The Origin of Complex Life Forms and Their Purpose

[Enoch07]

Yes, of course. The neck, heart and valve were always in place and they evolved all together. All three structures, neck, heart and valves have evolved a long time back in the first land mammals to manage blood circulation. Their positions, numbers and structures have differentiated over time as different species adapted to different ecological conditions in the various reptiles, birds and mammals. The entire circulatory system evolves as a tightly coupled group through a gene network, each of whose expressions in the developing embryo depends on the strength and timing of other gene expressions on the same network. To take a toy example, one of the valve gene network may read "For every 15cm increase in neck length, add another cell layer to thicken valve muscle." while another network may read "for every n meters of heart to brain blood vessel length add k number of valves equally spaced along the tubing." Such gene networks are widespread throughout all animal world and they automatically adjust the connected groups of organs that need to coevolve to maintain biological balance through evolutionary adaptation.

Ok that is an acceptable answer to my question.

 

[sayak83]

Ok that is an acceptable answer to my question.

If you can get hold of this from a local university library, I would recommend this book,

Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution

 

[Enoch07]

If you can get hold of this from a local university library, I would recommend this book,

Great Transformations in Vertebrate Evolution

Thanks I'll look into it.

 

[Profound Realization]

Personally, I see no reason to jump to the conclusion that intelligent design is in any way necessary to explain life as we see it. Evolution by natural selection makes sense, there is a plethora of evidence supporting it, there has not been any contradictory evidence found, and there is no verifiable, testable evidence for any creator.

Explanations of life are made by intelligent beings, they designed the models and thought of natural selection. Intelligent designers are much needed to explain anything or attempt to explain.

Nature selected intelligent beings to explain such or attempt to explain. "Natural Selection" is a peculiar set of words given to something that essentially means: Nature chose.

 

[leibowde84]

Explanations of life are made by intelligent beings, they designed the models and thought of natural selection. Intelligent designers are much needed to explain anything or attempt to explain.

Nature selected intelligent beings to explain such or attempt to explain. "Natural Selection" is a peculiar set of words given to something that essentially means: Nature chose.

I'm sorry, but I can't make sense of this at all. Are you saying that these "intelligent beings" are us humans who discovered evolution by natural selection as the natural mechanism by which speciation occurs?

 

[stevevw]

In another thread, a poster said the following.

"I didn’t start believing in the existence of God because some religion said so. What made me a believer was my study of science. The more I learned about how the universe works, specially life forms, the more I realized how incredibly connected and complex everything is. There is so much intelligence, so much creativity and so much purpose behind everything that I couldn’t believe it happened without someone designing it.
That's the base of it. I could develop this subject but there is so much material I would rather do it on a separate post."

I am setting my beliefs and knowledge aside for a moment to solicit thoughts on why it would require intelligence and creativity to create complex beings and to understand what purpose is behind this, and why this would be more plausible to an individual than evolution through natural selection.

This thread was not created as a call-out. The poster offered to expound on this, and I asked her if she would be kind enough to participate in this thread and share her thoughts. I welcome anyone else's thoughts on this as well.


ETA: I neglected to include the fact that the poster mentioned above claims to be well studied on the theory of evolution.

I agree that basically, it is the complexity of life but also a range of other qualities like organisation, harmony, patterns, language, codes, systems, that indicate intelligence rather than a self-created, naturalistic and material cause. That is why evolution by natural selection with random mutations providing the variation in life has been attributed with more and more creative ability to account for these qualities becuase everyone knows that there is a lot to be accounted as revealed by what we see and discover. It is easy to see how natural selection can appear to account for how life came about and can evolve graduallly more complexity through a world view as it has good explanation power but only up to a point. It is when it comes down to the detail that it begins to fail and account for all the qualities of life and the explanations then have to be more and more extraordinary to the point that natural selection begins to gain an almost god like ability and crative power.

