Posted on 05/08/2003 10:11:06 AM PDT by Nebullis
Arlington, Va.—If the evolution of complex organisms were a road trip, then the simple country drives are what get you there. And sometimes even potholes along the way are important.
An interdisciplinary team of scientists at Michigan State University and the California Institute of Technology, with the help of powerful computers, has used a kind of artificial life, or ALife, to create a road map detailing the evolution of complex organisms, an old problem in biology.
In an article in the May 8 issue of the international journal Nature, Richard Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert Pennock, and Christoph Adami report that the path to complex organisms is paved with a long series of simple functions, each unremarkable if viewed in isolation. "This project addresses a fundamental criticism of the theory of evolution, how complex functions arise from mutation and natural selection," said Sam Scheiner, program director in the division of environmental biology at the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funded the research through its Biocomplexity in the Environment initiative. "These simulations will help direct research on living systems and will provide understanding of the origins of biocomplexity."
Some mutations that cause damage in the short term ultimately become a positive force in the genetic pedigree of a complex organism. "The little things, they definitely count," said Lenski of Michigan State, the paper's lead author. "Our work allowed us to see how the most complex functions are built up from simpler and simpler functions. We also saw that some mutations looked like bad events when they happened, but turned out to be really important for the evolution of the population over a long period of time."
In the key phrase, "a long period of time," lies the magic of ALife. Lenski teamed up with Adami, a scientist at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Ofria, a Michigan State computer scientist, to further explore ALife.
Pennock, a Michigan State philosopher, joined the team to study an artificial world inside a computer, a world in which computer programs take the place of living organisms. These computer programs go forth and multiply, they mutate and they adapt by natural selection.
The program, called Avida, is an artificial petri dish in which organisms not only reproduce, but also perform mathematical calculations to obtain rewards. Their reward is more computer time that they can use for making copies of themselves. Avida randomly adds mutations to the copies, thus spurring natural selection and evolution. The research team watched how these "bugs" adapted and evolved in different environments inside their artificial world.
Avida is the biologist's race car - a really souped up one. To watch the evolution of most living organisms would require thousands of years – without blinking. The digital bugs evolve at lightening speed, and they leave tracks for scientists to study.
"The cool thing is that we can trace the line of descent," Lenski said. "Out of a big population of organisms you can work back to see the pivotal mutations that really mattered during the evolutionary history of the population. The human mind can't sort through so much data, but we developed a tool to find these pivotal events."
There are no missing links with this technology.
Evolutionary theory sometimes struggles to explain the most complex features of organisms. Lenski uses the human eye as an example. It's obviously used for seeing, and it has all sorts of parts - like a lens that can be focused at different distances - that make it well suited for that use. But how did something so complicated as the eye come to be?
Since Charles Darwin, biologists have concluded that such features must have arisen through lots of intermediates and, moreover, that these intermediate structures may once have served different functions from what we see today. The crystalline proteins that make up the lens of the eye, for example, are related to those that serve enzymatic functions unrelated to vision. So, the theory goes, evolution borrowed an existing protein and used it for a new function.
"Over time," Lenski said, "an old structure could be tweaked here and there to improve it for its new function, and that's a lot easier than inventing something entirely new."
That's where ALife sheds light.
"Darwinian evolution is a process that doesn't specify exactly how the evolving information is coded," says Adami, who leads the Digital Life Laboratory at Caltech. "It affects DNA and computer code in much the same way, which allows us to study evolution in this electronic medium."
Many computer scientists and engineers are now using processes based on principles of genetics and evolution to solve complex problems, design working robots, and more. Ofria says that "we can then apply these concepts when trying to decide how best to solve computational problems."
"Evolutionary design," says Pennock, "can often solve problems better than we can using our own intelligence."
You've got it! Rigging is the ONLY way this theory could continue to evolve. Honestly, it's scary to know that some really buy into evolution. Then again, what else is there for an atheist to belive in? Nothing but godless evolution with absolutely NO evidence to support it. Fossils don't show ANY transitional species but maybe this computer program with fix that too.
I've struggled with this for years. First being fully indoctrinated on young earth creationism (before it had that name), then being fully indoctrinated with evolutionary naturalism.
Never have fully sorted it out, but I have reached a few conclusions.
I. The Bible is open to some limited interpretation. Day-age, for starters. Which hebrew words are used for "made"? For that matter, look at what leading Jewish theologians say about it, its vastly different that what they teach in mainstream protestant sunday school.
II. Science itself is not anti-God. It is a study of that which God has made, and can provide a multitude of lessons about the nature of God.
