Just need a little bit of info from evolutionists.

Kool, i get the point of view about the amphibians now. I'd still love to see some solid evidence though, maybe pics of fossils etc. The grunion thing was interesting.


Anyway, about the electric fish. Ranma, thanks for your time. Focusing on what you said:

..if a mutation creates some sort of advantage...

This part got me thinking, do scientists really believe that there are advantages within mutations? Because from my understanding, mutations can only cause negative or harmful effects, and not really any positive.


For example, i've read some studies of fruit flies being tested with mutations by scientists. And there hasn't ever been any positive results. It's always negative, i.e. the fly may have become disfigured, unfit, weak etc.


Here's a link for some examples:
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibit...ant_flies.html


So if something is unfit, then that means that it's less likely to survive, therefore it isn't able to exist/survive in the world too long. How come the electric fish was able to, and still does today? Any ideas? If you don't know, it's no problem. Just want your opinions with evidences would be good if you are able.


Thanks for your time. I never knew this stuff was so interesting lol.



Peace.

format_quote Originally Posted by - Qatada -

....

This part got me thinking, do scientists really believe that there are advantages within mutations? Because from my understanding, mutations can only cause negative or harmful effects, and not really any positive.

For example, i've read some studies of fruit flies being tested with mutations by scientists. And there hasn't ever been any positive results. It's always negative, i.e. the fly may have become disfigured, unfit, weak etc.
...

If i were to guess i would imagine your understanding of mutations came from a creationists source?

Mutations are either, positive, neutral or negative.

What makes a mutation P,Neg or Neu is mostly dependent on the enviroment and whether it prevents the thing from reproducing "death being a main stopper"

This site as provided before has most of the answers to your questions.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evohome.html

and more specific on mutations
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolib...0/mutations_01

of course what may be a positive mutation in one aspect can be negative or neutral in another.

sickle cell is a good example.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolib...0/mutations_06

format_quote Originally Posted by - Qatada -

....
So if something is unfit, then that means that it's less likely to survive, therefore it isn't able to exist/survive in the world too long. How come the electric fish was able to, and still does today? Any ideas? If you don't know, it's no problem. Just want your opinions with evidences would be good if you are able.

Thanks for your time. I never knew this stuff was so interesting lol.

Peace.

Since mutations can be positive then that pretty much answers your question. The electric fish had a advantageous mutation. Sensing prey or predator is a defintite advantage. stunning them is also an advantage.


Cheers.

p.s.
the fly link you provided even spoke about benefital and negative mutations.

format_quote Originally Posted by - Qatada -

This part got me thinking, do scientists really believe that there are advantages within mutations? Because from my understanding, mutations can only cause negative or harmful effects, and not really any positive.

It depends where the mutation happens. Mostly mutations are disastrous or unnoticeable, beneficial mutations are rare.

For the mutation to be involved in evolution, it has to happen in a germline cell (i.e. an egg or sperm). A beneficial mutation will only happen about once every 200,000 years though.

Sorry I can't provide you with a source, but it was taken straight from my university lecture notes.

We should be very careful when attributing genetic mutation & evolution, since it's not always as black and white as creationists like to make us believe.

-Qatada- For example, i've read some studies of fruit flies being tested with mutations by scientists. And there hasn't ever been any positive results. It's always negative, i.e. the fly may have become disfigured, unfit, weak etc.

Actually, the entire species has evolved to become 40 times more resistent to insectgices.

Drosophila melanogaster aka Fruit-fly. A transposable DNA called "accord" (Transposable means that it jumps around a genome copying itself).

Accord landed in Cyp6g1, a gene that makes detoxification agents. Accord copied itself and then jumped out again leaving behind a 149 base-pair footprint (a section of DN called a long terminal repeat) This LTR just happens to express itself in exactly the same way as Cyp6g1. With double the gene expression, double the amount of detoxification agent was made - and the insect became resistant to the insecticide DDT, as well as a whole slew of new insecticides

Source: (Genetics, DOI: 10.1534/genetics.106.066597).

