Disproving the Bible

[Jenny A]

As you recommended, I am researching non-creationist articles and comparing them to the article I mentioned before. TOPIC: Orphaned Genes. ISSUE: 10-30% of all genes of all species can't be traced to other species. Where do they come from?

I found an article describing a study of orphaned genes by Tomislav Domazet-Loso and Diethard Tautz of the Institut für Genetik der Universität zu Köln, 50931 Köln, Germany. http://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/10/2213.full 10.1101/gr.1311003; Genome Res. 2003. 13: 2213-2219; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press.

Near the end of the article, they have a section: There are three possible reasons why a gene can be an orphan gene.

1. The genes have newly evolved
2. The gene was an ancestrally shared gene but got lost in most evolutionary lineages.
3. The gene evolved so quickly that a similarity cannot be found in other species.

All three theories have problems. The conclusion starts with "The role of orphan genes in the evolutionary process remains enigmatic."

It seems to have been the prevailing theory that: "The probability that a functional protein would appear de novo by random association of amino acids is practically zero." Jacob, Francois. June 10 1977. Evolution and Tinkering. Science, New Series, Vol. 196, Issue 4295, pp. 1161-1166. (Nobel prize winning geneticist) until the mapping of the genome found these orphaned genes.

Here is my problem. They listed three possible reasons for orphaned genes--none of which was that the organisms did not share a common ancestor (which would fit ALL the facts). You said that there is no bias in science. Tell me why this is not bias?

Okay so I read your article and and a few others about orphaned genes while as was at it.

Orphaned genes are genes that do cannot be linked to other lineages based on gene sequencing or to put it another way, these genes provide a new protein coding sequence not found in previous lineages. They constitute about 10 to 20% of all organisms genes. But identifying is difficult because so often they turn out to be genes that really do have links further back in the genome.

Your question is why none of the hypotheses for how these genes occur considers that organisms don't share a common ancestry?

Well, since the other 80 to 90 percent of the genes are not orphan genes and do evidence a common ancestor and the physiology of animals as well as were those animals exist and existed geographically and through time also evidence evolution, orphan genes are not evidence evolution did not occur.

However, since these orphan genes are by definition not the result of inverted transcriptions, merged, or truncated genes, the question is how did these mutations occur? Not surprisingly none of the hypotheses suggested is "magic."

If, as you appear to be proposing god mutated them, how would you test that? The hypotheses suggested are testable.

[The Grand Nudger]

You'd look for the skyhook. No god claim that refers to any observation of the natural world is untestable in principle.

[Jenny A]

You'd look for the skyhook. No god claim that refers to any observation of the natural world is untestable in principle.

The only way to declare it god or magic is to eliminate all the other possibilities. But finding and proving a single other cause on the other hand, that's doable.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's not how it works. Evolution isn't the only possible explanation, and we didn't have to rule everything else out to declare it "the explanation". We only have to show that evolution fits the available evidence better than other explanations, and that it makes predictions that could turn out either way, which it does, and those predictions panned out in favor of evolution. The same would be true for a claim of god or magic as regards the subject at hand.

Providing a single cause "other than" could very easily be limited to the example at hand, specifically. So lets say we find a single species that is demonstrably not of the same genetic lineage as all the rest, absolutely no correlation. That doesn't mean that the rest didn't evolve, but it would show that evolution wasn't the only way to get from a to b. I think that the latter ought to be the bar that the creatards aim for before they ever set their sights on god. Proving evolution wrong, at this point, looks to be a fruitless endeavor. Finding a single example of a creature that got to where it was by processes other than that invoked in evolutionary explanations would be a hell of a breakthrough. Nobel prize type shit. Then, then, they'd have some heft from which to throw a curve.

[SteveII]

It's not one. If we have 20,000 genes, that would be 2000-6000 orphaned genes.

You can take the numbers up or down and it won't matter. Where did the other 18-14k come from? This is probably news to some, but common ancestry ceased to be a theory with the discovery and application of genetics.

I don't believe it has. You would expect to see vast similarities in genes between living organisms. I would assume that there are a limited number of possibilities to construct a living, replicating, and interconnected cell to form a larger organism. It would stand to reason that on a genetic level, there would be nearly identical building blocks.

Actually, it seems that genetics might have opened up more questions than it answers (like harmful vs beneficial mutation rates, not enough time, orphaned genes, how GRNs came about, and others I am still reading about).

