One other thing I forgot:
Barbarian, regarding why evolution of the cell took longer than other things:
The cell is more complicated a structure than anything else in your body.
So why is it so hard to realize that it took longer to evolve than those other things?
I think I mentioned earlier in the thread my recognition of the vast complexity of the cell. This, of course, fuels my skepticism thaat it arose from Natural processes.
That's been investigated. Go back and read the links I posted for the evidence for that. It's compelling.
Helen, for example, was skeptical of photosynthesis evolving, yet we have evidence of simpler photosynthesis in bacteria (which show evidence of being the ancestors of bacteria with modern photosynthesis, and of plants). And we can show that the use of the porphryn ring evolved from oxidative phosphorylation, and uses many of the same enzymes and pathways.
BTW, go here:
http://www.rvt.com/~lucas/school/cyanotree.gif
for a look at the way living things are related to each other. Note that the archaea (formerly called archaebacteria) are more like eukaryotes than they are like other prokaryotes. There is a larger genetic difference among prokaryotes, which reflects the fact that the greatest evolutionary progress was in evolving eukaryotes.
[ June 07, 2003, 06:17 PM: Message edited by: The Galatian ]