Why bother with God? (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Thursday, May 26, 2011, 00:50 (4929 days ago) @ David Turell

David,
> Here is a lecture by James Shapiro, in which he imputs much more control over changes by individual cells than most scientists have stated. Warning, he is a terrible lecturer, but his material is fascinating. This is taking epigenetics far beyond neoDarwinism.
> 
> http://vimeo.com/17592530-Took me a couple days, but I finished this. I... struggle with what exactly you think he's pointing out that isn't already known. He seems to characterize modern "Evolution" as "a bunch of random stuff happens (mutations) and then selection happens when the environment changes." Which is Darwin's original synthesis--and I'm sorry--modern biologists don't really agree with Darwin's original synthesis. Shapiro's lecture covers that, really. The only problem is, that all the stuff I learned in microbiology and biochem is really covered here, it's just lumped into that subcategory of "mutation." -For example, we learned about how stress causes organisms to undergo changes. Often this reflects on what gets passes in the the genome. -This is materially no different to me than any other definition of mutation that I've heard of. "Natural Genetic Engineering" is simply another phrase for "How a cell lives." -Note the question, discussing Lysenko: "...that is an epigenetic phenomenon controlled by exposure to the cold."-This doesn't materially change the current picture of the world. If an organism responds in its lifetime with an epigenetic change, so what? Selection simply acts on it during ITS lifetime instead of its offspring. And if this change is NOT transmitted to its offspring, guess what? You don't have evolution. Evolution requires changes to be passed on in the genome, as Shapiro himself describes at ~time 1:34:40. Further, as I've criticized before, epigenetics still only responds to stimuli, meaning that cells are still essentially deterministic "information processing machines," which doesn't seem to add to (or take away) from anyone's case.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"