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ORIGINAL: Jhud

That being said, this plant seems more than extravagant for what it does; rather than create an organism whose ability to survive is enhanced through modification, we see again an organism that is limited by it's unique capabilities, and so less likely to evolve further. We see this happen regularly in nature, and natural selection acting as a limiting factor rather than one capable of producing species more likely to survive than their predecessors.

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ORIGINAL: Veritas

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

That being said, this plant seems more than extravagant for what it does; rather than create an organism whose ability to survive is enhanced through modification, we see again an organism that is limited by it's unique capabilities, and so less likely to evolve further. We see this happen regularly in nature, and natural selection acting as a limiting factor rather than one capable of producing species more likely to survive than their predecessors.

A species does not look ahead to plan further evolution. While it might not seem like an intelligent design, evolution can only work with what traits it has. It's not like there is an intelligence behind evolution. Evolution cannot plan for the future. Venus Fly Trap may well be an evolutionary dead end.

I've noticed that creationists often criticize evolution by saying selection alone is not adequate or because mutation alone is not an adequate explanation. You are right that selection alone is limiting, but selection does not act alone. Mutations add genetic information, and selection picks the beneficial traits. Evolution makes no sense until you consider both mutation and selection and how they act in concert.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames
Well that's just the thing. I didn't learn in my genetics class, a single method by which mutations can add genetic information.

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I learned a great many ways that the information can be damaged.

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There are some similarities between venus fly trap digestive glands and the glands that serve other perposes in other plants. What is the method by which these glands can be modified to both excrete digestive fluids and absorb nutrients?

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A species does not look ahead to plan further evolution. While it might not seem like an intelligent design, evolution can only work with what traits it has. It's not like there is an intelligence behind evolution. Evolution cannot plan for the future. Venus Fly Trap may well be an evolutionary dead end.

I've noticed that creationists often criticize evolution by saying selection alone is not adequate or because mutation alone is not an adequate explanation. You are right that selection alone is limiting, but selection does not act alone. Mutations add genetic information, and selection picks the beneficial traits. Evolution makes no sense until you consider both mutation and selection and how they act in concert.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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A species does not look ahead to plan further evolution. While it might not seem like an intelligent design, evolution can only work with what traits it has. It's not like there is an intelligence behind evolution. Evolution cannot plan for the future. Venus Fly Trap may well be an evolutionary dead end.

I've noticed that creationists often criticize evolution by saying selection alone is not adequate or because mutation alone is not an adequate explanation. You are right that selection alone is limiting, but selection does not act alone. Mutations add genetic information, and selection picks the beneficial traits. Evolution makes no sense until you consider both mutation and selection and how they act in concert.

See? Here I am again - mutations really have no significant power to add the significant complex information neccesary to create something like a snap trap in a fly trap, and there is absolutely no evidence that it does, but of course I can't explore this further because it would appear to be off-topic.

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Careful, Jack. At least we are staying on topic. Also, I think you're wrong. Grasses already have bulliform cells which close leaves by evacuating the cells when the leaves begin to become dry. Why couldn't these simply evolve the ability to do this faster, i.e. fast enough to catch a fly (which humans appear to not have evolved... we'll get there, though)?

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ORIGINAL: essentialsaltes

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ORIGINAL: DanJames
Well that's just the thing. I didn't learn in my genetics class, a single method by which mutations can add genetic information.

Apart from large-scale deletions, mutations add information to the gene pool, from the perspective of information science. Curiously, one way of quantifying information is called 'entropy' and it bears a mathematical resemblance to thermodynamical entropy.

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I learned a great many ways that the information can be damaged.

Certainly mutations modify the information. The selection process will weed out modifications that are damaging to the creature's fitness, but others will be neutral or beneficial and will survive, adding to the total information in that species' gene pool.

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There are some similarities between venus fly trap digestive glands and the glands that serve other purposes in other plants. What is the method by which these glands can be modified to both excrete digestive fluids and absorb nutrients?

This is certainly a good question, and is one that researchers can at least attempt to address through comparative genomics or whatever else biologists do. Apparently, we don't have an answer yet, but the stumbling block is not 'information'. Changes in the gene pool result in a pool with more information than a hypothetical static gene pool of plants with identical gene pools.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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Careful, Jack. At least we are staying on topic. Also, I think you're wrong. Grasses already have bulliform cells which close leaves by evacuating the cells when the leaves begin to become dry. Why couldn't these simply evolve the ability to do this faster, i.e. fast enough to catch a fly (which humans appear to not have evolved... we'll get there, though)?

Well, I can see how over time if there were very slow flieshung around on grass blades until those blades dried out and wrapped themselves around the flies, which would create a source of nutrition in poor nutrition soils. Eventually, as flies evolved to move faster, the blades would evolve a faster response as well, eventually evolving strutures that caused such movement in response to the presence of an insect. Sound plausible, given several million years of evolution.