Posted on 04/28/2008 5:21:00 AM PDT by Hank Kerchief
"A species is a population that cannot produce fertile offspring with another population. A number of new species have been created in the lab, populations which are reproductively isolated from their parent populations."
Um, this is what I told YOU last time. It appears that you are hampered by your emotion (a common problem within darwinism) which is interfering with your ability to read and understand.
You're wrong about darwinism being proven by ANYTHING scientific; no matter what you think supports the lie of darwinism, in FACT it doesn't. Don't slam me for my position, which I gleaned from principles published and promulgated by myriad THINKING folks within the scientific community, just because you are confused by inference and assumption.
BTW, engineering is applied science; without science, engineering wouldn't exist. For you to tell me I'm not scientific because I'm an engineer is as uninformed a position as is darwinism. Additionally, one of my many academic honor society memberships is in a pure science, so don't make assumptions regarding my scientific qualifications....oh, that's right; you're a darwinist, so your whole thinking process revolves around (baseless) assumption. Oops!
I wonder if you are truly a scientist, because it boggles the mind to think that if you were you would still make such erroneous assertions regarding so-called "proof" of darwinism, a THEORY based soley on (as stated previously) inference and assumption, not scientific fact.
No offense meant; just wondering. This is my last interaction - I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with someone so blinded by inference and assumption that they are only half equipped. BT SK
Nothing in Science is ever “Proven” it is accepted provisionally due to the weight of evidence.
Obviously you know nothing about Science. I know Science is the “new hotness” and even shampoo wants to wash your hair “scientifically”; but Engineering is not Science and you obviously know very little about the Scientific method or the terms used in Science.
Why are you ashamed to be an Engineer? Isn't that good enough? You have to try to pass Engineering off as a Science?
BTTT
Maybe your source doesn’t know as much as you suppose.
Maybe your source doesn’t.
Hank
I'll stick with my source, it is peer reviewed, replicable, and has received much corroboration.
Your source is a bad joke who cannot even be upfront about her qualifications.
Genetically all human beings are of the same species, regardless of whether or not they're reproductively fertile -- science looks at populations, not individuals, and no population of humans is reproductively isolated from any other. Your second question is a legal one, not a scientific one. I'm not a lawyer but I seriously doubt you'd have much of a case arguing that infertile people aren't human beings.
Evolution is a religion and a false one, I’d call that a pretty big problem.
I would still like to know how, and if, ring species are 1 specie or 2.
Just read the article and am, to be generous, not favorably impressed due to tripping over errors every few words.
DNA does not code for triglycerides.
Eukaryotes are not just “multi celled organisms”.
Point mutations are not “almost always deleterious”.
There are more neutral mutations than beneficial or detrimental.
Recombination is not usually either neutral or deleterious, instead it is so beneficial that recombination is a major reason sexual reproduction is maintained instead of the more efficient asexual route.
Female gametes do undergo mutation (both eyebrows raised at the counter-claim).
New alleles are not required to be dominant.
We have observed speciation.
Wow. Ow. The pain. She apparently does not understand enantiomers. The directionality of an alpha helix is controlled by the stereochemistry of the amino acids involved, and that is controlled by biosynthesis. Same with DNA. It *can’t not* twist the way it does. Whee! Grab two complimentary DNA strands, drop them in buffer, heat, cool slowly, and watch them spontaneously match up and coil into a right-handed helix. That happens all on its own because that’s the lowest energy conformation.
“This does not, of itself, prove the Hox box does in fact control limb structure, since the product of the mutant gene is a shortened form of the required protein, therefore unrecognizable to the body and possibly treated as many other toxic elements are and consigned to the furthest limbs.”
Pardon me but, ZOMG WTF LOL?? Homeobox genes do in fact control body patterning, the truncated Hox gene would not be “unrecognizable to the body”, merely unable to interact with its substrates, and organisms do not ship toxins out to their extremities (”Hmm, this looks poisonous. I guess instead of letting it go on its way to the liver to be detoxified I’ll ship it to my hand. Who needs hands anyway.”)
“There is no genetic evidence which demonstrates the final skeletal form is purely and solely genetically driven.”
No one ever said that the skeleton was “purely and solely genetically driven”. Our skeletons are constantly modified by the stresses we place upon them (which is why astronauts have to worry about osteoporosis as their relatively unstressed bones are broken down by osteoclasts) but genetics!! pretty much is what runs the basic structure.
“That it is a combination of factors, including the environment which the forms develop in, which directs the final shape, and that the shape found in all animals, (with a series of minor variations) is so, not because of “descent” from a common ancestor, but because in the environment of this world, it cannot take another.”
She can’t even come up with something original. Evolutionists have studied distributions in morphospace and determined that some body plans are not possible to reach from current body plans or just plain not possible. However, the fossil record clearly demonstrates evolution of body plans.
