Messages

Granted. You die.
I wish I could eat breakfast.

Granted. Your cat gets run over by and 18 wheeler, and the a tractor runs over what's left for good measure. Now, you cat is a disgusting looking splat on the road and all other cats look as "cute" as it.
I wish I wasn't so gory. Must have something to do with my foot getting cut off.

My turn to admit I haven't done enough research. Bacteria eat things by emitting enzymes to break them down, then absorbs them via osmosis or active transport. So, how exactly would a bacteria fuse with another if its way of eating is to break down the food into small pieces that it can actually absorb. It would be one thing to absorb broken down nucleic acids, but absorbing an intact extra chromosome is pushing it a bit. And, I'm currently ignoring the fact that this would lead to aneuploidy which would almost certainly mean bad things for the cell.

Granted. People never play the game again, thus preventing them from doing it again.
I wish I could be happy for one day if I walked one foot.

[parents.]

I am aware of allopolyploidy. However, as you said, the organism acquires a number of chromosomes that is the sum of those of its parents. The extra DNA is inherited. Since bacteria reproduce asexually via binary fission, this explanation wouldn't work.

No, I have not heard of the grain Triticale.

You do realize that the death of Jesus was sometime around 33 AD, right?

Your headache goes away, but so does your head.
I wish my homework would complete itself.

The reason I believe Christianity and defend it is because, more than anything else, it matches how I see the world. I look, and I see that people, as written in John, "love the darkness" and shun the light. I see that people are rather nasty things on the inside (if you think I'm biased, Freud agreed with me, though he didn't exactly say it the way I did). I have noticed that very young people are very very selfish. Despite this, selfishness isn't encouraged. Despite our inner evils, we strive to be "good." It makes no sense that we are born with a certain mind and yet we try to push it away. We should not. We are terrible things internally, in the unconscious mind, and yet we do not accept it. By the way, I haven't exactly been flaunting Christianity. I've been saying why I don't believe evolution.

Well, I've been digging around, and while it appears scientist have published a lot of research on mutations or evolution of genes, they haven't published to much about chromosomes. Go the the evolution wiki, look up chromosomes, and you'll see my point. Just out of curiosity, how exactly do you know that my point has been argued somewhere else, and that someone has come up with a counter argument or counter point?

I would love to help.

[or as a circular strand of DNA (or RNA in some viruses) in the cytoplasm of prokaryotes and in the mitochondrion and chloroplast of certain eukaryotes.]

Addressing your last point first, this is the definition of chromosome from biology-online.org.
Chromosome: A structure within the cell that bears the genetic material as a threadlike linear strand of DNA bonded to various proteins in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells, or as a circular strand of DNA (or RNA in some viruses) in the cytoplasm of prokaryotes and in the mitochondrion and chloroplast of certain eukaryotes. Yes, bacteria only have a single loop of DNA. That is their chromosome.
Now, I since your first point was more of a suggestion, I won't address it, but I will address your second point. You ask me to imagine a gene that tells the cell to create an extra chromosome. First of all, there isn't one. Secondly, if there was one, and if the cell did create an extra chromosome, the cell would die or, in a multicellular organism, develop into a cancer, as extra chromosomes are all but certain to have a negative effect. Having an extra chromosome (or missing a chromosome) is called aneuploidy, a chromosomal abnormality that leads to negative effects. In fact, the word aneuploid is taken from the Greek words meaning "not","good", and "fold." Like I stated earlier, most mutations have negative effects, and aneuploid is all but certain to have negative effects. The only reason I am using the term "all but certain" instead of certain is because I am not an expert on aneuploidy. However, no article that I have read mentioned any benefits. An extra or missing chromosome may lead to cancers, down syndrome, or a number of other bad conditions.
Aneuploidy occurs during cell division when chromosomes do not separate properly between tow cells. Since bacterial chromosomes do not separate (since they are never attached) it would be highly unlikely (I'm only using "highly unlikely" instead of "impossible" because I am not, as stated before, an expert on the subject) for aneuploidy to occur in bacteria. If it did indeed occur in bacteria, the bacteria would be unable to function properly and die. If a bacteria did indeed have a gene with the marvelous ability to encode a protein that would make an extra chromosome from scratch, there would be no reason for the cell would not be able to replicate the extra chromosome, as the chromosome would react with the enzymes responsible for DNA replication just like any other chromosome.
The main weakness of your argument comes from the fact that there is no evidence for the existence of a gene capable of creating an extra chromosome, as such a gene does not exist today. In fact, it is probably impossible for a gene to create an extra chromosome, as genes are blueprints for protein, not nucleic acids. You ask me to imagine a gene that could something when there is no evidence that any gene could do what you described. Asking me to imagine a gene that could do what you said is worse than a Christian asking someone to imagine a God who could create everything. At least God is God, and by being God he is understood to be all powerful. If God existed, he could indeed create everything. But no gene could do what you said. You claim to be objective and only believing in the facts, but claiming such a gene to exist would require wishful thinking or a determination to assert evolution's correctness. If your explanation, "Imagine there is a gene..." is fine, then why would you be against someone saying "Imagine there is a God..."? Saying God did something is much better than saying a gene did something that it can't do. I can't imagine a gene that could do something that no gene can do. It simply isn't possible. Why do you say that you only pay attention to the facts when you come up with something like a gene that creates an extra chromosome? At least Christians admit they put faith in God.

Well, the problem with the whole mutation thing is:
A) Most mutations are not passed down, as a mutation must occur in a gamete to be passed down to offspring.
B) Most mutations either have no effect or they have a negative effect and/or kill you. Now, there are some mutations that are beneficial, but...
C) Mutations, while they can have a variety of effects, and can even add new DNA to a gene pool, but are incapable of producing new chromosome sets. While mutations may lead to more genes in a gene pool, they do not lead to more DNA passed down to offspring, which would be necessary in order for bacteria with a single chromosome to evolve into a human with 42 chromosomes.

Ugh! I should have checked here before I looked at any other posts. I was having a hard time figuring out who was who. What's with all of the name changes?

I have noticed that once people make up their mind about something, they tend to hold on to that idea no matter what the evidence says. This applies to Christians, but I also think it applies to all other people. Christians will hold on to their beliefs because they are right in their own eyes. Evolution, as you should know, is far from a perfect theory with no flaws or loose ends in it, regardless of what people say. Therefore, since there are flaws or loose ends, Christians can exploit these flaws, and use them to disprove evolution in their own minds. Once people believe something fully in their mind, it becomes right. Any evidence to the contrary often gets ignored. This is a people thing, not necessarily a Christian thing. I doubt loose ends of evolution are highly discussed by scientists or in text books. Why should they be? To the scientist, evolution seems like the only rational explanation for our existence, and if there are any gaps or loose ends or flaws, they are probably based on a lack of human knowledge of the subject related to the gap or loose end or flaw. To a Christian, however, those flaws or loose ends or gaps are very important. Christians do not necessarily ignore clear evidence, they ignore evidence that to them is not clear. To a scientist who believes evolution and holds it as a truth, however, many things can be seen as proof for evolution. If you believe that the Big Bang is unprovable, why do you expect Christians to embrace it. At the very least, they hold their own faith to be unprovable, so why would you ask them to exchange their belief and values for something that is, at the most, no more provable.