Take the Atheist Challenge!!!

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I don't "think or feel it is so." It simply is. Evolution is what describes the changing frequency of alleles in a population of biological organsisms, and in the case of the T4 phage experiment, that is precisely what is observed.

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Ok, now we are getting somewhere. This is where I get in over my little head. But I will give it a shot. This could take a while.
Question 1: How do we know the bacteria wasn't designed to do that, and that is all the mutation they are capable of? there are other animals that can mutate to some extent, do their genes change also?
Question 2: Why in the next generation did some of the bacteria still die? Wouldn't that mean they evolved backwards? Do we have any evidence of backwards evolving?
Question 3: How did the Gene mutate?

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This has to be one of the most ill-informed statements I've read on this forum in a long while.

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Why so? At some point we started Loving, so it was part of the evolutionary process, no?

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What does it matter to the validity of evolutionary theory whether or not I happen to believe in life after death?

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It matters to me, not the evolutionary theory. helps me understand where you are coming from. I cleary stated where I am coming from, so thats why you guys can try to pick me apart. On the other hand...

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I never said that it was impossible, so what do you think you're arguing against? It obviously isn't my position.

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So you are open to it?What is luminiforous, beside what webster has to say about it? [quote] No. It would only invalidate your very narrow intepretation of it. There are other interpretations that harmonize perfectly fine with evolutionary theory.
[\quote]There is nothing narrow about feeling the presence of God, my good friend. I simply followed what the Bible said, and it all came true, how does that make it narrow?
Do not put words in my mouth as you have no idea of my total interpretation of the Bible, because I have no idea yet either. Everytime I read it, I get something new from it.
Especially what Jesus wrote to us, that for me is the most important part of the Bible anyway.
If it takes other interpretations of the Bible for you to know the True God, then I am all for it.

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Balderdash, and this lays bare your ignorance of the pragmatism of the scientific method. Unfalsifiable hypotheses are scientifically useless since they can never be tested against reality.

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Not yet anyway. To totally disregard them is not good either.
Who makes them unfalsifiable?
Please don't call me ignorant either.
If I know the truth and you don't who is the ignorant one?
Notice I said "if"

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All of its progeny will be almost exact replicates of it, because most bacteria are asexual (though some transfer of plasmids can occur, this is still not the same, as we still start with just one cell).

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I think you are on my side. Theres that word almost.

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however the worm evolved and adapted so that it could complete its life cycle in another snail.

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Did it really evolve?

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Random mutation with some sort of selection pressure, it all just works up from there really.

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Where is the fossil eveidence of this?

The following are quotes I took from you in this thread. I'll respond to each one accordingly.

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Science will never explain why we are here?

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Of course not. The "why we are here" question is a philosophical question, not a scientific. It is like asking a man "do you still beat your wife?" and demand a "yes" or "no" answer, especially when the man never beat his wife before.Although this statement is true by itself, the way you used it implies dishonesty.

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Theres no way it happened all by chance, think about it.

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Unless you provide some kind of evidence to back up this statement, it is dishonesty on your part. Myself and one other person have asked you to clarify this point before. You've ignored us and I have no doubt that you will continue to ignore us.

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The strongest points of science, are the things that have been proven. Even then, it could all change with new discoverys.

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I'm going to take your word for it and assume that you really know what you were talking about in regards to science. In this case, this was a shameless lie on your part. Science doesn't prove anything. The best it could do is come up with theories (or models) that help us predict what is going to happen if we do this or that. Truth ain't what science is after.

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Don't tell me that science isn't dying to find out why we are here.

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Again, you stated a philosophical issue as if it's a scientific one. Either you were ignorant of the difference between the 2 or you were outright dishonest about it.

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Sorry I don't find the fact that some bacteria can be immune to a plauge proof of evolution. How do we know it wasn't already designed to act that way? Can you prove that?

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You stated this after Rrhain explained this to you in post 35: The fact that you chose to ignore Rrhain on this point shows that you selectively left out this explanation and continued to blabber your slogan.

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Why should they all behave the same way? What law or theory proves that?

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You were refering to the bacterial culture in which some survived the T4 phage and some didn't, despite the fact that they were all descendants of a single bacterium. Either you didn't know about mitosis or you just played dumb.

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Did you actually extract DNA from each one of those bacteria, to see if they were exactly the same?

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Again, you showed that you didn't know how mitosis work. Either ignorance of the mechanism or you just played dumb.

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Me my brother and sister all came from my mother, but we act different.

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That's because the process that involved making you and your sister out of your mom and dad was meiosis, not mitosis. Either you were ignorant of the fact or you were just playing dumb.If you want more examples of what you have said to be untrue, I'll be happy to continue to dig them up.This message has been edited by Lam, 05-10-2004 05:13 PM

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The Laminator

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We don't, but we need not. To the best of my knowledge ANY biological organism's genes can mutate. Because they did not carry the allele for resistance to the T4 phage. No. Evolution doesn't work in terms of "forwards" or "backwards," "higher" or "lower," etc... Evolution just describes change -- ANY change. As species evolve, they don't evolve up and up like climbing a ladder, but rather they evolve "outward" in all directions like a bush or a starburst. Could have been lots of things, for example: radiation. Love is a psychological process whereas evolution is a biological process. I don't think psychological processes are adequately explain biologically. Evolution might tell us HOW we got brains capable of loving, but it will never tell us WHY we love. I didn't say there was. I said your interpretation of the text is narrow. Please try to stay focused on my arguments because I'm getting tired of repeating them. It is narrow because it refuses to recognize reality and does not consider that the language may be symbolic rather than literal. Excuse me, but Jesus didn't write ANYTHING that's in the Bible. What we have is hearsay retellings of old oral traditions. It'll take more than that, but I assure you that insisting that I must deny reality in order to believe as you do is quite the opposite of convincing. Perhaps you don't understand the meaning of the term "unfalsifiable" and how it describes hypotheses. If you DID understand what it meant, you would realize that your statement that I cited immediately above is nonsense.Unfalsifiable hypotheses will NEVER be able to be tested against reality.. you know why? BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT MAKES THEM UNFALSIFIABLE. If they could be tested against reality, even if not now but in the future, they WOULD NOT BE unfalsifiable. Those who propose them. Then give me a reason to believe that you're not. It's rather irrelevant in this case since I've shown quite clearly that you don't know what you're talking about.

