What is your take on evolution/old age earth?

[lestatdark]

Slimebeast said:

lestatdark said:

Slimebeast said:

lestatdark said:

Slimebeast said:

lestatdark said:

Slimebeast said:

I don't believe in current evolution theory.

We've gone through some things before, things i have problems with. Like the lack of evolution in bacteria and even some higher order species (like that fish that hasn't changed in 70 million years or something, forgot the name). The lack of skeletons from humanoids puzzles me.

And I don't trust the guys who reconstruct and interpret these monkey skeletons. Too amateurish. It's too much global warming hoax over it all.

There's the mystery of the conscious mind which evolutionists can't explain.

The mystery of the rapid evolution of human culture and intellect, and it's complexity. How stuff like our interest in art & music etc are explained.

The mystery of human altruism and morals. Even Dawkins admits that it's very mysterious.

Plus I'm a Christian so obviously I have a problem with Darwinian evolution without divine interference. If I wasn't religious maybe I would have just ate it all up without having done any deeper studies.

You're going down roads that you cannot possibly explain. Bacteria are the order of living organisms that suffer most evolution, due to the incorporation of extra set of genomic chromossomes, the plasmids, that confer them evolution patterns way ahead of Eukaryota cells. 

Also, the fish you're talking about, the Coelocanth, isn't an exclusive case of staggered evolution. Sharks have pretty much stayed the same, with very few minute mutational changes in the species range. Crocodiles as well.

And yet Bacteria's can't talk. They're still stuck at the micro level. (don't try with the "evolution has no goal" or "germs are already successful, they own their niche, they don't need to talk or to play video games").

Sharks and Croqs have the same problem as the Coelocanth, yes.

They are already more successful than any other living being.

Why? Because Bacteria are pretty much the most adaptable living being. They can live in environments ranging from pH 1 to pH 14. They can live in temperatures as low as -80º C to as high as 140º C. They can live in extremely low pressure areas like the top of the Himalayas or as high pressure as the bottom of the Marianna Abyss. They range from all the trophic, chemical and non-chemical, sustainable metabolism and pretty much are the only living being that can non-generational shift to adapt it's own genomic resistances 

High though process that Homo Sapiens are capable of is just a by-product of evolution. While it is important for humanity per se, for the ecological super-power, bacteria, it's pretty much useless.

Anyway, this is a pretty useless debate. Me, as a geneticist, have access to a vaster amount of information, knowledge and personal experience in this issue (bacteria evolution and genetic similarities) than you. I'm not saying that you're wrong and that i'm right, i'm just saying that you're debating an issue that you cannot possibly win. And that will only end in fruitless struggle that I won't indulge in this topic. 

You cannot win the debate either.

Yes, you just showed how extreme the environmental pressure is on bacteria, with them being present in all possible environments on earth. That's the point, to address how successful and prevalent bacteria are and show its implications in the context of the rate of evolution that would be expected from them. Despite bacteria being everywhere, in massive numbers, under all sorts of environmental pressures, yet they have remained on the primitive micro level, having only conquered niches on the single-cell micro level.

Because the individual bacteria doesn't care if bacteria as a group of organisms have conquered the earth. Every individual of bacteria tries to survive, and every individual bacteria has potential to evolve into something different, something more complex. But they don't. Why is that? You need to ask yourself why bacterial evolution is so limited, so narrow, compared to the eukaryotic line of life. 

Bacteria is the prime example of (so called) micro-evolution never becoming "macro-evolution".

Bacterial evolution is limited? You sir know nothing about bacterial evolution. 

Eukaryotic life and evolution is but a small speck when compared to the amount of evolution that bacteria have suffered. If you compare the sheer number of species that bacteria and microbial life has managed to successfully create with the amount of evolution and different species that eukaryotic life has created, it would make complex life pretty laughable.

Human though processing is as essential to human evolution as plasmids recombination and transposition are to bacteria evolution. 

As I said, I'm not going dwell further on this topic. You're speaking about things you know nothing about. Come back to me when you have basic genomic knowledge, and comprehension as to how bacterial genomics are the founding steps for understanding our own genomic evolution.

I don't like your arrogance. You're not as intelligent as you imagine.

You don't understand your own field of study. I am not the best man to explain things, but I am amazed that you fail to see my point.

One one hand you are perfectly fine with the diversity of life on our planet. If someone would ask you, "how come all this variation, all these species and organs and genes and proteins from a single ancestor?" your reply would be, "mutations and natural selection over a long period of time".

But on the other hand, amazingly, despite working in the field in question, you fail to see the mystery of why bacteria haven't evolved into anything like that diversity described above, despite trillions of chances, despite an absolutely massive gene pool being present in all possible living conditions, having a high replication & mutational rate and being affected by extreme environmental & selective pressures during a very long time.

 

It isn't arrogance. I'm perfectly fine admitting other possibilities, but when it comes to my field of study, then it's pretty obvious that I know more things than you do, thus it's only natural that I find some blatant gaps on your logic. And you're trying to imply something that isn't correct.

As I told you before and what you cannot seem to grasp, not because of lack of intelligence, but will to comprehend, is that bacteria doesn't need to evolve into complex organisms. Most species of bacteria are able to do, at the ribosomal, lysosomal and plasmid levels, what eukaryotic cells can only do when they're specified for a single purpose. 

For example, Cyanobacteria, are both able to do photosynthesis, ATP production and nitrogen fixation from organic sources in a single cell. Plants on the other hands, require a high number of specified cells to do it. While Eukaryotic cells have had a more complex evolution, solely on the fact specified eukaryotic cells can agglomerate to a large amount of tasks, they still lack some several means in which Bacteria can single handedly do similar tasks in a single Prokaryotic cell. 

One of the most extreme cases of bacteria dominant evolution over Eukaryotic cells is from the deinococcus radiodurans bacteria. It's extreme resistance to nuclear ionization radiation, ultraviolet and superoxide reducing agents it's mainly due to the synergy between it's chromosome and the two prominent plasmids, one of them is one of the largest plasmids in all bacteria. 

To draw a comparison, they can suffer an ionization radiation of over 5000 gy with almost 100% survival rate. In contrast, 5 gy is enough radiation to kill a human being, 600 gy kills almost all bacteria and 4000 gy kills the second class of bacteria most resistant to radiation.

This capacity has been an astounding discovery in the scientific community, due that the mechanisms for DNA repair that this bacteria has, has become one of the most valuable tools for bioremediation studies. 

As I told you, to consider bacteria has having limited evolution is pretty much a very naive and based on a very limited knowledge pool comment. You're drawing conclusions that complex life = more developed, which is extremely false.