You can't really base your whole point on this, because the bible would be a biased source wouldn't it?
The fact that the majority of American's don't believe in Evolution is quite sad. To deny evolution would actually be quite stupid, the sheer evidence for it is unbelievable and a huge portion of medicine and science today is based on evolution. If the theory was incorrect then these fields of medicine technically shouldn't work.
DNA has proved evolution countless times. Just because something is complex does not mean it is impossible to be created naturally. Look at the crystalline structure in diamonds. I have a blog on Abiogenesis. You should give it a look, and do yourself a favor. At least try to be intellectually honest with yourself.
Ah yes the inefficiency of DNA replication. Let's observe exactly how inefficient it is. Let's take a bacteria which can apporximately reproduce in about twenty minutes. Now let's look at the DNA replication part. Obvioulsy it doesn't spend all of the twenty minutes replicating the DNA, but a good portion of that time. Now let's just say that this particluar bacteria has DNA strands that are 3 million base pair units long. In one go DNA will replicate with at most one incorrect base-pair unit per 10,000 units. So, 1 in 10,000 units will not be the correct unit. Then the DNA checks itself and after making corrections, about 1 in 1 million base pair units will be incorrect. On top of this the Bacterium will replicate all of its DNA and organelles in under twenty minutes. That means that for every DNA strand, only about three units will be incorrect. Yea, that's inefficiency for you. If the human body's replication process were as inefficient as what you're purpoting it to be then I would be a freak of nature at the ripe young age of 17, imagine if I was sixty? Watch out carnies there's a new freak in town!
You do realize that 90% of your DNA does nothing because of random mutation. You can fight the fact all you want, but it's there. There is nothing you can do about it. I realize this post is rather brief. I'll edit it in a couple minutes. ---- No one is denying that the cell attempts to fix a DNA copy, but a mismatch will slip through the cracks. When that happens we have mutation. I've never head the probability 1 in a million so if you could link me to a credible source. Ok when a mutation occurs its a change in information. Picture the transcription of DNA like writing a book by hand 2. The first copy stated: THE CAT ATE THE DOG. The second stated: THE BAT ATE THE DOG. A very small change in information completely changed the concept of the whole sentence and indeed the book itself. It no longer speaks of a small feline, it speaks of a blind flying mammal. I would highly recommend you watch this video and the others in the series. It is an excellent educational video. YouTube - How Evolution Works Part 4- Mutations --- Also, how did I purport anything? I just said inefficient. Is that word off limits? I call a mistake an inefficiency.
Did you understand how those mutations occur? I'm not sure that you did. Please I took AP Biology I understand transcription and translation. I don't need to see a simple sentence to know what you are talking about. That sentence is very simple and easy to understand. Now repeat that sentence 1 million times or 1 billion times. However, only a handful of base-pairs will be incorrect. What are the consequences. Well if it was a substitution, then not much, the codon will still probably code for the same peptide or it could code for a different peptide. A three base-pair substitution codes for a totally different peptide. If it was a deletion or an insertion then following that point of mutation everything gets effed up coding for an entirely different protein. Form. Fits. Function. With a different peptide or peptides then the protein structure is change thereby changing its function. It will either be useless, perform at a slower rate or worse could become a prion. No benefit to the organism. However, this is on a such a small scale. More mutations more deformed protiens. Less benefit. Selected against. Please note that a cell can and will break down a deformed protein. As for the information, I gathered that from my textbook which I do not have access to. I may be incorrect in recalling this, but DNA replication is highly efficient. The textbook was heavy on evolution though, don't mistake that I don't understand simple biological processes. Edit: A mistake is one thing, inefficiency is another. Let's be glad that microsoft didn't come up with DNA replication because that would be inefficient and full of mistakes. Edit 2: I am not fighting that fact. A lot of 'useless' DNA prevents other DNA from being transcribed by smothering it. Notice how it's mutated and now become useless... The book no longer speaks of a small feline, but your body will. A mutation this insignificant will likey code for the same protein. Your body doesn't read The Cat Ate The Dog, it reads peptide1 peptide2 peptide1 peptide3 peptide4 for about at least another million or so base pair units. That would be a really long book title and that small a change wouldn't even affect the title.
I would assume so... Oh come on rusty. Stop throwing around a high school education like it's the end all be all of the subject. What about the countless university professors and biologists who have phds in the field? Are they wrong because your biased high school teacher said so? Which is cause for a mutation. Most of the time it does nothing. Sometimes its deleterious, and other times it is helpful for an organism to survive in an environment. Take for example nylon eating bacteria. Nylon has only existed for a few decades, and only recently have they been able to digest it. How did that happen? Did we keep all of our nylon in a clean room until a few days ago? Or did God just want to deceive us into thinking evolution is true? That barely glanced over mutation. For example, a specific 32 base pair deletion in human CCR5 (CCR5-Δ32) confers HIV resistance to homozygotes and delays AIDS onset in heterozygotes. Taken from Wikipedia. (Oh no!) If you simplify the big bang it sounds like a fraud. Is it? I don't think so. You're doing yourself and everyone else an intellectual dishonesty by giving them a slight bit of information and telling them that's all that happens. Haven't studied peptides much, so I'll have to get back to you when I have sufficient knowledge on the subject. Perhaps inefficient was a step too far. How about imperfect. Because that's all evolution needs. Summed up above. Or a framerate shift can occur and change the entirety of the book. THE CAT ATE THE DOG remove the H TEC ATA TET HED OGT I gotta bring it up. What the hell is up with birth defects, transitional forms, comparative anatomy, embryology, speciation, etc. Why does nothing make sense in the field of biology except under the light evolution?
