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."

Comments

Re:First!

[hostyle]

Turds often float to the surface even in the genetic pool.

Two words

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Continuous creation. God put those new bacteria there to test my faith ;-)

Re:Two words

[fastest fascist]

More insightful than funny. Creationism has nothing to do with a balanced look at the facts, and everything to do with strong personal beliefs. No amount of proof will turn the head of a devout creationist, since God, via the Bible (or the creationist's interpretation of it) is the ultimate authority.

Re:Two words

[zifn4b]

I know the parent is meant to be funny but it always amazes how the general opinion is that the Intelligent Design camp is at odds with the Creationist camp. Who's to say that God isn't a metaphor for the forces at work that allow our universe to exist? In that sense, God would be responsible for evolution and all the other processes at work here.

Granted I'm Agnostic but the problem with the Creationists is that they take the stories of the Bible literally. There are several branches of Christianity that understand that parts of the Bible are meant to be interpretted metaphorically. In reality, you'll find that most religious texts have common metaphors that refer to the same basic concept.

So, why continue perpetuating the rhetoric which continues the "Us vs. Them" mentality? Instead, we should all work together, searching for that which we refer to as "God", "Mother Nature", "Father Time", "Flying Spaghetti Monster", etc. Whatever you want to call it, it's an entity unto itself and this discovery sheds a little more light on what it is and how it works.

Re:Two words

[omeomi]

Which is fine with me. People can believe what they want. Where I start to have problems is when they want to start forcing others to teach their personal beliefs in Science class.

Re:Two words

[ElizabethGreene]

Obligatory link to xkcd.com here.

Re:Two words

[MightyMartian]

Regardless of any other premise, why should I accept your authority that God exists and Jesus is real?

Re:Two words

[morgan_greywolf]

I know that God exists, Jesus is real.

If no one ever told you God exists, how would you know?

Re:Two words

[nsayer]

why should I accept your authority that God exists and Jesus is real? I have nothing for the former, but as to the latter, it's pretty well established that Jesus was a real, historical figure.

Perhaps that's not what you meant in your question, but then that simply means you should have worded the question better.

Re:Two words

[MightyMartian]

I'm willing to concede that there was likely a historical Jesus. But so what? There's more evidence for Mohammed and Joseph Smith, but their mere existence nor their claims or the claims of those who claimed to know them (or claimed to know people who knew them) would convince me that any of these individuals were linked in some way to the Divine.

Re:Two words

[ArcherB]

I'm willing to concede that there was likely a historical Jesus. But so what? There's more evidence for Mohammed and Joseph Smith, but their mere existence nor their claims or the claims of those who claimed to know them (or claimed to know people who knew them) would convince me that any of these individuals were linked in some way to the Divine. Of course Jesus is real and Divine. Just read your sig. How could Jesus have died approximately 2000 years ago AND be seen on a Moped on I-50 without some Divinity thrown in?

Re:Two words

[lymond01]

Which is fine with me. People can believe what they want.

Because every good science article needs a religious debate....For simplicity's sake, let's say there's evolutionists (evos) and creationists (godists). When evos make the mistake of saying "People can believe what the want" they are making the assumption that beliefs have nothing to do with actions. This, in general, is not the case.

If I'm a godist, I might believe that God cures all ills, and never take my pneumonia-ridden son to the hospital. Bummer for my son but it was God's choice if he died. If I'm a godist, I might believe that evolution is a myth meant to defeat my faith. I ignore science, I lobby to create laws that ignore science, and I preach to other people to ignore science. I believe science is wrong and I want to convince other people of this truth.

So you can have personal beliefs that very much affect your public actions. Putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak.

The answer to ignorance of science or ignorance of faith is always going to be education - school, word of mouth, whatever. We need to talk it out, show why science is useful, and why the community of religion and other aspects can also be useful, and why either can be detrimental (sure the A-bomb was neat, but geez...).

Re:Two words

[ArcherB]

Which is fine with me. People can believe what they want. Where I start to have problems is when they want to start forcing others to teach their personal beliefs in Science class. How about the following:

Physical Fine Structure Constants-- The four forces in nature may each be expressed in a dimensionless fashion to allow their relative strengths as they act in nature to be expressed in a way that facilitates comparison. These are summarized in Table 2, and are seen to vary by 1041, or 41 orders of magnitude (10 with 40 additional zeros after it). Yet modest changes in any of these constants produce dramatic changes in the universe which render it unsuitable for life. Several examples will serve to illustrate this "fine tuned" nature of our universe.

The relative magnitude of the gravity force and the electromagnetic force has been found to be crucial for multiple reasons. Note from Table 2 that the electromagnetic force is 1038 times stronger than the gravity force. It is the force of gravity that draws protons together in stars causing them to fuse together with a concurrent release of energy. The electromagnetic force causes them to repel. Because the gravity force is so weak by comparison to the electromagnetic force, the rate at which stars "burn" by fusion is very slow, allowing the stars to provide a stable source of energy over a very long period of time. If this ratio of strengths had been 1032 instead of 1038 (i.e., gravity were much stronger), stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster.

The frequency distribution of electromagnetic radiation produced by the sun is also critical, as it needs to be tuned to the energies of chemical bonds on earth. If the photons of radiation are too energetic (too much ultraviolet radiation), then chemical bonds are destroyed and molecules are unstable; if the photons are too weak (too much infrared radiation), then chemical reactions will be too sluggish. The radiation produced is dependent on a careful balancing of the electromagnetic force (alpha-E) and the gravity force (alpha-G), with the mathematical relationship including (alpha-E)12 , making the specification for the electromagnetic force particularly critical. On the other hand, the chemical bonding energy comes from quantum mechanical calculations that include the electromagnetic force, the mass of the electron, and Planck's constant. Thus, all of these constants have to be sized relative to each other to give a universe in which radiation is tuned to the necessary chemical reactions that are essential for life. It comes from HERE. I bring up to illustrate that there is an awful lot of science that goes into Creationism and/or ID.

The article is a good read. It basically covers how incredibly narrow the limits are concerning the laws of nature. If any one of them was just an astronomically small amount different, then the Universe would not exist as we know it, and certainly life would not form. Which leads your budding C/ID believer to ask, "what are the odds of this happening by chance?"

Re:Two words

[John Whitley]

How could Jesus have died approximately 2000 years ago AND be seen on a Moped on I-50 without some Divinity thrown in? Photoshop?

Re:Two words

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> it's pretty well established that Jesus was a real, historical figure.

That certainly isn't the case. The evidence for a historical Jesus is very scant, far less than the amount of evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar and Alexander say, and the majority proponents of the existence of a historical Jesus who are described as Biblical scholars are, by and large, religious believers seeking to justify their faith. While we still need to take seriously and reply to the arguments of religious believers, the number of scholars who claim the historicity of Jesus has been swelled by the number of religious believers in their ranks. The term "pretty well established" is a a claim based on counting such numbers.

Re:Two words

[Hatta]

The historicity of Jesus is hardly well established. It might be well agreed upon by scholars who make their living studying jesus, but that's entirely different. We have absolutely no first hand accounts of Jesus. All of the gospels, as well as the text by Josephus everyone seems to like were written well after Jesus' alleged death. We have no artifacts, no surviving papers (and the romans loved their bureaucracy). If you look into it, we have about as much evidence for Jesus as we do for Hercules.

Which isn't to say Jesus didn't exist. There's also about as much evidence for Alexander the Great as there is for Jesus. Hell, even the existence of Troy was thought to be a myth until it was discovered a few decades ago. My point is history is damn hard, and nothing is well established until there's archaeological evidence.

Personally, I do rather doubt the historical Jesus. The whole thing REEKS of myth.

Re:Two words

[cheater512]

In a (nearly) infinite universe, there is a (nearly) infinite number of lifeforms.

So quite a high probability of life actually.
Sure the chance of life evolving on Earth was quite lucky but it was bound to happen somewhere.

Re:Two words

[cheater512]

So you were raised in to 'knowing' that God is real?

The same way if you were born in the middle east you'd 'know' that Allah is real.

And if you were born a few thousand years ago in Mexico you'd 'know' that Quetzalcoatl is real.

See my point?

Sure the community is great but basing it all on a really old book which has been edited and mis-translated isnt really smart.

Re:Two words

[hobbit]

Of course "the Universe would not exist as we know it". After all, we are the ones doing the knowing of it. If the constants were different, others would have to be the ones doing the knowing of it. Maybe that knowledge would not be borne by creatures of carbon and water, but to say "life would not form"? That's just an extension of the anthropomorphism we have come to expect from religious grandeur-delusional thinking.

Re:Two words

[rgmoore]

But adding God doesn't really simplify things. Saying "God willed it" is easy because it doesn't require you to think or learn about science, but it isn't simple because it requires you to assume the existence of an omnipotent God with all the philosophical and theological baggage that implies. Unless you substitute the belief in God for everything we know about science (e.g. that objects fall because of God's will, not because of universal gravity) then believing in God only adds another thing to think about. That's the exact opposite of Occam's maxim that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity".

Re:Two words

[hobbit]

That certainly isn't the case. The evidence for a historical Jesus is very scant, far less than the amount of evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar and Alexander say, Well, yes. The historical evidence for Princess Diana far outstrips the historical evidence for my uncle, but that doesn't mean he didn't exist.
Anyway, a debate about whether or not some chap called Jesus existed is a waste of time. He probably even believed he was the son of god; you can find dozens of such people in every city in the world. The question is: was he really the son of god? And the answer is: if you have to ask, you'll never know.

Re:Two words

[Opportunist]

Out of necessity.

Humans are pack animals. We work well in groups of 10, maybe 20 individuals. Anything beyond that isn't in our genes. You cannot easily make more than 20 people work together on a given project. And even those 20 people have to have something in common, most commonly their genes. It is likely that the first "packs" of humans were actually what we'd now call "extended family". Cousins, brothers, sisters and their mates.

If you want to create larger groups, you have to create a reason why they don't go to each other's throat to increase their own pack's strength. It gets worse as soon as a division of work (and the difference in status that comes along with it) sets in, which is another necessity for an efficient group. There's no use when you have 100 farmers but nobody to build you a new plough. And if everyone can do everything, nobody can do anything really well.

With the agricultural revolution you run into a new problem: You need to know when to sow and when to reap. You need an astronomer (the reason why astronomy is one of the oldest sciences). Now try to explain to your people why they should feed someone who doesn't do anything but look at the stars.

All those problems can be solved with religion. Religion is a tool to create order, to make people work together and to keep large groups of people from fighting each other for resources. Every single religion (at least the successful ones) made it an important point that God (or whoever) doesn't like it when you kill your fellow man or steal from him. And since they had no surveillance cams back then, God was usually allmighty, omnipresent and omniscient, so you could rest assured that you'll get your punishment, if not in life then in death.

