What Darwin didn't know.

[Tiger Shark]

[Devil's Advocate]

This way of thinking leaves room for both evolution and religion

This way of thinking also could be construed as either too lazy or too "limited" to look for the truth....

But that's a whole other subject...

[/Devil's Advocate]

PS: I'm an athiest so A&E is all a bit of a fairy tale to me and it's about as full of holes as the best of HC Anderson....

[JewishIntent]

This way of thinking also could be construed as either too lazy or too "limited" to look for the truth....

definatly too lazy. anything that has been debated over for more than 10 years with no clear movement towards one definative answer takes too much effort for me to bother with

[Evil Moo]

Originally posted here by OverdueSpy
Since we may have learned how to extract DNA from a jellyfish, inject it into a pig embryo, and make the new little piggies glow in the dark.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Hea...ory?id=1498324

It makes me wonder... Why would a supreme being use evolution when that supreme being could just adjust the dna as seen fit?

Lol! Scientists did the same thing with Alba, a rabbit! Green Bunny From the articles I've read online, it says they used genes from a jelly-fish, but when I read it in Scientific American a long time ago, it said they did it with chloroplast from a plant. Either way, I think it's awesome. I just wish I could have had this done to my ferret.

[ark_templar]

hmm.. id just like to re state a point that some one had already made .. there are some pieces of DNA in our system that are calles junk DNA they are basically base pairs that have no function at all at least from what we can tell by their interaction. I would thus like to point out the unlikelyhood of this bieng an argument that can be used for the intellegent design case .. cause well to put it bluntly it isnt very intellegent to have what can be only described as "no-ops in a code that is supposed to be optimised for execution".

although i did like the comparison made with a computer language i guess that then the basic chemicals used called the base - pairs would be like the binary we use. Thus giving a total of 4 bases and some 4 base pairs( I'm not certain of this number its just that any combination isnt just allowed like A only with T and C only with G if im correct I had studied this about .. 2 years back).

that also however brings to mind an interesting observation that if DNA is code then would we call RNA a script. (a joke i guess)

just my two cents.

[Relyt]

The complete set of instructions that determines how you are made is called your "genome". A copy of this set is found in every one of your 100,000,000,000,000 cells. It is packaged into 23 pairs of chromsomes which is made up of 3,000,000,000 base pairs.

We commonly call this our DNA. In shape, the DNA resembles a twisted ladder of such called a "double helix". Just as a ladder has rungs so does the DNA. Only these rungs are called base pairs.

The structure of the DNA molecule itself is identical among all living things, from an amoeba to a 150-ton whale, from a blade of grass to a redwood tree. It consists of sugar, phosphate, and four nitrogen bases: adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). A sugar, phosphate, and base together constitute a nucleotide. The four bases are paired on the DNA molecule, and in a very specific way: A always with T and G always with C. Source

Why I believe this is a perfect language, and Ole Darwin didn't know - granted which may be irrelivant one way or the other to his theory; is that the bases can only be paired up in one specific way: A with T and G with C. One half (side) of the ladder dictates the other side.

G -- C
T -- A
C -- G
A -- T


So when "splicing" takes place to improve vegatables, inserting the DNA sequence from one organism to another, or whatever else you may consider, the order of A with T and G with C must be maintained.


Sources: Google individual terms if needed.
rDNA

cheers

[alleyCat]

I would love to commend all the contributors on this thread for maintaining an excellent level of discussion. Very little to no personal attacks have been added and this made the thread enjoyable to read! Thank you all!

I have very little knowledge of DNA, RNA or evolution vs natural selection, but I did enjoy the initial comparison to programming... my thoughts are this:

If code is DNA strands and a program is life, we can supposedly create a program that can 'learn'. This (as far as my understanding goes) is like natural selection. The organism operates within the bounds of its compiled code.

But if we change the design of the original code, we are creating a new program. This is like evolution.

I guess I make this example, because natural selection does not necesarily mean evolution follows. I observe natural selection in nature, but I have yet to observe evolution...

I do not have a good understanding of RNA, but my first thought was that this would be like a program patch... is this an approximate analogy?

Hahah got a bit carried away...

[Tiger Shark]

This (as far as my understanding goes) is like natural selection.

No, natural selection is all about buggy code..... Learning isn't a part of it.. the code is inadequate or adequate....

But if we change the design of the original code, we are creating a new program. This is like evolution.

Same as above....

I guess I make this example, because natural selection does not necesarily mean evolution follows. I observe natural selection in nature, but I have yet to observe evolution...

We are all too young to see evolution..... We will never be old enough to see it.... It's slow... generations and generations...

[alleyCat]

My metaphor is not complete (what model ever is), but let me extrapolate slightly.

When I say 'learning', I am thinking about the limitations in programs that are inherent. By learning I simply mean a program gathers data, makes a descision, and alters its 'behaviour' based on its descision. I would compare this to natural selection. The organism is bound only to its coded behaviour, unless its original code is changed (evolution).

If we replicate true evolution, with this metaphor, the program would alter its own code to change behaviours, based on its decisions... (after all it is not conscious, which could represent DNA changes)

If you don't subscribe to the metaphor at all, I respect that.

[Relyt]

The problem with that is that, Man told it to adapt though programing and set the parameters of its adaptation.

cheers

[Tiger Shark]

But nature does not learn.... It has bugs.... some bugs are good, some are bad, some are neither....

You are doing exactly what I said earlier in the thread... You are assuming some kind of "intelligence" or pattern to evolution... There is none.... It's trial and error where the errors lose and the trials win... But that also depends upon the changes in the environment. Ahhh... I guess it's all a bit complicated if you are going to try to compare it to some kind of AI. It's not... It's pure luck....