by moman 55 Replies latest jw friends
Escargot,
With all due respect, you're talking through your arse.
I'd be very surprised if even a tabloid newspaper would print something so absurd. It would certainly never be reprinted in a reputable journal. Try actually reading up on the science you don't understand, rather than relying on misunderstood, half-remembered newspaper articles.
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Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit attrocities - Voltaire
I whould I lie, I worked for the LA times, and they do have staff writters to cover this type of stories.
DNA Shows Neandertals Were Not Our Ancestors
For photos click here
7-11-97
University Park, Pa. -- A team of U.S. and German researchers has extracted mitochondrial DNA from Neandertal bone showing that the Neandertal DNA sequence falls outside the normal variation of modern humans.
"These results indicate that Neandertals did not contribute mitochondrial DNA to modern humans," says Dr. Mark Stoneking, associate professor of anthropology at Penn State. "Neandertals are not our ancestors."
The research also reaffirms the origins of modern humans in Africa. Reporting in today's (July 11) issue of the journal Cell, the researchers detail their methods and the results of analysis of Neandertal mitochondrial DNA. The research team includes Matthias Krings, graduate student, and Dr. Svante Paabo, professor of zoology, University of Munich; Dr. Ann Stone, postdoctoral fellow, University of Arizona; Ralf W. Schmitz and Heike Krainitzki of Rhineland Museum, Bonn, Germany; and Stoneking.
Current theory holds that Neandertals became extinct only 30,000 years ago and co-existed with modern humans in Europe. The team, however, found that Neandertals and modern humans diverged genetically 500,000 to 600,000 years ago, suggesting that though they may have lived at the same time, Neandertals did not contribute genetic material to modern humans.
Since 1991, an interdisciplinary project of the Rhineland Museum, headed by Schmitz, has focused on the Neandertal-type specimen. This specimen was found in 1856 near Dusseldorf, Germany. As a part of this project, a sample was removed for DNA analysis.
"The ability to extract DNA from ancient bone is dependent on many factors, including preservation, temperature and humidity," says Stoneking, a faculty member in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts.
Paabo previously showed that even if extracting ancient DNA is possible, it tends to be damaged and degraded, yielding only short fragments. The researchers used a method of overlapping short strands of DNA to obtain a mitochondrial DNA sequence of 378 base pairs. To ensure that errors caused by damaged DNA were not incorporated into the sequence and that modern human DNA did not contaminate the samples, the researchers ran multiple extractions and amplifications. They also sent a sample to Penn State's Anthropological Genetics Laboratory where Stone, then a Ph.D. candidate at Penn State, ran a parallel extraction and amplification of the DNA.
To begin amplification, the researchers used two human primers -- small pieces of DNA that match the beginning of the sequence to be amplified.
"The first two human primers we chose worked," says Stoneking. "It turns out this was a lucky choice."
To check that the amplified DNA was really Neandertal, the researchers prepared primers based on their extracted sample and ran them on numerous human DNA samples.
"The Neandertal primers did not amplify any human DNA," says Stoneking. "Most human primers would probably not work on Neandertal DNA."
The researchers compared the Neandertal sequence with 2,051 human sequences and 59 common chimpanzee sequences. They found that the differences in Neandertal DNA occurred at sites where differences usually occur in both humans and chimps.
"The changes reflect the evolutionary pattern typical of mitochondrial DNA sequences of living humans and chimpanzees, not that of random damage or degradation," says Stoneking.
When the researchers looked at the Neandertal sequence with respect to 994 human mitochondrial DNA lineages including Africans, Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, Australians and Pacific Islanders, they found the number of base pair differences between the Neandertal sequence and these groups was 27 or 28 for all groups.
"While Neandertals inhabited the same geographic region as contemporary Europeans, the observed differences between the Neandertal sequence and modern Europeans do not indicate a closer relationship to modern Europeans than to other contemporary human populations," says Stoneking. The researchers used phylogenetic tree reconstruction -- a method that uses mitochondrial DNA to place individual groups in relative relationship -- to check the results of their pair-wise DNA comparisons. The trees show that the Neandertal sequence branches before the divergence of the various human mitochondrial DNA lineages, but after the split from chimpanzees.
