Genetics Sux Thread

Why do we have genetics?

My grandfather has liver and pancreas cancer. And since i'm pretty much similar to him the most, the chances of me getting cancer have increased

what do you mean by Sux? I ain't quite following, i mean what other options are there... As for me, my grandpa died of cancer so i am prolly heading along the same track.

Been an ignorant bumpkin i am, i am pinning my hopes on there been a cure for cancer in about 50 years when it prolly becomes a problem for meh

Because of the very nature of what most cancers are, it's very difficult to cure.

But who knows. In 50 years, it might be possible to clone new body parts (it is now, though it takes time and effort and most people only do ears) to replace the cancerous ones.

INtense! wrote: what do you mean by Sux? I ain't quite following, i mean what other options are there...

it just does.

Without genetics and passing on traits we'd still be dumb apes who live for 20 or so years, count yourself lucky.

technically we would still be single celled organisms, so yeah i am quite happy we 'evolved' beyond that stage

don't even get me started on evolution...i'm a creationist

That doesn't necessarily defy evolution.
Evolution in its simplist form, selective breeding, has been prooven.

Cheeseness wrote: That doesn't necessarily defy evolution.
Evolution in its simplist form, selective breeding, has been prooven.

If you believe that selective breeding is a type of evolution, then yes. In most cases, adaptation has been mistaken for evolution.

But in terms of humans evolving from apes evolving from frogs evolving from dust...then that is just too out there. Too unlikely to have occured.

Evolution IS adaption.

That's the whole kit and kabodle in one.

You wanna sit there and adapt yourself for 1.5 billion years, and see where it gets you. It's a slow process, but that's how it works. A combination of mutation vs selective and cross breeding, and nobody ever said that we evolved from apes (except maybe some really uninformed people talking about that which they do not have any knowledge of)

Out of interest, why are massive odds too difficult to comprehend?

People regularly gamble on odds that are less likely than their getting hit by a bus in the next 20 minutes, but few people are happy to acknowledge the odds of our own arisal.

There's a shite-load of places out there in the universe that could have perhaps come up with life as we know it, and I'm a slight believer that Mars is a place where life didn't quite make it. I'm inclined to believe that life did get started, but something tipped the balance (perhaps a bit temperature related change triggered by our solar system passing back through the 'arm' of the galaxy.

When viewing evolution or prolonged adaptation, it cannot be viably viewed from a perspective of hindsight. If you do, it seems totally unplausable.

Instead, take it from the other angle and realise the absolutely mind numbing amount of 'adaptations' or evolutionary variants that just didn't make it. Only then, when also taking into account that for more than a billion years, life has been cranking its thing on this planet, do you actually begin to appreciate the scope of what's gone on before us.

(I think I might throw some of this over in the "Are We Alone" thread)

- Edited By Cheeseness On Wed 28th, Aug 2002 @ 4:28am

Cheeseness wrote: Evolution IS adaption.

i actually was supposed to type selective breeding, but wrote adaptation instead.
but i can live with adaptation being thought of as a type of evolution...no big deal.

You wanna sit there and adapt yourself for 1.5 billion years, and see where it gets you. It's a slow process, but that's how it works. A combination of mutation vs selective and cross breeding, and nobody ever said that we evolved from apes (except maybe some really uninformed people talking about that which they do not have any knowledge of)

right, so in your opinion, what did we evolve from?

the problem i find with natural selection is that you are making a choice between two or more variants. So inevitably, this leads to an extinction of another. Natural selection cannot increase the number of variants, it decreases them. How can something which makes less and less, make more?

One answer could be mutation. But there are problems with mutation. You expect virtually all mutations to be harmful, and thus make the animal less successful. Cave fish for example, live where there is no light, so mutations which cover up the eyes minimise the damage to the eyes. However, if that fish was to go where there is light, it would be handicapped because it couldn't see. Mutations lose information (in this case, the eyes). You never see mutations gaining information. Eg. wings, eyes on animals which never had information about them in the first case.

Out of interest, why are massive odds too difficult to comprehend?

People regularly gamble on odds that are less likely than their getting hit by a bus in the next 20 minutes, but few people are happy to acknowledge the odds of our own arisal.

quote:
"Further tests exist to measure how efficient chance is at producing design. The following is fascinating. The question is: What is the expected probability for chance to spell the phrase - 'the theory of evolution'? This phrase by chance would involve the random selection and sequencing of letters and spaces in the correct order. Each letter from the alphabet plus one space (totalling 27 possible selections) has one chance in 27 of being selected. There are 20 letters plus 3 spaces in the phrase -- "the theory of evolution". Therefore "chance" will, on the average, spell the given phrase correctly only once in (27)23 outcomes!!
This computes to only one success in a mind boggling 6 hundred million trillion attempts (gasp!) Suppose "Chance" uses a machine which removes, records, and replaces letters at the fantastic speed of one billion per second! Only once in 26,000,000 000,000 000 years could you spell our phrase correctly using this random method. If, as evolutionists would have us believe, the earth has been in existence for approximately 5 billion years, then "chance" would take more than 5 million times longer to spell out its own success. This phrase is infinitely more simple than the smallest life form, and children of average intelligence could perform this same spelling task within a few minutes at the most.
"

gambling odds cannot be compared to the odds of human arisal. When odds of evolution are as large as they are, then of course i am not even going to try to comprehend them. They border of the line of ridiculousness.