Check any religion. All of them contain such or similar parts.

Re:Two words

[im_thatoneguy]

Perhaps it should be revised to:

People can believe what they want to believe so long as they don't believe it strongly.

Re:Two words

[CrazyJim1]

Regardless of any other premise, why should I accept your authority that God exists and Jesus is real?

I don't have a good answer for that. My authority isn't the kind that dictates stuff to others. I just know God is real, so I'm able to tell people with complete confidence that he is real. I don't have a lot more to offer. Sure you can read the Bible and learn about God yourself, but for me going past knowing God exists is a stretch.

Re:Two words

[im_thatoneguy]

But let's sweep those under the rug in favour of pointing out what a hypothetical group of people (who you invented) might do their hypothetical children (who you also invented).
I think members of The Church of Christ, Scientist might be offended by being called imaginary.

Re:Two words

[Drakonik]

But the quoted text assumes that ALL life MUST be carbon-based with four base DNA proteins that process oxygen and so on.

The problem with the "Everything is so perfect for life that a supreme being did it on purpose" argument is that it makes the assumption that life cannot exist in any form but ours.

Re:Two words

[Blue Stone]

A good point and one I'm sympathetic with, but it would seem that religion and a belief in something greater than oneself, whether God or Gods, a Great Spirit or Father or something else entirely - but a source of everything - seems to spontaneously arise in humanity all over the planet and is widespread in acceptance.

So maybe people only need to be told the specifics.

Re:Two words

[KDR_11k]

A lightning strikes and scares the primitive men. They wonder where the lightning might come from and think some powerful creature in the skies must be throwing it. They start worshipping that creature in the hope that the lightning will spare them and smite the people they don't like instead. Over the years that faith evolves into the many religions you see today.

Re:Two words

[Verteiron]

Actually, that's not hypothetical. That's a group called the Christian Scientists (irony abounds), and that is exactly what they do their children.

Fortunately they're a relatively small group. And if they keep doing as their belief tells them, they'll get smaller still.

Re:Two words

[element-o.p.]

Or you could be like me: a godist (in your terms) who really wants to reconcile science and faith. If a scientific discovery comes along that challenges my understanding of the Bible, then I need to figure out how what I understood the Bible to say is different than what God really intended to say. Back in Galileo's day, the position of the Church was that the earth was the center of the universe, and all the heavens (lower-case "h") revolved around it. No matter how hard I try, I can't find that in the Bible. Ergo, no conflict between science and religion. The Big Bang vs. creationism -- well, what do you think it would have looked like if God spoke and suddenly a universe was born? ;) Evolution vs. creationism...well, the Bible says God created all of the creatures on the earth, but it doesn't describe the method by which He did it, does it? Having said that, I'm not quite ready to embrace evolution as the origin of species (as opposed to evolution within species, which I do accept), but this discovery is definitely interesting.

The answer to ignorance of science or ignorance of faith is always going to be education - school, word of mouth, whatever. We need to talk it out, show why science is useful, and why the community of religion and other aspects can also be useful, and why either can be detrimental (sure the A-bomb was neat, but geez...). Agreed 100% -- I couldn't have said it better, no matter how hard and how long I tried.

Re:Two words

[NMerriam]

Wake me up when puppies start having kittens.

Indeed, such an event would completely disprove evolution, and should be noted. Such an event would be a miracle outside of biology, not macroevolution.

Re:Two words

[Metasquares]

On the other hand, evolutionary biology, when misapplied to the social (pretend) sciences, produced a whole range of crimes against humanity whose shock waves have turned the Western mind inside out.

That is not the fault of the evolutionary biologists, but those who applied the theories in all sorts of inhuman ways. Since we're already skirting around Godwin's Law anyway, I'll just out and say it: Neither Darwin nor Nietzsche were responsible for Hitler's actions; Hitler was responsible for Hitler's actions.

To use a more contemporary analogy, if I teach someone how to drive a car and he uses that knowledge to deliberately run people over, it isn't my fault; it's his.

(And who cares whether social sciences are truly sciences? They provide us with useful tools, and that is sufficient for me to respect them as areas of study. Computer Science isn't really a "proper" science either, and yet here you are on the Internet...)

Re:Two words

[Maxo-Texas]

Amazingly.. everyone who graduated from my computer science program got a bachelor's degree in computer science.

Can you imagine the odds of that? Who would have expected it!?!?

And I hear most of the people in Japan are Japanese!

And humans are most likely only found on earth!

And we use oil and coal for energy instead of atomic elements that don't exist or uncommon in nature!

---

Life fits this universe because it arose in this universe.
A different universe would have different life or be sterile.

---
By the way... I just flipped a coin 20 times and it came up h,h,h,t,t,h,t,h,h,t,t,t,t,h,t,h,h,t,t,t.

The odds of that EXACT sequence coming up is over 1 in a million!!! I should buy a lottery ticket now!

Re:Two words

[Idiomatick]

ahh evolution at work. I wish it were faster though.

Re:Two words

[snkline]

Hypothetical people? Hypothetical children?

Ahem Faith in Prayer Kills Children

Re:Two words

[snkline]

The funny thing about your comment is, whether or not "Troy" has been found is entirely debatable. It isn't like the site has signs. Whether the archaeological site now typically called Troy is the Troy of Greek myth, is completely unknown.

Of course, even if it is that Troy, it doesn't change the mythical nature of the narrative, unless you believe in the Greek Gods, as they are rather prime players in the story....

Re:Two words

[Anonymous Coward]

The Jewish historian named Josephus recorded Jesus' life in detail among many other things. In the end he decided that Jesus was not the promised Messiah and remained of the Jewish faith and so here is an example of a record of Jesus' life originating during his ministry by a third party who had no reason to lie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus

Re:Two words

[element-o.p.]

IIRC, that's kind of the reasoning C.S. Lewis used to arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was who he said he was: if Jesus was legit, then end of story. If Jesus was not legit then he must have been insane to preach what he preached and challenge not just the Roman garrison in Israel, but also the Jewish priesthood in Israel.

Generally, if you are going to pick a fight with someone, you don't go out of your way to piss off both your mark and your potential backers <grin>

Lewis, however, could find no evidence -- other than Jesus' apparent disregard for the opinions of those in power -- that Jesus was insane, and therefore, Lewis concluded, Jesus had to be legit. I'm not satisfied that this is an entirely compelling argument, but I thought it was rather interesting, nonetheless.

Re:Two words

[Mr. Beatdown]

Thanks for the car analogy. I was starting to get a little lost there.

Re:Two words

[Idiomatick]

That sure is a lot of effort to rationalize an old book. Wouldn't it be easier to take it from a new standpoint ... look at the world then the book and decide whether or not its needed?
 
Anyways there are contradictions within the bible itself. How is that rationalized. How do you rationalize the 6000year issue?
 
  Also, about the flat earth thing: http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Flat_Earth.htm

Re:Two words

[db32]

I think you are right to a degree. I have read some of his stuff but quickly became irritated with him. His tone quickly became anyone who doesn't believe is stupid and they believe in nonsense. He made a large number of assertions that morality can only exist because of God, but he relies on a terribly flawed model to make his proof. He ignores the fact that humans by nature are herd/community animals and not loners. Humans tend to go quite insane without other humans around.

The greatest irony for me is that Jesus was VERY vocal about the whole Pharisee approach to the religion. He advocated the "love thy neighbor" and everything else falls into place naturally approach rather than the Pharisees and their "you must follow this monsterous list of rules and rituals" approach. Interestingly enough he also talks about how many of you will have claimed to know me and I will say I have never known you, get away from me. Even from the getgo he predicted that a large number of his "followers" would fall right back into that rules and rituals approach over kindness and compassion. He was ridiculed for spending so much time with the various sinners of his time and his answer was "A healthy man has no need for a doctor." What is preached today in the name of Christianity is almost identical to the very same religious structure that Jesus fought against.

Dunno about the whole religious aspect of it all, but I think Jesus himself seems to be a pretty good example of how humans should behave. Which is why I think Jesus as a man is more impressive than Jesus as a divine instrument. As a man it means we should all be able to emulate that behavior. As a divine figure it gives the copout crap about how "he died for our sins, all you have to do is accept that".

Either way my two most favorite things to mess with the overly religious is walking past them as the pass out their bibles, preach on the corner, or pray in public(all of which was specifically advised AGAINST by Jesus "pray alone in your room for when noone else can hear you pray God does") and saying "Jesus was such a jew" and watching them get up in arms because they are so ignorant of their own faith. The other fun one is a similar exploit, when asked some variant of "Do you accept Jesus?!" I answer something to the effect of "I follow the teachings of Yeshua" and laugh as they blather on about how I must accept Jesus instead.

Re:Two words

[pugugly]

There is the rather ruthless approach as well.

If you genuinely believe God will cure your son's pneumonia, and I genuinely believe a doctor will cure my daughters pneumonia, then only the survivors of our respective decisions will go on to reproduce.

As it happens, Pneumonia has a significantly lower mortality when treated than untreated.

Education is only the answer if you genuinely *like* those people. Alternatively, you can simply allow those that believe in science to reap the awards of science. Personally, I'm all for banning creationists from any technology *not* specifically mentioned as a good thing in the Bible.

Pug

Re:Two words

[johnlcallaway]

Or take a real look at your faith and realize that the natural world around doesn't need a god to exist if one simply agrees that there are somethings that just can't be explained yet, there is no soul, your life has no purpose except to breed (and what you want to make of it), and everything dies.

Then you have nothing to reconcile, and life becomes a lot simplier. If that scares you, work on reconciling that.

Plus, you'll be able to sleep in on Sundays for a change and not have to give part of your income to something that sucks the life out of society and produces nations of sheep.

Christians sure do work hard to believe in something that doesn't exist, when it's a lot less work to just live your life like you are doing now without all that crap.

Re:Two words

[Sancho]

If I'm a godist, I might believe that God cures all ills, and never take my pneumonia-ridden son to the hospital. Bummer for my son but it was God's choice if he died. And your son won't grow up to pass those beliefs on to his children.

The answer to ignorance of science or ignorance of faith is always going to be education - school, word of mouth, whatever. We need to talk it out, show why science is useful, and why the community of religion and other aspects can also be useful, and why either can be detrimental (sure the A-bomb was neat, but geez...). Maybe I'm too cynical, but I just don't see this working on most creationists. Or hell, most religious people (stem-cell research is a great example of a scientific area which doesn't conflict with religion in any way, shape, or form, but which many religious people still protest.)

Re:Two words

[Sique]

If I look at the Greek gods, they just seem to be an ancient version of Superman Comics. They are not so much a "Great Spirit", more an endless soap opera with some supernatural abilities thrown in to get over the weak spots of the plot.