This one gene went on to become present in all fruit flies via Evolution, double the resistence double the chances of survival, double the chances of reproduction and bang, within 40 years all fruit flies have common ancestory with that single mutated fly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Evolution in action

Already the fact, there would be a common ancestor is already ridiculous. I would call it incest in that case. You cannot reproduce a copy from a copy from a copy...etc.

What do you mean? That it started out negative and later became advantageous?

ranma1/2 gave the example of the mutation that causes sickle cell anaemia. In Africa it is found that sickle cell aneamia, which is rather deadly, helps protect people who are infected by malaria, since the disease can not function/survive properly in the mutated blood cells.

That only applies to the heterozygous individuals though because they are olmy 'half-sick' and so the sickle cell anaemia isn't bad enough to kill them, yet is strong enough to ward of illness due to malaria.

In this case the mutation it acting as a benefit.

brother Qatada..
this article is for your other topic (evolution) as an Islamic perspective... which I have searched for and couldn't find ( I did however promise I'd find you an article)-- I don't want to get into another long winded debate... but surely you can read it and draw your own conclusions, this was featured on Sat, Jun 23
11:00 AM Mysteries of the Smithsonian
as was stated in the program and later in various scientific articles, this is the so-called "missing link" (the transition between sea life and land life) surprisingly found today-- leading some to reflect on the possibility of species simply gone extinct, rather than a huge leap into humanoid primates and later humans..
This one however managed to survive... and I guess it is back to the drawing board to re-hypothesize "origins" and "common ancestor" ...

Virtually unique in the animal kingdom, with a saga steeped in science and popular imagination, the fabulous Coelacanth ("see-la-kanth"), that 400 million year old "living fossil" fish, swims on. Pre-dating the dinosaurs by millions of years and once thought to have gone extinct with them, 65 million years ago, the Coelacanth with its "missing link" "proto legs" was "discovered" alive and well in 1938! At least three people have perished in the quest for the coelacanth, and possibly several others. Read all about it- including the latest efforts to protect the creature, and its pop-up appearances in "out of the way" places. Click in the navbar to the left. Check the News and Recent History sections and don't miss visits to the Coelashop for t-shirts and other "Coela-gear". The bottom of the Biology and Behavior page links the World's most complete Coelacanth Bibliography. Our favorite "Dinofish" is "age-free" and never boring! (In case you think conservation is dull, we put some of our best stuff on that page.)This is the web site of the Coelacanth Rescue Mission, a project under the direction of Jerome F. Hamlin to raise Coelacanth awareness. Welcome to award winning dinofish.com.

http://dinofish.com/


for some reason the image links aren't working, if you can modify them?
thank you!

This isn't any "one specie" this is according to scientists is where you came from... The fish that made it to land

The coelacanth is not just any living fossil fish. It is perhaps the most important variety of living fossil fish that could be discovered. It is a member of the lobe-finned fishes, one species of which first ventured onto land and evolved into ambhibians, later giving rise to reptiles, dinosaurs, mammals and every other type of land animal (with the exception of bugs and a few land-dwelling crustaceans). The coelacanth is the closest living relative among the fishes that you and me have.

http://www.newanimal.org/coelacanth.htm

found alive and well today, with no prospect of having transitioned.. perhaps by a long leap of faith and a pinch of some pseudo-science, some decided to pack their bags and developed legs whitest the rest took a long sabbatical under water? At this point trumble et al you are free to believe what you wish, when it comes down to it, it is really no more no less "magical" than G-D saying be and it was!

peace

format_quote Originally Posted by - Qatada -

May Allaah reward you sis PA! that seems interestin.. i'll check out the link insha Allaah.

