I think from now on people need to make a very clear distinction between the various meanings of ‘belief’ in their comments. It’s confusing as hell. Are we talking about belief as in ‘that which I think to be true’ or belief as a ‘religious conviction’?
People could use alternative words to avoid ambiguity, then with any luck we’ll all know exactly what we’re talking about. Phew!
[quote=“jwar”]What scientific method can test and re-test the belief:
“the universe is 14 billion years old, the earth has had life for the last few billion”;
or
“intelligent life evolved”?
Those are theories and a theory necessitates belief (the mental act, condition, or habit of placing trust or confidence in another person, thing, or idea). Otherwise how would you measure the results of genuine experiments?
Well, I would be the first to say that claiming that UFO’s and aliens are of the earth is a belief. That’s my belief. I see huge military budgets, I see motive (spying capabilities, propaganda, hystery, distraction a population); there have been a few people who’ve came out of high military positions claiming so.
Past that, it’s only my belief.
Aliens come into the picture because if a person believes that evolution is true, then it may have happened somewhere else. A species ever-growing, getting better and better as it evolves along.
Since you work with DNA, you surely must know that there has never been a single case in which the amount of information in a strand of DNA has increased to make an organism better than its ancestors. Information either stays the same or loses bits and pieces as it’s copied and transferred. It doesn’t increase. You have to believe that it increases, though it has never been observed.
It would be a gigantic disappointment if “modern man,” in its current brainwashed state, were granted the title “intelligent man”. We know so little and are so weak.
WOW, headhonchoII - that sounds like interesting work. Can I ask what is your job title?[/quote]
I’m not getting in an argument on belief etc. or whether man is intelligent or not. My way of defining intelligent is a grammatical and semantic language, culture and clear technological advancement.
I think what you mean is that 99.9% or some high statistic of mutations either result in no obvious change or are deleterious for the organism when you say information has never been known to increase. Many mutations are silent, yes.
However you can look at many genomes and see very clear cases where ‘information has increased’. Pseudogenes are a good example, resulting from the duplication of genes across a genome, some genes have many copies, most of which don’t function. Some of these copies collect errors and are thought to lose function. Sometimes the pseudogene is freed of evolutionary pressure and can evolve a new use.
That is one theory on how genes evolve.
Many genomes have been duplicated or triplicated , especially in plants. Note ‘tripled’ the entire genome, interesting eh?
Another way they evolve is swapping functional parts called exons. By swapping exons you could compare it to swapping verbs in a sentences, you can an unexpected and sometimes totally new sentence.
The genome does not remain static. It’s constantly changing, collecting mutations at a steady rate. When there is a serious epidemic or a catastrophe hits a population the genome can be severely altered in the new generation. Take the SARS virus for example, it is possible this virus has preferred receptor sites on the surface of cells. These receptor sites vary according to individual genes. Some people theorise that certain variations of receptor genes comon in Asian populations are favoured by the SARS virus, resulting in its spread in Taiwan and China etc. If this susceptibility was more widespread and resulted in 100% fatality you would have a massive information change or ‘selection’ in the next generation.
As for my job I sell reagents and instruments for biotech research. Buy two E.coli get one free 