If nobody minds, I would like to say something small. When I find myself telling a christian that I believe in evolution and they say "OMG how does a big bang happen out of nowhere!??!?!" The first thing I say is: Look it up. Not too ****ing hard. Second thing I say is: If evolution is impossible then God is impossible. If matter can't come out of nowhere then neither can God. It's that simple. Think about it. PS: I've actually converted a die-hard, devoted Christian to Atheism before. It's easy when you know how.
Moderator Notice: Remember it is good practice not to show your signature in the Debate forum ... since when were you all bad people who went against the rules? Sigs off. Now.
The article you posted gives a ratio of 1:922,227,750,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Seems big, right? That would be the probability of one chromosome in your body times the number of every cell in your body (estimated at around 50-75 trillion). However, that whole statement is flawed in the fact that it completely ignores many basic things that have already been understood about DNA. First of all, the author, by multiplying the huge number by every cell in your body, is incorrect. Each cell in your body is specialized, yes. Your skin cells are different from your blood cells. However, they all stem off from one base cell, which is the starting egg that has been fertilized by sperm during intercourse. That single cell, in turn, rapidly multiplies, creating more and more cells. These cells have the same DNA as the base cell, although there may or may not be a mutation from a corrupt copying (see Nitrous's post on that). So basically, each cell shares the same DNA. Lastly, but most importantly, even if there were the case where the original probability ratio was in fact correct, there still lays the problem of how long this whole process has lasted. Theoretically, the universe starts with the Big Bang, which happened (at an estimate) 13.73 billion years ago. Of course, what happened before that? There are three different ways to view the universe. Is it a static size? As in, there is a definite end to the region. Is it slowly shrinking? Or, is it expanding constantly? Assuming the last is true, which, in my opinion (which lays no credibility whatsoever, lol), seems more likely than having an end or having a limit that becomes smaller, then there is no definite beginning or end of the universe, concerning time. That would mean that there has been an infinite amount of time (and an ample amount of opportunities) for evolution to happen.
Hope no one minds if I bring back a scientific debate. It may be a breath of fresh air for some users (I know it is for me). A common creationist misconception is the beneficial mutation is impossible and even if it did happen the amount of deleterious mutations out weight any of the benefits that could have been associated with the positive change. If this were the case, science would drop the theory in favor of one more in line with the evidence, however, this arguement, due to computer models and factual evidence, has been disproved on several different magnitudes. Firstly, mutations are not rare they occur on average of at least 128 times within a human zygote and you will mutate another 30 times in your life time! Most of these if not all will be neutral and account for 95% of our DNA. It's hard to find one rigid set of numbers from any laboratory for a constant rate of how many mutations are beneficial versus those that are detrimental, due to environmental variables. But there is a general consensus that they're nearly equal with deleterious mutations being slightly more common. Just like a paternity test can positively identify your immediate lineage, a more in-depth genomic sequence analysis can also determine more distant ancestry. And the more in-depth it is, the further it can trace, even where it pairs different species to one genus, or different genera to one taxonomic family, collective families of one order, and so on. Secondly, we have observed within our own species several beneficial mutations that will eventually spread through population in the centuries to come. These include: Incredible muscle mass, resistance to HDL serum cholesterol, AIDS resistance within 10% of the white European population due to CCR5-delta 32 mutation, and a hyperdense bones due to the increase of LRP5 which makes their bones nearly unbreakable. The mutations have been identified from: A family in Germany, Kinfolk, Italy, Black Plague survivors, and a family in Connecticut repectively. Though not all mutations will be beneficial exclusively. Sickle cell anemia which has spread throughout the African population was a benificial mutation due to its ability to combat Malaria which causes the death of 3 million people world wide yearly. However, this has problems in and of itself and due to these problems it has steadily been decreasing. Lastly, science is not biased against religion or faith and it is certainly not the religion of atheism. In fact, science makes no points or retractions from any god only the holy texts written by man. These holy texts, which have been inspired but not directly written by a god, have been subject to man's political and social desires and even if the original authors were not responsible for the corruption of data the people who hand copied these books certainly were. I felt the need to include this, due to, what I believe to be, your resistance to science and your bias towards dogma. I have no qualms with what you believe or who you believe, however, when reality presents itself it should not be ignored in favor of a book that has been revised extensively up into the Dark ages. I don't want to destroy your faith, on the contrary strengthen it. I don't find it wrong to have a personal deity that provides comfort, it is the human condition. However, I would like you to understand that reality, like god, should not be looked at as static. Rather, fluid with seemingly rhytmic hyms that glorify creation, whether it be by deity or cosmic coincidence. Mutations and DNA are tricky subjects to understand. Creationism is not. I can see the attractiveness of putting in no effort for an equally satifying answer, but it holds no merit in reality or amongst scientists around the world.