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Is Evolution Predictable?
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is carrying a story about some research out of Rice University. They are exploring the possibility that we can predict the evolution of a species, given environmental factors." From the article: "Typically, the bacteria can continue to thrive when the temperature hits 73 degrees Celsius (163 degrees Fahrenheit). The experimental strain of bacteria contained a mutated version of a gene that, in the naturally occurring strain of the microbe, produces a protein that made existence possible. They then put these mutant strains in environments where the temperature rose slowly but steadily, and studied how different generations coped with the changing temperature. In the breeding that followed, millions of new mutations of the gene in question were produced, but only about 700 of those variants replicated some of the functionality of the naturally occurring gene."
> Ve is real smart!
No, I'm from spain too, which is how I was able to understand original poster after a couple of reads...
What, precisely, do you mean by "fundamentalist"? You know, not all Christians are nuts...
By fundamentalist, do you mean one who adheres to a traditional Christian lifestyle? Obeys various scriptural commandments? Fundamentalist is an inherently loaded term, would you compare a Christian "fundamentalist" to, say, a member of Al-Qaeda, often erroneously referred to as a Muslim "fundamentalist"?
I, for example, am a Mormon, which fits me under the group of Christianity. I am a "fundamentalist" in that I hold to fundamental and traditional doctrines of my faith. I also believe in evolution. There is no official stance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on evolution, the closest thing coming to it being a statement many years ago essentially saying, "it doesn't really matter to us either way." So called "fundamentalist" Christians routinely misread and misinterpret scripture on the matter of evolution and essentially everything in Genesis 1, demonstrating a lack of knowledge about the doctrines rather than a well-informed, "fundamental" belief in them (i.e., 1 day is not literally 1,000 years, 1 day refers to a period of time (and "1,000" refers to a big, incomprehensible number, much as "40" means simply "a lot"), to read a Hebrew scripture literally in English with no regard for the period of time it was written in is both ignorant and hardly "fundamental" to Christianity). The university system owned by my faith teaches evolution to its students with little to no controversy and has large and respected biology programs. Required biology classes teach the theory of evolution as it is, and Miller's Finding Darwin's God was required reading back when I took the course.
Yet, I remain a "fundamentalist" Christian. I believe in fundamental doctrines and live my life accordingly. I also read scripture with a reasonable attempt to understand its authors culture and intentions, which is a "literal" reading.
We're not all crazy, you know.