All in all, massively error-filled, not the work of an expert. I would say she’s an educated layman, and an excellent example of the saying, “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
Well, educated in the sense of “Hey, I’ve heard of Hox genes!”
It wasn’t that much of a torment, after I got into it it was pretty amusing. My favorite part is the external control of alpha helix and B-form DNA coiling. :-D
A yeoman's effort and it should be put out there. I went with the first and last examples of her errors that stuck in my mind; you gave it a much more comprehensive treatment.
Maybe they will say you are being “postmodern” for the very non-postmodern comments that her views are not reflective of any objective reality - and in fact contradict it.
It might be more appropriate to post a link.
posting identical texts to multiple threads makes for unnecessary redundancy.
Well, as I think you know (otherwise you wouldn't be asking the question), the taxonomy of ring species is difficult and the subject of considerable debate.
One possible answer is that species are not equivalence classes; i.e. “same species” is simply a non-transitive relation.
Polar bears are mutated grizzly bears which are mutated black bears which are mutated brown bears, (If I have my order right). They can interbreed and have viable, fertile offspring, which is the definition of a single species.
So why do we call them different species?
The same is true for wolves, coyotes, dogs and dingoes. They can all interbreed and have viable, fertile offspring. (The N. American red wolf is nearly extinct from interbreeding with coyotes. The Australian dingo is disappearing from interbreeding with domestic dogs.)
Zebras and donkeys, horses and jackasses can interbreed but their offspring are sterile, so they are considered separate species. Same is true of lions and tigers.
However, cheetahs are still considered 'felines' but cannot breed with anything else. Their claws don't retract, a required characteristic for the 'feline' familiy.
So why aren't cheetahs considered a 'transitional form' to a new species? Which they clearly are.
In this case they would be a 'mutation' that was positive in its context, a branch of superior survivor, that refutes the proposition that mutations are 'almost' always negative. That 'almost' is the problem, isn't it. As my grandfather used to say, the exception proves the rule, and in this case the rule is found wanting.
Same is true of a tick, which is really an arachnoid, in the familiy of spiders. Recent DNA found the same thing was true of centipedes and millipedes. Which makes sense since they are poisonous and insects are not. But they are not insects as previously thought.
The problem here is a matter of epistemology, definition and reification. People tend to think that the WORD makes the thing, rather than the thing making the word. Words come from observation, they don't create the object, they define it.
"Species" are mental buckets by which we "define" objects in reality, but they are not that reality.
The "four ways that genomic variations occur" doesn't mean that such variations are limited to those four, just the four buckets we have defined so far.
Or, as in the terms of a new phrase I learned just today:
All generalizations are false. {What FUN !!!}
It is true that there can be no final determination of the truth in our lifetimes, if ever, of the nature of how life came about on this planet. In that regard, one can only proceed from available evidence.
If one does not accept fossil evidence for the apparent progression of life on this planet, so be it. But that doesn't prove any other theory valid.
If one proposes a hypothesis that is incapable of verification by its very definition, then no one has to take that hypothesis seriously, even if others do.
And if a hypothesis proposes neither of the former, then that cannot be ruled out either.
The fact is the truth may be something that has yet to be proposed. Well, I did propose such a thing formerly, but nobody wanted to hear it.
Nobody is going to want to hear the Hewitt Conjecture !! either but I would submit it has a flaw.
Convergent evolution is actually what you mean when you say:
"That it is a combination of factors, including the environment which the forms develop in, which directs the final shape, and that the shape found in all animals, (with a series of minor variations) is so, not because of “descent” from a common ancestor, but because in the environment of this world, it cannot take another.
You have just defined evolution, not refuted it. If the environment "defines the final shape" this implies a less perfect shape that preceeded it, or there could be no "final shape". (A cheetah, a cat with no retractable claws, a more perfect "final shape" that what is needed for a lion or a panther.)
Finally:
"A huge variety of human artefacts, flint tools and bones identical to homo sapiens sapiens have been found in strata confidendently dated to the mid-Pliocene - 3.5 million years ago. A Professor of Geology found, in the lower Pliocene strata of Castelnodolo, near Brescia, a complete human skeleton indistinguishable from that of a modern woman. The staining in the bones, the depth and number of different strata above the skeleton and its position made it very highly unlikely it could have been a more recent burial. The inescapable conclusion is that this speciment of homo sapiens sapiens was walking around 3.5 million years ago."
Ok, so do you accept fossil evidence or don't you. If every species always existed, (an earlier assertion) then why not 50 million years ago? 100 million years ago? Where do you draw the line?
And if you draw the line the hypothesis falls.
Something came from something and there were no mammals 200 million years ago. So where did they come from?
Logic is a terrible thing to waste (as this article proved).
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