Like i said they will be almost exacts replicas, not because you are different from your bros and sis's, thats due to many complex things, such as crossovers during meiosis and the fact you are half your fathers genes and half your mothers (both random). However in a perfect world the bacteria would be perfect copies of each other. However in our flawed world the replicating machinery (for want of a better phrase) is not perfect, this means that different bases can be placed during replication, or segments can be missed out/repeated etc etc, there is a checking mechanism, however in bacteria it is very poor and so misses some, times that up by a few billion billion and you get a lot of variation.Parasites can be amazingly host specific, this type of worm only inhabits one type of snail out of the hundreds available in the uk, it had never even come into contact with the austrailian snail before. Although its not a guarenteed evolution, the likelyhood of it being perfectly adapted to this snail is beyond reasonable doubt due to likely variances in life styles/cycles/morphology etc etc etc, it would have had to adapted in some ways to be able to use the new snail.Heh, fossil evidence would be great if we could get dna from every skeleton we find however... a well documented retrotransposon (effectively a now defunct virus that just stays in our dna) is found in chimps and humans in almost exactly the same area, however we go back slightly further in the what are thought to be earlier lineages, ie primates in general, and this virus is not present. The likelyhood that this virus just happened to go defunct in both species, and end up in the exact same position of juink dna, is once again well beyond reasonable doubt.The fossils we have do point towards speciation, but as a lot of people here will tell you a transitional (i suspect this is where u r going) is effectively everything. Everything is a predecessor to something else (or it is now extinct) Im not to hot on where to find all the different fossils found and lineages etc, but i think Lam is quite good on it. You could try going to another of the forums and checking out a few threads on it.Another example of mutation is the mosquitoes that live in the underground system in London, those mossies that have been living in the tunnels for the last few decades can no longer interbreed with those living outside (speciation) due to various genetic changes. This has also been observed in similar circumstances with Drosophilia (an extremely well studied fruit fly), both in and out of the lab.Unseul

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Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life....

Can we take the discussion of mutation to the..oh..lets see...how about the Mutations thread.

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AdminAsgara
Queen of the Universe

Fair enough.Riverrat anything else u wanna know goto that thread ill keep replying, but im sure if u read thru that thread you'll glean a lot of info.Unseul

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Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life....

We could start quoting biblical passages to prove christian points but why? You don't believe anything it says anyway. SO how exactly are we to expect you to have an open mind when you keep opening your mouth (typing) and prooving otherwise. You DO NOT believe there is a god so why should he speak to you. There are passages in the bible that refer to that exact thing. (If you want to know what they are ask and I will provide.) This topic was for those who wish to ask truely for Gods guidance and such to do so in hopes they may find the truth. If you wish to come around and try to just get in the way then maybe you should start your own topic. -Z

your in the wrong topic Neeeeeeedddddddd. Don't hunt me down. I'm busy with this topic now. I'll get your lies when I have time. Love Ya buddy. -Z

When you take the time to type a response to something you think is a waist of time then how exactly am I the one waisting YOUR time. -Z

Mathew 10:33 "But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven." Are you that crazed. Has satan got his hooks into you so deep that you cannot see anything except what he wants you to. For every obsured thing you say I can find Christ speaking about people like you and what he says about them. I CAN NOT GIVE UP OR DENY MY GOD. To do so is damnation. Do YOU understand that. And if you say you're not an athiest then what exactly are you? You don't believe in the one and only GOD then you have no god excpet satan. And he's a dead end friend. The reason this sounds obnoxious to you is because it's the TRUTH. That always gets the other side mad, you can't stand to hear the truth. Oh well you're going to keep getting it while your hearing from me. By the way I guess I got the "actor" part correct. -Z

LAM and others will get back to us in 3-4 days on how things are going. That's if they haven't got side tracked from the matter at hand by this fly by night subject scramble.

Sorry, but I haven't had time to do what I promised I would. Been studying for finals and putting together a very long report and argumentive paper on sex crimes (I say we screw the sex offenders). I will start doing it once I'm done with finals, which will be next week.

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The Laminator

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First of all, you were admitting that you didn't know much about biology and the ToE. You said (and I still don't believe a thing you claimed) that your strong areas were math and physics. Yet, you tried to say that your scientific "know-all" was enough to refute the ToE. THAT is appeal to unqualified authority.I fail to see how you could relate THAT to what I have said or not said about my belief.

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The Laminator

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LAM,
Try not to lump us (christians) into one big group. As you have seen there are many veiws to one topic. I don't claim to know it all by a long shot. I (personally) base my morals, ethics, and such standards on biblical understanding. If others wish not to believe as I then so be it. I'll try to help inform where I can and when asked but I don't think we will ever get everyone to believe the same at the same time. Not until Christ comes back to judge anyway. The noone gets to deny, you just get judged. Prepare yourself. -Z