447 thoughts on “The Mysteries of Evolution: 6. Endosymbiosis-The second miracle of life after the origin of life”

1. Perhaps J-Mac would like to explain what it is about Kurland’s current thinking that he finds so compelling, and why.

2. Allan Miller:
   J-Mac,

   No. How do you work that out?

   I’m not the one calling endosymbiosis a fraud. I am ironically pointing out that, if a fraud, Kurland himself – the person you think is debunking the ‘fraud’ – has in the past published papers in support of it.

   Learn to read, J-Mac.

   Your desperation has blinded you… There is a solution…You write the paper debunking Kurland’s and Ajith’s papers… But make sure you have evidence for your claims though… otherwise…

3. J-Mac,

   How about you give me an idea how to experimentally falsify evolution?

   You know how land walking mammal can evolve to the aquatic one. Let’s say I would like to evolve some aquatic functions…How long would it take me to see some evolutionary changes if I spend most of the day in the water? Can you make a prediction as evolutionists often do ?

   I thought this thread was about endosymbiosis? Let’s save that for the (I can hardly wait!) ‘whale thread’. Although I will permit myself a hearty chuckle at the fact you think it’s an individual that would change. What do you think of that, Mung?

4. J-Mac,

   Your desperation has blinded you… There is a solution…You write the paper debunking Kurland’s and Ajith’s papers… But make sure you have evidence for your claims though… otherwise…

   This is supposed to be a discussion, not an exercise in encouraging pointless off-board activity. What is it that persuades you that they are right, the rest of the field wrong? You ought to be able to say, oughtn’t you, if you are bringing them in in support of your contentions?

5. dazz: They’re fighting the good fight, intellectual honesty is superfluous

   Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case on the other side of the fight…as Allan Miller pointed it out, there are a lot of fraudulent evolutionists publishing fraudulent papers that people like you and him do nothing about…

   No wonder TSZ became the means to expose the frauds and hoaxes of evolution…

6. J-mac: if I spend most of the day in the water? Can you make a prediction as evolutionists often do ?

   I predict you will quickly evolve into a prune

7. Allan Miller:
   J-Mac,

   I thought this thread was about endosymbiosis? Let’s save that for the (I can hardly wait!) ‘whale thread’. Although I will permit myself a hearty chuckle at the fact you think it’s an individual that would change. What do you think of that, Mung?

   Sorry but I’m working on the new OPs needed feedback…

8. J-Mac,

   Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case on the other side of the fight…as Allan Miller pointed it out, there are a lot of fraudulent evolutionist publishing fraudulent papers

   At the risk of being guanoed, that is an obvious lie. I said no such thing. This is all Creationists appear to have – endless distortion of the words of their opponents. Isn’t there some proscription in the Bible about false witness?

9. dazz: I predict you will quickly evolve into a prune

   You know this is what I first thought when I read the hoax about land mammal evolving into a whale…I’m glad YOU said… 😉

10. Allan Miller:
    J-Mac,

    At the risk of being guanoed, that is an obvious lie. I said no such thing. This is all Creationists appear to have – endless distortion of the words of their opponents. Isn’t there some proscription in the Bible about false witness?

    What do you call it when evolutionists distort the words and even get it published? A scientific paper perhaps…?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdghRwWfaOQ

11. Allan Miller:
    Perhaps J-Mac would like to explain what it is about Kurland’s current thinking that he finds so compelling, and why.

    All I’m saying is that by your own admission, an evolutionist who you call a fraud, because of his past fraud, calls your current beliefs fraud…
    So why is he still allowed to publish if it was and still is fraud… as you say?

    What have you done about that??? I

    I think I know the answer…pity…

12. J-Mac,

    What do you call it when evolutionists distort the words and even get it published? A scientific paper perhaps…?

    Whatevs. I did not say that “there are a lot of fraudulent evolutionist publishing fraudulent papers”, nor anything to that effect.

13. Allan Miller:
    J-Mac,

    Whatevs. I did not say that “there are a lot of fraudulent evolutionist publishing fraudulent papers”, nor anything to that effect.

    Would you like me to do an OP on fraudulent evolutionists nowI have a few drafts… I’m working on one right now as we speak… the so-called common descent/tree of life fraud…. that many more than just few like Kurland and Aija published on…

14. J-Mac,

    All I’m saying is that by your own admission, an evolutionist who you call a fraud, because of his past fraud, calls your current beliefs fraud…

    By my own admission … ? Why do you keep making Jesus weep?

