[Heartlander]

… neither can Darwinism explain how things come to be for instead of an intelligent designer (which intuitively makes sense) it offers random mistakes filtered by natural selection which is just another layer of randomness (which makes no sense at all). The details of why random mistakes would show up in a useful progression such that tremendously complicated structures get built up are never provided, nor explained, nor quantified in any way that science demands. Nor is it at all clear how each mistake could provide instant benefits even though a fully functional transformation remains in the distant future.

…But wait— it gets worse. Darwinism (unlike ID) doesn’t even exclude anything. It allows for convergent evolution (statistically impossible), stagnant evolution (you mean to tell me that for 500 million years there could be no improvement to the horseshoe crab?), punctuated evolution (everything stays the same for a real long time and then evolution kicks into high gear and it all happens so fast there’s no record of it having happened at all), neutral evolution (the blueprints for marvelously useful structures get created in unexpressed DNA by random shuffling, until one day voila, the gene is turned on and the structure appears fully formed). In evolution anything goes and contradictions live in happy harmony with one another. This is science? It’s not even a sound religion.
- Laszlo Bencze

******* *******

“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion–a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint … the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.”
– Michael Ruse, How evolution became a religion

[Blood of Tyrants]

Evolution is like globull warming. EVERYTHING “supports” their theory.

[circlecity]

"It seems astounding that life has not evolved for more than 2 billion years -- nearly half the history of Earth,"

Since the earth was a molten ball for the first 3 billion years of its existance, unable to sustain life, it would appear that this bacteria has never evolved.

[microgood]

A theory which explains everything explains nothing.

[Ouderkirk]

In either case is is a matter of faith...I can neither prove or disprove one or the other of these.

Darwin’s theory is fairly well constructed and plausible...but it is still a matter of faith since it cannot be empirically proven.

God...well, again it’s a matter of faith. Can’t prove he does, cannot prove he doesn’t and all evidence to support is inconclusive and must be taken as a matter of faith.

Believe or don’t but these nitwits keep trying to prove that Darwin was right...my question to them then becomes: How do you know that evolution isn’t what God intended?

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

“(The finding) is consistent with the null hypothesis required of Darwinian evolution — if there is no change in the physical-biological environment of a well-adapted ecosystem, its biotic components should similarly remain unchanged — (though) additional evidence will be needed to establish this aspect of evolutionary theory.”

— from the original paper, “Sulfur-cycling fossil bacteria from the 1.8-Ga Duck Creek Formation provide promising evidence of evolution’s null hypothesis”.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Sulfur Bacteria, Uncharged for Billions of Years

Uncharged? Is this some new type of ancient battery?

[I want the USA back]

If their environment remains the same, there is no need for them to evolve.

[Paradox]

Clearly, these authors really dont understand the theory of evolution. This article is really quite embarassing.

[JimRed]

A highly successful life form has no need to evolve.

[Mama Shawna]

About a year or so ago, I read an astounding essay on evolution posted here by a freeper, explaining how it was mostly an impossibility. Can’t remember the freeper, and kick myself for not having saved that essay! Anyone here that might know who it was, or have a link? It was pretty long, and I almost didn’t read the whole thing, but it sucked me in.

[Heartlander]

Non-Evolving Sulfur Bacteria Are on a March Through the Headlines

David Klinghoffer February 4, 2015 12:08 PM | Permalink

I can't decide whether my favorite organism in the news today is King Abdullah, for his righteous wrath and quoting of Clint Eastwood -- or those Australian sulfur bacteria that have stayed stubbornly, exactly the same for two billion plus years, defying what would seem to be evolutionary expectations.

I referred to the latter earlier. They are trending in evolution news currently and generating some priceless headlines. The Los Angeles Times chirps, "By not evolving, deep sea microbes may prove Darwin right":

Researchers say these microscopic organisms are an example of "extreme evolutionary stasis" and represent the greatest lack of evolution ever seen. 
They may also, paradoxically, prove that Darwin's theory of evolution is true.

"If evolution is a product of changes in the physical and biological environment, and there are no changes in the physical and biological environment, then there will be no evolution," said J. William Schopf, a paleobiologist at UCLA.

He calls it the null hypothesis required of Darwin's equation.

The Washington Post agrees, touting "The mysterious 2 billion-year-old creature that would make Darwin smile." He would smile!

In what researchers call the "greatest absence of evolution ever reported," these deep-sea creatures have taken a pass on the chaos of biological progress for the past 2.3 billion years. Leave it to other organisms to battle with the forces of natural selection -- to mutate and change, to prove their fitness in order to survive. The dinosaurs tried it, and where are they now?

A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said these communities offer evidence of "extreme evolutionary stasis" -- a total lack of evolution in response to a lack of change in the surrounding environment. Populated by sulfur-cycling bacteria that derive energy from processing dissolved sulfate in the surrounding water, the communities were found in nearly identical forms at two distinct points in the fossil record and still exist today. 

Live Science is more leery, "2 Billion Years Unchanged, Bacteria Pose an Evolutionary Puzzle."

Meanwhile at Why Evolution Is True, Jerry Coyne denies that there are sufficient grounds to conclude that the bacteria remain unchanged ("A new paper claims that evolution has stopped in a bacterial species. Is it true?"):

The lesson is that it's dangerous to use fossils -- even bacterial fossils -- to conclude that evolution hasn't occurred.  And the "null hypothesis of Darwinism" is a bit dubious anyway. Yes, species probably change most rapidly when the environment is changing, but there's no reason why environmental change is a sine qua non for evolution.

The paper by Schopf et al. does show an intriguing case of morphological and metabolic stasis over billions of years, and it probably does reflect a lack of environmental change. But what it doesn't show is that evolution hasn't occurred in these bacteria. To know that, we'd have to have them all alive to sequence their DNA and look at their physiology, reproduction, and so on --and that's impossible for the fossil species.

So running through the options, it either is a puzzle for evolutionary theory when things fail to evolve over billions of years; or it isn't a puzzle -- in fact it confirms the theory; or we can't really know whether it's a puzzle or not. It either "seems astounding" in an evolutionary perspective (the words of UCLA's Dr. Schopf ), or it "fits perfectly with [Darwin's] ideas" (again, Dr. Schopf). Darwin would smile, or he would grimace, or perhaps neither.

Here's the question. For those claiming non-evolution as a victory for Darwinism, would they be saying it was a black eye if the bacteria had, in fact, changed a little or a lot over all that time? Of course not. Darwinian theory is confirmed, it all "fits perfectly," no matter what evidence turns up.