afdave
Posts: 1621
Joined: April 2006
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I said ... | Quote | KEN HAM VS. A SINGLE CELLED ORGANISM -- WHICH IS MORE SPECIFIC?
Answer: Ken Ham
Why?
Because Ken Ham has not just one cell in his body, but trillions (?) of cells, all of them highly specific for all manner of different functions. There are far more functions specified in a human body than in a single celled organism which is why the genome is much larger. |
Whooops!
Let's just lop off the end of that sentence where it says "which is why the genome is much larger."
I did not know that there was an amoeba with 230X the number of base pairs as a human ... very interesting!
Here's my new revised statement then ...
Why? Because Ken Ham has not just one cell in his body, but trillions (?) of cells, all of them highly specific for all manner of different functions. There are far more functions specified in a human body than in a single celled organism.
Again, the best definition that I can come up with so far for biological information is Crick's ... which is ...
Biological Information is Precise Determination of Sequence
Now let's have a shot at a definition of Biological Specificity ... try this one on for size ...
Biological Specificity is the Sum of All Unique Functions in an Organism
Now I know cars better than cells, so I will use an analogy to explain what I mean. To use my car analogy, a car has a large function for transmitting power to the wheels we call the drive train, which can be subdivided into many sub-functions, like the engine, the transmission, the U-joint, the driveshafts and the wheels. These sub-functions can in turn be subdivided into smaller functions such as the wheel has a rim, a tire a brake system, etc. As we can see there are many unique functions in a car which have to be manufactured in a very SPECIFIC sort of way in order for the car as a whole to operate.
In the same way, every living organism is a system of large functions which are composed of "sub-functions." Now I will tread carefully here because I obviously misspoke about genome size, but I think that a worm would have more unique functions than a bacteria or an amoeba (single celled organism), and a lizard (reptile) would have more than a worm, for example. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Now I'm not sure about comparisons between things like humans and lizards and mosquitos. It is possible to me that these could all have close to the same number of unique functions, thus specificity, they would just have many DIFFERENT functions ... although many would also be the same.
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Russell... | Quote | | I think the Milano mutation is a pretty clear example of a "beneficial mutation". Exactly how it performs better - whether it's what I would call "increased specificity" is still not clear to me. Remember - I have a fairly quantitative definition of "increased specificity", and I haven't actually seen the relevant numbers for this protein. |
I agree that it appears to be beneficial at the moment. I do wonder what will happen when there are homozygotes. Will we have another bad situation like with sickle cell anemia? To me, sickle cell is clearly not the type of change required to validate ToE. Do me a favor and repost the link to your work and summarize for me why you think this is an example of change that validates ToE.
As for your loss of respect for Behe ... two comments ...
1) With the stacks of books supposedly explaining the evolution of the immune system, i think Behe (like me) see all this speculation about how it could have evolved as a monumental waste of good talent. I think his point is ... why not spend those brain cells learning about the amazing DESIGN? (regardless of who you think the designer might be). After all, we learn how to repair and maintain man made things much better if we study their designs. Why would this not be so with biological designs also?
2) As for astrology being called science, I think if someone wants to call it science, let them. After all, we let you call ToE science. And you can no more prove that macroevolution is true any more than an astrologer can prove that I'm in a good mood because the planets are lined up. If there is a large enough following of these fringe ideas in the larger marketplace of ideas, fine. If ToE advocates feel threatened by astrology, then one has to ask the question, "Is ToE really that weak? Does it need millions of dollars of government funding in order to maintain it's prestige?"
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k.e ... tell you what ... if you want to believe that white noise contains more info than a speech, you just go right ahead, K? I'll like you just as much ... promise! :-)
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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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