The bond between any two bases on the same strand is the same, no matter what the sequence is. Each nucleotide is attached to the next by a phosphate group (the P surrounded by Os).
In this case, the bases from the two strands of DNA are stuck together by complementary binding (As to Ts, Cs to Gs). If there is a section of DNA that is the same in two different parts of the genome then those sequences can stick together, either on the same strand or at different parts on two strands. The best picture I can find for getting this concept across is an RNA stem loop (U instead of T) which isn’t DNA per se, but the same mechanisms apply.
Complementary bases bind to one another on the same strand. Repeats that have lots of AT are susceptible to this type of structure because As and Ts want to stick to one another.
There are many natural processes that produce repetitive DNA that is prone to homologous recombination. One classic case is retroviral DNA that inserts into the host DNA. It has the same sequence at either end that likes to stick together:
This can result in most of the retroviral DNA being excised from the host genome.
As for God, I think we are stuck at the contrast between proximate causes (science) and ultimate causes (philosophy/theology). As Romanes put it:
The issue is with the scientific method itself. There is simply no scientific way to test for God, one way or the other. Science can only investigate mechanisms it can manipulate and measure.
I have been looking into the difference between modern reptiles and dinosaurs. Yes they had a common origin in the amphibian labyrinthodonts. But the dinosaurs had an adaptation which let them stand upright on two legs (a hole in their hip socket). It helps to explain why birds evolved from them because they were no longer using those front legs for running. Those dinosaurs which walked on four legs (like triceratops and brontosaurs) have the same bone structure telling us they evolved creatures which did walk on two legs (i.e. early dinosaurs).
It is much like @T_aquaticus example of cetaceans evolving from those with four limbs. Sometimes evolution goes bit backwards (cetaceans from land mammals back to the sea and these dinosaurs on 4 feet from those on 2 feet).
It seems to me that the key to being able to reject evolution is to not look at things in the world too closely.
P.S. I suggest an interesting google search: “changing the definition of dinosaurs.” Science often changes the definitions of the words it uses to enable communication which is easier, more clear, and more precise.
If that’s the one I’m remembering, the cartographer was part of a crew that sailed partway up the Sea of Cortez but turned around when weather got bad and got blown north, then later they found San Francisco Bay and without investigating decided it was the north end of a long channel.
It looks like a lot of guesswork, too – there’s nowhere near that many islands along the California coast!
is a bit like saying the sun is not a star. If your reaction is to say this latter is just false, I would point out that for the vast majority of history it makes perfect sense, and the Bible saying God created both the sun and the stars was not redundant at all for them. Now we like to emphasize how the sun is really the same as other stars, but there is of course an important difference for everyone living on the earth. So my point is that statements like these require an explanation of what ways in which they are not the same because they have abundant similarities.
Both computer code and DNA are repositories of information as part of a kind of machinery that translates them into various actions. But one difference is that while one is a product of design the other is a product of the learning process we call evolution. This difference has many consequence and is therefore quite an important distinction. This may prompt the suggestion that we might simulate this difference of DNA with software code (i.e. actually generating software code by an evolutionary algorithm). Apparently it has been tried – though a useful application of the idea may be harder than it sounds. OH found a discussion of this here.
As i pointed out, not it isn’t. It never has been. In fact originally it was thought that all higher life descended from them.
Besides, as I also pointed out, Evolution does not allow for any deviation to be animal or typr specific. Random means tha And my point was that if sucj restriction exist they imply intelligence in the system.
So therefroe. You appear to be just another nay sayer.
(And i wuld have thought you were better than that)
Preaching does not mean dogatsm or even teaching in the sense of I am right and you need to know it,
(Again you should knw this)
In conclusion, Jjoin in by all means but keep out of personal conflicts.
I was not asking that, I was askin gif science had an explantaition other than God.
Richard
PS, you were really wasting your time because that detail goes over my head A cynic might even accuse you of showing off
Again, what other descendants of dinosaurs are there?
