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jck200 On April 22, 2009




cardiff, United Kingdom
#1New Post! Feb 28, 2009 @ 01:28:47
I am not particularly interested in evolution and for the most part am happy with the main contentions but every so often I see something on a science programme that causes me some grief.

It is the absolute staggering detail in the most humble of insects and flowers that allows for a perfect solution to the very problem it has overcome.

Flowers in some respects cause more problems than insects because flowers have no idea what the problem is.

The total time needed to create these evolutions which must start with a very minor change to one or a few flowers and then needing a miracle for those few to survive and create the next slight change exactly in the right direction when blinded to the task in hand does not add up mathematically.

Like i said it is not just one flower or one insect it is millions.

Each one performing an incredible procedure for survival that defies belief and the road that has had to take to get to that position before going extinct creates a monumental obstacle to the claim it is pure chance.

This is just my observation, if someone simply wants to regeretate standard evolutionary theory then that is rather pointless as my views go far beyond simpky accepting this.

john
chisa96 On December 29, 2014
Supreme Goddess





Out in Nature, Wisconsin
#2New Post! Feb 28, 2009 @ 01:40:05
jonnythan On August 02, 2014
Bringer of rad mirth


Deleted



Here and there,
#3New Post! Feb 28, 2009 @ 01:41:09
It's tough to add things up properly when you don't know the math required to do so.
jck200 On April 22, 2009




cardiff, United Kingdom
#4New Post! Mar 01, 2009 @ 23:00:03
Some brilliant posts on the actual topic as usual.

john
crazychica On March 13, 2011
A taste of insanity





Aberdeen, United Kingdom
#5New Post! Mar 01, 2009 @ 23:11:25
The solutions aren't always perfect. Let's step away from flowers from a moment since my understanding of biology is better when it comes to humans than to flowers. One good example would be the gene which causes sickle cell anaemia. Genes can be dominant or recessive. For a recessive gene to show on the organism, the DNA of the organism must contain 2 of that gene. If there is a dominant and a recessive gene in a person's DNA set then the dominant gene is the one which affects the person.

Now, some genes are neither dominant or recessive to an alternative form of that gene and instead the pair work at the same time. One example is pink flowers on some plants when the genes for white and red flowers are combined. In humans, the gene for sickle cells is one example of this. When combined with the gene for normal haemoglobin, it provides a resistance to the malaria parasite. However, if 2 recessive genes are combined then the sickle cells cause blood clots and anaemia and can cause early death, obviously not beneficial. This gene solves one problem but causes another.
jck200 On April 22, 2009




cardiff, United Kingdom
#6New Post! Mar 02, 2009 @ 00:51:06
chica,

Thank you for that information. I am not at all as well informed about actual gene biology.

Part of my problem is the direction of a simplistic change as outlined by you over a substantial time resulting in a highly complicated copy of something with absolutely no understanding of that same something by the flower or animal.

A nasty biting fish farms other smaller fish by just eating small bits of their fins and one enterprising fish has now developed a fin that is a perfect copy of a highly complicated oceanic plant leaf. This ingenious evolution allows the small fish to live among the plant undetected.

I am sure you have seen the sea horse that does the same sort of thing and I am saying the time for this to happen by chance and the perfection defies the odds when all these amazing changes are considered as a whole.

Say the first few changes happen by chance when it hardly resmembles the leaf at all apart from being the same sort of greenish colour...now it has millions of chances of turning the outsides of that fin to another colour but manages to get the slight change in colour perfectly correct over the next few thousand years.

The leaf itself has a complicated coloured pattern on some parts and a serrated type edging.

Fish can become extinct in one area waiting for all the changes to occur due to predator, disease and global climatic conditions.

It is amost like locking you in a room and expecting you to come up with a certain designers exact cloth pattern for the following year.

A fish and a flower locked in a room would have no chance but they may as well be locked in a room for all they are aware of concerning patterns required.

It happens, so there is no dispute it has been an evolutionary thing but I am saying the mathematical odds of all the most amazing copy techniques must mean that information between these things and what they are replicating must somehow be included.

john
crazychica On March 13, 2011
A taste of insanity





Aberdeen, United Kingdom
#7New Post! Mar 02, 2009 @ 09:07:12
@jck200 Said

chica,

Thank you for that information. I am not at all as well informed about actual gene biology.

Part of my problem is the direction of a simplistic change as outlined by you over a substantial time resulting in a highly complicated copy of something with absolutely no understanding of that same something by the flower or animal.

A nasty biting fish farms other smaller fish by just eating small bits of their fins and one enterprising fish has now developed a fin that is a perfect copy of a highly complicated oceanic plant leaf. This ingenious evolution allows the small fish to live among the plant undetected.

I am sure you have seen the sea horse that does the same sort of thing and I am saying the time for this to happen by chance and the perfection defies the odds when all these amazing changes are considered as a whole.

