magically poofed it into being or if nature produced living things as He says in Genesis, it makes no difference at all to evolutionary theory.

Why the personal slur? why write "Not knowing much about biology, Tour missteps again"?

It's just a fact. Tour doesn't get it. He knows very little about these things, so he keeps running into walls.

Why not stick to the science, critique what you think are errors in his arguments.

That is the science. He just missed it, because he's not familiar with the science and he keeps conflating evolutionary theory with the origin of life.

You cannot successfully attack an argument by attacking the person presenting the argument.

I'm just pointing out why he keeps failing.

We were discussing biochemistry, the picture you posted representing a phospholipid is biochemistry, organic chemistry not biology.

You're wrong. That is the simplest of cell organelles. That's biology. And on reflection, yes, it's odd that a biochemist wouldn't know about it. Hard to say why.

(list of important degrees for Tour)

Yes, and that makes it really odd. How would a guy with a PhD and all, not know about this?

Cellular and organelle bilayers, which were once thought of as simple vesicles, are anything but. They are highly functional gatekeepers. By virtue of their glycans, lipid bilayers become enormous banks of stored, readable, and re-writable information. The sonication of a few random lipids, polysaccharides, and proteins in a lab will not yield cellular lipid bilayer membranes.

Here, tour confuses the simple phospholipid bilayer, with various added components that most evolved cells have. Here:


Molecular structures can be inserted into the primitive membrane to make it more efficient in protection and transport of material across the membrane.

Mes frères, mes semblables, with these complexities in mind, how can we build the microsystem of a simple cell?

You're assuming that it all has to evolve at once. But of course that's not necessary. Gradients of materials can be maintained by a simple phospholipid membrane, albeit not as well as with membranes with added structures.

Would we be able to build even the lipid bilayers?

They are observed to self-assemble into vesicles. So yes.
https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i19/Pho ... icles.html

Could time really have worked such magic?

Chemistry is observed to do it. No magic required. It happens whenever you put them into solution.

Many of the molecular structures needed for life are not thermodynamically favored by their syntheses.

Neither are hurricanes. So those are impossible without a miracle? How so?

And I see tour's assumption that the membrane could never evolve to add other components. But he offers no evidence for his assumption.

Does this suggest to you that Tour does not know anything about lipids?

It suggests that he didn't know how phosphylipids could spontaneously sell-assemble into enclosed cells.

[The Barbarian]

The very fact that we don't know the mechanism and especially the initial steps is what allows all kinds of speculation about it.

Of course we know the mechanism.

God creating bacterial DNA:

God says that the earth brought forth living things. So no knitting needles required. Why not just accept that God created the universe already capable of doing what He wanted it to do? Why wouldn't an omnipotent Creator do it just as he said, with nature producing life as He said?

Where does DNA come from? It comes from already functioning biological cells - without DNA we cannot generate DNA.

Turns out, there are self-catalyzing forms of nucleic acids. So that's not a conceptual problem, either. IDers call it "front loading" and it solves a lot of problems for those who believe God created life:

t is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science—that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called “special creationist school.” According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God’s direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world– that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.4
Discovery Institute Fellow Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny

[Sherlock Holmes]

The very fact that we don't know the mechanism and especially the initial steps is what allows all kinds of speculation about it.

Of course we know the mechanism.

God creating bacterial DNA:

God says that the earth brought forth living things. So no knitting needles required. Why not just accept that God created the universe already capable of doing what He wanted it to do? Why wouldn't an omnipotent Creator do it just as he said, with nature producing life as He said?

Where does DNA come from? It comes from already functioning biological cells - without DNA we cannot generate DNA.

Turns out, there are self-catalyzing forms of nucleic acids. So that's not a conceptual problem, either. IDers call it "front loading" and it solves a lot of problems for those who believe God created life:

t is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science—that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called “special creationist school.” According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God’s direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world– that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.4
Discovery Institute Fellow Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny

Well this is drifting away from the science and into metaphysics, theology I'm fine with that however.

That the universe was created with everything already built in to develop into what we see is a reasonable hypothesis. But it implies that therefore abiogenesis (for example) is entirely possible and a consequence of the laws of nature that we see.

Well that's the problem though, as Tour (and others) point out thermodynamics and other factors (which are laws of nature) seem to offer no prospect of being able to self assemble living cells and nobody has ever seen nature do it or even be able to coax nature into doing it.

Furthermore, God has intervened in the status quo numerous times so clearly can and will take actions that would not occur unless he took said action.

As you know resurrections do not just happen, so why should complex life be expected to just happen?

For example the flood account in Genesis or the resurrection of Christ (aka "miracles") - this shows that God's spirit - not an inherent natural capacity of nature - is necessary for certain events, if nature had been created with the capacity to do all that God desired then we'd have no need of God, even us, we, would have been built to do as God desired and we'd never hear of miracles or any of that.

So that's why I do not just accept that God created the universe already capable of doing what He wanted it to do, it renders God pointless.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #1314]

Kindly note I was trying to discuss some of the things that catch my attention with all this. I did not even mention "creation" by a "God being" - if you persist in dragging this kind of thing in then we have no real prospect of discussing what are aspects of science.

Who said you did? I made a comment and included the god creator alternative and made no attribution specifically to you, although you've said plenty of times here that that is exactly how you believe "creation" happened. But I'm free to comment as I see fit within the forum rules.

So moving on, James Tour does point out that chemicals do not show any tendency to form the kinds of structures that are necessary for life to form. Evolution presupposes an already function pretty sophisticated nano-machine that has the ability to replicate and construct proteins from the amino acids that themselves are described by the DNA code, the data I was speaking of.

Of course evolution presupposes existing life as it only works once that has been established. It makes no assumptions on how that first living population came into existence. Chemistry is what ultimately makes all of the physical structures on this planet via bonds between atoms, and it is certainly capable of building all of the structures involved in living things (and nonliving things) regardless of what James Tour may say or think.