mike the wiz writes:
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This is why evolution isn't a fact to me. Usually I define a fact as none-negotiable.
And yet, evolution is precisely that: It is a fact. You can watch it happen right in front of your very eyes. You know this, mike. I've posted this same experiment multiple times and you can probably recite it by heart:
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 T4
h 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.
Evolution is a fact.
It is also a theory.
That is because theories are based upon fact. You cannot have a theory unless you have a fact to base it upon. Theories seek to explain facts. That's why it's called the theory
OF evolution: We had to have the fact of evolution first in order to develop the theory
OF it.
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I see a theory as an explanation of facts
And since evolution is a fact, that's why we have a theory [I][B]OF[/i][/b] it.
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Evolution is largely inductive.
Incorrect. Evolution, like the rest of science, is largely deductive.
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Birds' feathers, and their whole flight system is so fe**ing incredible that they must be designed mustn't they?
No, because we can directly see that they weren't. That's what the fossil record shows us. There is no other deductive conclusion to make given the evidence that we have.
If you wish to make a leap of faith and declare that there is some evidence somewhere that we don't have which would change everything, then you are perfectly free to insist that it was magic. But you will understand if the rest of us who insist upon evidence don't quite come along for the ride.
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If theories are negotiable I don't understand why evolutionists care so much about creationists, and get so hot under the collar.
Because creationists don't even have a theory. In science, a theory is not simply wishful thinking. You actually need to be able to explain all current observations and make predictions of observations that have yet to be made.
Nothing out of creationism comes close to either criteria. Creationsim neither explains nor predicts. Since "god did it" is applicable to every single outcome of every single experiment that could ever be carried out, then it doesn't actually tell us anything. Any claim that explains everything actually explains nothing.
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The rational few will see that they are merely exersizing their right to not believe in a theory, even if there is a lot of evidence that suggests it is true.
Do you seriously not see the problem with this? How very telling that you're trying to frame this as a "freedom of conscience" issue as if creationism were akin to not eating meat on Friday. The problem is that you are insisting that we lie to people with regard to the way things work...and not regarding something innocuous but rather something basic and fundamental.
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. Just how do you expect there to be any progress in biology if you are going to insist that every fanciful opinion is just as good as any other? We are on the verge of genetic breakthroughs with regard to the treatment of disease and you want us to ignore the underlying biology that makes it possible in the first place?
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It strikes me as plain weird that Christians are expected to treat evolution as fact.
Then it should strike you as just as weird that Christians are expected to treat gravity as fact.
Is gravity a fact or a theory?
When I drop a ball from my hand, it falls to the ground. We call the force that pulls it to the ground "gravity." That's an observed fact...after all, the ball fell.
But what is gravity? How does it work? What causes it? That's where the theory part comes in. It is only after a great deal of experimentation and testing do we come up with F = Gm1m2/r2. That's the theory of gravity.
And it turns out, it's wrong. The Pioneer spacecraft are leaving the solar system and they're moving at a rate that isn't consistent with our current understanding of gravitational theory.
But notice that despite any changes we make with our theories of gravity, the original observation still holds: When I drop a ball from my hand, it falls to the ground.
The same thing exists with evolution. When we watch organisms over time, they change. We call the process by which those organisms change "evolution." That's an observed fact...after all, the organisms changed.
But what is evolution? How does it work? What causes it? That's where the theory part comes in. It is only after a great deal of experimentation and testing do we come up with mutation and selection. That's the theory of evolution.
Notice that despite any changes we may make with our theories of evolution, the original observation still holds: When we watch organisms over time, they change.
The point? You can't have a theory without a fact to back it up. A theory is an analysis of a set of facts. Just as gravity is both a fact and a theory, so is evolution. If you aren't going to complain about all the other theories in science, why are you picking on evolution? In fact, evolution is more solidly grounded than our theories of gravity: We have a mechanism. When Darwin first formulated his theory of evolution, he still thought that there was some form of pangenesis going on. That is, the gametes in sexually reproducing species were created by taking material from the entire body. This was used by Lamarck in his description of evolution that traits acquired by an organism during its lifetime could be passed onto the next generation, thus giraffes got their long necks because the first generation physically stretched their necks reaching for leaves and this acquired trait was passed to their children who stretched them even more, etc.
Darwin didn't agree with this idea...acquired traits are obviously not passed on or parents who had lost a limb would be more likely to have children without that limb. But still, he thought that whatever was used to transfer morphological traits from one generation to the next was distilled from the entire body. Remember, the chromosome hadn't been discovered yet. It turns out he was wrong. The gonads create the gametes by taking a single cell and subjecting it to meiosis.
We found the direct cause of evolution: The chromosome and how it mutates over time. We are still discovering the various types of selective pressures that exist, but we have actually found some.
What is gravity? Is it as Einstein described, a folding of space-time? Is it a force carried on a particle much like the other forces of electromagnetism, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear? We have absolutely no idea. We've got some great information about how it behaves, but we don't know what it is! We have no mechanism for gravity.
So yes, let's teach evolution for the theory that it is. But that doesn't mean creationism gets to be considered a theory. In science, a theory is something that has been tested a great deal and not found wanting. It might be wrong since theories can never be proven correct, but the theory is as accurate as we can possibly make it precisely because theories are tailored to fit all the facts that we know.
If you don't like what a theory says, then you need to find new data that the theory cannot be reconciled with. Note that this does not make creationism "true" just because our current theory of evolution is false. Again, the fact of evolution is still there: When we watch organisms over time, they change and that change is called "evolution." While the theories about the mechanism of evolution might change, evolution itself will always be the case.
Rrhain
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