AIG has an article up on the nylon-digesting bacteria

The only other creationist I know of who has talked about the nylon bug would be Lee Spetner. You can see his comments here:http://members.tripod.com/aslodge/id89.htmI emailed him about this. Here is a copy of the revelent portion of my email:
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Your calculations show that it would be near impossible for this new protein to have arisen randomly. I disagree with your conclusion. Let me explain. Please let me know if you think I am wrong.

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There are many ways to calculate things. I will use an analogy: take a standard, six-sided dice. What is the chance that you roll a 6 on your first roll? You have one chance in six, of course. However, what is the chance that the dice lands at, let's say, angle X and then comes to rest at 6? Considering that there are many different angles at which the dice could land before coming to rest at 6, the probability of it landing exactly at angle X is quite small. In fact, depending on how precise angle X is, it may appear quite impossible for the dice to land exactly at that angle. However, just because it seems quite impossible to get a 6 by having the dice land at precisely angle X, does not mean it is impossible to get a 6.

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Thus, I believe in coming to your conclusion you have made an assumption. Your assumption was that the only way to 'digest' this nylon waste is with this exact protein. I do not believe there is any reason for making such an assumption. Indeed there are reasons not to make it.

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It seems to be that there are many different ways proteins can be formed. The evolution of the nylon bug, even if it had not taken this direct route could have probably reached a similar destination simply because there are so many different possible proteins.

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One example: researchers created 6 trillion new proteins that can do the same job (bind with APT). Functional proteins were selected by enriching for those that bind to ATP. The paper on this appeared in Nature 401 in 2001. The title of the paper is "Functional proteins from a random-sequence library." It was done by Anthony Keefe and Jack Szostack.

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Another example is the cytochrome c protein. Although this protein does the same function every time, it is different in almost every animal.

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This shows that the assumption you made is incorrect. There are many potential paths that can be taken in creating proteins.
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I emailed him this several weeks ago and have yet to receive a responce, although I know his email is active because he was responding to other emails! Oh well....

hey there Wounded,wj is correct in understanding what I was trying to say about cytochrome c. The point was not that it had evolved independently several times, but that in each animal it does the same job--but it is different everytime.Perhaps I did not word it very well.About the APT binding proteins, perhaps I did not word that well at all. I believe I should email Spetner again to be sure he understands. What do you think? Should I include other examples that demonstrate that his assumption is incorrect? If so, what? How do you think I could word it better?Thx very much for your feedback.--Black[This message has been edited by Black, 04-17-2004]

I remember reading about other times that nylon-waste 'digesting' proteins (or something) had been evolved through mutations in the lab. Anyone have information on this? If each time, the resulting bacteria was different, that would basically show that what I was telling Spetner was correct.Anyone know about this?