Even without appealing to a supernatural God there are other mechanisms that are natural, inherent, pre-existing and a part of life and have always been there form the gebinning that can account for how complex life emerged and changes besides natural selection that are being overlooked becuase some want to make evolution above God and take him out of the picture to make humans the all powerful being who is able to be like god.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I agree that basically, it is the complexity of life but also a range of other qualities like organisation, harmony, patterns, language, codes, systems, that indicate intelligence rather than a self-created, naturalistic and material cause. That is why evolution by natural selection with random mutations providing the variation in life has been attributed with more and more creative ability to account for these qualities becuase everyone knows that there is a lot to be accounted as revealed by what we see and discover. It is easy to see how natural selection can appear to account for how life came about and can evolve graduallly more complexity through a world view as it has good explanation power but only up to a point. It is when it comes down to the detail that it begins to fail and account for all the qualities of life and the explanations then have to be more and more extraordinary to the point that natural selection begins to gain an almost god like ability and crative power.

Even without appealing to a supernatural God there are other mechanisms that are natural, inherent, pre-existing and a part of life and have always been there form the gebinning that can account for how complex life emerged and changes besides natural selection that are being overlooked becuase some want to make evolution above God and take him out of the picture to make humans the all powerful being who is able to be like god.

Can you give an example of a form or function found in living things that cannot possibly be a result of natural selection, and how you determined it?

Please give an example of a pre-existing mechanism that can produce complex life and changes in life forms that isn't natural selection.

Please provide evidence of how evolutionary theory is used to "take God out of the picture".

 

[stevevw]

Can you give an example of a form or function found in living things that cannot possibly be a result of natural selection, and how you determined it?

Please give an example of a pre-existing mechanism that can produce complex life and changes in life forms that isn't natural selection.

Please provide evidence of how evolutionary theory is used to "take God out of the picture".

Scientists have been challenging the Neo Darwinian theory for some time because what they are seeing and discovering cannot be accounted for by natural selection and random mutations and have been formulating a new revised synthesis. There are a number of mechanisms which influence how life came about and changes.

Some of the mentioned processes are covered in this paper,

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

Developmental bias refers to “a bias on the production of variant phenotypes or a limitation on phenotypic variability caused by the structure, character, composition, or dynamics of the developmental system.”[2]Essentially, something within the development of the species constrains the possible set of expressed features, favouring some over others. Example given in paper.

There is phenotypic plasticity.
Phenotypic plasticity is also changing the gene-centred view of evolution. Phenotypic plasticity refers to the way certain organisms can directly alter their morphology, physiology, and behaviour in response to an environmental change. What is interesting about these changes is that they occur within the lifetime of the individual organism itself rather than lagging behind in evolutionary time. Example given in paper.

Then there is Niche construction.
Niche construction avows that organisms do not simply passively adapt to their surrounding environment through the survival of the fittest but will actively alter that environment so that it is often more hospitable for them and their descendants or other species. Example given in paper.

The author Laland contends that SET (Standard evolutionary theory) treats the environment as merely a “background condition” rather than a central factor involved in the evolutionary process. EES (Extended Evolutionary Theory) takes into consideration the entire ecology of the system where the environment and organism live in a mutual relationship and where both are substantial players in the evolutionary process.

Finally, extra-genetic inheritance. The most cited of these mechanisms is epigenetic markers, but it can also include the transmission of social behavior (i.e., social learning and cultural evolution) and even ecological inheritance. An organism’s DNA does not unilaterally produce the specific organism, but rather these extra-genetic factors can suppress or reveal aspects of the genetic code, sometimes altering features of the organism. What is more, these epigenetic markers can be influenced by environmental and behavioural patterns and can be transmitted to progeny up to two to three generations.
The Changing Face of Evolutionary Theory?

The following paper is dispelling the myths that natural selection is made to be all powerful by many biologists and capable of explaining all changes in organisms. It explains changes in organisms through genomics and population evolution and how the emergence of complex life and the building of the structures for complex organisms come from non- adaptive influences and not adaptive evolution ie (natural selection).

