Quote Originally Posted by northpaw View Post
I, too, found the wording of the second part of statement B a little odd. While the first part of B represents one of the general principles of evolutionary descent, the second part does not. Rather, it seems to take one side in what is an ongoing discussion.

The problem is that at that early stage of life's development, there probably weren't individual organisms as we think of them today. Instead, there were something akin to "genetic pools" where the process of sharing genes was likely accomplished via horizontal gene transfer (see the section "Importance in evolution").

In a nutshell, it's generally accepted by biologists that all life descended from a Last Universal Ancestor. However, that ancestor may well have been more like "a discrete genetic pool". In terms of whether or not the average layperson would believe in such things at all, the difference between whether it was an individual organism (didn't really exist back then) or a discrete genetic pool is utterly insignificant, imo.


Therefore, a suggestion:

It might be most useful to read statement B as including whatever nuances it would need in order to fit with current evolutionary theory. Only then would any meaningful correlation between belief in the two statements be revealed.


[Disclaimer: I am not a scientist, so the above just comes from my vague understanding of the relevant research/ideas.]

This is what is found to be one of the obvious and glaring points, that you hear things like 'well it's something like .... ' or 'the general consensus is .... ' or 'we believe that .... '. You know why they don't just show you examples or why they show an 'artistic rendering'? Because they don't have them. They BELIEVE that stuff because it is their RELIGION. And they use Soviet style teaching methods and adhere to it and it's doctrines with the dogmatic ferver of any religious cult that you could name.