Creation vs. Evolution

[TRLWNC7396]

That wasn't my question. I was wondering if you could answer why a cat would WANT to turn into a dog. Or, for that matter, a single cell organism to turn into a multi-cell organism.

And then continue from there to the drasticaly complex ecologies we have.

 

[Imari]

To say that Creation or Evolution is the be-all, end-all is rather wrong. There has to be a balance of everything, and throwing one side or the other off makes the teeter-totter a rather steep and slippery slope.

Let's throw away this for starters. There doesn't have to be a balance of everything. Sometimes things are just wrong. There's no need for a balance between heliocentrism and geocentrism, geocentrism is just wrong.

I'm not going to argue for one or the other to be completely correct, but I do feel we started with creation, and evolution has happened due to mankind's manipulation or other environmental factors causing manipulation since then.

Here's your first misunderstanding.

Evolution does not describe how creation happened.

Evolution describes how evolution happens, how monkeys and apes and humans all appear to have a common ancestor. How species that appear to have a common ancestor but ended up living in different environments became so different from each other. That sort of thing.

The theory that explains actual creation, as in "how did life start" is abiogenesis, and most scientists will admit that it's not well understood and it's pretty shaky. There are some experiments that have been done that seem to show that it's possible for the "building blocks of life" to form randomly under conditions that may be similar to those on Earth in the early days. But the concepts are nowhere near the level of certainty of say, evolution, and so a scientist might reasonably say "we're not actually sure how life started, we think it might have been like this".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Not to say that that is the be-all, end-all, either. I have seen gray and white squirrels within 10 miles of my house. (And maybe red, but I don’t look real close.) Why are those ALL in the Appalachian Mountains of Western NC? I sure don’t know! If geological changes CAUSE evolution, why are they not ALL gray or white? That’s an entirely different discussion for another time.

Why do you think they're not all gray or white? Say that the common ancestor of all modern squirrels was red, but that near your house there are conditions that favour reproduction for a gray or white squirrel. What reasons might there be that all squirrels are not gray or white?

So, here’s one that I CAN put up: There are fire ants in the US. They were introduced sometime in the last 200 years or so by sailors who used sand as ballast, and dumped the sand when they got back. And there were ants in the sand…. When they first got here, they were acclimated to the more equatorial climate. However some survived, and they are now as far north as northern SC. I know, because I have spoken with people who live there and are dealing with them.

In this cooler climate, are they a new species? No, but…. They have evolved and adapted to being in the cooler climate. I would like to see someone compare the genetics of these northern ants with ones that are still at the equator (or, even better, a sample from pre-1900’s, if that were possible). I can pretty much guarantee that there will be a difference. Don’t know how much, and it’s only been 200 or so years, so it probably won’t be incredibly drastic. But there will be a difference, as they are now a (somewhat) cooler climate animal.

It's not about how long it's been, it's about how many generations of the animal in question there has been.

To answer your question, perhaps consider using Google:

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/fireants_01

I got that as the first answer typing in "fire ants evolution".

Now I have a question: What CAUSES evolution? If it is ALWAYS based on need to adapt, and powered by natural selection, how long does it take?

You're misunderstanding evolution again. Why must there be a need to adapt? Fish seem to swim around in the ocean happily enough, so why would anything ever evolve beyond fish?

Because there's a reproductive advantage to doing so. The individual has a mutation that makes it have a greater chance of reproducing.

Maybe that means that the fish is actually an amphibian that can wander up onto land and feed, where there isn't so much competition for food. That would confer an advantage over all those fish fighting over the same scraps in the shallows.

How about I answer that by putting up an idea:

Let’s say we want to force an evolution. We have seen this happen, and we understand the way to document it. For a “breed” of an animal to be established, a dog (or cat or horse) needs to be consistent in its breeding for 30-50 years ( https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081031224839AA22rXH ). So, let’s look at that from a different angle:

I would like to breed a dog to become a cat. Not that I hope this happens (eew!), but just for the argument. Aside from looking and acting like one, the following three things must happen:

Species are not capable of interbreeding, by definition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species

How about I take this from yet another angle:

Let’s ask this: If a dog is what it is, what would cause it to NEED to become a cat?

A dog cannot become a cat.

A dog might evolve into something with cat-like characteristics, if they were to confer a reproductive advantage. But it wouldn't be a cat.

Just as humans did not evolve from monkeys. We both evolved from a common ancestor.