    I did not call Kurland a fraud, you called endosymbiosis a fraud. I pointed out that, IF endosymbiosis was a fraud (note the use of the English conditional IF), then Kurland was in on it. Of course I don’t think endosymbiosis a fraud, nor Kurland. I was pointing out the ludicrousness of your marshalling Kurland for the prosecution.

15. So – what is it about Kurland’s approach that clinches it for you vis a vis endosymbiosis? Cat got your tongue?

16. J-Mac: You know this is what I first thought when I read the hoax about land mammal evolving into a whale…I’m glad YOU said…

    You believe that evolution is about individuals becoming something else when thrown into a different niche… should I be as offended as you were when I (metaphorically) portraited Jesus as a gay stripper?

17. Allan Miller: So you think this is good stuff?

    The best! If I can’t learn biology from the rest of you maybe I can learn it from J-Mac.

18. Mung,

    The best! If I can’t learn biology from the rest of you maybe I can learn it from J-Mac.

    I think there may be something in your psyche that makes anything a felllow Creationist says worth several pages’ worth of professionals in the field. Good luck with that, if it gets you where you wish to go. Bring back Joe G, I say. Say what you like, he really stuck it to those evolutionists! And that, after all, is the main thing …

19. Allan Miller: Anyone notice how a Creationist can post the most ridiculous drivel, and his fellows still gather round clapping him on the back – witness this thread. Yet an ‘evolutionist’ gets something wrong, fellow evolutionists are on them like a ton of bricks (quite rightly).

    Anyone notice how the “Skeptics” here can totally disregard the facts when it suits them? I have at least two posts in this thread critical of the OP. Three if you count my arguments for how freaking bloody obvious it ought to be to anyone that endosymbiosis != eukaryogenesis.

    But let’s just ignore those.

20. dazz: intellectual honesty is superfluous

    You, of all people, would know.

21. Allan Miller: Perhaps J-Mac would like to explain what it is about Kurland’s current thinking that he finds so compelling, and why.

    That he was quoted by Susan Mazur. Duh.

22. Allan Miller: What do you think of that, Mung?

    What do I think of what? The idea that individuals evolve?

23. Mung,

    Anyone notice how the “Skeptics” here can totally disregard the facts when it suits them?

    Bearing in mind that the term ‘Skeptic’ in the site name applies to any and all of us, I have to say “yes”.

    I have at least two posts in this thread critical of the OP. Three if you count my arguments for how freaking bloody obvious it ought to be to anyone that endosymbiosis != eukaryogenesis.

    Well, you thoroughly confused me on that one, because immediately after you were lol-ing that Bill had found support for the contention that he got his viewpoint – ‘endosymbiosis = eukaryogenesis’ – from an evolutionist. That thing that it’s ‘freaking obvious’ it’s not. I agree you are an occasional exception, but that series of posts illustrates that you still flip-flop between a desire for accuracy and a desire to score points against evolutionists.

24. Allan Miller: Why do you keep making Jesus weep?

    I know right? The more the Jesus weeps the less it seems like a miracle.

    What makes you think J-Mac is a Christian?

25. Mung,

    What do I think of what? The idea that individuals evolve?

    The idea that an individual evolves. This from the keyboard of someone who is supposed to be making prople ‘choke’.

26. Allan Miller: Say what you like, he really stuck it to those evolutionists!

    Is that broad brush of yours the only one you have?

    I rather clearly disagree with J-Mac on the issues raised in the OP, one of which is that I accept that there is evidence for endosymbiosis and I even referred him to a book where he could read more.

    And I can’t wait to see his thread on phylogenetics and common descent.

    Oh, and Sal? LoL. Yeah, I agree with him so much. Wake up man.

27. Mung,

    What makes you think J-Mac is a Christian?

    The Creationism. Never mentioned, but hovering behind every post. Even though it’s strictly OT, you rarely get Jews spreading these repetitious screeds, and I’m pretty sure he isn’t Muslim. Very much the hobby of certain Christian sects.

28. Allan Miller: Bearing in mind that the term ‘Skeptic’ in the site name applies to any and all of us, I have to say “yes”.

    🙂

29. Mung,

    Is that broad brush of yours the only one you have?

    The one I beat my wife with you mean? Yes and no.

30. Allan Miller: I agree you are an occasional exception, but that series of posts illustrates that you still flip-flop between a desire for accuracy and a desire to score points against evolutionists.

