Well thanks for that then. I would be grateful then if somebody else could help out by addressing my question on mutation. Cheers

didn't see this question:

'Anyone help me out with how that giraffe neck got so long based on non-theistic directed NS? Man that is some single mutation. If it is not a single mutation, but a series of (00s?) of them how did each one confer an advantage along the way?'

Probably not a single mutation, we're learning that most genetic traits are combinations, networks of genes.

Also i'm no geneticist. So i can only offer a guess, but, some trees grew taller and had the advantage of not having their leaves (read: food supply of the tree) eaten by short mammals. One species grew longer necks/legs to reach those trees, gaining an advantage over other mammals... and this slow gradual process repeated over many generations, leaving very tall Giraffes.

I've definitely heard of a number of competitive evolution 'wars' between species. And even within species between the sexes. I don't know if that's the case for Giraffes but i'm mostly trained as a physicist so i'm not really the perfect person to ask.

Ok, did a second of googling, and we have evidence that my theory is correct. A fossil called Bohlinia, with a neck that is intermediate in length.

Latterly, i'm not your teacher, if you want to learn about evolution go do so, there are many useful means. It is based on hard science and decent evidence from multiple disciplines. You are wasting your time expecting good answers here.

@orathaic
On Bohlinia, this is open to debate: http://www.weloennig.de/Giraffe.pdf

I guess, however, we could bat these things about between us all day, if we were so inclined and I see little point. from the tone of your posts it seems to me that you might feel the same way.

I do see some point in rephrasing my question to you. Without being sarcastic I should tell you that I do not expect any answers, because I don’t believe that we have them, if they do indeed exist. What I would like to convey, however, are my difficulties with this topic.
Let's say that a single favourable mutation occurred which lengthened one (or more, how do we know?) of the proto-giraffe's cervical vertebrae by some distance. How far might this extend? Are we talking microns, millimetres or centimetres? Who really knows? Intuitively, however, given the size of the cell, I would guess that we are on the micron scale. How much of an advantage would that confer, surely very little? The gradual inherently random process of mutation needs to be compounded at least some hundreds of times for an observer to even see the difference. Given also that other mutations are occurring at the same time which may confer other advantages such as improved running speed or vision, how likely is it that the ever so slowly extending neck becomes, what I might describe as, the principal component of the process? Incidentally Lewontin is particularly good on competing adaptations; e.g.,
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/not-so-natural-selection/?pagination=false
(I hope that this rather long-winded link works)

Despite what some have said here, I realise that there is a school of biology which might put forward a super-punctuated Gould-type evolutionary explanation of this problem. Does that work and, if so, what of conventional Darwin- and Dawkins-type gradualism?

Forgive the series of question marks, they are not meant as demands to anyone, but more reflect my thoughts on this matter. Any help would be appreciated.

fullhamish, I really don't understand where you get this idea that the neck grew in steps of microns. That's not how it works at all.

Take a look at the variety of shapes and sizes of humans. The tallest human might well be three times as tall as the shortest. I myself have relatively long arms and legs (or equivalently a relatively short torso), for other people this is the other way around. And of course, some human have a rather long neck while others have a rather short one.

Similarly, at any given time, the ancestors of giraffes would also have had a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Some would have had much longer necks than others, not by a few microns, but significantly. Those would have had a survival advantage because they could reach higher into the foliage leading to them producing more offspring than the ones with shorter necks.

Now when two tall people procreate their offspring is (on average) also tall. You can see this for yourself just by looking around really. Similarly when two ancestors of the giraffe with a relatively long neck procreated their offspring would have (on average) a relatively long neck.

Is it really that hard for you to imagine how the combination of these two factors (those with longer neck produced more offspring, and their offspring had longer necks as well) could over a large number of generations lead to the species developing a much longer average neck length? It's a rather simple process.

Oh, and by the way, thanks for confirming my prediction that your question about the giraffe neck was just a setup for you to share some more Intelligent Design "science". It's rather lame that it is the exact same author as with the laryngeal nerve though.