Time only goes forwards.

And, if that need arose, would it be slow enough to allow the gradual adaptation vs just killing them off before they could adapt?

That's the point of evolution. A mutation that kills off the individual does not create a reproductive advantage, and so is not naturally selected for.

How long are we talking here? We can say that the earth has been around for 4-billion years or more. Okay, I’ll accept that. But…

However long it takes. It depends on breeding rates, mutation rates, good old fashioned luck and probably some other stuff as well.

Look up the evolutionary timeline if you want an idea of how long these things take.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life

Let’s take something fairly simple as a different example. There are three layers of smooth muscle in the human stomach. (http://www.innerbody.com/image_digeov/dige11-new.html ) They mash and manipulate the food, then move it to the small intestine. Along with everything else that is going on. What are the statistical probabilities of those three layers (setting aside becoming muscle and lining themselves up correctly, as well as everything else that goes on) coming together to work like that?

But, the theory of evolution says it happened. So, again, here is my earlier question: Why and how?

Why? It works better than whatever was in place before it.

How? Random mutation.

Wanna see a cool little program somebody wrote that evolves clocks?



Random mutations and natural selection.



For all the things that I haven't answered, I still say that you need to go to Wikipedia and actually read through the main Evolution article and any supporting articles that you need to until you understand it. Because you still don't.

P.S. It helps a lot if you quote people when you're replying to them. For starters, it gives them a notification that you've done so. And it makes it clear exactly who and what you're responding to.

 

[niky]

That wasn't my question. I was wondering if you could answer why a cat would WANT to turn into a dog. Or, for that matter, a single cell organism to turn into a multi-cell organism.

And then continue from there to the drasticaly complex ecologies we have.

As I have said, and as Imari has said: Evolution is a blind process. It has no emotions, no needs, no wants.

A cat does not want to evolve. A cat wants to survive. And even that does not drive evolution. Evolution has given us, after millions of years of selection, cats that want to survive. Cats that don't want to survive don't pass on the "I don't want to live" gene to their offspring. Cats that want to survive but which don't have the traits to survive... or even the blind luck to survive natural disasters, ecological meltdowns and extinction before they reproduce, don't pass on their "I want to live" genes, either. Cats that are strong enough, smart enough, lucky enough and driven enough to survive and reproduce, do so... and pass on their genes to their offspring.

Pretty simple, isn't it?

 

[TenEightyOne]

So, you've given me concrete answers.

Please answer the open-ended why.

"Why would a cat want to turn into a dog" presumes that the cat, or the dog, are the life-form making the choices. They're not, they're making choices driven by the actual life of which they're built.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

Evolution is powered by natural selection, right?

If something goes outside of the norm, then regression pulls it back in that (or soon after) generations to meet the "average" of the natural selection at that time.

There would need to be a reason in the environment for a change in order for regression to allow it.

And if "like begets like" how did a single cell organism turn into a multi-cell organism?

 

[Scaff]

Evolution is powered by natural selection, right?

No

If something goes outside of the norm, then regression pulls it back in that (or soon after) generations to meet the "average" of the natural selection at that time.

No

There would need to be a reason in the environment for a change in order for regression to allow it.

No

Its not a planned process, this has been explained to you numerous times now, stop trying to make it one.

And if "like begets like" how did a single cell organism turn into a multi-cell organism?

Like doesn't beget like.

 

[Imari]

Evolution is powered by natural selection, right?

If something goes outside of the norm, then regression pulls it back in that (or soon after) generations to meet the "average" of the natural selection at that time.

Depends what you mean by powered by, but no.

You're assuming that creatures are optimal for their environment at any given time. I doubt that it has ever been the case that a creature was optimal for it's environment.

There would need to be a reason in the environment for a change in order for regression to allow it.

And if "like begets like" how did a single cell organism turn into a multi-cell organism?

Random mutations.

Do you understand how the concept of random mutations works? A trait does not exist within a population, and something creates it. Whether that be radiation, or transcription errors, or whatever (I'm not a biologist, I'm sure there's tons of ways) you end up with an individual with a trait that no other member of the species has.

Assuming that the trait isn't deadly, and that the individual manages to get to breeding age without being randomly killed by the universe dropping a fridge on it or something equally ridiculous, then it becomes a question of does that trait enhance the reproductive fitness of the individual? Does it allow them to have more children? Does it make their children more likely to survive to breeding age themselves? (Again, not a biologist) or some other way which gives their descendants an advantage over every other member of the species.