If there aren’t any living descendants of dinosaurs other than birds, then birds are the only descendants of dinosaurs.
While its possible that the might be some non-avian descendent of the dinosaurs hidden away in a remote location that’s not been fully explored, it has become increasingly unlikely over the last few decades. We are still finding new species of animal, though many of those are by noticing that what was previously considered a single species is actually multiple similar ones - something that wouldn’t work for non-avian dinosaur descendants, since there’s nothing similar that they could be mistaken for.
Nor have their been any non-avian dinosaur fossils found after the K/T boundary.
Those “old reptiles” you referred to are presumably either crocodilians/monitors, neither of which have the characteristics of dinosaurs - based on their skeletal characteristics it has been decided that they were not from the dinosaur lineage - or lineages such as pterosaurs/plesiosaurs/nothosaurs/synapsids/ichthyosaurs, none of which are considered to be offshoots from dinosaurs, and all of which are extinct anyway.
So unless/until you can name a non-avian living descendant of dinosaurs, the only sensible position to take is to accept that they have all gone extinct. And while this may be overturned by e.g. the future discovery of a tiny dinosaur living atop a South American tepui, a la ‘The Lost World’ or ‘Up’, that’s no reason to reject it as current kowledge.
I don’t think so. I’d be extremely surprised if anyone, anywhere has suggested that all mammals (including humans) were descended from dinosaurs, let alone all ‘higher life’ (whatever you mean by that), not least because dinosaurs were known about before evolutionary descent was ever conceived, and it was already known that they did not group with mammals taxonomically.
So unless you can provide a citation, I’m going to say that is factually incorrect, and you’ve either misremembered or misunderstood something.
Yes, I have seen a few interesting applications of evolutionary algorithms. However, computer scientists are very much concerned with efficiency in designing algorithms, and if a problem is well understood, the most efficient algorithm will be one that takes advantage of the structure of the problem. Evolutionary algorithms are seldom efficient, in the sense of computing a solution with minimal time and other resources.
I wasn’t actually talking about evolutionary algorithms. Those are actually quite useful whether efficient or not (I frankly think it is the essence of the new AI algorithms). Code generation by genetic algorithms is a different thing and applications have not been easy at all. Though your comments are even more applicable to code generated by genetic algorithms. Efficiency is not a great descriptor for the evolutionary process especially in regards to the time it takes. It is even doubtful that efficiency is a good descriptor for the result.
Interestingly there are some species where the young do need to be taught – they don’t have to be taught to migrate, but they have to learn the landmarks and resting places.
Some accidental Gaelic there!
You seriously expect a scientist to address the difference between a bird and a Pegasus? I can address it without needing science: birds are real, a Pegasus is fantasy.
Why not? There is no way to predict what evolution will produce, so why shouldn’t they evolve in dinosaurs?
But the question is also meaningless because it involves a tautology: birds are partly defined as creatures with feathers.
Because only some dinosaurs evolved feathers. Why would all dinosaurs have all the same traits? If they had all the same traits, they’d all be just one species, which they obviously weren’t.
Why would all dinosaurs evolve into just one kind of creature?
Yes – it’s called inheritance. You can’t inherit what your ancestors never had, and what they didn’t hand on.
There is no scientific reason the universe exists – so?
But the parameter you’re talking about flows right from quantum mechanics, where everything is up to chance. Indeed, to mix theology and science, a great way to describe the universe would be to call it a sea of chance guided by God’s hand. That chance should be found in how biology functions should not be surprising.
I just did. Your “parameter” is right there at the foundation of the ToE,which any high school sophomore would know.
And it goes back to chance: chance that the currents in the planet’s core flowed the way they did, chance that one continent rode up over another, chance that the climate was right to erode a canyon while uplift continued . . . all sorts of randomness along the way.
Hmmm… I wouldn’t have said it was happenstance or chance. I think the geological circumstance are very important reasons why the Grand Canyon is where it is. Composition and origin of the rock…? climate during its formation…?
