lucaspa

Transposons and viral elements are not sequences for functional proteins. Remember, Behe and other IDers state that a multicomponent biochemical sequence can arise only by getting all the individual genes to come into existence together. To them, this means ONLY manufacturing all of the genes at the same time. In this case, the bacterial genome already many hundreds/thousands of sequences for functional proteins. It is already a set of "irreducibly complex" systems. Now, consider that those functional proteins are in addition to the functional proteins already in the Drosophila genome, and you can see that you can suddenly get, without manufacture, several sets of complex biochemical sequences all at the same time. A major point of the authors is that it has been assumed that bacterial sequences found during the human genome project (for instance) were from contamination and they were ignored. The authors think that some, or all, of those sequences were actually IN the human genome. Considering that the DNA was isolated from members of Drosophila captured in the wild, it is likely that this is stable. It would be very improbable that this insertion happened just a few generations ago. Also, the authors tested for inheritance of the Wolbachia genes: "Crosses between Wolbachia-free Hawaii males (with the insert) and Wolbachia-free Mexico females (without the insert) revealed that the insert is paternally inherited by offspring of both sexes, confirming that Wolbachia genes are inserted into an autosome. Since Wolbachia infections are maternally inherited this also confirms that PCR amplification in the antibiotic treated line is not due to a low level infection. Furthermore, the Hawaii and Mexico crosses revealed Mendelian, autosomal inheritance of Wolbachia inserts (paternal N = 57, k = 0.49; maternal N = 40, k = 0.58)." In this case, only about 2% of the Wolbachia genes were transcribed to mRNA and then only in very small amounts: "In addition, RT-PCR followed by sequencing (11) demonstrated that ~2% of Wolbachia genes (28 of 1206 genes assayed; table S3) are transcribed in cured adult males and females of D. ananassae Hawaii. The complete 5' sequence of one of the transcripts, WD_0336, was obtained with 5'- RACE on uninfected flies (11) suggesting that this transcript has a 5' mRNA cap, a form of eukaryotic post-transcriptional modification. Analysis of the transcript levels of inserted Wolbachia genes with qRT-PCR (11) revealed that they are 10-4fold to10-7 fold less abundant than the fly’s highly transcribed Actin gene (act5C; table S3)."

Because they are not consistent. PETA is an example of taking a position based on an emotions and then looking for rationalizations of the emotion. Because they are rationalizations and not reasons, there is no attempt to test whether they are consistent. PETA is only looking for support, not testing their original position for validity. Can you validly extend the argument? In the first case you are being intraspecific -- within the human species and talking about rights and priviledges we give other members of our species. In the second case you move out of the human species. This is not "across the board" but a new board. You have a board for treatment of other humans, but a completely separate board for treatment of other species. After all, if you insist on "across the board", then it is equally "immoral" for lions and other predators to violate the "rights" of their prey. BUT, then the predator starves. In which case you've violated the "rights" of the predator. This example shows why you can't apply intraspecific ideas blindly to interspecies.

You have done what a lot of people have done: mistakenly tried to insert teleology and consciousness into evolution. What you have in movement of plants (and forager ants "doing" spherical trignometry) is natural selection, not "unconscious". Those plants who had a variation such that chemicals moved to rotate leaves to face the light did better than those plants that did not. Natural selection then ensured that, after several generations, all plants had that ability through the fact that they were all descended from that one lucky plant. Natural selection is an unintelligent process that gives design. What has confused you (as so many others) is that design looks like it is the product of intelligence. Therefore you keep looking for some sort of intelligence to give the designs we see in plants and animals. Some people do this by divine intelligence. You are doing it by "unconscious" intelligence. There is no "primal force" involved in non-life becoming life. It is chemical reactions. No "force". Trees grow not because they "can", but because of the chemical reactions. Then measure it. Find "unconscious energy". Again, you are looking at "design" and thinking there has to be an "intellect" at work. Where in virii do you hide an "unconscious". Yes, humans have one in our brains. Where do virii store theirs? 5. The greater ‘collective unconscious’ that Lucaspa reasonably needs proof of a housing for. Ok, now it gets really difficult [Dichotomy breaks into nervous sweat:eek: ]. ... I’ll say for the sake of argument that the herd’s ‘collective unconscious’ is transmitted between members. How transmitted? Radio waves? Light, sound, colors? Like codes that can be transmitted by light, sound and odors. It maybe a spectrum, level, intensity that we have yet to discover. Please document those. And document how many of them were accurate? This is selective data. After all, no one is going to report when they had a feeling the twin was in danger and the twin was NOT. Similarly, no one is going to report an absence of feeling and then find the twin was really in danger, are they? However, that is irrelevant. All the speculation about twin communication and unknown means of communication comes from a single mistake: thinking that the designs in plants and animals must come from some sort of intellect. This was Darwin's great discovery: that design happens without any intellect -- conscious or unconscious. But the pre-Darwinian concept dies hard, it seems. In that case the data refutes you. Remember, 99.99% of all species have gone extinct. Therefore there is no "much more likely" to succeed, since for each individual species the probability is so low. And again we see a misunderstanding of Darwinian selection. There is no desire on the part of the plant. If that were so, we would have many more species of insect catching plants. The book you need to read is Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea. You will see your desire for some form of intellect to drive evolution in the writings of others and how that is wrong. VERY likely. BTW, life does NOT "evolve" from energy and matter. The transition of non-life to life is chemistry, not evolution. Evolution doesn't kick in until AFTER you have life. Again, if you are looking at "cosmic unconsciousness" as driving living organisms to get favorable adaptations, then why are only 0.01% of all living species still alive? That's a very low probability of succeeding. But you say the CU improves probability. Shouldn't that mean that most species and lineages would still be around? Where is the "cosmic unconsciousness" housed? You never really answered that one, did you? The human being is the highest form of conscious matter that we know of. I see our bodies as a microcosm of the greater cosmos. If we have evolved from unconscious beginnings (which I believe we have) to our present level of consciousness, then I see the cosmos operating the same way, except without our current level of evolved consciousness. So, all of matter is unconsciously driven like a trees roots blindly searching for water. Our unconsciousness comes from an interaction between neurons in our brain. Where does the "cosmic unconsciousness" come from? What interactions in matter and/or in the universe constitute this "unconsciousness". And then how does this translate to affecting the matter in plants and animals to change their form?

