First multicellularity: new findings and theories (Evolution)

by dhw, Thursday, July 18, 2019, 12:48 (1953 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: A review of current thought, starting with the recognition that single-celled forms were highly complex before multicellularity appeared:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-debate-the-origin-of-cell-types-in-the-first-...

QUOTE: "The recent work paints a picture of ancestral single-celled organisms that were already amazingly complex. They possessed the plasticity and versatility to slip back and forth between several states — to differentiate as today’s stem cells do and then dedifferentiate back to a less specialized form. The research implies that mechanisms of cellular differentiation predated the gradual rise of multicellular animals. (David’s bold)

These observations, he said, suggest that spatial cell differentiation was already happening in the choanoflagellate lineage, and perhaps even earlier — a possibility that blends the new ideas (that the capacity for differentiation is ancient and the transition to animal multicellularity was gradual) with the old (that this could happen with choanoflagellate-like cells)."

DAVID: Note my bold in the first quote which tells us that single-celled early forms were highly complex. This implies to me that the very first life cells were highly complex, and therefore had to be designed. The basis for eventual multicellularity was designed into those first cells

Of course they were highly complex, and this whole article fits in perfectly with the argument that no matter what “lineage” of cells we’re talking about, single cells already had the ability to change their nature, and so it is perfectly logical to suggest that once cells began to form communities, they were able to create the innovations which led to the evolution of all subsequent life forms. Hence common descent. I agree with you that such a mechanism seems far too complex to have arisen by chance. That is one of the strongest arguments for a conscious designer, and is a major reason for my own unwillingness to embrace atheism. You already know my reasons for not embracing theism.

Under “Cambrian explosion”:
DAVID: Nothing new. They find some new forms and have no explanation as to why the Cambrian is so different from what preceded except more oxygen appeared. No help for poor Darwin who recognized the danger of the Cambrian gap to his theory

Ah, but “poor Darwin” never knew that there was an alternative to his theory of random mutations and gradual refinements – a theory that would explain the Cambrian and every other mystery arising from Chapter Two in the history of life, and would fit in perfectly well with the theory of common descent which even you, David, have accepted. Three cheers for the champions of “cellular intelligence” (leading to Shapiro’s natural genetic engineering), and “poor Darwin” could have ended his masterpiece with praise for the Creator who designed the mechanism that led to the “most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals”. Don’t you just love it?