Rapid evolution or epigenetics? (Introduction)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Saturday, April 30, 2011, 18:19 (4935 days ago) @ dhw

I have absolutely no problem with the idea that the mechanisms of epigenetics enable organisms to protect themselves against environmental changes, but firstly these mechanisms, as far as we know, do not change organisms into different species ... they result in adaptations not innovations. Secondly, it's your preordained "framework of driving evolution to create humans" that I find unconvincing in the light of the higgledy-piggledy evolutionary bush of species which come and go. Adaptation to change does not indicate that bacteria are preordained to evolve into humans! On the contrary, their being "programmed" to remain as bacteria suggests to me that they are an end in themselves.--If the are 'programmed' to remain bacteria, then evolution between species, and in particular from vastly less complicated to vastly more complicated would not occur. What I find even more intriguing is the method of their communication, which directly ties one of the four basic forces directly to life. i.e. Electromagnetism.