[The Grand Nudger]

It's not an issue of belief. Belief is neither required nor invoked. Genetics absolutely did open up more questions than we have answers for - but it also presented us with the tools to answer those questions. That's why it was such a powerful discovery, and why it's addition to evolutionary models turned modern synthesis into the unifying theory of biology.

Where did your genetic material come from, personally?

(why would you make that assumption you made above, btw?)

[Jenny A]

That's not how it works. Evolution isn't the only possible explanation, and we didn't have to rule everything else out to declare it "the explanation". We only have to show that evolution fits the available evidence better than other explanations, and that it makes predictions that could turn out either way, which it does, and those predictions panned out in favor of evolution. The same would be true for a claim of god or magic as regards the subject at hand.

Providing a single cause "other than" could very easily be limited to the example at hand, specifically. So lets say we find a single species that is demonstrably not of the same genetic lineage as all the rest, absolutely no correlation. That doesn't mean that the rest didn't evolve, but it would show that evolution wasn't the only way to get from a to b. I think that the latter ought to be the bar that the creatards aim for before they ever set their sights on god. Proving evolution wrong, at this point, looks to be a fruitless endeavor. Finding a single example of a creature that got to where it was by processes other than that invoked in evolutionary explanations would be a hell of a breakthrough. Nobel prize type shit. Then, then, they'd have some heft from which to throw a curve.

That's the point about "it's god." There is no mountain of evidence that suggests god or even evidence that could suggest god. What evidence would suggest god besides a lack of other evidence? Therefore, you can't disprove god in any single case except by showing something else did it.

---

You can take the numbers up or down and it won't matter. Where did the other 18-14k come from? This is probably news to some, but common ancestry ceased to be a theory with the discovery and application of genetics.

Actually, it seems that genetics might have opened up more questions than it answers (like harmful vs beneficial mutation rates, not enough time, orphaned genes, how GRNs came about, and others I am still reading about).

Um, nothing about evolution suggests any rate between harmful and beneficial mutations, only that mutations beneficial for the production of progeny will be retained and those that make reproduction less likely will be lost. It really is a logical certainty. That which succeeds at reproducing, will succeed at reproducing.

Orphaned genes suggest less rather than more time is needed for evolution.

[SteveII]

It's not an issue of belief. Belief is neither required nor invoked. Genetics absolutely did open up more questions than we have answers for - but it also presented us with the tools to answer those questions. That's why it was such a powerful discovery, and why it's addition to evolutionary models turned modern synthesis into the unifying theory of biology.

Where did your genetic material come from, personally?

(why would you make that assumption you made above, btw?)

My genetic material came from the same man that yours did. That would be fact. Before that?...now you are into theory.

My assumption? Since the more we realize how complex life really is, the more unlikely there are alternative methods to getting to that point. Scientist can't figure out how the origins of life came about when they have all the ingredients sitting on the table. Imagine having multiple sets of independent building blocks of life.

[Tonus]

I would like to see a thread about who wrote all those books and why, and how they found their way into the Biblical cannon. There will of course be people popping up to claim that every book was divinely inspired and that nothing could have been added afterwords.

You might enjoy this blog. The author sees the Bible as a collection of ancient stories and fables and studies it as a way of learning about the people and societies that wrote them. The contradictions aren't presented as a way of proving that the Bible is false, but as a way of understanding the motives of the storytellers and of the people who put it in the version we can read today. It's very interesting from that angle, IMO.

[The Grand Nudger]

My genetic material came from the same man that yours did. That would be fact. Before that?...now you are into theory.

That fact is all that modern synthesis deals with. "Before that" falls under the purvey of other explanations, other theories. How do you know that your genetic material comes from the same man as mine? Also, where did his genetic material come from?

My assumption? Since the more we realize how complex life really is, the more unlikely there are alternative methods to getting to that point. Scientist can't figure out how the origins of life came about when they have all the ingredients sitting on the table. Imagine having multiple sets of independent building blocks of life.

We know that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Carbon chauvinism has been out for awhile now. In the case of our lives, it's not an issue of likelihood or probability, again, evolution is an observation, not just a good guess based on how likely we think something might be (or unlikely). I love imagining multiple sets of building blocks for life, we just don't see that here - but nothing prevents it from being so, and we also know that. Silicon is a candidate (and we see alot of chemistry in our carbon based life that leverages silicon), as are other elements, and adding complexity is just useless, life doesn't have to be carbon based, nor does it have to be as complex as our own to qualify as life. Once you do away with that unnecessary qualifier a whole host of other "building blocks" become candidates.

How is that assumption looking now?