~Psychology Practice in Florida
Damon,
Finally, my cell phone typing is terrible, but weirdly enough, I think and write in complete sentences. It has been this way ever since my 10th grade English teacher taught me how to write. You may not remember this, but I was executive editor of our college newspaper. I have written this way since I was 15, although it took many years to find my personal and therefore authorial voice.
John
On Nov 22, 2019, at 11:59 PM, DamonLaBarbera <00000051867784e1-dmarc-request@LISTSERV.ICORS. ORG> wrote:~Psychology Practice in FloridaJohn,Was Darwin influenced bylaissez faire economics-- that competition leads to maximum utility? Would he havebeen reviled politically if he had droppedthe idea of progress?Hofstadter had a book on Spencer. My recollection is he described a tightly wound, asocial individual. Whatin particular was Spencer's idea of progress-- a better human? a better economy?a more efficient society?cellAnd, at a personal level, which I hope you don't mind-- how are you getting such prose from your cellphone. This can't be thumb typing.Damon L JOn Friday, November 22, 2019, 04:03:34 PM CST, John Auerbach <000009eba1592f75-dmarc-request@listserv.icors. org> wrote:~Psychology Practice in FloridaSome thoughts:I agree with Damon that evolution through natural selection does NOT involve progress, only adaptation. Even Darwin himself seems to havebeen confused about this idea, and Herbert Spencer, the founder of Social Darwinism, even more so. Alternatively, the only progress under the theory of natural selection is toward greater adaptation, not toward higher forms of life. No matter how “evolved” my brain, a panda is better at being a panda than I am.Also, intelligent design maybe a true explanation of evolution, but it can never be a scientific one. Why? First, intelligent design is not a falsifiable theory, but natural selection is. Second, intelligent design posits a non-natural cause (i.e., an intelligent designer), and scientific explanation is, or requires, natural explanation.John S. Auerbach, PhDSent from my iPhoneOn Nov 22, 2019, at 12:35 PM, BruceBorkosky <bruce.borkosky.1978@owu.edu> wrote:~Psychology Practice in FloridaRobert Hazen has been a prolific author and presenter on the evolution of minerals.It seems to me that a major flaw in creationism is viewing life through the prism of today's mineralogy. Earth was much different 3.5 billion years ago. Hazen makes a convincing argument that BOTH minerals and life evolved together - i.e., that life cause the Earth's mineral diversity to explode, which enriched life's diversity, etc. So, we don't really know what early forms of life looked like or how they worked.On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 9:44 PM Gene Schulze <000009c7482bd123-dmarc-request@listserv.icors. org> wrote:~Psychology Practice in FloridaDouglas Axe raised an interesting and important problem concerning the evolution of proteins. He failed to solve it and concluded that evolution can’t have happened. His reasoning is that if you try, for a little while, to figure out how proteins evolve, andfail to find a suitable path, then proteins can’t have evolved.Personally, I see this as an interesting biological problem and hope you share my interest in scientific mysteries.BackgroundThe machinery of your body is mostly made up of proteins. These canconsist of hundreds of amino acids strung together. Afterthe string has been assembled , the protein assembles itself into a complex shape as you can see in this diagram.[ 1]Proteins can become useless if you change the amino acids at key points. Many proteins won’t work correctly unless they have the standard shape and that shapeis the result of many individual amino acids acting together. That’s part of the reasonwhy many mutations are harmful. It’s very easy to break something complicated sothat it doesn’t work.So, it’s hard to understand how natural selection produced the complicated 3D structures in proteins through an evolutionary trial-and-error process. One biologist has described the evolutionary process as “something like close to a miracle.”[ 2]The problem becomes worse when you think about the origin of life. The very first organisms would have needed many complicated proteinsin order to live.Douglas Axe’s contributionHe showed that simple mutations areextremely unlikely to convert the overall shape of a protein into a new useful shape.[ 3] [4] [5] [6] Mutations that alter the shape of a proteintend to make itinstable or useless. He concluded that since thistype of evolutionary change can’t easily produce new useful proteins, then evolution can’t work.Why he’s wrongWe know that this conclusion is wrong because scientists can trace the evolution of many individual proteins by comparing their structure and sequence of amino acids. This chart traces the ancestry of the globin family of genes among mammals and birds.[ 7] The ancestor of birds and mammals must have had three different globin genesand these evolved into the several genes present in modern animals.This family of genes isextremely old, appearing in bacteria, plants, and animals.[ 8] The only way to explain the similarities among globin genes is to accept that they evolved, something that Douglas Axe says is impossible.Unsolved issuesWe still don’t know how the first complex proteins came into being. Here’s a couple of possibilities:
- Maybe they arose from random short proteins. These sometimes enhance growth of bacteria
[ 9] and sometimes catalyze (control) useful chemical reactions.[ 10] Evolution could have gradually lengthened them, making them bigger and more complexover time .[ 11]- Small proteins can combine to make a big protein. For example, scientists have strong evidence that machinery for photosynthesis evolved through several small units that evolved separately and eventually combined. I describe that in another answer.
[ 12]- Genes sometimes get duplicated accidentally. The extra copy can drift randomly for many generations without harm because it is unneeded. Over time, it may, by chance,
acquire a useful function. There’s good evidence that this happens.[ 13]ConclusionDouglas Axe provided a useful service to the scientific community by showing some ways that proteins couldn’t have evolved. But that’s not the same as showing that it’s impossible for proteins to have evolved in other ways.More to readHere’s a fuller rebuttal of Douglas Axe, pointing out that “Axe ignores the vast amounts of evidence that support evolution that come from comparative genomics, genetics, palaeontology, embryology, anatomy,evo -devo , etc.”Here’s a great, but technical,discussion of how proteins evolve:You can read Douglas Axe’s own opinions here:Footnotes
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