Irreducible Complexity: another Nail in Evolution's Coffin

[eagleseven]

So instead of having someone trying to explain it to me I should just take your word for it huh? Thats all you really want. Affirmation not information right. Well there is no point trying to talk to people like that because no matter what they believe they are already wrong. At least I'm trying to see both sides of things.

If you're willing to understand, I'm willing to explain.

Simply put, the reason why we see more variation in bacteria, than in animals, is because bacteria reproduce much more rapidly. Remember, every generation is an opportunity for mutation and genetic exchange (ie sex) to produce new and potentially beneficial traits.

So while we may reproduce only once every nine months, the bacteria growing in your oral plaque reproduce every fifteen minutes. So, every fifteen minutes, there is another opportunity for your oral bacteria to evolve.

Divide 4 billion years by fiffteen minutes, and multiple by the number of bacteria on the planet Earth, and you'll realize that there are more opportunities for bacteria to evolve than we can count!


Given those insanely high numbers, it seems almost inevitable that higher life forms (humans) would evolve! This is why scientists expect advance life to exist elsewhere in the universe.

 

[antagon]

I don't get why, if everything came from the same basic life form, it didn't evolve into the same thing. Why are there different plant, animals, bacteria ... etc. Were somethings lazier than others and just said screw it I ain't evolving? Im sure there is an answer to this. Blows my mind though.

natural selection is one of the major ways that evolution works. it means that features which allow life to survive to reproduce will be passed on through this reproduction. its that simple. it does not mean that all other life, say without these features, has to die off. these features or adaptations arise through mutation or through breeding, so not everything alive will be affected the same way. because advanced creatures like humans can actually aid the survival of simple organisms, germs and people exist at the same time despite germs being more similar to the simpler organisms which all life evolved from.

Yeah that helps at least in terms of multi system organisms. But I still dont get how single cell organisms would have developed into so many different things.

one way to look at advanced creatures like humans is to recognize that we are made up of specialized living cells which work together to keep the entire organism working. blood cells, sperm cells, fat cells -- each is a specialist which is alive.

bacteria function in colonies which offer simpler cooperation. sometimes it is just large numbers of the same bacteria, other times, like the portugese man-o-war, different types of bacteria are arranged in a way which makes an organism unto itself. this arrangement was subject to the same natural selection which kept it going -- made it stick. these types of arranged cooperations between single-celled organisms likely led to specialized systems in multi-celled organisms. still hundreds of examples of this transitional stage exist today.

 

[Flagwavrusa]

I don't get why, if everything came from the same basic life form, it didn't evolve into the same thing. Why are there different plant, animals, bacteria ... etc. Were somethings lazier than others and just said screw it I ain't evolving? Im sure there is an answer to this. Blows my mind though.

Your question boils down to why there are different species. A new species arises when a population with similar genetic makeup gets separated geographically, and you now have two separate populations breeding apart from each other and evolving under distinct environmental pressures. Over time, during what biologists call a speciation event, the two populations can become so different from each other you get an entirely new species.