Posted on 02/10/2011 4:52:11 PM PST by decimon
Genetic research proves worm has evolved to be less sophisticated than its ancestors
Evolution is not a steady march towards ever more sophisticated beings and therefore the search for the living "missing links" is pointless, according to findings published by a team of researchers led by Dr. Hervé Philippe of the Université de Montréal's Department of Biochemistry. "Aristotle was the first to classify organisms – from the least to the most sophisticated. Darwin's theory of evolution continued this idea, with the concept of a hierarchy of evolution. This way of thinking has led researchers and skeptics alike to look for less sophisticated ancestors in order to prove or disprove evolution," Philippe explained. "What we now know is that evolution does not happen in a single direction – when people talk about a missing link, they're generally excluding the possibility of more sophisticated ancestors."
The researchers compared the genomes of two kinds of marine worms with simple morphology – Xenoturbellida and Acoelomorpha – with those of other animals. They demonstrated that their previous position at the base of the bilateral symmetry animal group – that includes insects, mollusks and vertebrates – was inaccurate. "Instead, we determined that Xenoturbellida and Acoelomorpha are closely related to the complex deuterostomes, which is a major lineage containing sea urchins, humans and sharks," Philippe said. "I've put them in that order intentionally because it seems strange, which demonstrates our tendency to always put organisms in order of complexity." The findings mean that the worms had evolved from a more sophisticated ancestor through major simplifications.
"We did already know that most parasitic organisms had evolved to be less sophisticated than their ancestors – they lost certain abilities that they no longer needed. The independently living Xenoturbellida and Acoelomorpha do not fall in this category," Philippe said. The research is a striking example for the important role of secondary simplification in evolution and is part of 20 year project that is nearing completion. The findings were published in Nature on February 10, 2011.
What? Blind people have blind children because they don't use their eyes?
He wasn’t talking to you. ;-p
Brilliant as usual. Thanks for the anti-evo ammo.
Democrats actually evolved (or devolved, if you prefer) from real human beings. Amazing!
Well done!
For macro evolution to have occurred on the scale claimed by the darwinists requires more faith than reason.
The scientific community can not create on purpose what they claim occurred by accident...and yet they claim that it occurred over and over and over. New species are not created from existing ones.
Thank you. Do you have a ping list? If so, please add me. You have a way of explaining things that makes complicated intellectual and scientific arguments understandable.
“Darwin’s theory of evolution continued this idea, with the concept of a hierarchy of evolution. This way of thinking has led researchers and skeptics alike to look for less sophisticated ancestors in order to prove or disprove evolution,” Philippe explained. “What we now know is that evolution does not happen in a single direction – when people talk about a missing link, they’re generally excluding the possibility of more sophisticated ancestors.” “
—One of the things that separates Darwinism from Lamarckism and Haeckel is that it doesn’t continue with the concept of a hierarchy.
Darwin was also well aware that evolution was not directional, and that living things often became simpler instead of more complex. Many, many such cases are known. Not only is this not “new”, it’s not even uncommon. It’s particulary common among parasites.
Darwin himself studied such a case for 8 years before publishing Origin, which would become the textbook example - the barnacle. Such things are precisely what Darwin was attempting to explain, so it’s very odd to present this as “new”.
http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2007/02/basic_concepts_progress_primit_1.php
One way of looking at it, the total sum of miracles in the Bible is probably somewhere between 30 and 100, and probably more like 30 or 40. By contrast, evolution requires an essentially infinite sequence of probabilistic miracles for every kind of creature which ever existed on the Earth i.e. a double infinity of miracles and zero-probability events.
Which is the religion? What I sometimes tell people is that you could make up a new religion by taking the single stupidest idea or doctrine from each of the existing religions and even THAT would be better than evolution.
Evolutionites within my experience are basically immune to logic but they are not immune to laughter and ridicule. What I ultimately hope to do is to teach people how to laugh at this stuff. Laughter is the one thing which no ideology can tolerate and the one thing which can ultimately get false religions like I-slam and the theory of evolution out of this world.
For Plato and Aristotle laughter is an emotion involving scorn for people thought of as inferior. Plato also objects that laughter involves a loss of self-control that can lead to violence. And so in the ideal state described in his Republic and Laws, Plato puts tight restrictions on the performance of comedy.
This negative assessment of laughter, humor, and comedy influenced early Christian thinkers, who derived from the Bible a similar understanding of laughter as hostile. The classic statement of the Superiority Theory is that of Thomas Hobbes, who describes laughter as an expression of »sudden glory«.
So, we have to be careful. ;-)
Have a nice weekend
That is without doubt one of the best posts I’ve ever read in over 10 years on FR.
Bump for later reference
One of the best posts I have seen on this subject. Great. Thanks!
Very well put!
I first realized the points you point out as I was studying the theory of evolution in college as a believer in it and as an atheist. It became very hard for me to understand why others believed it any more. My Professors had no answers for my many questions but rather spoke in circles. Suffice to say it wasn't before too long that, by the grace of God, I became a saved born again believer. Hope you are too.
Feel free, that's what it's there for, but there is one big caveat: the biggest problem most people have with religion is the so-called 'problem of evil', and not evolution, and a reasonable answer to that one has to arise from logic and first principles and not from bible studies. The basic DNA/RNA code which forms the basis for all life is clearly the work of a single pair of hands. Nonetheless by the time you get to some point around 5000 - 20,000 years back on our own planet, the engineering and re-engineering of complex life forms appears to have become some sort of a cottage industry, with numerous hands involved. There is no rational way to picture an omnipotent and well-intentioned God creating ticks, chiggers, mosquitos, biting flies, disease vectors, or the myriad creatures of Pandora's box; whoever created those things is not anybody we need to worship. Likewise there is no rational way to picture an omniscient God needing to go through 100 species of horses or elephants to get to the one he wanted.
The problem of evil generally compels me to believe that God may in fact be omnipotent within his own realm, but has vanishingly little power to act in this physical realm which we inhabit. The problem seems to hang on the word 'omnipotent', and what it is supposed to mean. Defining it to mean "Having all the power which anybody can imagine" leads to conundrums; defining it to mean "Having all the power which there actually is" does not lead to conundrums.
Before nylon was invented there was nothing for a nylonase gene to do.
After nylon was invented, they discovered a bacteria living near the water outflow of the nylon plant that had mutated an esterase enzyme so that the “new information” could now digest nylon.
A single bacteria plated and grown up into a population only has an “information set” of one. As that population is plated onto ten different plates and subjected to ten different environmental pressures, the “information set” expands through mutation, and selective pressure eliminates all but those variations that survive better to whatever pressure the population is subjected to.
Our resulting ten populations resistant to the experienced pressure now have at least ten different “information sets”, each one allowing it to survive and thrive in an environment that would kill the ancestral population.
Semantics.
You can call it “Darwin’s theory of adaptation through natural selection of genetic variation” if you want, it changes nothing, the mechanism of change is exactly the same.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.