Re: Ben Stein's Movie EXPELLED - Could we have been "designed" bySpace Aliens?

On Mon, 05 May 2008 15:07:43 +0000, "Bill Bonde ( 'the oblique
allusion in lieu of the frontal attack' )"
<tributyltinpaint@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>
>
>Tokay Pino Gris wrote:
>> 
>> Bill Bonde ( 'the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack' )
wrote:
>> >
>> > Tokay Pino Gris wrote:
>> >> Bill Bonde ( 'the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack' )
wrote:
>> >>> "Brian E. Clark" wrote:
>> >>>> In article <481B1670.C91458AD@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Bill Bonde
>> >>>> ( 'the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal
>> >>>> attack' ) said...
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> Creationism "jibes" with known facts.
>> >>>> Alas for you, no. The creationist notion of a kind, to
>> >>>> mention just one problem, is at odds with biological
>> >>>> reality. Likewise the contention made by creationists
>> >>>> that microevolution and macroevolution describe two
>> >>>> very different phenomena is incorrect on both
>> >>>> evidentiary and conceptual grounds.
>> >>>>
>> >>> Really? If it can be shown that polar bears and grizzly bears are
>> >>> types of brown bear, does that proof that bears are related to
>> >>> fish? No, it doesn't. The idea that all the creatures that exist
>> >>> today must be "kinds" is absurd. If "microevolution" were to exist,
>> >>> the various "kinds" could ****ft to accommodate their environs, but
>> >>> still be "kinds".
>> >> Now "micro" evolution is doubted? Besides the thing that "micro" and
>> >> "macro" only differ in timescale.
>> >>
>> > Let's say that within a creature is the ability to rapidly make
>> > various changes, for example in size, the amount of fur, other
>> > things. Would that be qualitatively different than changing into
>> > another species by some mechanism of actual genetic change?
>> 
>> The genetic change is present, one way or the other.
>>
>Somehow somethings such as physical size and amount of fur can be
>changed very rapidly. I think they are potentially included in the
>DNA of the species.
>
>
>> For an animal
>> species (or population) to get longer fur, you need to change the
actual
>> "cooking recipe" for the phenotype. It then only depends how much you
>> change it.
>> 
>I think that there's something going on that is more complicated
>than just the bare DNA. If you change the environment, I think that
>can cause the rapid expression of various capabilities that were
>already there.


   Google "DNA Methylation".

   Seems that many rapid, sometimes heritible, tweaks to
   phenotype and even biochemistry/metabolism/etc make use
   of this 'extragenetic' mechanism. Methylation can be
   removed or added to genes coding for almost anything
   in response to environmental changes. Methylation of
   DNA will deactivate a gene, removing it re-activates
   the gene. 

   Seems that Lamark wasn't ENTIRELY wrong either, he was
   just wasting his time clipping off tails when he SHOULD
   have been placing environmental stresses - heat, cold,
   food deprivation/glut, over/under-population, micro-
   nutrient alterations, ***-ratio imbalances and such on
   his mice. He'd have found that certain adaptations by
   parents, even great-grandparents, had downstream effects
   on the offspring. 

   All that "junk" DNA you've heard of ... maybe it's not
   exactly "junk" after all but a library of "options"
   perhaps, previous genetic solutions. When the solution
   is no longer needed/adaptive it can be methylated into
   silence - but certain pressures on the organism can 
   DE-methylate it again.

   I'd expect the rules for the methylation/demethylation 
   follow the same logic as natural selection of actual
   gene groups - ie the RIGHT bits need to be demethylated
   in response to a particular stimulus or they're counter-
   productive. Surviving animals are those who (de)methylate
   the CORRECT genes in response to stimulus 'X'. 

   Methylation is a second mechanism regulating the expression
   of genes. So far, it seems to serve more as a "fine-tuning"
   or 'micro-adaptive' system. Of course genes that NEVER get
   demethylated for long periods ... that may put them in the
   position of being totally dropped from the genome. Odd
   changes in methylation may expose novel sequences of DNA
   which act as a gene, encoding new proteins or altering
   expression of others. Ergo methylation has some potential
   for affecting speciation long-term. Research continues. 

   There may be several "fine-tuning" mechanisms that affect
   when/how/if existing DNA is expressed which are in various
   ways responsive to short/medium/long-term pressures on an
   organism. Some, like methylation, appear somewhat heritable.
   The most neat-o sub-regulatory discoveries to date are
   extra-chromosomal DNA snippets ('plasmids' being the first
   kind discovered) and 'micro-RNAs' (now being intensively
   researched for medical applications). 

   Anyhow, while DNA is THE physical means of long-term data
   storage, these sub-regulatory mechanisms allow even more
   information to be encoded within that storage media. Take
   a book, for example. It says what it says. BUT, suppose
   you take a pencil and start underlining certain letters
   so that they spell out a second message, kind of like
   the old 'spy' trick. Now the book says more than it did
   before, yet without adding or subtracting a single one of
   its printed letters. Data compression, information multi-
   plexing. Cool. 

   And complicating ...