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To: Mamzelle; shubi; PatrickHenry
I can't do any sort of double-blind study for three million years ago -- I can't prove you wrong, so you can't prove me wrong, either.

We can prove you wrong quite easily, actually.

But don't let the facts get in the way of your smugness, since you seem so pleased with it.

But, wouldn't you think, since we've been playing with fruit flies for about three hundred years...

Okay, I'll bite -- exactly who do you hallucinate has been "playing with fruit flies for about three hundred years?

in Beijing, Detroit, Florence, Terra Fuego...and generations could well be in the hundreds of thousands.

Fruit flies don't have a life cycle *that* fast, m'dear... One day in the egg, seven days as a larva, six days pupating. Minimum generation time is thus about two weeks. And although people first dabbled in fruit fly experiments in the early 1900's, Drosophila didn't really take off as a test subject until after the discovery of DNA in the 1950's.

Nor was "creating a new species" the goal of these experiments, but even if it had been, that means that there have only been around 1000 fruit fly generations, total, under experimental conditions. That's a considerable amount, but hardly enough to allow the evolution of fruit flies into, say, non-flies, as you so ridiculously demand to be shown.

Do you likewise foolishly insist that geologists show you a brand new mountain range developed from flat land via plate tectonics in the past 100 years?

Wouldn't you think we'd at least get a New Fly, if the theory has anything to it at all?

Oh, you mean like this?

Hint: Ordinarily, fruit flies have only *two* wings...

It'd sure bolster your religion and its dogma--

And "it'd sure bolster" your credibility if you learned why science is not a "religion" and does not rely upon "dogma", it relies upon evidence and experimental results.

which may be why so many scientists claim to have Given Life when they clearly have not.

What *are* you babbling about here?

159 posted on 02/08/2005 6:47:55 AM PST by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon
The fact that you desire so badly to PROVE anything is your problem. PROVING such a thing is not possible, nor should it be the business of scientists. This desire is vanity, the will to dominate the minds of others.

That is not the realm of the scientist. A scientist can demonstrate what is plausible and reasonable--but what you want in the province of the shaman. The article was perfectly interesting until the scientist wanted to claim something he could not possibly claim--that not only are the hippo and whale related (we already knew that, btw) but that means--positively--that they were produced by some common ancestor. Kabang, popped out of the same cabbage patch.

That requires huge assumptions and leaps of faith--all kinds of surprising surmising.

The flies have indeed been the material of genetic experiments before we knew what genetics are. If ideal lab conditions, over considerable time and insolation, cannot produce your new Pet, it's not likely that nature can magically produce millions of fortuitous accidents in perfect fortuitous order!.

I don't know how it came about--and I'll admit that. You claim to know, and that is obvious arrogance. Who's the scientist?

183 posted on 02/08/2005 7:01:01 AM PST by Mamzelle
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