horizontal gene transfer: the real IM? (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, December 17, 2014, 08:51 (3629 days ago) @ dhw

I hate to be the devil's advocate here (ok, I lie, I don't hate it.) but there are a fair number of rather large speculative gaps here. Lot's of "could have's" and "possibly's" with no real actual scientific data. -
"The mite regularly parasitises both D melanogaster and D willistoni, using its needling mouthparts to suck up nutrients from fruit fly eggs and larvae. Such a parasite could conceivably transfer DNA from the egg of one fruit fly species to another." (Note that they didn't say it has been proven to happen)-"Thus exposed, the fern's gametes could easily come into contact with the similarly liberated sperm and eggs of hornworts, which tend to congregate in the same moist spots on the forest floor. If damaged or malformed gametes from both plants found one another, they could have traded DNA across their broken membranes before fusing with one of their own kind."-They then went on to compare the likely hood of a process they have not witnessed to viral transmissions which are on a totally different level. What I see when I read this is: -"We find a lot of stuff that doesn't agree with the theory of evolution. In order to save the theory of evolution, we have to create some new method that can be neither proved nor disproved to support the theory."

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What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.