Over a period of time, the individuals with this advantageous trait tend to breed more successfully than individuals without this trait.

Likewise, traits that are detrimental to reproductive fitness will tend to be lost. And stuff that doesn't really matter either way will just be carried on, like how so many creatures happen to have five "fingers". It's not that there's anything particularly special about 5, that's just what happened to occur and there's no real reason to select away from that.

Seriously, watch the clock video I posted and you'll have a much better idea of what's going on. And/or read the Wiki page, because you're still not getting it.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

This is why I've never studied evolution thoroughly... Oh, the headache!

But....

When does like NOT beget like? And, you can't throw out regression on this one.....

By the way, that was a fascinating article on Fire Ants. I'll watch the video when I have some more time. Probably lunch.

 

[TheCracker]

When does like NOT beget like? And, you can't throw out regression on this one.....

Do you have any siblings? Are they identical to you?

 

[Touring Mars]

When does like NOT beget like?

On a superficial level, one could be forgiven for accepting the 'like begets like' idea, since that is our everyday experience/observation. Where this idea starts to run into trouble is when you consider what happens over large numbers of generations, and when you consider that individuals are genetically distinct from their parents.

The idea that distinct species, say cats and dogs, are distantly related to each other is somewhat counter-intuitive - it makes sense to think that two species that cannot interbreed are unrelated biologically... but, a closer look at the genes of both cats and dogs tells a different story - they actually are related via common descent, albeit from a point in time far longer ago than is our everyday experience. Indeed, all living things share common ancestry - any two species alive today shared a common ancestor at some point in time - humans shared a common ancestor with our closest 'relatives' (bonobos, chimps etc.) about 5 million years ago... dogs and cats are probably more distantly related than that, and yet are probably far closer to each other than either one is to us, for example.

In other words, like does beget like, but only if you consider the short term. If you consider the bigger picture however, that concept doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

 

[Scaff]

When does like NOT beget like? And, you can't throw out regression on this one.....

Always, or we would all look 100% identical and DNA identification wouldn't work.

Every offspring is a genetic mutation of its parents, they are not identical.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

Okay, so like does not ALWAYS beget a PERFECT like.

It doesn't answer my question of HOW (forget why) a single cell organism became a multi cell organism.

I'm not going to breed (successfully) with a cat, nor is my wife going to have a horse. "Like begets similar" may be the better phrase to use in this case, since you are pulling technicalities.

 

[Imari]

When does like NOT beget like?

What do you mean by like begets like? That's a pretty generic phrase.

Explain what you actually think is going on, and then we can either address your point correctly or address any misapprehension.


I'll have a go with what you probably mean, but I'm guessing.

A single celled organism probably reproduces by division. But what if during the transcription of DNA (or whatever equivalent the organism uses) there was an error? These things aren't perfect, like anything they're gonna screw up from time to time. You'd then have at least one "child" that was a bit different. Maybe one error was that the single cell divides into two cells to reproduce, but those two cells don't separate, forming this multicellular organism. Maybe this multicellular organism turns out to be better at surviving in whatever conditions they're floating around in. And so it survives and thrives.

Eventually a three cell version comes along, and a four cell. Maybe it takes a few goes each time before random chance happens on a version that doesn't go tits up straight away, but you've got millions of years to keep flipping the coin. Eventually you're going to get one that does a better job than the current version. And so on and so forth.

The environment controls what is considered a reproductive benefit, to a certain extent. Read up on the long term evolutionary experiment by Lenski for a vivid demonstration:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

The populations were restricted by food supply, until one of them evolved to eat one of the other chemicals available and the population exploded thanks to the now plentiful food that the "mutants" could eat.

But even without the environment there's still the chance that any given mutation is just outright better than the previous one.



Think about how the information gets from a mother and father to their child. Some part of their body has to reproduce their genetic information, get it together with the other partner's genetic information and combine them. If anything goes wrong with that process you *may* end up with an offspring whose genetic code is not strictly a byproduct of the two parents genetic codes, it will have some tiny difference.

This is assuming that in the time between birth and the father getting it on with the mother there hasn't been something else happen that would alter the genetic code that he's firing out. He works at a nuclear power plant. He's been having his balls kicked by a dominatrix regularly. He's old (babies from older parents have higher chances of genetic defects, to my knowledge).