The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity
Abstract
What is in question is whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.
The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

Here is another paper explaining how non-adaptive forces rather than natural selection are more responsible for the emergence of genetic networks and states that even though natural selection has been claimed to be responsible for morphing different complex forms and structures there has been no formal demonstration of the adaptive origin of these genetic networks.
The evolution of genetic networks by non-adaptive processes
The evolution of genetic networks by non-adaptive processes : Abstract : Nature Reviews Genetics

This paper explains how the modern synthesis of Neo Darwinism is being challenged by various other mechanisms apart from natural selection such as HGT which undermines the tree of life and makes the origins of life more like a forest of life where organisms share genetic material. Non-adaptive forces are more dominant than natural selection for increasing complexity.
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics
There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non-adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics

There are many control genes (Hox genes) that are behind the creation of body plans in all creatures and are similar in all life. This is derived from developmental evolution which is challenging the Neo Darwinian point of view. According to natural selection an eye for example was evolved several times to account for the different eyes used in different creatures. According to latest discoveries the eye was only invented once, and all the different eyes are a result of switching genes on and off. In this sense new features do not need to be evolved and mutated into existence but are already there and are built through tinkering and switching on of pre-existing genetic material.
Evolution: Library: Walter Gehring: Master Control Genes and the Evolution of the Eye

This is also supported by the following papers

Universal Genome in the Origin of Metazoa: Thoughts About Evolution
(a) the Universal Genome that encodes all major developmental programs essential for various phyla of Metazoa emerged in a unicellular or a primitive multicellular organism shortly before the Cambrian period;
(b) The Metazoan phyla, all having similar genomes, are nonetheless so distinct because they utilize specific combinations of developmental programs.

This model has two major predictions, first that a significant fraction of genetic information in lower taxon’s must be functionally useless but becomes useful in higher taxon’s, and second that one should be able to turn on in lower taxon’s some of the complex latent developmental programs, e.g. a program of eye development or antibody synthesis in sea urchin. An example of natural turning on of a complex latent program in a lower taxon is discussed.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.4161/cc.6.15.4557#.VaEEzbUoTfc

This supports the idea that life has predetermined codes that needed to be around early and are not the results of adaptations (natural selection) as they seem to be part of a uniform set of specific 3D structures that are the same for all life.

The protein folds as Platonic forms: New support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law
However, in the case of one class of very important organic forms-the basic protein folds- advances in protein chemistry since the early 1970s have revealed that they represent a finite set of natural forms, determined by a number of generative constructional rules, like those which govern the formation of atoms or crystals, in which functional adaptations are clearly secondary modifications of primary "givens of physics." The folds are evidently determined by natural law, not natural selection, and are "lawful forms" in the Platonic and pre-Darwinian sense of the word, which are bound to occur everywhere in the universe where the same 20 amino acids are used for their construction. We argue that this is a major discovery which has many important implications regarding the origin of proteins, the origin of life and the fundamental nature of organic form.
The protein folds as platonic forms: new support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law. - PubMed - NCBI

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Scientists have been challenging the Neo Darwinian theory for some time because what they are seeing and discovering cannot be accounted for by natural selection and random mutations and have been formulating a new revised synthesis. There are a number of mechanisms which influence how life came about and changes.

Some of the mentioned processes are covered in this paper,

Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

Developmental bias refers to “a bias on the production of variant phenotypes or a limitation on phenotypic variability caused by the structure, character, composition, or dynamics of the developmental system.”[2]Essentially, something within the development of the species constrains the possible set of expressed features, favouring some over others. Example given in paper.

There is phenotypic plasticity.
Phenotypic plasticity is also changing the gene-centred view of evolution. Phenotypic plasticity refers to the way certain organisms can directly alter their morphology, physiology, and behaviour in response to an environmental change. What is interesting about these changes is that they occur within the lifetime of the individual organism itself rather than lagging behind in evolutionary time. Example given in paper.

