What convinced you of Evolution?

DaVx0r writes:

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Evolution isn't a religion?

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Definition of Religion- A cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor or faith.

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Logical error: Equivocation.The use of the term "religion" in the sentence "Evolution isn't a religion" is not the same use of "religion" in the definition you provide later.By the definition you provide, football is a "religion."Somehow, I don't think we'd manage to equate Christianity to football.Evolution is not a cause, a principle, or a system of beliefs.It is a theory based upon observation.

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Evolution really is held together by faith in.

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You mean we cannot see it happening? That's strange....Here's an experiment you can do in the privacy of your own bio lab. It doesn't cost very much and the materials can be acquired from any decent biological supply house.Take a single E. coli bacterium of K-type. This means the bacterium is susceptible to T4 phage. Let this bacterium reproduce until it forms a lawn. Then, infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do we expect to happen? That's right, plaques should start to form and, eventually, the entire lawn will die. After all, every single bacterium in the lawn is descended from a single ancestor, so if the ancestor is susceptible, then all the offspring should be susceptible, too.But what we actually see is that some colonies of bacteria in the lawn are not affected by the phage.How can this be? Again, the entire lawn is descended from a single ancestor. They should all behave identically. If one is susceptible, then they're all susceptible. If one is immune, then they're all immune. This can't be an example of "adaptation" because if one could do it, they all could do it.But since there is a discrepancy, we are left with only one conclusion: The bacteria evolved. There must be a genetic difference between the bacteria that are surviving and those that died.Indeed, we call the new bacteria K-4 because they are immune to T4 phage.But we're not done. Take a single K-4 bacterium and repeat the process: Let it reproduce to form a lawn and then infect the lawn with T4 phage.What do we expect to happen? That's right: Absolutely nothing. All of the bacteria are descended from a single ancestor that is immune to T4 phage. Therefore, they all should survive and we shouldn't see any plaques form.But we do. Plaques do, indeed start to form. How can this be? Again, all the bacteria in the lawn are descended from a single ancestor that was immune to T4 phage, so they shold all behave identically. If one is immune, then all are immune. There must be something else going on.Something evolved, but the question is what. What evolved? Could it be the bacteria experiencing a reversion mutation back to K-type? No, that can't be it. Suppose any given bacteria did revert back to wild. It is surrounded by K-4 type who are immune to T4 phage. As soon as the lawn is infected, those few bacteria will die and immediately be replaced by the offspring of the immune K-4 bacteria. We would never see any plaques forming because the immune bacteria keep filling in any holes that appear.So if it isn't the bacteria that evolved, it must be the phage. And, indeed, we call the new phage T4h as it has evolved a new host specificity.There is a similar experiment where you take bacteria that have had their lactose operons removed and they evolve to be able to digest lactose again.You might want to look up the information regarding the development of bacteria capable of digesting nylon oligimers. It's the result of a single frame-shift mutation.So why is it we can see evolution happening right before our very eyes if it is something that is only "held together by faith"?

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So call it what you want, but I'm going to continue calling it a religion, because it sure fits the definition...

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Then you must be a polytheist since I am sure you have many "causes, principles, or systems of belief held to with ardor or faith." Love your family? That's "religion." Have a favorite sport? That's "religion." Happen to be one of those that treats your car like a person? That's "religion."Are you seriously trying to say that somebody who finds cooking an elegant meal to be one of the most supreme things a person can do is the same as a Christian?Perhaps, rather than using definition 4 from Merriam-Webster, you should use the first one: How does evolution fit into this defintion?

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Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

holmes responds to me:

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but was wondering if the experiment you outlined has been documented somewhere (esp online)? Without that it is just an outline for an experiment and a hypothesis of what outcomes one would find.

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It's from my biology text: Life: The Science of Biology by Purves/Orians. My copy even contains pictures of petri dishes showing the plaques. I have the second edition and I know it has been updated since then (I took biology with Purves when I was at Mudd in the late 80s.)------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

MrHambre writes:

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Creationists want us to believe that what we know about the DNA molecule and reproduction should tell us nothing about the relationships between separate species.

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And yet, they'll use the exact same process to determine paternity.If you can use genes to say that so-and-so is or is not the father of a child, why can't you extend that process to determine which species are related?------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!

Thronacx writes:

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since no one posting on this forum was alive 100 years ago let alone a 1000 or a million whose can say what really happend.

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By this logic, we should open the prisons and let most of the convicts out.The vast majority of crimes have no witnesses, and yet we still manage to come to conclusions that so-and-so did it.By your logic, there is no utility at all in forensics. Yeah, we found the suspect's fingerprints at the scene, but since nobody saw him actually leave them there, we can't make any conclusion about his presence at the scene at all. Heck, we can't even say if he was the one who left them there. Perhaps god did it.You're right that I wasn't there millions of years ago. But you know what, we have the fossils of organisms that were there millions of years ago. We can examine them to find out what they can tell us about their existence then.Just as there are techniques that we can use to determine when a body died, even though we weren't there to see it happen directly, there are techniques that we can use to determine how long ago a fossil was made, even though we weren't there to see it happen directly.

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All we can do is use the data and our own imagination to "deduce" a story that seems reasonable to us.

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Incorrect. That may be what creationists do, but that isn't what scientists do.Instead, they use the data to construct an hypothesis consistent with that data and then test that hypothesis by making predictions about data we don't have yet. We then devise experiments to gather that data and see if those predictions match the gathered data.Science is a creative field, yes, but you don't imagine scenarios simply because they seem "reasonable." Your imagination is great for getting a question asked, but it is lousy for actually answering it. Instead, you rely upon the data to tell you what the story is and keep yourself out of it.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!