Related Topics Linked to Cultural Evolution
This I Believe Cultural Evolution Factual Links Related Topics
Gene Editing
Gene Editing: should we be worried? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7DpdOHRDR4, 25 min, 2023. At 9:41min CRISPR, 10:40 sickle-cell, 12:40 deafness, 18;30 agriculture, 21:30 wooly mammoth. Also scan the search list on right side of the screen, for God and for ethics.
The story behind gene editing, The background to The Genetic Revolution, CRISPR: We can play God, 48 min, 2023. The Manipulation of Human DNA | Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qS2fjeVzsk, The CRISPR Apostle: Rodolphe Barrangou, 12 min, 2023. How an editing gene was found trying to produce better yogurt. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuHD7jCY8X4, Nobel winners Doudna and Charpentier discover how CRISPR Cas9 gene editing works. 14 min, 2023. How they found the key to directed evolution.
Origin of Life
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgbwySSd0PM, 65 min, 2023, super good video. The Scientists Beginning To Doubt The Theory Of Evolution | Unlocking The Mystery Of Life | Parable. The 1993 meeting of just 4 people that gave rise to Intelligent Design (ID) including irreducible complexity at 18:20 min. The validity of these rationalizations becomes questionable when their applications are examined and then discredited with more recent discoveries.
Creationism is a literal belief in the Bible. Creation Science is a way to stop teaching evolution in United States schools. As named "Intelligent Design" it failed several ways in several court cases. The most recent product is a video of belief, fact, and politics by a group known for influencing elections. It is TV quality.
Intelligent Design versus Evolution, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3721655/ 2010. Easy to read including "irreducible complexity" that is disproved in the following item.
The
Collapse of Intelligent Design:Kenneth R. Miller Lecture,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohd5uqzlwsU, 218 min, Recorded 2006. It is all good. At 15:00-16:53 min: facts support theory. At 25:00-30:00 rewrote science definition. At 35:35-39:37 fused chromosome 2. At 39:40-51:24
irreducible complexity. At 51:24-62:00 a religion (59:00 textbook graph showing transition of creationism into intelligent design in 1987). At 64:00-69:00 how science deals with new ideas and what is at stake.
Important issues came up in the following question period. At 129 min: "a genuinely religious person" can "be fully excepting of science as a way to learn about the natural world."
At 134 min: "science is apolitical", "scientific rationalism", "science and religion can coexist in peace", "fear of science as the basis of morality", "science is, in fact, a threat to religious beliefs." At 147 min: creationism: "creation science, intelligent design, and new critical analysis of evolution."
[Creationist is mentioned in Charles Darwin's unpublished 1842 manuscript. Scientific creationism and then creation
science became popular in the 1960s; Intelligent design in the 1990s; and critical analysis of evolution in the 2000s.]
At 150 min: a new gene? nylonase < 65 years, 1,138,000 generations (22,750,000 human years); TNT ingredient < 90 years, 1,575,000 generations . This is the time needed only for a new gene, not a new species of life. [30 min per microbe generation.]
Science relates tested facts into theories about what may be real. Creationism relates selected facts and beliefs into a theory of what is held as real. Science matures into many disciplines. Creationism is acceptable to many denominations in varying degrees. What a genuinely religious person believes, is real to that person. What a scientist believes may be real until sufficient verification establishes that it is real for all.
Has Space Exploration Aided The Case For Creationism? | The Call Of The Cosmos | Parable,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8DS61hCrWM, 57 min, 2023. At 0:00 min moon landing. At 26:58 Carol Sagan. At 31:55 Aurora borealis. At 49:10
bionanoworld. At 54:29 Gaza Strip. Superb videography 17 years after the above. Scan the list of 40 Parable videos on the right side of the screen.
The music is highly emotional for grandparents as we approach the 2024 presidential election. In the past 17 years this group has shifted its background, from directly apposing evolution in education, to entertainment (Discovery Institute.org). The bionanoworld is introduced, in awe, very effectively with no factual comment.
How reading an entire DNA genomic history has implications for the origin, evolution, and loss of traits that is longer, more complete, and more detailed than from fossils and rocks.
A Mitochondrial Etiology of Common Complex Disease, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aCHrHwm_AI, 59 min, 2018. At 5 min anatomical and Mendelian (nuclear chromosomal). At 7 min bioentergentic dysfunction (female mitochondrial).
Cultural Conflict
Religion, Spirituality and Health Scientific Interest Group: Harmonizing the Spiritual and Scientific Worldviews, https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=41402 (external link), 60 min, 2021. At 0 min belief. At 16:30 min Stephen Colbert. At 24:24 min atheism, 26:42 agnosticism, 29:20 creationism, 29:54 intelligent design, 33:19 evolutionary creation, 35:09 book & BioLogos.org, and 37:00 epidemic. [Membership]
Dr. Francis Collins created BioLogos to promote a best synthesis of belief and science, based on what was practiced and on what was known at the time. Later he found changing the behavior of evangelicals and Pentecostals (fastest growing denomination in the world) very difficult as the director of the National Institute of Health, during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Faith is believing. Seeing is believing. After seeing the microbes during WW2 a Pacific Ocean tribe threw a microscope into the ocean to avoid needing a vaccination (punch line). Cargo Cult. Related to stressful times and charismatic expressions/leaders such as evangelicals.
