thehomer:
It is because a population evolves not just the individual. In order to determine that evolution is occurring, you compare the frequency of certain alleles between different populations.

Mr_Anony:

Ok wiegraf, let's work through this...

First of all human beings are a very complex organism. Basically, a human being is a whole universe of individual cells living together and these cell all have to work in near perfect uniformity for a human being to function. A human being who doesn't feel pain will be seen as diseased. It won't be attributed to genetics. Perhaps we should make it a bit simpler by focusing more on unicellular organisms.

Now you talked about probabilities, let us put a number to it shall we? The number of atoms present in a single cell organism is estimated at 100 trillion. Now, the chance of life starting from a primordial soup means that these 100,000,000,000,000 atoms need to come together in a specific way. This puts the chance of life forming on earth at one in 100 trillion factorial (100,000,000,000,000 x 99,999,999,999,999 x 99,999,999,999,998......3 x 2 x 1). Please take a minute to consider the magnitude of that number. Just for comparism, 50 factorial is approximately 3 x 10^64 (3 with 64 zeroes following). Now even if this "probability" happened (and mind you it would have to repeat itself quite a number of times), it wouldn't still explain life.

Mr_Anony:
Let us leave the above aside for now, let us assume that the conditions were just right (which by the way is another "probability" of it's own) so that life "miraculously" happened and we have the first living cell or groups of cells, let us also agree that these cells don't have any consciousness whatsoever and the basic characteristics of living things (movement, growth, respiration, feeding, excretion, reproduction and response to stimuli) are just chemical reactions for this cell since it doesn't have a conscious life.

The question now becomes why would the cell reproduce at all in the first place enabling it to pass it's genes on? Why would the gene want to be propagated?

Mr_Anony:
Let us also ignore this question and assume that reproduction is just a random chemical reaction such that the cells that don't reproduce simply die. same thing for feeding respiration e.t.c.

Another question pops up: How can an organism die if all the characteristics of it being a living thing are more or less, chemical reactions? This should point to the fact that as long as natural conditions remains the same, these chemical reactions should continue and the organism should stay 'alive' and never die or decay.

Mr_Anony:
Let us not even talk about the probability of these 'mindless' organisms eventually evolving into complex animals like we have today (A human being that weighs 70kg is roughly 7 quadrillion synchronized cells).

The above are some of the logical steps we have to jump across before coming to complex organisms.

Now most animals are in such a way that they are adapted to their environment, this evolution explains is as a result of natural selection i.e. these are the animals that survived and the traits are not developed in response to the environment rather, they are developed in spite of the environment. the environment only lets some traits survive. This sounds like a good explanation until we look at it a bit more closely.

Take for instance the presence of melanin in the human skin, or the absence of tails in human beings. If evolution is really by purposeless natural selection, shouldn't a surviving trait simply continue to exist even though it we have no more use for it? After all it is not threatening our survival.

Doesn't this suggest that rather than mindless natural selection, there is a purpose that allows the animal to adapt to it's environment.

Mr_Anony:

As for dawkins and his selfish gene theory, well that's another pot of soup on it's own.

Mr_Anony:
Dude, I am not thinking anything. I am asking a question that truly puzzles me as regards evolution and you are linking me to a psychology article. What has that article got to do with anything I am asking?

If genes are passed on from one individual to another, how come "Random mutation and natural selection act at the level of the population." when the genes themselves are passed at an individual level?

davidylan:

worry not, every single individual who has had the opportunity to cross paths with thehomer has left with the exact same feeling. A slimy snake who really doesnt know but covers his own ignorance with hubris.

davidylan:

worry not, every single individual who has had the opportunity to cross paths with thehomer has left with the exact same feeling. A slimy snake who really doesnt know but covers his own ignorance with hubris.

davidylan:

1. Many organisms arent unicellular but the VAST bulk of biomass on earth is unicellular so what was your point? Infact we can conclude that the most adaptable and most successful species on earth are unicellular organisms.

davidylan:
2. To say we cannot tell that a single organism is evolving is just plain mad. The bulk of research showing how mutations markedly change phenotype has been done in single-celled organisms. For example, a lot of my mutation studies back in grad school was done in E. coli.

davidylan:

this is as absurd as a non-answer can get. Mr_Anony asked a very simple ques - If genes are passed on from one individual to another, how come "Random mutation and natural selection act at the level of the population." when the genes themselves are passed at an individual level?

davidylan:
Your response was - it is because population evolves not the individual? What did that even mean?

davidylan:
Random mutations dont occur at the population level but at the level of the individual genome... how does this then get passed unto the general population so as to affect their phenotype... and your answer is the above? Puerile.

