Rather than post part 2 as a second entry, I decided to combine them both into one and make a giant edit, for once using timestamping for legitimate means.Somewhere in our genome is buried a very curious stretch of DNA. Located on the short arm of chromosome 8 is an unassuming group of 152 nucleotides.
If one compares this sequence to a mouse genome they find... it matches exon 10 of GULO gene with extremely high accuracy. This gene codes for the enzyme responsible for the final step tin vitamin C biosynthesis.
Well, this is curious since humans don't have this protein. This is why if we don't consume vitamin C we get scurvy.
Why should this gene be there? These 152 nucleotides are part of a psuedogene, a completely nonfunctional piece of DNA. How do we know this DNA is nonfunctional (I can hear you already, SDFL)?
Most of the exons (the DNA encoded into RNA, the translator between DNA and proteins, the building blocks of life) have been been deleted, but a few of this sequence remain.
The surviving sequence is riddled with mutations that would:
- Change the amino acid sequence
- Cause frame shifts
- Add stop codons
- Disrupt intron splice sites
No mRNA has been detected from this sequence.
No protein has ever been found.
(If any of the above sentences have been beyond your reading comprehension, don't feel bad... you're part of 97% of America, and you shouldn't feel bad. Feel free to ask and and I'll explain. However, there are a couple of people this is directed at who pretend to know this whole process and who should understand this whole process...)
Though the functionality of some of these genes may be debated, for all intensive purposes this DNA is abandoned real estate.
But why is it here? There are two scenarios:
1) It just appeared via spontaneous mutations.
2) It evolved from a previously functional gene.
Let's humor the first possibility: the probability of having a stretch of DNA having an 86.2% identical match is 1 / 1,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Given the size and composition of our genome it is still unlikely: 1 / 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
But it gets more interesting. Other primates are also unable to make vitamin C. Yet they two have this sequence for matching exon 10 for GULO. The probability of four species (the number of primates sequenced for this gene thus far) having this same sequence is 1:100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. In other words, the odds of Pauly Shore winning an Oscar for best dramatic performance.
Intelligent Design / creationism give no explanation for this sequence's existence. They make no testable predictions. Does this mean the designer is flawed? Or just screwing with us? Many creationists claim the sequence is functional, yet offer no data to the many scientific papers showing evidence to the contrary.
So what about the other possibility? Evolution is the only theory that can explain this
seemingly impossible statistic. As any good scientific theory it goes further and makes testable predictions.
Prediction: If primates evolved from a common ancestor that lost function in this gene, closely related species should have more similar sequences than more distant species. Since this bit of DNA has no function, mutations have no affect on the organism's fitness, and therefore the sequence can drift freely. However, species bound by a recent common ancestor will not have as much time to acquire diverging mutations as species joined by a more distant ancestor.
And this is exactly what we find. The human sequence is more similar to the chimp sequence than to the other primates.
Similarity in GULO genes- Human - Chimp 97%
- Human - Orangutan 94%
- Human - Macaque 89
Let's take this one step further. Another mammal has lost function in its GULO gene. The mighty guinea pig. Phylogeny tells us that the primate pseudogene and the guinea pig pseudogene cannot be related, as there are many in between the evolution of primates and guinea pigs that have functional vitamin C genes, including bats, flying lemurs, tree shrews, elephant shrews, and prosimians.
Evolution makes another prediction: Since guinea pigs are more closely related to rodents than to primates, the guinea pig sequence should be more similar to the rat and mouse sequence than it is to the primate sequence, despite the guinea pig and primate sequences having the same malfunction.
And it is.
Evolution is the only theory capable of explaining how this stretch of 152 nucleotides found its way into our genome: that it evolved from exon 10 of the GULO gene. Evolution not only gives us an explanation but goes further to make testable predictions which are confirmed by data.
Comments (39)
Has anyone checked to see if this 152 nucleotide sequence is ever transcribed into RNA? Otoh, it's quite possible that the "pseudogene" sequence was active at one time and became dysfunctional.
You still fundamentally don't understand the nature of the question. The difference between creation and common ancestry is between a grove of trees and a single large tree. Originally-designed reuse is just as good an answer as ancestry for like sequences. I fundamentally and intuitively understand reuse, as I work in it day in and day out, since my job is to create and maintain reusable software. You, obviously, do not. Creation, unlike ID, asserts that the design was deliberately broken, so a broken design is a prediction that distinguishes it from ID. You have only added evidence for creation with your post.