    I want to have my cake and eat it too.

    But you can see for yourself right in this thread how I get lumped in with “those filthy infidels” and this in spite of the fact that I disagree with many of them and have done so for many years here and at UD.

    So yeah, I take my shots.

31. Pedant: Seems like that kind of ad hominem slur violates the spirit of this site.

    Unlike “Liars for Jesus.”

32. Allan Miller: Here’s the funny thing though: phylogenetic methods are roundly poo-pooed unless they appear to support Creationism (even if only in the mind of the Creationist).

    Those Creationists all smell alike.

    I have Sober’s Reconstructing the Past and his Evidence and Evolution. Perhaps one day there will be a reason to refer to them based on some discussion here.

    As an aside, I went looking in a number of my evolution books for chapters on the evidence for common ancestry/descent and came up empty. I just thought that a bit odd. Maybe there isn’t any. 😉

33. Mung,

    But you can see for yourself right in this thread how I get lumped in with “those filthy infidels” and this in spite of the fact that I disagree with many of them and have done so for many years here and at UD.

    I think, given the way you are prone to make broad-brush generalisations about ‘Skeptics’, your complaint is both fair and a bit rich.

34. Mung,

    As an aside, I went looking in a number of my evolution books for chapters on the evidence for common ancestry/descent and came up empty. I just thought that a bit odd. Maybe there isn’t any.

    Yeah, that’ll be it. I’m sure you have thoroughly searched the space of possibilities.

35. Allan Miller:

    At least you have dropped the pretense that ID is anything but Creationism.

    Nope!

    First off, Charles Darwin himself used separate terms “intelligent design” and “special creation.”

    Second: creationists, especially YECs, make the distinction.

    Third: There is natural theology and revealed theology. ID follows closely to natural theology (i.e. Paley), and creationism, especially YECism follows closely the notion of revealed theology.

    So there is a difference.

36. Mung: As an aside, I went looking in a number of my evolution books for chapters on the evidence for common ancestry/descent and came up empty. I just thought that a bit odd. Maybe there isn’t any.

    Then why do you believe in common descent?

37. Allan Miller:
    GlenDavidson,

    There are degrees of drivel, though. Some can at least be well-written and marshal a coherent argument, even if wrong. J-Mac … just splatters round … a few half-grasped facts … with lots of ellipsis for adding an air of … unspoken Truths … which you can’t handle … I imagine it in a Shatner-as-Kirk voice.

    My favourite so far is the use of phylogenetic methods to disprove the reality of endosymbiosis. Phylogenetic methods suddenly work when they have a conclusion to support. Erik tried to do the same with homoplasy of mouse SINEs, and others have tried to puff the Caetano-Anolles work that in their imagination ‘proves’ that protein is older than nucleic acid. It doesn’t, but even if it did, their methodology was phylogenetic, and so would only work if phylogenetics worked.

    Speaking of Caetano-Anolles, he and others reviewed Kurlands phylogenetic method back in 2013:
    The importance of using realistic evolutionary models for retrodicting proteomes
    Kyung Mo Kim, Arshan Nasir, GustavoCaetano-Anollés
    Biochimie Volume 99, April 2014, Pages 129-137
    https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biochi.2013.11.019

    1. Introduction
    In a recent paper, Harish et al. [1] generated rooted phylogenetic trees that describe the evolution of proteomes. The trees separated organisms belonging to the three superkingdoms of life, Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya, in three monophyletic groups. These groups were proposed to have evolved primarily by genome reduction from a reconstructed universal cellular ancestor, the ‘Most Recent Universal Common Ancestor’ (MRUCA), which was (reportedly) genetically and morphologically very complex. In fact, the ancestor already contained three quarters of the repertoire of protein fold structures found in modern proteomes. Troublingly, eukaryotic organisms with complex levels of biological organization, such as land plants and advanced animals such as amphibians and mammals, appeared as basal branches of the eukaryotic clade. In contrast, unicellular eukaryotes such as hemiascomycete fungi and basal microbial eukaryotes such as Giardia and Paramecium were evolutionarily derived (Fig. 3 in Ref. [1]). Similarly, the bacterial Thermotogae and Aquificae groups that are ancestral in standard 16S rRNA phylogeny [2,3] appeared also close to the crown. The authors interpreted these inversions as the result of major organismal extinction events that ‘re-diversified’ the universal tree of life, without explanation of how inversions occurred.