Completely different are the German gods. They didn't demand loyality. Whenever a god failed on you, you weren't thinking "God is testing your faith", you were just switching allegiances. Odin not helping you win? Next time you pray to Freya. That will show him!

Another completely different type of gods are the Slavic ones. They are all in one person. Cerny Bog and Bily Bog (Black and White God) are bitter enemies to each other and fighting each other to death. But both are in fact the same person. Whenever one of both dies he's reincarnated as the other one. The Midday Wife is both Death Angel and Bringer of Eternal Luck. She is lovely and fearsome. And she is one person with the Evening, the Morning and the Midnight, who themselves are three sisters. Pretty confusing, right?

No. Gods don't have to be those almighty, evercaring, all-loving Greater Spirits. Gods are whatever the people who created them wanted them to be.

Re:Two words

[ignavus]

One would have thought that Stalin was the more obvious reference here than Hitler. He had more people killed, and (mis)ruled for a longer time, and was more obviously opposed to religious belief and more obviously pro-evolution.

I could even imagine Hitler supporting creationism provided it was a blond Nordic Adam that was created in the Garden of Eden. And belief in God would be fine if his name was Woden or Thor. Stalin's Communism was strictly atheistic and pro-science (even if it was sometimes junk science, like Lysenko).

Soviet Communism was based on some kind of scientific rationalism. Nazism was based on crude nationalistic sentiment (irrationalism). Both were quite content to destroy millions of lives in pursuit of their respective ideals. But Stalin was more "efficient", or at least more successful in holding onto power and killing more people.

Hilter was the amateur. Stalin was the professional. But when you are looking from the West, you see Hitler first.

Re:Two words

[Stickerboy]

>> But the quoted text assumes that ALL life MUST be carbon-based

What else would it be based on? Carbon as a basis of organic molecules provides superior stability and diversity in its flexibility of arrangement. Silicon-based life has been posited but lacks the stability of carbon (as well as real-life examples). Pretty much everything else is a Star Trek pipedream.

>> with four base DNA

There's good evidence that early life on Earth was RNA-based, and DNA (mostly) won out as a source of genetic information due to stability in replication.

>> proteins that process oxygen and so on.

Plenty of anaerobic life on Earth would beg to differ with that assessment... if they had sentience to beg with.

>> The problem with the "Everything is so perfect for life that a supreme being did it on purpose" argument is that it makes the assumption that life cannot exist in any form but ours.

Except that from a physics standpoint, "life" is most easily obtained and created through the carbon-based system like that of Earth. Believing that there is another system out there completely unlike our own without evidence or observation or even conjecture that stands up to scrutiny sounds suspiciously like....

faith!

Re:Two words

[lymond01]

It's a multiplayer game. Anyone who thinks compromising isn't vital to the survival of humanity is kidding themselves. You can believe strongly, but not to the detriment of others.

"I'm really upset that those people won't listen because they're going straight to Hell when they die. I guess I'll just have to accept that." -- The Way It Should Be In My Opinion

Another example:

"America needs to be strong, and stay strong. We can do that by keeping our military well-funded and well distributed, and keeping our allies close. However, we could also try to relate more to other cultures, utilize resources more efficiently, and bring everyone up, instead of staying stronger by keeping everyone down."

Re:Two words

[Mahjub Sa'aden]

I am curious why misapplication of evolutionary biology on a large scale is forgiveable, leading to hundreds of millions of deaths, but misapplication of Christian dogma leading to a few deaths at worst is something we must, at all costs, root out.

I have a unique perspective on this, being a largely secular Muslim. Members of my faith are misapplying and twisting Muslim dogma to justify their terrorist activities and giving the rest of my religion a bad name.

Why, then, do we not call a spade a spade and simply say that misapplying things is a bad idea? It lead to, among other things, the Crusades, the Holocaust, slavery, terrorism, the Community Gulags and purges, and Microsoft Windows. Or at the very least something was misapplied to justify these things.

Simply because those misapplying happen to agree with you does not make it less virtuous to call them for what they are. When you do not call them for what they are, you deny yourself the opportunity to critique others: Cleanliness starts at home.

Re:Two words

[RsG]

Stalin supporting evolution? Oh boy, were you misled. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that whoever told you of the views on evolution in the USSR under Stalin was a creationist, who wanted to villify evolution.

I suggest reading up on Lysenkoism and the effect it had on science in the Soviet Union:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

(You'll probably want to look beyond wikipedia for the in-depth story, but it's a place to start.)

Stalin was strongly anti-religious, but he was equally anti-evolutionary. Neither fit well with the beliefs of communism, and while Stalin probably wasn't an idealist, he needed his citizens to buy into a certain worldview. The notion of heredity doesn't gel well with the notion that all humans can be molded to the communist ideal.

Lysenko's "science" was basically Lamarckism revisited in such a way as better fit communism. Genetics and evolutionary biology were labeled "bourgeois science". Actual evidence-based research was written off in favor of what the people in power would rather believe. Sound familiar?

The parallels between Lysenkoism and Creationism (or Intelligent Design, to use the newspeak name for it) are striking. Both were proposed as alternatives to evolution by those who didn't want to have their worldview challenged by science, both were labeled and taught as science (despite failing to meet the scientific criteria), both had the vocal support of people in high places. The underlying "religion" was different - Lysenkoism was rooted in the quasi-religious views of Marxist-Leninism - but beyond that, they're the same story told in radically different countries.

The major difference is scale - evolutionary biology was all but outlawed in the USSR under Stalin, whereas it has not been similarly repressed in the USA. That can be chalked up to the fact that the US doesn't have, and has never had, a party or ruler with that kind of unchecked authority.

This little adventure into pseudoscience crippled Soviet biology for years to come. It can be argued that Russia still hasn't caught up to the rest of the world. An object lesson in why it is important to leave science to scientists, and keep faith, however deeply held, separate.

Re:Two words

[Anonymous Coward]

"just as I can't prove that God *does* exists, so you cannot prove that God *doesn't*" Do you have any idea how that comment has made you look? Lets see here... The Tooth Fairy exists because you cant prove that the tooth fairy doesnt exist The Jaberwocky exists because you cannot prove that it doesnt exist Santa exists because you cant prove that he doesnt exist... shall i continue?

Re:Two words

[CrimsonAvenger]

Perhaps it should be revised to:

People can believe what they want to believe so long as they don't believe it strongly.

Better yet, it seems that most people (on both sides of any debate) hold with:

People can believe what they want to believe so long as they believe what I believe.

Re:Two words

[shellbeach]

Back in Galileo's day, the position of the Church was that the earth was the center of the universe, and all the heavens (lower-case "h") revolved around it. No matter how hard I try, I can't find that in the Bible. Ergo, no conflict between science and religion. Um ... the issue stemmed partly from Joshua 10:13, which reads:

"And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."

Obviously this passage only makes literal sense if the Earth is stationary, and the church was reluctant to treat any passage as allegorical unless there was direct proof to the contrary (something, incidentally, which Galileo failed to provide at the time).

This leaves you in a bit of a quandary, though, doesn't it? Do you now renounce the Bible, or renounce scientific observation? :)

Having said that, I'm not quite ready to embrace evolution as the origin of species (as opposed to evolution within species, which I do accept), but this discovery is definitely interesting. You might be interested to know that the Catholic church has no problem with evolution ... I think you're getting yourself needlessly caught up in all of this what-the-bible-says business! Personally, my advice would be to follow the teachings of Jesus, and solve all your problems with more alcohol ...

(incidentally, if that trick doesn't work, you might be interested in reading this essay by Stephen Jay Gould, on religion, science, and the unnecessary conflict between them ...)

Re:Two words

[morgan_greywolf]

Nice idea, but based on what I remember from my humanities classes in college, probably wrong, at least to some extent.

You are right in that religion has been used to control the masses -- that's exactly what the Roman emperor Constantine had in mind when he adopted Christianity as the state religion of Rome.

However, studies from some of the earliest religions don't always suggest gods that are omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Try reading about Greek mythology, for example: some of the gods weren't even immortal, let alone omniscient or omnipresent. Or try reading the story of Isis and Osiris from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Osiris wasn't even very bright -- he got duped by his brother.

Re:Two words

[Micah]

> How do you rationalize the 6000year issue?

Easy. The days in Genesis 1 are long ages of time. In fact Gleason Archer, probably the best Hebrew scholar of modern times, has argued that the way the text is worded rules out the calendar-day theory. Also there are demonstrable gaps in the genealogies, so I have no problem with humans being on earth tens of thousands of years.

When you look at the whole Bible, including everything it says on Creation, it describes Big Bang cosmology fairly accurately (well not the science of the BB itself of course, but the effects of a BB universe).

> Wouldn't it be easier to take it from a new standpoint ... look at the world then the book and decide whether or not its needed?

I've done that, and to me the Bible describes reality more consistently than other worldviews.

Re:Two words

[Cairnarvon]

Hitler's Holocaust had more to do with animal husbandry (which predates Darwin by millenia) than with the scientific theory of evolution.

Even if you could demonstrate a direct causal link between evolutionary biology and mass murder, though, the fact remains that evolutionary theory is true while things like Christian Science are not, and a billion social Darwinists buying into the naturalistic fallacy wouldn't change that.

Though even if argumentum ad consequentiam weren't a logical fallacy, you'd still be wrong. Considering how much of modern medicine and agriculture, for instance, is based on evolutionary theory, it's safe to say Darwin has saved a lot more lives than Hitler ever could have snuffed out.

Re:Two words

[Cairnarvon]

Like Douglas Adams once said:

. . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'

Using a very narrow definition of life and then acting surprised when it probably couldn't arise in vastly different circumstances is disingenuous. Not to mention that it ignores the fact that nearly every part of our universe is incredibly hostile to life as we know it anyway.
We're barely clinging to existence on the congealed surface of a ball of molten rock at the bottom of a gravity well in some tiny, god-forsaken corner of a massive, uncaring universe, pretending that that universe is in fact the best it could possibly be and made especially for us. It takes profound ignorance or cynical disingenuousness to defend the fine-tuned universe argument.

Re:Two words

[MadMartigan2001]

Or you could be like me: a godist (in your terms) who really wants to reconcile science and faith.

At first glance that sounds good, but say it different..."I'm a tooth-fairy-ist who really wants to reconcile science and tooth-fairy-ism". It just does not have the same ring.

More to the point, to be viewed as an objective person with no bias towards the evidence, you must first show your objectivity and/or scepticism by stating that the observed evidence can influence your opinion in either direction. Ie, god may not exist and/or evolution may not exist.

