Evolution starting with a single bacterium

Are you saying that there arent? Then why did you ask if there were any fossils of them?

I am saying I don't know. Thats why I asked in first place. Duh. And again I asked you first!

I thought that prokaryotes appear as two groups- archaea and true bacteria and that they both appear in the fossil record at the same time whole, and complete. Some guy Woese discorved them if memory serves.

If "them" WERE, there would have to some evidence of "them". Hence the first question.

Would there be? Exactly what part of these organisms would fossilize?Remember when I asked you that before?

Without evidence we don’t know that there are any predecessor organisms to form fossils. So I guess I you have in a way answered my question. Thanks.

You're right. It just means we have to look carefully for other kinds of evidence that might shed some light on these creatures.

Until proof presents itself, I think its safe to say they're aren't any. I don't have a problem with it.

Well, there aren't any passenger pigeon fossils, even though there were 3 billion of them in the US at one time. Not a one.I agree that it's pretty hard to determine anything about these organisms in the absence of the fossil record. But taking that as proof that they don't exist is ludicrous. We know they must have existed; their decendants - all life - are proof of that.

They don’t have to exist. You assume this because of your bias.

Bias? I don't know what you're talking about.Have you ever seen procaryotes arise spontaneously via any process, intelligent or otherwise? Neither have I. Ergo the reasonable conclusion is that procaryotes are themselves decended from other organisms.

They appear to have done just that- arise spontaneously about 4 Billion years ago. Not just one kind either. 2 kinds. Same time. Whole and complete. No evidence of anything before them. Ergo No evidence of a single progenitor for all life.Is this why you say that ...they must have existed; their descendants - all life - are proof of that.This assumes that all life descended from them. It’s a very circular reasoning.

Oh, I'm sure something did. I just don't believe that it was procaryotes that did. It's not an assumption that all life decended from them; we defined "them" as "the ancestor of all life." It's not circular reasoning when we define terms.

We know for a fact that prokaryotes did. We however don’t know that anything else did. You have faith that there was something before the 2 distinct complete prokaryotes, but no proof. Why, in your mind, does there have to be a predecessor to these 2 types of prokaryotes?I will not assume that them or prokaryotes are the ancestor of all life.I didn’t call them the ancestors of all life. You did.You are saying them must exist because all must have come from them.And again we have no evidence of them. Evolution falls apart without a single progenitor. And this is what the evidence to date shows. No single progenitor.

Faith? No, I don't really have faith.I just think it's the most likely explanation, out of all the alternatives I know about. No, you did. Remember the post where you asked what fossil evidence there was for the predecessors to the procaryotes? Well, the procaryotes are the ancestors of all life we're aware of. That would make the predecessors of the procaryotes the predecessors to everybody else.So, it was you who defined the terms here, not me. If you didn't want to talk about the predecessors of all life, why did you even bring them up? Which we have - the prokaryotes. Who were their predecessors? We may never know, though I imagine we'll have some ideas. How do you figure that?