Do You Believe in God?

WOW! That is a crazy clip. That was true journalism at work.

 

I am sorry if I offended you and I hope you feel the same about me. Can we just start over and move on? It is just a fan board, let's enjoy it instead of insulting one another. What do you say?

 

That's the point, it isn't always blue. Not even to humans. 475nm is a totally different color to some animals. And on another planet, the primary colors would be different. What makes something blue or orange or whatever is just how our minds evolved. Color isn't real. It doesn't exist. You only perceive it because it's a way for your brain to process information and display in a way that your conscious mind can understand it. It's an incredible amazing thing, but color is not real.

I never understood why people felt evolution threatened or didn't give with the existence of a god. If you believe god created the universe - then what difference does evolution make - evolution is then by god's design anyway.

There is no way to prove or disprove the existence of god. The goal of science, and of evolution - isn't to address god or the existence of something greater, it's to explain how there are so many freakin species all coded by the same exact molecule. Don't you find it odd in any way that a chimp's coding is almost exactly the same as ours? What's the big deal if humans and chimps had a common ancestor anyway? Who cares in terms of religion if that's true or not?

People forget how long a billion years really is. You are how old, 40 maybe? Let's say you are 50. Then that means for you to watch life evolve you'd have to live your life another 20 million times. Don't you think that's enough time for mutations to explain the diversity of species we see today? I think it is, maybe that's just crazy.

 

Thanks for the response I appreciate your good discussion...

I can't agree with you, how 475 nm is perceived may change, but it doesn't change the fact that it is always the same. Color is just a word we use to describe it, but when our brains are working and our eye cones are working we all see the same thing.

My question is why? What is the purpose for color? And why was it in light to begin with?

I don't think adaptations in random occurrence or mutations in 100 trillion years would explain how a protein was synthesized and then DNA, life, humans- that is illogical. There isn't enough time in eternity for that to happen by chance, even if you started with carbon from a burning star.

I used to do statistical design of experiments to predict occurrences and your model couldn't stand up to a statistical analysis based upon the variables even with any time period you choose. In fact time would work against it in statistical analysis.

I have no faith, bible, creation quibble with evolution because I can't prove creation and I find it too extreme to try to prove origins the way modern science postulates it.

I would like to see science used to help people become healthy, safer and improve their quality of life more than to keep teaching kids that their once was a big bang- just my preference because I think it's a big stretch that the big bang produced complex life by random occurrence.

I don't see any reason for DNA codes being similar to define origins, that's like saying a black and white tube tv left for a billion years will become a LED HDTV flat screen. They are similar in many ways but not because of chance or randomness.

I am not trying to prove God, or creation, I know less about evolution than most everyone else who posts on it,(obviously) but I find it crazy to think length of time somehow makes randomness and chance so powerful and predictive.

I think adding time only helps scientists be magical.

As far as God the proof I have is personal, what spiritually happened to me.
I have evidence for that, so I would be a piece of evidence that God exists.
Problem is God is spiritual and so how do I give you a scientific point of reference?

 

Color is not in light. It's all photons. Your eyes are able to identify certain photos as being 475nm and then tells your brain to see it as color so it can differentiate it from photons that are 520nm. That's it. Some creatures can see infrared light which is invisible to us. The light has no color.

Why is it that you see 475nm as blue - why not 435 you might ask? Because 475nm is the color of the sky and oceans - things that we would need to notice as we evolved. Our color palette is merely a reflection of the types of radiation in our world.

It was a very methodical thermodynamic process. YOu mix carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen with energy and you get amino acids. And if you allow amino acids to stew for a while and evaporate they start to form proteins. Proteins that eventually interact with one another. Some of these interactions resulted in self-replication - and thus began the precursor to life - a molecule that replicated itself. That's it. It went from proteins, to ribosomes, to RNA. Once you are at RNA you are basically there, and DNA wasn't a big jump.

That's because you think this is a random statistical process when it is not. There are thermodynamic forces at work as well.

Science is about uncovering the nature of reality. It's not about helping people, or making streches, or talking about religion, or beliefs. It's just a method for creating models that increasingly better fit.

All animals are made of the same molecule - DNA. The code may vary, but the actual molecule is the same. And it self-replicates - imperfectly - by design! Your analogy isn't accurate.

I think you are trying to prove it to yourself. Look, it's not just randomness and chance. Again, there are physical laws at play that drive certain things to happen. But your statement - it's crazy to think. Guess what, that's how amazingly unique and wonderous life is.