Just as any real scientist would say - "I believe what the evidence shows me and I'm willing to throw out all my current beliefs if new evidence arises that contradicts my current beliefs". granted it would most certainly be really really good evidence, but a real objective person who seeks truth has to be able to say such things.

So my point is, your kidding yourself if you think you are trying to "reconcile" anything. What you are doing is trying to find bits and pieces of evidence to support your pre-conceived belief that god exists.

You cannot be objective unless you are willing to admit that all you now believe may be completely wrong. If you cannot, then all you observe in the world will be filtered through your belief system in support of your manufactured reality.

I'm willing to say it. Evolution may be a complete crock of &*^% and totally wrong. God may exist and created everything we see. That was not to hard, it feels good.

Now, can you say that God may not exist and evolution may be completely correct? Hmmm?

Re:Two words

[ttfkam]

You're tap dancing around the question. Our perception of the Sun and the Moon in the sky are dependent upon how they interact with the Earth.

For the Sun to stand still, the Earth could have stopped rotating or other similar feat of astronomical proportions. The Moon would have had to stop its revolutions around the Earth to be perceived as staying or the Earth would have had to rotate at the same rate as the Moon's revolutions.

For both to occur at the same time, the Moon would have had to stop its revolutions and the Earth would have had to stop rotating.

Things would have become quite toasty on one side of the planet while the other side became quite a bit cooler -- depending on the length of staying put, of course. The Moon would have crashed into the Earth due to the force of gravity and the ceasing of a stable orbit.

So my question to you is what other alternatives are there? The next question is whether you have a better alternative than "God did it?"

"Joshua is told in a way that made sense to the people witnessed the event..."(!?) C'mon! God did not pick up a quill pen and some parchment and write Joshua. At best, he inspired someone to write it. I thought the point of the Bible was that it was originally written by the people who were there, presuming that God told Adam what happened before he was created. But wait! Adam never wrote any of the books of the OT. Adam's great grandson perhaps? And perhaps he needed a better copy editor, because God wasn't doing his job in that capacity.

"Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him."

"No one?" It's just him and Adam and Eve, right?

"Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch."

Cain's wife? If Adam and Eve were the first humans, does that make Cain's wife Cain and Abel's sister? Or did Cain and Eve do the nasty to make Cain's wife? (Isn't it convenient that the Bible never mentions this woman or many others by name? God was kind of a chauvinist, wasn't He?)

"Adam lay with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, saying, 'God has granted me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.'"

So... umm... so I guess God created other women in the background so that the... umm... fratricidal maniac could get his groove on and procreate to make an entire line of damned souls.

Or do you not take a strict, literal interpretation of Genesis either? If all of these are allegorical and not literal, why base your life on it? Why does it hold special meaning over your life while Aesop's Fables do not?

Because you feel it? Muslims feel Allah's presence and the holiness of Muhammad. Tibetan Buddhists feel that the earthworms are possibly reincarnated loved ones. Why does your feeling trump what you know of the orbits of the planets and stars and moons? Why does it hold a great truth unto you when you do not see it as literal truth?

I'm honestly curious.

Re:Two words

[Repossessed]

I will accept that a supreme being exists, if you can defend why you believe that said supreme being matches, or even comes close, to what you think of as God.

Re:Two words

[Sancho]

Because stem cells can be harvested without aborting babies.

Because even if you use aborted fetus tissue, people aren't going to go around having abortions just for the tissue.

Re:Two words

[10Ghz]

The reason why Stalin and the commies were "atheists" was because they saw the Orthodox Church as a potential adversary to their rule. After all, the church was quite close to the Tsar, and deep down, Russians were a religious people. And if their religious leader had told them that their political leaders are godless heathens, things could have gotten ugly for the commies. But when Germany invaded USSR, Staling went to a mass and prayed.

Re:Two words

[Eivind Eklund]

I'm not quite ready to embrace evolution as the origin of species (as opposed to evolution within species, which I do accept) I come across this viewpoint a lot among what I otherwise perceive as wise, open-minded Christians, so I'd be curious if you'd answer a question for me: What would it take for you to accept evolution as the origin of the species?

I'll note that to me, evolution as the origin of the species is the obvious conclusion - I've seen scores of types and hundreds of pieces of evidence for it, and no evidence that goes in the opposite direction. But, for you, there's obviously things that you feel hard to reconcile - and I'd like to know what they are.

Eivind.

Re:Two words

[barius]

I'm an atheist, but I do have to take issue with the following comment:

Plus, you'll be able to sleep in on Sundays for a change and not have to give part of your income to something that sucks the life out of society and produces nations of sheep.

Even as an atheist I still volunteer to help at the local Presbyterian church. Why? Because the church provides community services that are not offered anywhere else. The church where I volunteer provides baby-sitting, computer education classes, yard-sales, book readings, community meeting space, discussion groups, and much more. There are so many good things that church groups do that I find it foolish and irrational that so many Atheists automatically discount the very real and tangible benefits of their presence.

I suggest you at least try to respect the good things done by your local church, even if you disagree with the beliefs. It wouldn't hurt to show them up a bit and actually leave your computer for a few hours a week to join a local charity or community group either.

Re:Two words

[Rimbo]

The simple way is to look at the Bible for what it is: A collection of writings by different human beings at different points of time who all had different views of the world. That pretty much covers all of the conflicts. It does, however, require you to use your brain from time to time.

Hi! I'm a Christian, and I'd like to introduce you to a version of Christianity you might not have known existed: The kind that believes that if facts conflict with dogma, then facts win.

Rant follows:

There's an interesting history to Fundamentalism, and it (and the history of the Bible) is well-covered in the phenomenal book Whose Bible Is It?. But the short version is that at some point, along with all of the Scientific knowledge that was challenging a lot of how we understood how the world works, a lot of Biblical scholarship occurred since the Enlightenment that was challenging to some standard dogmas. For example, the original Hebrew prophecy of the Messiah spoke of a "young girl," which in the Greek Septuagint -- which was the most popular "Bible" back when the New Testament was being written -- translated into a word meaning "virgin." Well, this eventually snowballed into the Immaculate Conception, but starting from the 1700s or so Christians started to recognize that what really happened was that young teenage Mary got herself knocked up.

As people began to recognize these sorts of things, obviously there was some resistance from those who felt that commonly-held and well-treasured dogmas that had been held for nearly 15 centuries really weren't up for debate, and sometime in the early 20th century these "not up for debate" dogmas were published as pamphlets titled, "The Fundamentals." (From which we get the name, "Fundamentalism.")

Now the key thing to note about this is that this didn't begin as a war between Science and Religion. It started out as a conflict within Religion itself. And it's notable that the Fundamentalists were taking the view that tradition trumped whatever the Bible actually originally said, that mistranslations and misunderstandings of what was in the book that had become traditional -- such as Young Earth Creationism -- were really more important than what had actually been written. You'll note that this is a very different thing from believing in a "literal" interpretation of the Bible.

Well, what's happened is that the Fundamentalists won the war. There are some good churches out there left, but generally the populations in those churches are elderly and dying off; in the rest of the churches, intellectuals are ostracized. Young Christians today know little more than a dumbed-down version of Christianity that's based on living through certain traditions, rather than a "way" or a "walk" to try and understand and learn about God; they think they know all they need to about God, and are ready to show the rest of the world just how it is. (Get off my lawn.)

And this is the Christianity that they now inflict on the rest of the world. It is not my Christianity, not the Christianity I grew up with. But even that good old church was taken over by the Fundamentalists shortly after I left for college. And that war is over.

Oh, as for Genesis 1? When you look at the text repeated in the verses, you see the same things over and over: "And God created... and said it was good." I think the point here is that God created the universe and everything in it, and called it "good." Note how the sun was not created until the 4th day -- so how could there have been an evening and morning? The "days" are just a poetic device, part of the oral tradition, a (very effective) memory trick used to help people remember the story during the many centuries the story existed but hadn't yet been written.

(But if you are one of those Christians who needs the Bible to say something before you believe it, just take a peek at Psalm 90:4; given that Genesis is "The Fir

Re:Two words

[rprins]

Well see, that's a mistake. Religious people tend to equate realizing there is no God with believing there is no God.

However, the two are fundamentally different. One view is based on unassuming, open and critical thinking. When you 'believe' there is no God, you assume it to be true and bend your interpretation of reality towards it. Just like people do when they believe there is a God.

No-one who is truly unassuming and is capable of accepting something as "not yet completely explicable" will arrive at the notion of a God. Some self-conscious entity pulling invisible strings in a world completely defined by laws he apparently set himself. Retarded.

Re:Two words

[Half a dent]

there is no soul Sure there is and James Brown is its Godfather!

Re:Two words

[Entropy2016]

Stalin supporting evolution? Oh boy, were you misled. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that whoever told you of the views on evolution in the USSR under Stalin was a creationist, who wanted to villify evolution. Wether Stalin supported evolution isn't known unless you can get some quotes of him commenting on the topic. Without citing that, the most you should be able to argue against is what the Stalinist regime's official stance on evolution was.

And in fact, they did support the evolution of species. Lysenkoism was not an attempt to replace evolution, but rather it tried to serve as a mechanic for how evolution worked.

I suggest reading up on Lysenkoism and the effect it had on science in the Soviet Union:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism [wikipedia.org] I read the article. Lysenkoism doesn't involve any such evolution vs creationism, or Lysenkoism vs evolution. You've misrepresented the entire subject, and I hope people do read the article you linked so they can see why.

Quoting the article:

Lysenkoism, or Lysenko-Michurinism, may also denote the biological inheritance principles Lysenko subscribed to which derive from theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics, a body of biological inheritance theory which departs from Mendelism and that Lysenko himself named "Michurinism". Notice, it departs from "mendelism", not evolution as a whole.

When Darwin stumbled upon evolution, he was able to come up with all sorts of examples of things that must had evolved adaptations, but he didn't have a clue about the exact mechanisms involved other than there must be one.

Lysenkoism wasn't an alternative to evolution (as you said). It was merely trying to define the mechanism behind how evolution works. Of course it's not the evolution we know to be correct today, but it was still a branch of evolutionary theory (just a bad branch of evolutionary theory).

You've framed the context to be some sort of issue that attempts to be tangental to creationism, when in fact it was only a Mendelism (genetic heritability) vs Lysenkoism (inheritance of acquired characteristics). They were still both evolution.

Why are people so many people constantly desperate to try and distance the Soviet communists from being advocates of evolution? If it is for some sort of religion-vs-atheism impulse, leave it out of a science discussion, otherwise it's no better than creationists trying to get their stuff in our science classes.

Re:Two words

[mpeskett]

I have the beginning of the book of Genesis open in another tab (via biblegateway.com) and even taking the days as long periods of time it still doesn't square with the scientific account.

