How do you know amoebas evolved 2 billion years after the earliest life form? Is it all conjecture?

Question

I asked in a previous question if it was evidence of intelligent design that an amoeba, one of the most primitive and earliest life forms on this planet, contains enough specific instructions in it's DNA to fill an entire 30 volume set of Encyclopedia Britannica.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Aq9zonfa4GVosltyGC2FSnPsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20070910125516AA2sYOe

The answer that I got from one person was that Amoebas are actually a product of 2 billion years of evolution.

I have to wonder how in the sam scratch you could anyone know that? Did a biologist make this up one day "oh yeah 2 billion, that's a nice round number - who can argue with that?"

Or did a biologist look at the complexity of DNA and say "there is NO WAY this could have evolved! But if I say that in my paper I will be laughed out of the university... Wait. If I postulate "billions and billions" of years there's no way you can argue with that..... right?"

Answer 1

That is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

Dating on fossils is done by dating the rock layers from which the specimen was found.

Carbon dating is good for recent (around 40 thous. years old) fossils. Other types like Potassium/Argon are good for much older specimens.

There are no scientists (that is to say - people who actually use EVIDENCE to support their hypotheses) who claim that any life form as evidenced in the fossil record did not evolve.

Amoebas are a modern form of life, not the most primitive. Further, life has not been around for 2 billion years.

Answer 2

Yes and No.

The theory is that evolution is caused by a series of adaptive mutations.

My understanding is that biologists are basically of two schools. The odds against life evolving are astronomical, OR, if you have the "right" conditions for long enough life will always find a way to evolve.

The numbers you are talking about are rounded off, they are not exact. They are not facts, they are theoretical estimates.

The biggest problem in understanding the basics is that unscientific people who know nothing about the science parrot what they remember and make the whole theory sound really dumb, or they claim that the theory is a fact, which is just as dumb.

I suggest reading Isaac Asimov's non-fiction works on the subject.

Answer 3

Challenges to evolution are mostly based on religion like intelligent design, which claims things are so complex how could they evolve into that level of complexity without some higher power making that happen.

Well ID is garbage, even if a higher power made the amoeba materialize, the higher power could just as well make things able to evolve, or even crazier yet made things to be perfect which would mean able to adapt to take advantage of things and continue on living.

Where Intelligent design fails, currently you can actually see evolution. The human dog ten thousand years ago looked like a wolf, or a coyote. Though technically a fox is a dog too.
Ten thousand years ago mankind started to domesticate the dog, cross breeding, and inbreeding the various traits that were needed. Traits like size, color, shape, temperment, intelligence, bite strength and so on.

So from wolf or coyote to a great dane and a chihuahua, the domesticated dog has evolved.

Yet religion resists evolution because many in religion take the biblical stories as being the truth and not just parables.
They say god made it all in 7 days.

BUT

Dinosours have existed in fossil record since 230 million years ago, and most died off 65 million years ago.

Homosapien fossil remains, the oldest that exist are 200,000 years ago in africa.

Intelligent design disregards this and claims carbon dating is not an exact science. How much more of science does intelligent design have to deny to make its story plausible.

If the god made the world, the animals and mankind in seven days how can dinosaurs have died off 65 million years before mankind was on earth. That is a very long 7 days.

Part of the problem of christianity is you have to bury your head in the sand to try to ignore what science has proven.

Or instead you could realize the bible was not a factual account of events and was instead not meant to be taken literally, but this would cause all sorts of doctrinal problems, and disturb peoples beliefs.

Answer 4

Who is sam scratch?

Of course, asking about some specific detail of evolution is unlikely to receive a sound response because most of us are not biologists. However, for a theory to be accepted in the scientific community, it nust be based on solid scientific research and multiple sources of data. Christianity on the other hand, is based on a single book that has been modified over the years by people trying to make it credible. There is no evidence to support it's opinions, many of which have been plagiarised from other equally unreliable sources

Answer 5

Believe it or not, amoebas can be fossilized just like anything else... Really, amoebas can't be considered "one of the most primitive" life forms on this planet by any definition, they are a FAR cry from archaebacteria, even bacteria as we usually understand them are rather "advanced", and don't qualify as being early life forms by comparison. Amoebas are eukaryotes, which tend to be defined by their complexity.

Fossilized archaebacteria have been found to be ~3.5 billion years old (other, even more crude forms of life have been found to exist before this, but I won't even go there). The oldest protozoa fossils, (amoebas are a subset of protozoa) are ~2 billion years old.

Answer 6

How do they know it was a product of 2 billion years of evolution?Were they there?No.How did they come to this conclusion?By listening to their teacher in school.Oh yeah,about the biologist.That pretty much sums it up.And yes you will be laughed at on your exam paper.Know why?Even if your teacher believes the same as you they will protect their job before they have the guts to stand up and say it.There is no proof of particles to people evolution.Do you have the courage to stand up and argue the point?Ever wondered why schools wont discuss the criticism of evolution?Because they know that students will not buy into evolution.It's pretty pitiful when an elementary schoolteacher tells a child they came from re arranged pond scum,and evolved from a monkey.No wonder kids commit suicide,and kill other kids.

Answer 7

We have a good idea about how long evolution takes to produce certain complexities, and we know the time frames that were allowed for our life on this planet.

Would you prefer scientists just throw their hands up and say - well we have no first-hand evidence of these events that take millions of years to occur... therefore it must be a god... somebody have some dice? We need to figure out which god to pick

Answer 8

Amoebas and other uni-cellular organisms are commonly found in rocks fossilized.
Do you know what the single largest singe-cell organism on Earth is today? An ostrich egg.

Answer 9

Everything living today is the product of around 4 billion years of evolution. This has to be true because evolution is inevitable and constantly occurring, and living things have been on the Earth for around 4 billion years.

Answer 10

I'll take 4, then get into a special alien suit that grants me strength and a gun/bike. I'll go saving the princess from the evil crow. Also my name is Jim.