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Shocking Discovery Flies in the Face of Neo-Darwinian Tradition


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My current theory is that Brigham Young was right, that all of the creatures on earth were brought from other worlds. Since life on earth was put here according to a designed timeline, we end up with discoveries like this very recent one: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/228798/20180530/massive-genetic-study-reveals-90-percent-of-earth-s-animals-appeared-at-the-same-time.htm

Edited by Mordecai
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"The simplest interpretation is that life is always evolving," said Stoeckle.

"It is more likely that—at all times in evolution—the animals alive at that point arose relatively recently."

In this view, a species only lasts a certain amount of time before it either evolves into something new or goes extinct.

https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html

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The researchers referenced appear to be legit and have worked together before apparently:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ece3.2394

This appears to be the article:

https://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stoeckle-Thaler-Final-reduced.pdf

Journal's contents:

http://www.pontecorboli.com/digital1/humanevolution/human-evolution-vol-33-1-2-2018/

Edited by Calm
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8 hours ago, Calm said:

So this response is a good explanation to you? Notice that the researcher himself said, "I fought against this as hard as I could." Why? Because it represents more evidence of "punctuated equilibrium," where you have stasis and then a sudden explosion of information. If "evolution is always occurring," shouldn't we see that in bacteria? But in reality, we don't. And for the past 100 to 200 thousand years, it hasn't been occurring either, not among multicellular organisms and extremely little among bacteria! Certainly not enough evolution to produce anything more complex than two point mutations. And why would a bunch of _destruction_ create order in a short period of time? It's called _evolution_, because it is, by definition, _gradual_. That means widespread destruction would _not_ result in millions of new species emerging at the same time. Because there wouldn't be time to search through the needle in the evolutionary haystack, and the claim that "a small population increases the chances of a new mutation becoming dominant," avoids the _real_ problem, which is getting the mutation to appear in the first place. A small population reduces the chances of it appearing and the destruction reduces the chances that such a mutation would survive, if it had emerged with a large population. Malaria has a population of ONE TRILLION PER HOST. But it took a hundred years for malaria to develop chloroquine resistance with _enormous_ selective pressures on it, and that was a mere two point mutation. That's _typical_ of microbes. A hundred years for a large mammal is about 30 million years. For a mere two point mutation. But 90% of all the species on earth appeared _at the same time_ a mere 100 to 200 thousand years ago. And that makes sense to you, in a Darwinian framework? That makes ZERO sense, which is why the researcher "fought against it." It is in stark contrast to any _rational_ interpretation of how Darwinian processes should play out. The "small population" argument is smoke and mirrors that only works on people who don't understand population genetics, which is _basic_ biology.

Edited by Mordecai
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15 hours ago, katherine the great said:

I really don't see how this information could possibly indicate that life was transported from another planet. That is about the most unparsimonious explanation I've ever heard and we use Occam's razor in science. One would really have to discount the entire fossil record pre 200 kya to make that leap. We also have DNA from other hominins that is similar enough to see that they were a type of human but distinct enough to consider them a different species of human. And yet they had fertile offspring with our ancestors. How could that be? Well, we are in the process of trying to understand and maybe redefine the biological species concept. We love things to be black and white, but they just usually aren't. There are a lot of gray areas in biology and speciation is a very messy process.

I never said that this _per se_ means that life was transported from another planet. I'm merely saying that the fossil record demonstrates something that nothing currently explains well, so having creatures put here from other planets at least fits the evidence. Do you have a _better_ theory? Because Darwin's theory fails miserably to match the pattern of speciation in the fossil record. The panspermia hypothesis arose merely from looking at the "punctuated equilibrium" in the fossil record and such and Richard Dawkins himself posted that maybe aliens designed the first life. So it's not like Mormons are the only ones saying the earth has been tinkered with by an outside intelligence. Furthermore, what do other hominids with similar DNA have to do with anything? That doesn't support Darwin's theory nor contradict the claim that life on earth was placed here. How would it? And there is no good reason to believe that other hominids necessarily intermarried with our ancestors other than a significant amount of similar DNA. Kangaroos have a massive amount of _identical_ DNA, seemingly completely unevolved, despite our nearest ancestor being a shrew-like creature. They call that, "parallel evolution" or some such nonsense. Which basically means that they have a lot of identical DNA despite being very distantly related. Makes no sense from a Darwinian standpoint, as Darwin's theory demands a lot of random stuff occurring gradually, over hundreds of millions of years. Doesn't appear to be the case.