I think adding time only helps scientists be magical.

You don't mix science and god - that's how. They are separate things. God isn't about the physical world, that's scientific realm.

For instance, I think the existence of the Universe isn't this random event. There is some purpose to existence. There's more than what we can see. But it's not about us. Not directly. We aren't the main show, we're just part of the main show.

 

Call it wavelengths instead of color and we can discuss this better, your photons transmit data to your brain , your brain tells you it is color instead of black and white. That's it. Light does have color in the spectrum, don't get caught up in the name you call it. Blue pigments can't reflect red. You need to think this over.

So you are telling me that evolution was based upon future need? And why did optics evolve to see color? We needed to see a blue sky? I am trying to discuss random chances not an implied need.

So who mixed this? You mean they accidentally mixed?

How smart is thermodynamics, because if something caused it to happen tell what caused it.

Science can only observe reality and when it uncovers it then it tests it to postulate what laws govern it.

Science can tell us what diets produce healthy bodies, science can find and develop sources of clean water, science can reveal harmful agents to the body, science can help people grow healthy food, science can help build habitats for people, science can improve information and communications, science can help us sustain our environment, science can impact economies and give the world better quality of life.

My analogy is about why the code is different and where the code came from and why there is a code, don't think about this one.

If it isn't randomness what caused it? Where did physical laws come from?

Please leave God out of it, I want to know why macro evolution is so brilliant.

I agree there is purpose to the universe. I agree it is not a random event.
I think we see this all the same. Thanks.

 

I see your God-Lion, and a raise you a God-Lion Turtle:



"The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can touch the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginningless time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light."

 

I swear I've gone over this but you never reply to my science-information posts. Let's start simple - you have a certain molecule on your head that lets you detect light. It arose from a simple point mutation in another pigment molecule that gave you coloration. Nobody else in your species has this except for you. It's a simple thing, it only differentiates between lightness and darkness (how you "sense" this doesn't quite matter yet), but it's quite a useful thing since your food source grows in the light. You are obviously quite successful and pass this mutation on to your offspring, who are also successful and so on. Now, this molecule gets even better over time via selection pressures (natural selection and all that) and can then differentiate shades of light and dark. Via a copying error (happens quite frequently in genes - google transposons and retrotransposons) and now you have two copies.

One of these gets slightly modified via mutation (there's the only true randomness to this whole thing) and now can detect a certain wavelength range of light. It doesn't matter what this range is, but let's call it "blue", just for fun. You can now see even better than those around you and are able to differentiate objects even better than before. Those objects include other members of your species, predators, food items, dangers, etc. This is obviously a huge advantage and gets passed on to many, many offspring.

Somewhere along the way there's another transposon event (jumping genes) and again, the copying isn't perfect down the line, maybe even a hundred generations or more down the line and you now have a pigment sensitive to yet another wavelength range. Now you can see in a multitude of colors. Since you have two of these light pigments you have two primary colors. It doesn't matter what they are (I think you're confusing cause and effect with respect to colors).

If the same thing happens again, you have a trichomate organism and three primary colors. Some human women have been shown to have FOUR cone types and therefore they have four primary colors. Neat, eh?

"Who" caused these things? Why does it need a who? Who caused gravity? Do you subscribe to the theory of intelligent falling? Interesting question for someone that wants to leave god out of this discussion.

I think you're confused by science. A recent blog post by pz myers explains things fairly well.

The genetic code is there because it originated from self-replicating molecules (look into the RNA world and other theories (and please don't fall victim to the old layperson vs. scientist definitions of theory, it's tiresome).) All living things share that code because they share a common ancestor. It's quite simply when you think about it.

I'll touch on physical laws later.

 

I apologize I didn't reply before, sorry.
It needs to be simple for me, I am not a scientist, thanks,
Who is the 'you'? Where did the pigment molecule come from and why does it have pigment related to light wavelengths? How can you be certain a mutation was involved before there were pigments? I can understand a pigment being mutated but what about prior to pigments?

Could you explain how an optic sensor gets mutated to perceive a pigment when there is no 'brain' function to perceive it? Or is this a special type of mutation where both necessary functions randomly happen at the same exact time.

And how many of these mutations going from light sensory to color sensory have been observed outside of a laboratory?

So, if I understand you a lights sensor and a 'brain' or 'perception nerve' both mutated together by chance to perceive "blue". Color receptors are optimized to see primary colors. Without primary color receptors (cones in humans) there is no way you can tell colors from visible light. So if there is a mutation that by chance formed a primary color receptor how did it know the primary colors? By randomness?

