The 'evolution' of food

[Ken Everett]

I see a number of Christian and non-believers subscribe to the notion of evolution. It is my opinion that evolution is impossible, and I believe my opinion is supported by (the Bible and) DNA.
I have a question for those who actually think evolution is real: can you please explain to me, using Darwinian logic, how and why the plethora of tasty and nutritious plants, vegetables and fruits evolved?

 

[Shemjaza]

I see a number of Christian and non-believers subscribe to the notion of evolution. It is my opinion that evolution is impossible, and I believe my opinion is supported by (the Bible and) DNA.
I have a question for those who actually think evolution is real: can you please explain to me, using Darwinian logic, how and why the plethora of tasty and nutritious plants, vegetables and fruits evolved?

Plants extract energy from the sun to grow and animals steal that energy by eating plants.

This is a very, very old relationship.

Some plants that produced harder seeds could use animals to spread their offspring.

Seeds wrapped in high energy packets can grow faster... or entice animals to swallow them and spread them.

These are a few of the simpler interactions of plants and animals... but the interesting thing about them is that they all can develop and change in very, very small steps. This means that the little variation you get from mutations over a very long period can lead to significant changes.

Your thoughts?

Incidentally, how do you think DNA can be used as an argument against evolution? DNA is an explanation as to how the inheritance and mutation part of evolution happens.

 

[46AND2]

I see a number of Christian and non-believers subscribe to the notion of evolution. It is my opinion that evolution is impossible, and I believe my opinion is supported by (the Bible and) DNA.
I have a question for those who actually think evolution is real: can you please explain to me, using Darwinian logic, how and why the plethora of tasty and nutritious plants, vegetables and fruits evolved?

One could start by doing a search on Google Scholar.

I never could find contentment in my beliefs. Constantly challenge them. Would rather go out and find truth than just hope it has been given to me...

 

[Ken Everett]

Plants extract energy from the sun to grow and animals steal that energy by eating plants.

This is a very, very old relationship.

Some plants that produced harder seeds could use animals to spread their offspring.

Seeds wrapped in high energy packets can grow faster... or entice animals to swallow them and spread them.

These are a few of the simpler interactions of plants and animals... but the interesting thing about them is that they all can develop and change in very, very small steps. This means that the little variation you get from mutations over a very long period can lead to significant changes.

Your thoughts?

Incidentally, how do you think DNA can be used as an argument against evolution? DNA is an explanation as to how the inheritance and mutation part of evolution happens.

 

[Ken Everett]

So some chemicals (which accidentally formed from free atoms) combined to form the building blocks of plant life. These found a way to synthesize energy from the sun. They rearranged themselves into thousands of different food types which just happen to contain some of the 93 elements in the periodic table which are required in finely tuned amounts to support life in human (and animal) cells. In a stroke of serendipity, they also removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and generated oxygen.
What was the process and driving force behind this process? How did evolution steer this amazing sequence of events to the final products?

 

[Ken Everett]

One could start by doing a search on Google Scholar.

I never could find contentment in my beliefs. Constantly challenge them. Would rather go out and find truth than just hope it has been given to me...

 

[Shemjaza]

So some chemicals (which accidentally formed from free atoms) combined to form the building blocks of plant life. These found a way to synthesize energy from the sun. They rearranged themselves into thousands of different food types which just happen to contain some of the 93 elements in the periodic table which are required in finely tuned amounts to support life in human (and animal) cells. In a stroke of serendipity, they also removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and generated oxygen.
What was the process and driving force behind this process? How did evolution steer this amazing sequence of events to the final products?

The force is chemistry.

Efficient replicators will consume space and resources.

It isn't pre planned, animals would have been originally predators and parasites on plants.

All of life has been adapting and changing... animals who are better at eating the food available will thrive. They eat it because it's available, it's not available because they eat it.

Even oxygen breathing is an adaptation. You can study the very ancient rocks to see when animals were rare and the oxygen grew out of control... it would have been toxic and dangerous. But it's also an excellent source of energy, so when animals developed the ability to harness it they grew in number... and stabilised the atmosphere.

It's taken billions of years for life to get this complicated and specialised.

 

[Brightmoon]

Part of that happened back in the Cambrian . A eucaryotic cell contains mitochondria engulfed a cyanobacterial cell. The engulfed symbiotic Cyanobacterial cells eventually evolved into chloroplasts . One lineage of unicellular chloroplast containing algae evolved into multicellular land plants . Land plants are an symbiotic amalgam of three different organisms . Two eubacterial and one eucaryotic .