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5 hours ago, Mordecai said:

I never said that this _per se_ means that life was transported from another planet. I'm merely saying that the fossil record demonstrates something that nothing currently explains well, so having creatures put here from other planets at least fits the evidence. Do you have a _better_ theory? Because Darwin's theory fails miserably to match the pattern of speciation in the fossil record. The panspermia hypothesis arose merely from looking at the "punctuated equilibrium" in the fossil record and such and Richard Dawkins himself posted that maybe aliens designed the first life. So it's not like Mormons are the only ones saying the earth has been tinkered with by an outside intelligence. Furthermore, what do other hominids with similar DNA have to do with anything? That doesn't support Darwin's theory nor contradict the claim that life on earth was placed here. How would it? And there is no good reason to believe that other hominids necessarily intermarried with our ancestors other than a significant amount of similar DNA. Kangaroos have a massive amount of _identical_ DNA, seemingly completely unevolved, despite our nearest ancestor being a shrew-like creature. They call that, "parallel evolution" or some such nonsense. Which basically means that they have a lot of identical DNA despite being very distantly related. Makes no sense from a Darwinian standpoint, as Darwin's theory demands a lot of random stuff occurring gradually, over hundreds of millions of years. Doesn't appear to be the case.

The pre-cambrian explosion is another example of the woefully inadequate mechanism of darwinian evolution. Hundreds of species just suddenly appear. The mechanism itself in evolution, "random genetic mutation" can't possibly explain the diversity of life we see on earth. 

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10 hours ago, snowflake said:

The pre-cambrian explosion is another example of the woefully inadequate mechanism of darwinian evolution. Hundreds of species just suddenly appear. The mechanism itself in evolution, "random genetic mutation" can't possibly explain the diversity of life we see on earth. 

When you say "just suddenly appear," do you realize that the period of time when this explosion was taking place lasted 20 to 25 million years?  While this may qualify as "sudden" as compared to the age of the universe, by almost any other measure it was a fairly long process.

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Always be very very skeptical of any scientific study that tells you what you want to believe. Be even more skeptical of people using it to push a theory....especially if you want to believe that theory. The internet loves clickbait and this is ideal clickbait.

the-science-news-cycle.jpg

This does not necessarily mean what the Christian and Young Earthers want it to. Disclaimer: I am not a geneticist so take what I say with a grain of salt.

There are two kinds of DNA. This is talking about mitochondrial DNA, the kind we generally do not talk much about. It is also the most similar across species. What they found was that between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago there were relatively small interbreeding populations within a species. Basically you can track how old a species population is by tracking how many mutations (most of them benign) a species acquires over time. We know roughly how long that is. These guys ran a test across populations worldwide and find most DNA for a species comes from a common source in the time frame they gave. This could theoretically mean a small population got off a spaceship or off an ark or that God created them wholesale in that timeframe (though other evidence would refute this). Another explanation is that most species were reduced to a small breeding population due to some event (an ice age for example would be the most likely) and this interbreeding blended to (in a way) standardize mitochondrial DNA. What would be interesting would be to go back in time before whatever caused this and check them. It could be cyclical and we would find their mitochondrial DNA was as old as the last major climate shifts/cataclysm.

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17 hours ago, snowflake said:

 The mechanism itself in evolution, "random genetic mutation" can't possibly explain the diversity of life we see on earth. 

This is true. Random genetic mutation really cannot explain the diversity of life we see on earth--at least if we are talking about mutations on single traits. I agree 100%! However, if we look at regulatory genes that control gene expression (kind of "the boss" genes), then we can see large scale changes that happen relatively quickly. For instance, It's widely believed that birds evolved from Theropod dinosaurs. So why don't they have teeth? Through the traditional random mutation model, a series of mutations that caused them to produce less and less dentin and enamel over time would take far more time than it actually took. It doesn't work. But if we think about a mutation on regulatory genes that control the "when and how much" of these traits are expressed, the time element changes significantly.  We can literally cut off millions of years of time for these changes. A mutation in a regulatory change could cause them to shut off altogether but leave the genes for those traits in tact. In fact, an American scientist studied a chicken found with teeth and found a mutation on that vestigial gene that reactivated tooth production. Snakes with "reverse" regulatory genes have also been found with little legs (the ancestral condition), humans with regulatory gene mutations have been born with little vestigial tails. These genes remain but the regulatory gene mutation turns off (or sometimes on) the expression of the gene. 