Say the first few changes happen by chance when it hardly resmembles the leaf at all apart from being the same sort of greenish colour...now it has millions of chances of turning the outsides of that fin to another colour but manages to get the slight change in colour perfectly correct over the next few thousand years.

The leaf itself has a complicated coloured pattern on some parts and a serrated type edging.

Fish can become extinct in one area waiting for all the changes to occur due to predator, disease and global climatic conditions.

It is amost like locking you in a room and expecting you to come up with a certain designers exact cloth pattern for the following year.

A fish and a flower locked in a room would have no chance but they may as well be locked in a room for all they are aware of concerning patterns required.

It happens, so there is no dispute it has been an evolutionary thing but I am saying the mathematical odds of all the most amazing copy techniques must mean that information between these things and what they are replicating must somehow be included.

john



Evolution is not conscious thing. Flowers don't decide they want to be pink and fish don't decide they want to be bigger. It's nothing to with them really. Think of it this way. Your cells are replicating right now. They're making new skin cells, retinal cells, kidney cells etc. They're even making new sperm cells. So let's go there. The process of DNA replication isn't always perfect. Occasionally, there's a mistake. You could wind up with AGTCGGAC becoming AGTCAGTCGGAC or AGTGGAC or AGTAGGAC. Just small mistakes like these and they can be the difference between producing healthy blood cells or sickle-shaped blood cells.

It happens in everyone, in all of your body and it can sometimes cause cancers. But the only ones affecting your offspring are the mother cells which produce your sperm. So let's say there's a mistake in the coding passed on to your offspring. The replicated DNA set has a mistake in it. So in theory you have 3 cells with the "normal" gene and one cell with the new code in that gene. It turns out that that gene gives your child a better resistance to the H5N1 virus. When there's a pandemic, they survive to pass on this new gene and this gene sould be passed on to 50% of their offspring. Since people without this resistance are more likely to die then it means that these genes can pass through a small population in a long time, giving new features.

Now, there was nothing consciously good in this new gene. You did nothing to make a new gene and you weren't conscious of it when you passed it on and probably weren't even when the bird flu pandemic hit. But let's say this gene also has a downside. Let's say that it causes a severe form of asthma. Without inhalers, it is very likely that your child would die before passing on that new gene, not benefitting the population at all and natural selection would probably not favour it, were it not for modern medicine, so the gene would die out of the population quickly and you would not have passed on a useful gene.
jonnythan On August 02, 2014
Bringer of rad mirth


Deleted



Here and there,
#8New Post! Mar 02, 2009 @ 13:09:49
DNA transcoding mechanisms are astoundingly bad. Without the robust error checking built-in, no strand of DNA would ever be perfectly copied.
jck200 On April 22, 2009




cardiff, United Kingdom
#9New Post! Mar 03, 2009 @ 00:25:11
chica,

I am impressed at your age you propogate your replies with factual and informative explanations.

The non-descript mutations and the natural disposal of any such mutation that was negative is fine for reasonable evolution and I am at pains to point out it is way beyond this that my concern refects.

For example over time birds evolving flight is acceptable as that merely requires a mutation of limbs in a progression to benefit running animals trying to escape larger fast predators.

A fin which has copied in perfect detail an ocean plant cannot be chance with each minute change needing to be perfect is akin to you in a closed room being asked to make a perfect copy of a tapestry you have never seen.

Because there are millions of such detailed evolutionary things I do not think anyone has stopped to consider the mathematical combinations in total required to achieve this level of complex copy.

See, if just the odd thing had managed this trick by some miracle of chance we could say that is likely but with millions of such evolutionary contraptions it cannot be chance.

Somehow, someway the genetic coding knows for certain what is required for each thing.

I have no idea how this would be possible but I am saying without this access to specific information as to what level of perfect copy is required it cannot be done by chance.

Again if you simply had to fit pieces of a jigsaw together blindfolded you could probably do it by touch but to then still blindfolded say what the finished picture is is beyond reasonable expectations by pure chance.

I hope you can understand where the mathematical problem lies with this explanation as the majority of people posting seem to have great difficultry grasping my meaning at times.

Basically if some method is available for DNA to develop mutations specifically then every evolutionary step would also be more than mere chance.


Thank you for your excellent replies anyway.

john
crazychica On March 13, 2011
A taste of insanity





Aberdeen, United Kingdom
#10New Post! Mar 03, 2009 @ 13:54:14
@jck200 Said

chica,

I am impressed at your age you propogate your replies with factual and informative explanations.

The non-descript mutations and the natural disposal of any such mutation that was negative is fine for reasonable evolution and I am at pains to point out it is way beyond this that my concern refects.

For example over time birds evolving flight is acceptable as that merely requires a mutation of limbs in a progression to benefit running animals trying to escape larger fast predators.