Some plants evolved different ways of becoming attractive to animals because they’re able to spread the seeds more widely than the plant can. Evolving a thick edible layer and small hard seeds like berries do, means that the seeds get dropped a distance from the parent plant and with a covering of fertilizer. Birds tend to be sloppy eaters and seeds get spread that way. Some seeds are sticky and when the animal grooms itself or dies the seeds get spread. Plants species that had ineffective ways of spreading their seeds just went extinct.

 

[Ken Everett]

I agree with you, in part.

I was born into the Anglican faith, attended a Catholic school for seven years and never found anything that fully satisfied my longing for the truth.

One day in utter desperation, I called out to God: "If you are out there, I need You" - that day I had a 'Damascus Road' experience which has lasted 44 years and counting!

His Word says that we will seek Him, and we will find Him, when we seek Him with all our hearts!
That is His unreserved condition.

I was so hungry to know more that I read the Bible from beginning to end. Suddenly, His Word made so much more sense (it cannot be understood by the natural mind because it is Spiritually discerned), read books and found a person who was willing to walk the discipleship road with me.

The Word of God is food for the spirit. Food must be digested for growth and strength. Similarly God's Word requires reflective meditation (what is this Scripture saying; in my own words, how do I understand it; how can I practically apply this in my own life) for meaningful spiritual growth.

For anyone who is prepared to seek God on His terms, this will be a journey of (self/) discovery leading to a place of peace, joy and hope.

I am on this journey.

You can walk beside me.

 

[Ken Everett]

The force is chemistry.

Efficient replicators will consume space and resources.

It isn't pre planned, animals would have been originally predators and parasites on plants.

All of life has been adapting and changing... animals who are better at eating the food available will thrive. They eat it because it's available, it's not available because they eat it.

Even oxygen breathing is an adaptation. You can study the very ancient rocks to see when animals were rare and the oxygen grew out of control... it would have been toxic and dangerous. But it's also an excellent source of energy, so when animals developed the ability to harness it they grew in number... and stabilised the atmosphere.

It's taken billions of years for life to get this complicated and specialised.

 

[Ken Everett]

Our most recent studies of DNA (and the rate at which DNA can change) suggests that billions of years (even the estimated 43 billion year existence of the universe) would not be enough time for the complex life forms found in plant and animal species on earth to 'evolve', even if this process of evolution was capable of adding DNA information in propagation of species.

Every single argument offered as a probable answer to the process whereby life came to be on earth as it is now, requires conjecture and unseen, unmeasured and unprovable processes.

If one conservatively quantifies every single cosmic, astronomical, chemical, biological and other factor that is required to support sentient life on earth, it would be found that the odds of there being such life, dependent on all the infinitesimally fine-tuned variables, are just one in ten the the power two million!

So evolutionists have a 1 in 10¬2000000 chance that intelligent design is not the answer to the question of life on earth.

These are not odds that any rationally-minded person would be prepared to take.

 

[Brightmoon]

It always puzzled me why accepting silly stories about nature and natural phenomena makes people think that this chaotic nonsense is a good description of God’s Creation. Mainstream Scientists actually study God’s Creation (Nature )and take a great deal of pride in getting their understanding of what’s going on correct.

 

[Brightmoon]

Intelligent Design is a pseudoscience explanation created specifically in the USA to evade our laws against teaching pseudoscience nonsense in the public school system .

It isn’t even good theology as it’s a not very sophisticated god-of-the-gaps argument

 

[Bungle_Bear]

Poe?

 

[essentialsaltes]

In a stroke of serendipity, they also removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and generated oxygen.

It was not a stroke of serendipity for most life on earth. The Great Oxygenation Event caused one of the first mass extinctions on Earth, as most of the critters alive at the time were poisoned by oxygen.

But your overarching point betrays some teleological thinking that evolution created these plants for us to eat. There is no reason to believe that. After all, evolution also produced nasty things like poison ivy, castor beans, and peaches (yuck).

But there are some evolutionary connections. It is to the advantage of plants to have their seeds spread widely. Attractive fruits are one way that plants can get animals to distribute their seeds (with a bonus helping of fertilizer). So, in some ways it is not random that many fruits are sweet with high energy sugar. They are bait.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

I see a number of Christian and non-believers subscribe to the notion of evolution. It is my opinion that evolution is impossible, and I believe my opinion is supported by (the Bible and) DNA.
I have a question for those who actually think evolution is real: can you please explain to me, using Darwinian logic, how and why the plethora of tasty and nutritious plants, vegetables and fruits evolved?