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10 hours ago, ksfisher said:

When you say "just suddenly appear," do you realize that the period of time when this explosion was taking place lasted 20 to 25 million years?  While this may qualify as "sudden" as compared to the age of the universe, by almost any other measure it was a fairly long process.

So... uh... you think 20-25 million years is a long time? It would take a large mammal, typically, 30 million years to evolve a mere two-point, coordinated mutation, judging by observations of microbes. (Unless it's an adaptive mutation, which means, the mutation is built- in, which is not a Darwinian process, as it's not random). So 20-25 million years is absolutely nothing for typical creatures. It's still nothing even for microbes, if you are looking for functional changes in body plans.

Edited by Mordecai
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8 hours ago, katherine the great said:

A couple of comments: Richard Dawkins comment about alien life was probably tongue in cheek, but I interpreted him as saying that we just really don't know how life began on this planet. He was referring to abiogenesis not evolution. The study you referenced discusses a very new interpretation of genetic data that indicates that much of the life on the planet now underwent massive speciation events as recently as 200 kya. I know very little about the type of genetics they are studying, it's quite new so I can't speak to it's accuracy. However, it's quite a different thing to have a planet "seeded" with the most elementary life form and transplanting fully formed mammals and humans with phenotypes and genotypes almost identical to previous forms.

The part of your statement that illustrates your lack of biological knowledge is this: "And there is no good reason to believe that other hominids necessarily intermarried with our ancestors other than a significant amount of similar DNA. Kangaroos have a massive amount of _identical_ DNA, seemingly completely unevolved, despite our nearest ancestor being a shrew-like creature."  I would never presume to suggest that our ancestors "intermarried" with Neanderthal or Denisovan people. But there is no doubt that they had babies with them. If you are curious about how we know this, look up Svaante Paabo's work at the Max Planck Institute. It isn't just similar DNA. Of course we have similar DNA because we share recent common ancestry with them but set aside what we have in common and look at what is unique to each species. Chunks of uniquely Neanderthal DNA is found in some populations of modern humans but not others. We even know what some of the traits contained in this DNA are, such as insulating skin, some variants of light skin, straight hair, a boost to the immune system. If these traits were vestiges of common ancestry, all humans would have them, but these chunks of DNA are only found in Neanderthals and Homo sapiens with European and/or Asian ancestry. They are not found in modern or ancient Africans. This can only be explained through gene flow with Neanderthals after some of our ancestors left Africa. We also see evidence of "hybridization" in the fossil record outside of Africa in areas that were inhabited by both Neanderthals and modern humans. Neanderthals show up in the fossil record over 300 kya so it seems peculiar that a species transported from another planet would be genetically close enough to interbreed with a species firmly rooted in this planet.

My last thought on this: Of course we share a lot of DNA with kangaroos! A lot of our DNA is protein coding and regulatory and both species have hair, both are mammals, have most of the same bones configured differently for different forms of locomotion, etc. That all requires a LOT of the same DNA.

First of all, Richard Dawkins was quite serious, when he made that statement. He actually said it condescendingly. LOL Watch Ben Stein play dumb, to get Dawkins to speak openly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoncJBrrdQ8

With respect to similar animals on our planet, with apparent common ancestors, that suggest a type of evolution, obviously. But couldn't that evolution have occurred elsewhere? Perhaps in a place with enough time and resources, possibly tinkered with along the way, to produce the life forms on earth? I merely reject the notion that Darwin's theory fits the fossil record here, and reject that it adds up mathematically, given the limited time we have here. With enough time and resources and/or help, it could work. The theory is such an elegant theory, we can't just throw it out, of course. So I'm still open to it, but _only_ if you have the aforementioned conditions.

Well, right, they wouldn't have "intermarried." I just think of marriage, when I think of babies, being Mormon. lol All of that said, the DNA that kangaroos and humans have in common is enormous and _exactly_ the same. Well beyond what anyone would predict; no rational person could predict from Darwin's theory, that we would see enormous amounts of _identical_ DNA in kangaroos and humans, looking at the fossil record. What are the chances of producing 100 MB of functional information (which is basically nothing compared to the first life, of course), given the limits of Darwinian processes and the timeline found in the fossil record, where humans and kangaroos emerged? Zero. What are the chances of producing that much exactly _identical_ information with two profoundly different pathways to get there? Yet another miracle. The production of the information in the first place is mathematically implausible, given the tiny amount of time, relative to what's mathematically plausible. Then you produce that amount, and it turns out to be _identical_, despite two widely diverging branches of life? That's insane.

