afdave
Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006
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Good morning to all my "Evo" friends ...
The Vitamin C issue with apes and humans seems to be a very compelling evidence for you that Apes and Humans do indeed share a common ancestor.
OK. Let's take a look. I assume everyone is familiar with the Talk Origins article my Dr. Edward Max here and the AIG article by Woodmorappe here, right?
Dr. Max begins with an analogy to a plagiarism case ...| Quote | | One way to distinguish between copying and independent creation is suggested by analogy to the following two cases from the legal literature. In 1941 the author of a chemistry textbook brought suit charging that portions of his textbook had been plagiarized by the author of a competing textbook (Colonial Book Co, Inc. v. Amsco School Publications, Inc., 41 F. Supp.156 (S.D.N.Y. 1941), aff'd 142 F.2d 362 (2nd Cir. 1944)). In 1946 the publisher of a trade directory for the construction industry made similar charges against a competing directory publisher (Sub-Contractors Register, Inc. v McGovern's Contractors & Builders Manual, Inc. 69 F.Supp. 507, 509 (S.D.N.Y. 1946)). In both cases, mere similarity between the contents of the alleged copies and the originals was not considered compelling evidence of copying. After all, both chemistry textbooks were describing the same body of chemical knowledge (the books were designed to "function similarly") and both directories listed members of the same industry, so substantial resemblance would be expected even if no copying had occurred. However, in both cases errors present in the "originals" appeared in the alleged copies. The courts judged that it was inconceivable that the same errors could have been made independently by each plaintiff and defendant, and ruled in both cases that copying had occurred. The principle that duplicated errors imply copying is now well established in copyright law. (In recognition of this fact, directory publishers routinely include false entries in their directories to trap potential plagiarizers.) |
Now I have read both articles in their entirety, but before Dr. Max even gets into the details of gene "mistakes", there is one very large item jumps out at me. The analogy seems very clever, but there is a huge assumption that is made which I consider to be invalid and to me this destroys the whole analogy. See what you think and please correct me if I am wrong.
OK. Are you ready? With the plagiarism case, we are talking about printed words in a well-known language. In the GLO gene case, we are talking about genetic "words" in a poorly-understood language. I hope I don't have to cite the recent literature to prove to you how poorly we understand the genetic language. If you do a Google Scholar search, you will see numerous articles talking about pseudogene and "junk DNA" function and how much we are learning and how much there is remaining to be learned. Here's just one with an appropriate comment from Woodmorappe ... | Quote | | Balakirev, E.S. and Ayala, F.J., Pseudogenes: are they ‘junk’ or functional DNA? Annual Review of Genetics 37:123–151, 2003. The very title of this article would have, only a few years ago, been almost on a par with the following: ‘The Earth: is it spherical or flat?’ |
Are you with me so far? I don't want to lose anyone. Again, I am saying that ...
With the plagiarism case, we are talking about printed words in a well-known language. In the GLO gene case, we are talking about genetic "words" in a poorly-understood language. This is a big, big difference.
Notice again that Dr. Max's whole argument rests on the following ...| Quote | | In both cases, mere similarity between the contents of the alleged copies and the originals was not considered compelling evidence of copying ... The principle that duplicated errors imply copying is now well established in copyright law. |
Do you see where I am going? Dr. Max is assuming that the state of the GLO gene in humans and apes is an error and with our as yet limited knowledge of gene function, genome function as a whole, pseudogene function discoveries, and "not-junk-after-all" discoveries about "junk DNA", this seems to be an enormous unwarranted assumption. If, in fact, this GLO gene turns out to have some function, then Max's whole argument fails, because now the gene would be rightly interpreted as part of the correct informational content analogous to the correct informational content in the textbooks.
To emphasize this point, consider a passage of text from a language which you do not know, but I do (my dad's jungle tribe for whom he is a Bible translator). In this case, I am playing the role of the hypothetical "Designer" and you are playing the role of the genetic researcher trying to unlock the code. Let us say the above plagiarism case involved the following text ...
| Quote |
ORIGINAL TEXT: Twaihsom me thakwa xatkene roowo pono komo ahnoro. Yipinin yaw so tko xakne Kaan. Ero ke Tumumuru tak nimyakne rma okwe twaihsom mera tak ehtome so. Waipini ro me xa matko naxe Noro pona enine komo.