Some insects have receptors that are sensitive to ultraviolet wavelengths, why is that? So I guess these are some pretty accurate gene jumps since they target wavelengths of light previously unknown.

This is so irrational.

The chance of this happening by intelligent intervention is remote, by randomness- zero.

If you mean that mere chance caused these things, yes I need a who, what or how answer. You haven't given an intelligent reason for me to believe that color receptors and color perception both were accidental gene jumps that precisely targeted light wavelengths that were previously not perceivable.

I've looked in to it. I think it's big guessing that Amino Acids by chance made complex nucleo-tides that my randomness sequenced RNA etc- I know long periods of time are brilliant biologists, but I think it is worth questioning rather than swallowing hook, line and sinker.

It's just my opinion. doesn't mean I am right, obviously many more intelligent people than me believe that Amino Acids traveled to earth and started life, by accident.

It's not that I don't see any logic in mutations altering genes I just don't see how that proves that complexity arises out of random mutation. Unless you use the magic of long periods of time.

Seems like there would be alot of transition if it took really long periods of time and it would still be observable today- all the transition. There is not much evidence for transition observable. The little that is there is just simple adaptation, not transition.

 

I don't think you understand how light works. It doesn't have color in it. It's not that blue pigments don't reflect red. It's that they absorb all other wavelengths but can not absorb blue wavelengths. It's like a mirror. A mirror doesn't reflect everything, it just happens to reflect the range in the spectrum that we can perceive. If you shin shorter wavelengths, they will pass through or be absorbed.

Blue pigment is just a mirror to certain wavelengths, wavelengths we perceive by assigning the color blue to them in our brain.

not future need, current environment. Optics did not evolve to see color. You are mistaken. Optics evolved to see certain wavelengths of light. This is a real need, not implied, and it was not random. It is in fact more akin to the nature of variation and natural selection. It is the same process why which the sickle cell anemia gene continued to survive.

THey mix in a lot of places, not just on earth. C, H, N, & O are very commonly found in the universe as they are baseline elements. They get mixed often. It's no more an accident then an asteroid colliding with earth. These things are inevitable.

???? Thermodynamic processes are simply laws of physics. Laws of physics dictate the construction of amino acids as lower state entities. Entropy drives the construction of proteins - it is not random.

Science can do those things, but that is not what science is.

A tv has no code - it's a bad analogy.

The physical laws is what caused it. No one knows where the physical laws came from. They are fundamental.

Evolution isn't brilliant, it simply just is what is.

 

There are a lot of transitional fossils which have been observed. I think they have found over 1500 transitional fossils so far. Here is one of the most well known (there is also a NOVA on Archeopteryx I highly recommend):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx

You keep using words like 'random' and 'accident' as sort of derogatory terms when describing evolution. Sweet Lou 4 2 has repeatedly countered those terms with very solid and logical reasons. It is not a random accident that cells started to sense light. It was an eventuality because light plays such a major role in our environment.

 

I understand how light works and pigment (I broadly use the word color because it is consistent by wavelength- agree?)

You are just repeating my points- optics have to detect reflected color (pigments) and a 'brain' or sensory preceptor has to assign a visible hue that is perceived.

So back when there was no optics or 'brains' to do this- you believe it happened by accident or by random mutation, when there was no way of knowing that those wavelengths existed in visible light.

I totally agree.

Explain again how optics knew it needed to see specific wavelengths? I understand why an insect would need to perceive colors for food. But we were talking about origins not adaptations.

I want to understand what you mean, are you saying that because the wavelengths were there the optics and the 'brain' had to evolve to see them? Or are you saying it accidentally happened?

No, it is not the same- organisms, genes, adapt, vary and the like all the time but not in increasing complexity but in diversity and survival. The difference in complexity and survival is that new information is needed for complexity to increase and it has to be specific and beneficial. It also must happen randomly.- Adaptation and mutation both may assist survival but do not have the means to guarantee new information that is specific to benefit.

Please consider the logic of this.

Are you telling me that proteins routinely form in the universe? How many RNA molecules have been observed randomly forming in the universe? If it is observable it is science and I am good with that.

Are you getting this from google that amino acids mix often from C, H, N, and O? I think it takes over 400 amino acids to make a protein and the 20 amino acids have to be in correct sequence. Is this what you mean by mixing often?

