Originally posted by jagdflieger
Why don't we see animals or plants that use 22 amino acids different than ours? Why don't we see animals or plants
whose DNA structure is fundamently different than ours?

...Becaus we all have the same, rational Creator who loves certain numerical systems? The number 22 is one of the most sacred numbers in Jewish mysticism and is connected to the Tree of Life/DNA.

Blessings,
Mikromarius

"The number 22 is one of the most sacred numbers in Jewish mysticism and is connected to the Tree of Life/DNA."

Not heard of this before. Any suggested reading/sites???

Originally posted by cassini
"The number 22 is one of the most sacred numbers in Jewish mysticism and is connected to the Tree of Life/DNA."

Not heard of this before. Any suggested reading/sites???

I'll suggest that you try and search for "Sefer Yetzirah", Kabbalah, Sefiroth, "Tree of Life", "Hebrew alfabet". Hopefully you'll find a page about the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, or the Sefirot Tree. There are ten sefirots and 22 connections between them. One for each letter in the Hebrew alfabet. When you draw up the geometric figure called the Tree of Life using a pair of compasses and a ruler, the first step is to draw four circles along a straight line. This is also the first you'll have to draw to make a double helix, the shape of our DNA. Now: Four circles = four proteins? Ten sefiroth = ten combinations of the four proteins? 22 connections = 22 amino acids? I used to have several links to material like this, but I've lost the old bookmarks... Start searching yourself, it's really interresting. Perhaps you should also check out some Kabbalistic newsgroups too. But keep in mind that there's much phoney Kabbalistic stuff around. There's also many who refer to Kabbalah as Qaballah. Good luck!

Blessings,
Mikromarius

Originally posted by jagdflieger
My question is: ... Why don't we see animals or
plants that use 22 amino acids different than ours? Why don't we see animals or plants
whose DNA structure is fundamently different than ours?

The short answer is "because we live on Earth."

Those 22 amino acids contain the information that produces a creature capable of surviving here on Earth. You'd get a different set of them from a creature capable of living (for example) in the cloudbanks of Jupiter. You'd get a different set of them from something that evolved on another planet.

Think of it this way: Why are all the words in the English language spelled with only 26 letters? The answer is because those are the sounds that English speakers learn to pronounce. Native Chinese and Hindus (and other non-English speaking groups) have sounds they make that we don't use. Just as you really can't translate exactly a Chinese word into English (like the Peiking/Beijing/etc spelling for the Chinese capitol), organisms without those essential amino acids just can't survive on Earth.

Cheers to mik for suggesting the search words. And cheers to Byrd for answering the question (IMHO) in such good terms.

The point yours truly was making was the proponents of Common Descent make a big deal out of the fact that all life uses say protein A (or process A), when protein B (or process B), protein C (or process C), etc. would do the job just as fine. In short they make the point that there is a whole bunch of different ways in various life processes that would work (or so the evolutionists say) but life on earth uses the same basic processes. The use of 22 amino acids is just one of the things quoted and was used just for the sake of brevity. However the theory of abiogenesis would suggest that there should be life forms on this planet that would use different proteins and processes. To me the evolutionists are saying in one statement there is only one common ancestor and in the next saying there should be several common ancestors.

jagdflieger, certainly going to look into this more because right now I don`t really know enough. However, for now I will say one thing, "theory of abiogenesis", with the stress on theory. Theories are quite often found to be incompatible with reality. I will (someone else will) give this some research and hopefully answer in the fullness of time.