From my blog:

In an article at Uncommon Descent DaveScot announces the imminent demise of the Tree of Life. After announcing an incendiary alternative title, says something is fishy because "Our closest relative on the tree of life according to ultra-conserved DNA is a fish that?s been around unchanged for at least 360 million years."

I went to the original article in Nature and you can already guess what I found out. Seriously these guys are a laugh a minute. Every time I read a creationist site, I think to myself that I'm witnessing a moment in history. "This is it," I think, "This is the dumbest thing that any human will ever say."

Fat chance.

What I find truly fascinating about so-called creationists is that they claim to be doing it in the name of a religion that, at least in theory, proclaims its belief in truth and integrity.

If Jesus Christ truly died for their sins he must be wondering which part of his message they are incapable of grasping. The truth is that "creationist" is the label they have given themselves. A more honest label would by "hypocrites."

Yes. I have a theory the reason why George W. and Tony B-liar are so good at fooling their citizens is that they are fundamentalist Christians. These people have to be really practised at lying because they have to fool themselves constantly.

This is the "not quite" forum so lets continue in this vein as I think it a near biological certainty.

Have you (the global "you") ever stopped and asked yourselves why some people are liberals and some conservatives? There is obviously no single group that is correct as were that the case the issue would have been resolved eons ago. And yet in every country, whether Maoist China or Stalinist Russia or the US or Singapore or Iran there are liberals and there are conservatives.

And the liberals are, in general, in agreement about leaving people alone to do whatever as long as no one is hurt and the conservatives are, in general, in agreement about enforcing their code upon their society. Now a US liberal and an Iranian liberal are hardly going to agree with the specifics ... but in general their attitudes are similar.

Are they hypocrites or just incapable of conscious thought processes where they see themselves in the context of their environment? Or both? I wonder. Sadly for, those of us in the US, history is going to write a very harsh judgement of the Bush administration and of the voters who put them into office. I don't know if Blair will fair as poorly. Though I do know more than a few fox hunters who'd like a go at him.

Dan, I think that whether we are conservative or liberal tends to be a product of our background and upbringing. Perhaps conservatives are afraid of change but they do tend to come from the already wealthy sections of society.

But back to religion and politics. On September 11th 2001 I had a letter published in our local paper. It was in reply to an earlier letter regarding Muslim fundamentalism. I pointed out that in the same paper there had been an article about Protestant extremists throwing stones at Catholic school children passing through their area (in Ireland of course). On the same page there had been a short report on a Palestinian suicide bombers response to the Jewish extremists' attitude to the rest of the world. Also there had been recent strife in Yugoslavia because of Orthodox extremism and Hindu extremism in India. My last paragraph read, "Surely it is religion as a whole that is the problem, rather than any one religion".

NZ is one of the first countries to greet each new day but nothing has happened since that letter was published to make me change my mind. In fact events set in motion later that same day have confirmed my analysis.

TNZ wrote:
"Perhaps conservatives are afraid of change but they do tend to come from the already wealthy sections of society."

This is not my experience. Many of the poorest are quite conservative clinging to orthodoxy as a crutch. Let me try rephrasing what you wrote and see if we can agree.

"Conservatives are afraid of change and tend to come from those who live in fear of losing what they have." I think, too, there is an element of trying to be in control and being less trusting of others.

Good letter and I think you are correct. I have few arguments with Chrisitans, Jews, Muslims, etc. But I do think we, collectively, need to address extremism in all of its guises and disguises. We need to stare in disgust at fundamentalists the way we stare in disgust at a drunken bum lying in the gutter. And perhaps get them a prescription for a decent antidepressant.

You're right DA. Many dirt poor people are conservative. My theory doesn't accomodate that fact. Your theory seems better. Like you I have no problem with people of any religion. Even extremists are only a problem if they use their beliefs to justify what I consider to be unethical behaviour. I don't actually think George W. Caesar necessarily is a fundamentalist himself. He may have merely used their ideas to justify his imperialist ambitions.