With respect to neanderthals and humans, again, I'm aware of everything you've said. Obviously, it _appears_ that maybe there was interbreeding. But the same logic applies to kangaroos and humans. It seems something _else_ can explain large amounts of common DNA. "This can only be explained through gene flow with Neanderthals after some of our ancestors left Africa." Wait. You just said that a bunch of common DNA can be explained, because the form is the same. Kangaroos and humans have a lot in common; therefore, they have identical DNA. Not sure why if the "only" way to explain some common DNA in humans and neanderthals _must_ mean interbreeding, while identical DNA in kangaroos doesn't mean interbreeding. Obviously, I agree with the latter. That's not interbreeding. But the former? I think it's certainly plausible that there was interbreeding. But I don't think it's necessary, by any means, since we know nothing of how the fossil record looks like it does, seeing as _no_ scientific theory can explain it, unless you include ID. And I still don't see how the existence of human cousins somehow disproves intelligent design or at least, some sort of seeding via an intelligent designer.

So it can't possibly be true that some humans represent "parallel evolution" the same way kangaroos represent "parallel evolution?" Either way, it's mathematically impossible to produce the information in the first place, given the tiny bit of time we see in the fossil record.

 

 

Edited by Mordecai
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On 6/4/2018 at 3:45 PM, katherine the great said:

I really don't see how this information could possibly indicate that life was transported from another planet. That is about the most unparsimonious explanation I've ever heard and we use Occam's razor in science. One would really have to discount the entire fossil record pre 200 kya to make that leap. We also have DNA from other hominins that is similar enough to see that they were a type of human but distinct enough to consider them a different species of human. And yet they had fertile offspring with our ancestors. How could that be? Well, we are in the process of trying to understand and maybe redefine the biological species concept. We love things to be black and white, but they just usually aren't. There are a lot of gray areas in biology and speciation is a very messy process.

I agree with you as to the non-parsimonious explanation.  Going to the extraplanetary explanation is WAY off the beaten track.

Unfortunately, although we have a fossil record going back 3 billion years or so, we don't have a DNA record anywhere near as old. The half-life of DNA is only 521 years.  After 100,000 to 200,000 years, little or no DNA from any organism is going to be readable. And human/neanderthal interbreeding is still under dispute.  Here's an interesting Wikipedia article on the subject: Neanderthal Genome Project.

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7 hours ago, katherine the great said:

This is true. Random genetic mutation really cannot explain the diversity of life we see on earth--at least if we are talking about mutations on single traits. I agree 100%! However, if we look at regulatory genes that control gene expression (kind of "the boss" genes), then we can see large scale changes that happen relatively quickly. For instance, It's widely believed that birds evolved from Theropod dinosaurs. So why don't they have teeth? Through the traditional random mutation model, a series of mutations that caused them to produce less and less dentin and enamel over time would take far more time than it actually took. It doesn't work. But if we think about a mutation on regulatory genes that control the "when and how much" of these traits are expressed, the time element changes significantly.  We can literally cut off millions of years of time for these changes. A mutation in a regulatory change could cause them to shut off altogether but leave the genes for those traits in tact. In fact, an American scientist studied a chicken found with teeth and found a mutation on that vestigial gene that reactivated tooth production. Snakes with "reverse" regulatory genes have also been found with little legs (the ancestral condition), humans with regulatory gene mutations have been born with little vestigial tails. These genes remain but the regulatory gene mutation turns off (or sometimes on) the expression of the gene. 

Thanks for your response.  Am I correct in my understanding that it would take new sections of genetic "code" in the DNA molecule to produce different genes which lead to different features on a species? One thing i have never been able to grasp with the evolution theory is that you have to start with a huge section of DNA. (where did the DNA come from, why does it contain information, how could this just "randomly" form and then reproduce)?  And then through "random mutation" of the genetic code somehow large chunks of new code are created (a code that would produce say wings).  If you think of it like a computer code on your I phone, and you take a certain code for an app and "randomly" start manipulating the code...it doesn't create a new app...or improve the code....it only leads to errors, and It certainly wouldn't lead to a new and improved app. (And the DNA molecule is far more complex than computer code).  

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3 hours ago, Stargazer said:

I agree with you as to the non-parsimonious explanation.  Going to the extraplanetary explanation is WAY off the beaten track.

Unfortunately, although we have a fossil record going back 3 billion years or so, we don't have a DNA record anywhere near as old. The half-life of DNA is only 521 years.  After 100,000 to 200,000 years, little or no DNA from any organism is going to be readable. And human/neanderthal interbreeding is still under dispute.  Here's an interesting Wikipedia article on the subject: Neanderthal Genome Project.