This phylogenetic tree also shows that the first three branches of humans are of African origin, with only the fourth branch showing non-African sequences.
"The branching pattern indicates that the ancestor of the mitochondrial DNA gene pool of contemporary humans lived in Africa," says Stoneking of Penn State.
**aem**
Here is why evo is not a fact:
FUNDAMENTAL UNCERTAINTY IN THE AVERAGE EVOLUTION
Information and energy are two important characteristics of the evolution stream. In the previous paragraphs, the importance of information has been emphasised. In classical natural sciences, and in physics in particular, the role given to information was not impressive. However, in our current "age of information", the role of information is being generally accepted to be important for several processes in evolution.
This historical lack of attention for information, can be explained as follows : energy is rather to be considered as a quantitative aspect of the stream of evolution, while information is a qualitative aspect. Since the 17th century, science is booming mainly due to the quantitative approach of nature. In many cases, simple dynamic processes (e.g. mechanical processes) can be described quantitatively in terms of a balance of input and output of energy, and numerous scientific realisations and the resulting artefacts are created based on these quantitative energy-relations. These early quantitative successes have decreased the need and esteem for qualitative relationships, as for information-dominated processes.
There have been attempts in the past to approach information in a quantitative way, by searching for a defined relationship between the quantitative amount of information and the amount of energy. The end result of this search would have been a relation of the kind :
1 bit Information = ? Joule Energy
Nobody has succeeded in finding this fixed relationship until now (as Einstein has found a fixed relationship between matter and energy). This explains why information is never a standard parameter in most of the quantitative physical relationships. It is my opinion that this relationship will never be found, for the simple reason that there is no universal relation between matter/energy and information. Some arguments for this reasoning are :
- the same information can be carried on different types of material carriers. For instance, a compact disc and a book can carry the same information. The energy needed to put this information on these carriers, or to read the information from the carriers, will certainly be different. So, in this case, there is no fixed relationship between the information and the energy needed to process the information.
- The Swiss Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), founder of both linguistics and semiotics, has always emphasised the independence between the meaning of a signal, and the carrier. Although every "sign" (a sign is the smallest unit with a meaning), always consists of a carrier (which he called the "signifier" = the M/E aspect), and the meaning (which he called the "signified" = the I-aspect). As the relationship between the meaning and the carrier becomes more and more independent (as in the case of Gamma-information), also the importance of interpretation grows.
- The same information can be coded in different ways, even if they use the same carrier (for example a book). The word for "table" in English is different than in French or Dutch, although these languages use the same symbols. The word for "table" in Chinese or Japanese, will be even more different, because these languages use another type of symbolic code. As a consequence, one type of symbolic code is more efficient than another code, and thus the energy needed to use different symbolic codes will be different, even for the representation of a simple object as a table.
As explained before, information has only a meaning within a certain context (cfr. our definition of information), namely when both the physical carriers and codes are related to a known code convention. Within certain, very limited contexts, it is probably possible to find quantitative relationships between bits and Joules, but in most cases it will not be possible or relevant. The important consequence is that information cannot be used to generate quantitative and universal laws of nature, based on streams of both information and energy/matter.
The fact that it is probably impossible to make a universal quantitative relationship between information and matter/energy, does not mean that information has no important role in our universe.
>From the point of view of "the average evolution", information deserves an honourable place near to energy and matter in descriptions of our universe. This statement will probably be less controversial in our information era, than 300 years ago.
However, we may also not overestimate the role of information in evolution. Information and energy are co-evolving as "chicken and eggs" (and asking who was first might not be to the point). We need energy to create information, and during the creation of each bit of information, energy will be lost or spread, and will not be useful anymore to create other evolution patterns. If we would have an unlimited reservoir of energy/matter, we would probably be able to counteract all forms of spreading with information, and we could control the direction of evolution to the largest possible extent. We would be able to steer evolution, and even to reverse evolution in some limited cases. (But alas, my dear reader, this is a hypothetical assumption, and the universe is plagued with a permanent and universal lack of information.) As the evolutionary spreading increases, so does the amount of information, but not to the same extent. As information decreases uncertainty about selections in evolution, and as all necessary information will never be available, we can make the statement :
The universe is characterised by a fundamental uncertainty.