Then there is Niche construction.
Niche construction avows that organisms do not simply passively adapt to their surrounding environment through the survival of the fittest but will actively alter that environment so that it is often more hospitable for them and their descendants or other species. Example given in paper.

The author Laland contends that SET (Standard evolutionary theory) treats the environment as merely a “background condition” rather than a central factor involved in the evolutionary process. EES (Extended Evolutionary Theory) takes into consideration the entire ecology of the system where the environment and organism live in a mutual relationship and where both are substantial players in the evolutionary process.

Finally, extra-genetic inheritance. The most cited of these mechanisms is epigenetic markers, but it can also include the transmission of social behavior (i.e., social learning and cultural evolution) and even ecological inheritance. An organism’s DNA does not unilaterally produce the specific organism, but rather these extra-genetic factors can suppress or reveal aspects of the genetic code, sometimes altering features of the organism. What is more, these epigenetic markers can be influenced by environmental and behavioural patterns and can be transmitted to progeny up to two to three generations.
The Changing Face of Evolutionary Theory?

The following paper is dispelling the myths that natural selection is made to be all powerful by many biologists and capable of explaining all changes in organisms. It explains changes in organisms through genomics and population evolution and how the emergence of complex life and the building of the structures for complex organisms come from non- adaptive influences and not adaptive evolution ie (natural selection).

The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity
Abstract
What is in question is whether natural selection is a necessary or sufficient force to explain the emergence of the genomic and cellular features central to the building of complex organisms.
The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

Here is another paper explaining how non-adaptive forces rather than natural selection are more responsible for the emergence of genetic networks and states that even though natural selection has been claimed to be responsible for morphing different complex forms and structures there has been no formal demonstration of the adaptive origin of these genetic networks.
The evolution of genetic networks by non-adaptive processes
The evolution of genetic networks by non-adaptive processes : Abstract : Nature Reviews Genetics

This paper explains how the modern synthesis of Neo Darwinism is being challenged by various other mechanisms apart from natural selection such as HGT which undermines the tree of life and makes the origins of life more like a forest of life where organisms share genetic material. Non-adaptive forces are more dominant than natural selection for increasing complexity.
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics
There is no consistent tendency of evolution towards increased genomic complexity, and when complexity increases, this appears to be a non-adaptive consequence of evolution under weak purifying selection rather than an adaptation.
Darwinian evolution in the light of genomics

There are many control genes (Hox genes) that are behind the creation of body plans in all creatures and are similar in all life. This is derived from developmental evolution which is challenging the Neo Darwinian point of view. According to natural selection an eye for example was evolved several times to account for the different eyes used in different creatures. According to latest discoveries the eye was only invented once, and all the different eyes are a result of switching genes on and off. In this sense new features do not need to be evolved and mutated into existence but are already there and are built through tinkering and switching on of pre-existing genetic material.
Evolution: Library: Walter Gehring: Master Control Genes and the Evolution of the Eye

This is also supported by the following papers

Universal Genome in the Origin of Metazoa: Thoughts About Evolution
(a) the Universal Genome that encodes all major developmental programs essential for various phyla of Metazoa emerged in a unicellular or a primitive multicellular organism shortly before the Cambrian period;
(b) The Metazoan phyla, all having similar genomes, are nonetheless so distinct because they utilize specific combinations of developmental programs.

This model has two major predictions, first that a significant fraction of genetic information in lower taxon’s must be functionally useless but becomes useful in higher taxon’s, and second that one should be able to turn on in lower taxon’s some of the complex latent developmental programs, e.g. a program of eye development or antibody synthesis in sea urchin. An example of natural turning on of a complex latent program in a lower taxon is discussed.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.4161/cc.6.15.4557#.VaEEzbUoTfc

This supports the idea that life has predetermined codes that needed to be around early and are not the results of adaptations (natural selection) as they seem to be part of a uniform set of specific 3D structures that are the same for all life.