This seems like an odd request, in that several if not many decades have been used to develop
not just so-called "Darwinian logic", but several other worldly plans/ systems/ efforts to substantiate the theory,
and no matter what argument is used to show any theory to be in error,
there is or will be made up a 'logical' answer to it, "using their own logic"..... sort of an endless going down that path or paths.....

i.e. asking or using their own logic, cannot lead to the correct solution - it just ends up developing more of the world's system/ 'logic'/ to further promote their theories.

Oh, it is good, perhaps, Yahweh Willing, as some escape theories when they discover a "lie" or a false premise or a false argument being used, and the lie, or false premise or false argument continues to be used (whether by necessity for the theory, or even just for convenience or for feelings/ emotions) ...
i.e. as LIGHT SHINES IN THE DARKNESS, it is true a few come to the LIGHT instead of rejecting it,
as written in SCRIPTURE, the Creator's Plan and Word.

 

[pitabread]

These are not odds that any rationally-minded person would be prepared to take.

There are no meaningful probability calculations related to either the origin of life or evolution thereof, since we don't have the availability of enough information to define a meaningful probability space.

Any arguments claiming that the odds of life and/or evolution are too slim are bogus arguments.

If one conservatively quantifies every single cosmic, astronomical, chemical, biological and other factor that is required to support sentient life on earth, it would be found that the odds of there being such life, dependent on all the infinitesimally fine-tuned variables, are just one in ten the the power two million!

The post-hoc probability of the occurrence of event after it has already occurred is always 1.

This is another reason why the claims in such probability arguments are bogus.

 

[46AND2]

I agree with you, in part.

I was born into the Anglican faith, attended a Catholic school for seven years and never found anything that fully satisfied my longing for the truth.

One day in utter desperation, I called out to God: "If you are out there, I need You" - that day I had a 'Damascus Road' experience which has lasted 44 years and counting!

His Word says that we will seek Him, and we will find Him, when we seek Him with all our hearts!
That is His unreserved condition.

I was so hungry to know more that I read the Bible from beginning to end. Suddenly, His Word made so much more sense (it cannot be understood by the natural mind because it is Spiritually discerned), read books and found a person who was willing to walk the discipleship road with me.

The Word of God is food for the spirit. Food must be digested for growth and strength. Similarly God's Word requires reflective meditation (what is this Scripture saying; in my own words, how do I understand it; how can I practically apply this in my own life) for meaningful spiritual growth.

For anyone who is prepared to seek God on His terms, this will be a journey of (self/) discovery leading to a place of peace, joy and hope.

I am on this journey.

You can walk beside me.

If you had spent half as much energy into actually learning evolution (instead of reading apologist literature on it), you would have never started this thread.

And no offense, but, contrary to your first sentence, you didn't agree with me at all. You basically did the opposite of me. You hoped, and now you believe, that truth would be just given to you. And now, you haven't challenged that belief for nearly half a century.

 

[loveofourlord]

I see a number of Christian and non-believers subscribe to the notion of evolution. It is my opinion that evolution is impossible, and I believe my opinion is supported by (the Bible and) DNA.
I have a question for those who actually think evolution is real: can you please explain to me, using Darwinian logic, how and why the plethora of tasty and nutritious plants, vegetables and fruits evolved?

tastey plants didn't evolve, we evolved to find them tastey. Funny how things that in nature that we find tastey are useful while those that arn't we don't find tastey. What a zebra probably finds as the tastiest thing ever, is different from us, due to differences in diet.

 

[loveofourlord]

So some chemicals (which accidentally formed from free atoms) combined to form the building blocks of plant life. These found a way to synthesize energy from the sun. They rearranged themselves into thousands of different food types which just happen to contain some of the 93 elements in the periodic table which are required in finely tuned amounts to support life in human (and animal) cells. In a stroke of serendipity, they also removed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and generated oxygen.
What was the process and driving force behind this process? How did evolution steer this amazing sequence of events to the final products?

you do realize your backwards? First off plants ARE life so they would of course use many of the same required building blocks or they wouldn't survive very well.

Second animals survive off eating plants, because they adapated to eat them, look at koala's that can survive off a plant toxic to other species, look at bacteria that can use arsenic and other deadly stuff for animals and other bacteria and such. Niches arn't built for animals, animals evolve to fill niches.