Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
See my profile for info
Posted on 01/07/2006 7:44:07 PM PST by MRMEAN
My edition is paperback, a reprint from Owl Books, 1987.
Cheers!
The inability to replicate is common to all parasites. Even humans can't survive without nutrition provided by other living things.
The difficulty drawing a line between living and nonliving is to be expected in an evolutionary scenario.
We don't know the history of viruses. They may be a relatively recent development, arising after cellular life.
"Sigh. Try reading the essay Barry's Key To Life in Dave Barry's Bad Habits (A 100% Fact-Free Book) Henry Holt and Company, NY."
Does it have the column about the whale in Oregon?
Where does that come from? It matters.
Nobody knows . We are here so it had to happen somehow. We can only guess. Until somebody manages not only to recreate it but to do so in a way that could have happened naturally. I go for the burning bridge theory. DNA was not the first molecule that encoded information. It was something simpler that eventually led to DNA. But DNA was so successful it wiped out all traces of its previous generations, like a bridge you have to cross to get to a point after which the bridge burns down making future generations wonder how they got where they are now.
Why would a single celled organism go to the trouble to reproduce?
Only those that did would win out eventually. Volkswagen stuck stubbornly to the Beetle design for quite a long time but the competition eventually forced them to change or go bankrupt. You only need one self replicating organism that is competitive to occur. After that it wipes out the non competition.
Why do the two cells band together? They're supposed to compete with each other.
This is actually a very profound question! As it turns out the vast history of life is mostly single celled so that whatever combination of cells you needed to have multicellular life was so rare it took most of the history of life for it to happen. Different life forms forming alliances against others does have its advantages though for the same reason a group of people working together is much more successful than a bunch of individuals treating each other as enemies. I think it is the same reason political parties form naturally: strength in unified numbers.
The scene from 2001 that has always stuck with me was the discovery of the stone with the dimensions 1X2X3. Every character in the movie -- and every person who saw the movie with me -- thought its very existence was apodictic proof of an intelligent designer. I have watched the movie several times since, with many different people. Each has made the same assumption. I know because I always make it a point to ask.
"Why would a single celled organism go to the trouble to reproduce?"
"Only those that did would win out eventually. Volkswagen stuck stubbornly to the Beetle design for quite a long time but the competition eventually forced them to change or go bankrupt. You only need one self replicating organism that is competitive to occur. After that it wipes out the non competition."
What do they win, from their perspective, not ours? In other words, why bother? Shouldn't the most successful cell be the one that does not expend excess energy by reproducing?
"As it turns out the vast history of life is mostly single celled so that whatever combination of cells you needed to have multicellular life was so rare it took most of the history of life for it to happen."
That's "Because." If I use something other than copper in my chemistry experiment, the teacher will ask me why the thing is red instead of green. If I tell him that I botched the chemistry and there must be iron present, I have given an answer. If I say that it's rare and it just took a long time to happen, I will get an F.
I have thouhgt it through. What good does it do the original organism? Why does the organism care if it's species continues? Where did that come from?
Reproduction is success is an artificial definition that we impose on the biological system because of our own observations.
No. Suppose you have a country where the natives don't effectively reproduce. (less than 2 kids per couple) They save lots of money they would have had to spend on their kids. Then some Muslims move in who produce 4 kids per couple. Sure the Muslims have to work harder and sacrifice more but what religion do you think that country is going to be after a few centuries? The answer is strength of numbers. You are doubling every generation and the other life form is holding study. That's how a single germ manages to kill a host trillions of times its size.
If I say that it's rare and it just took a long time to happen, I will get an F.
We know it happened from the fossil record. Why it happened is a guess. I did venture a guess, namely an alliance between two different cells gives it more of an advantage than one living alone. I suspect the first grouping of cells acted somewhat like a Portuguese Man-of-War . It's not a single creature but actually a colony of different animals acting together. We do know that once you did get multicellular animals a huge expansion of diversity was let loose. It was definitely an advantage. Funny how folks deny the existance of a puzzle because we don't have all the pieces.
You assume rightly.
It's only a "Success" in the sense that it's still around at the end of the day. If its dead then it can hardly claim the title of "champion". The value judgment of "Good" or "Bad" , "Success" or "Failure" , "Winner" or "Loser" is very much related to "Living" or "Dead" because the dead ones don't get to play anymore. The winners get to keep playing. The dead ones are just that, dead. It's not us who imposed this rule, the very nature of life imposed this rule on us!
Not true. Mosquitoes could feast on recently-killed animals and still breed and have offspring. There are "artificial dogs" used to raise mosquitoes in a lab environment. Although some of the blood of the artifical dogs comes from real dogs, in principle it doesn't have to. In no way does a mosquito depend on the cellular metabolism and nuclear synthesis of the host in order to propagate. But a virus will only replicate if that machinery is functioning in a living cell, and the virus is able to subvert those processes to its own end.
Except for yogurt and raw veggies, I don't eat anything that is actually alive, and a diet of 100 % cooked stuff is 100% dead, nevertheless it is possible to live on such a diet, and my ability to reproduce doesn't depend on the life of any specific organism, but rather overall nutrition. It is possible to synthesize proteins, lipids, vitamins, and so forth from mineral sources, and I suspect a nutritionally complete diet could be lab-synthesized soon if not already. The fact we eat things that used to be alive is just an artifact of our multi-billion year ancestry, but unlike viruses, we don't absolutely depend on it for our propagation. We use the stuff we eat as building blocks for our own molecules; viruses hijack the machinery of whatever host they have taken hostage, and trick it into making more of themselves. They don't "eat" the other cells, they don't make anything themselves, certainly not copies of themselves (reproduction) nor do they metabolize nor respire. Those essential functions are all done by the infected host. If there's no host, there's no propagation.
Where did I say that we eat things that are still alive? Where did I even imply it?
There are things that feed directly on minerals, but animals eat living things or things or recently living things or things produced by living things. That is a form of parasitism.
Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
See my profile for info
It's that picture of a darwin monkey man that does it for me.
What do you consider a slight dissent? Do you agree with ID advocates, Behe, Denton and Dembski that common descent is a fact that can be taken for granted?
"Even humans can't survive without nutrition provided by other living things."
Well, in the case of eating raw plants, we are eating living things. In the case of meat and cooked vegetables we are eating the products of living things.
That explains why the organism is still around - our theory fits the observation. it still does not explain what the organism gains by reproducing, and the gain of an advantage in the environment is the key to adaptation.
I said as much two posts ago. I still maintain humans could subsist on a diet that was 100% lab synthesized, if not now, then soon. I'm not sure you understand why I think viruses aren't alive.
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.