That and the good old fashioned process of combining genes from two parents may result in a combination that actually does something in the child, whereas the parents with only half the puzzle each had no effect. The human genome is MASSIVE, and we don't really know what most of it does. Maybe the genes for telepathy already exist, but they've never been combined together in one person before. Or whatever.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

That's a fair and decent response. Thanks.

That also covers why both species COULD survive, which is an interesting thought. Not sure it covers every single possibility, but that's a good starting point for the argument.

But I still wonder about natural selection within a species. Hmm... Or a mutually exclusive species coming out of a mutation. Like putting an amoeba into a petri dish. That strikes me as a bit odd that it COULD happen, when we all started with an identical starting point.

 

[niky]

There's nothing odd about it. Nothing odd at all.

The planet is not a petri dish. Take multiple tidal pools on a single rocky seashore. The tidal pool over here may have a different level of salinity from the tidal pool over there, because it gets refilled with seawater less often, and it's out of the shade, so it experiences more evaporation. Another tidal pool will be rich in nutrients because it gets more sunlight/plants/whatever.

Then consider that the salinity levels and pH balance of the different oceans themselves are different. And that thermal vents found at the bottom of each are rich in organic material and minerals. And that at different depths, you get different temperatures, differing amounts of sunlight, differing amounts of flora. And that in different areas of the ocean you have nutrient rich currents or stagnant waters or...

Here, we're just talking about plain ol' H2O. But it's anything but plain.

At any one time, there are millions of differing petri dishes, all around the world, in which entirely separate subpopulations are reproducing, mutating and evolving.

As our planet is not a perfectly smooth cueball covered in exactly two or three feet of water, the starting conditions for any two organisms separated by any distance is never the same.

And then you get beyond the effects of geography and down to the effects of catastrophism. Which creates environmental stresses that split populations and lower a species' number dramatically. When a species is reduced to a few thousand in number (like, say, your H. Sapiens tribe is nearly killed off by an Ice Age or two, mutations (and thus, evolutionary changes) spread rapidly through the species.

Mutations like that big, beautiful brain we all have inside our heads... ...what doesn't kill us...

 

[wfooshee]

It took a VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY long time to get from single-cell organisms to cells staying together as a single organism. And that was just as big an accident, if not a bigger accident, than the combination of chemicals forming "life" in the first place.

And pay attention to the word "accident." EVERYTHING in evolution was an accident. There was no purpose, there was no guidance, there was no creature thinking to itself, "Damn, I wish I could grow something long and flat out of my shoulders to catch air with so I could fly!" It's completely and totally and simply about how some trait that shows up by some accident may end up being more successful, more useful, for that individual than others in its community, and thus passed down its descendants. Unsuccessful accidents disappear, as the very definition of unsuccessful.

 

[Imari]

Or a mutually exclusive species coming out of a mutation.

What's a mutually exclusive species?

 

[wfooshee]

And a single mutation does not a new species make. A mutation, and the adaptation it may lead to, may eventually result in a new species, but when it happens it's nothing more than, say, a red-headed child born of blond parents. It's still a human. And that's really not a good example, as the genes for red hair already exist. But say someone had a child with bright blue hair. That would be new! But it would still be a human child.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

An amoeba eats other bacteria, then dies when it runs out things to eat.....

"Accident" seems a bit presumptuous to me. If it's an "accident", then regression and natural selection will either maximize or destroy it very quickly. If this process maximizes, then it will take over, or at least become dominant, won't it?

So, how long is a long time? Yeah... Blue hair club...

That was a fascinating article on the long term growth study. I was pleased to see the "challenging environment" statement. That says to me that they WANT to see how they survive.

It does beg the question, though, for how it will turn out. Will they ever NOT be THAT bacteria? This will be something interesting to keep up with. And it's going to take a while.... One Trillion divisions to get a useable mutations... wow....

 

[wfooshee]

An amoeba eats other bacteria, then dies when it runs out things to eat.....

I don't even know what that means with regard to evolution.

"Accident" seems a bit presumptuous to me. If it's an "accident", then regression and natural selection will either maximize or destroy it very quickly. If this process maximizes, then it will take over, or at least become dominant, won't it?

Why is that presumptuous??? But the word regression has no place there. Natural selection will either select for it or not. (Not "maximize" or "destroy.") If it is successful, it carries down the generations.

