Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Coffee! Evolution – Sometimes you just don’t know what or who to believe.

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A reader sends me this oldie but goodie:

In “Can evolution make things less complicated? Scientists suggest cell origins involved a forward-and-backward process” Becky Ham for MSNBC.com explained (May 18, 2006 – a century ago in these times) that

… the data suggest that eukaryote cells with all their bells and whistles are probably as ancient as bacteria and archaea, and may have even appeared first, with bacteria and archaea appearing later as stripped-down versions of eukaryotes, according to David Penny, a molecular biologist at Massey University in New Zealand.

Penny, who worked on the research with Chuck Kurland of Sweden’s Lund University and Massey University’s L.J. Collins, acknowledged that the results might come as a surprise.

“We do think there is a tendency to look at evolution as progressive,” he said. “We prefer to think of evolution as backwards, sideways, and occasionally forward.”

Don’t try this stuff on a traffic cop, if you are in a collision.  Like, where was your vehicle headed when the collision occured? … and all that.

Comments
Hey, finally a discussion of the data. If eukaryotes came first, this would be a serious problem for the dominant theory, even though it seems that the authors do not question the varacity of the theory (of course).
bfast! The "dominant theory" is nowhere near as well defined as you'd like. It is extremely plastic. There are obvious evolutionary reasons why eukaryotes preceeded prokaryotes. I have to admit that I cannot admit at present what they are, but that is no argument in favor of the assertion that they do not exist.Mung
November 25, 2009
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I wonder how the authors deal with all the evidence that some essential organelles in eukaryotic cells originated by symbiosis with prokaryotic bacterial organisms. The most prominent case is with the ribosome.magnan
November 25, 2009
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Hey, finally a discussion of the data. If eukaryotes came first, this would be a serious problem for the dominant theory, even though it seems that the authors do not question the varacity of the theory (of course).bFast
November 25, 2009
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This is one reason why nested hierarchies are not predicted by descent with modification/ Common Descent. That is because nested hierarchies demand a direction of immutable and additive defining characteristics and evolution isn't like that.Joseph
November 25, 2009
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Tragic, I agree, but one clue is where they say that bacteria came later as "stripped down eukaryotes."Collin
November 25, 2009
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I would like to know how they define the directions they are talking about.tragic mishap
November 24, 2009
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“We do think there is a tendency to look at evolution as progressive,” he said. How funny, now why would there be such a tendency?Collin
November 24, 2009
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