As several people have noted, this is abiogenesis, not evolution. Abiogenesis --getting life from non-living chemicals -- is chemistry. Let me get this out: whenever a person comes along and tries to make evolution = abiogenesis, they are not really talking about evolution. Instead, they are arguing atheism vs theism and using god-of-the-gaps theology. Fakeman, in case you don't know, god-of-the-gaps theology is a theology that says: if there is not a "natural" explanation, then God did it by directly making the thing. 1. Evolution assumes that life already exists. This is what Darwin wrote in Origin of Species: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450. As you can see, evolution kicks in AFTER you have living organisms. Darwin wasn't concerned with how those first living organisms got here and, in fact, suggests that they were directly made by "the Creator". 2. Spontaneous generation is not abiogenesis! Spontaneous generation is the theory that complex organisms -- mice, maggots, etc. -- appear from decaying living matter (grain, rotting meat, etc.). Sorry, but data says it happens. Start here and we can discuss it further: http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html No, it's not. It's presented as what it was: getting amino acids and sugars from a simpler chemical mixture. Now let’s examine the experiment critically: Untrue. Miller and Urey had some evidence that the early earth had a reducing atmosphere. Today we know that it was not. That's why the experiments were repeated in several different atmospheres, some of which contained low levels of oxygen. What were the results? The same as Miller-Urey: 1. Kawamoto K, Akaboshi H. Study on the chemical evolution of low molecular weight compounds in a highly oxidized atmosphere using electical discharges.**Origins of Life and Evolution of the*Biosphere 12: 133-141, 1982. 2. http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=9952573C-E7F2-99DF-32F2928046329479 This is where we often get incensed at professional creationists: they lie to people. You are the victim of that fraud. "amino acids bond together" is different from Miller-Urey! Miller-Urey is getting amino acids from hydrogen, cyanide, carbon dioxide, ammonia, etc. What is the complete citation? That is, who were the authors, what is the volume number of the journal, the pages of the article, and the year? Before you accept any scientific citations, you MUST have all of those. Your source didn't give it to you, did they? Probably didn't want you reading it for yourself. That is simply not true. Oxygen has NO effect on amino acids bonding together. Think about it: if this were true, how can we have proteins (amino acids bonded together) in our own bodies? After all, we live in an oxygen atmosphere and there is oxygen dissolved in the water in our cells! Again, not true. UV light doesn't break up proteins or DNA/RNA. In fact, one way to measure the concentration of proteins or DNA/RNA in solutions is to shine UV light on them and see how much is absorbed! The proteins are fine! UV light tends to break the double bonds in lipids. If this were true, you couldn't be alive. In fact, it's not true. Any scientist has had protein solutions in sterile water for years and there is no hydrolysis! Do you know how hydrolysis is actually done in labs? You need 6 N hydrochloric acid and heating at 110°C for 15 minutes! No, you are not. What you are seeing is recreation of natural conditions. Miller-Urey were recreating a thunderstorm. So, there was lightning (electrical sparks) and rain (what you call "a trap door") to wash the chemicals out of the atmosphere. Oh yes there are! Once again people have lied to you. Here's a paper describing some of the D-amino acids in living organisms. There are quite a few: Biomed Chromatogr 2001 Aug;15(5):319-27 Amino acid sequence and D/L-configuration determination methods for D-amino acid-containing peptides in living organisms. Iida T, Santa T, Toriba A, Imai K. Not only that, but proteins made of racemic mixtures of amino acids also function quite well. Living organisms today use 20 amino acids and use L-amino acids in directed protein synthesis. The mistake is thinking that life requires only these 20 amino acids and that they must be L. That simply is not true. Physicists think they are experts in all of science. They are not. Dyson is simply wrong here. [qoute]Neither was Karl Popper when he stated that evolution was not scientific, but rather it belonged to the field of metaphysics. 1. Popper was a philosopher, not a scientist. 2. Popper changed his mind. Your source didn't bother telling you about that, either, did it? Strange, you keep saying that "evolutionists" don't tell you important facts. Yet we keep finding that creationists conceal facts from you. As we have seen, a lie. Modern living organisms contain far more than "one right-handed amino acid" and they don't die. Another lie. Amino acids bonded to form proteins by chemistry, which is not chance. Nor is it random. The following calculations are GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. the real odds of getting a protein with A biological activity by chemistry are 1: virtual certainty. Since we aren't talking about "a chemical accident", this is irrelevant. Chemistry is deterministic, not "accident". You need to do a later search of the literature. This is routinely done now. The quotes you used are another example of GIGO. Proteins aren't formed by random association of atoms, but are polymers of amino acids. Know the amino acid sequence, and you get a very good idea of the folding. Again, it's a matter of chemistry. This time it's the chemistry of being either "water-loving" or "water-hating". The SLOT argument has been dealt with a lot. Personally, I think it was devised by creationists to avoid getting out of cleaning the garage: "Dear, go clean the garage." "But you know I can't because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. You know a disordered system can't go to an ordered system. So I can't go out and bring order to the garage. It's impossible. Now let me finish watching the football game." What you have repeated is the falsehoods creationists have been saying for years. It makes a lot of us angry. Mostly because professional creationist say these lies with a straight face to people like you. However, you must accept some responsibility here. If you repeat a false witness as true without checking it out, aren't you also responsible for false witness. Now, the question I have is: I've done my best to give you some of the truth. Do you have the courage to stick around and listen to the rest of it?

The universe is increasing in entropy, but life represents a local decrease in entropy. In doing thermodynamic calculations you must consider the system and surroundings. The entropy of the system and surroundings must increase, BUT the entropy of the system can decrease. Consider a compressed gas cylinder such that the output goes thru a turbine that in turn runs and electrical motor. Open the cylinder and the expanding gas increases in entropy. However, in the process you get a decrease in entropy in the electric motor. Or think about cleaning the garage. The system is the garage and the system + surroundings is you, the atmosphere, and the garage. As you put items in the garage in order, you are decreasing the entropy of the garage. However, when you consider yourself and the atmosphere, there is an increase in entropy as you convert food to carbon dioxide, water, waste heat, and work. Thus the entropy of the system + surroundings increases. Life is like that. Life itself does not "increase entropy in the universe". Life decreases entropy BUT that decrease is much smaller than the increase in entropy as the universe expands. Therefore the total entropy of the universe (system + surroundings) continues to increase despite the decrease in entropy (system) in living organisms. "First, it must be emphasized that in entropy calculations it is important to distinguish between the system and the surroundings of the system. The system is that part on which we focus our attention. It may be part of a mechanical system, or more chemically, a gas, liquid, solid, or a reaction mixture. The surroundings constitute all other parts that might interact with the system. The surroundings will most frequently consist of heat reservoirs that can add to or subtract heat from the system or mechanical devices which can do work on or accept work from that system. The entropy change, not only of the system but also of the surroundings, will be of interest, and it will be important in all entropy considerations to distinguish these components clearly. The combination of the system and its surroundings correspond to an "isolated system", as suggested in Fig. 7.4, since the process being considered affects nothing outside of the system and its surroundings" pg 191-192. Physical Chemistry by Gordon M. Barrow

