This is one of the most fundamental mysteries of evolution and the origins of multicellular life often called endosymbiosis, which is supposed to explain the origin of eukaryotic cell.
It doesn’t! Here is why…
What I found perplexing, or even disturbing, is that although it is presented as scientific fact of evolution, as evolution itself often is, there is absolutely not one fact to support that endosybiosis happened or could have happened…
And this the fact…
How could that be?
First of all, the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell is so staggering that even proposing such quantum leap in evolutionary change goes beyond macroevolutionary claim…
Here are some facts:
Prokaryotic cell above vs Eukaryotic cell below
Dr. Gauger at evolutionnews.org wrote a really good article on the miraculous appearance of the many structures in eukaryotic cells not found in prokaryotic cells that had to have evolved if endosymbiosis were true, such nucleus, mitochondria, etc…
“…There is no single proposed mechanism for the evolution of the nucleus or the other structures…” – wrote Dr. Gauger
However disturbing the theory of endosymbios already is, which makes one wonder how far and how deep preconceived ideology can reach, and the acceptance of evolution, common descent, the tree of life…right or wrong…
However…there is even more to it…
In his paper “Uprooting the Tree of Life” W. F. Doolitle destroys the preconceived and fundamental dogma of evolutionary theory – the so called Darwin’s Tree of Life (which is worth another OP). His ammunition is mainly the horizontal gene transfer…but there is another thing that is very profound…
You can read about it here:
http://labs.icb.ufmg.br/lbem/aulas/grad/evol/treeoflife-complexcells.pdf
On page marked 94 of the paper I linked above, Doolitle writes about the origin of eukaryotic genes:
“…Many eukaryotic genes turn out to be unlike those of
any known archaea or bacteria; they seem to have come from nowhere.”
So, if eukaryotic cell evolved from prokaryotic cells, via the process of endosymbiosis, as evolutionists claim, not only there is not a single evolutionary mechanism to explain rather miraculous appearance of the many structures not found in prokaryotes, that exist in eukaryotes, like nucleus, mitochondria etc. they don’t have many genes to account for in the supposed evolution of eukaryotes…
This is not a joke! It’s real...
Will these very facts overturn the evolutionary thinking and bring down the theory of evolution? One would hope… but of course not…
If it were to happen, it would have happened in 2000 when Doolitle published the world acclaimed findings about the horizontal gene transfer and the mysterious genes nowhere to be found if endosymbiosis is true…
Why?
As someone once said:
“…No amount of evidence disproving evolution will convince it’s faithful followers that the theory is wrong…”
If you don’t believe these words, just watch the comments below on how the faithful will post excuses to make them feel good and secure in their preconceived set of beliefs…
Let Darwin of the gaps begin…
God help us!
BTW: I’m willing to bet all my money that nobody can experimentally prove that endosymbiosis of prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic is possible… How could it be possible if many of the genes aren’t accounted for? Maybe gene-spermia happened? 😉
I’m pretty sure that Darwin’s faithful are willing to believe any nonsense… as long as they can pretend that the-long-dead theory of evolution is alive and kept on the respirator…for as long as possible…lol
You understand that was just an analogy, right?
You keep avoiding to answer my key questions… while trying to offend me…
I have not time to waste…
Pay attention because I really mean it:
No credentials or arguments are good enough for you unless they are aligned with your preconceived ideas…Don’t you get it?
No, not really, and I apologize If that offended you.
Utterly false, that’s just you sporting the classic creationist knack for projection.
You’ve been asked to come forth with a better alternative to endosymbiosis countless times. Forget about credentials, show us the money. If you have that alternative explanation we will all dispose of endosymbiosis
I wouldn’t be in favor of that. Coherence is rather subjective. I’m sure that lots of my posts seem incoherent to people who aren’t already heavily invested in the problems I’m interested in.
There isn’t one. J-Mac has confused two rather distinct issues:
1. Is there good evidence for our best model of the prokaryote -> eukaryote transition?
2. Is endosymbiosis a good explanation for the evolution of mitochrondria and plastids?
He thinks that answering (2) in the negative would entail answering (1) in the negative.
I have no idea why he thinks this.
Of course, the whole point of his “Mysteries of Evolution” series is to say that this question:
3. Is there sufficient evidence to rule out the possibility of intervention by an intelligent being that somehow inserted additional information into life?
should be answered “no”, which means that anyone who rejects that possibility is being dogmatic, credulous, intolerant, etc.
The fundamental flaw with his entire strategy is that while it is indeed correct to answer (3) with “no,” this is because of a philosophically important point that turn on the difference between a posteriori and a priori reasoning.