I think that I need to post about reuse, using reuseable software as an example, since so many evolutionists don't understand it.
@soccerdadforlife -
I agree, It could be a good example of a feature disabled, or commented out, ultimately a result of the fall.@interstellarmachine - Here's a paper about the topic.
@interstellarmachine - I'm sorry, I must of missed the Sunday school class that teaches the genetics of The Fall. Are there any good textbooks on this subject? Where in the Bible did God spell out how sin is translated into genetic mutations?
@bryangoodrich - @interstellarmachine - Pardon me if I cut in, but Gen. 3:17 makes it clear that the ground is cursed and Gen. 3:19 makes it clear that the ground is cursed because man is of the ground. Rom. 8:20-21 makes it clear that all of creation suffers corruption, presumably because of Adam's sin, since it refers to the corruption being due to the will of God, who cursed the ground back in Gen. 3:17. Hence it is a relatively small inference to make that any mutation of God's design is a corruption of it and, hence, is due to the Fall. God obviously didn't spell out how sin is translated into genetic mutations, but that's not what ISM was claiming.
@soccerdadforlife - Actually gen 3:17-19 merely details that due to the Fall, man will now perish, and must sustain himself by eating. Anything about mutations seems a bit of a stretch, and filling in the details as you need to when you need to. As for Rom 8, where does it say this corruption is all of creation? It speaks specifically about human beings, unless we are to take it to imply that plants and animals, too, will recognize the Glory of God through Christ (Rom 8:18-19). You seem to be taking a colloquial use of the word "creation" to apply it how you wish to apply it, in general to everything created, when the context seems to speak of something rather specific, and not in line with what you're imposing.
@bryangoodrich - this is a major scriptural problem (for me) with the Adamic Fall argument and many creationist arguments in general. I know I have said this before, but one of the major flaws with the creationist/ID approach to many of the issues GL tackles on his site is that the arguments commonly given aren't concretely supported by the Bible or supported by seemingly sound scriptural inferences. Not only that, but some prominent creationist arguments flatly contradict the Bible. I mean, most creationist positions are derived under the assumption that the Bible is absolute truth, but the assumptions used to create creationism as a "scientific" explanation are interpretations that are often entirely extra-biblical and man-made in nature. However, creationists still present and treat these interpretations as if they are divinely inspired (like they view the Bible). It's not circular logic, it's incredibly haughty and downright blasphemous illogic in many respects.
@bryangoodrich - Nope, read it again more carefully. The text specifically states that the ground is cursed, just like I said.
@soccerdadforlife - I'll read your paper in the morning. Has there been any research, studies or experiments into the flaws related to The Fall?
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@soccerdadforlife - Yeah, cursed is the ground, and as clearly pointed out, it only signifies that things will die. These are the passages used to indicate that all life will now eat and die due to the Fall. You've taken it--with no justification--to mean whatever you want it to mean, which in this case is to indicate that it accounts for evolution or mutations. That is very much a stretch of what is stated. UTRow hit the nail on the head.
I might also add that gen 2:17 furthers my point about the consequences of the Fall.
@bryangoodrich - In Gen. 3:17-19, the emphasis is on the ground as the source of the curse. The ground, instead of only growing beneficial things, will grow thorns and thistles. The ground will no longer yield its produce easily; now it requires work and sweat. The ground is cursed because of Adam; he was taken from it and he shall return to it. The emphasis here is on the physical stuff, so any spiritualizing of the curse is twisting the text. Since man's genetic material is of the ground, because it is part of man, and man is of the ground, and the ground is cursed, man's genetic material is also cursed. Exactly how that works out, I don't think that we can say using only Genesis. Sanford has written a book about human genetic load that is worth reading. Some have tried to attribute the load merely to medical advances, but I don't think that that can be maintained. Genetic load had been accumulating for centuries before modern science began.
Gen. 2:17 states, literally, "dying, you shall die." The emphasis here is on man's new acquisition of mortality, resulting in eventual death. However, that in no way contradicts the fact that the ground is cursed in Gen. 3:17.
@soccerdadforlife - so where does this connection to ground and genetic material come in? There is absolutely no Biblical basis for it, nor scientific basis for it. You're just filling in the gaps with what you want still.