I didn’t really know so I googled the question…
Uplift of the Colorado Plateau was a key step in the eventual formation of Grand Canyon . The action of plate tectonics lifted the rocks high and flat, creating a plateau through which the Colorado River could cut down.
Why is this important? Just speculating but… it seems obvious to me that a river cannot cut below the water it flows into or it would cease to be a river at all. The height difference makes for a faster moving river, right? So that speed must be an important reason why it cuts into the rock. Perhaps the speed also means there is less sediment to build up the bottom of the river (wondering why other rivers keep flowing).
Anyway it seems to me there are reasons why one place and not the other so I don’t get attributing this to chance.
Though… what it most certainly is not… is like some painting of an artist who adds and subtracts things from his picture on a whim or reasons of his own.
When I read Genesis with these comments by an all-powerful God looking at the result of His work and saying “It is good.” That doesn’t sound to like He knew ahead of time what the result would be. It sounds much more like someone setting up a process which generates things (like the procedural generation of places in a computer program) and then being pleased with the result when it is done.
Citation is impossible. Much like the history of life itself, t i have no access to texts of when I was in school / college or of the lessons / lectures i was taught in. Sp
If I am just mistaken?
Well, niether you nor i can "prove it either way. It is what I came away with. (and I still passed all appropriate exams.
Howerver. I will thank you for you polite and appropriate response this time
Yet. I did ask one mr ething,
if it is true that feathers are only found in birdes, what is it (sceintifically) that makes it so. IOW why can’t a mammal grow feathers (not just, because they haen’t) If deviations are random and some of them must work , why isn;t the deviation that forms geathers found in other genomes? Is it that thee are certain componants of the bird DNA that do not or cannot occur in other genomes> (A molecule ef DNA sot that no string outside birds can contain it).?) Or is there some other reason that would exclude the possibilty of feathers being grown?
Perhaps there are others better equipped to answer this, but the short answer is: nested hierarchy.
Evolution builds on what came before it, and well developed structures do not arise spontaneously, but rather through modification of the structures that preceded it. Thus a flight feather does not pop out of lizard like creature, but rather through modification of perhaps a more downy feather which itself arose from a fimbriated scale, which arose from a thickened epidermal layer. A mammal might develop scaly skin due to a mutation (and do, though not true scales), but at least in humans, I suspect it is highly unlikely that would provide any reproductive advantage, except perhaps in certain subsets of furry subculture, and doubtful even then.
Of course, that explanation is woefully condensed, but the idea of a nested development is ultimately the answer to your question.
OK. I once wrote a computer program that used a genetic algorithm to attempt to solve this math puzzle: Hat Hostage Strategies
After something like 5000 generations, it came within one of the perfect score needed to solve the problem. I don’t know how many further generations it may have needed to arrive at a solution. I could share the program upon request.
Yes, I agree that Large Language Models (LLMs), used in AI applications, are a form of “evolutionary” algorithm. In fact, their training uses random processes in various forms. Since they were trained by human-made information, and if you believe that humans have free will (as I do), LLMs have come into existence in not a completely deterministic way.
Here is an idea for a science fiction story:
Set in 1000000000 CE, long after humans have left the scene, and the earth is devoid of Carbon-based life, AI’s have arrived at another solar system, where they can sustain their existence. Perhaps they will argue about whether they had a Creator, or whether they came into existence by purely “natural” processes, or both. Maybe they will discuss whether they are a “cosmic fluke”, or whether they exist as a result of a designer but also in the presence of “random” processes. Maybe they will launch SETI projects to search for “life” elsewhere in the universe, by searching for the basic building blocks of life, ie. silicon, copper, et al.
There is no charge for that idea (although a little acknowledgement would be nice) .
Forgive me but we seem to have a chicken and egg paradox here.
Feathers only come from feathered creatures so creatures without feathers or the capacity to have feathers cannot have feathers. Nice and circular. But…
If deviations can “create” anything" why should they be restricted to a specific genome?