The protein folds as Platonic forms: New support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law
However, in the case of one class of very important organic forms-the basic protein folds- advances in protein chemistry since the early 1970s have revealed that they represent a finite set of natural forms, determined by a number of generative constructional rules, like those which govern the formation of atoms or crystals, in which functional adaptations are clearly secondary modifications of primary "givens of physics." The folds are evidently determined by natural law, not natural selection, and are "lawful forms" in the Platonic and pre-Darwinian sense of the word, which are bound to occur everywhere in the universe where the same 20 amino acids are used for their construction. We argue that this is a major discovery which has many important implications regarding the origin of proteins, the origin of life and the fundamental nature of organic form.
The protein folds as platonic forms: new support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law. - PubMed - NCBI

Rather than copying and pasting a whole wedge of text, can you demonstrate a personal understanding of the topic involved by answering my questions in your own words? You can still use references to support them.

 

[stevevw]

Rather than copying and pasting a whole wedge of text, can you demonstrate a personal understanding of the topic involved by answering my questions in your own words? You can still use references to support them.

I thought I did that with a commentary before each link. Sorry, normally I have learnt when I just speak about things in my own words I have found people reject this and want scientific support, so I have learnt to focus more of the scientific verification from the papers. So as I have covered several ideas it will require some explanation. I will go through everything and then we may want to look at things one by one. As mentioned the Neo-Darwinian synthesis is being challenged by a number of areas such as developmental biology, genomics, epigenetics, ecology and social science. The neo Darwinian theory has taken a gene centric narrow view of how life has evolved and changed with random mutations providing new variations and natural selection sifting through these to create the complex life we see throughout history and today. But this view does not account for how life can evolve as the nature paper puts it,

We hold that organisms are constructed in development, not simply ‘programmed’ to develop by genes. Living things do not evolve to fit into pre-existing environments, but co-construct and coevolve with their environments, in the process changing the structure of ecosystems.
Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

All areas of life that may affect a living thing and should be taken into consideration as to what may influence change in the way a creature lives and the effect that has on their genome, the ability life has to have a say in changing things rather than always being subject to environmental pressures and having to always adapt to make changes. When the question has been posed as to how an organism can possibly acquire some complex feature the explanation is always around adaptations, environmental pressure and natural selection producing the needed change but when it comes to the detail of how that happens it is always missing. Because simple examples of selection are well known it is then assumed that natural selection must be responsible for all else. This seems to be the common understanding and promoted view which is simplistic and unsupported. This is the myth that Lynch is trying to dispel in his paper.

Evolutionary biology is treated unlike any science by both academics and the general public. For the average person, evolution is equivalent to natural selection, and because the concept of selection is easy to grasp, a reasonable understanding of comparative biology is often taken to be a license for evolutionary speculation. It has long been known that natural selection is just one of several mechanisms of evolutionary change, but the myth that all of evolution can be explained by adaptation continues to be perpetuated by our continued homage to Darwin's treatise (6) in the popular literature.
The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

There are also inbuilt mechanisms that can help change a creature in development both in the embryo and in their own lifetime some more than others. All life has similar basic control genes which can be switched on or off according to a number of things with epigenetics being one influence that can change a creature in their own lifetime but can also affect future generations in the way their genes are expressed. The standard evolutionary theory says that the eye for example evolved many times through a sort of convergent evolution to account for the many different eyes in different living things. Yet these eyes have similar basic structures and there have been similar control genes (Hox genes) and clusters of genes discovered in all these different eyes. So rather than several eyes being evolved there was one basics eye created and from this all eyes were made by switching on the needed genes for the different eyes.

