A challenge to evolutionists

If all life evolved from primordial soup then explain this to me as I'm totally bewildered by it.

The Venus Fly Trap.




A venus fly trap is a plant therefore has no eyes, no ear, no brain as we would describe it. Yet it somehow evolved into what it is. As a plant it could see flies flying around it and then know that flies are nutritious, far more nutritious than anything it takes from the ground.
So as a plant it decides to evolve itself to take advantage of these flies.

Hey, I think I'll grow some trap like leaves that can box them in so they can't get out.
But how will I know they're on my leaf? Simple - I'll evolve lots of sensitive hairs on the inside of my trap which will tell me when an insect crawls over them to make me shut the cage.

How can I make them crawl on my leaves and not other plants?
I'll make the inside red - flies are attracted to red as it resembles the flesh of a dead animal - as I plant I know that of course!
Hold on - how about I actually make the inside smell like rotting flesh? Done!

The above process was apparently conducted through the natural course of evolution. A plant that is aware of its surroundings can think logically and can adapt the shape of its body to 'hunt' but still after millions of years of evolution it is still a plant?

I for one welcome our fly trap creating alien overlords who put them here in the first place!

While I agree we may have come from a different place or the origins of man are not what we have come to believe, as in I think our species is a lot older than what we think.


Evolution can not be discounted at all, simply because life from no matter which planet had to evolve from something, it simply did not just appear out of nothing.

Originally posted by vonspurter
If all life evolved from primordial soup then explain this to me as I'm totally bewildered by it.

The Venus Fly Trap.




A venus fly trap is a plant therefore has no eyes, no ear, no brain as we would describe it. Yet it somehow evolved into what it is. As a plant it could see flies flying around it and then know that flies are nutritious, far more nutritious than anything it takes from the ground.
So as a plant it decides to evolve itself to take advantage of these flies.

Hey, I think I'll grow some trap like leaves that can box them in so they can't get out.
But how will I know they're on my leaf? Simple - I'll evolve lots of sensitive hairs on the inside of my trap which will tell me when an insect crawls over them to make me shut the cage.

How can I make them crawl on my leaves and not other plants?
I'll make the inside red - flies are attracted to red as it resembles the flesh of a dead animal - as I plant I know that of course!
Hold on - how about I actually make the inside smell like rotting flesh? Done!

The above process was apparently conducted through the natural course of evolution. A plant that is aware of its surroundings can think logically and can adapt the shape of its body to 'hunt' but still after millions of years of evolution it is still a plant?

I for one welcome our fly trap creating alien overlords who put them here in the first place!

well...your god is the most complex thing in or out of our universe and you claim he came from nothing..pooof!!...so why do you have a problem with the fact that a totally simple flower..a mere few cells in comparison to your god...can evolve over millions of years from other flowers?

you dont understand evolution..i suggest you buy a book..

now ive a pretty good question regarding origins......how did god get here?

This is a pretty good example of something that defies evolution, thanks for pointing this one out. There is a 2 part series called Creatures that defy Evolution out on the internet and available for download that shows several animals that could not have evolved, like the Bombardier Beetle, and had to have all its parts at the start or it would have never survived the first mutation. I will write to my Creationist friends and bring up this example as I think you have found another one that defies evolution...

GOOD FIND!

you dont understand evolution..i suggest you buy a book..

I thoroughly understand the theory of evolution. I have no requirement to buy a book on the subject. If you read and understood the post then you would see I am asking how can the theory of evolution change a cell into a 'thinking' plant and then remain a plant and not evolve any further?

now ive a pretty good question regarding origins......how did god get here?

Who's god? No wait........ I should buy a book!

reply to post by alienesque


I have no belief in mans god what so ever, I simply can not trust or believe in something that is simply artificial, do you think these books were created by the man on the street or the upper elite, with the control over men.


I wont say there is nothing out there, but I dont believe its in the form these books imply or that we are bound by the laws of these religious books.

