How the Venus Flytrap Evolved

As with most evolutionary findings, the scientists present no evidence to support their story of how the plants changed from one into the other. They just assume the changes happened, then try to explain how it might have happened.

If you look at evolutionary theory objectively, the supposed proofs are not at all convincing. However, I acknowledge that evolution (little e) does happen, but Evolution (big E) does not.

Religion is much less convincing.

>Evolution is a fact-based Theory (big T) and the proofs are quite “convincing” to all but the willfully dumb.

That doesn’t help the discussion at all. First, proofs are for Math, not Science. Second calling people who disagree with you “willfully dumb” is anti-rational. Third, in this particular case there was certainly no proof, nor, more importantly, is there any evidence. There was just a made up story to fit the few facts we have. Realistically, we can’t know how the Venus Flytrap evolved, all the evidence we would need to know that is gone. Plants don’t leave nice fossil records. All we have are educated guesses. It’s better than saying “God did it,” but it’s really not science, it’s speculation, and should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

There are a lot of places where we can clearly illustrate evolution happening thanks mostly to the evidence of fossil records. This is not one of them.

Finding a good adaptationist story is important, even though we must acknowledge its speculative status.
Because evolution can only proceed by small, incremental steps, figuring out what those steps might have been enable scientists to make novel predictions (about cladistics, genomics, the fossil record) even though the story they tell may not be verifiable directly.

The power of adaptionist inference can be illustrated by the following passage:

In 1976, the American biologist R.D. Alexander lectured on sterile castes. It was well know than these existed for ants, bees, and terminates, but not for any kind of vertebrate. Alexander, in a kind of thought-experiment, toyed with the notion of a mammal able to evolve a sterile caste.

[i.e., precisely the kind of speculative, adaptionist thinking that can serve as a predictive ground though the story itself has no evidential weight.]

It would, like the termintes, need an expandable next sllowing for an ample food supply and providing shelter from predators. For reasons of size, an underbark location was no good. But underground burrows replete with large tubers would fit the bill perfectly. The climate should be tropical; the soil clay. An ingenious exercise in armchair ecology, altogether.

[Alexander tells just the kind of story our Venus fly-trap people have told: evolution puts constraints on what is possible, so we can make some general predictions, if we're clever enough. That's how science works: you start with a theory, then test it. No one simply generalizes to a theory from data-points: data only makes sense within the context of a coherent theory, because it must be interpreted. But here's the kicker!]

But after his lecture, Alexander was told that his hypothetical beast did indeed live in Africa: it was the naked mole rat, a small rodent.

[Naked mole rats are eusocial, sterile-caste mammals that basically fit all the parameters Alexander outlined in his thought-experiment. Alexander was famous for giving "stories" on how insect societies might've evolved. His ability to predict, based on his reasoning, what a eusocial mammal might look it, and see that prediction vindincated, gives some evidence that he's on the right track. Science offers no certainties, of course, but that's not a bug, that's a feature.]

More fairy tales from the so called “scientists” of this heathen age!

This plant was clearly designed. By GOD.

Flame on Religious wars!

Seriously though I was looking for a more in depth explanation of why the plant moved to insects not that it just happened. I’m not even bringing into question Evolution or Religion (because I have a belief in both) I just want to know why it moved to insects. Can’t I just get that info?
If the reasoning is it evolved from another carnivorous plant then that doesn’t help.

Whoa. I don’t have a lot to say about the plant itself, but I work in an addition to the building that those two do research in. I have to go by their labs to go to the vending machines. I saw the nastiest giant cockroach outside one of them just the other day. :K

(For the record, I see no reason why any creator would not be able to use evolution as the mechanism of creation, and my argument here is not against any religious belief that does not place itself above observable reality.)

Yes, I am aware that it goes against some interpretations of what the Bible says.

-And then the no-longer-necessary sticky substance would be phased out, as it would be no longer necessary and simply a waste of resources.

The venus fly trap evolved from a letter plant when that plant ate a poekmon power crystal.

(oh, and Misc – it wouldn’t, not unless some random mutation caused it to stop producing the sticky fluid, and the new breed flourished more. This is why humans still have apendix and other species other useless things).

Sorry, but if these plants evolved, then why are there still monkeys today?

In addition, if evolution didn’t happen, then you have a quandary:

either God created the carnivorous plant before the Fall, meaning there WAS death before the Fall (goes against dogma)
OR after the Fall, the plant dramatically changed from being a plant that did not consume animal matter to one that did – in LESS time than evolution took to do so. So what would you call the rapid adaptation of existing body structures to new purposes but evolution?