The point is this: there can be never be sufficient empirical evidence to rule out any logical possibility. For any claim about the actual world, regardless of the empirical evidence in support of it, it is always possible to imagine some world in which that claim is false. The only constraint on the space of logical possibilities is what we can imagine, and we’re constantly inventing new ways of imagining or conceiving.
The scientists here — all of whom accept evolutionary theory to some degree or other — want J-Mac and other ID supporters to give us empirical evidence for why we should posit the existence of an intelligent being capable of intervening in the history of life by introducing information at key moments.
But all they have ever been able to give us are complaints about what science has not yet been able to solve — and then a lot of whining about how ‘intolerant’ and ‘dogmatic’ we are when they are not taken seriously.
In my physical chemistry class the professor showed that the probability of all of the gas molecules in a vessel spontaneously moving to one side was not zero, yet the likelihood of it happening was ( as we could calculate using thermodynamic equations) so low that it was, as he said: “impossible”
I think people need to understand the point KN makes above because of its logical precision, but I think the ultimate goal of all of this should be to understand the world around us. Getting hung up on low possibilities can lead us astray. The evidence that the universe has unfolded due to natural laws is overwhelming. It is reasonable to think that a God or ID that possessed even the minimal qualities ascribed to him would have left some evidence for his existence but there is none. At this point we can definitely say the answer to 3. is ‘yes’. The fact that the probably of God isn’t zero is a minor philosophical nitpick that we are all aware of.
RodW,
How would you support this probability claim? What is your proposal for the origin of the natural laws? Matter? Life? Eukaryotic cell? Multicellular organisms?
Tell me you kidding…please.. as you are digging a grave for you own argument…
Why would I need to come up with better alternative to endosymbiosis?
All I’m saying it didn’t happened because it couldn’t happen…
You are saying ‘ there is no alternative… so endosymbiosis must be true because on it the whole theory of evolution rests…’ unless there is an alternative theory …
You haven’t gotten to know me yet?
I don’t make unsubstantiated claims…I wouldn’t have started this OP if I didn’t have a better one in to begin with…
I will show you the money… lol
Yeah, and what about cheese? Frogs? God?
I think you’re basically committing the same error as KN ascribed to J-mac: confusing an empirical claim with one of logical possibility.
“3. Is there sufficient evidence to rule out the possibility of intervention by an intelligent being that somehow inserted additional information into life?”
How did you determine that it isn’t possible that some sort of intelligent designer has intervened at some obscure period in the history of our planet, between 754 and 613 million years ago?
You have basically affirmed that we have sufficient evidence to rule out that this is possible.
We happen to be in a position where there is no evidence that such an intervention took place(and that alone is enough reason not to believe it), but this is different from saying we have so much evidence that we can definitely rule it out even the possibility that it could have happened.
That is clearly not the case, we are not in such a position.
Nixies.
Nixies.
Nixies.
Nixies.
Nixies.
So ID is done. Just pick a favorite made-up being (or beings), and credit it with whatever you want.
YMMV.
Glen Davidson
I didn’t determine that and I said that the possibility that it happened is greater than zero. But the evidence that it didn’t happen is great enough that at this point we should put consideration of ID aside. Its the same situation with Last Thursdayism. The idea that the universe came into existence last Thursday with the illusion built in of great age and including our memories or an earlier time that never existed. The notion can be set up in such a way that one has to acknowledge that its possible. But that doesnt mean that we need go through our lives with that possibility in he back of our minds. I dont think the idea of God is quite this unlikely, but its unlikely enough that it shouldn’t be brought up in discussions about life on earth or even the origin of the universe
J-Mac,
And yet there are numerous instances of more recent endosymbiosis – see Wolbachia for an example; there are others. So on what grounds are you saying it couldn’t happen?
No, that’s not what he’s saying at all. In fact, endosymbiosis is something of an exception to the ‘normal’ run of evolutionary change. It is not normally the case that evolution is expected to proceed by wholesale joining of separate lineages. If Goddidit in endosymbiosis, that tells us nothing about any other part of evolution – including the rest of eukaryogenesis: the origin of features not shared with prokaryotes, and the subsequent changes in the organellar association post-union.
Why should your opinion be given any weight?
What credentials do you have?
J-Mac,
And yet papers are published, books are written, university courses are completed and degrees earned. Not bad for a long dead theory.
And yet if we look at the ID journals we seen very very little activity. We see no papers, no books, no university courses and certainly no degrees.
