Phaedrus: Not when it comes to Evolution, which is driven by materialism and atheism -- it is dogma, not science.
RWP: Am I the only one expected to substantiate my claims? Or would you like to tell me how you propose to demonstrate the truth of this assertion? I know many, many biologists. Some are atheists. Some are not. I've never heard either strain argue that atheism drives evolution
Phaedrus: Baloney. Show me the Evolutionary equivalent of E=mc2. Evolution is a failed hypothesis, it is not even a credible theory.
E=mc^2 is a deduction, not a postulate. Are you asking me for a deduction from evolutionary theory?
(Long argument from me elided. Phaedrus comes back with:)
This is pure sophistry. I warned you that I would call you on this sort of thing. Care to try again? ,/i>
Oh, I thought you were going to expose my words as sophistry. Imagine my relief to find you think simply labelling them as sophistry is sufficient. My young son, when he's inarticulately mad, just shouts out 'You're a booger!'. Of course 'sophistry' sounds better, particularly among the crowd who are impressed you know to spell it with a 'ph'.
Phaedrus: Then you agree with me that species exhibit great stability over very long periods of time, not change. Has it ever been shown that "genetic drift" has ever resulted in a new species?
There's good evidence, I think, that several of the pairs of closely related bird species which were isolated by the Rockies and Great Plains developed distinct plumages largely as a result of genetic drift. Of course, they often still are interfertile, and there are always arguments whether Bullocks Oriole and the Baltimore Oriole, or the Lazuli and Indigo bunting, are distinct species. But then creationists seem to set much more store by the term 'species', a horrible unspecific and continually contentious categorization, that those of us who actually know some biology. Bullocks and Baltimore were two species, then they were one, now they're two again. You could argue that systematists, not evolution, caused speciation, but either way I don't think God worries too much about it.
There is also excellent evidence showing that the extent of flightlessness in isolated species of rails depends strongly on thow long they've been isolated on their particular islands, an example where large scale change occurred under huge selective pressure on a time scale of mere thousands of years.
Check out Feducca's The Origin and Evolution of Birds. Great book, esp. if you're a birder. He's considered a maverick, BTW; he doesn't beleive birds evolved from dinosaurs. Those monolithic doctrinarie evolutionists do have their little spats.
Now, RWProf, bacterial resistance to antibiotics results from degradation of the information content of the bacteria's DNA, which is not a favorable change. The bugs that mutated are alive. The ones that didn't are dead. You say mutation isn't favorable. Ergo, it is favorable to be dead. Now, that's sophistry.
As to the "development" of immunity, it seems to me that that capacity is already built into our genetic structure; i.e. it doesn't "evolve". Are we playing word games with "massive mutagenesis in your immune cell line"? What you're describing is development that was pre-programmed.
Nope. Random. The varible chains were, if you like, programmed to mutate; then the cell lines that face challenge from some particular immunogen they accidentally happen to be complementary to, propagate and multiply. Mutation, in this case, is most definitely favorable. And so your statement was incorrect. The nice thing about science is that it is verifiable in the real world.
Yes indeed. Do you gewt out in the real world, Phaedrus. Have you studied, even descriptively, any of the major animal groupings? Do you have any base of experience at all, outside of creationist tracts?