Posted on 07/06/2007 11:20:54 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
The study also found that these similarities were absent from fruit fly and nematode genomes, contradicting the widely held belief that organisms become more complex through evolution. The findings suggest that the ancestral animal genome was quite complex, and fly and worm genomes lost some of that intricacy as they evolved.
It’s surprising to find such a “high level of genomic complexity in a supposedly primitive animal such as the sea anemone,” Koonin told The Scientist. It implies that the ancestral animal “was already extremely highly complex, at least in terms of its genomic organization and regulatory and signal transduction circuits, if not necessarily morphologically.”
(Excerpt) Read more at the-scientist.com ...
Thanks for the ping!
On the topic of what would definitively falsify Darwinian evolution, UndauntedR wrote:
==To add to js1138’s (unanswered) response...Finding an animal whose offspring differ from it in a way unattributable to genetic variance. (i.e. Lamarckian Evo)
What do you make of this, UndauntedR?
LAMARCKISM REVISITED Normally, the fur of agouti mice is yellow, brown, or a calico-like mixture of the two, depending on the number of attached methyl groups. But when Duke University researchers Jirtle and Waterland fed folic acid and other methyl-rich supplements to pregnant mothers, despite the fact that all offspring inherited exactly the same agouti gene (i.e., with no nucleotide differences), mice who received supplements had offspring with mostly brown fur, whereas mice without supplements gave birth to mostly yellow pups with a higher susceptibility to obesity, diabetes, and cancer. The methyl groups bound to a transposon at the 5’ end of the agouti locus, thereby shutting off expression of the agouti gene, not just in the murine recipient but in its offspring as well.
https://notes.utk.edu/bio/greenberg.nsf/0/b360905554fdb7d985256ec5006a7755?OpenDocument
Thanks for the ping!
It's very interesting stuff, but it has nothing to say about whether evolution happened, or whether natural selection is the dominant cause of change in populations.
Darwin was not opposed to the concept of inheritance of acquired characteristics.
Epigenetic inheritance, however, is a far cry from the inheritance of learned behavior, or the inheritance of characteristics achieved through striving (as with the example of the giraffe).
Fortunately, science isn't judged by the care with which people write on chat forums. Lamarckian inheritance co-existed with evolution for eighty years or so. It was dropped not because it disagreed with Darwinism, but because the evidence was against it.
Epigenetic inheritance is quite unlike "lamarckian" inheritance as originally formulated.
It's the magical, flexible, unfalsifiable Super Theory!
Finding fossils sorted in the strata according to density rather than in a pattern that supports descent with modification. That would be good evidence against evolution.
==Finding fossils sorted in the strata according to density rather than in a pattern that supports descent with modification. That would be good evidence against evolution.
I’ll do you one better. How about a fossile record that:
The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:
1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;
2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed’.
Gould, S.J. (1977)
“Evolution’s Erratic Pace”
Natural History, vol. 86, May
Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am -- for I have become a major target of these practices.I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record -- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond . . .
I'm willing to be convinced. Please show me how this statement is a prediction of ID. IOW, please reply with the logical argument from the axioms of ID whose conclusion is that statement and also show that its negation is inconsistent with the theory.
Good luck getting to 1000 posts!
You might want to start by reading the OP. Here are some links for further commentary:
From the ID perspective:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/surprises-in-sea-anemone-genome/
http://www.uncommondescent.com/darwinism/frontloading-confirmed/
And now for my favorite, from a Creation Science perspective:
http://creationsafaris.com/crev200707.htm#20070708a
Unlike some evolution critics, Gould was not a liar. He did not pull quotations out of context, attempting to make them say the opposite of what they intend.
From the article linked by Dembski:
"What's exciting about this paper is that you're seeing the footprints of that ancient organization, reaching back perhaps 700 million years, which is an enormous expanse of evolution," said David Haussler of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the work.
When Dembski talks about "front-loading" is he unaware that 700 million years is just one-fifth of the history of life? He is a mathematician, isn't he?
By the way, what happened to the Cambrian "explosion"? I thought the designer zapped all this complexity into the Genome one day 500 million years ago. What is it doing showing up 200 million years prior?
And what is a creationist doing admitting to 700 million years of evolution, anyway? Do the troops in the trenches know about this?
I don't see it. Why would a Creator make His creatures so they eat each other? Even supposing that were true, it doesn't follow they need be made of common elements, at least as I understand the term.
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