A Venus Fly Trap does not "see" anything. In the open "mouth" of the plant there are three little hairs. If an insect enters the "mouth" and touches any two of the hairs at once the trap springs shut.

reply to post by vonspurter


Discovering how evolution may have resulted in apparent complexity, in this case, is not too difficult, given the simplicity of search via Google:
Irreducible Complexity Demystified


Perhaps, if you will, I may offer an alternative counter-challenge to you --

[A] Science is uncovering more and more evidence to support not just the existence of, but the mechanics of biological evolution

[B] The believers of religion hold-fast the faith that our existence is owed to the creative origins of a supreme intelligence

Given "A" and "B" are statements of fact, why is it apparently impossible to assume that biologic evolution was a tool of your God to ensure the long-term diversity of his creations?

reply to post by Horus12


I wasn't clear from my first post - I don't believe in God either, I am not at all religious. Just because I do not believe in evolution does not mean I am a Jesus fanboy? - I have no idea on who created us. I believe we were created, by what I have no idea.
My post just reflects my view that the whole evolution thing is certainly not 'whole'.

Today the Ben Stein Movie called "Expelled" is released on DVD, may I suggest everyone rents it and watches it as it will show you what the worlds top 22 Evolutionists think about Darwin's theory.

Stephen Hawkins admits that evolution is impossible on so many levels and does say he believes in intelligent design, he doesn't say God at any time and may think it's Alien Design but non the less, he knows that every Law of Science and Math has to be broken for evolution to occur. Just the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible, not to mention the many other flaws.

When you speak of evolution you need to be more clear on what version you prescribe to. Are you a Darwinst? Neo-Darwinist? or one of the new ones that believe in Punctuated Equilibrium?

well almost everything youve listed there can be found seperatley in many different plant/flower species

so there for it could evolve ^_^

there are plants that give off the smell of rotting meat but dont eat flys, its just a modification on sweet smelling flowers

there are plants that displa pressure/touch sensativity

many many flowers glow like crazy under uv light, why becasue it attracts bugs, if the can manage uv glowing surley a bit of red (a common colour in nature) wouldnt be to hard to pull off

there are other forms of killer flesh eating plants

who ever wrote that is anthropromorphasisng(ats spell checker please) to make it a thinking living person trying to solve a problem and ignoring the fact these are all traits found else where

guess what plants are able to move and communicate too does that mean they cant have evolved?

D- for effort but showing a lack of research and understanding

reply to post by vonspurter


My post was to Alienesque lol, even if you believe we were created by another species lets say an alien race for example.


Then where would you assume they came from, evolution offers a logical explanation, now whether our appearence on earth was manufactured or evolutional remains to be seen, but all life everywhere (exluding manufactured ofc) in this universe must have evolved from something, it did not just appear out of thin air.


A good book called "Forbidden Archeology" or "forbidden history of the human race" the writer says he does not believe in the mans evolution theory and that a lot of scientists refused to except any evidence that went against the theory of mans evolution, its a good read, you should look into it.

Or you can hear him in an interview on youtube type in "forbidden history of the human race"



[edit on 21-10-2008 by Horus12]

Originally posted by theindependentjournal
Stephen Hawkins admits that evolution is impossible on so many levels and does say he believes in intelligent design,

He has not made any such statement about biological evolution. Here is the statement often misunderstood by creationists --

www.infidels.org...

For instance: if there is a true answer to "the question of why it is that we and the universe exist" it can only be because, as a matter of fact, the universe was and/or is caused to exist by something outside itself. Even if that is indeed the case it still does not necessarily follow -- as is too often and too easily assumed[4] -- that such a cause must be a personal God capable of harbouring purposes in creating and sustaining us and the universe which we inhabit.

Just so it is CLEAR, I DO believe in Creation and GOD CREATED. I am this way because no other explanation to date has ever been proven. The theory of evolution is ridiculous at best as it violates all the known laws of science.

Just to clear things up and make sure everyone understands what evolutionary theory is let me give it to you in the short version...

between 4.5 and 20 billion years ago NOTHING EXPLODED, that nothing that exploded then became everything in the universe. All the elements, the stars, the planets, the plants, the animals everything came from nothing. Lets also look for a moment at stellar evolution and the laws of science if nothing exploded in a vacuum, why do we have clusters of galaxies and they don't seem to be equally separated and moving away. How does an explosion of nothing in a vacuum give us galaxies spinning in different directions? Planets in our system rotate in different directions, their moons can spin in either direction and some planets have moons spinning in both. The laws of science say this is impossible, that if it exploded the way the theory says the Laws of angular momentum would be null and void.