Firstly, when you quote something, please try to say where you've got the quote from so that the rest of us can investigate the material, its validity, context and other interesting things.

What do I think we evolved from? Certainly something that doesn't exist anymore.

When people say "Oh, we evolved from apes", they're making a huge generalisation. A 'common ancestor' is what we're talking about. Sure, things which are very similar to our 'common ancestor' may exist today, but the only reason for that is because they too share the 'common ancestor'.
Not all mutations are detrimental. The point I was making about the tree is that it's not until you can recognise all the 'failed' branches of evolution can you understand that there's been a staggering amount of life put into getting us where we are today.
Evolution doesn't mean that creatures go around intentionally picking out the best mutations to have and the best genetic partners to mate with.

Progress is determined by what survives and what doesn't. A lot of people seem to think that the fact that we have five digits on each hand instead of six (aparently more useful) is a clinching proof in the non-validity of evolution.

I'd also like to say that this is supposed to be a mature discussion that nobody should be taking or giving offence to anyone else.

If this topic gets out of hand (as it seems that it might), I suggest that we leave it lie and discuss something else.

Cheeseness wrote:
I'd also like to say that this is supposed to be a mature discussion that nobody should be taking or giving offence to anyone else.

If this topic gets out of hand (as it seems that it might), I suggest that we leave it lie and discuss something else.

i'm happy with that. i don't think i've managed to offend anyone in this Cosmos part yet, but if i have, then i'm sorry.

Oh, I'm not saying I'm offended at all, just that things were getting a little heated.

I've always found that it pays to make sure everyone's calm and collected. Best way to avoid a chainsaw in your back.

Calm and collected people use poison.

- Edited By Cheeseness On Mon 2nd, Sep 2002 @ 4:07am

They already have cures for cancer (like glivec) but they are a) experimental, b)cost a couple of thousand dollars per pop and c) can give you other side effects (anaemia, rashes, skin diseases, etc.) Also, your grandfather might have gotten the cancer because of radio-waves or because of some other reason, rather than genetics (you know that recently the number of cases of testicular cancer have jumped a few 100% because of mobile phones).

And still nobody seems to realise that hands free units don't help with the radiation problems.

Load of BS. The amount of microwave radiation produced by a single mobile phone is lower than the natural radiation found in Cornwall. It's also lower than the radiation output by your PC monitor, TV set and probably alarm clock.

M@t, I believe in evolution totally, but differently from what you may expect. I accept everything could've been created. A also accept everything could've evolved randomly. Combining the two produces my belief, that there is a God, but He doesn't run the show. Instead He is more of a guide, 'pointing' evolution down the right path. Thus, the universe can quite happily be created in a Big Bang, and can have evolved to the present condition, but all the time being guided, so it was effectively both created and evolved at the same time.

Creatolution? Evolted? Take your pic.

genectics = life
no gen = no life
life isn't perfect
we(humans) aren'perfect
genetics aren't perfect.

do the math...

i think cheeseness has some valid points
as my biology class dicussed last year, there is some exponentially small number of all the species ever to live alive right now
think about that for a second
we didnt just arrive here, but through a random throw of this dice over billions of years, we somehow got to this point. there are many things about the human psyche that are not perfect. for one point neaderthals actually had quite a bit larger cranial capacity (see: bigger brain) than we do. So, if they were smarter than we are, y r we alive, and not them?
evolution is chance, and perhaps we have all evolved from one common ancestor, perhaps there was a meteor shower that caused one tribe of monkehs to have enlarged heads somewhere in our past
no matter what creationism says, there is still a huge amount of things to disprove it. if the god/supreme being is so knowlegable, how come he screwed up so many times? also, where did this god guy come from? who was the thing that created him? or did he evolve

PsychoFarmer wrote: i think cheeseness has some valid points
as my biology class dicussed last year, there is some exponentially small number of all the species ever to live alive right now
think about that for a second
we didnt just arrive here, but through a random throw of this dice over billions of years, we somehow got to this point. there are many things about the human psyche that are not perfect. for one point neaderthals actually had quite a bit larger cranial capacity (see: bigger brain) than we do. So, if they were smarter than we are, y r we alive, and not them?

With evolution, you expect the weaker of the "evolved" species to be wiped out through selective breeding (ie. go for the stronger mate, rather than the weaker). And if the neanderthal was superior to the human today, then why did it survive. if that really was the case, it certainly doesn't support the theory of evolution.

no matter what creationism says, there is still a huge amount of things to disprove it. if the god/supreme being is so knowlegable, how come he screwed up so many times? also, where did this god guy come from? who was the thing that created him? or did he evolve

i'd be interested to know what these "huge amount of things to disprove it" are.
if you want to elaborate on your questions, i'll certainly try to give you a decent explanation if you want

in the huge amount of things, i was referring to the fact of all the organisms that have become extinct up until this point

also, neanderthals may not have been better than us. maybe they were jus smart, and we were stronger so we killed them off. whos to say?

i just found something which says Neanderthals were actually inferior to humans. With all these contradictions, how can we know what is really true? People have great imaginations and can draw images of ape-looking creatures. But it is still extremely feasible to suggest that Neanderthals resembled modern day humans. So many contradictions that it gives me a headache just thinking about it....