@soccerdadforlife - and you're still ignoring the entire context of the cursed ground. You take it as some independent fact of the world that gen 3:17-19 applies to the introduction of mutations in nature that give rise to the world we see today, but that completely undermines the point of God's speaking these details to Adam. As he says, "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken." (gen 3:19) The only way your stretching these statements can make sense is if the entirety of changes to the nature of the Earth was to serve in the "painful toil" of man. That is a very long stretch you will have to make. As I said, the context of it is clearly based around the point we agree, that of gen 2:17 and man's mortality. gen 3:17-19 is detailing the difficulty man must now face in this mortality as punishment. You are correct, there is an indicated change to "the ground" as producing "thorns and thistles", but that doesn't change the context, nor demonstrate the thesis implicit in your assertion, at least not without a whole lot of qualification to how a cursed ground as punishment to man is going to produce mutations in genetic information, or even be remotely involved with genetics at all. Just because the Bible says God made man out of dirt doesn't mean genetic information has anything to do with dirt, which is also implicit in this connection. How do you even make that relation?
@bryangoodrich - The "painful toil" is in the context of eating the "plant of the field" from the previous verse.
From the context, man is dust--physical stuff--which includes the genetic material of man. There has always been an understanding that there is a a physical component to the curse which is passed from father to son, i.e., genetically. Our physical inheritance as children of Adam includes a curse. I am not introducing anything novel in my reading of Gen. 3.
@soccerdadforlife - You ASSUME there is a genetic connection, but you would never make such a claim if this were before we had any understanding of genetics. You presume that genetics is the mechanism for how this curse is transferred, and yet such a mechanism is, as you said, something you don't know "exactly how that works out." So in other words, you're just making shit up. You've also did a switch from the metaphorical to the literal here when you say "man is dust" is equivalent to "made of physical stuff", so that when God talks about the ground being curse we're talking about "physical stuff is cursed." Yet, you take it to be a literal translation that the curse is something physical passed through the mechanism of genetic information. How do you distinguish between the metaphor and the literal here? God clearly made man out of the dust of the ground, breathed in him to make him living (gen 2:7). So is man really of dust or is this just a way of saying "man is physical"? Otherwise, you seem to be making equivocations in one direction as you please, but preventing the other way to protect the usage you have imposed. Again, just sounds like you're making shit up, regardless if other people have made the shit up before you.
This is totally off topic, but it popped in my head the other day...Why do we feel the need to wear clothes?
Greater than 90 percent between humans, rats, and mice are the same. So did the Macaque evolve into a rat or mouse before an orangutan?
And check out this link and this link.
This may deserve a rec for the picture of the guinea pig alone (kidding, of course...kinda...)
@soccerdadforlife - [Originally-designed reuse is just as good an
answer as ancestry for like sequences. I fundamentally and intuitively
understand reuse, as I work in it day in and day out, since my job is
to create and maintain reusable software.]
In the cases give the theory of evolution makes two predictions (in other words it implications)
1. "If primates evolved from a common ancestor that lost function in this
gene, closely related species should have more similar sequences than
more distant species."
2. "Since guinea pigs are more closely related to rodents than to primates,
the guinea pig sequence should be more similar to the rat and mouse
sequence than it is to the primate sequence, despite the guinea pig and
primate sequences having the same malfunction."
Does a design (either creation or ID, if you insist on such a distinction) idea make the same sort of predictions if we substitute evolved with desgined and such? Let's look at the first one "If primates were designed by the same designer of humans, closely related species should have more similar sequences than distant species." Does the notion of common design (or creation) predict or necessarily imply the consequent here? The answer comes as no, because the notion of common design does NOT predict that closely related structures have strong similiarities. A person can design (part of) a software program at work for an office job during the day, come home, and 10 minutes later create (part of) a painting of the Sistine Chapel. A designer could make it so that chimps and humans have a close relationship while having fewer similar sequences than more distant species. You can talk all day about how most designs work incrementally and would not do that, but it remains that design CAN work that way.
To make a more concrete example, let's say I start designing codes for encrypting the message
"Hal is my pal." My first desgined code could be
"Ibm jt nz qbm." My second designed code could be
"pamlis yalh."
Both codes have a close relationship in that they have the same ancestor "hal is my pal." (reuse) Both have a common designer. Both have the same original source material ("hal is my pal.") However, even though they have the same ancestral relationship, they do NOT have more similarity than more distant sequences of letters such as
"Hal iz my pal." nor do they have a strong similarity between themselves given that we only have the sequences
"Ibm jt nz qbm."