Granite proves this planet was cold formed, not molten rock for billions of years as supposed, there is halos in the granite all over the world that prove that the planet could not have been molten or there would be no halos in the granite. There are many thousands more reasons why evolution don't work and as Spock said, when you rule out all the reasonable reasons for something the unreasonable must be true. Since all the evidence points to a young Earth age and there is no intermediate fossils, and there is no place on Earth that the geological column appears as the theory says it must we can only logically throw out the theory.

One cell in any organism is as intricate as New York City, that is one cell. To have evolution you would need many millions of New York Citys appearing at once and accidentally and randomly but yet working perfectly within its environment. Meaning those random cells found something to eat and someone to mate with.

Your theory is easy to put in one sentence, as follows and it shows the ridiculousness of it all.

Nothing Exploded and made the Earth, after millions of years of molten rock cooled it rained on the rocks and then lightning hit the water on the rocks and life began. Basically your theory is that everything in the universe came from nothing, and wet rocks. That is NOT REASONABLE.

reply to post by vonspurter


First of all: It is a common thing for plants to take nutrients from dead creatures. If you bury your deceased pet in your backyard, chances are, flowers and grass will grow more in that area than elsewhere, because of the abundance of nutrients. This is of course different from how a Venus fly trap works, but just so that's clear...

Now, imagine it is several million years ago. There is a plant in a place with relatively low nutrients, sitting in the dirt with all its planty brethren, just some little fern-type thing. But this plant happens to have two leaves which have grown so that they are laying on top of one another. Some wandering fly or other insect comes along and lands on (or crawls up) the plant, and crawls in between the leaves. At this point the bug gets itself stuck in the tangled frayed edges of the leaves that many fern-like leaves have. You could even throw in another common factor such as a spiderweb to help things along, if spiderwebs are common among these particular ferns at this particular time.

This is not so complex, is it? I'm sure this is happening with many household ferns all over the world right now. So, to continue...

The bug is unable to wriggle free and dies there, between the leaves. Now all you have to do is get the dead bug onto the soil, and voila, you've got a plant who has a slight survival advantage over its neighbors. Of course you'd need to have the leaf fall off, or maybe they separate in the wind and the bug falls out... or better yet, the leaves were close to the ground to begin with. You would also need this environment to remain consistent for a while. But now, plants with their leaves together are more likely to survive--even if only slightly--than their peers.

Once you've got that initial advantage, evolution takes care of the rest. Those plants with bristle-like edges on the two leaves are more likely to survive than those without. Those whose leaves are slightly more red-colored are more likely to attract insects than those that are green. At first you have the two leaves near the ground, in the dirt along with the roots... eventually the plants evolve so that the leaves can "digest" the nutrients from the insects without being in the dirt with the rest of the roots, because again, this gives them a survival advantage.

And as for the trapping mechanism itself... this is a complex and still poorly understood process, involving chemical processes on a cellular level that are triggered by contact with the hairs inside the "leaves." But rest assured, something like this is well within the possibilities of biological evolution, too.

Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org...

I see no reason to completely dismiss the idea of a "Creator" on some level, but at the same time, I am not going to choose this theory--which is completely speculative--as long as there are scientific, practical alternatives. Evolution is as much an accepted scientific fact as gravity. We can't get a very good firsthand, observational look at the mechanisms of either (gravity due to its foundation in largely unknown quantum physics, evolution due to the incredibly long time over which it occurs), but we can easily see the results all around us.

P.S. Remember that low-nutrient environment I was hypothesizing about? It appears the Venus Fly Trap still lives in that environment. The description on Wikipedia, which states:
"The nutritional poverty of the soil is the reason that the plant relies on such elaborate traps: insect prey provide the nitrogen for protein formation that the soil cannot."
... supports my hypothesis.

[edit on 21-10-2008 by Magnus47]

Why can't evolution and creationism be right?

Lets say god created everything and made them perfect. That would mean he created everything perfect for that time. As enviroments changed, the tempature rose and fell, lush enviroments turned to desert those things he created would have had to change. Therefore they evolved.

To me this makes sense and explains both theories. I'm not an expert, I just looked at both arguements and came to this conclusion.

