Re: on co-opting impulses towards organized religion

From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Sun Jul 29 2001 - 16:14:30 MDT


In a message dated 7/28/01 2:18:02 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
citizens@vcn.bc.ca writes:

> >> Has anyone demonstrated then that any mutation induced in any species is
> >> adaptive in the wild?
> >> POC

Mutations in response to changed conditions are demonstrated as well
as could be; there's a great sequence of sequential mutations in French
mosquitos responding to insectide. We can also identify selected
regions; Wu's lab showed a section of Drosophila chromosome with
meiotic drive has had at least 5 selective sweeps.

> >Is Darwinian evolution a dogma and part of the catechism of
> >Scientism? (Unless you give the expected answer to this religious question
> >you won't pass Geology 100). Doesn't it depend on millions of successful
> >adaptive mutations in the wild to be valid? Why can't genetics labs after
> >so many years come up with any? Where are the hard fossil records of the
> >huge number of failed mutations? Bone mutations should be failing out
> >there left, right and centre and leaving a fossil trail behind.

Well, they are. Every bone we ever find is different. Although we can't
yet specifically identify the individual genes responsible, we know that
there is a lot of genetic variation behind that variability; plenty for
Darwinian
evolution. Actually the current problem is more explaining why it's so
slow in the long-term sense; models suggest it should always run at the
rate of the apparent punctuations.

> >Why do all the grasshopers and boll weevils have legs and not wheels?
Not enough knowledge of development to answer that one.
We don't see how they could evolve, but we don't under-
stand everything about development, by a long shot.
Could also be that wheels demain nice hard flat surfaces
for efficiency and such things are not common apart from
human agency.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:39:58 MDT