According to what I'm reading here:
Day 1 - Light and day/night created, "water above" separated from "water below" by an expanse of sky.
Day 2 - Land and sea separated, plants and vegetation placed on the land
Day 3 - The sun and moon placed in the sky to govern the seasons, and provide light
Day 4 - Sea creatures and birds created
Day 5 - Land animals and humans created
Day 6 - nothing specified, until the 7th day when he rested.

Few things there...

I'm not sure what the waters above are; we have yet to find an expanse of water sat on top of the sky, although that would perhaps explain the blue colour if you didn't know about the atmosphere scattering the sunlight.

The Earth very clearly exists before the Sun in this account, and the Sun and Moon are created at the same time. Both not true. Even more noticeable is that plants were on the face of the Earth before the Sun was there to allow them to grow. The original light could be explained as stars from before the Sun, but starlight sure isn't enough to grow plants by.

When it comes to the genealogies, I'm not so bothered by the sum total of their ages implying a 6000 year old Earth as I am by the fact that each man between Adam and Noah apparently lives for centuries. Noah had 3 sons at age 500 (note Abraham's disbelief at the idea of a son at the age of 100 in Genesis 17, they knew this stuff was impossible) then he went on to live to 950 years old for crap's sake... did they misplace a decimal point here? Perhaps there's further dilation of time here and "year" actually means 1 tenth of a year.

That, and the fact that the story has the entire human race originating with a single couple. Basic genetics pretty much rules that out, unless there was some incredibly rapid mutation/evolution immediately after the fall. But of course evolution doesn't exist, does it? Round it all off with an impossible flood of the world and the Tower of Babel and the crazy whirlwind ride that is the start of Genesis is more or less complete.

I'm not buying it.

Re:Two words

[Micah]

I'm not sure what the waters above are; Water vapor in atmosphere? Rain clouds?

The Earth very clearly exists before the Sun in this account, and the Sun and Moon are created at the same time. In the English translations it looks that way. However there are a couple things about Day 4.

First it says that God ordered the lights to appear. The word here is Hebrew 'haya', meaning "let there appear". This is NOT the same as ex-nihilo creation, Hebrew 'bara', which is used for the heavens and the earth in verse 1.

The second verse in Day 4 is a parenthetical note that says that God created the sun and moon, and the stars also. The verb there is the other Hebrew word for create, 'asa'. It also is not ex-nihilo creation, but the formation of something from what has previously existed. Also, the tense there is an imperfect past tense, stating that God had accomplished that at some point before the end of Day 4.

Even more noticeable is that plants were on the face of the Earth before the Sun was there to allow them to grow. Yes it was.

So what happened? God created the universe, which expanded and the earth formed by generally accepted planetary formation physics. According to planetary formation theory, the earth should be covered in thick atmosphere, even more so than Venus, and it probably was. It was also covered by water after the initial cooling. Note that both of these conditions are mentioned in Genesis 1:2 -- "darkness was over the face of the deep."

I also believe the phrase "the Spirit hovered over the waters" is a reference to the creation of the first life, widely believed to be in the ocean very early in life's history. The word for 'hovered' is the same Hebrew word used later for God brooding over Israel, protecting her like a hen protects its chicks. Obviously something profound was happening.

Also early on was the collision with the Mars-sized object that ended up creating our moon. This ate up much of the atmosphere causing it to become translucent. Light from the sun was visible on the earth's surface for the first time, hence "let there be light."

As the atmosphere dissipated over the eons, it eventually became transparent in Day 4, when the heavenly bodies were finally visible from the surface. This happened sometime before the Cambrian Explosion, which I think is rather nicely described in Day 5.

Perhaps there's further dilation of time here and "year" actually means 1 tenth of a year. I don't think so. There are conceivable explanations. I admit none can be proven (nor disproven), but speculations as to how it could have worked. First, all humans were said to have been vegetarians in the beginning. This would allow one to be healthier if they had lived hundreds of years. Second, there may have been less cosmic radiation early on (one or more supernovae have occurred since man came to earth). But what I think had to have happened is that God modified human telemeres, which essentially limit our lifespan. Yes, the God I believe in is plenty capable of that, and the Bible says that God ordained our days to be no more than 120. A divine manipulation of telemeres seems to fit the bill here. Also note that other ancient cultures have legends of kings living 1000 years. This is not unique to the Bible.

That, and the fact that the story has the entire human race originating with a single couple. I think again I have to appeal to manipulation by God. Note that at the Tower of Babel God is said to have confused languages. It seems reasonable to me that He would have changed a few genes in the process.

I realize this isn't acceptable to a methodological naturalist. It certainly isn't falsifiable nor provable. To me there are a lot of other factors that make belief in the God of the Bible reasonable, and that belief causes me to accept Genesis.

Round it all off with an impossible flood of the world I believe the Flood was geographically local, but it covered all the areas where humans were living at the time. I think I can even prove that from the Bible itself, which drives young earth fundies nuts. :)

Re:Two words

[Darby]

I could even imagine Hitler supporting creationism provided it was a blond Nordic Adam that was created in the Garden of Eden. And belief in God would be fine if his name was Woden or Thor.

Why would you bother making up silly nonsense when you could just look up the fact that the Nazis were an explicitly and militantly Christian organization? Belief in god was demanded of the German citizens and that god was named Jesus, or else.

Let me be the first to say...

[MightyYar]

It's a miracle!

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[zach_d]

It's clear evidence of a noodley appendage!

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Cypher04]

Praise Jebus!

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Spy der Mann]

It's a miracle! Hmmm that doesn't sound right. Let's see...

It's alive, Igor! It's ALIVE! There. Much better.

Remember...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"One in a billion odds" means very, very different things for bacteria than it does for humans.

Re:Remember...

[oldspewey]

Hell, even for humans it means ~6.7

Re:Remember...

[Wandering Wombat]

To bacteria, that means "It'll happen eight times before Thursday."

I can't wait for God's press release on this one.

Re:Remember...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I can't wait for God's press release on this one.

Blah-blah-blah revolutionary E. Coli version 2.0 blah-blah-blah flexibly interoperate blah-blah-blah leverage synergies blah-blah-blah best-of-breed blah-blah-blah exciting new environmental opportunities blah-blah-blah...

Re:First!

[spun]

And getting first post on Slashdot improves your chances to reproduce how, exactly? No offense, but I think you may be an evolutionary dead end.

Quote from article:

[Izabael_DaJinn]

"In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome."

Wasn't that already proven with the rise of homo sapiens?

Never Be Enough

[dontPanik]

Too bad this evidence still won't be enough to make creationists change their minds.

Re:Never Be Enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad this evidence still won't be enough to make creationists change their minds . There was a problem with your sentence. I have highlighted it and request that you fix it.

Re:Never Be Enough

[spun]

Of course not, because nothing can refute creationism. That's the precise reason it isn't a scientific theory at all. It can't be falsified. There is simply no way to disprove the hypothesis that an all powerful being willed it to happen that way.

Re:Never Be Enough

[KungFuSoi]

not all unicellular organisms belong to the same species. there are a variety of criteria to determine speciation. invisible differences between (invisible) organisms does not mean they cannot be of different species. even in fruit flies, it takes training to differentiate visually melanogaster from simulans from yakuba etc.

creationists distinguishing "macro" and "micro" is just their attempt at using semantics to deny evidence. no one has agreed on a standard definition of species; a creationist could pick and choose a definition to refute an argument as convenient.

any how, can you test creationism with a likelihood test? i do not know the answer to that, but i do know that you could sample dna from these new citrate metabolizing bacteria and test the hypothesis that positive selection was acting on certain parts of the genome corresponding to the appropriate enzymes and come up with a p-value. for some reason i am skeptical that you could do the same for a god-helped-the-bacteria hypothesis.

Re:Never Be Enough

[Spy der Mann]

Science explains HOW, not WHY. Imagine a little child.

- Daddy why do things fall down?
- Because they're attracted to earth.
- Why?
- Because the law discovered by newton states... blablablah, 9.8m/s^2, blablablah
- Why?
- Because the law of universal gravitation... blablablah... equation... blah...
- Why?
- According to quantum physics and Einstein's relativity theory, the curvature in the space-time continuum... blablablablabla...
- Why?

The why's never end. Science try to explain HOW things work. But why they work that way, it's a problem impossible to solve - we'd need a way to measure them that is superior to the things being explained. In other words, we'd need a power greater than the whole universe to explain WHY.

Ah, but HOW... that's a very different thing.

Re:Never Be Enough

[vtscott]

Unfortunately, like any article that mentions evolution or something that happened in the universe over 6000 years ago, this has turned into a flamewar against creationists and Christians. However, this article is actually news if you are looking for more than just something to throw in the face of people who don't believe in evolution. The reason this is really interesting is that these scientists can go back through the generations of bacteria they stored and pinpoint exactly where the bacteria started to evolve this new trait and how it came about. This will be kind of like stepping through code in a debugger vs. just giving it some input and seeing what the output is. We will actually get to see step by step how a very useful trait evolved uniquely in one population.

Or alternately...

[Anonymous Coward]

God performs miracle of transformation on bacteria right before the eyes of watching scientists, yet they still refuse to believe in Him.

Okay... I was just saying :(

This is why ...

[oldspewey]

This is why doctors ask people to finish the entire bottle when prescribing antibiotics. This is also why we should ban antibacterial hand soaps for domestic use - because when you bathe a population of microbes in something for millions of generations, the odds are that eventually a spontaneous mutation will occur.

All the anal-retentive clean freaks will just have to figure out how to live with the notion that they - like everyone else - carry microbes on their skin.

Re:This is why ...

[slashname3]

I always figured this would be how we kill ourselves off. Over use of antibacterial soaps and cleaners in homes. At some point in the next few decades we will have an outbreak of a supper bug that can not be defeated with any antibiotics that are available. As more and more people die off civilization collapses.

Of course the good news is that we can then ride around in big honking SUVs made of all kinds of different parts searching for gas and shooting arrows at each other. I wonder where we will get the hair dye for the mohawks that will be in fashion at that time or the leather for the jackets and straps?

Re:This is why ...

[rho]

At some point in the next few decades we will have an outbreak of a supper bug that can not be defeated

I for one...

Re:This is why ...

[Prof.Phreak]

Soap isn't an issue. There are plenty of things that kill bacteria---but those things usually also kill humans. Soap doesn't need to be selective---no penicillin in soap, just chemicals that kill anything living. The trick is to have things that kill bacteria without doing harm to humans...

Re:This is why ...

[eln]

I, for one, prefer to regard everything on the planet as being covered in a thin fecal veneer. While I, being a more proactive sort, prefer to spend my days covering everything on the planet in a thin fecal veneer. It's nice to know someone has finally noticed my work.

Re:This is why ...