Originally posted by Magnus47
reply to post by vonspurter

 

Evolution is as much an accepted scientific fact as gravity.

That is not true, or it wouldn't be called a Theory it would be a fact or science or a law. 54% of scientists do not subscribe to the theory, that is over half. Let's keep it to the facts only, and no interject speculation and theory. As I said earlier the Ben Stein Movie is released today on DVD, rent it and see what the worlds top 22 evolutionists say about evolution, you may be surprised.

Now don't get me wrong, if you want to BELIEVE in evolution by all means go ahead, I believe in God. But a belief is not a fact until shown to be true through science, by that I mean that scientists can recreate the experiment and get the same results. Theory's are untested or unproven guesses, scientific facts are repeatable.

reply to post by theindependentjournal


And:

God. "Light". Everything.

is any more reasonable? At least evolution (and indeed abiogenesis, which concerns the origins of life, not evolution) are scientific theories (and not just normal theories, like Intelligent Design) are based on observations. Actual measurements. Actual knowledge of the forces at play.

Just because it doesn't fit in with what your parents and community has taught you over the course of your life doesn't mean it's not true, only that you are unwilling to be rational if it means more to you to not be.

Don't pin this problem on science or evolution - the problem of understanding it lies squarely in your head, and nowhere else.

reply to post by theindependentjournal


But god and religion is 100% proven and fact is it? ooh please. Wake up.


God is not logical and cant be proven because it is a mere myth, "god created man in his own image" so what is that implying exactly? to me it implies god is actually a man. Strange how "man" also wrote the religious books with these messages from god.



[edit on 21-10-2008 by Horus12]

A venus fly trap is a plant therefore has no eyes, no ear, no brain as we would describe it. Yet it somehow evolved into what it is. As a plant it could see flies flying around it and then know that flies are nutritious, far more nutritious than anything it takes from the ground.
So as a plant it decides to evolve itself to take advantage of these flies.

These statements show a clear lack of understanding how evolution works. You claim you thoroughly understand it, yet it is clear that you show a lack of comprehension on the subject. I'll try to explain the evolutionary process that this plant most likely went under.

First, the plant doesn't see. It doesn't decide to evolve. It doesn't make choices like you described.

The venus fly trap evolved in a specific area of the United States that has very nitrogen low soil. This is an element that plants need to survive. As plants, they would have started off as seeds drifting into the area from other plants. Most would have died, but due to random mutation, some would have lasted long enough to produce the next generation. Let's take a look at some of these mutations.

1) Red interior.
2) Meat smell.
3) Snappy leaves.
4) Sticky substance.

These did not evolve all at once. A plant with a defect elsewhere (such as sticky substance on the outside - internal sap leaking out) would have survived by having bugs get stuck to them. As the bugs disolve in the acidic or base solution, it would have produced a bit of extra nitrogen at the based of the plant, allowing it to survive. When the next generation of plants were produced, the ones which produced more sticky stuff would have produced more child plants. This is survival of the fittest in action.

Over generations (millions of years), other mutations would have been generated through shear chance. Some were successful (red interior), some died out (theoritical black interior). The ones that received more food would produce more children, passing these random mutation to its children.

Hey, I think I'll grow some trap like leaves that can box them in so they can't get out. But how will I know they're on my leaf? Simple - I'll evolve lots of sensitive hairs on the inside of my trap which will tell me when an insect crawls over them to make me shut the cage.

Once again, you are stating that evolution is a choice. Biological evolution is not a choice. It is random chance applied to the environment around it. The snappy leaves were not an evolution over night. They gradually developed to what they are now through a series of small mutations that gave the plants a slight edge over the other plants. A lot of mutations are determental. Those plants would have died out. No genes would have been passed to the next generation.

The above process was apparently conducted through the natural course of evolution.

Yes, it was.

A plant that is aware of its surroundings can think logically and can adapt the shape of its body to 'hunt' but still after millions of years of evolution it is still a plant?

And yes, it is. An herb actually.

By studying (and I do mean studying, not just saying you studied it) the theory of evolution, as well as how survival of the fittest and other related theories work, it makes a lot more sense on how this could happen.

I will admit, your choice of a subject is definitely an interesting one. I was just helping my kids look up this very subject the other day.