Evolution is a Fact #6 - Human Chromosome 2

by cofty 24 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  slimboyfat

  I bought a book about evolutionary psychology last week. Is it a reputable science?

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Evolutionary-Psychology-Louise-Barrett/dp/0333725581/
  

  Don't forget cats. Aren't they worth talking about for evolution? There are 40 kinds of cats. I've seen 17 of them. Cats are my favourite. I'm sure there must be something intersting about cats. Do you know which cat has the most powerful jaw? A jaguar. They look similar to leopards, but the strength of their jaws and a few other things set jaguars apart. Amazing cats.
• 

  cofty

  That book looks interesting. Please share a summary when you have time.
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  slimboyfat

  I only read the pages about sex. Don't know if I'll get to rest. So far I learned that men like women whose waists are 0.7 the size of their hips. But the question is is this universal or culturally specific? Apparently in poorer societies men simply prefer fatter women, whereas in wealthy societies men prefer women with the 0.7 waist to hips ratio. The reason might be that the first priority is to find a female who is properly nourished. When that's no longer an issue then the 0.7 ratio becomes significant maybe because it correlates with women who can breast feed well. It's easy to read but it could do with more pictures.
• 

  Beth Sarim

  I liked reading somewhere about Polar Bears. How they might have been at one time like any bear and evolved into what they are, in Polar Bears. How genetics takes over, the bodies of creatures and homo sapiens adapts to its environment.

  Similar to people who live in the tropic zones. In latitudes between 23.5N and 23.5S. Skin colour takes on a darker tone over time along with hair and such.
• 

  slimboyfat

  Come to think about it, understandably most of the book is about sex, just some parts more explicitly.

  Another thing I remember now. It says when women reach 35 they begin to habitually conceal their age in online dating profiles. The reason they do this is because many/most men routinely filter out women over 35, but when they are "tricked" into meeting an older woman many men "settle" for the older woman in real life. It also said that women who conceal their age are much pickier than those who don't. Plus women unwittingly give away their own age when specifying which men they are interested in meeting. A woman who is interested in meeting men who are aged 40 to 55 for example are 99 times out of 100 aged at the starting end of the range themselves - about 40 - regardless of what they've said about their age elsewhere.
• 

  Crazyguy

  When I say a video about this, it was the final nail in the coffin that evolution is a fact no longer speculation.
• 

  Landy

  • Another thing I remember now. It says when women reach 35 they begin to habitually conceal their age in online dating profiles. The reason they do this is because many/most men routinely filter out women over 35, but when they are "tricked" into meeting an older woman many men "settle" for the older woman in real life. It also said that women who conceal their age are much pickier than those who don't. Plus women unwittingly give away their own age when specifying which men they are interested in meeting. A woman who is interested in meeting men who are aged 40 to 55 for example are 99 times out of 100 aged at the starting end of the range themselves - about 40 - regardless of what they've said about their age elsewhere.

  • I sense some bitterness there SBF :)
• 

  ILoveTTATT2

  More info on this:
  
  http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm
• 

  Saename

  Recently I heard someone argue that the vestigial telomeres in chromosome 2 don't exist in the numbers an "evolutionist" would expect. Those vestigial telomeres, he argued, also supposedly degenerated far more than, again, an "evolutionist" would expect. Therefore, they're not vestigial telomeres but telomeric sequences found throughout chromosomes. Here's what he specifically said:

  To address the science, though, the fusion was supposedly a telomere-telomere fusion, the first documented aside from in cancer cells: “Fusion of telomeres is a rare occurrence in normal lymphoblasts and fibroblasts, although it has been observed in 20-30% of the cells of certain tumors, where it appears to be nonclonal (25-29) . . . The frequency with which telomere-telomere fusion has participated in chromosome evolution cannot readily be assessed. ” (http://www.pnas.org/content/88/2...). That is because the function of telomeres is typically to prevent fusion and is a highly unlikely way for fusion to actually occur at all—much less lead to a higher organism.
  
  Humans typically have 2500 repeats of the telomeric sequence TTAGGG (15,000 base pairs). Chimpanzees have telomeric sequences that are twice as long (Blood cell telomere lengths and shortening rates of chimpanzee and human females.). If there was a fusion, even if there had been degeneration, we could have expected thousands of repeats. However, another group found “Only 48% of the 127 repeats in RP11–395L14 and 46% of the 158 repeats in M73018 are perfect TTAGGG or TTGGGG units” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc...). So there were few repeats to begin with (127+158=285, ~4% of the 7500 that could be expected), and most of these were degenerate. That also forces them to raise the question “If the fusion occurred within the telomeric repeat arrays less than ∼6 Mya, why are the arrays at the fusion site so degenerate? The arrays are 14% diverged from canonical telomere repeats (not shown), whereas noncoding sequence has diverged <1.5% in the ∼6 Mya since chimpanzee and humans diverged (Chen and Li 2001)” (ibid.). They come up with several explanations, but of course they have to keep riding with the Evolution assumption and can’t admit that the data just don’t fit their assumptions because they have no other option with God excluded. The Christian response that these telomeric repeats are simply normal telomeric repeats that intersperse chromosomes and that the human chromosome, though similar (as humans and chimpanzees are also outwardly similar), is unique.
  
  Furthermore, we would expect there to be little genetic function in this region, since telomeres are not active, but are expendable parts of the chromosome that only protect the rest. On the contrary, though, the region around the fusion site is functionally quite active (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc...).

  [...]

  As I said, the vestigial telomeres don't exist nearly in the numbers one would expect, and have supposedly degenerated far more than one would expect. I find it more likely that they are just telomeric sequences that are found throughout chromosomes. Most are peri-centric (Distribution of non-telomeric sites of the (TTAGGG)n telomeric sequence in vertebrate chromosomes), about where the fusion location is supposed to be.

  What would be your response?
• 

  cofty

  Here's what he specifically said:

  Who is "he"?

  Source please.

  They come up with several explanations, but of course they have to keep riding with the Evolution assumption and can’t admit that the data just don’t fit their assumptions because they have no other option with God excluded. The Christian response that these telomeric repeats are simply normal telomeric repeats

  What explanations do "they" come up with and why specifically are those explanations not satisfactory?

  Why is a rejection of evolution by the unnamed author being equated with a "christian" response? Millions of informed chrisitians accept the fact of evolution. What he means is "the fundie response is..."

  The very first paragraph quote-mines a peer-reviewed paper the presents the genetic evidence for telomere - telomere fusion in chromosome 2 to make it sound as if the authors of the paper are saying the exact opposite.

  Typical creationist dishonesty. Having noted the rank dishonest of paragraph 1 I stopped wasting my time right there.