I'll accept this because I found it somewhere else -- an .edu site. But please, in an serious discussion, don't use Wiki. Since anyone can write or edit an entry, Wikipedia is a good first source to get an idea of a subject, but can't be used as a source. I will go back to the first question in the part of my post you quoted: "When you are all wrapped up in furs due to the cold, what difference does it make? " So yes, the eyes get overburdened with UV light, but that doesn't get you enough to make vitamin D. Also, since there are ways to protect against snow blindness (even without sunglasses), reflection of UV off snow and ice during winter still isn't going to get enough vitamin D made for the Inuit. I did a PubMed search. There is a group out of San Diego with 2 recent publications on what constitutes "attractive" mates in 2 human populations: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17160976&ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17136587&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlus The first is NW China, the second a community in central Africa. As one test (out of 5) men were asked to ratethe attractiveness of back posed females based skin color. The African males had no preference. The Chinese males did show a preference for lighter-skinned females. The other tests were: 1. Females for average male shape. Both sets of females did not like heavy set men. Chinese females liked average somatotype while the African females liked muscular males. 2. Female preference for amount and distribution of male trunk hair. Chinese women preferred little or no trunk hair, African females did not have a preference except they did not like the hirsute figure. 3. Female preference for the size of the non-erect male penis. Chinese women had a low numerical rating but showed a slight preference for figures with a moderate (22 or 33% above average) lengthening of the penis. African females rejected both the largest and smallest sizes of penis and expressed preference for the intermediate sizes. 4. Male preference for waist to hip ratio (WHR) in females (0.5-1.0). African men liked 0.8, Chinese men liked 0.6 followed by 0.7. 5. Male preference for skin color. See above. Now we wait to see if the group has any further publications with different populations.

Did Dak's post answer your question? This is a case where the scientific terms changed. So if you read an older paper you will see the terms "eubacteria" and "true bacteria" because of the older terms. In today's classification scheme "bacteria" = "eubacteria" = "true bacteria". Does that help?

OK, I found the paper and my answer as to how many of the genes are expressed: "In addition, RT-PCR followed by sequencing (11) demonstrated that ~2% of Wolbachia genes (28 of 1206 genes assayed; table S3) are transcribed in cured adult males and females of D. ananassae Hawaii." It's also not clear how biologically relevant the expressed proteins are: "Analysis of the transcript levels of inserted Wolbachia genes with qRT-PCR (11) revealed that they are 104-fold to107-fold less abundant than the fly’s highly transcribed Actin gene (act5C; table S3). There is no cutoff that defines a biologically relevant level of transcription, and assessment of transcription in whole insects can obscure important tissue specific transcription. Therefore, it is unclear whether these transcripts are biologically meaningful, and further work is needed to determine their significance." Interestingly, the peer-reviewed article in Science doesn't mention ANYTHING about evolutionary implications! Instead, the focus is on methodology and excluding bacterial sequences when genomes are sequenced: "Whole eukaryote genome sequencing projects routinely exclude bacterial sequences on the assumption that these represent contamination. For example, the publicly available assembly of D. ananassae does not include any of the Wolbachia sequences described here. Therefore, the argument that the lack of bacterial genes in these assembled genomes indicates that bacterial LGT does not occur is circular and invalid. ... Because W. pipientis is among the most abundant intracellular bacteria (17, 18), and its hosts are among the most abundant animal phyla, the view that prokaryote to eukaryote transfers are uncommon and unimportant needs to be reevaluated." A problem I have with this data is that it contradicts other data that we have: phylogenetic analysis. You see, if these inserted genes played a role in evolution, we would have discontinuity at the genetic level between ancestor-descendent. When the Wolbachia genes were inserted into female Drosophila genome the first time, we don't have "descent with modification" but gene engineering -- done by the Wolbachia bacteria. Thinking about it some more, Werren and colleagues would argue that phylogenetic analysis excluded any bacterial sequences from the analysis -- thinking that they were contamination. (see quote in previous post from paper). So maybe the phylogenetic data doesn't contradict this because the sequences were excluded. Oh, this paper is a nasty blow to IDers! IDers argue that the only way to get complex sequences of genes is for an intelligent agent to manufacture them. But here Drosophila (and other invertebrates) potentially get a complex sequence of genes without an intelligent agent. Yes, this does indeed knock a major prop out from under ID. Yes, you can have "genetic engineering" in multicelled organisms but not by an intelligent designer!

1. With your question, this probably should have gone in the Evolution forum. 2. How many of the bacterial genes are expressed? Having the genome present in Drosophila does not mean the Drosophila cells are making the proteins from the bacterial genome. 3. This is not "steering" in terms of evolution. When evolutionists speak of "random", they mean "random with respect to the needs of the individual or population". Mutations are NOT "random" with respect to areas of the DNA they appear in or some of the substitutions. For instance, when you have substitution mutation for A, it will almost always be T, not G or C. This insertion of the bacterial genome is still "random" in terms of the Drosophila. After all, what were the needs of the Drosophila as an individual or population? Did the bacteria genes fill that need or not? What this discovery does do is tell us another way that huge amounts of DNA can be "created". That is, how new pages of "information" can be added. Since the Drosophila operated just fine without the bacterial genes, this means that those genes (if expressed) can now be mutated without taking anything away from the Drosophila. Instead, those changes can ADD to the repertoire of traits of Drosophila. In that regard, the effect for evolution is similar to having chromosomal duplication. There never was a "progression theory of genetic mutations". And you are in error: most mutations are either neutral (the vast majority) or harmful. Only 2.8 per thousand mutations are out and out harmful. Pioneer, how much about evolution have you actually read? This is not an insult, but a serious question. I ask because you seem to be trying to reinvent the wheel. Let me review: natural selection is a two-step process. 1. Variation (of which mutations are one type) 2. Selection. You must have BOTH steps for natural selection to work. And yes, it is the environment that sets the criteria for selection. Only those variations that do better in that particular environment will be selected. It has long been known that there are 3 types of natural selection: 1. Directional. This is the one people most often associate with the term "natural selection". This happens in a changing environment and where natural selection picks new designs/adaptations and changes populations to fit that environment. 2. Purifying or stabilizing selection. Once a population is well-adapted to a particular environment, natural selection will actually act against changing the population. Once a population is at a fitness peak in the adaptive landscape, almost any change is going to make the individual LESS adapted. Therefore selection will work to stabilize or purifiy the genome to only those alleles that have the best adaptations for the particular environment. 3. Disruptive selection. This happens when a population covers a geographical area such that there are different environments in different parts of the range. Directional selection for the subpopulations tends to adapt the subpopulation for the particular environments but gene flow between the subpopulations tends to homogenize the population. Not really. You are using selective data. Dinos ranged in size from chickens to the giants you are thinking of. Again, not "the direction of the future". In evolution there is a principle called Cope's Rule. It states that, in any particular lineage, the trend is toward larger body size over time. The data strongly support this. Notice what happened to mammals and birds when the dinos suddenly went extinct at the KT boundary: lineages of mammals evolved into larger sizes to fill the empty ecological niches. Many mammalian species -- rhinos, hippos, elephants, etc., present and extinct -- overlap in size the range of size of the dinos. Blue whales are larger than any dino ever was.

