Half billion-year-old bacteria not “simple”

Sorry I missed this post. I was thinking of posting it myself. Interestingly, what the experimenters basically did was make an attempt to reconstruct "ancient" proteins by manipulating present-day ones. And they couldn't. They couldn't go very far---which means that, out of the configuration space of all proteins seen as an infinitely dimensional Venn diagram, the proteins they were interested in were the tiniest of points. As Dembski might say, "How did nature hit this 'target'?" We've seen this kind of work before; and with the same results. And how do they evolutionists respond? They don't change their thinking. What they do is what they always do: find some contorted way of safely placing their results inside a Darwinian narrative. Ever more "epicycles" upon "epicycles". Just think about what they're telling us (since I don't think they bothered much to think about it): within 500 million years of a planet being formed and then cooling off from massive heat (you know, the way to kill bacteria is to 'boil it') bacteria already came into existence using "the sophisticated cellular machinery that exists today.” So, for life to begin, it only takes 500 million years upon a seething planet; but to get up to today's speed, it needed another 3 billion years (i.e., the additional "mutations" that the protein is able to sustain 'going backwards'). How can this possibly be? How can scientists make such outlandish suggestions? PaV

Apparently, this generates an impenetrable cognitive dissonance field to the evolutionists here. The data does not fit their narrative so, it doesn't exist. Think of it as a symptom of ideological solipsism. ;-) -Q Querius

As soon as people start thinking about what is required for reliable self-replication it will become more clear to them that a "simple" self-replicator is a myth.

Despite a popular hypothesis that primordial organisms had simple enzyme proteins, evidence suggests that bacteria around 500 million years after life began already had the sophisticated cellular machinery that exists today.

Self-replication lies at the end of a very complex, carefully-controlled, functionally-integrated, information-rich design process. The underlying assumption of the materialist creation myth -- that life starts with "simple" self-replication and then proceeds to add controls, functional integration, information processing systems -- is not just unproven, it is not just wrong . . . it is absolutely, fundamentally backwards. This is not just another chink in the armor of the materialistic creation story. It is not just another mystery that needs to be solved. It is not just another open question. The entire paradigm of the materialist creation story is upside down -- fundamentally and irretrievably flawed at a basic level. Eric Anderson

Extremely interesting! Of course, we are not surprised at all. :) This is really ID friendly research! The more we can understand about LUCA, the more all present "theories" about OOL will be seen for what they are: fairy tales and nothing more. Well, shall I say it? OK, I will say it. After all, I have already alienated BA and many others here... Of course, this evidence, like almost all the best scientific molecular evidence in favor of Intelligent Design theory, is completely based on the assumption of Common Descent. :) gpuccio

Researchers are resurrecting ancient bacterial protein complexes to determine how 3.5-billion-year-old cells functioned versus cells of today. Surprisingly, they are not that different.

Why is that surprising? It's only surprising to those who are believers in evolution. tjguy