[Roger W Moore]

I always figured this would be how we kill ourselves off.
Hang on a minute! Anti-biotics were not invented until the 1930's. While I agree that abuse of them should certainly stop (especially including abuse by farmers feeding them to livestock needlessly) it will not be the end of the world. More people will die, live expectancy will drop but we are not going to end up in a post-apocalyptic world with only a handful of survivors.

Re:This is why ...

[Taibhsear]

Actually soap doesn't tend to kill bacteria. It merely lifts it off the surface of the skin and running water carries it away. (but for sanitization purposes it serves essentially the same outcome) However, there were studies done that found antibacterial soap was no better at sanitizing skin than normal hand soap. The antibiotic in some hand soap rarely takes effect until the bacteria is already off of your hands. And therefore is essentially useless. This is however merely allowing the bacteria to gain an evolutionary defense against the antibiotic. It should not be used in the home. It should be reserved for hospital use only.

Citation

Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[tiedyejeremy]

Keep it up and it won't be a "just" a theory any more! I'm so sick of my neighbor saying "evolution is just a theory" with a scornful attitude that implies evolution is a whimsical idea kids will have and common sense will later dispel.

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[zach_d]

You could counter your neighbour with "gravity is 'just a theory'" as well.

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[samkass]

No, it'll still just be a theory. A theory that happens to match reality with a large pile of evidence behind it. But in science, there's really no such thing as a "fact", simply theories with greater levels of evidence supporting them.

Gravity is just a theory. The Sun-centered solar system is just a theory. Radio waves are just a theory.

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[Sponge Bath]

Or: "It may be a theory, but your religion isn't even that."

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[Sciros]

Well, "evolutionary theory" (which includes natural selection) is in the scientific sense, a theory. In the colloquial sense, that translates to "fact." The colloquial sense of "theory" does not apply to the theory of natural selection any more than it applies to gravity, indeed.

I think that rather than defending the strength of the word "theory," we need to recognize that there is indeed more than one sense to the word, and creationists like to use the "weaker" sense when referring to evolutionary theory, when in reality they're wrong to do so. It's yet another disingenuity on their part. When they say "evolution is only a theory," they are either disingenuous or misinformed. There is no other alternative, because they are not using the word "theory" in the scientific sense.

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[Krinsath]

Actually, it will someday be "not a theory" I refer you to the example above of gravity. Newton proposed the Theory of Gravity, which has since been tested, observed, and (more or less) universally accepted as true by the scientific community. Hence it is currently the Law of Gravity. You also have the Laws of Thermodynamics from Sir Issac which have similarly been observed, tested and validated over the centuries.

When a theory is proved to be cogent, and repeatedly true in empirical testing over a long period of time it becomes a scientific law. Evolution is a long, long way from that status (given that biology is a much more "fluid" field compared to physics) but as the GP points out, this is another step closer.

Not to be overly pedantic, but it's not relegated to just being a theory forever. :)

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[tiedyejeremy]

I read your post and find myself singing:

I'm just a bill.
Yes, I'm only a bill.
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill.
Well, it's a long, long journey
To the capital city.
It's a long, long wait
While I'm sitting in committee,
But I know I'll be a law some day
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a bill.

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[morgan_greywolf]

No, no. That'll be countered with drivel like "God is a FACT! Jesus is a FACT! The Holy Spirit is a FACT! And if you don't believe in these FACTS, the FACT is that you're going to Hell!"

(Which I suppose must also be some sort of 'fact', too huh?)

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[pauljlucas]

The thing most people don't understand is that the word "theory" doesn't describe the word "evolution." The correct way to say it is, "Darwin's theory of evolution is Natural Selection" or "Natural Selection is the theory of evolution." Hence the theory is Natural Selection that describes the fact of evolution.

Ha! This is just how God test his flock.

[viking80]

Ha! God let the devil do this so he can test who are the real faithful, and who are the unfaithful to be smitten.

Re:Ha! This is just how God test his flock.

[seanonymous]

Without the smitten, it would be hard for a species to evolve.

Re:Ha! This is just how God test his flock.

[lesinator]

God should test his flock with LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB, just like everyone else....

Re:Perplex and Confound?

[slashname3]

We are not bacteria! We are not bacteria! We are not monkeys! I mean we are not bacteria!

You can't even see a bacteria with your own eye, so this can't be real.

Nylon Bug

[Camel Pilot]

It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait

Didn't the nylon eating bacteria already demonstrate that a complex trait can arise in short order? Actually I think it was industrial waste products from the nylon manufacturing process but still the same.

Re:Nylon Bug

[frankie]

Sure we've seen "before" and "after" bugs that evolved new traits, but this guy mapped out 40000 generations of "during". No more worries about "Then a miracle occurs", now it's all on film.

Documentation of the random mutations piling up over time until a beneficial combination hits. This fills in the question mark from Step 2.

Re:First!

[Thyrteen]

For those of you who didn't RTFA, the new evolution which they claim occurred was the ability to metabolize citrate, a substance in the culture medium that e. coli were previously known to be unable to metabolize, and this occurred in one of twelve populations that were spawned from a single parent bacterium. I think it's pretty interesting :)

Re:NOOOOOOOOO!

[SatanicPuppy]

Not at all! They'll just say, "That's micro evolution. Evolve me a giraffe in a petri dish and I'll be impressed."

It's funny how they are completely non-skeptical when it comes to their book, and how intensely skeptical they are toward things like evolution.

Big deal

[devotedlhasa]

I've been watching bacteria developing complex evolutionary traits in my refrigerator for some time now....

Grow up.

[bigstrat2003]

For fuck's sake people, grow up. Can't we discuss a cool scientific discovery without dragging religion-bashing into it? If this changes their minds, it will do so without our mockery. If it doesn't change their minds, it will do so without our mockery. In the meantime, we will have wasted our time, and ceded any moral high ground, by lowering ourselves to the level of 5-year-old "ha ha told you so ha ha ha!" nonsense.

Anyway, it's an interesting find, but I wonder, why did they not wait until they finished their investigation of the event? It says that they're still figuring out if the change was a random, incredibly rare mutation, or the result of many small changes. Why not wait until you get the whole story to announce your discovery?

Re:Grow up.

[Jzanu]

Funding. Science is expensive.

Re:Grow up.

[Abcd1234]

You're technically correct, but that doesn't make the action acceptable.

I couldn't disagree more. See, these creationist believers are fighting tooth and nail to get their ideas included in school curriculae, etc, in order to make themselves appear legitimate. They're feeding on, and also fostering, rampant anti-intellectualism, particularly in the United States, and historically, people have just sat back and let it happen. "It's their right to believe what they want", they'd say. "Gotta respect their beliefs!"

Luckily, scientists and the educated public have finally started to realize that they can't just sit back and let the anti-intellectuals foster an environment of anti-science. They *must* be challenged. And so, when stories like this come up, you can damn well be sure that those fighting on the side of science will hold up those results and say, "See, we were right!". Otherwise, the anti-intellectuals will continue to dominate the debate, by virtue of simply yelling louder, and things will never improve.

Re:Grow up.

[bigstrat2003]

You mean like the way religionists and creationists bash scientists and science? So, the proper response to douchebaggery is... more douchebaggery? Wow, what a great atmosphere of mutual respect that's gonna foster in our society.

Stones and glass houses and all that. That implies that I'm a) religious, b) bashing science, neither of which is true.

Re:Grow up.

[FleaPlus]

Anyway, it's an interesting find, but I wonder, why did they not wait until they finished their investigation of the event? It says that they're still figuring out if the change was a random, incredibly rare mutation, or the result of many small changes. Why not wait until you get the whole story to announce your discovery?

It's science -- there's pretty much always going to be open questions, and you can be rest assured that seeking the answer to the questions they listed will only result in more questions. If you wait until you get the whole story before publishing, your field will be long dead before you publish anything. Science works by having people publish interesting results as they get bits of pieces of the whole story, allowing others to explore the story as well.

Evolutionist

[BigDumbAnimal]

If Creationist are just a bunch of crack pot fundamentalist nuts, why do these scientist frequently seem preoccupied with creationist. FTFA:

Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. "The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events," he says. "That's just what creationists say can't happen."

Re:Evolutionist

[Bombula]

Because in the incredibly sad state of affairs that is the US educational and political system, science - and with it the future of our nation - is genuinely threatened by religious lunacy and the moronic beliefs and ravings of dysfunctional schizoid-delusional sociopaths. Science IS modernity. That's all there is to it. The only thing we have that cultures didn't have 500, or 1000, or 2000 years ago, is science - and scientifically-derrived knowledge. We HAD religion. Only science has fostered new insights into the nature of reality. And as a result of those insights, we now have the modern world and the wonders of technology - from dentistry to antibiotics to cheap clothing to the internet and cell phones. Science gave us EVERYTHING that makes us different from the middle-eastern tribesman and shepherds of the 1st Century.

Scientists are preoccupied with Creationism because modern American Christianity has degenerated into a freakish, extremist cult that is substantively no different that Wahabism or Scientology - the only difference is that these people are in charge of our government. If that's not a threat you should be concerned about for the sake of your children grandchildren, then I don't know what is.

amusing

[fish_in_the_c]

I often find it amazing how people are stereotyped. Not all people who believe God is responsible for creation of the universe have a problem with evolutionary theory. Roman Catholics believe God is responsible for everything. Including random chance ( which everyone knows is seldom all the random.)

So assuming all science were in and we could prove from end to end the entire evolution of the human species , you would have made no progress in proving or disproving either the existence of God or weather or not He was ultimately responsible for the creation of human beings.

The only group that holds 'evolution can't happen because the bible says' is a very small minority of Christians. Specifically biblical literalists.

Evolution also poses no particular threat to Hindu or Buddhist belief system.

Re:amusing

[Strilanc]

It's becoming more commonplace for "creationist" to by default mean "young earth creationist", and that is what the GP was most likely referring to (definitely seems that way based on the context).

Strictly speaking, you're correct because "God created the universe" and "the theory of evolution is true" can both be true.

Re:amusing

[NMerriam]

I often find it amazing how people are stereotyped. Not all people who believe God is responsible for creation of the universe have a problem with evolutionary theory

Nor are such people called Creationists, so I'm not sure why you think they're being stereotyped in the message you're responding to. Creationists believe God created life (or at least Man) from whole cloth. Believing in Guided Evolution (which is what Catholics and many/most contemporary Protestants believe) isn't remotely controversial except to the most staunch anti-religionists, since the presence or absence of a guiding intelligence to evolution is a matter of philosophy/religion rather than one of science.

Re:amusing

[Anonymous Coward]

"I often find it amazing how people are stereotyped."

I often find it amazing how (some) people lacks the slightest ability to understand a context.