Well, if we take your criteria seriously, humans have only had consciousness since 1859! Or maybe 1948 with the formation of the Modern Synthesis. The concepts of "consciousness" or "intelligence" are very difficult to pin down precisely. We all have an intuitive feel for what those words mean but no one has been able to come up with an acceptable precise definition. To get back to the OP, it appears that the appearance of intelligence/consciousness is a gradual process. We can point to the extremes -- such as a bacteria -- when consciousness is not present and to us where it is. But when exactly in the evolutionary continuum should we draw the line? We can't. We do know that hominids made stone tools date to 2.6 million years ago: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031105065322.htm Were the hominids that made them "conscious"? The oldest artifacts we have that are definitively "art" date from 50,000 years ago. There are other artifacts that may be art that are older: http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/art(evolution_or_revolution).htm I mention this because of your criteria "The ability of possessing uniquely human creativity". However, I would say that the controversy itself over whether older artifacts are "art" tells us that the evolution of "consciousness" and "creativity" was gradual, with no hard-and-fast line denoting the sudden appearance of either.

1. That's a VERY big "if" there. The webpage you referenced states "In some aspects of its cranial morphology, Eosimias exhibits affinities with the omomyoids." That would lend support to the Onomyoid Theory, not Beard's. 2.The molecular data also fits the Onomyoid or Tarsier theory, too, doesn't it? Wait a minute, the molecular data actually is against Beard, isn't it? After all, Beard states that "anthropoids descended from some ancient and unknown group of primates in the Eocene that are uniquely related to the living anthropoids." If that were the case, then there would be no diverging from the tarsiers because the lineage is unique, not tarsiers. Therefore the molecular data should place anthropoids equidistant from tarsiers and all other known mammalian taxa. If Beard's hypothesis were correct. The webpage didn't give an age for Eosimias. What is the supposed age of the fossil? First, let's remember we aren't looking in this thread at human evolution, but considerably further back: the origin of the anthropoids. If the molecular data is correct (and it usually is), we are 48 million years before the split of chimps and hominids. Second, since we don't have the hands-on experience, yes, we are confined to 1) speculation and 2) waiting for the scientific consensus to emerge. That's why I thought it was way too early to say Beard's ideas are more supported than the other ones. CDarwin, learn to be patient. Don't cheerlead a hypothesis; wait for the data. There is no "weight of data" yet. Third, when we get to the hominid line we run into problems of secondary motivation among the scientists. Every paleontologist wants to either 1) have his fossils be in the direct ancestor-descendent line to humans or 2) be a new species. Those are the sexy claims. I can see this in the discussion of the 3 species discovered near the chimp-hominid split; all the investigators are sure the species they discovered are on the hominid side of the split. I also see this when new hominid fossils are discovered, particularly H. antecessori and A. garhi. Both, as described, sound like transitional individuals to me, but both are classed as completely separate species.

Neither of us are claiming that life violates the 2nd Law. When dealing with the 2nd Law you have to specify the system. The whole system increases in entropy, even if subsystems decrease in entropy. In the paper you included, instead of taking the solar system as the "system", the author takes instead that total amount of light that hits the leaf. He is assuming that enough is reflected to provide enough increase in entropy to counter the decrease seen with formation of glucose: "By hypothesis, only the part rU, of the energy is used in the photochemical reaction (1), while the remainder (1 - -) U, is emitted as blackbody radiation having volume V, temperature TE - T, and thus the entropy (4/3) (1 - n) U,/T." "When radiation of volume V and energy U, is absorbed by the leaf, only the fraction i of the energy is utilized in the reaction (1), and thus reappears as the excess of the free energy of the products over that of the chemical reactants; the remaining fraction 1 - 7, we assume, is emitted by the leaf as equilibrium radiation of temperature TE and volume V. The accompanying (negative) increase of the entropy of the reacting molecules and the (positive) increase of the radiation entropy are ASm and AS, say." So here the system is all the light that hits the leaf, with the subsystem being the amount of light absorbed by chlorophyll and used in the reaction. It's a more constrained system than the entire solar system, but still broader than the individual chlorophyll molecule. As such, it is still valid and, within this smaller system, the increase of entropy does appear to be greater than the decrease in entropy in the synthesis of glucose (altho here the author is very weak on providing the equations for that entropy; he simply asserts it, referring back to a very obscure 1951 book.) That's pretty close to the thesis as I understand it and it is that thesis that I am challenging. Mostly because non-living systems have very few processes that will decrease entropy, whereas living systems, by their very nature, must have processes that do so. For instance, look at the balance of ions across cell membranes. In terms of ionic concentrations of Na, K, PO4, etc, cells have decreased entropy and maintain it by energy using ion pumps. So, is the net increase of entropy greater in the cell (increase in entropy of pump - decrease in entropy of ion concentration) than the increase in entropy we would see by placing comparable solutions of salts adjacent to one another and then removing the barrier and allowing them to mix freely? As far as I can tell, Sampson made the assertion without doing the work. This again is about specifying the system. You forgot that the tree also uses light to make glucose. So yes, looking only at the formation of glucose, you have a decrease in entropy. However, you can't do that. You have to also look at the formation of the light that was used to make glucose. When you do that, then there is a net increase of entropy. Also, cellulose is a polymer of hexoses (not all of which are glucose). In order to make the bonds connecting the individual hexoses to each other, you must use energy. This total energy ends up being an increase in entropy overall. Again, you aren't looking at the total system. Remember you said "duplication of DNA". Yes, the hydrogen bonding is such that, using Gibb's Free Energy equation, the formation of the helix is spontaneous because of the hydrogen bonds. However, if you look at the "duplication" of adding nucleotides to the chain and all the reactions involved in that, you have a very large increase in entropy overall to get the decrease in entropy of the DNA polymer. Thus, the net entropy increases even tho you have a decrease in entropy in the chain. Again, you have to look at the total system. In order for amino acids to react to form proteins, you must add heat. The generation of that heat is a larger increase in entropy than the decrease in entropy of the proteins. In making proteins by directed synthesis in cells, the energy is supplied by the cleavage of ATP. Only part of the energy is used in forming the covalent bonds between amino acids. The rest is dissipated as heat -- increase in entropy. Even in making an ATP by combustion of food, only part of the energy is used to make the high energy phosphate bond. The rest is dissipated as heat -- increase in entropy. When you look at the total change in entropy by formation of ATP and then cleavage of ATP to make the covalent bonds and the change in entropy from amino acids to protein, you find that the net change in entropy is an increase. Yes, life does carve out a volume of decreased entropy -- a subsystem of decreased entropy. But it does so within a larger system where entropy increases and that increase in the larger system is so large that the net entropy of the entire system -- larger system + life -- still increases. And biochemists have addressed this phenomenon in great detail. They have studied in great detail exactly how life decreases entropy, but that includes studying how the overall entropy of the system increases. Then the protocell qualifies. It has the ability to evolve further, since replication is going to give variations among the daughter cells. "The ease with which such protocell units arise under possible primitive Earth conditions has been abundantly documented, especially in the elegant experiments of Sidney Fox and his collaborators on the proteinoid microspheres. .. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that preformed primitive polypeptides (proteinoids) have properties enabling them to aggregate spontaneously to form remarkably uniform spherical units of bacterial dimensions which contain complex internal morphology including a double wall, exchange materials with the ambient medium, grow, cleave in two, fuse, exhibit weak catalytic activiity, and move when ATP is added to the medium. Protocells containing both proteinoid and polynucleotide have been shown to carry on a primitive kind of protocoding activity (27,29) The proteinoid microsphere is a compelling model for the high-probability prebiotic origin of discrete individual units of evolving organic mattter which could conceivably compete with one another and thus provide the basis for a primitive selection process." Dean H. Kenyon, Prefigured ordering and protoselection in the origin of life. In The Origins of Life and Evolutionary Biochemistry, ed. Dose, Fox, Deborin, and Pavlovskaya, 1974, pg 211. This is one possible sequence of events for abiogenesis: 1. Formation of amino acids from primordial precursors (water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, methane, oxygen, hydrogen, etc.) [M-U experiments and Miller and Orgel]. 2. Formation of proteins by polymerization of sets of amino acids. [Fox and others]. 3. Formation of microspheres by contact of proteins with water [Fox and others]. 4. Synthesis of RNA within the microspheres [Fox] 5. Replication of RNA. [Orgel] 6. Development of the genetic code. The first 5 steps have been done in the lab. I will be happy to provide a full set of references if you are interested. They are simple chemical steps whose probability is close to 1 (100% likely to happen). Step 5 also depends upon the chemical properties of RNA and is nearly 100% likely to happen. Development of the genetic code is still under investigation. However, internal evidence from the code itself indicates it started as a 2 letter code for only 16 amino acids. Here again is a stepwise movement. There is a paper describing how directed protein synthesis could evolve once you have RNA, with each of the steps being advantageous. It is also interesting to note: "In more recent work, Fox and his colleagues have shown that basic proteinoids, rich in lysine residues, selectively associate with the homopolynucleotides poly C and poly U but not with poly A or poly G. On the other hand, arginine-rich proteinoids associate selectively with poly A and poly G. In this manner, the information in proteinoids can be used to select polynucleotides. Morever, it is striking that aminoacyl adenylates yield oligopeptides when incubated with proteinoid-polynucleotide complexes, which thus have some of the characteristics of ribosomes. Fox has suggested that proteinoids bearing this sort of primitive chemical information could have transferred it to a primitive nucleic acid; the specificity of interaction between certain proteinoids and polynucleotides suggests the beginning of the genetic code." A. Lehninger, Biochemistry, 1975, pp 1047-1048 So this is how the genetic code gets started: again simple chemistry.