This fundamental uncertainty is certainly also valid to the human life. We will be able to describe laws of nature that will lead to important applications and the creation of valuable artefacts. However, we will always lack information to create detailed laws that apply to the whole universe, and that are not limited to certain contexts. For this reason, we will have to be satisfied with more humble aspirations, and we will have to limit the validity of our own laws in two ways. This will lead to two types of potential laws that we can create :
- contextual laws of nature : these laws are detailed but only valid within certain contexts (as for instance biology, physics or chemistry). For instance, the Newtonian mechanics is not more valid when the speed of the objects is near to the speed of light.
- average laws : these laws are not so detailed, but use the average characteristics of populations of objects or phenomena in time or space. The advantage is that they are valid in a broader context than the "contextual" laws. A typical example is the law of statistical mechanics developed by Boltzmann. These laws relate the average microscopical movement of particles, with the macroscopical characteristics (e.g. the pressure of the gas). Another example is the quantum-mechanical wave equation of Schrödinger.
The conclusion is in each case that a complete description of the universe in not possible, not only because the knowledge of human beings about universe is insufficient, but also because uncertainty is an essential element of the universe itself.
When we want to describe nature, we will have to select the alternative that is best fitting with our purposes. It will be clear now for the reader that the concept of "the average evolution" uses the second alternative. I have proposed here a heuristic model for a qualitative relationship between the average microscopical and macroscopical behaviour. I emphasise here the word qualitative, because I wanted to emphasise that information could be considered equally important to evolution as energy. The concept of "the average evolution" is developed in the first place to enhance our understanding of evolution, across the classical scientific barriers.
When one considers the earth, & how it differs from the planets we have seen,well, I guess I know why all the astronauts are firm believers in a Grand Creator!.
So you are saying every single astronaut believes in a grand creator?
OK Escargot, now read the article. Then read what you said above. Then read the article again. Then read what you said above again. Then look back and forth very quickly between the two, slap yourself on the forehead and say "D'oh!"
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Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit attrocities - Voltaire
Other thoughts on Evolution:
I have to agree with Dr. Peck: Life is a miracle, just based on the second law of thermodynamics, energy goes from a high state to a lesser organization. In other words, the universe in winding down. The Flow of Evolution is against the force of entropy, plan and simple. What has caused this higher organization in the face of the second law of thermodynamics? I put to you the fact that creation was the source.
Escargot,
In what way does the second article you posted demonstrate that evolution is not a fact? I disn't get that from it but it's fairly technical. Would you care to explain it for us lay people?
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Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit attrocities - Voltaire
escargot,
DNA Shows Neandertals Were Not Our Ancestors
So you think neanderthals were chimpanzees? Yikes, you're so fantastically ignorant about the subject matter you should really stay out of the debate altogether.
As I have said previously: to understand evolution is to accept the fact of evolution. Creationist "arguments" can generally be categorized based on how the misrepresent or misunderstand evolution (or science generally). Your messages betray you don't even have high school level knowledge in natural sciences.
- Jan
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"Doctor how can you diagnose someone with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and then act like I had some choice about barging in here right now?" -- As Good As It Gets
jan, I could give a rats arse about creation or evolution, either way I am here!
I'm saying the fossil record doesn't prove that (a God) didn't create man seperatly & that man iz so differant than the other animals!
-fastone-
“OK Escargot, now read the article. Then read what you said above. Then read the article again. Then read what you said above again. Then look back and forth very quickly between the two, slap yourself on the forehead and say "D'oh!"”
Nice try, I stated, from memory, that we have a common ancestor and that we did not come from “apes.” this is in line with the article. It blasts the evo’s theories that we came from tribes throughout the earth and we did not have a common ancestor (Adam & Eve) but evo from Apes on down.
Really, your uniformed comments without any “facts” is what needs to be addressed. D'oh!