"Dominant" means something else entirely. Two or more genes may exist for a certain trait, such as hair color. A dominant gene paired with a recessive gene expresses, where a recessive gene only expresses when paired with another recessive. Did you ever do the fruit flies experiment in high school biology?

That says to me that they WANT to see how they survive.

No. Again, no.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

Hmmm.... I don't always come across clearly, so let me try this again.

If you put an amoeba into a petri dish (for the sake of removing the multitude of factors in an eco system) that has ONE type of prey for it, the amoeba will eat and destroy all of the prey. Once it runs out of food (the "prey" bacteria), it will die. Simple natural selection. You live until you run out of food. That is all I was meaning. If a "prey" bacteria mutates into an amoeba, how long will EITHER species survive?

And THEN how does evolution happen?

This is why ecosystems are so amazing. The sheer complexity of having all of the necessary elements coming to be is mind blowing.

And that is where I say that "accident" seems presumptuous. Ecosystems are fine tuned for what they are. To have one happen "by accident"..... Hmmm.... How?

Oh, and me saying that the bacteria is being stressed in no way says that I think they are TRYING to kill them. They merely want to see what happens with them.

 

[wfooshee]

That's not selection in any way, shape, or form. It's just starvation.

 

[GBO Possum]

To say that Creation or Evolution is the be-all, end-all is rather wrong. There has to be a balance of everything, and throwing one side or the other off makes the teeter-totter a rather steep and slippery slope.

I'm not going to argue for one or the other to be completely correct, but I do feel we started with creation, and evolution has happened due to mankind's manipulation or other environmental factors causing manipulation since then.

No there doesn't have to be a balance between ideas for which there is evidence and ideas for which there is no evidence. That'd be like teaching the physiology of the Easter Bunny to Veterinary Science students along with the physiology of actual rabbits.

And, no, evolution did not start with the commencement of mankind's "manipulation". It started some 3+ billion years ago, and until all life on this planet is snuffed out, nothing will stop it.

If you have evidence to the contrary of what I'm saying, then please present it. Evidence would convince me to change my mind.

EDIT FOLLOWS:-

This is why I've never studied evolution thoroughly... Oh, the headache!

Maybe a little reading on the subject of evolution would be a good idea before jumping in here. Just for "balance"!

 

[TRLWNC7396]

Well, I watched the 'clock evolution' video. Interesting, but makes assumptions. The first is that there are known variables in an "accident". Hmmm....

My point about the amoeba still stands. How would a single bacteria survive if a mutation caused one of them to become a predator that ate all of the others?

I'm not saying it DID or WILL happen, but just wondering how we have the well balanced ecology of predators and prey when we all started from the same point.

 

[GBO Possum]

My point about the amoeba still stands. How would a single bacteria survive if a mutation caused one of them to become a predator that ate all of the others?

I'm not saying it DID or WILL happen, but just wondering how we have the well balanced ecology of predators and prey when we all started from the same point.

The scenario you describe would result in elimination of the bacterium. If it happened, then you can see the outcome today. The bacterium is not there. So what?

Reasonably balanced ecologies have a better chance of survival than radically unbalanced ones.

 

[huskeR32]

If you put an amoeba into a petri dish (for the sake of removing the multitude of factors in an eco system) that has ONE type of prey for it, the amoeba will eat and destroy all of the prey. Once it runs out of food (the "prey" bacteria), it will die. Simple natural selection. You live until you run out of food. That is all I was meaning. If a "prey" bacteria mutates into an amoeba, how long will EITHER species survive?

Sure. That one species that found itself in an environment with no food left will die. As have countless other species throughout Earth's history.

But another countless many species have found themselves in an environment rich in resources. And they survived.

Just because one species may find itself in an environment that wipes it out doesn't mean it will happen everywhere. You do understand that right?

And THEN how does evolution happen?

It happens in the "petri dish" that has enough food.

This is why ecosystems are so amazing. The sheer complexity of having all of the necessary elements coming to be is mind blowing.

Elaborate on how the complexity of an ecosystem suggests creation rather than evolution.

And that is where I say that "accident" seems presumptuous. Ecosystems are fine tuned for what they are. To have one happen "by accident"..... Hmmm.... How?

-sigh-

The finely-tuned universe argument is a fallacy.

This ecosystem that seems so perfectly-matched to our planet didn't just come to be all at once. After the first life emerged, evolution started doing its thing. Countless species (and variations of) popped up through genetic mutation, only to be immediately wiped right back out by an environment they weren't equipped to survive. Millions of starts and stops, dead-end branches, and non-effectual changes later, and the relatively tiny amount of us here today are the lucky leftovers. Fine-tuning? I'd call it carnage.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Okay, so like does not ALWAYS beget a PERFECT like.