I hate to be picky, but what did I say? You quoted it: "2. Sexual selection is often tied to adaptive traits." Yes, the tail itself is maladaptive, but it is more than compensated for by other adaptive traits. An extensive study was done in frogs: 3. E Pennisi, Females pick good genes in frogs, flies. Science 280:1837-1838, (19 June) 1998. Discusses recent studies that show how "bad" genes associated with male display are actually connected to survival genes in males, so that females actually pick survival traits. In frogs the descendents of "long callers" did better in every fitness test. I never said it did. However, as more and more of these studies are done, it is turning out that "maladaptive" traits that are sexually selected for are linked to adaptive traits. And here is the start of linkage. This means that females picking the mate because of the large tail are also going to get a mate with another adaptive trait -- and have more surviving kids. So now sexual selection is also natural selection. Yes, on the surface the females are picking mates based on sexual cues -- sexual selection -- but underneath natural selection is also at work. Yes, it appears that pigmentation in humans is not able to be completely segregated (remember, most of the faces and hands also have to be covered in winter when there is snow to reflect sunlight). Having the darker areas exposed to UV still means that they are not getting enough vitamin D thru exposure to sunlight. BUT, there are 2 other factors at work: 1. Vitamin D thru the diet. Traditional Inuits eat the livers of whales and seals. 2. Insufficient generations to evolve paler skin. Remember, Inuits could only migrate to the region about 12,000 years ago when the glaciers melted at the end of the last Ice Age. Until then, they lived at a lower latitude and warmer climates. So, they are descended from darker skinned ancestors (Asians) and haven't been in the current location long enough. That's fine, but what I want you to do is test your introductions before you post them. Your "introduction" was really a hypothesis. I'm trying to get you to test that hypothesis before you post it and, if necessary, to modify the hypothesis with the appropriate tentativeness. Don't wait for us to test it for you. And I gave you the reasons for that. It isn't as though the idea hasn't been considered. There are areas where sexual selection has been seriously considered as a driver in human evolution. There are a couple of studies out showing that human females prefer tall males. Desmond Morris hypothesized that the size and shape of female human breasts were partly due to sexual selection. Some of his data is that larger hemispherical breasts are actually maladaptive for breast feeding. And I mentioned that hairlessness has been proposed to be due to sexual selection. None of these is "diversity", but evolution of H. sapiens as a whole. I think sexual selection for diversity is downplayed simply because the data says that human females of whatever population generally find human males of any other population desirable as mates. Even if they did not, human males find females of any other population desirable as mates and can force the mating if all else fails. Therefore, it's difficult for sexual selection based on population characteristics to be effective. However, since all populations have some taller males than others, that selection can be somewhat effective.

Define "real cell". We will get a living cell. It will be made entirely of proteins without DNA or RNA. The reason is due to the side chains of the amino acids in the proteins. Most amino acids have side chains that are "hydrophobic" or "water-hating". They are like oil and don't mix with water. Some side chains are hydrophilic or "water-loving" and mix with water. Think of soap with a hydrophobic tail and a hydrophilic head: they form small spheres with the tails in and the heads out with the water. Or think of oil droplets. Proteins tend to fold so that the hydrophobic side chains are in the center and the hydrophilic ones on the outside. When there are lots of proteins together in water, they tend to aggregate so that the hydrophobic parts are together and the hydrophilic ones out. This ends up making a cell. If you look at Figure 2 at http://www.theharbinger.org/articles/rel_sci/fox.html you can see cells forming as water hits proteins formed by dry heating of amino acids. The cell membranes of modern cells are over 50% protein. So all you need is protein to make a cell membrane. And there is your cell! Proteins to form the cell membrane and other membranes inside the cell and some proteins dissolved in the water inside the cell -- serving as the cytoplasm. The cells 1) metabolize, 2) grow, 3) reproduce, and 4) respond to stimuli. By metabolize I mean that they will break down molecules for energy and also make new proteins and DNA or RNA. They will even photosynthesize!

Multiple competing hypotheses with insufficient data to decide between them. My opinion? Wait for more data.

