Coulter delivers knockout

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | June 12, 2006 | Joseph Farah

[aruanan]

Only in that natural selection still remains the best fit to the available data. For immediate proof that natural selection operates, the closest-to-hand evidence is bacterial resistance to antibiotics. Newly introduced antibiotics are always amazingly effective, fr a limited time. Then bacteria evolve resistance, and we have to try newer compounds.

No, bacteria don't evolve resistance. In any bacterial population, there is variation in resistance to any particular antibiotic. That means that there are individual bacteria that are more resistant than other bacteria. Those that are not as resistant are killed off, leaving those whose resistance is greater. If enough of the lesser resistant bacteria are killed off, the population as a whole is considered more resistant to the antibiotic. But no individual bacteria has "evolved" a resistance to the antibiotic. Nor has the population as a whole devised any strategy to deal with the antibiotic by developing a means of resisting it. It's just a matter of having an already genetically diverse population with enough members that happen to be resistant to the antibiotic that something will be left over to continue reproducing. If you have a genetically identical population such as a strain of hybrid corn, none of the individual members of the population will survive something that will kill any one of them.

This is natural selection. It does nothing to ensure genetic diversity unless you consider that reducing the genetic variability within a population by splitting the population up into more genetically distinct subpopulations is an increase in genetic variability. According to neo-Darwinian theory, the only way of obtaining genetic diversity is from mutation of existing DNA or from borrowing of genetic material from other organisms. The problem with the first is that it is only altering not creating additional DNA. The problem with the second is that it is only swapping DNA that already exists. One way of trying to get around this involves the concept of transposing and copying stretches of DNA in order to create new genes. Still, this is shuffling something that is already there. It doesn't tell us how the DNA (most of which is pretty common across organisms) came to exist to begin with.

The existence of natural selection does not disprove intelligent design. Framed as a scientific hypothesis ("there exists at least one biological process or structure that cannot be explained by natural selection"), all ID supporters have to do to establish validity is to find ONE such example. The scientific world is still waiting.

Ha ha ha. Don't be ludicrous in positing as "the scientific world" those who refuse because of philosophical predispositions (not to mention emotional aversion) to even entertain anything having to do with ID.

[no dems]

You can buy it now at www.newsmax.com for $4.99.

[BlazingArizona]

This is natural selection. It does nothing to ensure genetic diversity unless you consider that reducing the genetic variability within a population by splitting the population up into more genetically distinct subpopulations is an increase in genetic variability. According to neo-Darwinian theory, the only way of obtaining genetic diversity is from mutation of existing DNA or from borrowing of genetic material from other organisms. The problem with the first is that it is only altering not creating additional DNA.

This is how natural selection works in ANY situation, with any living organism. All expressed genetic characeristics, such as the lengths of a tree-eating herbivore's neck, fall along a bell curve: a few individuals have much shorter necks than the median length, a few longer. If competition for food causes the longest-necked mammals to preferentially reproduce, the bell curve of neck length in the next generation is skewed toward greater length. After a great many generations have passed, you get giraffes.