Also, gaps in the fossil records, really? Is that gonna be your argument now?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/science/camels-had-no-business-in-genesis.html

I'll just leave that here.

i did post a link where they discuss the arguements within biology between the so called gradualists and punctuated equilibrium-ists (or as they called each other, the creeps and the jerks) It is interesting to note that jerks seem to occur in fossil records (which only record dense bone material, and thus miss a lot of other changes are going on) while the gradual-type changes were predicted by, what, an understanding of DNA, and perhaps point like errors - this two ideas seem to contradict each other. But in both cases we're not really getting a full picture, we're talking about specialities who separately study parts of a whole and need to work out the details (which perhaps the current generation of scientists have done, i'm not sure how old the gould-type vs darwin/dawkins-type arguement spans from, though again i'm not a historian of science, so i've relatively little interest in that topic)

I think i also pointed out that we're only now learning that the simple one gene for one protein idea of DNA has been demolished by new information. The last decade has lead to the emergence of an understanding of how networks of gene work in concert, and a series of changes can occur in a species from one changed gene (if that gene turns on and off several other genes)

As to your question. Look at Down Syndrome, that is a fairly common genetic error which results in an extra chromosome, no new genes are added, and thus no new 'information' but double the genes (on that chromosome) mean twice the proteins produced (or in a non-linear system, not exactly twice, it could be f(x)-> 2x^2 + x + 1; which would mean 2x chromosomes gives us 2(2x)^2 + (2x) + 1 proteins...) And the resulting changes in the human are massive. Far more than any gradualist theory of a single cell - which you seem to be worried about.

Ok i'm not talking about height here, and i'm not even talking about a small mutation. Further i don't even know if Down Syndrome suffers are fertile (though i suspect either 50% or 100% are) BUT some gene copying errors - and fairly simple ones - can have a huge impact on an individual.

It think you are failing to see the complexity of the system you're talking about. And are simplifying it a bit. A human doesn't need any genetic mutations to end up with a very long neck, or big holes in their ears, extra cells are produced to cope with environmental changes, such as slowly sticking ever larger things into your ear or lip, or the Karen Hill tribe: http://albertandrhonda.blogspot.ie/2011/02/karen-long-neck-tribe-human-zoo.html

It is when you take into account the non-linear effect of genetic networks (that is a network of genes which switches on and off other functions within a cell, which is part of the way different cells in your body had all the same genes but each acts differently and has a different function) the variety of mutations from duplication errors, copying errors, insertion errors, deletion errors, etc. You could get your 2x^2 + x + 1 worth of proteins being changed to 2x^2 - x +1 which still gives a similar amount of that protein for lots of x. (by the way i'm making up numbers here) But if you have a network where one gene is responcible for the 2x^2, one gene for the sign of the x and a separate mechanism for the +1 (it occurs in all cells regardless of x, lets say) - and by the way, x may be the level of some other chemical/protein in the cell/environment, so could vary across the body and result in different cells doing different things. Oh My.

Your simplified explanation/understanding lacks soo much of the complexity (much of which i don't understand, and some of which nobody understands) that you're getting stuck on somewhere... If you want to go further, i suggest a biology degree, and then a genetics masters.

Sorry, i should have opened that @fullhamish.

And no i'm not answering his question, because i don't have all the answers.

And further, within the human (and presumably Giraffe) population there is human variation in height, body length, (and shape) besides the fact that eating more/better during development results in taller humans (as i believe the poor nutrition in North Korean over the past 50 years demonstrates) If taller Giraffes eat better and grow better, they would quickly become very different from any giraffes who failed to grow...

I find it far more interesting to look at some of the developments in the question of abiogenesis. I mean, talk about evolution all you want, we've actually got evidence for it, but it only says how life changes, how we get varieties, new species, new strains of bacteria and perhaps viruses (if we count them as living). But abiogenesis that's where life came from in the first place, you can't have evolution without it, and it's freaking awesome.

Synthetic proto-cells, without dna, with 5/6 chemicals, in a lab which have cell like properties (following a food source, separating in two, or both).

Then understanding of viruses, and this year mega-viruses, prions - which are even further away from being life, but almost self-replicate - crystal growth (and the entropy which contradicts what was mentioned above about this universe being one where things break down... crystals are definitely not life, but they can grow, and form ordered structures, it is beautiful, an example of order in a system which doesn't even come close to being life) We see all of these properties - now that we're looking for them - in simple systems, and what we need is some way to combine them to get life-like systems.