Then why don't you go to a library and look at the paper?! I did! Here's the reference again: D-E Nilsson and S Pelger, A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B. 256: 53-58, 1994. Here's a web article by one of the authors describing the paper: http://www.talkreason.org/articles/blurred.cfm#lund Yes, the "outcome" is "known" in evolution: designs that will perform well in that particular environment. In the Dawkins' example, Dawkins picked the environment. In evolution, physics, chemistry, and interactions with other life picks the outcome. And yes, we have an objective criteria to decide the "right" direction in evolution: frequency of traits or alleles that are greater than the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium predicts. Mendelian genetics predicts that the frequency of traits/alleles in a population will remain constant. It comes directly from the equations of Mendelian genetics and is known as the Hardy-Weinberg principle. Most loci do, in fact, conform to a Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. So, if you follow a population for generations (by taking a good sized sample of that population) and looking at the frequency of a trait or allele, you can see if a population is going in the "right" direction -- adaptation -- by 1) seeing that the overall population is stable and 2) observing that the frequency of some traits or alleles are increasing. Please document this. If you are referring to a changing environment between two stable points (starting and end points), then the intermediate steps will be less fit with regard to those points. BUT, the intermediates will be more fit than the preceding forms for that particular environment. The reason people question you is that you are repeating the flawed arguments we have seen written by IDers and other creationists. It's apparent that you are not reading textbooks of evolutionary biology. For instance, what you refer to as a fitness "valley" only occurs in the situation of heterozygous disadvantage or underdominance. This is where both the homozygotes are more fit than the heterozygote. Figure 13.12 D in Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology, 1999, pg 379. The text on page 402 is clear. Fitness landscapes can get more complicated if there are interactions between loci, but even here "evolution may be envisioned as the movement of a point (representing the population) on the surface. The point moves steadily upslope until it arrives at the peak -- the allele frequency at equilibrium". The way you have phrased this, you have that entropy increased elsewhere BECAUSE of life. Instead, the entropy was increasing ANYWAY, thus allowing life to decrease in entropy without violation of the 2nd Law. For instance, plants decrease entropy by using the energy of sunlight to combine carbon dioxide and water to make sugars. It takes a lot of work to create glucose from carbon dioxide and water. The way you stated it, "so the entropy increased elsewhere" that would mean that the decrease in entropy in plants causes the solar system to increase in entropy. That's the "so" in the sentence. Instead, as you well know, the solar system increases in entropy due to the nuclear fusion in the sun. The solar system would increase in entropy whether there were any plants or other life or not. Not ALL the processes of living beings increase entropy. As we noted, the photosynthesis of sugars by plants decreases entropy and does NOT "reject heat". In heterotrophs, there is conversion of foods to energy. Synthesizing proteins and DNA decrease entropy. This is more than balanced by the increase in entropy due to the combustion of the food. I would view this as life tests the validity of the 2nd Law of Thermo. Since life never exists in a system where the TOTAL entropy is not increasing, then the 2nd Law is not challenged by the existence of life.

If that is what Sampson is saying, then it is wrong. Life doesn't "disperse" energy, but concentrates it. Remember, life is a DECREASE in entropy: it is an INCREASE in the energy available to do work. From light sensitive proteins via a light sensitive spot such as are seen in Paramecium. I didn't say the eye could be described by 3640 bit. I said, using the hypotheticals, that it would represent an increase of that amount. Let's look at what I said again: "3. Let's take a less severe example. A selection pressure such that of 100 individuals, 99 survive to reproduce. -log(2) (99/100) = -log(2) (.99) = - (-0.01) = 0.01. So now we have only an increase of 0.01 "bits" in this one generation due to selection. But remember, selection is cumulative. Take this over 1,000 generations and we have an increase of 10 "bits". Now, Nilsson and Pelger have estimated, using conservative parameters, that it would take 364,000 generations to evolve an eye. D-E Nilsson and S Pelger, A pessimistic estimate of the time required for an eye to evolve. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B. 256: 53-58, 1994. Taking that over our calculations shows that the eye represents an increase of 3,640 "bits" of information." Notice I picked a very low selection coefficient -- 0.01. In nature, many selection coefficients are 10-50 times greater than that. 1. The DNA itself is not, strictly speaking, information described in "bits". Instead, it represents instructions for building an organism. 2. Your assumption of "no information" or just a few tens of bits is not accurate. First there is selection involved in forming elements in that all combinations of protons, neutrons, and electrons are not possible. So just having carbon involves having quite a bit of information. Then you get more information in that carbon cannot form all possible chemicals, so there is selection and increase in information when amino acids are made. 3. More information is generated when you make proteins by chemistry. It turns out that not every amino acid can be adjacent to every other amino acid; they are not playing cards. Fox and co-workers did an experiment using 3 amino acids -- glutamic acid, glycine, and tyrosine. With 3 amino acids you would expect 3^3 or 27 possible tripeptides. Instead, they got 6. So, if you put that in the information equation, it would be -log(2)(6/27) = -log(2)(2/9) ~ 3 bits of information added just to get those tripeptides. Actually, evolution has gone much slower than it is capable of going. Evaluation of the rate of evolution in natural populations of guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Reznick, DN, Shaw, FH, Rodd, FH, and Shaw, RG. Science 275:1934-1937, 1997. The lay article is Predatory-free guppies take an evolutionary leap forward, pg 1880. This is an excellent study of natural selection at work. Guppies are preyed upon by species that specialize in eating either the small, young guppies, or older, mature guppies. Eleven years ago the research team moved guppies from pools below some waterfalls that contained both types of predators to pools above the falls where only the predators that ate the small, young guppies live. Thus the selection pressure was changed. Eleven years later the guppies above the falls were larger, matured earlier, and had fewer young than the ones below the falls. The group then used standard quantitative morphology to quantify the rate of evolution. So we have a study in the wild, not the lab, of natural selection and its results. The rate of evolution was *very* fast. Evolution is measured in the unit "darwin", which is the proportional amount of change per unit time. The fish evolved at 3700 to 45,000 darwins, depending on the trait measured. In contrast, rates in the fossil record are typically 0.1 to 1.0 darwin. This means that evolution can happen 10,000 times faster than seen in the fossil record. Instead of 3.8 billion years, that rate would produce all the evolutionary change seen in just 380,000 years! The question has become: why has evolution gone so slow! Very few things are known in science at 100%. Every time you answer a question, 3 or 4 new questions pop up out of the answer. However, overall evolutionary mechanisms are known: natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, gene flow, mutation, recombination, etc. Why "must" there be more to get the designs we see in nature? That's what natural selection is: an algorithm (unintelligent process) that is guaranteed to give design. Now, will natural selection account for every feature of every organism? No. But it does account for what we are most interested in: the adaptations (designs). The possibility of getting protocells by chemistry is VERY high: close to 1 or virtual certainty. The websites that claim very small possibility are making some very bad assumptions: 1. That amino acids are like playing cards and are thus interchangeable within a protein. That is, ALL amino acid sequences are possible. That simply isn't so. 2. That only ONE particular amino acid sequence will do the job. We know that isn't so because different organisms have different versions of the protein (different amino acid sequences) to do the same thing. Think of cytochrome c -- essential for using oxygen to "burn" food. http://members.aol.com/SHinrichs9/descent/denton.jpg 3. If you combine amino acids by chemistry, you don't have to get one particular protein. Instead, what you want are the odds of getting A biological activity. Not a specific one. And the odds of getting a protein with A biological activity = 1. You don't know which activity, but it will have one. So those calculations showing a small probability are examples of GIGO: garbage in, garbage out. Instead of low probability, DATA indicates that the formation of life by protein first would be very high probability.