This is also supported by the last couple of papers I posted in the previous post.They also indicate that becuase many of the control genes and the basic structure of proteins are similar for all life they had to be around very early before the Cambrian explosion. So most if not all of the basic body plans for life were around too early and appeared too suddenly to be accounted for by slow evolution. From these basic genes all life has been made and genes can be switched on or off accordingly when needed. Natural selection may then refine these but it does not create the original feature.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.4161/cc.6.15.4557#.VaEEzbUoTfc
The protein folds as platonic forms: new support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law. - PubMed - NCBI

This is another example of how natural selection has been given the creative credit becuase that is what people have been told when there were other mechanisms involved as well. Selection may refine the feature after it has been created but it does not create the feature de novo. As stated by one of the scientists at a meeting of top scientists in Austria discussing the new synthesis and future direction for evolution mentions "The Neo Darwinian theory is good at modelling the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest.”
Biological theory: Postmodern evolution? : Nature News

It seems living things can also be influenced by other living organisms especially those that coexist in an environment and exchange genetic material such as through HGT and symbiosis. Not just for micro-organisms but also for complex creatures as well where micro-organisms can transfer genetic info to complex life. Considering that 95% of all life is microbe then most of life shared their genetic material and the tree of life is not a single trunk like evolution has made out where genetic info is past on vertically and mutations and selected to gain new genetic info, but it is more like a forest of genes where there may be vast difference in genetic info within each organism, but this vastness can be combined into a greater pool of genetic material to form new combinations.

The environment itself can have an effect on life by being able to act as a conduit for transferring genetic material and organisms can also be affected by the environment and change accordingly through phenotypic plasticity to suit that environment and then later have the genes backup those changes rather than the other way around through evolution. It seems there is something within living things that can connect them to the environment and activate the necessary genes required to adapt to that environment rather than just through blind adaptations hoping to find the right mutated genetic info in among a vast amount of possibilities. The environment changes with life and the ecosystem can become one living organism which is working together to help life survive. It seems living things have more say in what happens to them than previously thought.

Basically, the narrow view offered by Neo-Darwinism has not been able to explain what is being seen and is requiring an ever-increasing extra ordinary explanation to account for the evidence. Another example from the Nature paper for example talks about how different species can evolve the same features when living in different locations. The standard theory would account for this with convergent evolution, but this is beginning to require extraordinary coincidences as more discoveries have found that the creatures have the exact same features even right down to the same genes. A better explanation is that these species follow a biased development paths with is designed to produce certain structures more readily than others.

When we view life changing this in the context of all these processes such as niche construction, epigenetics, extra genetic inheritance, phenotypic plasticity, HGT, developmental biology etc it begins to make more sense and fit the evidence better than appealing to adaptations that just happen to produce the exact same things by coincident, or that can perhaps account for part of the process but leave big gaps that need explaining or require a lot of assumption and speculation it makes more sense to see that life is far more complicated when it comes to how it emerged and changes. The standard evolutionary theory will regard the above-mentioned mechanisms as small influences on the sidelines of the main driving force ie adaptations (natural selection) for evolution but many are saying that these additional forces are actually driving forces themselves and need to be included if we are to have a complete understanding of how life can evolve.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

I thought I did that with a commentary before each link. Sorry, normally I have learnt when I just speak about things in my own words I have found people reject this and want scientific support, so I have learnt to focus more of the scientific verification from the papers. So as I have covered several ideas it will require some explanation. I will go through everything and then we may want to look at things one by one. As mentioned the Neo-Darwinian synthesis is being challenged by a number of areas such as developmental biology, genomics, epigenetics, ecology and social science. The neo Darwinian theory has taken a gene centric narrow view of how life has evolved and changed with random mutations providing new variations and natural selection sifting through these to create the complex life we see throughout history and today. But this view does not account for how life can evolve as the nature paper puts it,

We hold that organisms are constructed in development, not simply ‘programmed’ to develop by genes. Living things do not evolve to fit into pre-existing environments, but co-construct and coevolve with their environments, in the process changing the structure of ecosystems.
Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?

All areas of life that may affect a living thing and should be taken into consideration as to what may influence change in the way a creature lives and the effect that has on their genome, the ability life has to have a say in changing things rather than always being subject to environmental pressures and having to always adapt to make changes. When the question has been posed as to how an organism can possibly acquire some complex feature the explanation is always around adaptations, environmental pressure and natural selection producing the needed change but when it comes to the detail of how that happens it is always missing. Because simple examples of selection are well known it is then assumed that natural selection must be responsible for all else. This seems to be the common understanding and promoted view which is simplistic and unsupported. This is the myth that Lynch is trying to dispel in his paper.

