Og

I want to tell you guys a little bit about how we know the evolutionary past of animals.

First off, we know that the earth is very old and that life formed a long time ago. This is from the fossil record and radioactive dating. We know the age of the universe through cosmology, interferometry and a variety of techniques that let us understand the age of things we look at when we peer into space.

Given that we understand the age of the systems involved and a general framework for when life arises based on fossil record, we can start to talk about the tree of life.

All life on earth uses DNA to encode proteins. All life is cellular in nature to some degree.

We use what is called "Homology" or genetic similarity. For example, if you look at something like a protein in the membrane of a cell that acts as a valve that can let calcium into a cell (called an ion channel) we can look at the genetic code that creates this protein.

For a little background, a protein is a series of amino acids (there are only 20 or so). Each set of 3 base pairs in your genes encodes a single amino acid. So, as your cells read the DNA, three base pairs at a time, it creates a chain of amino acids. ALL proteins are created this way. Your body is made of nucleic acids, proteins, fats, and sugars. And a few other trace elements. But a cell in your body is utterly those 4 types of molecules in complex patterns.

So what we can do is take the DNA of TODAY's life and look at how different their, in this example, ion channels are. Virtually all life uses ion channels to communicate between cells. We can then look at difference in the sequence.

The cool thing is that mutations happen at a fairly constant rate throughout time. Most mutations cause little to no change in a gene. But what these mutations can do is tell us how different two genes are in two organisms from one another. We can then talk about how closely related the components of organisms are and relate that directly to how they diverged over time.

For example, at some point in the distant past, channels that allow calcium to flow into your cells mutated and copied themselves into channels that allow sodium to flow into your cells. The channels that allow these two ions through are virtually identical except for a few small changes in their code.

By looking at the divergence across species and knowing a little bit about the environment of earth (from geology and cosmology), we can project how long two species have diverged from one another (i.e. how long ago did their common ancestor exist).

This divergence of species is principally how the age and relationship of organisms are measured. It's by comparing the sameness of their genomes.

Genetics really allowed for the map that illustrates the path of evolution.

This is how we know much about the history of life. It's not just the fossil record.

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Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
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Og

Here's an example of a paper talking about some ion channels (potassium)

http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/content/full/868/1/233

One particular graphic is:


It shows the branching of many of the potassium channels and how their divergence is mapped out back in time based on mutation analysis.

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Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

Og

People that bash evolution because they don't understand the odd behaviors of organism really don't get the depth and complexity of these systems.. They don't get the depth of our understanding of these systems either.

Denying evolution is like denying that the sky is blue or that there are other stars or that I have grandparents.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

Og

As you can see, evolution is not some sort of crackpot idea that only applies at the organism level. In order to discard the obvious nature of the "theory" of evolution (more accurate is "fact" of evolution), you have to discard all of molecular biology and all of cosmology and physics.

This really is a picture of how the world and you and I came into being. Intelligent design or creationism is not a stance. It is not based on any evidence. All evidence from molecular to behavioral and organism levels points to us as evolved organisms. You don't need the bones of the "missing link" to do this when you can show species specific homology between genomes. You can show how we share genetic sequences with bacteria.

Combine that with the realizations of the Miller Urey experiment and the understandings of cosmology and the age of the earth/universe, and you have evolution.

This is not some "stand alone theory"... To reject evolution, you have to reject the ideas that create modern medicine, put men on the moon, and create the internet that you're surfing right now.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

jaej

That is really really cool. Thanks.

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sisterX

"There is nothing conscious or intentional in the action of natural selection. A biologic species does not say to itself, 'Let me try tomorrow (or a million years from now) to grow in a different soil, or use a different food, or subsist on a different body part of a different crab.' Only a human being could make such conscious decisions. This is why the species Homo Sapiens is the apex of evolution. Natural selection is at one and the same time a blind and a creative process. Only a creative but blind process could produce, on the one hand, the tremendous biologic success that is the human species and, on the other, forms of adaptnedness as narrow and as constraining as those of the overspecialized fungus, beetle, and flies mentioned above" [Mark Ridley ed. "Evolution" Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 381].

"The organic diversity becomes, however, reasonable and understandable if the Creator has created the living world not by caprice but by evolution propelled by natural selection. It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's, method of Creation" [Ibid., p. 382].


"Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology" [Ibid., p. 387].


Albert Einstein once wrote that "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."

Why do you want to divorce one from the other OG?
You seem to want to use the idea of evolution and science to disprove the existence of a conscious creator.

sisterX

By the way I'm a creationist AND an evolutionist!
Evolution is God's METHOD of creation. Can you disprove that?

Og

This is just intentionally confusing on your part. What do you mean by God?

If you are saying that God is equivalent with the forces that direct the unfolding of the universe (as Einstein meant) then there's no problem with your stance. God is, by definition, what we observe in science. If you're referring to God is some sort of entity with a will that exists in some sense separate from the processes of the universe then your idea of god is demonstrably false as arising from an illusion that we perceive.

Guess it all just depends on what you're using in terms of God.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are

sisterX

By God I mean a concious being, in the general sense of God, the standard definition.
What is there to say that there IS a God, a Master, a King of the worlds, Judge of the day of reckoning, and Evolution is just a process he has created to bring life into being. There was a "process" to creation, cells, water, ions, atoms, protons, electrons, etc etc did not appear out of nowhere and nothing, in no time, thats why we have Time and Space, its all apart of the "process" and its all a creation of God.
Now I've confused myself (lol)

Og

OK then, this is false. You somehow think life is different than non-life. That it's something that has been "brought into being." That is your misunderstanding. Life is not different from non-life.

Your notion of an individual that is judged on the "day of reckoning" is false. Judgment can not have ultimate meaning since free will and choice and good and evil are illusions. I understand why you feel this way. You're still under the mental forces that cast us out from the garden of eden into this illusion. Your god is a guardian at the gates that keeps you in exile (metaphorically, of course).

When you realize this, you'll open your eyes and see that you were in the garden all along. Your Quran is your shackles. Your literal belief in the text is what pins your eyelids shut.

__________________
Vi veri veniversum vivus vici. (By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe)
The self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships
You & I, no distinction. - Tat Tvam Asi
Become Who You Are