Not sure what to make of this

[Andrew]

So its the chicken and egg scenario ?

[chesters1]

the chicken came first ,why? because a living chicken must exist before a "potential" chicken

[corydoras]

the chicken came first ,why? because a living chicken must exist before a "potential" chicken

No chesters the egg came first. There were eggs long before there were any birds.

[Vagabond]

No chesters the egg came first. There were eggs long before there were any birds.

 

Invoking fish eggs is cheating !

 

As an evolutionist, you have a better argument.

The egg (from which hatched the first chicken) came first, but was laid by a creature that was not a chicken.

Q.E.D.

[Vagabond]

No, no, no; not so fast. The table is applied to ANY human alive today There never was a time when there were only 2 human beings (or of any other organism) on earth.

Yes, hang on, not so fast.

 

Surely the first bit of protein that resulted from that chance combination of elements which enabled it to replicate was a single event - ie it wasn't something that occurred simultaneously in many different places. Like amoeba, this first chunk of "life" would grow, become too big for its own good (volume/surface area issues etc) and either perish or divide (making two chunks).

 

Further divisions would make further chunks - each would adapt (or perish) to any slight differences in its immediate environment and hey presto, evolution's on its way.

 

The circumstance of that initial spark of life is so unlikely, that I believe it only occurred once on Earth.

Evidence - there is only ONE genetic code linking all known living and extinct organisms - and yes I know it's "the dog that didn't bark in the night-time" sort of evidence, but the chances of each initial "spark" generating the same genetic code is not just like one monkey at a typewriter producing the works of Shakespeare, but TWO monkeys at two different typewriters both doing so.

[corydoras]

Invoking fish eggs is cheating !

 

As an evolutionist, you have a better argument.

The egg (from which hatched the first chicken) came first, but was laid by a creature that was not a chicken.

Q.E.D.

 

I wasn't thinking of fish eggs Dave, I was thinking more along the lines of something like Archosaur.

 

I was under the impression that no species ever gave birth to an animal that was a different species to it's parent. It's just that species blend over time or allele frequencies vary over time.

 

I'll try an analogy. I don't get to see my son in France so much these days, so when I see him I notice that he has grown, that his facial features are changing as he approaches adulthood, his voice has broke, he is even starting to sport whiskers on his top lip. I notice those things when I compare them to photographs and memories that I have of him when he was younger. Those photographs taken anywhere between weeks apart to months apart are like "fossils" of his development. His mother who sees him every day does not notice those changes so much, he never went to bed one night and woke up the next morning looking 3 months older. In a similar way species vary over time.

 

I admit that this is not the classic Evolution by Natural Selection of Darwin, it based more on The Modern Synthesis of Genetics and Evolution.

 

Don't forget that old Charlie didn't have the fossil record, nor did he know much, if anything about genetics, despite the fact that both he and Gregor Mendel were contemporaries and Mendel had read a German translation of "On the Origin of Species". I wonder what Mr Darwin would think if we could whizz him to the current day in some time-machine and show him our current understanding of evolution, including the fossil record, genetics, evolutionary developmentology AKA (evo-devo), evolutionary embryology, etc.

 

I'll bet this clip would blow his mind.

Youtube Video ->

Edited February 22, 2012 by corydoras

[corydoras]

Yes, hang on, not so fast.

 

Surely the first bit of protein that resulted from that chance combination of elements which enabled it to replicate was a single event - ie it wasn't something that occurred simultaneously in many different places. Like amoeba, this first chunk of "life" would grow, become too big for its own good (volume/surface area issues etc) and either perish or divide (making two chunks).

 

Further divisions would make further chunks - each would adapt (or perish) to any slight differences in its immediate environment and hey presto, evolution's on its way.

 

The circumstance of that initial spark of life is so unlikely, that I believe it only occurred once on Earth.

Evidence - there is only ONE genetic code linking all known living and extinct organisms - and yes I know it's "the dog that didn't bark in the night-time" sort of evidence, but the chances of each initial "spark" generating the same genetic code is not just like one monkey at a typewriter producing the works of Shakespeare, but TWO monkeys at two different typewriters both doing so.

That's pretty much the way I see it. If we ever found any kind of extra-terrestrial life, and no I'm not talking ET, something like our Archaea living in some hot spring on one of Jupiter's or Saturn's moons will do fine for meme. If we ever find something like that and it turns out to be based on the same DNA as we have here on Earth, now that might just throw a big really cat amongst some very small pigeons.

[Vagabond]

I was under the impression that no species ever gave birth to an animal that was a different species to it's parent.

 

"Species " is a man-made and imprecise term, coined before "evo-devo" was properly understood. It is useful as an arbitrary taxonomic unit, but has its limitations. Arguments between taxonomists as to what is or is not a "species" can get bitter and bloody.

 

The point I was making is that although genetic changes occur almost imperceptibly on a human lifetime scale, there must somewhere be (if you split the hair fine enough**) a point in the progression from a primitive eukaryote to a Red Jungle Fowl (from which we have bred our domestic chickens) that you could say a proto-chicken laid an egg from which developed what we call a chicken.

 

The change from one generation to the next might well be near-imperceptible, but the changes add up - or "speciation" would not occur at all.

 

** and don't forget that at a cellular level each genetic change is a quantum event - ie either a chromosome crosses over, or it does not.

[Andrew]

For what its worth, and bear in mind i am totally ignorant on this field, and many others,

One single life form gave rise to the rest of life form.

That ever so used word, EVOLUTION took over from one living being/organism/virus and all the other scientific names posted by Cory.

 

To say life EXPLODED onto the scene en mass is wrong, again IMHO.

[Vagabond]

One single life form gave rise to the rest of life form.

 

 

To say life EXPLODED onto the scene en mass is wrong, again IMHO.

Yep, in a nutshell