Even being used "loosely", the term is inaccurate. "Purpose" implies a goal, and life does not have the goal of dispersing energy. That simply is a side-effect.

We were talking specifically about long-distance runners. The area of Africa where the best long distance runners come from is eastern Africa and the people there tend to be taller and leaner than elsewhere in Africa. And the culture in Ethiopia and Kenya does tend to favor long distance running. I thought the context was clear (after all, you set up the context) and didn't think I needed to be specific. I hope this clarifies my remarks. We don't know that olympic standard is beyond the vast bulk of humanity simply because the vast bulk of humanity never tries to get to olympic standards. They simply don't spend the time and money necessary to do the rigorous training necessary. Of those that do, most perform at olympic levels, but the competition is such that the number of entrants are limited, therefore it depends on who does a little better on any given day during qualifying trials in each nation. After all, in smaller nations, people get in that could not have made the cut in larger nations. I would note that several military units train vast numbers of men (and women) to olympic standards.

You screwed yourself. Your calculation is 25 ul (PCR solution) x 400 ng/ul BSA = 10,000 ng BSA. To get 10,000 ng you need 25 ul of the BSA solution. But if you add 25 ul of BSA solution, you now have 50 ul of PCR mixture that is only 200 ng/ul of BSA. Right? You need to do one of two things: 1. Add all your PCR reagents (in solid form) to the BSA solution you have already prepared. That would mean that the solution was 400 ng/ul of BSA. 2. Make up a 100x BSA solution. That would be 40 mg/ml BSA solution as your "stock". You would then add 0.25 ul of the stock BSA to your PCR solution to get 400 ng/ul.

http://www.accessexcellence.org/LC/SS/PS/PCR/PCR_technology.html "Universal primers are complementary to nucleotide sequences which are very common in a particular set of DNA molecules. Thus, they are able to bind to a wide variety of DNA templates. Bacterial ribosomal DNA genes contain nucleotide sequences that are common to all bacteria. Thus, bacterial universal primers can be made by creating primers which are complementary to these sequences. Examples of bacteria universal primer sequences are: Forward 5' GAT CCT GGC TCA GGA TGA AC 3' (20 mer) Reverse 5' GGA CTA CCA GGG TAT CTA ATC 3' (21 mer) Animal cell lines contain a particular sequence known as the "alu gene". There are approximately 900,000 copies of the alu gene distributed throughout the human genome, and multiple copies distributed through the genome of other animal cells, as well. Thus, the alu gene provides the sequence for a universal primer for animal cell lines." As to eubacteria: http://tolweb.org/Eubacteria http://www.britannica.com/ebc/article-9363972/eubacteria Eubacteria are "true bacteria" as opposed to "archaebacteria". Today the term "eubacteria" is no longer used. Instead, the terms "bacteria" and "archaea" are used. "Until recently, bacteria were the only known type of procaryotic cell, and the discipline of biology related to their study is called bacteriology. In the 1980's, with the outbreak of molecular techniques applied to phylogeny of life, another group of procaryotes was defined and informally named "archaebacteria". This group of procaryotes has since been renamed Archaea and has been awarded biological Domain status on the level with Bacteria and Eucarya." http://textbookofbacteriology.net/bacteriology.html

How many millileters of the mixture do you have? You take the # of ml x .4mg/ml and that gives you the number of mg of BSA you will need. 400 ng/microliter (ul) = 0.4 mg/ml

According to Lehninger's Biochemistry (a standard college textbook on the subject), "there is more than one specific tRNA for each amino acid." This varies from species to species. "altogether, E. coli cells contain some 80 different tRNAs for the 20 amino acids." This means that sometimes there is more than 1 tRNA for a specific codon sequence. For instance, yeast have 5 different tRNAs for serine, but there are only 4 codon sequences that code for serine. There are 4 tRNA's for lysine, but only 2 codons for lysine. On the other side, there are 5 tRNAs for leucine but 6 codons for leucine. So there isn't a one-to-one correspondence between number of codons and number of tRNAs.

When you are all wrapped up in furs due to the cold, what difference does it make? BTW, are you sure UV is reflected off of ice? You might find that water absorbs light at the UV wavelengths -- most compounds do. You have three points here: 1. Sexual selection. Yes, sexual selection happens and, in fact, it is a new hypothesis put forward to explain hairlessness in humans. About the time of H. erectus (long before the skin color change we are talking about) it is hypothesized that hairlessness in both males and females became a selective trait. 2. Sexual selection is often tied to adaptive traits. That is, the peacock's tail appears to be maladaptive and would pose a hindrance for them to escape predators. However, in reality, other genes that are adapted are tied to the genes for the tail. 3. Skin color may have been more sexual selection than adaptive. We have the data on the adaptiveness of skin color vs UV radiation -- both for folic acid preservation and production of vitamin D. Skin color correlates well with latitude around the globe. So there are 2 independent lines of data supporting the hypothesis. What data have you seen supporting that skin color is sexually selective? The recent glamour magazines don't count because this type of pressure wasn't around 100,000 - 20,000 years ago when the evolution of skin color was happening. That fair skin is thought to be desirable today can be attributed to the dominance of Western European/American culture. Could, but unlikely. The entire human species right now is 6 billion people and nearly all of them find mates and reproduce. This makes for 1) a great deal of inertia in shifting the bell-shaped curve of skin color and 2) doesn't really result in differential reproduction. After all, if men (or women) settle for their 2nd or 3rd choice of mate and still mate with a person of darker skin color and have children, the frequency of alleles doesn't change. You might get wealthier people picking mates of lighter skin color, but it is well-documented that wealthy people have LESS children than poor. So that would mean shifting the curve toward darker skin color, since the lighter skinned people will have less children. Your premise of a "random natural selection process" is mistaken. Natural selection is NOT "random". It is very deterministic. Therefore it works faster, usually, than sexual selection which is, as you noted, often fickle. However, the amount of average sunlight at different latitudes is constant generation after generation. Also consider that a light skinned woman born in Africa in a primitive society is not going to have ANY living kids -- because they all die from spina bifida shortly after birth. Similarly, a dark skinned person born above 50 degrees latitude is going to die before they even get to be teenagers -- from rickets. That is a hugely more effective selection pressure than mate selection -- especially in a society where everyone gets a mate. To illustrate the fickleness of sexual selection in humans, if you go back just 500 years, you find that the ideal woman was plump. Look at the women painted by the Rennaisance painters -- who were, after all, painting what they considered attractive women (just like artists today). In just 500 years the concept of attractiveness in women has done a 180 -- now it is thin women that are considered attractive and desirable.

