[editor-surveyor]

" Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance..."

That statement is one of the biggest piles of horse hockey that evolutionists dump on us. It's like equating racial genocide with evolution. Bacteria have not 'evolved' drug resistance; the resistant bacteria have always been there; all the drugs have done is tilt the population demographics in favor of the resistant strains by killing off the non-resistant ones. If this is evolution, then the genocide in Africa is evolution too.

[js1138]

all the drugs have done is tilt the population demographics in favor of the resistant strains by killing off the non-resistant ones.

How does this happen when you start with a single organism?

[muawiyah]

Actually, the resistant bacteria use conjugation to pass their resistance on to other bacteria.

More correctly we are looking at a bacterial immune system ~ and it works pretty much like ours.

The guys trying to stretch this into evidence of "evolution" are the same guys trying to revise the word to mean "change", as in "evolution your tire when it goes flat", or "evolution your underwear at least once a month", or "evolution your bed".

[Virginia-American]

... Bacteria have not 'evolved' drug resistance; the resistant bacteria have always been there ...

This is false. You can start with a single bacterium and it will make many copies of itself. A few of these will, randomly, have mutations that confer antibiotic resistance. Google Luria-Delburuck or Lederberg experiments to learn the details.

[RobRoy]

>>Bacteria have not 'evolved' drug resistance; the resistant bacteria have always been there; all the drugs have done is tilt the population demographics in favor of the resistant strains by killing off the non-resistant ones. If this is evolution, then the genocide in Africa is evolution too.<<

Excellent point.

I was shocked when I made the same point to some Rabid True Believer evolutionists thinking they would change the subject. I thought they just didn't understand what was going on. Instead they vehemently defended that very scenario as EVOLUTION IN ACTION. They DID understand it and still considered it proof of evolution. I was dumbfounded. I suddenly realized just how much we are dealing with "educated children" here. They only know what they have been told, and believe it because they trust their professors. That is a good thing because as most of them age and replay in their minds what was being taught and by whom, they will start thinking for themselves and alter their world view. In fact, I just coined a new phrase based on an old favorite:

"Show me a young man who is not an evolutionist, and I will show you a man who was not paying attention in school. Show me an old man who IS an evolutionist, and I'll show you a man who never learned to think for himself."

[betty boop]

In the end, the true value of evolutionary biology is not practical but explanatory. It answers, in the most exquisitely simple and parsimonious way, the age-old question: “How did we get here?” It gives us our family history writ large, connecting us with every other species, living or extinct, on Earth. It shows how everything from frogs to fleas got here via a few easily grasped biological processes. And that, after all, is quite an accomplishment.

In philosophy, there is a technical word for this sort of operation: MYTH. I've got nothing against myth, mind you. But myth has nothing to do with science or the scientific method.

Thanks for the ping, Editor-Surveyor! I was really tickled by your analogy of African genocide to bacterial evolution! :^)