A fin which has copied in perfect detail an ocean plant cannot be chance with each minute change needing to be perfect is akin to you in a closed room being asked to make a perfect copy of a tapestry you have never seen.

Because there are millions of such detailed evolutionary things I do not think anyone has stopped to consider the mathematical combinations in total required to achieve this level of complex copy.

See, if just the odd thing had managed this trick by some miracle of chance we could say that is likely but with millions of such evolutionary contraptions it cannot be chance.

Somehow, someway the genetic coding knows for certain what is required for each thing.

I have no idea how this would be possible but I am saying without this access to specific information as to what level of perfect copy is required it cannot be done by chance.

Again if you simply had to fit pieces of a jigsaw together blindfolded you could probably do it by touch but to then still blindfolded say what the finished picture is is beyond reasonable expectations by pure chance.

I hope you can understand where the mathematical problem lies with this explanation as the majority of people posting seem to have great difficultry grasping my meaning at times.

Basically if some method is available for DNA to develop mutations specifically then every evolutionary step would also be more than mere chance.


Thank you for your excellent replies anyway.

john



The genetic coding does not know what is required and people have sat and done the maths on this, you can count on that. It is not down to chance. Natural selection is the part that gives birds decent wings and fish strong fins. Any creature with anything less tends to die before reproducing. There is nothing "concscious" behind it and mutations don't happen to suit the conditions. There have been billions of years for these changes to happen (the first recognisable life-form came into existance around 3.5 billion years ago). That's a very long time for all of this to happen. This is stretching on my time and patience here so I'll just suggest that you do some reading, particularly Dawkins (not the God Delusion though).
jck200 On April 22, 2009




cardiff, United Kingdom
#11New Post! Mar 03, 2009 @ 19:05:39
chica,

Really I can do the maths in my head on the specific points I have emphasised and allowed for a few miracles but not millions and this is simply not a matter of improving naturally.

As far as your time is concerned it takes me less than a minute to type a reply and if you think this is too much then of course for you it is too much trouble.

While I appreciate those giving me their point of view I do not take kindly to them demanding I also take their view.

What you said is fine but it is standard theory and my question is not about the standard it is to do with the perfect copy scenario which has not been answered with anything that leads me to think the standard represents the particular evolutionary probabilities I specify.

Now I am not demanding you change your mind far from it, either you can work out how a particular copy can reach perfection simply by small genetic mutations that naturally allow perfect copy or you accept the standard without working it out.

Your choice, be my guest.

john
jck200 On April 22, 2009




cardiff, United Kingdom
#12New Post! Mar 03, 2009 @ 19:27:33
chica,

One more small point, I am a lateral logical thinker so well capable of working things out for myself rather than reading what someone else decides for me.

On the other hand you have read up on this so what you gave was the best answer based on what you have read so rather pointless me reading the same stuff.

When I am finished posting on a thread I never bow out saying unless everyone accepts my opinions they are wasting my time because it is only from opposite opinions will I get the opportunity to look at all sides.

I am not looking for any one sided arguement based on a bias of any kind.

john
crazychica On March 13, 2011
A taste of insanity





Aberdeen, United Kingdom
#13New Post! Mar 03, 2009 @ 21:14:23
@jck200 Said

chica,

Really I can do the maths in my head on the specific points I have emphasised and allowed for a few miracles but not millions and this is simply not a matter of improving naturally.

As far as your time is concerned it takes me less than a minute to type a reply and if you think this is too much then of course for you it is too much trouble.

While I appreciate those giving me their point of view I do not take kindly to them demanding I also take their view.

What you said is fine but it is standard theory and my question is not about the standard it is to do with the perfect copy scenario which has not been answered with anything that leads me to think the standard represents the particular evolutionary probabilities I specify.

Now I am not demanding you change your mind far from it, either you can work out how a particular copy can reach perfection simply by small genetic mutations that naturally allow perfect copy or you accept the standard without working it out.

Your choice, be my guest.

john


That's because I only really know standard theory. I haven't read up on it as much as you think I have but one my lecturers specialises in this stuff and never misses an opertunity to talk about it. I suggested reading up because this is not maths, as you seem to think and these people are experts on the subject, unlike me and I think you should learn a bit more about it.

And by the way, our genes are far from perfect, as I have tried to explain. Most of it is "junk" DNA, not useless but hardly the most useful coding out there. It does not reach perfection but rather, the number of variations are whittled down by natural selction. Deer which can't run are killed by wolves or foxes or other predators. Birds with wonky wings can't fly properly and fall to their deaths. It's not a case of knowing what is needed and reaching perfection as those with parts not built to function the way the organism needs them to quickly fall prey to "nature", as my step-dad likes to put it.