On the basis of that, which theory is dead?
http://www.evolutionmeetings.org/previous-meetings.html
vs
http://www.icr.org/index.php?f_submit=Search&module=events&action=search
or
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/issue/view/31
vs
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1558-5646/issues
So on the one hand we have thousands of scientists meeting, and the other we have talks in a church basement. On the one hand we have a list of publications as long as your arm, and on the other we have the premier ID journal with a single paper this year, written by one of the editors no less (no conflict of interest there!).
So yes, it’s clear what theory is long dead and on the respirator. You accuse others of being unable to face facts J-Mac, can you face this fact I wonder?
stcordova,
Sal,
It occurrred to me that the eukaryotic protein synthesis initiation that you showed is that for nuclear genes. But since the OP is dealing with endosymbiosis, should you not also consider the mitochondrial and plastid translation apparatus? Both are quite different from the cytosolic translation apparatus (and why would a designer do THAT?) and the translation apparatus in plastids appears to be a lot more similar to the bacterial system then to the cytosolic one:
Tiller and Bock 2014 Mol. Plant
Now, I appreciate this adds even more “complexity” to eukaryote cell biology. But employing a bacterial-like translation system for a handful of genes, when a perfectly funcional translation system is present in the cell, seems a strange design decision (Let alone the different genetic code in mtiochondria, but let’s ignore that). Wouldn’t you agree?
Because mitochondria and chloroplasts have peculiar features (such as their own private genome), that warrant an explanation even if you assume they have been designed. A little more inquisitiveness, if you please.
Allan beat me to it. My question as well.
Quoting from the OP:
I have a roadmap that I find useful.
No amount of evidence disproving that roadmap will convince its faithful followers that the roadmap is wrong.
Well, that’s probably correct. No amount of evidence will convince me that the roadmap is wrong. And that’s for the simple reason that I already know it is wrong. I can easily point to some of its problems.
Nevertheless, that roadmap is a very useful guide for planning trips.
It’s the same with the theory of evolution. You will never convince me that it is wrong, because I already know it is wrong. But it is still a very useful guide to understanding biology. And biologists stilll find it a very useful guide to research.
So what about ID?
Even if ID is absolutely true, it is completely useless. It doesn’t provide any help to studying biology. It doesn’t guide research. Maybe it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside. But so what. It is still completely useless for anything other than giving warm fuzzy feelings to people who take their religion too far.
I teach computer science. Or, at least, I taught computer science before I retired. In the operating systems class, I taught how virtual memory works. I actually taught a false explanation of virtual memory. But though false, it was a useful guide. I even told my students that it was false (over-simplified), and I did indicate where it was over-simplified.
Science isn’t about truth. Science is about roadmaps. Science is pragmatic.
Gotta love this stuff.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bc/8f/d0/bc8fd01452b1e15ce5170f034cd95e60.jpg
That’s not what this OP is about, is it? Start you own OP on the theme I will be more than happy to warrant the design…Or you can wait for my upcoming OPs where I go further and take apart the issues before the miracle of evolutionary origin of eukaryotes… as well as the design of life…;-)
Can’t wait!
Uh..yes it is. Margulis’ endosymbiont theory hypothesizes that mitochondria and plastids (the “structures in eukaryotic cells” from your OP) originated from prokaryotic progenitors.
If you meant something else, you need to explain what.
This OP is about the impossibility of the evolutionary process leading to eukrayotes, not about ID designing eukaryotes! Get it?
Read your previous comment! If you can’t remember your own questions maybe you should be doing something else other than getting into discussions…
wal to = beat it in many of the Slavic languages 😉
Your comments are not showing up on my side, which means that you either have been too nice to talk to 😛 or a wast of time… quite possibly both…lol
Just a question for the biologists here.
Erythrocytes (eukaryotic blood cells) are a cell type that lack mitochondria, ER, and a nucleus. We might say they are “alive” but they can’t reproduce. Without mitochondria, how are they powered.
How essential are mitochondria to Eukaryotic life? Are there any eukayotes without mytochondria outside of specialized cell types inside a multicellular organism?
If eukaryotes can’t live without mitochondria, that seems to be a problem for endosymbiotic theory.
OOPS,
I just found one answer to my question:
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(16)30263-9.pdf
Endysymbios doesn’t explain the origin of the Eukaryotic Splicesome and the connected processes. How can it? The spliceosome has so many orphan proteins that only appear in Eukaryotes. Where is the phylogenetic explanation for such orphans genes and orphan physiology and orphan function? They sort of look kind of poofed into place.
The funny thing is I was just looking for a diagram about the operation of the spliceosome. And the word “design” just happened to pop up.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867409001469
Phylogenetic principles don’t add much to the insight of how this thing works.