ALLEGED PLAGIARIZED TEXT: Twaihsom me thakwa xatkene roowo pono komo. Yipinin yaw so xakne Kaan. Ero ke Tumumuru tak nimyakne okwe twaihsom mera tak ehtome so. Waipini ro me naxe Noro pona enine komo. |
While a word by word comparison of the above text gives some evidence of plagiarism, i.e. they are similar, you cannot conclude this positively if we use the court case guidelines because you do not know the language so as to be able to detect errors.
Now I DO know the language, so I can identify an error, namely that the word "cewnaninhiri" which means "only begotten" (it is John 3:16) is left out of both texts.
So we see that for Dr. Max's argument to be valid, we have to know the language which obviously, genetic researchers do not yet very well.
Now there is something else interesting here. This text of John 3:16 could be rendered in a number of different ways and yet communicate the same meaning. For example, we could say ... | Quote | | Yipinin yaw so xakne Kaan roowo pono komo poko. Ero ke Tumumuru tak nimyakne okwe twaihsom mera tak ehtome so. Waipini ro me naxe Kaan pona enine komo. |
I know the language well enough to know that this would communicate the same message, but with different structure.
Now, back to biology. It is my theory that this is exactly the situation which we will find in the genomes of various organisms as we understand more and more about them every year. I predict that we will find that the genetic code is a very real language, complete with "words", "sentences", "phrases", "paragraphs", and different ways of saying the same thing.
Now, here is something else ...
How do you explain the similarity of the GLO gene "defects" of humans and guinea pigs? (you knew I was going to go here, didn't you) Apparently, something like 36% of the substitutions are the same when compared to the functional rat GLO gene. If we assume that there is some pro-simian ancestor that has a functional GLO gene, then it would appear that humans are more closely related to guinea pigs than to this pro-simian ancestor. This would seem to defy the evolutionary scenario. How do you explain this?
OK. There's some food for thought. Now pick me apart.
Oh ... and here the quote from Balakirev and Ayala for you
| Quote | Annual Review of Genetics
Vol. 37: 123-151 (Volume publication date December 2003)
(doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.37.040103.103949)
First published online as a Review in Advance on June 25, 2003
PSEUDOGENES: Are They "Junk" or Functional DNA?
Evgeniy S. Balakirev1,2 and Francisco J. Ayala1
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, California 92697-2525; email: fjayala@uci.edu
2Institute of Marine Biology, Vladivostok 690041,
Russia and Academy of Ecology, Marine Biology, and Biotechnology, Far Eastern State University, Vladivostok 690600, Russia; email: esbalak@bio.dvgu.ru
Pseudogenes have been defined as nonfunctional sequences of genomic DNA originally derived from functional genes. It is therefore assumed that all pseudogene mutations are selectively neutral and have equal probability to become fixed in the population. Rather, pseudogenes that have been suitably investigated often exhibit functional roles, such as gene expression, gene regulation, generation of genetic (antibody, antigenic, and other) diversity. Pseudogenes are involved in gene conversion or recombination with functional genes. Link to article |
And here's one I like from Dr. Max that confirms what us YECers so often say about mutations ...
| Quote | | Mutations causing genetic diseases and malformations are generally so detrimental to the organism's survival and reproductive success that in the wild--i.e. in the absence of modern medical science--they would tend to be "weeded out" by the pressure of natural selection. Rarely, mutations can be beneficial to an organism: these rare cases form the basis for evolutionary adaptations that improve the "fitness" of an organism to its environment.Link to article |
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A DILEMMA FOR THE COMMITTED NATURALIST
A Hi-tech alien spaceship lands on earth ... DESIGNED.
A Hi-tech alien rotary motor found in a cell ... NOT DESIGNED.
http://afdave.wordpress.com/....ess.com
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