Is that not an awesome thing to understand.

And even if i could prove all of these fantastic awesome things, if i had all the evidence to back up ever idea. Does that not highlight the awe-inspiring nature of your God's creation? How the heck is that anti-religious??? (i did hint that i wasn't interested in hashing out the same arguement again, right?)

Wow thanks orathiac there is plenty to get my teeth into there. On the girrafe's neck it occurs to me that we have all of that connective tissue, blood pressure regulators etc. to factor in too to the mutation complexity. Then again I have read another article, in a good journal, which says the neck elongation has nothing to do with feeding, but rather sex selection! How right you are on the complexity of the matter - no simple just so explanations here, as you say.

On abiogenesis the think that strikes me as miraculous is not only the process itself, but the fact of reproduction. That first unit must, by definition, have had this ability. What were the chances of that?

'What were the chances of that?' - indeed, which came first, the chicken or the egg? metaphorically of course.

No wait, my point was viruses don't reproduce on their own. But the do highjack the cells reproductive processes which exist in host cells. Prions don't really reproduce but they refold other proteins to make copies of themselves. Crystals don't reproduce, but they can grow, reproducing their structure/pattern.

So something which had some reproduction-like qualities came before the first unit, and we'd be unsure whether to classify it as life or non-life.

And that's just the examples we know about. (and yes, viruses only exist as they do because we have host cells for them to highjack, but just looking at the complexity of them, just molecules folded just so, and they can do awesome life-like things - and we only really know about the viruses which cause illness, because those are the ones which are most profitable to study... there are probably lots of things out there with about the same number and variety of atoms/molecules as viruses but they don't need human host cells - and they happen to be nowhere near as common as a virus because they don't know how to highjack cells to reproduce... in fact, in some sense evolution selects against them... but we've never spotted them because we're not looking in the right places... To demonstrate that point, we found mega-viruses in the past 12 months which were completely unknown before and we don't really know what they do!)

There is actually a HUGE jump between viruses and crystals (or the qualities that we see in them) and prions are a pretty poor example, but at least it fits somewhere in between (again, prion-disease is the only reason we know about them)

But let's get back to my thesis, (and do you object to it) IF god, then science is the flawed human endeavour to understand HOW god did it all (while assuming no why)

Or maybe better put, IF god created the universe, then scientific understanding is an attempt to understand the creator's greatest work.

I really don't see why there is conflict between Christianity and evolutionary science (for example) evolution might be wrong, but it's the best theory we have at the moment, one of our greatest intellectual achievements, and anyone is free to go into that field of science and participate in that endeavour. Yet some Christians have started a war on that achievement. Trying to change school board decisions, is not an attempt to learn better science and correct the flaws in the theory, it is an attempt to dilute knowledge and understanding of it in non-experts. It is an attack not on a scientific basis, but on a cultural one. (which in turn means any serious creation scientist is seen as part of a culture war rather than a scientific endeavour)

My understanding as to what scientists believe happened to create the start of life on Earth now, having much less evidence for it than for evolution, is that materials gathered on Earth, most likely all submerged under a body of water, and various protein structures were chemically attached to each other by means of some powerful energy insertion from something like a big lightning storm. Some of those structures resembled early instances of DNA that when other non-living but complex structures maybe took on the rightly formed DNA strands and housed them in the early forms of what a nucleus would be, you have the start of life.

And maybe it was the early forms of viruses that provided the hosts that actually inserted the DNA into these structures to turn them into life and start replicating. So viruses created life? It's possible...

DNA or RNA ?

Probably RNA I guess, that's half of DNA right? Yay high school bio

Doesn't really matter, except in the context of the supposed clay template. Your high school bio combined with my a (very) little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

More dangerous than believing the bible? :)

Of course not (!)

it was for a long time (and maybe thought in your bio class) that the process of information went DNA -> RNA -> Proteins, and always that way.

But then we found retro-viruses which go RNA -> DNA -> RNA -> Proteins and more DNA... I think RNA read DNA to produce Proteins... but i may be wildly off on that.