III. Science is limited to naturalistic assumptions. Meaning, being based on repeatable experiments, it [i]a priori[/i] excludes the miraculous. Some misunderstand this and conclude miracles are impossible. No, they are just not subject to investigation by science, because they are by their very nature non-natural, non-repeatable.
IV. The Theory of Evolution is a mixture of good and bad science, and advocated zealously by the naturalists. The naturalists seem to think that the T-of-E removes the need for a God. Ignoring the whole question of where did the universe come from in the first place.
V. The two single biggest problems for the T-of-E are macroevolution and abiogenesis.
A) Abiogenesis, that life arose from inorganic material, is, scientifically, a discipline in shambles. A lot of time and energy spent, a lot of speculations made, and so far, nothing but some impossible speculations to show for it.
Oddly ... the impossibilities are suppressed --- the cleverness of the speculation trumpeted, and in some quarters people think its already proven.
B) Macro-evolution - perhaps a bad term. I mean to say, descent with change is proven - children differ from their parents, over time this can lead to changes in a species.
But, the assumption or speculation that this accounts for the grand diveristy of all life on the planet has not been proven, and in fact, scientifically, is a huge and largely unsupported leap. Put another way: the fossil record supports this theory very poorly.
7 posted on 04/28/2003 8:03 AM PDT by FactQuest
[This ping list is for the evolution -- not creationism -- side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. To be added (or dropped), let me know via freepmail.]
If evolutionary biology really embraces these computer models and manages to shape itself into a more predictive theory as a result, the result will be a stronger scientific theory, but one far less apt as a iron with which atheistic polemeicists can brand theists as obscurantist, retrograde and anti-scientific. After all the computer runs take place inside one of the most magnificent artifacts of human craft: a computer!
Don't touch that dial. I can't, but it has been done many times on these threads. I might add that there are many intermediate modes of reproduction that are neither completely sexual or completly asexual.
evolution, as I have said many times is ANTI-SCIENCE.
The central point of science is the discovery of causes and effects and materialist evolution denies it. It proposes random events as the engine of the transformation of species.
This is totally unscientific, it is an attack on science which in order to expand human knowledge and human health and living standards needs to find the causes and effects of how our Universe functions.
Randomness answers nothing and leads to no discoveries.
In fact it opposes scientific inquiry and is a philosophical know-nothingism.
That is why evolution has been popular with the masses and virtually ignored by scientists.
It is ... pseudo-science (( link // source )) --- for morons.
With a few words such as 'survival of the fittest' and 'natural selection' it seeks to make idiots think they are knowledgeable.
We see the idiocy of evolution and evolutionists daily on these threads. That is why they all repeat the same stock phrases, throw a few links (because they cannot even understand the concepts being discussed), but never give any facts showing their theory to be what they claim it is - the center of science. If it was, they should have no problem doing so. It is not, that's why they cannot.
sop ...
The theory of evolution is just that - a theory.
g3 ...
It may be a theory, but it is not a scientifically supported theory which is what evolutionists claim it to be. Anybody can have a theory about anything. It is whether a theory is valid that is the point. So you have not given any evidence for your side. All you have done is indulge in rhetoric, but you have not shown that evolution is science or have in any way refuted my statement that evolution cannot in fact be science because of its central proposition that 'evolution just happens'. Such is not science.
539 posted on 03/13/2003 8:59 PM PST by gore3000
Really? You know where I can find this proof?
I think your reality check just bounced...
1. First segment, where YECs get to propound their principles of cosmology, universal age, and the size of the universe without resorting to any scripture, and without making any any attempt to specifically discredit evolution (and if they are offering up principles which require changing constants such as a shifting speed of light, clearly stating the scientific principles which buttress that belief, the amount of change, and the names and credentials of the scientists who postulate it).
2. Second segment, where YECs detail their criticisms of evolutionary theory, without resorting to scripture.
3. Third, YECS will get to defend their beliefs in an inerrant and short timeline of scripture by offering up their absolute proof of the events referenced in the books of Genesis and Exodus.
hmm. Where do most of them say this? Fungi have a multitude of perverse sexual practices, including up to 19, at last count, observed genders with distinct roles in a single species. Ameba can be observed having three way sex, and more, and there is a regular saturday night party where various species of microorganisms have been observed to pass around usefully altered DNA so everyone can take a toke.
Bi-sexuality is just one hugely successful variation from a population of competing DNA-exchange schemes. Think of it as a living fossil.
Oh boy, just what we need, some more idiocy posted with complete assurance.
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