We seem to have an extension of Mendelian succession whereby they result of two sets of DNA joining is a “random” or shuffling combination so deviations are just a shuffling of the pairing or strings, IOW the deviations can only use the DNA that is available, it cannot create a “new” element… But this would only work if the first cell, or ultimate ancestor had every possible DNA molecule which then dissapated as the lines diverged Do Amoebas (or other single celled organisms ) have a very complex and complete DNA structure? or are “simple” life forms simple because they have simpler or less complex DNA?
IOW the “new” traits have to come from somewhere. So do the new molecules.
Now here is an outrageous suggestion based on the making of a curry. You do not put all the ingredients of a curry in at once, you slowly add bits as time progresses so as to get the perfect combination of spices and herbs.
So let us say God starts with a basic set of DNA and allows it to diversify within the limits of that DNA, then adds some more, and waits, and so on,
This is not God of the Gaps or tinkering, this is deliberate creation but giving it the widest latitude possible. Nevertheless the humanoid form will become the inevitable pinnacle
All the hierachies, progressions and examples will be exactly as found, but the “cause” or “process” is by design not pure fluke. There is randomness built in, but there is also direction and an ultimate goal.
And that results in big difference: computer code flows in a logical progression and is ( more or less) efficient; DNA doesn’t and isn’t.
That’s kind of like referring to the original hand a rummy player was dealt when what’s under consideration is whether to take a discarded card or draw from the deck – that hand has grown and changed since it was originally dealt; it has lost some cards, gained cards, has new sequences and sets. And since the cards it had before have been discarded, it isn’t getting them back.
I remember back in junior high reading that mammals must have come from dinosaurs, though the author of the text was honest in saying we really didn’t know. There was a tone in the book that suggested that mammals were “higher animals” than the rest, primate the highest of the mammals, and humans that highest of the primates, so while it didn’t directly say that all higher animals were descended from dinosaurs it strongly implied it.
But that just begged the question of why any species in evolution should be considered “higher” (except for its relation to its ancestors), and almost certainly came from the notion that humans are the pinnacle of Creation – which while true theologically makes bad science when importing the idea to biology.
Which is to illustrate that what people learned back in the day in school depends substantially on what texts were used in their science classes and the biases of the authors of those texts.
But those all ultimately go back to chance, at the very bottom being how materials collected to form the planet – which may be a matter of chaos, but when chaotic systems intersect you get chance.
Made me think of a cartoon in a church bulletin where God has just created some animal and Gabriel comments “That’s good!”, and God responds, “Of course; I made it”.
We tend to think of the “That’s good” in a photo-like frozen moment, but the underlying sense of the Hebrew being, “That works/functions well”, we should be thinking in terms of an ongoing movie. That in turn takes us to an idea from the cartoon, that the angels would have also recognized it as good/functioning well, which since they were and are not omniscient would have required time for them to recognize that.
Which would in turn suggest that He built chance into the system – which in its turn indicates that God not only “plays dice” with the universe, He built it to run on “playing dice”. And if that is the case – which it appears to be – then we should expect to find systems that run on chance at all levels of events, and rather than reject them as contrary to God being in charge rejoice in His design which includes chance.
No kidding – texts more than twenty years old tend to get sent to a landfill or incinerated (a school district we competed against when I was in high school had a burner that generated the school’s heat, and that’s where old textbooks went). And in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s there were a lot more publishers turning out science textbooks; it wasn’t dominated by just a few publishers as it is now. That diversity meant that a science text that actually cited Genesis was possible, among other things, so a science text saying that all “higher animals” came from dinosaurs was certainly possible (what we used in junior high didn’t quite say it but definitely implied it).
It’s possible that the idea didn’t come from textbooks, too; there were TV shows and sermons and other sources that actually said we all came from dinosaurs.
But when you get down to it that wasn’t science since it hadn’t been tested; it was speculation for which we had no way of testing.
