Origin of Life; pre-planning (Origins)

by dhw, Saturday, September 03, 2011, 12:46 (4828 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: I believe that from the beginning evolution was coded into the genome with pre-planning. Here is an example of early precursors of the nervous system in single-celled organisms:-http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128283.800-your-brain-chemistry-existed-before-...-Thank you for this extraordinary item. I feel such discoveries should be given a fortissimo trumpeting, whereas it seems to be only weird and wonderful speculations, like multiverses with our alter egos on Planet X, that make a noise. If brain chemistry already existed in single cell organisms, i.e. before animals appeared, isn't this a truly sensational piece of evidence that evolution happened?-"Choanoflagellates are our closest single-celled relatives and, because they sometimes come together in colonies, are on the boundary between single-celled and multicellular animals."-"Today, says Zakon, the nervous system seems 'unbelievably complex', but evidence from these tiny organisms suggests it was built up from several simple systems, which evolved separately for different reasons." -As the researchers say, "the brain is a lot more than a bunch of choanoflagellates", but the basic concept of single cells ALREADY provided with the necessary ingredients to combine into more complex mechanisms surely provides a massive underpinning for evolutionary theory. Of course the question of whether this is the result of divine pre-planning or a chance combination lies beyond the boundaries of that theory.