[Right Wing Professor]

They do not ‘become’ resistant, they ‘are’ resistant regardless if you expose them to antibiotics or not – and if this resistance was not present they would all obviously die once exposed regardless if mutagens were present.

That is false. They are all descended from a single cell. In the absence of mutation, they are all either resistant or non resistant. If the original cell was non-reistant, and a descendent is resistant, then the descendant became resistant.

I'm unable to figure out what your difficulty is here. Do you want to parse the word 'became'? Or do you deny the truth of how I've described the experiment?

Naturally speaking; nothing becomes ‘resistant’, or is ‘beneficial’, or ‘selects’ anything.

When a salt crystallizes from water, it becomes crystalline. There is no implication of purposefulness in the ordinary meaning of the word 'becoming'.

[Fatalis]

They are all descended from a single cell. In the absence of mutation, they are all either resistant or non resistant. If the original cell was non-reistant, and a descendent is resistant, then the descendant became resistant.

Question for edification: how does one determine the first cell is not resistant without killing it?

[Fatalis]

When a salt crystallizes from water, it becomes crystalline. There is no implication of purposefulness in the ordinary meaning of the word 'becoming'.

That's fine, so long as there is also no implication of purposelessness.

[Heartlander]

My point is this is not an adaptation caused by exposure to antibiotics. Again, they die or live once exposed to the toxin and that’s it… A localized catastrophic event would only allow those who currently possess the necessary characteristics to survive. IOW, depending upon what is burning, water might spread fire.

When a salt crystallizes from water, it becomes crystalline.

This is merely a chemical reaction and does not involve death. (again, see fire)

If you add a carcinogen to bacteria beforehand in order to cause a desired result is this the same as adding salt to the water? Regardless, you are correct in that the current theory of evolution involves no purpose which would otherwise imply some kind of adaptive quality to a mindless system. Neo-darwinism amounts to fortunate happenstance for survival and reproduction without meaning or purpose and similar to chemical reactions feeding off the environment and likened to fire…