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Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift In the Lab
Auxbuss sends us to New Scientist for news sure to perplex and confound creationists: scientists have watched a new, complex evolutionary trait develop in the lab. "A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait. And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events."
...welcome our evolutionary innovative bacteria overlords. And so do I.
If a baby duck is a "duckling," why would anyone want to eat "dumplings?"
The inherent danger here is that Creationism became Intelligent Design. The Creationist book had a word for word replacement done. And now many of the "Guided Evolution" folks have been conned into supporting "Intelligent Design" against science due to the wonderful new marketing of a really stupid idea.
I often point "Guided Evolution" folks to Ken Miller's speach on the matter. Incredibly intelligent, does a wonderful job of tearing apart the ID nonsense and giving some incredible detail on the whole Dover shenanagins and the history of ID. He is also Roman Catholic and challenges the notion that evolution has anything to do with denying God. Look him up on youtube. Hour long presentation, but incredibly done.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
One in a billion odds means "something that happened to roughly six people".
The cake is a pie
Young earth creationists believe in evolution. At least, in the form of microevolution that is present in the experiment. (They don't believe that microbes become jellyfish, chickens become dinosaurs/dragons or apes become human. Heck, we are genetically closer to dogs than apes anyway...)
Creationists believe that there are mutations.
Creationists believe in natural selection (ie, the most genetically matched to the environment will eventually outbreed the others).
Creationists believe that mutations sometimes result in a "net gain" for the organism despite being a "loss" of actual data. That is what most likely happened here. Notice what it says in the article:
a rare chromosome inversion was the most likely cause.
This kind of genetic mistake is well-documented and it's not as if creationists are idiots with their ostrich heads in the sand (despite that constant characterization, which just shows complete ignorance of their position on the part of the speaker). But creationists are still waiting for a single example of a mutation that adds genetic material that was not already there instead of shuffling or removing what they would say God put there to begin with. This could be that kind of example, or, it may end up being a chromosome inversion, which would do nothing to disprove creation science whatsoever.
Time will tell.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
WTF? More strawman arguments? IAAC, I have no trouble with electrons, and I hate epistemological nihilism.