Evolution, Science & Religion (Evolution)

by romansh , Monday, June 18, 2012, 02:14 (4324 days ago) @ David Turell

When oxygen first arrived living systems had to be developed to handle it. From a logic standpoint photosynthesis is the better way to go if you are alive. But oxygen allows for a better energy production, which mobile life needs.-For a photsynthesizer oxygen is an excrement and a oxidant. Better is not the right word here. Photsynthesis allows plants to store energy in the form of sugars and allows those sugars to be used as building blocks for structures. Luckily for us plants generate more elemental oxygen than they consume.-For an anaerobic sulphur reducing bacterium sulphate will be a 'better' source of oxidant than oxygen ever will be. In water sulphate concentrations can be much higher and it is not highly poisonous.-So living systems had to evolve to cope with trace quantities of this poison. The same way flora and fauna will evolve to cope with Tony's mess long after mankind has gone.