(Renamed) 'Irreducible Complexity'

I’m going to have to ask you to stop jumping around, changing the topic and moving goal posts. If you want to talk about cars, whales or histone modification then why don’t you start a new topic to do that?

why actually? according to this- even if fish and chimp have been closest from genetic prespective, we will need to say in this case that chimp is more closer to fish then human?

No, why would you think that? This has to be the silliest thing I’ve heard all day. When I say genetic evidence, I mean patterns of relatedness not overall similarity in one or two short sequences.

Think about this for a moment - it’s going to require some very basic logic.

Imagine a short four letter sequence that you inherit from your parents

Great Great Great grandparents: ATAG
Great Great grandparents: ATAG
Great grandparents: ATAG
Grandparents: ATAG
Parents: ATAG
You: ATAC

Does this imply that your parents are more closely related to your Great Great Great grandparents than they are to you just because they have an identical 3 letter sequence but you have one letter different?

Take a moment now to think about how drawing that conclusion would be ridiculous

This is how we know that you are more closely related to your parents: You share common mutations that others don’t

Great Great Great grandparents: ATAGAGAC
Great Great grandparents: ATAGAGAC
Great grandparents: ATAGAGAC
Grandparents: ATAGGGAC
Parents: ATAGGGAT
You: ATAGGGAT

Because you, your parents and your grandparents share a mutation, it’s likely that you form a clade.

Because you and your parents share another mutation that others don’t, it’s likely that you also form a subclade.

Do you understand the difference now between overall similarity and patterns of relatedness? Now apply this reasoning to the HAR1 region and you will see the fault in your logic.

so the 60 de novo may be the result of convergent pseudogenes

Read my responses to @johnZ where I explain how we know that these sequences were likely never genes to start with.

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ace. i ansnwer about the overall similarity in the other post about har1. now lets talk about complexity and testing evolution.

before we start a new topic- why there i no experiment that take for example a protein and change it into a non homologous protein? for example- cytochrome into h4? i think it will be a good evidence for evolution. so why there is no such experiment? how much mutations we will need to this change to your opinion?

I’m not aware of any prediction in genetics that a gene copy should be able to mutate to the point where it is no longer recognisable as a gene copy. Are you?

i doesnt talk about prediction but about experiment to test evolution. why we cant evolve a minimal eye from an animal without an eye? yes, it can take milions of years- but lets say that if a minimal eye need a 3 parts- then we can evolve the first part for example( lets say photoreceptor). so why there is no such experiment?

Experiments test predictions. That’s how science works.

Now you’re asking why no experiment has been run to demonstrate that an eye can evolve over millions of years. I’ll let you think about that one :wink:

and because its take milions of years, i actually said that we will need to see only one part of the changes. for example: if an eye need a series of 10 parts. then we will need to see at least 1-2 parts evolving in experiment.

And how would you know that those are parts that could go on to form an eye? There could be hundreds of thousands of different ways to form an eye. You wouldn’t know if step 1 had gotten you any closer to that goal.

you right. it can be any complex system. so we can actually need to see 1 part evolving into somthing more complex. but we dont.

How do you define “more complex”? That seems like a trick question. I could easily point you to a newly evolved trait that I call more complex and you could just counter that that’s not what you mean by more complex.

Either way, see the LTEE for newly evolved traits:

http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-1
http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-2
http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-3-tinkering-over-the-edge
http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-4-ic-and-exaptation
http://biologos.org/blog/behe-lenski-and-the-edge-of-evolution-part-5

good question. lets take for example 2 systems: a gps and a used showing gum. lets say that we add the showing gum to the car. now we have a new “system” in the car. for example: we can stick notes on the showing gum. but its not a complex system. a gps is another story. a minimal gps will need at least 2-3 parts to work. so it cant evolve step wise. but a showing gum can. you see the different?

I think you are missing a major point here. The car does not evolve into a plane. Instead, the car AND plane BOTH evolved from a common ancestor. Therefore, we should look back to a very primitive car (e.g. a model-T) and a very primitive plane (e.g. the Wright brothers) and find what they have most in common to infer what their common ancestor was; namely a box with seats, a steering mechanism, wheels, and some unit which produced energy for propelling the structure forward. Among this group of strange vehicles (no longer in production today) some would have had short appendages (e.g. flared fins… like seen on some cars) and some would have longer appendages (capable of catching air for lift). THAT would be the common ancestor to both the modern car and the modern plane. No changing major from to major form. Hope that helps to clarify. (www.evidenceandbelief.wordpress.com)

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@Aceofspades25 Thank you for those links! I’d never heard of the LTEE before and really enjoyed reading about it. I still can’t speak about it authoritatively, but I enjoyed reading the links nevertheless.

@mabloom I think the point @dcscccc is trying to make is a matter of complexity. It started as a hypothetical question about a change in kind. For example, can a land animal turn into a whale (I read about this on Slate today so its at the forefront of my mind tonight)? Perhaps I don’t understand what you (@mablroom) mean by ‘form.’ But to me, that seems like a pretty major change in between major forms. Thus, the original question was if a hypothetical car could turn into a hypothetical place to which I answered yes given that a Google search of ‘flying car’ shows that in fact we have seen the ‘evolution’ of a car into a plane. The conversation has since…evolved…(sorry, couldn’t help myself) into one of complexity. In other words, how do less complex systems evolve into more complex systems. How does your horse buggy acquire a combustion engine step by step? More specifically, I think @dcscccc is looking for that very specific step where the first ‘piece’ is in place and has enough of a competitive advantage to be passed on to future generations. Not disagreeing, just trying to clarify the conversation.

hi jlock and mabloom. a flying car indeed cant evolve step wise from a non-flying car. its need a big jumps between them. for example: the engine of the flying car\airplan need a lots of parts that cars dont have. so we cant just jump in one step from a car engine into airplan engine. or any other complex system that need for flying. its not just cars and airplan but any 2 different complex systems. a gps, dvd, cell-phone and even a toaster. all are irreducible complex systems.

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