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Originally Posted by Beau Perkins  Evolution does happen.
I've seen nothing that sells me 100% that we all came from single cell organisms. They have some good theories but nothing archelogical or scientific to prove we can trace evolution back that far.
That is an example of the kind of hole I am referring to. |
It's not that simple, Beau. You make it sound like we were amoebas once, then suddenly walked on land
When one species disappears from the record and one slightly similar but fundamentally different appears, is that speciation or magic? We may have difficulties recovering fossils of soft tissue creatures, but we do have evidence of a trail generally moving from prokaryote to metazoa to the first vertebrates -- a process that literally took
billions of years. The one central, incontestible conclusion we can draw from that? It's that every form of life on this planet is derivative. Everything descended from a predecessor, and if you go back far enough the candidates for "original predecessor" become fewer and fewer until the only conclusion left is that we did, indeed, descend from the original cellular life forms.
Here's a good example of what I mean when I talk about how the mechanisms involved are still being discussed and debated -- this is a good counter-argument to the notion that scientists are close-minded about Evolution. There's debate, there's new evidence, there's more debate - but nobody is questioning the fact that human life owes its primal origins to microscopic creatures, whatever they might have been:
New cellular evolution theory rejects single cell beginning Quote:
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Life did not begin with one primordial cell. Instead, there were initially at least three simple types of loosely constructed cellular organizations. They swam in a pool of genes, evolving in a communal way that aided one another in bootstrapping into the three distinct types of cells by sharing their evolutionary inventions.
The driving force in evolving cellular life on Earth, says Carl Woese, a microbiologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been horizontal gene transfer, in which the acquisition of alien cellular components, including genes and proteins, work to promote the evolution of recipient cellular entities.
Woese presents his theory of cellular evolution, which challenges long-held traditions and beliefs of biologists, in the June 18 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Cellular evolution, he argues, began in a communal environment in which the loosely organized cells took shape through extensive horizontal gene transfer. Such a transfer previously had been recognized as having a minor role in evolution, but the arrival of microbial genomics, Woese says, is shedding a more accurate light. Horizontal gene transfer, he argues, has the capacity to rework entire genomes. With simple primitive entities this process can "completely erase an organismal genealogical trace."
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Please note: Woese isn't just throwing an idea out there to see if it sticks. He's done research, found evidence he feels supports his idea, and then published it for peer review. If other biologists can replicate his work and find that it answers questions better than the traditional theory, his work will be adopted. Or maybe his work will be adapted to compensate for its own holes before being adopted - that's part of the scientific method. It isn't just any idea that is worthy. It's only ideas with proof behind them and which are openly debated. If they withstand the tests, they're in. Otherwise they are tossed in the bin with Cold Fusion.
But no matter what the decision is regarding Woese's work, there really are only two choices when considering our first primal ancestors: Either we are like every other form of life on Earth and descended through natural means from more primitive life (including cellular organisms) or we appeared by magic.
To paraphrase a common Creationist canard, "you can't make something from nothing".