I believe that the chemicals in glycine are in the universe and I understand that accidentally it is possible under perfect conditions that possibly a glycine molecule could form, you can google it, (intelligent) scientists may have done this, I don't know. But that is where you lose me to say everything mixed often and poof there is a protein formed.

You are over my head when you get into Entropy, though I am certain it is not a cause of the construction of amino acids but a description of the balance of energy in a system. The laws of entropy deal with energy in closed or open systems (I think), that's all I can remember now. Randomness is essential to entropy, I think, like I said I don't know enough about thermodynamics to address entropy very well, but as far as forming amino acids, proteins, RNA, DNA I think it is a way to measure energy not a way of causing synthesis.

I probably should google all that. I am pretty sure that systems when open go to disorder but I am as likely to be wrong.

Not with regard to long periods of time = causation or purpose.

OK, please explain the physical law again that would synthesize RNA by chance.
That is the question I have.

I enjoy these discussions, thanks for keeping it civil.

 

Sorry, I don't think accident is a derogatory term at all, I met my wife by accident.

Archeopteryx is a dinosaur with feathers. So let's say that's one. If that little dinosaur evolved over millions of years into a modern bird how many transitional fossils would be left in you opinion in the first 100,000 years? And where are they?

 

It's healthy to question things. I am not intelligent enough to explain origins but I am not so dull that I don't question.

I also don't think creation is something that is proven, I see it as something believed.

If we were all there when it happened and we witnessed it then we wouldn't have anything to discuss. (Jesus claimed to know, but I am not Jesus)

Until then IMHO there are some logical holes in current origin ideas.

 

seems relevant to the discussion... and there is a good deals of debate in the comments.

http://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance

 

That's the beauty of the Scientific Method. Holes will be uncovered and you will come up with a better model to explain things. Eventually, you come to a better answer. You seek the best truth as you can. This is a process that so far have work. Until you reach that one last question that probably can never be answered.

BTW, Buddha claim to know too.. he claim that the "start" cannot be known.

 

I honestly can't tell if you are being intentionally obtuse, simply repeating tired old creationist talking points, truly don't understand, or are just trolling, so...congrats?

I am a scientist. I trained as one, was a practicing one for a bit, had publications in scientific journals as an undergraduate (links available upon request) and think like one. I now teach other budding young scientists.

As for the "you" part, I was clear in that I thought - An organism that had a mutated pigment most likely and that pigment or chemoreceptor (probably a crystallin pre-cursor) was not photosensitive. Unicellular organisms without brains have these sometimes, it's not that hard to fathom. Please read again. Or just gloss over whatever doesn't fit your worldview? Whichever makes you happy, I suppose.

Again, it most likely originated from a pigment molecule and co-evolved with neurological structures. We have repeated examples of this in everything from echolocation in bats and dolphins to lateral lines in some fishes. It's not unique.

Eyes have evolved independently multiple times. Our eyes are not like those of insects or even cephalopods. They share common genetic history however, with respect to these proteins.

Sensory organs evolved before brains as there was no input to process. Euglena with eyespots have no brains, but they can detect light via eyespots. No brain needed. Once things got more complicated, the brain, or simple nerve bundles, evolved alongside the sensory organs. As I already explained, multiple times, they are primary colors BECAUSE we have cones for those wavelengths. You are getting your cause and effect backwards, still. Re-read my earlier post. It lays it out very clearly.

Oh, there's some irrationality going around, no doubt. Insects have UV receptors because flowers have UV pigments, but the insects had the UV vision first. They co-evolved after that - plants with UV landing spots that were easily seen by bees with UV vision passed that on to their offspring and those better at it (landing patterns, etc.) spread the most. That's natural selection 101. It's not difficult. And re-read my post for understanding. The genes jumped as copies, sometimes perfect, sometimes not. If perfect, somewhere down the line they got altered slightly (it doesn't take much) and were then sensitive to a different wavelength. It's not irrational unless you force it to be so.

Chance causes mutations. That's it. After that, natural selection acts upon those mutations. No need for an outside hand. None. The wavelengths weren't targeted, they were just what the photoreceptors happened to be sensitive to and at that point because so-called primary colors. If we had yellow cones (and some tetrachromates may) then yellow would be a primary color (and it may be for tetrachromates).

So you're one of those people that expect every single transition to be perfectly fossilized, each step of the way? And then that creates two new gaps to force god into? Got it. There was a nice episode of Futurama about that. Oh well, at least we know what we're dealing with now.

Have you read any books by Dawkins or Coyle or any other modern scientist or just random googling?

 

I suggest reading this blog and really, the book too. Please.