"pamlis yalh." The idea of a common designer or common creator allows that both strongly similar desgins such "Ibm jt nz qbm." and not so strongly similar designs such as "pamlis yalh." arise in the same number of step(s). Basically, if design/creation worked out as good of an explanation as evolution did, then in the example given
closely related codes should have more similar letterings than more distant codes. But, this does not hold. I could have
"Ibm jt nz qbm." having "hal is my pal." as its ancestor could have
"jcn ku oa rcn." as its descendant. Thus, it works out as a second generation code of "Hal is my pal." "jcn ku oa rcn." has a close similarity to the original message "hal is my pal." However, "pamlis yalh." and "lispamha ly" can both work out as first generation descendants of the original code, but have *less* similar letterings than the more distant code "jcn ku oa rcn."
The notion of design in general allows for this, thus it makes no prediction like that of evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory basically doesn't allow for such, and thus it ends up making predictions. Consequently, common ancenstry and common design/creation do NOT work out as "just as good an answer." Again, one can go on all day that MOST designs get incrementally in a manner resembling that of evolution, but it still remains that design CAN work in different ways... and people really show such quite frequently when they design meals and then design very different structures a moment later.
@bryangoodrich - "Yet, you take it to be a literal translation that the curse is something physical passed through the mechanism of genetic information." I've already stated that this is an inference, though it has been inferred for millenia. Is mortality passed from parents to child? Yes. Are genetics (in a very general sense) involved? Yes. Now what about the children of Adam and Eve? Were they mortal? Abel sure was. Did they evidence sin? Cain did. The inference is quite reasonable. Furthermore, the emphasis on curses being sited in the ground follows when Cain is cursed from the ground. His farming livelihood was taken away.
The serpent is condemned to eat dust; if the ground is itself cursed, then the serpent is condemned to subsist on cursed "stuff". Here again, the emphasis is on linkage between "curse" and "dust". That cattle and beasts of the field are the subject of the curse along with man and the serpent is evident from the comparative used in v. 14.
There are a great many linkages between "curse", "dust", and "ground" in these verses. We could go into Eve's judgment, where children are twice referenced and pain twice as well. Pain, perhaps, could be inferred to be analogous to man's toil in laboring and his pain from thorns and thistles when farming.
Oh, I didn't point out the strong linkage between ground and dust in v. 19.
Probably we should discuss what it means to be cursed. As I understand it, something is cursed if it doesn't have a good future (e.g., a country, city, or person) or if it doesn't provide its expected benefit (e.g., ground used for farming).
Some of the linkages are quite strong (e.g., "ground" and "dust", while others less so, like woman's labor in childbirth vs. man's labor in farming); the idea of stuff being cursed is thematic in these verses; ground is explicitly stated as being cursed; there is strong linkage between dust and ground and between dust and man. There is circumstantial evidence from the text about Cain that sin is transmitted to the children and that the children are mortal as well as the parents.
Man is dust (necessity), but not only dust (lack of sufficiency).
I think that there are strong contextual clues in the passage for the genetic inference; to my knowledge, I am not imposing any external theological constraints on the passage.
Thanks, by the way, for your detailed questions which have helped me look more carefully at the justification for the genetic inference. They are much appreciated.
@Spoonwood - Hello. Long time, no debate.
If I understand you correctly, your argument is that design can be made incomprehensible; therefore no predictions can be made about what would be produced by a designer, even if we assume that design occurred. If we assume that creation included bioengineering, then I think that it's reasonable to assume that a creator would use bioengineering principles and that we should avoid assuming contrary principles, such as obfuscation, even if design might be involved.
You use the notion of "closely-related" in the context of design. I'm not sure what you mean by that.
@gabrielpeter - For some long sequences, human and chimp DNA is 80+ % divergent. _0_0_ This is a big anomaly, assuming standard rates of primate mutation.
The amount of chimp DNA is 12% greater than the amount of human DNA.
Furthermore, chimp DNA was sequenced assuming a human template. Using chimp DNA to argue for similarity with human DNA is problematic since it wasn't done from scratch and a lot of assumptions about similarity were made.
@soccerdadforlife - [For some long sequences, human and chimp DNA is 80+ % divergent.]
1. Many of those sequences occur at recombination sites, and there is new evidence indicating that recombination is, itself, a particularly mutagenic process in humans. This, like several other mechanisms I won't go into, appears to be contributing to human mutation rates that we weren't taking into account several years ago.
2. Evolutionary theory predicts certain gene sequences (length really isn't an issue) to be very divergent from analogous chimp sequences. After all, we are a very different species from chimps in many respects.