Evolutionary biology is treated unlike any science by both academics and the general public. For the average person, evolution is equivalent to natural selection, and because the concept of selection is easy to grasp, a reasonable understanding of comparative biology is often taken to be a license for evolutionary speculation. It has long been known that natural selection is just one of several mechanisms of evolutionary change, but the myth that all of evolution can be explained by adaptation continues to be perpetuated by our continued homage to Darwin's treatise (6) in the popular literature.
The frailty of adaptive hypotheses for the origins of organismal complexity

There are also inbuilt mechanisms that can help change a creature in development both in the embryo and in their own lifetime some more than others. All life has similar basic control genes which can be switched on or off according to a number of things with epigenetics being one influence that can change a creature in their own lifetime but can also affect future generations in the way their genes are expressed. The standard evolutionary theory says that the eye for example evolved many times through a sort of convergent evolution to account for the many different eyes in different living things. Yet these eyes have similar basic structures and there have been similar control genes (Hox genes) and clusters of genes discovered in all these different eyes. So rather than several eyes being evolved there was one basics eye created and from this all eyes were made by switching on the needed genes for the different eyes. This is also supported by the last couple of papers I posted in the previous post.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.4161/cc.6.15.4557#.VaEEzbUoTfc
The protein folds as platonic forms: new support for the pre-Darwinian conception of evolution by natural law. - PubMed - NCBI

This is another example of how natural selection has been given the creative credit becuase that is what people have been told when there were other mechanisms involved as well. Selection may refine the feature after it has been created but it does not create the feature de novo. As stated by one of the scientists at a meeting of top scientists in Austria discussing the new synthesis and future direction for evolution mentions "The Neo Darwinian theory is good at modelling the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest.”
Biological theory: Postmodern evolution? : Nature News

It seems living things can also be influenced by other living organisms especially those that coexist in an environment and exchange genetic material such as through HGT and symbiosis. Not just for micro-organisms but also for complex creatures as well where micro-organisms can transfer genetic info to complex life. Considering that 95% of all life is microbe then most of life shared their genetic material and the tree of life is not a single trunk like evolution has made out where genetic info is past on vertically and mutations and selected to gain new genetic info, but it is more like a forest of genes where there may be vast difference in genetic info within each organism, but this vastness can be combined into a greater pool of genetic material to form new combinations.

The environment itself can have an effect on life by being able to act as a conduit for transferring genetic material and organisms can also be affected by the environment and change accordingly through phenotypic plasticity to suit that environment and then later have the genes backup those changes rather than the other way around through evolution. It seems there is something within living things that can connect them to the environment and activate the necessary genes required to adapt to that environment rather than just through blind adaptations hoping to find the right mutated genetic info in among a vast amount of possibilities. The environment changes with life and the ecosystem can become one living organism which is working together to help life survive. It seems living things have more say in what happens to them than previously thought.

Basically, the narrow view offered by Neo-Darwinism has not been able to explain what is being seen and is requiring an ever-increasing extra ordinary explanation to account for the evidence. Another example from the Nature paper for example talks about how different species can evolve the same features when living in different locations. The standard theory would account for this with convergent evolution, but this is beginning to require extraordinary coincidences as more discoveries have found that the creatures have the exact same features even right down to the same genes. A better explanation is that these species follow a biased development paths with is designed to produce certain structures more readily than others.

When we view life changing this in the context of all these processes such as niche construction, epigenetics, extra genetic inheritance, phenotypic plasticity, HGT, developmental biology etc it begins to make more sense and fit the evidence better than appealing to adaptations that just happen to produce the exact same things by coincident, or that can perhaps account for part of the process but leave big gaps that need explaining or require a lot of assumption and speculation it makes more sense to see that life is far more complicated when it comes to how it emerged and changes. The standard evolutionary theory will regard the above-mentioned mechanisms as small influences on the sidelines of the main driving force ie adaptations (natural selection) for evolution but many are saying that these additional forces are actually driving forces themselves and need to be included if we are to have a complete understanding of how life can evolve.