I find special creation by a miraculous act of God a more intellectually satisfying explanation for the origin of Eukaryotic spliceosomes.
I remember sitting in biochemistry class one day (mostly of pre-med students) and the professor said while showing a slide of a biochemical pathaway, “this is so well designed”! And then he caught himself and said, “I’m not supposed to say that–it evolved.” The whole class laughed. 🙂
One could hardly ask for a more Behe-friendly article about the Irreducible Complexity of a eukaryote. 🙂
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16709776
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7071535_Genomics_and_the_Irreducible_Nature_of_Eukaryote_Cells
Thank you for this.
RodW,
You say God is unlikely enough. How did you reach this conclusion? If you can’t make an argument here that supports ” unlikely enough” it does not appear you have thought it through. This opp is arguing a second origin of life which is evidence that would support a creation event. Do you disagree with the opp?
RodW,
You say God is unlikely enough. How did you reach this conclusion? If you can’t make an argument here that supports ” unlikely enough” it does not appear you have thought it through. This opp is arguing a second origin of life which is evidence that would support a creation event. Do you disagree with the opp?
You seem to be making a list of things endosymbiosis doesn’t explain. Was it ever intended to explain any of those things? Why should we expect endosymbiosis to explain anything other than the origin of mitochondria, plastids, and the various bacterial genes in the nucleus?
And that without any explanation for the origin of the Eukaryotic spliceosome via God at all.
Is just making up a cause what is intellectually satisfying to you?
Glen Davidson
Probably not, but I’ve encountered evolutionists on the net who seem to think so until I set them straight. 🙂
I found this website on unrooted phylogenetic trees:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Class/NAWBIS/Modules/Phylogenetics/phylo9.html
From the paper on Irreducible Eukaryotes:
Why do we have root the phylogenies? For that matter why have phylogenies at all?
It seems the most empirical thing to say is similarities are hierarchically organized. Explanations as to these nested hierarchical patterns aren’t empirical, they are inferential.
If life is young, it would seem the nested hierarchical pattern is due to common design, not common descent, and eukaryotes were the result of special miraculous creation.
Nested hierarchical patterns aren’t proof of phylogeny, they are proof of nested hierarchical patterns.
The hierarchical pattern can also be used to argue against universal common ancestry because the eukaryotes have so many orphan features that came from nowhere, as in “did not inherit them from an ancestor that wasn’t a eukaryote.” Ergo, the features suddenly emerged. The hierarchical pattern is especially strong because of orphan features. Phylogeny doesn’t explain those kinds of nested patterns!
The features necessary for life had to be in place simultaneously too. Poof is a good description of the mechanism.
The Big Bang is a poof explanation, so if one accepts poof for the Big Bang, why not poof for Eukaryotes?
stcordova,
The Big Bang is a poof explanation, so if one accepts poof for the Big Bang, why not poof for Eukaryotes?
That’s a very good point!
Many keep forgetting that universe started with extremely low entropy, which means that not only was it already highly organized, but the 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each were squeezed into the size of tennis ball.
Quantum poof it must have been alright!
Eukaryote poof implies ID/God, so why would anybody hating the idea even consider it? Materialists are not searching for the truth…. they are trying to support preconceived ideas… right or wrong…so help them dumb luck…
The dull and useless thing to do is to stop with noting that similarities are hierarchically organized.
Why is what is interesting and productive–when you have people interested in discovery, rather than in shoring up a priori beliefs.
Since empiricism is heavily dependent on inference, your false dilemma is just a fallacy.
No it would not, because there is nothing about design that “naturally” produces the derivation found in life. That’s why we don’t have hierarchical patterns in manufactured goods, for the most part.
No, that’s just your assumption. Other BS “explanations” could be made.
The lands and grooves on bullets aren’t proof of being fired from a specific gun, they’re proof of lands and grooves on bullets.
Try that one in court.
Many people think beyond your dull, pedantic poof world.
Gee, maybe they evolved. Anyway, clearly no one bases evolution on the unshared genetic features, rather the shared ones. Which you have never explained by making things up.
Gee, or ancestral sequences went extinct without other progeny. I wonder which is more reasonable? No, I mean in the adult world of believing in cause and effect.
Makes no sense at all.
What does? God did it?
Poof is a good description of your thought processes.
Utter nonsense. Just because we don’t know doesn’t mean that it was a miracle.
That’s your error.
First off, because there is enormous evidence of derivation of eukaryotes from both archaea and bacteria.
Secondly, because we don’t accept poof for anything. Your projections notwithstanding.
