Now that its morning and my head has cleared a little from last night I had
a few more comments that may be more to the point regarding my last post:
<snipped a large chunk about Plasmodium (malaria)>
> As a tangent, these parasitic protists got me thinking about the
>origins of parasites and preservation of them. Issues abound (and I'm sure
>many more that I haven't thought of) and here are just a few that come up in
>my mind:
>
>1: Concerning YEC's: At what point did the relationships of these
>parasites with their hosts arise (this could even be expanded to viruses
>etc.). Lots of origins questions here!!! I was amazed to find out how many
>different digenetic parasites (a very peculiar life-cycle to say the least)
>there are and I wondered how were these preserved on the ark. If they
>simply were carried though in one of the hosts the number of parasites that
>would have had to been carried by two dogs/cows/etc.. would have had to been
>tremendous - they would have been a bunch of really sick puppies (no pun
>intended). Possibly it could be argued that there was a large population of
>ticks and mosquitoes on the boat which wouldn't be unreasonable.
>
>2: Problematic to me is the specificity that many of these parasites have
>for a human host to complete the cycle. What does this say about the age of
>man. Again, did Noah and his family carry a multitude of diseases with them
>or did they originate after the flood (this would seem problematic in a
>4000year old earth. I wonder if anyone knows anything something of the
>history of malaria?
>
Maybe more clearly the problems as I see them:
1: YEC view, earth is created "good" with no parasites (this is the
argumentation from my personal experience on this issue).
Problem: origin of parasites, I assume they are the result of the
fall, in this case they are to me clearly a "new creation." I have never
gotten a straight answer about what is meant by "sins effect on creation."
I am always confronted with sin caused this change in the "order of
things". This to me requires a miraculous event not a simple "things began
to decay." These parasites are so specialized that I don't believe any
natural/ordinary mechanism acting over just a short period of time could
have resulted in their "creation."
I don't necessarily say there is anything wrong with a radical miraculous
change in the way life is orgainized after the fall but my YEC friends
always seem to shy away from taking the seemingly necessary step of
appealing to a "second creation" following the fall, as well as miraculous
creative events following the flood
2: Intelligent design: The Plasmodium example I have to admit can be fit
into an intelligent design model now that I have thought some more. The
remnant of the plastid-like molecule (35kb) contains a suite of genes
necessary for transcription and translation, no pseudogenes have been found
and it would appear that the whole genome is functional although its
specific purpose is unknown at present. Because it probably serves some
function I have no problem with a design argument here even with many of
the genes being most similar to transcriptional/translational genes in
chlorplasts because even functioning cpDNAs in green plants have other
functions than photosynthesis and thus may have common functions with the
Plasmodium genome.
The evolutionary model would have the Plasmodium being an
independent/photosynthetic organism that lost photosynthetic function and
because of its extreme antiquity (maybe 800million years) has lost every
bit of then unused DNA (photosynthetic genes) resulting in the streamlined
molecule it has now.
Problems arise in a case like Astasia where this organism is very
similar (at a molecular and morphological level) to the green Euglena yet
it is nonphotosynthetic but has cpDNA genome. Its cpDNA genome would
appear to have a similar function to that of Plasmodium, having retained
all of the same genes but it still contains several cpDNA genes including
the rbcL gene (large subunit of the CO2 fixing enzyme) but this gene does
not appear functional.
Some basic choices:
1: Astatsia created non-photosnthetic (note: not a parasite, its
freeliving) with genome as it is and we just haven't figured out what other
function the rbcl and other supposedly cpDNA genes may have (this is the
answer I usually get)
2: Astasia created photosynthetic and loss of photosynthesis due
to fall or after the fall and has been losing photosythetic genes due to
random drift/other natural processes
- this would be difficult to explain based on modern molecular
biology given a 6-10 thousand year time line
>Joel
>
> ,-~~-.___.
> / | ' \ Joel and Dawn Duff
> ( ) 0 1457 W. Lake Rd. #4
> \_/-, ,----' Murphysboro, IL 62966
> ==== // e-mail: duff@siu.edu
> / \-'~; /~~~(O) phone: (618) 684-3726
> / __/~| / | * * * * * *
> =( _____| (_________| \\\/// \\\///