Ihedinobi: @wiegraf, I confess that I thought you were a little like Ptolomeus, probably using a translating program, when I first read you on my thread set up to defend Yahweh. Your posts were practically incomprehensible. But, for awhile now, I see that you can type clear English that nobody could rightly misinterpret. But your ability to become incomprehensible has again shown in your response to Mr Anony. Is it perhaps a ruse to avoid giving a clear answer? Or what? I couldn't make it through half of that "write-up", dude.

wiegraf:


What I said was jhhgcttyjjnbuugfrddknvyjktff

Point out the bits you don't understand

Hkivyfffuumkbigjll

davidylan:

1. Many organisms arent unicellular but the VAST bulk of biomass on earth is unicellular so what was your point? Infact we can conclude that the most adaptable and most successful species on earth are unicellular organisms.

2. To say we cannot tell that a single organism is evolving is just plain mad. The bulk of research showing how mutations markedly change phenotype has been done in single-celled organisms. For example, a lot of my mutation studies back in grad school was done in E. coli.

Kay 17:

I thought you said Science wasn't empirical? If so, why bother confirming with observations??

davidylan:

the sun appeared by random chance and those seeds just appeared out of nowhere? So sand exists because that is what it always does? Somehow this chance has ONLY found expression on this tiny portion of the universe?

wiegraf: Calm down, there's enough wiegraf to go round..
oh, someone took over... anyways, taking you back



This has little to do with evolution, this is more abiogenesis. I'm not familiar with the topic, but these guys seem pretty pissed whenever ID people bring up numbers like yours http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html . It wouldn't be too fair to use this link though as they seem to be particularly concerned with claims like the ones you make (and I actually haven't read/researched it yet ), a neutral would be more acceptable. Regardless, it's got little to do evolution, and I believe there are others on NL familiar with the topic (I believe Avi for one is)

Also, like thehomer points out, lots of other things in nature work similarly. Simple + simple = complex, till you get very complex. Even atoms are made up of many particles (and if string theory is correct, the average string is supposed to be the size of tree when compared to the full size of an atom, but string theory is far from confirmed). You can imagine how many atoms make a whale? What about a mountain? What about a star? etc

The odds though I would imagine would probably still be fairly low, and I cannot see how that aids ID actually. If ID were involved, why this highly inefficient system? Also, low odds help explain the seeming paucity of intelligent life, much rarer than multi-cellular life (we've had millions of these on this planet, only 1 attained intelligence), which is also rarer than single celled life. I remember reading somewhere that the jump from single to multi-cell is very unlikely (a dawkins book, I think 'The Greatest Show on Earth', will have to clarify). There are many other options that could explain why we've not gotten any evidence of intelligent life though.

Don't forget they're hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy, and hundreds of billions of galaxies in this universe (though ours is fairly big). So when you look at low odds...

ID designer sure is astronomically inept if we were the objective or purpose.

Edit: whether the mutation is classified as a disorder or not is irrelevent to my point. What's important is that the trait is hereditary and harmful or not up to par as far survival
is concerned. There are people born without the ability to feel pain, not sure if its hereditary though. But I'm sure of people born without the ability to sleep, and theirs is hereditary.



I think it's already been pointed out. It didn't need a conscious reason. It's just a natural process. Rivers flow downstream. Clouds form. Stars shine, etc.

random: if you're insinuating an ID how did the ID acquire such complexity in the first place? There must have been a natural process at the beginning, and it would work like all of nature, logically, which is: simple -> complex. But the requirement of an ID is completely superfluous, not to mention illogical considering the inefficiency of the system for one.



The same with the question in the op actually. Evolution didn't set out to achieve anything (or in this case, abiogenesis), it just so happens a configuration that could be termed "life" was achieved and it was not configured to last forever. We (humans) for instance have acquired the means to engineer life ourselves, rather than leave it to chance. We are now working on things like SENS with the goal of elongating our lives. We are being a hell of a lot more efficient than nature because we have a purpose. We've drawn up plans, experimented, tested etc etc and continue to do so. We now have optimistic estimates of achieving something similar to "immortality" in ~30 years. Evolution, on the other hand, has non of that. Just blind random mutations and natural selection. Living forever, or any other similar goal, is not the aim. It doesn't have one.

Why didn't an ID use an approach similar to ours?

