Wings

[Mark Walker]

Glad to know where Doug's hot button is.  I'll have to try pushing it again
some day (I like the way you say that...).

If I was insulting, then Doug - you win the prize.  Grade school argument
indeed!

>By the same logic you are using to naysay evolution, you
can naysay life itself, which is ALL anti-entropic. 

Yep, I totally agree.  In fact, that is precisely my point.  Life itself is
in conflict with entropy.  Therefore there MUST be a guiding external force
at work to sustain it.  Without this force, life would be nay-sayed.  It's a
good thing that isn't the case, otherwise our email would stop working.

Mark Walker.

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	dyanega at mono.icb.ufmg.br [SMTP:dyanega at mono.icb.ufmg.br]
> Sent:	Thursday, September 10, 1998 2:38 PM
> To:	LEPS-L at lists.yale.edu
> Subject:	RE: Wings
> 
> This will hopefully be my last comment on this thread:
> 
> Mark Walker wrote:
> 
> >I do think it to be a huge stretch to suggest that random mutations
> >are responsible for this process.  Talk about blind faith!
> 
> You have missed a rather large point here, as well. Mutations are not
> responsible for this process, they are the raw material upon which the
> process acts. The *process* is the differential extinction and propagation
> of mutations. If one in a billion mutations leads to a new structure being
> expressed, or an old structure having a new function, then is when the
> process is most visible.
> 
> >        Mutation a "creative force"?  I think not.  A decay of order, a
> >jumbling of information, a mistake of nature.  Left to its own, the
> result
> >would be chaos, an eventual decline of life as we know it.  Isn't this a
> >scientific position?  Aren't all of the laws of physics in agreement?
> 
> Pardon me if I get a little harsh here, but this "entropy" argument is one
> of the oldest, tiredest, and BIGGEST fallacies of the Creationist Party
> Line, and has been discredited thoroughly by one physicist after another -
> if you don't TRULY understand about entropy or "closed" versus "open"
> systems, don't try applying this stuff to biology, please. At the very
> least, you are working at the wrong scale - drawing *analogies* which
> simply don't work. "Photosynthesis defies
> the Law of Thermodynamics!!". Fooey. There is nothing _contra_ physics
> inherent in locally anti-entropic processes. I have a list of links on my
> homepage which help put this grade-school pseudo-science stuff to rest. If
> you don't have the patience to read them, just consider this:
>         MOST mutations are eliminated right away because they ARE jumbles
> and mistakes. It's the one in a billion mutations that result in an
> improvement that count, because they will occasionally survive and
> proliferate - and there's a heck of a lot of neutral variation that
> exists,
> too, which can help bridge the gap between things which seem quite
> different. Think of mutation as something which sometimes - but very
> rarely
> - moves a ratchet and you'll be a little closer to the ballpark, and don't
> forget that by definition, only *populations* evolve. Those 999,999,999
> mutants that represent a "decay" *can't* cause a problem for the
> population
> because they are *eliminated*. The ratchet will almost never move
> "backwards" (and please note I use that term not in a literal sense, but
> in
> the sense of mean relative fitness decreasing between generations), except
> when the population size gets very small and drift takes over.
> 
> Peace,
> 
> Doug Yanega    Depto. de Biologia Geral, Instituto de Ciencias Biologicas,
> Univ. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Cx.P. 486, 30.161-970 Belo Horizonte, MG
> BRAZIL
> phone: 031-449-2579, fax: 031-499-2567  (from U.S., prefix 011-55)
>                   http://www.icb.ufmg.br/~dyanega/
>   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
>         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82