Evolution is a Fact #38 - The Origin of Complex Cells

by cofty 71 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cofty

  Vidqun I see you have abandoned the conversation. I'm not surprised.

  I added this topic to my series "Evolution is a Fact" specifically because you raised the subject of complex cells on another thread.

  You began by laying out your extensive scientific credentials as a basis of your authority to dismiss evolution and endosymbiosis specifically. To your credit, having seen the evidence, you have acknowledged the reality of endosymbiosis and accepted that it has been observed in the lab - including the transfer of genes from symbiont to host. However you continued to insist that this doesn't explain the origin of eukaryotic cells.

  You raised nine objections on the previous page and linked these to extracts from scientific papers. Although you provided no links I was able to track down most of them and in my previous post explain how each of them described specific evidence for the origin of organelles and contradicted your objections.

  Your final reply - after numerous attempts to change the subject - has been to totally ignore my evidence and post a bizarre rant about the supposed pagan origins of a scientific theory and yet another attempt to change the subject to "information theory".

  Let me just say that you are making a common error by conflating evolution with atheism. Millions of christians accept the fact of evolution, including many prominent scientists. Kenneth Miller and Frances Collins are two names you might want to check out. Both of them have reconciled evolution with their faith.

  Having to hide from evidence, obfuscation, changing the subject etc is a sad situation to be in. Perhaps you would enjoy Miller's book "Finding Darwin's God" for an intellectually honest and scientifically respectful position.

  I am not going to be distracted by your latest attempt to change the subject. I have already posted a lot of information about the evidence for evolution in DNA. If we had absolutely no fossils it would not matter one little bit. Genetic evidence proves the fact of evolution beyond all reasonable doubt. As for "information theory" I may cover that in a later thread in this series.

  We have now seen extensive evidence that the mitochondria in all of our cells - with the exception of red blood cells - originated as free living prokaryotic bacteria. Having invaded an ancient archaea the two formed a sort of chimera with more than 99% of the genes being transferred to the nucleus of the host cell.

  In part two of this subject I will look at the possibilities for complexity that endosymbiosis made possible and at the origin of the nucleus in the eukaryotic cell.

  See links below for information about the DNA evidence for evolution.

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  #1 Protein Functional Redundancy
  Comparing the sequences of amino acids in ubiquitous proteins confirms the relationship between all living things.

  #2 DNA Functional Redundancy
  Comparison of the DNA that codes for the amino acids of ubiquitous proteins predicts the tree of life with an astonishing degree of accuracy.

  #3 ERVs
  Endogenous retroviruses that infected our ancestors are found in the same place of the genome of our closest primate cousins.

  #4 Smelly Genes
  Hundreds of broken genes that used to code for olfactory receptors in our ancestors are still found in our genome.

  #5 Vitamin C
  Why humans can no longer make their own vitamin C and what that tells us about our species' history.

  #6 Human Chromosome 2
  Our second biggest chromosome is made up of two of our ancestors' chromosomes stuck end-to-end.

  #7 Human Egg Yolk Gene
  Humans and our primate cousins have the genes for making vitellogenin and they are all broken in the same way.

  #8 Jumping Genes
  Bits of parasitic code called ALU elements prove our common ancestry with primates.

  #9 Less Chewing More Thinking
  A broken gene for a type of muscle fibre we no longer have tells a story about our evolutionary past.

  #10 Non-Coding DNA
  In common with many other species huge amounts of our genome originated as copying errors.
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  Esse quam videri

  Evolution

  By Langdon Smith (1858-1908)

  When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
  In the Paleozoic time,
  And side by side on the ebbing tide
  We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
  Or skittered with many a caudal flip
  Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
  My heart was rife with the joy of life,
  For I loved you even then.

  Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
  And mindless at last we died;
  And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
  We slumbered side by side.
  The world turned on in the lathe of time,
  The hot lands heaved amain,
  Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
  And crept into life again.

  We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
  And drab as a dead man's hand;
  We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
  Or trailed through the mud and sand.
  Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
  Writing a language dumb,
  With never a spark in the empty dark
  To hint at a life to come.

  Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
  And happy we died once more;
  Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
  Of a Neocomian shore.
  The eons came and the eons fled
  And the sleep that wrapped us fast
  Was riven away in a newer day
  And the night of death was passed.

  Then light and swift through the jungle trees
  We swung in our airy flights,
  Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
  In the hush of the moonless nights;
  And oh! what beautiful years were there
  When our hearts clung each to each;
  When life was filled and our senses thrilled
  In the first faint dawn of speech.

  Thus life by life and love by love
  We passed through the cycles strange,
  And breath by breath and death by death
  We followed the chain of change.
  Till there came a time in the law of life
  When over the nursing sod
  The shadows broke and the soul awoke
  In a strange, dim dream of God.

  I was thewed like an Auroch bull
  And tusked like the great cave bear;
  And you, my sweet, from head to feet
  Were gowned in your glorious hair.
  Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
  When the night fell o'er the plain
  And the moon hung red o'er the river bed
  We mumbled the bones of the slain.

  I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
  And shaped it with brutish craft;
  I broke a shank from the woodland lank
  And fitted it, head and haft;
  Than I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
  Where the mammoth came to drink;
  Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
  And slew him upon the brink.

  Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
  Loud answered our kith and kin;
  From west to east to the crimson feast
  The clan came tramping in.
  O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof
  We fought and clawed and tore,
  And cheek by jowl with many a growl
  We talked the marvel o'er.

  I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
  With rude and hairy hand;
  I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
  That men might understand.
  For we lived by blood and the right of might
  Ere human laws were drawn,
  And the age of sin did not begin
  Til our brutal tusks were gone.

  And that was a million years ago
  In a time that no man knows;
  Yet here tonight in the mellow light
  We sit at Delmonico's.
  Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
  Your hair is dark as jet,
  Your years are few, your life is new,
  Your soul untried, and yet --

  Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
  And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
  We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
  And deep in the Coralline crags;
  Our love is old, our lives are old,
  And death shall come amain;
  Should it come today, what man may say
  We shall not live again?

  God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
  And furnish’d them wings to fly;
  He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
  And I know that it shall not die,
  Though cities have sprung above the graves
  Where the crook-bone men made war
  And the ox-wain creaks o'er the buried caves
  Where the mummied mammoths are.

  Then as we linger at luncheon here
  O'er many a dainty dish,
  Let us drink anew to the time when you
  Were a tadpole and I was a fish.