How Do You Describe This Weird Bacterium?

Not With Evolution

The reason why evolutionists use teleological language is simple and, no, it isn’t because they are lazy. Evolutionists use teleological language because otherwise biology doesn’t make sense. That was evident again this week when the unusual cell division of a bacterium that lives on the marine nematode, Robbea hypermnestra, was reported.

The easiest way to cut a hotdog in half is by slicing it in the middle. And that is how bacteria usually replicate. A protein ring is formed in the middle to start things off, though there are many variations on just how that is done. From there, an immensely complicated molecular choreography proceeds to divide the unicellular organism into two daughter cells.

But the R. hypermnestra symbiont breaks the rule by dividing long-ways (see photo), and without the customary protein ring. This longitudinal division makes sense because these bacteria live, like the hair on your head, with one end attached to the nematode. Attachment to the nematode is important, and longitudinal division leaves the two daughter cells both attached. Transverse division would leave the far daughter cell floating free.

But from an evolutionary perspective this makes no sense. Aside from the fact that the cell division process is statistically impossible for random mutations to construct, evolution calls for designs to be inherited via common ancestry.

But what biology reveals—and the R. hypermnestra symbiont is yet another example of this—are one-off designs. Biologists even have a name for this general trend: “species-specific” biology.

This makes no sense on evolutionary theory and the inevitable result is Aristotelianism. As usual, it is the infinitive form that reveals all:

The division of the R. hypermnestra symbiont leaves the dazzled scientists at a loss to know which kind of evolutionary advantage this quirky division might bring. One possible explanation is that this would allow the symbiont to remain faithful to its worm host. “Longitudinal division might have evolved to transmit host attachment to both daughter cells. In other words, to avoid that one daughter cell is lost to the sand or the sea,” speculates Bulgheresi.

Teleological thinking is not a sign of laziness, it is a sign of a failed theory that lacks explanatory power. Biology does not lend itself to evolutionary explanation and language.

Religion drives science, and it matters.