3. The majority (about 3/4) of genetic differences between chimps and humans are not in gene-coding regions of our genome, but rather, non-coding regions of the genome that, instead, appear to regulate the expression of other genes. This is an important distinction, as several of these divergent non-coding areas are hypothesized to be more susceptible to evolve and mutate than coding regions for reasons we do not entirely know (or at least the scientific community didn't 1-2 years ago, when I kept up with the literature regarding this stuff). For instance, we see consistent mutations in the regulatory regions of humans that we believe to regulate the development of the brain (which we would expect, as our cognitive abilities are significantly different than those of chimps). As such, the mutations and mutation rates we see when comparing the genetic evidence to evolution's predictions really aren't as big of an issue as creationists try to make them out to be. In fact, many of them confirm predictions that evolution makes.
[This is a big anomaly, assuming standard rates of primate mutation.]
Assuming that humans would follow standard rates of primate mutation is a very poor assumption given that our environmental niche and the evolutionary pressures our species has experienced is completely unprecedented for any living organism in the history of Earth. In fact, it's poor logic to assume that recent human mutation and evolution rates should be even relatively near comparable rates for other animals or primates. For instance, there are new studies linking an explosive period of human evolution beginning about 10,000 years ago to agricultural breakthroughs that would affect human diet and, obviously, affect human population sizes, gene pools, and evolution substantially. There have been no primates that have had a comparable evolutionary catalyst that we are aware of.
[Using chimp DNA to argue for similarity with human DNA is problematic since it wasn't done from scratch and a lot of assumptions about similarity were made.]
You need to expand on this more for this to be meaningful and for me to understand what your problems with the approach are. This also seems like a counter-productive claim to make, given that you just made a bunch of very concrete assertions about what this evidence entails and how it clearly refutes/contradicts evolutionary theory. It seems like you are pre-emptively covering your bases in case someone proves that your interpretation of this evidence is wrong. "The evidence doesn't support evolution, and even if it did, I don't believe this evidence wasn't obtained in a methodologically sound manner anyways."
soccermoron says: "You have only added evidence for creation with your post."
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@soccerdadforlife - [If I understand you correctly, your argument
is that design can be made incomprehensible; therefore no predictions
can be made about what would be produced by a designer, even if we
assume that design occurred.]
No. I nowhere talked about incomprehnsibility, so I didn't make such an if-then argument to begin with. The argument goes that the notion of design does not predict that closely related species should have more similar sequences than distant species (nor the other prediction given, though I didn't detail that). Why? Because the notion of design allows for closely related members with *fewer* similar sequences than distantly related members. For example, consider the ancestral form
"Hal is my pal."
We can design the first descendant as
"alhmpsylai" or as
"hmspyaalli"
We could also design the first descendant as
"hal is my pam."
With the second descendant as
"hal is my pbm."
The third descendant as
"hal is my pbl."
The fourth as
"hal is my obl."
The fifth as
"hal is my oal." and so on.
"hal is my pam.","alhmpsylai", and "hmspyaalli" end up as closely related, in that they're both first generation descendants.
"hmspyaalli" or "alhmpsylai" are both much more closely related to the common ancestor "hal is my pal" than "ial is my pal." and "ibl is my pal", AND "hmspyaalli" or "alhmpsylai" have fewer letters that match in the sequence of letters "hal is my pal." than "ial is my pal." and "ibl is my pal". Consequently, one can't make such a prediction. On the other hand, evolution DOES make a prediction here, because it necessarily implies closely related species should have more similar sequences than distant species.
[If we assume that creation included
bioengineering, then I think that it's reasonable to assume that a
creator would use bioengineering principles and that we should avoid
assuming contrary principles, such as obfuscation, even if design might
be involved.]
I don't think such reasonable, nor have you provided any basis as to why such works out as reasonable. Why would the designer or creator use bioengineering principles to begin with, when it could work another way? Even if you want to assume that such a designer or creator did use such principles, if it can use or could have used other principles, then you can't make a prediction as to what it would have designed.
[You use the notion of "closely-related" in the context of design.]
Number of steps from a common ancestral form. I.E. if we build the natural numbers via collections of sets, then 2 ends up more closely related to 3, than 6 does to 3.
Let me say this... if you claim that "Originally-designed reuse is just as good an answer as ancestry for like sequences." then you have to show that it makes the same predictions as that of evolutionary theory. You haven't show how "originally-designed reuse" makes a single prediction here, nor shown how it makes the same predictions as the two given by GL. And I've shown specifically how "originally-designed reuse" can't even predict what evolutionary theory does in this specific case.