Comments on: Four Days of Fusion Chromosome Freak-Out

By: YA

YA — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 00:01:08 +0000

“a few scientists (ie, people with Ph.D.’s who’ve published research in peer-viewed scientific journals”

By that definition get rid of the journals and the universe will collapse from unanswered questions.

By: Het gefuseerde chromosoom als bewijs voor gemeenschappelijke voorouder met aap « Het design in de natuur

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 09:31:52 +0000

[...] van de evolutietheorie probeerden vooral zout te leggen op het slakje dat fusie heet. Zie hier voor meer [...]

By: john naddaf

john naddaf — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 18:40:22 +0000

hi carl,
i must tell you,this is an issue that i can seem to be able to avoid lately…
having grown up in beirut,at the height of the civil war,i lived in what was known as the green line,,,(dividing east from west beirut),,,our appartment on the third floor,had three big holes in the stairway,before the entry door…our kitchen had been hit 4 time,we lost half the ceiling in the living room,,,and the roof was mostly inaccessible,as it was under continuous sniper attention,,,as was my primary school,,,but the time i was 5 i had been shot at 3 on three occasions by snipers,,,around the same age when i began sleeping with a loaded shotgun under my bed,,,thats how i was able to sleep,with the constant shelling,and gunfire,,,24 hrs,7 days…till i came to australia…but wasnt that bad really,,it was my home,,all i knew,,and like any people in war,we learn to depend on our faith,,,and i had,still have,and will long after im dead,,,,i dont like to say i believe in god,i feel that understates it for me,,i love god,my most cherished friend…to say i believe in god assumes a leap of faith,,for me there is no leap,,,i have felt his presence,and that is a privilege that remain with me for eternity….but im not here to boast about god,or to try to convince anyone in god…just wanted to explain my relationship with good,so you get a clearer picture of my motivation….
Now the second part of the story,,,science,,i have a deep passion for science,love anything i can learn,im self taught,but i learnt from the teachings of science,,in grade 2,primary school,,when science was intriduced,i had to memorise some pages after the first class,,,and i did,,and from 10 to 19 yrs old,,i could recite the first three pages of my book,word perfect….now im trying to further my understanding of physics,particle,astrophysics,,,
as you can clearly see,my two greatest loves are god,and science,so when i hear creationists refuting scientific claims,i realise how they are distancing intelligence from religion,,,creationists have a very narrow view about god,,,which is why their scientific view is even narrower,,,,,their faith is threatened by truth,,so they close their minds to knowledge,becoming protective of their faith,,which itself becomes even weaker from its dependence on untruths to sustain it…eventually science develops contempt for anything religion,,and religion is perceived as fairytale……
creating a rift,alienating both science,and religion,,,my two sweethearts,,at war,through no fault of their own,,,and i hate that,,,my faith is not threatened by science,,science helps me understand god better,,god didnt expect us to be stubborn,or stupid,one of jesus’ more repeated sayings in the bible is;listen if you have ears:,,said for the sole purpose of provoking thought,,,if you can hear listen,,if you have a brain think,,,use your faith to go deeper not to hold you back….
i could talk abou this for another 5 years,,but i wont,,,but id love to help where i can in this reguard,,,if i can assist with any thing in the future,please let me know,as i d like to have more involved….
meanwhile this is a short paragraph from the old testament(genesis)which sort of hints of evolution,,,see how you perceive it,,,me,i think the best example of intelligent design,,is evolution itself….after all its was suggested by a monk in the first place….hope you like it…

these are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when
they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth
and the heavens,
and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every
herb of the field before it grew : for the Lord God had not caused it
to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole
face of the ground.

By: amphiox

amphiox — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 22:17:20 +0000

I can see no particular reason why a fused chromosome would convey a genetic advantage – maybe specialists have some hypotheses about that.

It doesn’t have to, and on the face of it, would not be expected to.

Genetic drift alone is enough to bring it to fixation.

It could also be that some time after the chromosome fusion, when the fused chromosome existed only at a low frequency in the population, a new mutation conferring a genetic advantage arose in an individual possessing the fused chromosome in one of the genes on the fused chromosome. The spread of this gene through natural selection would automatically increase the frequency of the chromosome that contained it.

But it would not an advantage specific to the fusion itself.

By: One more time: Intelligent design is a pig that still doesn’t fly « Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:42:02 +0000

[...] Four Days of Fusion Chromosome Freak-Out (blogs.discovermagazine.com) [...]

By: Stephen

Stephen — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:24:13 +0000

Here is the article that they cited:

Yuxin Fan, Elena Linardopoulou, Cynthia Friedman, Eleanor Williams, and Barbara J. Trask, “Genomic Structure and Evolution of the Ancestral Chromosome Fusion Site in 2q13-2q14.1 and Paralogous Regions on Other Human Chromosomes,” Genome Research, 12 (2002): 1651-62.

Here is the article that discusses the matter on ENV:
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/what_the_litera_1062521.html

Cheers.

By: The whole truth

The whole truth — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:34:10 +0000

Carl, there’s a typo in your article you might want to fix.

“…Chromosome Two Lifes and Misdemeanors.”

Should be:

“…Chromosome Two Lies and Misdemeanors.”

By: Shrunk

Shrunk — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 16:03:01 +0000

@ SLC #29

You don’t understand how the creationist mind works. If both Neanderthals and modern humans possess the fused chromosome 2, and this is so astronomically unlikely to have happened by chance, then that can only mean one thing: God magically intervened as an Intelligent Designer and caused both fusions to occur. Praise Jesus!

(I’m just joking, of course, but watch: It’s only a matter of time before some creationist makes this claim in earnest, if they haven’t already.)

By: John Kwok

John Kwok — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 14:37:37 +0000

Nathaniel Comfort,

You may be familiar with Ken Miller’s “Only A Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul”. Ken may have made a similar argument. So too, I believe, has Shawn Otto in his recently published “Fool Me Twice”. Unfortunately, this debate as been rather “fast and furious” for years.

By: Nathaniel Comfort

Nathaniel Comfort — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 13:40:23 +0000

Of course you’re right about the absence of real evidence to support ID claims. There is not and never will be scientific evidence to support ID–but the absence of evidence will never shut them up.

The ID people claim their argument is about science, but it isn’t. It’s about the authority of science in American culture. I and half a dozen other historians of science wrote about this in The Panda’s Black Box (Johns Hopkins, 2007). I’ll be glad to send you a copy if you like. It might give you some different perspectives on this debate, if it’s heating up once again.

Hit me up on Twitter (@nccomfort) if you want a copy–no strings, no promotion required, just fyi.