On the other hand, you point only makes the parent's one truer. It's only Catholic Church is more clever that others about finding the slipery way to "retain their truth".

Catholic Church: The world was made in just six days
Science: err... no.
CC: OK then. But Earth is flat.
S: err... no.
CC: OK then. But it's only about 6000 year old.
S: err... no.
CC: OK then. But it's the centre of the Universe.
S: err... no.
CC: OK then. But there's no evolution.
S: err... no.
CC: OK then. But God itself inspires us and gives us a soul at conception.
S: well, there's no proof of that
CC: But you won't say "err... no" this time, do you?
S: err... no.
CC: SEE!!!??? I WAS TELLING THAT ALL THE TIME, YOU DISBELIVER!!!

Re:amusing

[Tebriel]

Roman Catholics believe God is responsible for everything. Including random chance ( which everyone knows is seldom all the random.) I am a Roman Catholic and that's not true. There's no doctrine stating that God controls every single thing in the universe and there never will be. While you can safely say that God is the ultimate cause of all creation, there's nothing that theologically indicates that God actively controls everything. That's not to say that He couldn't influence anything, but He's certainly not guiding every single atom at every time. He created perfectly good laws of nature to do that for Him.

Re:amusing

[JaWiB]

Regardless, there was no reason to bring creationism into this article in the first place. Mentioning it only annoys people and masks any actual scientific discussion of the article. But I guess this is slashdot and we don't have any insightful comments that are actually relevant to the posted articles.

Re:amusing

[mea37]

TFA itself quoted one of the scientists involved as saying that his favorite thing about the discovery, is that it contradicts creationists.

You are correct that it's inflamatory and hurts the discussion. You are incorrect to blame slashdot (in this particular instance).

Re:amusing

[nojomofo]

Including random chance ( which everyone knows is seldom all the random.)

Do you have some great new quantum mechanical breakthrough to share with us? Or was the parenthetical statement above just pulled out of thin air because it sounded good?

Re:amusing

[Hatta]

He's certainly not guiding every single atom at every time. He created perfectly good laws of nature to do that for Him.

What's the difference?

Re:amusing

[Woundweavr]

The existence or non-existence of Free Will. But then, that debate makes the evolution/Creationism debate look like a polite 1 minute conversation on whether to have Coke or Pepsi with lunch.

Re:NOOOOOOOOO!

[timster]

Well of course. It doesn't even require them to change their position. The whole "micro-evolution versus macro-evolution" argument has always been about accepting that 1+1=2 while denying that 1 * 1000000 = 1000000 because it "hasn't been observed and can never be observed". Now that somebody managed to get to a million, they'll claim we have to count up to a billion to prove anything. Same argument, different scale.

Re:Pros and Cons

[Strilanc]

Spontaneous generation is a type of abiogenesis, but abiogenesis is not spontaneous generation. Abiogenesis refers to any theory about how life arose from non-life. Lookup abiogenesis on wikipedia for more.

Re:NOOOOOOOOO!

[Weaselmancer]

That's because God wrote their book, and faith is the exact opposite of skepticism.

In a way you have to admire people with faith. They want so badly to be good people that they're willing to even discount things their own eyes show them, because seeing these things would break their faith.

It's amazing, really.

That's why no argument can ever be enough. It would screw up their relationship with God. They're understandably grouchy when scientists come up with stuff like this. It requires another round of mental gymnastics to keep their faith in order. Each round getting harder and harder to do as science keeps raising the bar.

Find some microbes on Mars, for instance. Watch what happens next.

Re:NOOOOOOOOO!

[MightyMartian]

Just ask a Creationist if they've seen an electron. When they try to explain how we can tell they exist from how they influence things that we can directly observe, they've just admitted that inference/indirect observation are in fact useful ways of gathering knowledge. At that point, their whole "you can't see it happening" nonsense evaporates. They'll likely fall back on epistemological nihilism at that point, but since that position trashes their beliefs just as thoroughly as science, I always take that as a tacit admission on their part that they're argument is utterly fucked.

You're doing it backwards

[bberens]

I don't think the question should be "How does evolution fit within my God hypothesis?" I think the question should be, "What conclusion does my evolutionary data support?" The answer to that question may lead you to create a God hypothesis, which you would then invariably need to test more directly. However, looking at the situation from the perspective you described is like trying to decipher the revolution of the stars and planets about the Earth, because the Earth is in the center of the universe.

Re:Doesn't disprove creationism

[drinkypoo]

Show me how how the leafy sea dragon developed its leafiness and I might just start to believe in Evolution (with a big E), othewise, you are just seeing persistent change from generation to generation that eventually produces something useful.

The Good News (for the world, not so much for you) is that by the time enough time has passed to prove such a thing, you will be dead. I cannot conceive of the horror if someone as stupid as you were to be immortal.

Or, maybe if the bacterium suddenly developed the ability to feed on their glass petri dishes.

Right. If the bacterium does some new thing that there's really no reason for it to be able to do (lots of petri dishes are plastic now, BTW) then THAT will invalidate your belief? Of course not, because it would take a fucking miracle.

The simple truth is that as a rational individual it is safest to assume that any religious fundamentalist is wrong, because there are so many competing claims, and absolutely zero of them have been shown to have any grounding in reality. This is not the same thing as proving them wrong, of course. It's simply proving that there is no rational reason to believe them. If you choose to be irrational, that's your decision, but you shouldn't complain when people choose to label you as such.

Re:Complex Evolutionary Trait, really?

[MightyMartian]

It must be rough for them, because speciation has been observed. Besides, not all Christians reject evolution. Don't equate your Fundie friends for all of Christianity. Biblical Literalism is a very new feature, and damned near any Church that still holds Augustine as any kind of theological figure does not advocate it.

Important result. Read the article.

[Animats]

This is an important result, and it's going to be more important when the mechanism by which it happened is figured out. Read the article.

The great thing here is that the researcher made a backup every 500 generations of bacteria, by freezing samples. So it's possible to go back and make this happen again and again, which has bee done. Then it's possible to find out exactly when it happened, and eventually decode the DNA before and after the evolutionary jump. This should produce some real insight into the underlying mechanism. We're a step closer to figuring out how evolution really works.

Easy...

[kjkeefe]

Humans made up god...

What kept them?

[hcdejong]

The interesting thing will be: why were e.Coli never able to metabolise citrate? Has new code been added to allow for citrate metabolisation, or was the mutation much smaller, maybe removing a blockage from existing but dormant code?

The press release is fascinating and infuriatingly incomplete at the same time.

Re:First!

[iminplaya]

Actually it sucks. Now the lime won't kill the bacteria on the beer bottle.

Re:A 'Creationist' Perspective

[everphilski]

I also believe that it is entirely possible that he did so by means of evolution.

My problem with this - by someone who claims to be a Christian - is this:

The Bible specifically says "And there was evening and there was morning, the Nth day." There are specific set spans of time spelled out in the Bible. And it specifically says "And God called out X and Y and Z and God formed Adam out of the dust of the ground", etc. It gives specific instances of God creating with His hands.

My problem is this: when you claim that evolution creeps in there, then the 24 hour days vanish. God no longer formed Adam out of the dust of the ground. If you believe the Bible to be truth, then you call God a liar.

But it doesn't stop there. So you don't believe the first 2 chapters of Genesis. Where do you stop? The fall into sin? The flood? The promised savior? By doing that you are calling the Bible a collection of stories, form which you can pick and choose. And that becomes dangerous.

**That** is my beef with Christians who compromise. I have no problem with people who choose not to believe in Christianity, that's their choice in life. I do have a problem with people who cherry-pick their beliefs within Christianity, or any religion for that matter.

(For the record, I do believe in a literal creation. I have no issue with micro evolution within species.)

Re:energy?

[cashman73]

being said that they may evolve to feed on whats in abundance in their surroundings, could you feed them something that will make em' shit something out that will work in my gas tank?

Um, actually, that's been done. Yeast have been producing ethanol from sugar for how many years now? With very little modification, virtually none if you have a FFV, ethanol will work fine in your gas tank,... :-)

There's theory, and there's practise

[Scrameustache]

Keep it up and it won't be a "just" a theory any more!

I'm so sick of my neighbor saying "evolution is just a theory" with a scornful attitude It will ALWAYS be a theory.

Just like the theory of electricity. No matter how many high-voltage cables we lay, the theory remains a theory.

Terrible argument

[Woundweavr]

First, the unlikely happens. If I flip a coin 1,000,000 times, the odds of that exact sequence of results is astronomically small (1/2^1,000,000). If something happened against the odds, that isn't magic its happenstance.

Second, this argument is terrible.

The article is a good read. It basically covers how incredibly narrow the limits are concerning the laws of nature. If any one of them was just an astronomically small amount different, then the Universe would not exist as we know it, and certainly life would not form. Which leads your budding C/ID believer to ask, "what are the odds of this happening by chance?"

Why would life not form? Because the laws of nature say so? But we just established the laws of nature are not the same in this alternate universe. Its a variation on the first fallacy. "Life" has the characteristics of this universe because it exists in this universe. If there was another set of rules, life might be much more likely, much less likely, extremely different or very similar.

Re:Terrible argument

[Tablizer]

Why would life not form? Because the laws of nature say so? But we just established the laws of nature are not the same in this alternate universe. Its a variation on the first fallacy. "Life" has the characteristics of this universe because it exists in this universe. If there was another set of rules, life might be much more likely, much less likely, extremely different or very similar.

The problem is that most variations produce "bland" universes where a single force tends to dominate, wiping out variation in structure. Life as we know it lives and forms best on boundaries between different matter types and energy differentials. Our universal constants seem to produce more of these than most the other possible variations. There may be variations where "interesting" universes exist, but they are relatively rare combinations according to the models. Is it just a coincident that we are in a "boundary and variety abundant" universe when most combos are not?

It sort of reminds me of those Java applets where you tweak constants to produce pretty patterns. Most combinations are not very interesting because they tend to over-do or under-do one thing or another such that it dominates everything, creating something too uniform or too random: muck. The nice combos are the lucky "sweet spots".

The anthropic principle against a field of multiple universes seems like the best explanation for the "fine tuned constants" to me.

Perplexed and confounded

[iliketrash]

"perplex and confound creationists"

_Nothing_ perplexes or confounds creationists.,

Re:Evolution or mutation?

[Mentorix]

In spite of what any of you say, I'm betting the resulting organism is a Escherichia coli bacterium. Wake me when it becomes a two celled organism

I am not interested in counterarguments, so I'll just repeat another old canard that works great in my church community and run away to safety.

Re:First!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually it sucks. Now the lime won't kill the bacteria on the beer bottle.

First off, if you're putting a lime on your beer bottle, you're doing it wrong.

