From single cells to multicellular life: Researchers capture the emergence of multicellular life in

a reply to: GetHyped

People without a background in science and a reliance on divinity and faith will make any sort of statements evoking the deity of their choice as the cause as opposed to the effect or result of eons of evolution at work. They simply refuse to understand that there is a huge difference between setting experimental perimeters then letting the experiment run its course and recording what happened along the way as well as the end result vs. deciding what the end result should be and then setting things up to give you the desired outcome. The former is good science, the second is the approach preferred by those subscribing to an evangelical version of Christianity where they see what the current outcome is and fill in the blanks with god instead of trying to see what happened along the way to get things to where they are. Its frustrating for sure because where the science minded individual is willing to change their mind if that's what the evidence and data states whereas the other approach is to ignore all evidence or deny that its true or accurate and use god of the gaps as the explanation for everything not understood. It makes an intelligent conversation under those conditions very difficult to come by.

a reply to: stumason

You said that evolution is just a random event and I keep posting articles that state it is not 100% random.

There is nothing to misunderstand about what you said. Seems to me like you are not trying back peddle and change your argument after you have failed miserably at your claim that evolution is 100% random.

You can keep remaining ignorant and avoiding the evidence that goes against your beliefs. I'm not going to continue to waste my time, it's pointless to think that you would change your mind if I were to post anything else so why bother.

a reply to: Sabiduria

No, I said the mutations were random. I then went on to say that if that mutation gave it an advantage in the given environmental circumstances it finds itself, then it was more likely to survive and procreate

Here let me post what I said for you again:

All evolutionary change is accidental. It is pure random mutations that, if they happen to offer an advantage in the given environment, lead to a successful organism. As the environment changes (be it climatic or as a result of other organisms evolving themselves) those same mutations could then be detrimental. It's a constant, ongoing process but entirely random.

Do point out where I said evolution was random. I didn't, I said it was "accidental" because there is no plan or conscious effort on the part of the creature or some Sky wizard. The only thing I claimed was random was the mutation itself. Here lies the misunderstanding on your part.

You mentioned about creatures evolving because of a "need", this implies that there is some conscious effort at work, there is not. It is pure chance that an animal should evolve a certain feature, it is then down to the environment to sort them out and determine if that feature is a blessing or a curse.

Not sure why you've taken such an arsey attitude. There I was thinking I was talking to an adult, not some petulant child. My "beliefs" are precisely what you have posted, no back peddling required. You have simply misunderstood what I said and are now acting like a bit of a douche when discussing it.

EDIT: And yes, you do post articles, but you've freely admitted you've pulled them willy-nilly from Google, don't read them yourself and even posted one from a creationist, so I am hardly surprised you've got yourself in a bit of a pickle, misunderstood what I've said and now gone off half-cocked.

Long term evolution is much more about the environment rather than the mutations themselves. You have so many different species having so many different mutations at the same time. It's like rolling millions of dice, and getting new partial combinations of DNA each generation. There's so many going on at once that some species on earth will survive virtually every extinction level event imaginable. It could just be luck, but the environment determines the path of life more than anything else. The fact also still remains that most mutations are neutral. Life follows the environment, rather than the mutations. The weaker species simply go extinct.

Neat that they observed this emergent behavior that shows a transition from single cellular to colonial organisms. Obviously teamwork pays off at some point.

As for chemical chiralty, I suspect it has to do with light. Light can have a polarization property, and with that comes optical rotation. When it comes to stuff like photo-chemistry, that rotation property can strongly bias which molecules are stable and which break down. Basically depending on the nature of the light hitting the stuff, it creates a selective pressure for either right or left handed molecules. So perhaps when the chemistry for early life formation was occuring, strong exposure to sunlight may have had a role in selecting chiralty in the life here on Earth.