Posted: Oct 16, 2010 7:14 pm
Oh, WTF, I have been threatening this for a while, so, since he is active on the forum at the moment, here goes, not that I think that he will listen but it might attract his attention, and the attention of others of his ilk.
This thread is to meet Stevebee’s challenge that no one can tell him simply “Where you are wrong” as asserted in the thread “remember stevebee”
I intend to take single assertions from Stevebee’s blog initially, but not exclusively, from the page “Trees organs and biosystems” and do precisely that - to show him where he is wrong on specific assertions.
I feel that it will be more conducive to rational discourse to discuss these on the Ratskept forum than on Stevebee’s blog but if required will post there too.
I would request that each post that is aimed against Stevebee's assertions contain at least once the text "you are wrong" and to give the reasons why.
So on with the first one:-
Basically the argument is the same as “if we evolved from monkeys then why do we not see monkeys evolving into humans today”. The rebuttal is also the same i.e. that no one who actually understands what the theory of evolution proposes would expect this to have to happen before evolution could be considered to be a factual occurrence.
*For example some slime moulds are single celled organisms which live most of their lives as single celled organisms in the soil. However, they congregate together for sex (they also have several hundreds of distinct genders) to form a multicellular ‘organism’ in which some cells serve the function of a locomotive slug like body, other cells become a stalk to hold up other cells which become a ‘fruiting body’ to produce spores that propagate the organism producing new single celled protist like individuals.
It is not inconceivable that the evolution of single to multi celled organisms could follow this path today and a species of slime mould change from becoming mainly single celled for most of it’s life cycle to becoming multi celled for the majority of it’s life cycle (just like us).
This thread is to meet Stevebee’s challenge that no one can tell him simply “Where you are wrong” as asserted in the thread “remember stevebee”
I intend to take single assertions from Stevebee’s blog initially, but not exclusively, from the page “Trees organs and biosystems” and do precisely that - to show him where he is wrong on specific assertions.
I feel that it will be more conducive to rational discourse to discuss these on the Ratskept forum than on Stevebee’s blog but if required will post there too.
I would request that each post that is aimed against Stevebee's assertions contain at least once the text "you are wrong" and to give the reasons why.
So on with the first one:-
No, the evolution from single to multi cell organisms happened at a time when there were no multi celled organisms filling up the niches that multi celled organisms now inhabit. It was a novel innovation then which gave a specific advantage that allowed the novel organisms to spread freely in a relatively uncompetitive environment. This novel innovation and the environment in which it could spread rapidly are extremely unlikely to occur again. This is an example of the loose rule that evolution is never likely to repeat in exactly the same way as it has done in the past. However, it’s not an impossibility for single celled organisms to evolve into multi celled organisms today*. You are wrong to assert this because the reality of evolution happening is not refuted by the assertion that we do not see new multi celled organisms evolving today.Stevebee wrote:If evolution was real, of the trillions of trillions of single celled species, wouldn’t we see thousands of newly forming tiny multi-celled species today? Right now?
Basically the argument is the same as “if we evolved from monkeys then why do we not see monkeys evolving into humans today”. The rebuttal is also the same i.e. that no one who actually understands what the theory of evolution proposes would expect this to have to happen before evolution could be considered to be a factual occurrence.
*For example some slime moulds are single celled organisms which live most of their lives as single celled organisms in the soil. However, they congregate together for sex (they also have several hundreds of distinct genders) to form a multicellular ‘organism’ in which some cells serve the function of a locomotive slug like body, other cells become a stalk to hold up other cells which become a ‘fruiting body’ to produce spores that propagate the organism producing new single celled protist like individuals.
It is not inconceivable that the evolution of single to multi celled organisms could follow this path today and a species of slime mould change from becoming mainly single celled for most of it’s life cycle to becoming multi celled for the majority of it’s life cycle (just like us).