Shokran Akhi-- jazaka Allah khyran
I have gone into great details into some of your questions on this thread, if you have a minute you may want to check it out:
http://www.islamicboard.com/recycle-...olution-3.html

unfortunately I can't dedicate as much time as I want to, to this forum anymore but, you may ask me by PM, if the answer you are looking for isn't answered on the link enclosed, as I am about to unsubscribe from this thread.. lastly I deliberately didn't enclose a Harun Yaha page with the previous info. on the account I know how others like to character assassinate him-- but as you can see from previous links, as well as on the program : mysteries of the Smithsonian, that this is in fact true.. this Coelacanth is thought to be our ancestor which somehow developed lungs and a brain.. as you can see the fact that it still exists puts a dent into that theory..

this is from the harun Yahaya website, which I didn't want to resort to, in fact I didn't even know it existed until five minutes ago as you can tell from previous links... but worth a read nonetheless..

Up until 70 years ago, evolutionists had a fossil fish which they considered "the ancestor of land animals". Scientific developments, however, put an end to all evolutionist claims about this fish.

The absence of intermediate form fossils between fish and amphibians is a fact evolutionists also admit to today. However, until 70 years ago, it was accepted that a fossil fish called the coelacanth was an outright intermediate form. Evolutionists claimed that the coelacanth, which was estimated to be 410 million years of age, was a transitional form with a primitive lung, a developed brain, a digestive and a circulatory system ready to function on land, and even a primitive walking mechanism. These evolutionary interpretations were accepted as undisputed truth in scientific circles until the end of the 1930's.

Until a living specimen of it was found, evolutionists presented the coelacanth as the ancestor of "all land animals". Drawings such as the above were presented as fact and took their place in textbooks. When a living example of the fish was caught, all these evolutionist allegations were debunked.

However, on December 22, 1938, a very interesting discovery was made in the Indian Ocean. A living member of the coelacanth family, previously presented as a transitional form that had become extinct 70 million years ago, was caught! The discovery of a "living" prototype of coelacanth undoubtedly gave evolutionists a severe shock. The evolutionist paleontologist, J.L.B. Smith, said that he could not have been more surprised if he had come across a living dinosaur.28 In the following years, more than 200 coelacanths were caught in different parts of the world.



Before a living example of it was caught, evolutionists believed that the coelacanth had organs which were half-fin and half-foot that enabled it to creep on land. When the living coelacanth was examined, it was understood that the fins of the fish had no such additional function.


Evolutionists had claimed that the fish had a primitive lung. However, the organ that was supposed to be a primitive lung turned out to be a lipid pouch.


It was asserted that the brain structure of the coelacanth also resembled that of land animals. However, it was revealed that its brain was no different from that of modern fish.

Living coelacanths revealed how far evolutionists could go in making up their imaginary scenarios. Contrary to their claims, coelacanths had neither a primitive lung nor a large brain. The organ that evolutionist researchers claimed to be a primitive lung turned out to be nothing but a lipid pouch.29 Furthermore, the coelacanth, which was introduced as "a reptile candidate getting prepared to pass from sea to land", was in reality a fish that lived in the depths of the oceans and always stayed more than 180 metres below the surface.30

format_quote Originally Posted by PurestAmbrosia

This isn't any "one specie" this is according to scientists is where you came from... The fish that made it to land


http://www.newanimal.org/coelacanth.htm

found alive and well today, with no prospect of having transitioned.. perhaps by a long leap of faith and a pinch of some pseudo-science, some decided to pack their bags and developed legs whitest the rest took a long sabbatical under water? At this point trumble et al you are free to believe what you wish, when it comes down to it, it is really no more no less "magical" than G-D saying be and it was!

????!!!!

Even before a live coelacanth was found we knew they had been around up until around 65 million years ago. The giant sauropods were long dead, T-Rex was stalking the land and about to become extinct itself - and the first fish had crawled onto land over two hundred million years previously. So what did the discovery change? So it didn't have a 'primitive' lung or different brain structure (I've been unable to source either of those speculations), but no doubt those that made it to land did - it would have been essential at some point regarding lungs, at least. Such species exist today! It's just "God in the gaps" again, and it's a VERY small gap.

