The red blood cells are manufactured in the bone marrow, and just like all other cells they are alive, have DNA to reproduce, and mitochondria to manufacture energy for the cell. But something "miraculous" happens about the seventh day (how interesting) of its life.
Why is it interesting that it happens about the seventh day? Pubic lice eggs take about seven days to hatch - is that equally interesting?
The red blood cell extrudes out their nucleus with their DNA and then extrudes out their mitochondria (sequence not importatnt). They can no longer produce any proteins, or reproduce. They basically die on purpose.
Cells dying on purpose is quite common. Why do you say that a cell becoming anucleatised is death? Is the ability to reproduce essential to defining something as a 'living cell'? Wouldn't the kind of death that kills the cells in the human tail during development be a more accurate 'death' than the process that mamallian red blood cells go through?
Now to say the least, this is an amazing process. It is a process of sacrifice to give life to the rest of the body. Sounds like Jesus doesn't it? Maybe He designed it this way as evidence of His will and plan for us. I think He did! Throughout the Bible we see the correlation of life, blood, soul, and sacrifice.
Hmm, why does it sound like Jesus? Did Jesus remove his testicles? It sounds
more like Osiris' story to me...someone who due to events completely beyond his control (the red blood cell is tightly constrained by chemistry) lots his private parts. The 'sacrifice to give his life to the rest of the body' sounds more like soldiers dying in battle to me.
I don't see what is unique to the Bible about correlating life/blood/sacrifice together and correlating life/soul together seems fairly Hellenistic to me.
Sounds like you have just managed to find a way to frame the story in a way that sounds parallel to the Jesus story.
As you know, evolutionary theory relies on the fundamental concept of self preservation and survival.
No - it doesn't. It relies heavily on ensuring the reproduction of the germ line. If doing that means sacrificing one's life - that works as far as evolution is concerned. Just look at the insect world: kamikaze bees, suicidal sterile ants, mayflies and so on. Heck - there are plenty of spiders that risk death to mate with a hungry female.
All mammals have red blood cells that do the above biological process.
Almost like all mammals share a common ancestor with each other, but not non-mammals?
In lower animals, from which we supposedly "evolved" their red blood cells do not extrude out the nucleus and the mitochondria.
The populations out of which we evolved are long long dead. By 'we' what do you mean? Our great great great grandparents? I'm certain they had similar red blood cells. How about the common ancestor between chimps and humans? No - I think the evidence is that they had a similar set up.
You're going to have to go back to the common ancestor of all mammals - that's a long time ago. And obviously, when a new feature evolves, the new population must come from an old one that didn't have it.
Therefore, mammalian red blood cells must have evolved
While the conclusion is right - I'm not sure your reasoning is complete.
Therefore, random mutations over time must have caused the red blood cells to sacrifice their life for the benefit of the organism. But hold on! This change in red blood cells is huge! Not small! Any organism that would have mutated to have living red blood cells turn into dead red blood cells would not have had the capacity to replenish these cells.
But we have the capacity to replenish red blood cells. How do we do it? How are you sure that our primitive ancestor could not also do it this way?
Then the kidneys which filter the blood would have had to adapt to these new cells. The heart would have to adapt to these new cells. The blood pressure would change, because the capilaries would have to adapt. The fluid dynamics of the blood would have changed, and all the other organs would have to compensate. And not only would they have to compensate, but they would have to all coordinate together to compensate in avery short period of time.
And once more - you are assuming that the physiology of our primitive ancestors could not already cope with this before the red blood cell mutation event. You are also assuming that whatever disadvantages may have come about, would have overwhelmed the advantage given by the adaptation.
You are also assuming that the anucleatisation (?) process always happened at the same point during the 'life cycle' of the red blood cell. It could have been the case that after acting like any other 'primitive' red blood cell for all of its 'life' it then spat out its bits and had one last spurt of being hyper efficient.
What makes you so sure your assumptions are accurate? Or are you just relying on ignorance to squeeze Jesus into some interesting new gaps?
So here's the challenge topic, what "just so" story could explain an evolutionary pathway for living red blood cells to give up their life and that change be beneficial for the entire organism without having catastrophic consequenses for the life of the organism
Now - I have not looked into the studies of the evolution of mammalian red blood cells, I was simply pointing out where your argument is lacking necessary evidence or relies on some point of problematic reasoning. I have no idea what the answer is, are you sure there is as big a problem here as you are making out? Have you made any attempt to study the literature on this subject for yourself?
Out of curiosity - if a complete account of the evolution of the mammalian red blood cell were given...would that convince you evolution was true?
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