Once again, this is a wall of text. Can you please give concise answers to my questions rather than forcing me to read through reams of text in order to find the answers I asked for? Here are the requests again:

Can you give an example of a form or function found in living things that cannot possibly be a result of natural selection, and how you determined it?

Please give an example of a pre-existing mechanism that can produce complex life and changes in life forms that isn't natural selection.

Please provide evidence of how evolutionary theory is used to "take God out of the picture".

If it helps, do it in bullet-point formatting. I want you to be concise.

 

[stevevw]

)

Once again, this is a wall of text. Can you please give concise answers to my questions rather than forcing me to read through reams of text in order to find the answers I asked for? Here are the requests again:
If it helps, do it in bullet-point formatting. I want you to be concise.

Can you give an example of a form or function found in living things that cannot possibly be a result of natural selection, and how you determined it?

If you would have readthe papers you would have answered the question. For example the Nature paper talks about development bias and gives the example nearly 1000 centipede species that have an odd number of legs despite the different environmental settings and their different evolutionary histories. This is explained by the development process in centipedes and the way in which the physical development of the leg segments constrains the possible number of legs—thus leading to an odd number of legs in centipede species that evolved independently of each other. This happenes as part of the developmental process which has determined that some traits are more suitable or needed and not from adaptations associated with random mutations and natural selection.

Please give an example of a pre-existing mechanism that can produce complex life and changes in life forms that isn't natural selection.

Well the above is one example as the changes are part of the creatures developmental process and therefore preexisting. This would have to be the same for all life going back in history. HGT and symbiosis are examples of the tranference of complex genetic material without the process of natural selection. In fact endosymbiosis theory mentions that all eukaryotic cells came from prokaryotic organisms. It holds that the organelles distinguishing eukaryote cells evolved through symbiosis of individual single-celled prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea). Along similar lines living things such as plants especially will form symbiotic connections with microorganisms to gain needed genetic material for adaptation to their enviroments. All without the need for random mutations trying to mutate the right stuff and selection trying to sift thought the wrong stuff to find the right stuff becuase the genetic gains from the symbiotic relationship is the right stuff because that is how life works in living things cohabitating with each other and their enviroments.

Please provide evidence of how evolutionary theory is used to "take God out of the picture".

Well this one is a bit harder because it is more about a personal and phiolsophical views. The main support comes from a lot of what is said about evolution in in debates and from prominent who support evolution and has nothing to do with whether evolution is true or not. Evolution is primarily trying to show that everything has a naturalistic explanation so therefore it inherently is disproviong God. Dawkins is probably the best example with his book the God delusion. You often hear him and others talk about how there is no God and everything can be explained through natural selections awesome power.

 

[Milton Platt]

In another thread, a poster said the following.

"I didn’t start believing in the existence of God because some religion said so. What made me a believer was my study of science. The more I learned about how the universe works, specially life forms, the more I realized how incredibly connected and complex everything is. There is so much intelligence, so much creativity and so much purpose behind everything that I couldn’t believe it happened without someone designing it.
That's the base of it. I could develop this subject but there is so much material I would rather do it on a separate post."

I am setting my beliefs and knowledge aside for a moment to solicit thoughts on why it would require intelligence and creativity to create complex beings and to understand what purpose is behind this, and why this would be more plausible to an individual than evolution through natural selection.

This thread was not created as a call-out. The poster offered to expound on this, and I asked her if she would be kind enough to participate in this thread and share her thoughts. I welcome anyone else's thoughts on this as well.


ETA: I neglected to include the fact that the poster mentioned above claims to be well studied on the theory of evolution.

Why are you assuming life has a purpose?