Nobody has ever claimed the coelacanth species to be the "missing link".. knowing its history that would be absurd. It is merely an example of the sort of evolutionary trends that occured. It is a freak in that one or more populations found themselves in an ecological niche for which they were perfectly adapted. Many similar species, and no doubt some populations of coelacanth descendants, were not so lucky, continued to evolve, made it to land and the rest was history. No pseudo-science, no leap of faith... except maybe by those desperate to fit God into the equation somewhere.

May I respectfully suggest you read more science books and less Harun Yahya?!

according to "scientists" this fish pre-dates dinosaurs..

Coelacanths first appear in the fossil record in the Middle Devonian, about 410 million years ago

originally thought to have gone extinct 65 mil yrs ago, but it is 410 mil yrs old!
this was featured on the Sat, Jun 23 issue of "Mysteries of the Smithsonian"-- you may call the Smithsonian giftshop online or whatever, and order yourself a copy, if you have any questions or would like to juggle dates differently than previously thought and documented to prove a point be my guest!..
If you have any questions after this, of true nature and not of I am putting a dent in "your theory" aka ( science as documented by other than my person) nature, you may PM as stated I am about to take a sabbatical myself from the forum.. but I doubt very much that purchasing a copy of the program wouldn't allay some of your deep concerns.
I have stated plenty fitting G-D into your life or anyone's life is really not my job. I get no credit or joy whatsoever into bringing G-D into your home. As my grandmother (G-D rest her soul) used to say (3a'alak fi rasak t'3raf khlasak) -- in other words if you have a head on your shoulder, you can reason your way through your life...

have a great weekend

format_quote Originally Posted by Trumble

Who is juggling dates?! Sure it was around long before the dinosaurs. So what? We knew that long before we found a live one.

if you knew that long before you had a live one, why did you write this?

format_quote Originally Posted by Trumble

Even before a live coelacanth was found we knew they had been around up until around 65 million years ago. The giant sauropods were long dead, T-Rex was stalking the land and about to become extinct itself

I don't understand what this means really? or how it fits into the debate... seem ridiculous, further if the other sources aren't sufficient for you then that is your problem not mine!-- but pls. don't come and suggest to me what I should or shouldn't be reading!... in fact, I didn't know of the Harun Yaha page until later on when I was browsing all the pages that had to do with that fish; not that I have to defend what I do or do not read!..

I am not sure why you have to insinuate yourself in this debate actually I shouldn't call it a debate, since it was especially addressed to one person, but somehow irks you so (G-D of the Gaps, well here is science of the Gaps) so again I say back to the drawing board before we recycle any more cheesy lines!

people hypothesized and very incorrectly, I am pointing it out to Bro. Qtada.. it doesn't seem like a significant "so what" to you but it actually is!... according to the Smithsonian it is even more significant than a "walking dinosaur" given its age!... your eldest ancestor still swims today "un-evolved" -- that is the bottom line!

addendum

format_quote Originally Posted by Trumble

Nobody has ever claimed the coelacanth species to be the "missing link".

Because of its bony fins, coelacanth was itself thought to be a "missing link," with the bony fins thought to enable it to "walk" on the muddy bottom of bodies of water. At least that was the common assumption until, much to paleontologists' surprise, a live specimen of the supposedly extinct fish was netted by a fishing boat off the coast of South Africa in 1938!

http://www.iscid.org/papers/Mullan_P...ell_112302.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/q-bio/papers/0603/0603005.pdf
http://www.gnmagazine.org/issues/gn65/science65.htm

and according to the Smithsonian today, the same exact line was used.. afraid to invest in the video? please do watch and read before you write, further before suggesting to us what we should watch and read!

peace