Evolution: hacking back the tree of life (can anyone say DEVOLUTION?)

New Scientist ^ | June 13, 2007 | Laura Spinney

[muawiyah]

Once we get SDI out of the way (and working I might add), it’s time to search the other planets for functioning protein-making machinery.

[ThinkClearly]

They’ve evolved an efficient way to continue eating and breeding by use of a certain system. This pattern of development is an advance for that species. Humans have an appendix they don’t use, is that ‘devolution’ or a vestigial remains of a time when our species DID have a use for it?

[RightWhale]

There is some doubt that our CNS including the brain parts are necessary to consciousness. It is an old question. Some creatures exhibit clear responsiveness and behavior with no hint of a nervous system at all, even our cousins the plants do that.

[RightWhale]

If it’s there we’ll stumble across it. We probably already have. In the meantime space programs are the state equivalent of high-marking contests.

[GodGunsGuts]

==The TOE doesn’t require or infer increasing complexity. That is a later addition by exegetes of limited cognizance.

The whole notion was popularized by Darwin himself in his "Orgin of Species." Here's the chart from his book:

And here's his explanation of the "great Tree of Life":

"The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connexion of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and bear all the other branches; so with the species which lived during long-past geological periods, very few now have living and modified descendants. From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off; and these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren, which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications."

[editor-surveyor]

"Devolution is Evolution."

Devolution is only, and always, a loss of 'part of the blueprint.' If the wind blows away the plan pages for the elevator, and we build the building without it, thus relying on the stairway, it is not an evolution of the art of building.

[muawiyah]

No doubt the primary purpose of the brain is to serve as a sort of multi-dimensional full home theatre system for the critter who lives within.

At the moment we don't know where the seat of consciousness resides, but I'd bet it's in at least one cell located near the main signal switching unit in the brain.

Now a thought like that is a tad heretical since it denies primacy to the brain ~ on the other hand it allows for consideration of all cellular life as repositories for fully conscious (if not knowledgeable) entitites ~

Nikko Tinbergen suggested that 100% of all the known functions of a human being can be found in the single celled paramecium. Lorenz, his contemporary, also discussed King Solomon's Ring, a kind of an icebreaker in any conversation about freewill, consciousness, and just exactly why is that parrot trying to make time with my girl.

Think of multicellular life as a prosthesis for a horribly handicapped, but fantastically intelligent, microscopic lifeform.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

The history of most fossil species include two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism:

1) Stasis - most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless;

2) Sudden appearance - in any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed’.

When did God give us the English Bulldog?
When did God give us the French Poodle?
When did God give us the Boston Terrier?

[Diplomat]

Because the mathematics of abiogenesis never work. Thus we’ll never see the suggestion that there are multple starting life forms when no one can prove the first one could even come into existence.

You cannot spontanously create the simpliest life form presently known to man without completely defying the laws of probability. This is why many evolutionists will state that there were many, many intermediate lifeforms that evolved between the first life form that came into existance and the single celled amoeba we find today. Those lifeforms are either extinct, or as of yet, undetected.

Continuing, these life forms were much simplier and gained complexity and functions over many successive generations until they become like the single celled amoeba we find today. It really comes down to this, God did it, or space aliens. And if you want to go with space aliens, where did they come from originally?

[RightWhale]

It’s like the arrow of time. That is a figment, too.

[Tribune7]

Yup

[editor-surveyor]

"perhaps you're also familiar with the fact that that quote is taken from his work on the theory of punctuated equilibrium, in which rapid changes in an organism spark fantastic changes over a short period of evolutionary history"

I.e. a pipe dream. Gould didn't pretend that there was a shred of evidence to support punctuated equilibrium, except for the fact that, as he said, "the alternative is unthinkable." (to the evolutionite believer)

"Of course, if you're quoting one of the pre-eminent evolutionists of our time as an argument against evolution"

Gould's writing utterly demolished evolution, but he kept on grasping at straws. (he was, after all evolution's most prolific straw inventor)

[RightWhale]

Evolution in reality has nothing to do with probability. That is a speculation by mechanicists and other Paracelsians.

[muawiyah]

Sure you can ~ first, you create a chamber with 50 atmospheres pressure. Introduce some distilled water. It'll collapse into a crystalline form that looks just like the double-helix of DNA.

Now that we know that this chemical structure simply pops out of the very structure of the universe (like any other crystal), all we have to do is toss in some contaminants, and we can start building DNA.

Sufficient number of contaminants, and sufficient amount of water, given the pressure, I don't think the probabilities are as meaningful as they once were.

Currently we live in a universe that seems almost made for our existence. Could be that the most ancient original lifeforms created it for that purpose. And maybe not. But the hardest part of the task can apparently be done quite easily.

[editor-surveyor]

"Wherever that 'nobody' statement came from it can go back now"

It came from the intro of the article...

[GodGunsGuts]

Very well said. Don’t be surprised if you see me using your analogy in the future. But if I do, I promise to give proper attribution :o)

[GodGunsGuts]

They all devolved from the original created kind.

[RightWhale]

The purpose of the nervous system, including those neural networks with a brain of some kind, is partly to speed up thought processes so the creature can walk around with some safety and partly to secrete hormones that control a hot metabolism needed to provide energy to walk around long enough and fast enough to catch dinner to feed that hot metabolism. That did not evolve randomly or otherwise, life came up with it out of sheer playfulness.

[editor-surveyor]

"Humans have an appendix they don’t use"

That nonsense was disproven before either of us was born; it's the argument of a stranded mind.

[RightWhale]

That proves I don’t read these C/E articles. Just the comments in the posts is about all I can manage if they are kept to a line or two.