El Blanko
Don't get it.
That's because you cling to one idea of god, the super duper christian god. Allow to be removed all that proves to be wrong. What gets left over, no matter how different from your preconceptions, may be the the truth.
S
Evidence for evolution, Installment 2: Cytochrome c
by seattleniceguy 53 Replies latest jw friends
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Satanus
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El blanko
That's because you cling to one idea of god, the super duper christian
I didn't state my belief in the nature of God, but you are partially correct and yes, I think ' the Christian' idea of God is not a terrible concept.
Certainly my mind gravitates towards that idea, although I have attempted to embrace the idea of a God that is living energy passing through all things seen and unseen.
Allow to be removed all that proves to be wrong.
That is a little difficult when we are discussing metaphysical issues. I may feel there is a God, or say that 'I know', but how can I truly define the nature of God in an absolute sense? Impossible.
Thanks for the thoughts
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seattleniceguy
El blanko,
I guess I am a little confused about your actual position. Near the top of the thread, it seemed obvious that you were being facetious when you said,
What about unobserved mechanisms?
I like to believe in fairy tales.
But here it seems as though you may have been serious when you wrote that? Not sure exactly.
At any rate, keep in mind that evolution and God are not mutually exclusive. As pointed out, evolution and Chritianity are unless you intend to do a lot of mental backflips. But the evidence I'm discussing in this series is only evidence of two things:
- Organisms change over time (evolution)
- All living organisms known today are geneologically related (common descent)
Where God fits into that picture is a philisophical question. But that's okay. The important thing in my mind is that we accept and grow with new data instead of resisting it. Clearly, this new data has implications for God. But, if s/he exists, the real God is certainly not threatened by humans learning more about how the world did and did not come to be. In fact, if s/he does exist, I'd rather hope s/he'd be beaming with pride as we slowly unravel these secrets.
Just my two cents.
SNG
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Whiskeyjack
SNG,
Again, thanks for all the hard work in presenting this material. Looking forward to next week's installment. I just came across some AlanF's posts on the "creation book" yesterday in regards to the misquote issue-unbelievable (well, sadly it is too believable of the org.)! I'm embarassed that I "placed" a couple of those back when it came out in the eighties.
Presently, I think the "super Aliens" (a la Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey) theory holds as much water as any of the others (no, I'm not a Trekkie!).
T
W.
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SixofNine
btw, SNG, could you post these installments on Tuesday evenings around 7:30 pm Central time? That would really be comforting to me :P~
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seattleniceguy
Whiskeyjack,
Glad you're liking the series. I figure this is something that will help me be regimented about continuing to study biology/evolution, and hopefully it will be a long-term contribution to the board as well.
Presently, I think the "super Aliens" (a la Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey) theory holds as much water as any of the others (no, I'm not a Trekkie!).
The thing about the universe that is both confounding and beautiful is that we cannot see what happens outside of it. It's as though we are in a sealed box. We are able to learn a great deal about the mechanisms inside the box, but we can only speculate about what might exist (if anything) outside of it. Clearly, evolution is one of the most fundamental processes that happens inside the box. Outside of it, perhaps there is a God or gods, perhaps there are aliens (and how would these differ from "gods" anyhow?), or perhaps there is nothing.
Although I am agnostic out of principle (to me, it is illogical to hold a belief in something for which there is no data), I like to speculate that the universe is a deterministic machine that happens to be the fastest way possible of calculating a particular end-state, much like we might use a very powerful computer to determine a discrete but unknown value, such as the trillionth digit of pi. Obviously, this is only sci-fi imagination, but it makes for interesting discussion.
SNG
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seattleniceguy
LOL @ Six!
SNG
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hooberus
There really isn't much a creationist can do to counter such evidence.
I hope to (Lord willing) shortly provide a response to this thread.
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hooberus
The protein we'll be discussing today is called cytochrome c. This protein is absolutely essential for life - no creature can live without it. Interestingly, this particular protein can take an incredibly large number of different forms. For example, cytochrome c in yeast is 40% different than in humans. How do we even know we're talking about the same protein? Because when we take the cytochrome c out of yeast, and insert cytochrome c from a human, it works as expected. But it's not just human cytochrome c that works in yeast:
The cytochrome c genes from tuna (fish), pigeon (bird), horse (mammal), Drosophila fly (insect), and rat (mammal) all function in yeast that lack their own native yeast cytochrome c ( Clements et al. 1989 ; Hickey et al. 1991 ; Koshy et al. 1992 ; Scarpulla and Nye 1986 ).
Notice that the cytochrome c from various different classes of animal all worked in yeast. This demonstrates the fact that there are many different possible varieties of cytochrome c which are all functionally equivalent. As it turns out, analysis of this particular protein has revealed that the majority of the amino acids can be swapped out with other amino acids and still make a functional cytochrome c protein.
The number of different possible functional versions of cytochrome c is staggering:
Hubert Yockey has done a careful study in which he calculated that there are a minimum of 2.3 x 10 93 possible functional cytochrome c protein sequences, based on these genetic mutational analyses ( Hampsey et al. 1986 ; Hampsey et al. 1988 ; Yockey 1992 , Ch. 6, p. 254). For perspective, the number 10 93 is about one billion times larger than the number of atoms in the visible universe. Thus, functional cytochrome c sequences are virtually unlimited in number.
The number of different possible functional versions of cyctochrome c sequences calculted by Yockey is staggering (2.3 x 10 93 ). However, Yockeys calculations also show that when compared to the number of of possible sequences of the same length as cyctochrome c (110 amino acid length 2.0 x 10 137 possible sequences) that functional cyctochrome c sequences are exceedingly rare.
2.3 x 10 93 1.15 x 10 137 = 2.0 x 10 -44
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hooberus
Since there is an outrageous number of possible functional cytochrome c proteins, then if species are not related in an evolutionary sense, then we should expect to find random variations in their cytochrome c protein sequences. We should not see any patterns of relatedness in the cytochrome c sequences for different species.
I have a problem with this line of reasoning. The reasoning is that if common descent is not true that then we should expect random variation is the sequences.* This line of reasoning imples that a creator would be expected to use a purely random set of cyctochrome c sequences for the different created kinds/species. This certainly is not a provable assumption (and seems unlikely).
*This might be a valid assumption only if the alternative to common descent were some form of spontaneous generation of species by purely unguided natural process (something that virtually no one advocates).