Evidence for God from Science

Massive Project Will Reveal How Humans Continue to Evolve
A global hunt for genetic variations reveals secrets to disease and survival

The ability to spoon down ice cream or chug a milkshake might not seem like an evolutionary advantage in our weight-conscious society. But scientists say that 5,000 to 10,000 years ago, around the time dairy farming began in Northern Europe, natural selection encouraged the spread of a genetic mutation that enabled adults to digest the sugars in milk. Those with the new gene—lactase—had a nutritional advantage over those who lacked it, so they proliferated, along with the mutation. This theory was first proposed in 1970, but scientists at Harvard Medical School demonstrated the genetic proof just last year.

Now geneticists are about to get a powerful new tool that should make it much easier to find such direct evidence of evolution in modern humans. This month, a three-year, $100-million venture called the Haplotype Mapping Project, or HapMap, will complete a massive public database of genetic variation in our species. The first HapMap-derived papers are due out soon, and scientists are abuzz about the prospects. “It's going to be very exciting,” says Christopher Wills, a biologist at the University of California at San Diego. “It will allow us to understand ourselves at a far greater depth than we ever have before.”

In recent years researchers have begun to uncover genetic evidence of mutations that conferred survival benefits in certain populations. In 2004, for instance, University of Utah geneticist Stephen Wooding and his colleagues showed that a mutation in the bitter-taste receptor, which popped up several hundred thousand years ago, helped humans migrating out of Africa avoid unfamiliar toxic plants. Wooding's work and other discoveries like it stem from the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, which has provided a map that enables scientists to pinpoint key genes. But, Wooding notes, research like his focuses on single genes. Until now, geneticists hoping to study multiple genes in many different populations have been out of luck.

This is where HapMap comes in. If the sequenced genome is a massive single-volume encyclopedia, HapMap breaks it up into hundreds of easy-to-read books. A strand of DNA comprises roughly three billion chemical units, known as A, T, C and G. Generally speaking, we all have the same letters in the same slots along that strand, which is why we resemble one another. Variations called single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, however, pop up every 1,200 slots or so. Though tiny, these genetic disparities confer traits like hair, eye color and susceptibility to disease. HapMap has examined SNPs from the genomes of 270 individuals descended from four groups—Western Europeans, Japanese, the Yoruba of Africa, and the Han Chinese.

By comparing differences among those groups' DNA, HapMap gives scientists a better shot at distinguishing the genetic factors involved in disease from the environmental ones. Ultimately, it will help them explain why, for instance, some people have a higher or lower risk of certain illnesses. And once scientists understand how deleterious genes affect various populations, they'll be better equipped to develop more-effective, targeted drugs to combat them.

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AttentionKMartShoppers wrote:lol

You should recognise that many scientists carrying out research in fields involving evolution (i.e. most of biology), don't see what the fuss is about. The entire "debate" over evolution originates squarely from the religious realm where it is viewed as some sort of attack their beliefs. Very few scientists get drawn into the fray.

jettlogic wrote:AttentionKMartShoppers (I like that nick), it would only be genetic fallacy if tried to claim the an anti-evolution arguments were _false_ because of a religious origin.

What I'm actually claiming is that the debate doesn't matter to most scientists that are actually involved in evolution research.

And _that_ is because most opposition to TOE (even from somone supposedly objecting on a "scientific basis") has a religious origin rather than a scientific one.

(A) Virtually no scientists reject common ancestry (though a fair number debate details of mechanisms of TOE, etc.)

Therefore (C): Most scientists overlook the debate (maybe by genetic fallacy themselves, because on scientific subjects they'd only take scientifically reputable sources seriously),

Dude, Behe and Meyer are hardly shining examples of scientific reasoning

For one, AFAIK Behe doesn't reject common ancestry per se in his criticisms of TOE (http://www.ualberta.ca/~dlamoure/3Behe.htm, for a Catholic view).

For two, his irreducible complexity (IC) argument for ID is based on the false premise that IC things can't evolve and IC itself suffers since most things can be made to fit the defintion (i.e. remove a bone from a leg and it won't work).

The IC=>ID idea specifically doesn't deserve a refereed paper for refutation, wikipedia will do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreducible_complexity. Information refuting Meyer's CSI is more complex in a specified manner, but I have to go now.

You have a point that scientists do accept things on authority and a physicist might provisionally accept evolution without personally investigating it, but OTOH researchers in molecular biology and other evolution-related fields have plenty opportunity to evaluate the evidence for themselves. And apparently 2/3 of the "project steve" folk are biologists http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/steve/

Examples?

We have shown, first, that systems satisfying Behe's characterization of irreducible biochemical complexity can arise naturally and spontaneously as the result of self-organizing chemical processes. Second, we have argued further that evolved biochemical and molecular systems exhibit redundant complexity -- this kind of complexity simultaneously accounts for the stability of evolved biochemical systems and processes in the face of even quite radical perturbations, for biochemical and metabolic plasticity, and, mainly as a result of gene duplication, for extant structures and processes to get co-opted in the course of evolutionary time, to serve novel functional ends.