Secondly, if your opened beer bottle still contains beer over the course of the hours it takes for bacteria to colonize it (lime or no lime), you're doing it really wrong.

Re:Young earth creationists believe in evolution..

[drsmithy]

They don't believe that microbes become jellyfish, chickens become dinosaurs/dragons or apes become human [...]

Neither does the Theory of Evolution.

There is no difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" - except to people with agends, and those who don't know what they're talking about.

Re:First!

[Jade E. 2]

Actually it sucks. Now the lime won't kill the bacteria on the beer bottle. Yeah, you'll have to put something else in your beer to kill them. Alcohol, maybe.

Re:First!

[si3n4]

metabolize not synthesize .......... enough mutation took place that this substance became a survival enhancing resource (or at least not a debilitating one in the environment)

Re:Young earth creationists believe in evolution..

[pluther]

There is no difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" - except to people with agends, and those who don't know what they're talking about.

Since we haven't had a good car analogy in this thread yet:

Microevolution would be if you drive your car across town. This has been proven so many times that by now everyone accepts it as true.

Macroevolution would be if you could drive your car all the way to another country. This is, as everyone in America knows, impossible.

Come to think of it, this analogy could help explain why they hardly ever have these kinds of debates in Europe, too...

Re:First!

[mako1138]

No, they're not random. The Flying Spaghetti Monster reached out with His Noodly Appendage and blessed the bacteria. Ramen.

Re:First!

[Timothy Brownawell]

Don't the researchers find it strange that of all the substances it could synthesize it chose one that was already there? I doubt it.

Either the experiment is flawed or the bacteria have some sort o Lamarkian evolution mechanism working inside. They probably did develop the ability to metabolize a number of other substances. And since none of those other substances were available, nobody noticed and the ability probably just randomly disappeared again a while later.

Re:First!

[Draykwing]

Your premises are incorrect. If it had evolved an ability to metabolize a substance that was not present, how would the scientists know? Also, natural selection merely states that those traits which give a reproductive advantage will spread. If the substance they become able to metabolize is not present, how does said ability provide a reproductive advantage?

Re:First!

[Savior_on_a_Stick]

If Intelligent Design were not so analogous to Military Intelligence, I might make the effort to click the link. Then again, my mind is not so open that my brain is in danger of falling out.

Wrinkly spreaders

[Michael Woodhams]

This isn't the first time we've seen evolution in the lab. Andrew Spiers has been doing it for years - e.g.
here (2003) or more recently here.

Basically Spiers grows bacteria in an unstired beaker. As the limiting resource for growth (nitrogen? Oxygen? I forget) is most available at the top of the beaker, it soon evolves a mutation which allows the bacteria to stick together and form a mat at the top ("wrinkly spreader"). Then somewhat later the mat collapses as freeloaders have evolved and come to dominate the population.

Spiers' experiment is highly predictable - the populations always go through the same phases, but different colonies turn out to have used different mutations to get there. This differs significantly from the research here, where it appears a low probability event has occured.

(Warning: the above is primarily based on my memory of a talk he gave several years ago. My memory is known to be lossy.)

Re:First!

[dmwst30]

1.) That's not addressing the current paper. They talk of glycerol, and this paper is about citrate utilization.

2.) The logic in that ID response, to put it nicely, is full of excrement.

Re:Really?

[jjohnson]

You're kidding, right?

Sailors knew the earth was spherical long before Jesus came along--it's obvious when you watch ships approaching over the horizon, since they're not only smaller but the bottom is hidden by the horizon.

Souls

[ttfkam]

If a soul exists, when does it come into being? At conception, formation of a brain, or...?

The reason I ask is because if it's at the formation of a brain, that would imply that the "meat" has importance independent of some immaterial artifact.

If it's at conception, what about identical twins where the zygote splits in two? Does the soul split in two as well? If what about when two young embryos (fraternal twins) merge to make a single embryo, a chimera? Do the two souls merge or does one simply go away?

If you look at the natural world in and of itself, these questions don't need to be asked. Zygotes sometimes split and young embryos sometimes merge. Done.

If however you fixate on the lessons of the Bible, you are stuck with an awkward sort of soul arithmetic; one soul divided by two equals two souls (or one half a soul), and one soul plus one soul equals one soul (or two souls in one body).

Citing Occam's Razor, which is more likely? That one zygote into two is simply that or that an immaterial and unproven concept known as a soul inhabits each of us and must under a special arithmetic to follow natural processes?

Re:Souls

[TheNucleon]

Citing Occam's Razor implies that Occam's Razor is an axiom.

No matter how you slice it, everyone I've met ascribes value and meaning to human life. Why is this, if we are all just destined to die anyhow, and be dust, and our heirs to be wiped out by the heat death of the universe? Does that picture look stark just because we are frightened, or because our intuition tells us otherwise? We are sentient and curious beings who have the audacity to ask not just how to live, but why. I don't find it remarkably persuasive that all this happened as a result of some quintillion random quarks that conveniently arranged themselves just so I could enjoy my life. Given the depth of philosophical inquiry, the mystery of dreams, the allure of art and music, the love of family, the beauty of nature, and the wonder we feel at our lives, I don't think I'm going with William of Ockham on this one. The most simple solution may not, in fact, be the best. I have thought about this a lot, and I believe I have a soul.

Re:Souls

[ttfkam]

And many people have thought a lot about it and think their children are the smartest, most beautiful creatures ever to grace this planet.

Thinking and believing do not make a thing so. That's why we make observations, make predictions based upon those observations, and then have others independently verify those predictions.

Humans are faulty. We need help with objectivity. That's what the Scientific Method does; it helps us to be more objective.

Belief is not objective nor is it always right.

Re:First!

[UltraAyla]

Ok, I'll bite, given that this is the third post of yours that I've seen adamantly opposing this as proof of evolution.

Is it possible to discern that this "newly found" ability of these bacteria to thrive on a different nutrient was NOT already latent in the original ones they started with?

Yes, it is. First, RTFA, please. If you already did, I ask that you read it again with an open mind because I think you'll see that you missed something. You have continually asserted that maybe they always possessed this ability, but never expressed it until they needed to. However, in the experiment, somewhere around generation 20,000 is when this was enabled. Bacterial lines before generation 20,000 do not develop the gene, but lineages derived from that set do when "replayed." This, along with the fact that none of the other lines of bacteria show it under the same conditions (despite all originating in the same place) shows that this was not simply a case of a dormant gene becoming active. Only bacteria after a certain point in a certain genetic line were able to perform this function. That is adaptation and evolution since it outcompeted the other bacteria which lacked the trait.

Applying the word "evolution" to such adaptation doesn't justify the leap to claiming that birds came from reptiles or monkeys are the ancestors of people.

Sure it does. Give me one good reason why over the course of generations genes in monkeys couldn't slowly be mutated to stand upright and gain benefits from it. Remember, these bacteria took 35,000 generations to achieve this minor mutation. If we assume that the monkeys had 15 year generations (which I believe is quite long, maybe someone else can chime in who knows more on primate generational times), that is 500,000 years to make 35,000 generations for this beneficial mutation. Current science and anthropology think spines straightened over the course of millions of years, which means that it took even longer. It really is no leap. It just takes longer time scales and more generations than you seem to be able to comprehend (and most of us can't) at one time.

I think you ought to rethink your concept of "evolution" to mean more of the generation of random traits through mutation where beneficial results sometimes arise. Sometimes cancer or miscarriage results, and sometimes it's the difference between blue and brown eyes. But what you need to keep in mind is that all of these complex adaptations are not one single mutation. They are chained mutations that just happened to be beneficial with numerous, uncountable numbers of failures (eg:miscarriages and pre-reproductive deaths) over generational timescales. Your eyes didn't develop from one mutation. Nor did the lens in your eye or even the membrane on the lens. It is all the result of MANY mutations. That's why it's reasonable to make the "leap."

critical thinking

[misanthrope101]

Person A: There is an invisible unicorn over there. He talks to me and watches over me. He's nice. Don't bother trying to detect him--he's too sly for that.

Person B: There is no reason to believe in that unicorn. There is no evidence at all! You can't see, touch, smell, or hear him. He doesn't even give off heat, doesn't make noise, doesn't show up on any kind of instrumentation, etc. There is not even detectable mass! I'm guessing you're just making it up.

Person A: Well, I can't prove I'm right, and you can't prove I'm wrong, so I guess we're in the same spot! Since you don't know any more than me, why are you acting like you're more rational than me?

See what I'm getting at? You have completely turned critical thinking on its head. Believing in something for which there is no empirical evidence (by evidence, I don't mean that which is evident only after you have faith) is not on the same footing as skepticism. Saying that there is no tooth fairy is not a statement of faith.

That rules out american beer then.

[Viol8]

What does sex in a boat and yankee beer have in common?

They're both f***** close to water.

My Grandparents were Christian Scientists

[RexDevious]

Ya gotta be pretty smart to live through being raised by them. Fortunately my mum was - hence me being here.

Funny story - although Grandpa walked around with club feet his whole life (praying that condition away apparently takes a very long time); something did happen that finally convinced them to see a doctor. My uncle (who was about 15 at the time) went from being irrational, to disturbed, to homicidal. I guess when you've got a homicidal 15 year old male in the house, and you can't out run him because your "please fix my damn club feet" prayer hasn't kicked in yet - self-interest makes you do crazy things - like call the nice men in the white coats. But as with many things, if you wait until something is life threating before changing your approach - it's usually a bit too late. No, he didn't kill my grandparents or anything - he got the typical "locked up and shocked up" treatment most people in his condition got back in the '50s. I don't know if Granpa asked if he was also too late to get his feet fixed, or just kinda figured it out on his own. The whole experience did cure them of their religion though.

Again, a bit late. The story losses it's "funny" status around the time my uncle escaped from the hospital. He burned down a block of flats for some reason, then later beat an old lady to death with a skillet because he thought she was trying to kill his children (he didn't actually have any children). Later he escaped from prison and showed up at my house with 2 other convicts, and car full of guns (no easy trick in England). My mum set them up and got them caught with no harm done to us (told ya she was smart).

So, to get back to the "Christian Scientists only hurt themselves" question - no, they don't. They can get other people killed at the same time. My uncle could have just as easily been afflicted with typhoid and sent off to school with nothing but prayer just as easily as he was sent into society with severe mental illness (which may or may not have been the result of some other untreated medical condition).

No one likes to take away something that makes people happy (like faith) - but until people take responsibility for their actions, it's the burden of others to deal with the mess. I think it's OK to argue that people should take responsibility for their actions - even if there's no way of doing it that won't offend them.

And while I don't want to see religious discrimination anymore than anyone else here does - I recognize that there's a world of difference between *offending* someone and discriminating or persecuting them. It's OK, when necessary, to offend.