Hopefully this link will work: Ancient Romanian human had Neanderthal gg grandfather  This find can't be explained without interbreeding. 

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3 hours ago, snowflake said:

Thanks for your response.  Am I correct in my understanding that it would take new sections of genetic "code" in the DNA molecule to produce different genes which lead to different features on a species? One thing i have never been able to grasp with the evolution theory is that you have to start with a huge section of DNA. (where did the DNA come from, why does it contain information, how could this just "randomly" form and then reproduce)?  And then through "random mutation" of the genetic code somehow large chunks of new code are created (a code that would produce say wings).  If you think of it like a computer code on your I phone, and you take a certain code for an app and "randomly" start manipulating the code...it doesn't create a new app...or improve the code....it only leads to errors, and It certainly wouldn't lead to a new and improved app. (And the DNA molecule is far more complex than computer code).  

No. It doesn't take entire new sections to create a new variant of a gene. It can be as simple as a point mutation. There are numerous types of mutations and they can be harmful, neutral or advantageous. It just depends. It may help if you review Biology 101. (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm serious--its really the only way to begin to understand the complexity of genetics) But my point is that mutations in regulatory genes can cause sweeping changes in a relatively short amount of time. A good example in our species is the ability to digest milk in some populations. This ability was caused by at least two different regulatory gene mutations in two different populations at two different times. It was so beneficial that the trait became extremely frequent. It also, unfortunately caused many modern people to lose their very attractive figures to the curse of ice cream. :)

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7 hours ago, Mordecai said:

With respect to neanderthals and humans, again, I'm aware of everything you've said. Obviously, it _appears_ that maybe there was interbreeding. But the same logic applies to kangaroos and humans. It seems something _else_ can explain large amounts of common DNA. "This can only be explained through gene flow with Neanderthals after some of our ancestors left Africa." Wait. You just said that a bunch of common DNA can be explained, because the form is the same. Kangaroos and humans have a lot in common; therefore, they have identical DNA. Not sure why if the "only" way to explain some common DNA in humans and neanderthals _must_ mean interbreeding, while identical DNA in kangaroos doesn't mean interbreeding. Obviously, I agree with the latter. That's not interbreeding. But the former? I think it's certainly plausible that there was interbreeding. But I don't think it's necessary, by any means, since we know nothing of how the fossil record looks like it does, seeing as _no_ scientific theory can explain it, unless you include ID. And I still don't see how the existence of human cousins somehow disproves intelligent design or at least, some sort of seeding via an intelligent designer.

So it can't possibly be true that some humans represent "parallel evolution" the same way kangaroos represent "parallel evolution?" Either way, it's mathematically impossible to produce the information in the first place, given the tiny bit of time we see in the fossil record.

 

 

Nah. Our origin in on this planet (or a planet that is identical to ours). Think about all of the vitamins, minerals and elements we need to sustain life. We depend on the inorganic to maintain the organic. We are connected in the flesh to this very planet. We don't need another planet for our mortality--just this planet. Even the creation stories in the scriptures support this idea.

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20 hours ago, katherine the great said:

No. It doesn't take entire new sections to create a new variant of a gene. It can be as simple as a point mutation. There are numerous types of mutations and they can be harmful, neutral or advantageous. It just depends. It may help if you review Biology 101. (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm serious--its really the only way to begin to understand the complexity of genetics) But my point is that mutations in regulatory genes can cause sweeping changes in a relatively short amount of time. A good example in our species is the ability to digest milk in some populations. This ability was caused by at least two different regulatory gene mutations in two different populations at two different times. It was so beneficial that the trait became extremely frequent. It also, unfortunately caused many modern people to lose their very attractive figures to the curse of ice cream. :)

I don't follow you.....so the human race (mammals) were going along and then suddenly we got the ability to digest milk?...which was caused by two regulatory gene mutations in two populations at two different times...What were all the humans feeding their babies before that? 

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21 hours ago, katherine the great said:

No. It doesn't take entire new sections to create a new variant of a gene. It can be as simple as a point mutation. There are numerous types of mutations and they can be harmful, neutral or advantageous. It just depends. It may help if you review Biology 101. (I'm not being sarcastic, I'm serious--its really the only way to begin to understand the complexity of genetics) But my point is that mutations in regulatory genes can cause sweeping changes in a relatively short amount of time.

I thought that new genes were required for the "creation" (evolution) of new species....or multiple genes were needed...no?

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