I get email


Jebus. Another creationist.

isn’t it true that according to evolution a part of a feces (a bacteria) can evolve into a supermodel (human)? just a thought

No. According to evolution, they can only evolve as far as a creationist.

No. According to creationism, nothing evolves, which means you, sir, are nothing more than a part of feces.

No. Bacteria are complex single-celled organisms that should not be reduced to mere poop; your argument relies on denying reality.

No. Humans are not derived from E. coli or other fecal bacteria, but from a completely different lineage.

No. Evolution is not reducible to a goal-oriented process. Bacteria will evolve and change over time, but there is no reason to anticipate a particular multicellular outcome.

No. Supermodels are unique and specific instances of an evolutionary process (as are we all), so I don’t know why you are trying to belittle them by comparing them to poop.

No. You seem to be ignoring all the complex and contingent forces operating on organisms over the last 4 billion years.

No.

Bored now. Fuck off, scum.

Comments

  1. strangerinastrangeland says

    Your answer is much more detailed than my would have been.

    “No.”

    (And that includes both the question and the claim that this was a “thought”.)

  2. says

    They have no originality. It is the same guy, too, just sent on 25 March.

    I guess he thought it was a brilliant gotcha question. He’s wrong.

  3. says

    The question is unsettled, but it is at least an oversimplification and most likely completely wrong to think that eukaryotes evolved from bacteria at all. They are some form of symbiosis between archaea and bacteria, although exactly how that came about is unclear. But I suppose arguing the finer points with this bozo would be pointless.

  4. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Yeah, Pauli pointed out that there were things so stupid they were “not even wrong”. This might require an even more severe category–not even sentient.

  5. robert79 says

    Just to humour him…

    Q: If we were to find some lifeless planet, dropped some poop on it, and waited a few billion years, what would happen?
    A: All the bacteria in the poop would probably die to vacuum exposure, or if there is an atmosphere, because it’s an atmosphere they are completely unused to.

    Q: What if it was a lifeless planet but with an Earthlike atmosphere?
    A: First, the Earthlike atmoshere we know is due to life, without life nothing would be producing oxygen. So this does not exist. If it did, the bacteria in said poop would die because they are adapted to living in a human intestines, not in open air.

    Q: Okay, what if it did manage to survive somehow?
    A: Whatever produced the Earth-like atmosphere would probably try and eat the poop. Bacteria and poop-eater would probably both die.

    Q: Okay, so in the extremely hypothetical situation that some poop bacteria was dropped on a lifeless foreign planet, managed to survive and adapt to whatever weird atmosphere was there, and would evolve. What would happen?
    A: It would evolve into something. Some of it’s distant cousins might admire the beauty of its 17 tentacles. It would not be human, or anything a human might consider sexually attractive, let alone be considered to be a supermodel.

  6. says

    Well Robert, anaerobic bacteria could survive in an atmosphere without oxygen. The question is whether they would have anything to eat. If they did, we do not know the probability of multicellular life emerging. It could be a very rare event. The eukaryotic cell certainly seems intuitively improbable, but maybe it isn’t really assuming something like a prokaryotic cell exists.

  7. woozy says

    And if the answer[*] were “Yes” that would mean…. what?

    [*]with generous leeway of what “could” and “a” bacterium evolving into “a” human a means.

  8. aziraphale says

    Maybe a little counter-attacking would be in order.

    Isn’t it true that according to creationism a benevolent god created every bacterium, virus and parasite that causes human diseases, and gave them the ability to evolve so that our countermeasures against them would need to be continuously improved?

  9. Rich Woods says

    @robert79 #7:

    or anything a human might consider sexually attractive

    Given everything humans have tried to shag over the years, that claim may be a little too much of a stretch.

  10. blf says

    According to evolution, they [bacteria] can only evolve as far as a creationist.

    Are cretinists a type of extremophile bacteria? Extremophiles can survive in extreme conditions inhospitable to most. Cretinists seem to survive in conditions with an extreme shortage of critical thinking and facts, so are they some sort of extremophile…?

  11. jrkrideau says

    I had to look up the word “feces”.

    Oh “faeces”
    The writer cannot even spell.

  12. curbyrdogma says

    Is it true that creationists hold the record for packing the most logical fallacies into a single sentence?

  13. monad says

    Could a fecal bacterium develop into a supermodel? You’d think that if it got the flagella just right, to really frame its figure, and featured a really elegant set of pili…well, maybe not with eukaryocentric beauty standards, but it should be something anyone can aspire to.

    @13 jrkideau: Just going to throw out all of North American usage as ignorant? You might notice both PZ and Tom the Dancing Bug spell feces the same way.

  14. aziraphale says

    @15 monad: I have glumly come to accept that there are 2 main variants of English spelling and that mine is in the minority. I like the “ae” version because it goes back to the Latin root “faex”. Also North American usage is not as consistent as it claims. Why not “erodynamics”?

  15. blf says

    Is it true that creationists hold the record for packing the most logical fallacies into a single sentence?

    Possibly, especially, perhaps, if they also are afraid of falling off the Earth’s edge, there are only four elements, and only the local sheriff has any secular authority† — thus completing their denial of all of physics, and adding denial of chemistry to a toxic authoritarian mind-set. Added to complete denial of biology and belief in magic sky faeries, that’s a rather deep hole of often-willful ignorance.

      † For anyone who does not recognise this oblique reference, it’s the so-called “sovereign citizen” rubbish…

  16. Owlmirror says

    I like the “ae” version because it goes back to the Latin root “faex”

    Aha.

    Faex (Fæx) News.