@jck200 Said

chica,

One more small point, I am a lateral logical thinker so well capable of working things out for myself rather than reading what someone else decides for me.

On the other hand you have read up on this so what you gave was the best answer based on what you have read so rather pointless me reading the same stuff.

When I am finished posting on a thread I never bow out saying unless everyone accepts my opinions they are wasting my time because it is only from opposite opinions will I get the opportunity to look at all sides.

I am not looking for any one sided arguement based on a bias of any kind.

john



I'm not being biased, but the evidence supports it and I have to listen to the evidence. The evidence is compelling and strong, and you have shown that you do not truly understand it. Evolution is not about reaching "perfection" of any kind, but rather organisms which suit their enviroment, for example, long fur in cold climates, out-surviving organisms which cannot handle such conditions. That is the meaning of "survival of the fittest", that those who, by mutations in the DNA, are suited to certain conditions will survive for longer in those conditions.
jck200 On April 22, 2009




cardiff, United Kingdom
#14New Post! Mar 04, 2009 @ 01:53:42
chika,

I am happy with your posts but if you make a point and then it either does not agree with my logic or it refects that it does not relate to a point I have made...what do you suggest I do then?

Would you like me to agree with you?

Would you rather I did not point out any errors regarding a conflict in what I am saying and what you are implying?

See, if you want to debate further it depends on being able to accept opinions that have not come directly from your teacher.

An expert knows everything and is never wrong so there are no experts.

What we have are people who know what they know and do not know anything they do not know.

It is not what they know I question it is what they don`t know.

If you believe you only have to listen to an expert to have an expert opinion and disregard any opinion apart from that then so be it.

It is the very fact DNA is not perfect that is the problem, the copy is perfect and not simply a natural survival of the fittest thing at all.

A sea-horse would become extinct before evolution of a perfect replica of differing colours of coral were copied exactly. Tiny changes that are absolutely nothing like the finished product as in the gradual progression of wings capable of flight.

Highly complicated patterns require more than a chance genetic mutation over and over because as you say at each stage the gene has no idea of what the finished copied pattern should be so could easily retrograde a million times on the evolutionary road.

Evolution as I said in my original post is not really an interest of mine but the perfect copy and such like is of interest to me because that alone does not fit into the normal evolutionary trends.

It is this evolution within the whole of evolution that particularly stretches the limit of logical reason that chance alone could find the patterns for millions of life forms to perfection.

As you will know getting any eye to evolve is actually fairly simplistic and is nothing at all like getting a certain pattern and shape to match an already existing pattern and shape.

I use mathematics purely to comprehende the chance of something to happen logically as I find I have an excellent grasp in this direction.

If the fish has 1% correct of the pattern the next 1% has countless chances to go wrong and hardly any chance of getting it right and that is only on the first 2% so when it gets even more % the odds run into billions and billions about adding another 1% perfectly.

It is more like the lottery, any 6 from 7 is 7 but when you add another 1 then the odds jump dramatically and this gets worse each time you add another number.

6 from 49 is just under 14 million but that would hardly represent getting the next bit right after the fish getting the first 1% right. As the evolution is a direct response to increased predator activity the cosy option of going through all 14 million mutations to make sure the next 1% is correct is totally beyond reasonable thinking.

I am not comparing what I am saying to something that has a more natural progression but how anyone can see a natural progression for some highly complicated patterns without any information for the mutations to go on is not quite how I see it.

I tell you what, you tell me how a little old lady shut away in a cottage knitting manages to copy exactly the complicated pattern I have on a jumper?

In 14 billion years she would never get it perfectly right or anywhere near it.

That is the real mathematics so no one has worked them out properly before.

Right, I am posting because each time I post I am actually saying something new and not repeating standard theory but if all I could do was repeat standard theory then I would stop posting unless I was able to start thinking beyond the standard theory and coming up with something original to say but that is how I am and not everyone is like me which I understand.


john
crazychica On March 13, 2011
A taste of insanity





Aberdeen, United Kingdom
#15New Post! Mar 04, 2009 @ 12:36:36
1) Exactly. It;s because the DNa is not copied perfectly that we get things like cycstic fibrosis. The sea horse thing is a good example. They don't always have the right colours and the ones that don't DO die, that's why the gene doesn't get passed around so much. There are millions of examples of this out there. That's why it's called natural selection so your old lady anology is perfectly wrong.

2) As for no-one even sitting down and doing the maths, have you never heard of Lord Kelvin? He argued against evolution, having worked out that this would need billions of years to happen, but believing that the Earth was only thousands of years old. Guess what, he was wrong about it. Experts are experts because they know more than anyone else about their subject, but, as researchers, they know what they don't know and they work on trying to find out. That is science. Now, I am unsubscribing to this thread and I don't care what you say after this because you are not getting what I'm trying to say. All I can say is to read up because you don't know as much as you think you know.
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