If it often did beget a perfect like then wouldn't we mostly be identical clones of our parents... and all appear exactly similar to our siblings therefore?

Well, I watched the 'clock evolution' video. Interesting, but makes assumptions. The first is that there are known variables in an "accident". Hmmm...

In what way?

My point about the amoeba still stands. How would a single bacteria survive if a mutation caused one of them to become a predator that ate all of the others?

I don't know, how do apex predators like Great Whites get to where they are? Must breed or something, I guess... and remember that 99% of all species that ever lived no longer do.

 

[niky]

It would take a very persistent amoeba to eliminate all the bacteria in the global petri dish.

And it's a fallacy to think any ecosystem is in total balance. Imbalance, change and extinction are the norm, rather than the exception.

You're looking at a complex traffic system and wondering why the cars don't hit each other. Of course they do. ALL THE TIME.

 

[Imari]

Well, I watched the 'clock evolution' video. Interesting, but makes assumptions.

Of course it does. The point is that you can get surprisingly complex systems out of a few very simple rules that are remarkably similar to the rules that we suppose govern mutation and selection.

My point about the amoeba still stands. How would a single bacteria survive if a mutation caused one of them to become a predator that ate all of the others?

Humans will eat pretty much anything, and while we've caused a few species to become extinct like giant tortoises, but we're nowhere near eating our way through the entire planet.

Think about it. How are there any sheep left when there are wolves and dogs and lions and keas and all sorts of other things trying to eat them?

You know the answer to this, or at least it's not that hard to find, so I leave it as an exercise to improve your skills in finding knowledge. When you find the answer, you'll know why the existence of a predator does not logically equate to the extinction of all species on which it predates.

And that is where I say that "accident" seems presumptuous. Ecosystems are fine tuned for what they are. To have one happen "by accident"..... Hmmm.... How?

What are ecosystems fine tuned for, exactly?

I'm fairly sure that for every example of a creature that's staggeringly specifically suited for it's environment there's ten that are the most bizarre ass-backwards things you ever saw still managing to stumble along despite that.

All these things work together because if they didn't then they wouldn't be alive for you to observe them.

Have you heard of the anthropic principle?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

It explains why our universe has just the right constants and such for intelligent life to evolve, which would seem to be a massive coincidence. But then, if a universe didn't have the right constants for intelligent life to evolve then no one would ever be around to observe it.

In a similar way, ecosystems are like they are because that's how it needs to be. You take simple observable facts, like the fact that individuals do randomly mutate, and that it is more likely for individuals with certain traits to survive and breed, and it leads (over a significant amount of time) to a highly complex system that takes advantage of as much of the available environment as it can.

 

[TRLWNC7396]

True. I realized I basically had just said "perfect" and that's not going to happen in this life. So..... Yeah, but, there is still A balance. We don't have the Amoebas eating everything, and we don't have the "prey" overcoming the amoebas. It's a fluctuation, but it always comes back to regression. The "average" wins.

So, what is the balance, and how does it change? Does one change create another predator, which then may compete with the original? How does that affect the balance? Why do we have so many different ecosystems?

The clock assumed that we started with something. That is the point, I know. But how did we get to that point? I don't care to get into that argument because it isn't evolution on this level, and isn't worth arguing.

So, moving on: A pendulum happen. Okay, so the second assumption is that a gear wants to be a pendulum.

Why?

Then, he assumed a ratchet came to be. Hmmm... really?

If this is an unplanned accident, anything can happen, right?

Why not have a (to be ridiculous) bomb show up?

But.... that would kill off the system, so the rule of survival would be surpassed. We have to obey the rule of survival.

Then there is the assumption of breeding. Why would a cell breed when it is fine in its ecology and environment?

Hmm.... I don't get that.

After a time, it DOES make sense that things come together to create a clock. Okay. But, who said it had to be a 24 hour clock? why not 10 minutes or 100 hours?(I'll admit that I don't always grasp all of the information and didn't completely grasp the numbering system, so sorry if I missed that.)

Still, though, the assumption is that an end result is wanted. I get we want a clock, but why not a car? If we are going for a random outcome, when are we happy?

A balanced (surviving) ecology answers THAT question.... or does it?