What do you do with the macaque that invented a way to separate sand from wheat? Was that macaque a philosopher? Did she comprehend and understand language? It would appear that she skipped a level of intelligence. That is data against your idea of "levels of intelligence". Who is "you"? Me? Americans? Western Europe? The data indicates that the Chinese model was not that effective, since 1) it was conqueored by the Manchus to begin with and 2) disintegrated later in the 20th century. I quoted you making that universal statement! Sorry, you can't deny it because it is there in this thread for anyone to look at it. You said " yes i don't consider farmers to be intelligent in the way i am speaking. " That's a universal statement. And in case you think you meant Chinese, go back to my last post and note that you thought Washington and Jefferson were intelligent because they were NOT farmers. You also said "but you don't need to be smart to be a farmer. " I stand corrected. 1. We don't have to draw a line between "no intelligence whatsoever and some intelligence". Some concepts in biology are such that absolute lines are impossible. 2. The last sentence in the quote also applies to humans, but we don't draw a line through a species. Instead, we take the whole species and make the judgement based on the capabilities of the best in the species. Above you noted that "philosophers" had level 3 intelligence. However, you wouldn't draw a line of "intelligence" in the human species. And a very poor one. Yes, it does. Read Origin of Species, particularly Chapter 3 "Struggle for Existence". EVERY species has the ability to produce more offspring than the environment can support. This is because reproduction increases geometrically. Extinction occurs when 1) population increase outstrips resources and 2) the environment changes such that the species can no longer earn a living. 1. For the Mayans, it wasn't "insight", but necessity. They were starving in the cities because the farms couldn't produce enough food for the entire population. 2. What will "ruin the earth" is too many people. And that will happen no matter what species you have. Too many buffalo would eat all the plants. Fortunately, humans have technological means to limit reproduction; other species do not. I don't know of any good tests for intelligence. It started out with me testing your hypotheses, altho you didn't recognize them as hypotheses. I took statements of yours (hypotheses) and tested them. The data refuted the statements. You don't have to "think" about what you said. You can go back in the thread and look at what you actually said. And yes, that was one of your hypotheses. It doesn't work because 1) China's governmental system didn't work like you said it did, 2) passing examinations isn't all there is to intelligence, and 3) it won't lead to more intelligent species unless a) the people passing the exams had more children than other people and b) there is no interbreeding between the ones who passed and the ones who didn't. Neither of those conditions apply. Someguy, just how much do you know about evolution? That's not an insult, but an honest question. But why did the numbers of addicted continue to grow? By your theory, the Chinese should have been more intelligent and, after they had seen the effects of the first few addicts, should have never tried opium. Yet the numbers of addicts grew and grew. Also, if the Chinese government was so effective, why did they have to plead with the king of England to get England to stop. Surely an effective government would have had other means of keeping opium out of the country. Do you see what you are doing? In an attempt to excuse the Chinese, you refute your own thesis about the intelligence of the Chinese and the effectiveness of their government. Without realizing it, you are slandering the Chinese. 1. EVERYONE invents only because of the discoveries of other men. After all, if nothing else, every invention involves language, and that was invented by our hunter-gatherer ancestors. 2. Nearly all hypotheses in science are products of the imagination. They are not digests of observations. There is always an inventive leap between observation and hypothesis. 3. Well, you've told us what you did NOT mean by "invent" . Now please tell us what you did mean. No, you said the system functioned a particular way. Now we find out it did not function that way at all. Leave the value judgements aside and step back and be objective. No, that's not how Western society was designed. You missed the point. 1. In order to have "trinkets inventions", you have to make strides in fundamental knowledge. Before Edison can make a light bulb, there has to be fundamental knowledge into electricity. 2. The society was open enough that the poor could become the wealthy IF they used their intelligence. 3. Commerce is NOT "exploitation". It's a 2-way street. Both the vendor and the consumer get benefits. 4. Much of the incentive was competition with fellow capitalists: able to find a better and/or cheaper mousetrap. Getting better quality products for less price is not exploitation. What you have missed is that even the poorest of people in the West have a lifestyle that only kings could have afforded thru most of history. Are toilets "trinkets"? How about antibiotics? How about airplanes that convey you to visit relatives that live far away from you, or ships that bring you fresh fruit from all over the world? For 50 years between 1800 and 1850 there was no fresh milk in New York City because the city was so large that wagons took too long to bring milk from the farms. When the "trinket" of trains were invented (for the purpose of making money), then milk could be transported to the city. Is having fresh milk for children so they don't get rickets a "toy" or "mere possession"? The cotton gin was invented to make money, but the idea of machines to do manual labor adapted to other areas opened up the huge productivity we have now. Productivity such that only a few of us actually produce goods. Most of us are now free for other activities because of this excess wealth in society: everyone gets an education because they don't have to hand work on a farm anymore, lots of leisure time, and many people pursuing intellectual careers such as art, literature, music, and science. Is the ability to have more and more people pursue these intellectual and emotionally fulfilling pursuits "mere possession"? Why would you think that is so? Have you ever looked at the demographics of Qing Dynasty China? How many people got a college-level education? How many were musicians? Artists? How many worked the farms from morning to night? What was the standard of medicine? How many doctors? You can continue the list. It seems to me that the inability to really think thru the problem and look at all aspects is an attribute of childhood. Excuse me? How big is the Forbidden City? How many servants did it take to maintain the place? Well, you already told us how ineffective they were at the former. Anyone looking at the death tolls from flooding of the rivers, typhoons, and earthquakes tells us how ineffective they were at the latter. By your criteria, no they can't. After all, many Chinese are farmers, which you say are less intelligent. Many Westerners are not farmers, meaning that they are smarter than those Chinese. Not by all the information we have, including that told to us. Remember, the kings were still hereditary. And as for "better", well, it fell apart to be replaced by Communism. It didn't do so well, did it? After all, the smartest people ended up in opposition. After all, one criteria of intelligence you noted was the ability to outsmart another animal. Well, first the Westerners and then Mao and his comrades outsmarted the Qing Dynasty. Pretty clever of the British, wasn't it, to introduce opium to weaken China? Please stop projecting your flaws onto me. Sure I would. The problem is that you have wed yourself to a set of ideas and won't listen to any evidence that is contrary to your set beliefs. Look at the evidence! Then change your ideas when the evidence contradicts them. The problem now is that your ideas simply aren't defensible. That's too bad, but it is the way it is. Can you give me a source for both the genetic observation and the "reason"? I thought the reason was that 1) their physiology was lighter build and 2) their culture involved more long distance running. Yes, exceptional athletes can be made thru environmental manipulation. That's the whole point of training programs.