by metatron 10 Replies latest jw friends
I must admit, I hate the word and concept of evolution. However, to give the 'devil his due', there
has been an interesting development in the fight against AIDS. Some people appear to be resistant
or completely immune due to a mutation called "Delta 32" - a happy accident that may have been
bred into some humans by the plague hundreds of years ago.
Result: AIDS isn't going to wipe out the human race. See:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_plague/interview.html
metatron
Isn't evolution awesome?
It does see that there are always a section of the population who are immune to new certain diseases.
What also helps in the fight against AIDS is the evolution of the condom.
Awesome? I guess. I just think that Darwinian evolution defies the spirit of science itself, if you look
at that spirit as reductionism itself. I see that idea that you throw a brick into the genetic code
and end up with something beneficial as naive. To me genetic code is more like a ticket given to
a coat check girl to get your jacket. She isn't making the jacket and lacks the instructions to do so
but you get it anyway. A difficult analogy to articulate but it's all I got.
metatron
I just think that Darwinian evolution defies the spirit of science itself, if you look at that spirit as reductionism itself.
I guess it depends on the type of reductionism yoy're talking about. I like what Daniel Dennet says about "greedy reductionism." It attempts to explain too much with too little, in the same way that creationism attempts to "explain" biology.
It seems to me that there is much, much more research on evolutionary biology, and and actual evidence for it - most particularly in the field of cellular development - than there is for "creation." However, if a creator exists, I'd be very interested for his discovery to be established because I (and a lot of scientists) have many, many scientific and philosophical questions for him.
My feeling is that AIDS is an attempt by nature to save and continue Earth's evolution. Just like some fungi produce penicillin.
I like that phrase "greedy reductionism". It's the point that I'm trying to make about evolutionary
theory being unsatisfying as an explanation. Someday we may see a fusion with physics ideas of
non-locality. That might lead to a sort of pantheism ( which I favor).
metatron
To me genetic code is more like a ticket given to a coat check girl to get your jacket. She isn't making the jacket and lacks the instructions to do so but you get it anyway. A difficult analogy to articulate but it's all I got. -metatron
Using that analogy: people without winter coats can die in winter. When you get the 'coat ticket' even if you don't know how it works or what it is made of, you get the added option it represents. One must note that genes do not work in a vaccum all by themselves, but are turned on & off by environmental factors.
In a simplified way, a new genetic mutation can represent one of four general outcomes in the particular organism:
1) It changes nothing.
2) Makes an irrelevant change.
2) If a dominant gene, creates a disfunctional protein and probably a disease/condition. Leves no or few offspring.
3) If a dominant gene, creates an option to adapt to the environment. Leaves more offsprings and the new mutation forms part of the new population's genome --> That particular population evolved.
Now, humans have two factors that beguin to override evolution: The use of reason and technology. Using them, there seems no boundaries to the range of environments we can adapt. Good and bad mutations (if not fatal) are being overriden by medication or technology. Natural selection works no longer on humans at the level of species, yet random genome mutations will continue at a known rate and humans will continue to evolve.
Oops! ....on the tangent of the AIDS topic.
Gerard
Some people appear to be resistant
or completely immune due to a mutation called "Delta 32" - a happy accident that may have been
bred into some humans by the plague hundreds of years ago.
I thought George Bush and the CIA invented Aids back in the 70's to controll the worlds population. Now they screwed that up too?
Reductionist Neo-Darwinism is not the only game in town. Evolutionary Biologist Lynn Margulis has studied the processes of evolution at the cellular level and has promoted Symbiogenesis. From the Wikipedia:
She later formulated a theory to explain how symbiotic relationships that are taking place in modern day humans and animals are the driving force of evolution. Genetic variation is proposed to mainly occur as a result of transfer of nuclear information between bacterial cells or viruses and eukaryotic cells. While her organelle genesis ideas are widely accepted, symbiotic relationships as a current method of introducing genetic variation is somewhat of a fringe idea. However, examination of the results from the Human Genome Project lends credence toward an endosymbiotic theory of evolution—or at the very least Margulis's endosymbiotic theory is the catalyst for current ideas about the composition of the human genome. Significant portions of the human genome are either bacterial or viral in origin—some clearly ancient insertions, while others are more recent in origin. This strongly supports the idea of symbiotic—and more likely parasitic—relationships being a driving force for genetic change in humans, and likely all organisms. It should be noted that while the endosymbiotic theory has historically been juxtaposed with Neo-Darwinism, the two theories are not incompatible and the truth is likelier to be that natural selection works on many levels (genetic up to the ecosystem) and variation is introduced both at the genetic and the cellular level.
So, anthropocentrism aside, HIV is likely to be a factor in human evolution, much as viral code is today a component of the human genome.
Dave
