First the ancestral plant must have adapted to move its tentacles and leaves in a particular direction, giving it a greater chance of sticking to and engulfing a passing insect.
Next it sped up how quickly it detected prey and tried to respond.
Then the plant would have had to find a way to become selective, so it only tried to trap live prey and not any detritus that landed upon it.
Finally, it must have evolved its tentacles into sensory hairs and teeth that detect and wrap around prey, respectively, while also losing its sticky glands and growing new digestive glands capable of digesting the victim's corpse.
The adaptations led to the plant's ability to eat larger insects for more nutrition. Link -via the Presurfer
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.
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.
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.]
This plant was clearly designed. By GOD.
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.
Henry Drummond: Do you think a sponge thinks?
Matthew Harrison Brady: If the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks!
Henry Drummond: Does a man have the same privilege as a sponge?
Matthew Harrison Brady: Of course!
Henry Drummond: [Gesturing towards the defendant, Bertram Cates] Then this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to THINK!
(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).
Regarding bug-eating plants in the garden of eden: This is somewhat speculative as well, but I think there is some question whether flies would have been considered "alive" at that time. The Bible refers to the "breath" in connection with life. Like plants, insects don't really "breathe" the way other animals do. Just one possible explanation.
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?