[21 Mar 2024] I found the third citation below. It never occurred to me to search for "cultural evolution". The topic is throughly covered and currently engaged as natural experiments in many ways with, possibly, the exception of the nano world; the subject of this blog.
https://fetzer.org/blog/biologos-and-center-christogenesis-love-intersection-faith-and-science#
https://christogenesis.org/ [Membership]
https://www.culturalevolution.org/ [Political think tank]
It will take me several weeks to explore all of this. My original concern was making the facts of the nano world believable and understandable. That alone does not make them acceptable when they must compete with the current situation in many parts of our culture: education, commerce, industry, entertainment, government, religion, and science.
Attitude
Rapid progress is now being made in many areas because of a change in attitude. A lot of what tradition has taught us in the past is now being scientifically questioned again in the new worlds we live in. We can see and detect things never possible just a few decades ago.
"No pain: No gain" has been replaced with "appropriate" for long COVID patients (do not overexercise; I am living this.). The gigantic decline and increase in the California migratory monarch butterfly population count came from choosing to count in traditional locations rather than counting where the butterflies chose to overwinter (a multimillion dollar blunder).
Now that the location for the origin of life maybe found on any planet with liquid water and hot water vents in the open and under ice, life has recently been found in hot springs here on earth (because it was now looked for there).
The longterm belief that humans had a special creation and that each organized religion was better than all the rest creates enemies rather than friends. It is a barrier to believing in multiple ways related to your age and education. "Jesus loves me this I know" is very comforting to a 5-year old and a 95-year old. We should not put limits on what God can do and how it is done. We should increasonaly marvel at all of the new information about the creation.
False Advertising
The best of intentions can go array when what is said in one setting has unexpected responses in another. [University of Missouri settles lawsuits over knee surgeries involving veterinarian. $16.2 million, Mar 12, 2021, missouriindependent.com]
One of the following statements by Washington State University is only partly correct, which helps generate misconceptions.
First university to put gene-edited livestock into human food supply, https://news.wsu.edu/press-release/2023/05/01/wsu-first-university-to-put-gene-edited-livestock-into-human-food-supply/
"Gene-editing can make changes in an organism’s DNA that could occur in nature or through selective breeding but would take much longer without a tool like CRISPR.
Essentially a high-tech form of selective breeding, surrogate sire technology can greatly expand dissemination of valuable genetics in livestock.
Gene-editing is a modern, cutting-edge technology that works only within a species’ DNA* and can make changes that could come about naturally or through traditional breeding practices.
The public often holds many misconceptions about gene-editing, Oatley said, and hopes that the WSU example will help dispel misinformation and improve perceptions of this technology."
“'There’s a trust that comes with university-based research,” he said. “At WSU, we’re all about the science. We just want to make sure the research is valid, and the animals we produce are healthy.'”
*"It works only within a species' DNA" until a native head and anchor group is added to the foreign DNA.
This I Believe Cultural Evolution Factual Links Related Topics Epilogue
Biological evolution follows two basic rules: (8 Mar 2024)
1. A space (environment) niche.
2. A self reproducing entity (with variation).
Cultural evolution adds two more:
3. Spiritual-and-religious (S/R). Unverifiable beliefs.
4. Science. Verifiable beliefs and verified beliefs.
How long it will take for the nano world to be generally accepted at the S/R level is
an unknown. The scientific discovery of an origin of life (self reproduction) is now eminent. Many of the factors involved are discussed in the "Four Stages of Spiritual Evolution" by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming in
2022.
The time to find the conditions under which life originated has greatly shorted by finding the hot under ocean vents and by a definition of what life is. In fact, the three digit nucleotide codes are different in microbes leading to a new phylum of life.
There are two competing factors that have an ever increasing effect on cultural evolution. The range and rate of things that people choose to be offended by is increasing as more people are crowded into less space. This includes choosing to label people as enemies. We can only productively discuss emotional things with friends.
Cultural evolution has been unpredictable. It took two world wars involving Christian nations and 80 years for the Euro to be created (and fail to establish a nation for the displaced). It took 50 years for Columbia, MO, to become tobacco smoke free (and a few more to approve tax free vaping).
My attempt to ground my beliefs in current knowledge without giving the traditional appearance that everyone should believe the same is still a problem. I need a real example that everyone can relate to.
The current mix of beliefs associated with Christianity and "strong man" politics may be as good an example of a natural experiment as COVID-19 where registered Republicans died at a higher rate than registered Democrats and continue to do so with lower Republican vaccination rates.