Okay, theoretically it’s possible, but given that feathers arose from a certain specific set of code that is many, many characters long, and that specific set of code has likely changed since feathers first developed, the odds of the original code being intact so that the precise series of mutations that led from an external integument to protruding structures could occur again are astronomical.
Assume that to get from (to simplify things) skin to feathers took eight specific mutations in a certain order – that means that if the original genes for skin are still extant in some organism, the odds of that sequence occurring is x^8, where x is the number of codons in the original genes. At the very least, it comes out to 2^8, which gives us one 1 in 256 chance, but no gene sequence is just two codons long, so it may well be a matter of x being a hundred, which makes it one in ten quadrillion!
And that is the odds before natural selection takes over: If by that wild chance a horse did develop feathers, they would start out the way feathers first did, as very short hair-like structures with small “branches” off them. Given that horses need to shed heat rather than conserve it, that wouldn’t be a useful change, right from the start, since it would result in heat retention. So any horse that despite the odds was born with proto-feathers, odds are it would almost certainly die from that condition.
In my half-dream-state this morning an analogy for a nested hierarchy came to me: a stream flowing down a low-relief, low-slope plain. As the stream flows downward, the low slope makes it so that it is easy for the stream to divide, and the low relief makes it so the bifurcations will be distinct and remain so. So we get a branching set of small streams that continually divide but do not intersect (don’t push this too far; even if the plain is infinite eventually some streams will intersect.
Now pick a stream at the point where there are just eight or nine branches and pour in some blue dye. The only streams that will end up tinted blue are those that branch from that stream for the simple reason that neither streams nor time flow backwards, so the blue dye can’t go upstream. Then pick a different stream when there are a dozen or so branches and pour in some red dye: the branches from that stream will get red tint, but no others.
This can be continued until there are so many colors it’s hard to distinguish between some of them: no matter what streams got picked, the only branches that have a given color are those that (literally) descended from the stream that color was poured into.
These streams are analogous to genetic inheritance: when some gene appears, it will only ever be found in branches of inheritance downstream from where it first occurred.
I must congratulate your subconscious for achieving something you conscious cannot normally achieve. It made sense and reflected perfectly how you see nested hierachy. I will leave it there. Suffice it to say that I understand what you think,but that does not mean I think that either it, or you is 100% correct.
Except for the SETI project specifics and the dependence on Earth, it’s been done, sort of. I remember a short story from a Sci-fi reading course where there was a society of SI (silicon intelligence) that lived in space and had been between stars for a very long time, then came upon a planet where there was simple life. It ended with two SIs debating whether such a thing as carbon-based intelligence was possible.
There’s nothing circular about nested hierarchy – it’s no different really than saying that water flows downhill.
Nice but not science – and that’s the issue.
Scientifically that’s nonsense – we are no more a pinnacle than an oyster is. Indeed if you go with complexity as a measure, there are a number of good candidates as pinnacles; they host so many other (mostly microbial) species within themselves that each animal is a walking biosphere! Yes, we host many microorganisms, but not as many as some ruminants – so by that measure some kind of cows may well be more likely to be the “pinnacle”.
Plausible, but science can’t detect direction or goal – the moment you introduce those you have left science behind.
This was actually a fairly common topic for musing/debate in our informal intelligent design club: all there who had been atheists or agnostics but became Christians did so because of their studies of the sciences, primarily evolution, and the question was where the line was: could the conclusion that there was a Designer be considered scientific since it was based on science? The consensus was always that it couldn’t because there was no way to test it – though a lot of great arguments were advanced that some varieties of science might be able to corroborate it.
And that I think points to the issue here: Richard wants science to corroborate the idea that God intervenes in evolution. The trouble is that all such corroboration has to begin with the premise, i.e. it has to start with the postulate that God is real and can mediate things in Creation, and that makes it un-- or at least a-scientific from the start.
So the claim(s) that there are weaknesses in science that suggest that God is active in evolution is not scientific but philosophical. And the usual reaction of a scientist is to say “So what? That’s not science”.
.