Posted on 06/30/2008 10:48:44 AM PDT by Soliton
Creationists (I mean, Intelligent Designers) often cite the dictum by IDer William Dembski that non-intelligent processes cannot produce new information. From this they conclude that biological evolution is impossible. But what to do when a researcher shows bacteria evolving new capabilities?
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
It proves nothing. God created the heaven and the earth.
Its not worth investing one’s mental energies nor time on this thread:-P
Calling bacterial enzyme induction/enhancement evolution does not make it evolution. Idiots.
Maybe you could expand on your criticism. Also, why not create a profile so we will know you a little better?
Evolution doesn’t explain creation.
Has conservatism taken a particularly strong stand on bacterial evolution? I always thought we were more about low taxes, non-intrusive government, and national defense.
I don’t see these bacteria disproving the effectiveness of tax cuts.
H
The Scripps researchers, in a nutshell, discovered that E. coli, when stressed (such as running out of food as in Lenski’s experiment or in the presence of antibiotics in the Scripps experiment) selectively increases the mutation rate on certain genes. Thus the mutations in this case are not random but rather directed at a certain area in an attempt to solve a certain problem. Lenski should have have been aware of this but even if he weren’t he should have known just by definition alone selection can operate on any heritable change no matter how the change happened.
No, I think the thinking goes more like, bacteria evolving disproves religion and therefore disproves the idea that religion is worthy of special protection in the constitution (and perhaps it should even be labeled criminal misinformation and be outlawed from being taught to the next generation). Since conservatives support the literal interpretation of the constitution and the first amendment, and since conservatives think these documents are a positive thing, conservative philosophy is disproven by bacterial evolution.
When Neil Armstrong guided the lunar lander down toward the surface of the moon in 1970 he had many concerns. One of those was Cosmologist Isaac Asimov’s prediction in 1958: “I get a picture, of the first spaceship picking out a nice level place for landing purposes, coming slowly downward tail-first and sinking majestically out of sight.” Asimov had calculated that, if the moon had been around a few billion years, it would be covered with a layer of cosmic dust several miles thick. That, of course, is why NASA first sent an unmanned lander that found, to Asimov’s surprise, only two or three inches of dust. And we are all familiar with pictures of Armstrong’s footprints in the shallow lunar dirt. Evolutionists depend heavily on huge eons of time to allow for all the happy accidents necessary for life to evolve from the primordial soup. Yet they keep bumping into evidence that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Our explorations on the moon have turned up many types of evidence that the earth and its moon have not been around the billions of years that evolutionists claim. The lunar dust is only one item of lunar evidence confounding the evolutionists. With modern methods of measurement, scientists have discovered that the moon is traveling away from the earth at the rate of one and one-half inches a year. This means that, if it had been around billions of years, it would have been so close to the earth that it would have been pulled into the earth by gravity. The moon rocks brought back by the astronauts also betrayed the old earth theory. They contained the short-term radioactive isotopes Uranium 236 and Thorium 230 that would have turned to lead in only a few thousand years. This, alone, is very important proof that the moon cannot be older than several thousand years
He didn’t claim that the adaptation was random. In fact natural selection explicitly states that the adaptation is “selected”. It will not happen however unless some of the population had already experienced mutation through poor DNA replication or mutation. Natural Selection needs variety to select from.
The purpose of this article was to show that when some posters defended Lenski, their accounts were suspended.
“To their credit, some Conservapediaists backed up Lenski. Ideological purity being more important than scientific accuracy, the dissenters have evidently had their accounts blocked”
Evolutionists tell us we cannot see evolution taking place because it happens too slowly. A human generation takes about 20 years from birth to parenthood. They say it took tens of thousands of generations to form man from a common ancestor with the ape, from populations of only hundreds or thousands. We do not have these problems with bacteria. A generation of bacteria grows in a matter of hours. There are more bacteria in the world than there are grains of sand on all of the beaches of the world (and many grains of sand are covered with bacteria). They exist in just about any environment: heat, cold, dry, wet, high pressure, low pressure, small groups, large colonies, isolated, much food, little food, much oxygen, no oxygen, in toxic chemicals, etc. There is much variation in bacteria. There are many mutations (in fact, evolutionists say that smaller organisms have a faster mutation rate than larger ones4). But they never turn into anything new. They always remain bacteria. Fruit flies are much more complex than already complex single-cell bacteria. Scientists like to study them because a generation (from egg to adult) takes only 9 days. In the lab, fruit flies are studied under every conceivable condition. There is much variation in fruit flies. There are many mutations. But they never turn into anything new. They always remain fruit flies. Many years of study of countless generations of bacteria and fruit flies all over the world shows that evolution is not happening today.
If you can provide some scientific evidence that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, I would be facinated.
It did NOT “evolve” in the Grand Darwinistic (Random Actions created Super-Complexity out of nothin) sense. It’s still a freaking BACTERIA. That’s called “adaptation to the environment” not evolving into something else.
“It did NOT “evolve””
Sure you did. You just can’t imagine how. This will help:
http://www.hhmi.org/lectures/webcast/ondemand/05webcast1/interface_broadband.html
Proving that evolution can occur, does not disprove creation.
In most cases what has been claimed as evolution is nothing more than selecting for genetic potential. No different than breeding a new kind of dog.
Bacteria are poisoned and the few that survive are touted as having a new capability. Wrong it’s not new, it was there all along. It’s just instead of being rare in the population it’s now predominant. Existing genetic potential has been selected for.
That or a mutation causes a loss of function or specificity, and that is claimed as a new function. An example is sicle cell anemia. Because half a person’s red blood cells are deformed and deficient, they have better immunity to a virus that attacks red blood cells. It’s like saying a man born without legs has evolved because he is immune to toenail fungus. It’s hardly a positive development.
It's not really an issue that is relevant to most political issues. But 70% of Republicans reject evolution compared to about 50% of Democrats.
Where did you learn theology?
>> It’s not really an issue that is relevant to most political issues. But 70% of Republicans reject evolution compared to about 50% of Democrats.
Even so — it doesn’t disprove “conservatism”, as the headline says.
I don’t necessarily reject evolution. Maybe, maybe not. I simply admit to not knowing. I’ve always thought of science as the human explanation of the divine ... God revealing details of the intricacies of His natural systems.
If evolution is true, it is simply the human scientific explanation of the divine. If it isn’t, there is another explanation. Either way, evolution doesn’t explain creation, and cannot disprove the existence of God.
H
I thought the lunar dust stuff was explained when we found evidence of the cosmic cleaning lady. I think they found a tip envelope leaned up against one of our flags.
LOL, I didn’t notice the headline.
I keep waiting for darwin awards to eliminate liberalism, but it’s taking too long.
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