The Dumbest Proof of God I Have Heard
Offline In 1967, a large migration occurred from Kashmir to Bradford in England. Among the migrants were a large number of people who had married close cousins. Several of them were microcephalics -- they had small, but otherwise normal brains. Because the family pedigrees were so well documented, scientists were able to pin down the exact gene and the exact mutations (four of them, to be precise) that caused the condition. (If you're interested, it's the ASPM gene on chromosome 1.) In recent years, with our advances in genetics, we've learned that this is a particularly large gene, 10,434 letters long, split into 28 paragraphs (exons). Paragraphs 16 through 25 are basically just repeats of the same "sentence," which refers specifically to the amino acids isoleucine and glutamine.
The significance of this is that these amino acid repetitions apparently correlate directly to the number of neurons in the adult brain. In humans, there are 74 repetitions. The mouse has 61, the fruit fly 24, and the nematode worm only 2. In layman's terms, this gene apparently directly influences how smart the creature will be.
Ok, are you ready for the dumbest proof for God's existence ever? The standard abbreviation for isoleucine is "I" and the abbreviation for glutamine is "Q." Put them together, and what do you get? "IQ." Intelligence quotient. And this, apparently, is proof enough for some scientists that God himself arranged things this way just to humble us with his incredible sense of irony.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
- Login to post comments
Those folks must be a few paragraphs short of a book!
Did they have any sweaters with 'em?
So did gawd create I.Q.? What would her "gawd" I.Q. be? I think gawd is listening and she isn't happy.
Signature ? How ?
Is this anything like the Hattfield's of Kentucky. I just read some of their story, The Hattfield's and McCoy's.
LOL... I don't know if the Hattfields or McCoys were microcephalics. If there was a paper about it, I missed it.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
That's odd. I could have sworn that the IQ domains were a large repeated insertion not possessed by the mouse ortholog. (PS, for everyone who doesn't catch deadpan, when I say "that's odd" I mean "they're full of shit".)
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
Heh. I only read the writing and report back to the group. I have no personal knowledge of the mouse ortholog.
Regardless of the accuracy, it's still a really dumb proof of god.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
For anyone interested, it's Bond, Roberts, Mochida, et al. 2002. ASPM is a major determinant of cerebral cortical size. Nature Genetics 32:316-20
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Remember how I suggested that people should read an actual study in its entirety? Here's your chance. Hey, it's also free online. That's actually pretty rare. Usually you have to subscribe:
http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/12/2025
The full text is in PDF in a link. This takes you to the abstract.
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
Books about atheism
There is only a bit of information about the two families at Wikipedia. I understand that some of the members here don't like that source, but it is the only one that I am familiar with. Anyways it is funny shit!!
They kind of remind me the TV show Ma & Pa Kettle.
Cool. Thanks for the link! Now I'm really curious about this, so I'm afraid I have to pick your brain. The bit that I read seemed to indicate that the importance of ASPM was the number of iterations of the IQ "motif." If I understand correctly, humans all have 74 iterations, and accordingly, we each have essentially the same number of neurons. In other animals with orthologous sequences, the number of iterations of the motif is in proportion to the number of neurons.
Mice aside, am I just missing a big point here? It seems to me that this study indicates that within humans (all of whom have 74 iterations) ASPM itself doesn't seem to correlate to relative brain size, but that seems to be almost beside the point. If all the subjects have 74 iterations, we wouldn't expect their brain size to vary, since the whole point of the article I mentioned was that across species, the number of iterations of IQ seemed to correlate to number of neurons in the brain.
Thoughts?
[EDIT: I should mention that this is the first time I've even heard of the link between ASPM and microcephalics, so I don't claim to know much about it. My understanding is that there are four known mutations of ASPM that correlate to the condition, but I didn't get the indication that the mutation was a decrease in the iterations of IQ within that particular exon.]
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Ha ha, I'm actually related to those Hatfields.
Waaaiiit a minute. I'm related to those McCoys!
Damnit, Jmm!
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
*Takes out banjo*
You can start singing '" I'm my own grandpa..."
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
Is it wrong of me that I was disappointed you didn't follow this up with something like "I'm a DOCTOR, not a musketry target!"?
--
maybe if this sig is witty, someone will love me.
It wasn't Acharaya S was it? That's the kind of proof she generally uses?
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
Censored and blacked out for internet access in ANZ!
AU: http://nocleanfeed.com/ | NZ: http://nzblackout.org/
Hahhahahahahahah!!!!! *breathes in* Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server, which houses Celebrity Atheists. Books by Rook Hawkins (Thomas Verenna)