@ RC: "For evolution to be true..."

by Scully 40 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cofty

  Flamegrilled - The fundamental difference between male and female is how much their sex cells contribute to the offspring.

  Beings made of eukaryotic cells - stuff that isn't bacteria or archaea, have numerous organelles that are outside the nucleus of our cells. Crucially we have mitochondria that produce energy. Originally mitochondria were free living organisms that formed a symbiotic relationship with one of our very distant ancestors. It became enclosed within the cell membrane in a process known as endosymbiosis - discovered by Lynne Margulies.

  Mitochondria have their own DNA that is crucial to their function. It is vital that the few genes that are still retained in our mitochondria work in sync with the rest of our genome. For this reason the mitochondrial DNA is donated by just one parent - the one we call female. It may be that this is also the reason why egg cells are culled at an astonishing rate by females. If they don't pass muster they don't get to ovulate. The embryo starts with 6 million eggs of which only 300 or so will be ovulated.

  So our fishy ancestors had an evolutionary choice. do they produce lots of sex cells containing just the genome or do they produce fewer cells complete with vital organelles such as mitochondria? Some went one way - we call them males; some went the other and we call them females.

  The plumbing for internal fertilisation evolved later step-by-step. Just like the evolution of eyes, the intermediate steps can be found in the living world.

  See "Power, Sex and Suicide" by Nick Lane for much more detail.
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  flamegrilled

  I'm ordering "Power, Sex and Suicide" from Amazon. Thanks. There is much here that I know nothing about.

  I note that the write up on Amazon cites Steve Jones as one of his scientific forebears. I find Jones extremely informative, but sometimes frustrating in that he sometimes makes some unsubstantiated assertions outside of his field of expertise.

  The Lane book looks good though and I will give it a read.
  
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  cofty

  Nick Lane is one of my favourite science authors. His books are challenging to amateurs like me but worth the effort.
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  Cadellin

  The WT has said this in print before, so nothing new in this astoundingly and embarrassingly ignorant statement. Sexual reproduction, with its combining and re-combining of genes, may have originated as a way of avoiding bacterial infection. The external visual sexual characteristics we associate with male/female came along way way later. One good book to learn more is Matt Ridley's The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature. Another one is, of course, Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.

  Facts are much more pleasant than mindless arguments from incredulity.
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  Oubliette

  "For evolution to be true, two of the same kind would have had to evolve at the same time; one would have to be male and the other would have to be female, and then they would have to find each other"

  Actually that is more or less true regarding sexual reproduction. But there is nothing surprising or challenging about the above statement if you understand how evolution works and the time frames involved. Without intending to, the speaker referenced in the OP unwittingly expressed his agreement with the theory of biological evolution.

  We are evolving all of the time.
  

  Watch this short PBS video and you'll understand if you don't already. And if you already get it, you might find the way this is presented will help you reason with others that don't yet get it:

  There Was No First Human
  
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  Oubliette

  DarioKehl: I guess the dirt man and rib woman in a magic garden who fucked up everything for the rest of us by taking dietary advice from a talking snake makes a helluva lot more sense. My bad! Sorry for murmuring.

  Too funny!

  Love the sarcasm.
  
• 

  Oubliette

  Billy: Of course, a JW argument like this against evolution is also an argument against the Noachian flood.

  Exactly.

  JWs are really reveal their profound lack of intellectual ability whenever they make statements like this. Indeed, if the Noachian flood story is true, then JWs would be required to believe in a much more aggressive form of biological evolution than the one that is generally proposed and accepted in the scientific community. They just don't get it.

  They are essentially saying that they believe the present biological diversity on earth (after the initial creation and subsequent destruction at the flood) happened in only a few thousand years whereas evolutionary biologists and related scientist make the claim that it happened over hundreds of millions of years.
  

  Most of JWs don't realize that evolution per se is not even the issue, it's the origin of life question. So silly. If you hope to have an intelligent conversation with most JWs you have to first educate them about how wrong they are about how they think before you can show them how wrong they are about what they "know."
• 

  GrreatTeacher

  Thank you, thank you, thank you Island Man for pointing out that evolution occurs at the POPULATION level, not the level of the individual organism!

  I know that there are some intelligent people who would readily agree with the obvious truth of evolution at the population level as long as you didn't use THE WORD EVOLUTION. As soon as you use that word, though, their brains turn off.

  Now I'm wondering if it would be fun (and possibly fruitful) to discuss the "Theory of Progressive Allele Frequency Change" with my otherwise intelligent dad and see if he'd agree it made sense. And THEN casually mention that that's actually what the theory of evolution actually means.
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  DATA-DOG

  Yep! Abiogenesis and evolution are separate topics. Either the GB are stupid or corrupt.

  Their practice of routinely misquoting, taking quotes out of context, and creating strawman arguments, while simultaneously DF'ing any who dare oppose them make me lean toward the latter.

  DD
• 

  Oubliette

  For anyone that wants to know more about what Cofty was talking about:

  Scientists discover why fungi have 36,000 sexes

  IF HUMANS were mushrooms, finding a date would be much easier. Whereas we muddle by with just two sexes, the fungi have 36,000, all of which can mate with each other, in a mysterious process involving underground fronds.