FallibleFiend. I tried to post a comment re. coelocanth/human similarity on your blog. Obviously have to join but it hints you need to pay. Is that true?

What you do is click on the part that says '0 comments'. Then, type your response, but click on Anonymous or 'other' before you publish the response. I think you tried to post with the default, which is 'blogger', meaning you have a blogspot acct.

Anyway, if it's a hassle - or even if it isn't - just post it in this thread. We can get more of a discussion going here.

Hey, that's a sensible idea. I was going to suggest the stretch of DNA they looked at seems to have been resposible for the development of four limbs. That's why it's conservative. Any mutations there would lead to such things as five limbs, deformed limbs etc. The article doesn't mention whether they compared the section to other primates. We know primates have relatively unspecialised limbs and so we would expect the region responsible would be primitive. The same stretch of DNA in other mammals would presumably be more different. Does that make sense?

They said the region was an 100% match with every mammal they checked. The article specifically mentions the segment is identical between humans, rats, and mice.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Genomes/ lists the animal genomes they have in the genbank database. This includes the chimpanzee.

Most of what you say makes sense, except I don't believe the chimpanzee would necessarily diverge. They're limbs are still quite important, even if 'unspecialized.' (Not sure what criteria you use in that judgement, but okay.)

The might, for example, look at frog, chicken, a few lizards and a snake. We don't have those genomes yet - at least not in genbank. If this is conserved because it has to do with limbs, then we might expect it to be slightly different for snakes - and possibly chickens.

TheFallibleFiend. Do you think it possible that chimpanzees believe they have evolved from us?

umm...no.

I wonder, though, if they distinguish between them and us.

They, no doubt, would be horrified if presented with the possibility that they were in any way related to us. <g>

Good one DA! LOL.

...a bit more back on topic, I recalled this link I found for tbyte back in October. It's a neat article and is a good example of differential rates of mutation for different "parts" of the body (brain and liver of chimp/human as I recall). Hope the link is still good. Seems good. c.o. Discussion section.

http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/hartl/lab/publications/pdfs/Lemos-05-Evolution.pdf

~samwik

In addition, Caceres et al. (2003) and Hsieh et al. (2003) re-analyses of the brain and liver data of Enard et al. (2002) suggest that,
on a gene-by-gene basis, the liver shows more statistically significant differences between humans and chimpanzees than does the brain, a finding that is confirmed by our conclusion that expression levels of genes transcribed in the liver have evolved at a faster rate than the expression levels of genes in the brain.

... a clip from the article mentioned above.

~samwik

Thats a good one Samwik. I did struggle through it when you originally posted it but I'll have to print it off and study it at leisure. I guess the liver variation indicates our diet has changed more than out intelligence.

I agree, Creationists are hilarious. But Relieon could be our undoing as a species. I've said for years, that were it not for "The Dark Ages" we would today be colonizing Space. We wouldn't be in this mess we're in.

Just one example of how powerfull (and WRONG) Religeous Experts can be very wrong - In the 18th century The Church had decreed that all implements used to till the soil must be manufactured of wood; metallic objects would poison the soil, and we wouldn't want THAT to happen. As a result, Carpenters made a good living making plow shares. But then an eccentric "Gentleman Farmer" invented a cast iron plowshare. It worked so well that it was modified into a steel version that could be sharpened. The "Gentleman Farmer" faced charges of Witchcraft; he was an eccentric, after all. But logic overcame superstition and the business of Farming was changed forever. BTW, you may have heard the name of the eccentric Farmer, it came to prominence a few centuries later. His name was Jethro Tull.

Wolfman quote:

"I've said for years, that were it not for "The Dark Ages" we would today be colonizing Space."

I'm partway through a book called "The Closing of the Western Mind" by Charles Freeman (Knopf 2003 or Heinemann 2002). Deals exactly with that subject. Interesting. Deals with the development of Christian thought via Zoroastrianism and Plato. I'm sure any of you interested in the influence of culture on science would find it fascinating.