Look up senescence for reasons for cell death though, and as already mentioned, entropy (put wear and tear to entropy as well)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senescence

Also, it's not impossible that species that have been "immortal" once existed and have died out. Cell lines exist which are immortal (HeLa, from humans, a cancer cell line) and even looking at complex animals Hydra's are basically immortal, or sort of, they don't die from old age. But there are debates about the nature of its immortality. Other biological life forms fit the bill too

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality



You are aware of course of lots of useless bits in life forms from their ancestors
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigiality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_vestigiality

If you're going to ask this, you might as well ask how are species formed, it's more or else the same thing. As time, a lot of it, passes the changes in members of a species somehow divided (be it by geography or what not) become so extreme that you get 2 or more different species. Breeding dogs from wolves in a few millenia alone show how drastic changes can be when directed with a purpose (we have hairless cats and dogs without tails). Island gigantism shows said dramatic changes without the aid of intelligent planning. While these changes are taking place, if a trait that is not critical to the species survival anymore keeps on becoming less and less of priority, other mutations will take precedence, and we can have changes as drastic as snakes not having any limbs, and far more dramatic of course.



Looking up his selfish gene theory, it has little to do with the current issue. But if it were what I thought it was, it would have. In essence, if the problem is why do most life forms seem very eager to live, procreate etc, then the answer would be because natural selection favours the 'selfish'.

Over to you good sir, and of course editing later

thehomer:

Really davidylan? Are you sure about that? Don't blame me for your ignorance and hubris.

Mr_Anony:
I'll be right back, give me some time to digest your argument

Mr_Anony:
Now you talked about probabilities, let us put a number to it shall we? The number of atoms present in a single cell organism is estimated at 100 trillion. Now, the chance of life starting from a primordial soup means that these 100,000,000,000,000 atoms need to come together in a specific way. This puts the chance of life forming on earth at one in 100 trillion factorial (100,000,000,000,000 x 99,999,999,999,999 x 99,999,999,999,998......3 x 2 x 1). Please take a minute to consider the magnitude of that number. Just for comparism, 50 factorial is approximately 3 x 10^64 (3 with 64 zeroes following). Now even if this "probability" happened (and mind you it would have to repeat itself quite a number of times), it wouldn't still explain life.

Ihedinobi: @thehomer, as far as I can see, you're incredibly slippery in debate. A distinctive mark of dishonesty.

Ishilove:
Au contraire; it shows he is very very smart

Kay 17:

I thought you said Science wasn't empirical? If so, why bother confirming with observations??

Ihedinobi:

You're kidding, right? I've played ball with this guy before. Displaying a far more honest level of this "smartness" earned me a reputation of dishonesty on that same thread. Wiliness isn't smartness in any day or age. It's just plain dishonesty.

thehomer:
It means what I said. The population evolves not the individual. I would recommend that you read but you'll just start whining and continue your ignorant blather. But really, for someone who claims to have studied these things, the depths of your ignorance and braggadocio is simply amazing.

thehomer:
Think of it as being that random mutations are assessed at the level of the population. I hope you know that a random mutation doesn't necessarily affect the phenotype of an organism.

But before you go too far along Mr_Anony's questions, what is your response to this post?

thehomer:

Really davidylan? Are you sure about that? Don't blame me for your ignorance and hubris.

Enigma: ^^^ He is unquestionably the most sly and dishonest of the evangelical atheists.

There are some of them who make up for poor argument with rudeness and obnoxiousness.

There are one or two (only one currently active IIRC) fairly intellectually honest.

Then you have the ranters who regard unthinking, ill-thought or even outright senseless rants as "logic and reason".

thehomer:
Nature selecting certain individuals is a response to the environment.

Kay 17:

ID doesn't explain why viruses flourish and mutate to be more deadly.

ID doesn't explain how organisms readapt to climate changes

ID doesn't explain the complexity of the Originator

ID doesn't explain general purpose of Life.

Ihedinobi: @thehomer, as far as I can see, you're incredibly slippery in debate. A distinctive mark of dishonesty.

truthislight:

dude
Actually Since you joined this thread i 've not red any logical post from you.

Can you pls improve the situation?

thehomer:

Like other Nairaland Christians, you seem to enjoy making accusations without evidence. When asked to present your evidence, you'll shy away from it. To demonstrate, why don't you present your evidence of my slipperiness using quotes I've made on this thread?

thehomer:

Don't blame me for your failure of understanding. To back up your statement, why don't you post three of my quotes and explain to me why you don't think they're logical.