    My bold.

    There’s much in this paper that is outside my paygrade, but I find it funny that the method employed by Kurland et al effectively put pine trees and elephants closest to the root of the eukaryotic clade. This is of course flatly contradicted by the fossil record, and both laughable and ludicrous. Made even funnier and more preposterous by the fact that Kurland et al seem to handwave it away by reference to some obscure extinction event. What?

    If this is actually true, then I stand by my earlier statement, Suzan Mazur is in the prop-up-the Kook-fringe business.

38. stcordova,

    Shouldn’t you be making a beeping noise when you’re backing up like that? You had a bit of a cdesign proponentsists moment, as far as I can see.

39. Rumraket,

    Harish, whose model is under criticism by Caetano-Anolles there, was Caetano-Anolles’s co-author on the protein/nuucleic acid paper I alluded to. This sure is one elaborate hoax!

    I don’t know what all that cross-checking methodologies is all about either. Surely, as Creationists would have it, the Darwin faithful just swallow everything whole?

40. dazz: Then why do you believe in common descent?

    Exactly! That’s the question I asked myself. Why do I believe in common descent.

    I thought perhaps evolutionists had shared why they believe in it. Boy was I wrong.

41. Rumraket sees his vaunted “twin nested hierarchy” crumbling before his eyes.

    Don’t cry.

42. stcordova: First off, Charles Darwin himself used separate terms “intelligent design” and “special creation.

    Second: creationists, especially YECs, make the distinction.

    What is the distinction? In other words how does the mechanism of ID conflict with the special creation mechanism?

43. Rumraket: There’s much in this paper that is outside my paygrade, but I find it funny that the method employed by Kurland et al effectively put pine trees and elephants closest to the root of the eukaryotic clade.

    I find the terminology in that abstract and in your comment disturbing. All extant eukaryotes are in “the eukaryote crown”; that’s the definition of “crown”. It’s impossible for any living eukaryote to be “closest to the root”, and all are equally far from it. I’m not sure what the abstract means by “basal branches”, but usually it refers to the side of a divergence with fewer species, and that’s almost certainly true. There are probably many more species of protists than of animals or plants. Just remember that, topologically speaking, both sides of a node are equally “basal”; there is no “main line” or “side branch”.

    So what were they actually saying?

44. Mung: As an aside, I went looking in a number of my evolution books for chapters on the evidence for common ancestry/descent and came up empty. I just thought that a bit odd. Maybe there isn’t any

    Some science requires no actual evidence, it is the default

45. Mung,

    Rumraket sees his vaunted “twin nested hierarchy” crumbling before his eyes.

    How?

46. Mung:
    Rumraket sees his vaunted “twin nested hierarchy” crumbling before his eyes.

    Don’t cry.

    I was not aware. Thanks for telling me.

    Just so you know, they’re replacing one hierarchy with another. You get that they still support universal common ancestry and merely posit a different branching order, right? Supposing it is all true, why would that make anyone cry?

47. Allan Miller: Rumraket,

    Harish, whose model is under criticism by Caetano-Anolles there, was Caetano-Anolles’s co-author on the protein/nuucleic acid paper I alluded to. This sure is one elaborate hoax!

    Exactly my point. I get the sense J-mac thinks the word hoax is basically synonymous with wrong. If someone miscalculates something, they’ve done a hoax. Oh well…

48. Mung: I thought perhaps evolutionists had shared why they believe in it. Boy was I wrong.

    I believe in common descent because, why else would Jesus be a gay stripper?
    Obviously

49. dazz: I believe in common descent because, why else would Jesus be a gay stripper?

    Maybe he wanted to meet gays.

50. Rumraket:

    Here’s a PCR temperature gradient I ran about a year ago to find the optimal annealing temperature for a primer designed to target only a single specific locus (about 700 basepairs) in a small section of the human genome, marked by a green arrow. From left to right, the temperature increases by half a degree between A and B, B and C etc. This is for a roughly 20 bp primer. Notice the large difference in quality between the C and D lane. Half a degree centigrade and suddenly you get a lot of nonspecific binding for that 20 bp DNA piece. The optimal temperature would be somewhere in between the D and E lane, so we are talking a quater of a degree change. Notice the thickness and intensity of the bands between each lane. It changes, meaning the degree of association between primer and template changes.

    Hey, nice pic!

    Thanks for you comment. I will think on it. 🙂