Traditional scientific research attempts to get a useful glimpse of this with the fewest observations; with the lowest cost in time and money. Noble prizes are won by people who are the best at generating in their minds what those observations should be
and in being open to observe and question unpredicted observations.
A couple of simple examples from my USDA-ARS in Hawaii and Florida: What diet does a fruit fly prefer and then lay the most eggs? Put diets in small paper cups on the cage floor. Count the number feeding periodically. For several days no fly was found feeding! But one diet was gone. They can fill up on a preferred diet in seconds outside of office hours.
Then I was flown to Florida. The laboratory could not get their fruit flies to lay eggs. It was the laziest fly I have ever seen. I watched for several hours. Then I smeared the diet near their preferred resting area. They fed. They laid eggs the next day. You must imagine their world. This is part of the fun in a lot of science drudgery.
[23 Mar 2024]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55_HDpIIY6E, Ron Vale - Marvelous Molecular Motors, 72 min, 2023. All good. At 38:30 min hypothesis. 41:15 min surprise, 68:00 min XBio:
www.explorebiology.org, The Explorer's Guide to Biology, For self-learners and higher education students, free online biology textbook replacement presented with the fun and luck of doing science.
The separation of spirituality/religion (S/R) and science is dependent upon what evidence or results you are willing to accept. The scientific study of S/R has finally come into
vogue (see Cultural Conflict above). S/R can enrich its beliefs from science. Science can benefit from valid experimental designs for selected longterm practices associated with S/R beliefs, but not from beliefs alone.
God plays fair. The traditional distribution in research results is the shape of any pile of small objects: sand, shelled corn, wheat, or marbles (
bell-shaped-curve). When results deviate from this it is cause for concern.
God's natural occurring bell-shaped-curve is the dividing line. This is most easily seen in numbers: 1 X 1 = 1 and 1 / 1 = 1 , that is S/R. Science deals in the average of populations (samples) of more than one: 2 X 2 = 4, 3 X 3 = 9, 4 X 4 = 16, etc.
True believers do not need to tryout several different religions. Their needs are 100% satisfied. There is no variation (variance). There is no need for discussion.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-deviation-calculator.html.
The quincunx (or Galton Board)
https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/quincunx.html. See how God actually works at the extreme end of values starting with zero commonly used in science. This is a very misleading view of what happens at the nano world scale where things happen over millions of years and generations occur many times faster. What appears as random chance becomes near certainty in the nano world. God's creative will, to match organism with environment, can be visualized with a Galton board.
Something that happens on average once every 1,000,000,000 times over a period of 1,000,000,000,000,000 times can be expected to happen 1,000,000 times. This would take microbes and virus, reproducing every 30 minutes, 350,000 generations to span one 20-year human life cycle.
Play with the Galton Board. Get the feel. Creativity, in art, is something different. In genetics it is error. The normal curve develops imperfectly almost every time. It develops more perfectly with more counts and greater range (1-14). Scientific work tended to use 20-100 counts with a range of around 6 until the era of gigantic COVID-19 data banks where counts are in millions with a range of several dozen.
https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/standard-normal-distribution.html Scroll down to one Standard Deviation (SD) at 68% of sample, 2 SD at 95%, and 3 SD at 99.7%. This works for all numbering systems. The 1 SD marks where the curve changes bending from one direction to the other. [Use the link above to return to the quincunx or Galton Board (or Search Galton).]
[Now it just happens that the 2 SD at 95% is the 5% level of significance (statistically significant). And the 3 SD at 99.7% is the 1% level of significance. A ball is expected to land this far from each average, by random (creative) chance alone, equal or less than 5% and 1% of the time, for the average set of several runs. Evolution has had billions of runs.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/p-value.asp]
[Pascal's Marble Run - or the Deterministic Galton Board,
http://www.karlsims.com/marbles/, An elaborate demonstration of probabilities.
Galton was Darwin's cousin. He was thrilled by his invention. Francis Galton coined the term "eugenics". It took until 1995 for Canada to undo a law based on "crude misconceptions of heredity". The United States has yet to do this.] Culture changes slowly.
As the months roar by our natural experiment in government will become increasingly entangled with more religious and political beliefs, the nano world, and verified science. My best guess is that an unexpected event is most likely to change the sequence of events. The natural experiment continues until the genetic errors inherent in evolution and the matching educational environment become manageable.
Beliefs can take effect in little time and with little understanding. A two year research project can take four to five years to produce useful results. The first emphasizes memory, the second understanding. The optimum environment for humans is the best goal; not the perfect environment for one individual or small group. The optimum environment is not left to chance; to finance education by each school district.
'(A good starting point is the 2003 government report "Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness," available at bioethics.gov/reports/beyondtherapy/.)' I have yet to read this.
The goal of cultural evolution research is to learn enough to promote cultural evolution beyond the basic biological-power-makes-right, to a universal set of oaths and rules that are held sacred peacefully with and without a religion.
