Re: Thermodynamic vs. Informational Entropy - for Dr. Marc Buhler


Marc wrote:

Your problem is that bacteria do not need to use this sort of "sex" in
order to evolve novel functions. Bacteria primarily reproduce via
clonal reproduction. Using only clonal reproduction bacteria can
indeed evolve novel functions. There is no fundamental difference here
between how bacteria can reproduce and evolve and how immune cells can
also reproduce and evolve. It doesn't matter if the host cannot pass
this information on to its offspring. The population of immune cells
CAN pass on this information to its offspring. Your reference to these
offspring as "daughter cells" is a strange attempt to ignore that these
daughter cells are indeed offspring in every sense of the word. They
are clonally reproduced offspring just as any bacterium is almost
always a clonally reproduced copy of its parent ancestry - save for
random mutations.


Stop being a stubborn idiot, Sean.

Prokaryotes reproduce endlessly. Evolution occurs.

So, you are now claiming that for real evolution to occur the
population in question cannot ever die out? - ever? How desperate can
you get? Barry Hall's bacteria were wiped out many years ago. Does
that mean that they didn't really evolve the lactase function since
they no longer exist? What if I used a colony of bacteria to
demonstrate the evolution of flagellar motility in 100 generations and
then sterilized all of them after my experiment? Would that mean that
I hadn't really demonstrated the evolution of a flagellar motility
system? - just because I killed the entire population?

Who's being stubborn here?

Lymphocyte mutation of their binding pocket goes on for a few
generations and is a dead end. No evolution occurs.

Again, just because a functional change happens in just a few
generations doesn't mean it wasn't the result of real evolutionary
mechanisms - random mutation and function-based selection. This
mechanism is most certainly in play during these few generations and it
most certainly does result in functional changes that do produce a
reproductive advantage in the immune cell offspring. This most
certainly is an example of the evolutionary mechanism at work.

Please stop mixing up different definitions of evolution here, idiot.

What? What definitions of evolution are you talking about here? Your
definition of evolution, which requires a population never to have gone
extinct? I suppose that dinosaurs didn't evolve because they are not
longer with us? What is your cutoff point for the number of
generations required to achieve "real" evolution? If a population only
survives for 10 generations, then it didn't evolve but what if it
survives for 10,000 generations? - or perhaps a million generations?

Where do you come up with these "definitions"? I haven't read where
anyone else places this sort of limitation on the definition of
evolution. Most that I've read seem to agree that evolution is defined
as change over time via random mutations and natural selection. Who
else says that the time must be "endless" like you claim here?

Come on now . . . Dr. Buhler. Why not send this in for another of your
Chez Wat nominations? I'd second the vote myself for you . . . ; )

< snip repeats of the same thing >

(signed) marc

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

.

Loading