Glen Davidson
stcordova,
I remember sitting in biochemistry class one day (mostly of pre-med students) and the professor said while showing a slide of a biochemical pathaway, “this is so well designed”! And then he caught himself and said, “I’m not supposed to say that–it evolved.” The whole lass laughed. 🙂
I hear same all the time! Its sad that the majority of the education system got bullied by the Darwinian propaganda into so-called political correctness in the 21 century where freedom of speech emphasized but frowned upon if it offends someone…
I remember C. Venter in the public presentation admitting that the English language doesn’t have a better word to describe certain living things but “designed”… 😉
Permit me to doubt that you have ever encountered any such people.
This is all exceedingly bad reasoning. Let’s count the ways:
1. If we followed that reasoning, no empirical data would be evidence for (“proof” isn’t a word science uses) anything other than itself, and that would be the end of science.
2. Science is all inference from data, so “inferential” is not the invalidating adjective you think.
3. “If life is young…” is a non-starter. The overwhelming evidence is that life is billions of years old. Might as well begin a syllogism with “if pigs have wings…”. Anything that follows is pointless.
4. Common design doesn’t explain nested hierarchy, since there is no expectation that designs will fit a nested hierarchy. Of course they could, but the only reason I can think of for that would be an attempt to simulate common descent. Human designs certainly don’t. If anything, common design would imply identity of similar parts, rather than hierarchical structure of those parts. Is this a good point to remind you that you have promised a post defending common design as an explanation?
5. If eukaryotes are a result of special creation, how do you explain, in addition to nested hierarchy, the presence of mitochondria and plastids? And let’s not be coy. You don’t propose a single miraculous creation of eukaryotes; you propose thousand or millions of separate creations of different eukaryote “kinds”.
6. This would seem to have nothing at all to do with endosymbiosis, so why did you bring it up?
You don’t know that. How many former “orphan” features have been found with homologs in recently discovered Archaea? Does that perhaps suggest that there might be more left to find in the future? Looks like god of the gaps to me. Still nothing to do with endosymbiosis.
One could–and I think at this point should–note that nested hierarchies are diagnostic for common descent, and simply are not diagnostic for common design.
In other words, nested hierarchies are indicative of common descent, and they are not indicative of common design.
It’s simply a matter of a specific sort of cause producing specific effects.
Glen Davidson
One could note that there is a particular sort of ID scenario in which a nested hierarchy would be expected: a tweaking designer who every so often inserts a mutation, perhaps even a macromutation, into a lineage, which then continues to evolve and branch. But of course the reason the nested hierarchy would be expected in that scenario is that the designer is working within a framework of common descent. The hierarchy has nothing to do with design, per se.
walto,
I wonder if it will be before or after the ones on whales, flagella and Haeckel’s gill slits.
J-Mac,
Yeah, great start tough guy.
We’re playing the ‘just because’ game again? Triffic. Just because there are missing genes doesn’t mean they were never there. Just because we can’t explain everything about eukaryogenesis doesn’t mean endosymbiosis never happened. And so on.
Anyway, there is extensive evidence that endosymbiosis happened in the prokaryote-eukaryote transition regardless of modern endosymbioses. You are saying it couldn’t happen, a categorical statement. On the evidence in sum, it can and it did.
He said, handwaving furiously.
I don’t think your mind takes much boggling.
So where did God do it, Captain Ellipsis? Or rather, having demolished one theory, what do you wish to put in its place?
For some bizarre reason, I cannot handle the truth. If you say so.
stcordova,
And you can’t even think of one sensible, non-POOF reason why that might be? I despair.
stcordova,
Not at all. Regardless whether modern eukaryotes can’t live without mitochondria, it requires only a historic pre-fusion cell that could for endosymbiosis to occur. Of course there are amitichondriate cells, though they are secondarily so. This, and the previous point, show your perpetual evolution blindness at work. You really cannot conceive of sensible evolutionary explanations to answer your own questions. Of course, since your objective is probably testifyin’, it’s not in your interests to do so. But, it’s the mark of a poor scientist, IMO.
So let me get this straight: You write an OP clearly inspired by a post of Ann Gauger on Evolution News, then tell me off because mentioning ID is off-topic and proceed by writing a post on the big bang.
No I don think I get it, but hey it’s your OP.
Allan Miller,
What do you think is the strongest evidence for the origin of mitochondria. The internal structures are very different so even though they have similar shapes I am finding it hard to believe one came from the other.
So what’s new that you have written since your many previous fruitless comments? You used different words to describe the same?
If you have decided to resort to personal attacks on me this tells me you came to shoot with blanks…
Until you come with something worthwhile, I’m not going to waste my time…