Problems with evolution? Submit your questions.

It is evolutionary change. Not evidence for it, but the thing itself. Sometimes they do. However, it can be acquired de novo. As can be demonstrated by starting with a clonal line which does not have antibiotic resistance.Your error shows exactly why you should get your information on biology from biologists instead of creationists. The former have a vested interest in being right; the latter, in being wrong. That was a strange sentence.Mutations arise which are beneficial and become fixed in the gene pool by natural selection --- and this is "contrary to evolution"? No, that is evolution. But not invariably. For example, some bacteria have evolved to eat vancomycin. Defense mechanism? They eat nylon-6. Of course. There's always a trade-off. The properties that make me a good human make me a lousy monkey, and if I tried to leap from treetop to treetop in the rainforest canopy, I'd break my neck. And mutation does. And we can watch it happening.

If they're novel, then it seems that by any sensible definition of information they add information to the gene pool.If you have some sooper-sekrit definition of information that you're not telling us about, now would be an ideal time to tell us about it. That's not how recombination works. And your secret method of measuring information is? And the information in the gene pool has increased.I never claimed it was an example of speciation. This quotation does not support your original claim.And naturally if you select for things other than viability, fertility, and longevity then you are unlikely to increase these and likely to decrease them. A creationist saying something is, if anything, evidence that it isn't true. What are you talking about? Again, your point is obscure. You mean the quote that does not in any way say that they all became sterile? No you don't. You do have some stuff that creationists made up, but that is not an "experiment" except insofar as it explores the limits of human gullibility. That depends on what they said. If it was some gibberish about all mutant becoming sterile, then yes. I've come across Rifkin, and you shouldn't treat a moron as an authority. Unless you want to be wrong. If you wish to indulge in silly daydreams, I don't see how I can talk you out of it.If you ever find yourself drawn to reality, you could read up on Lenski's experiment. I've already explained this to you. See my note on mutation rates above.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Sure. Some math.It refers you to results proved here, which perhaps you should read first.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

For varying values of "like this".Try the genetics textbook, of which these articles form a part. It's quite good, though it should have stuff on transposons and on ERVs.There are various other articles on Biology; and there's a catalog of creationist arguments.And I'm writing a geology textbook, but it isn't finished yet.

That would be amusing if it was remotely true.Back in the real world, the one the rest of us live in, it's still quite amusing that you made up that stupid garbage in your head, and that you're deluded enough to think that it's supported by the passage you quoted, which of course says absolutely nothing of the kind.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

First, let me implore you to learn to use the quote tags, as this would make your posts look slightly less like gibberish. No it isn't.Try again.We want a method where you put in a string of bases (A, G, C, T) and get out a number which is the quantity of information. ... which you are unable to define. I thought you had already admitted that.Really, you want a reference to show that more information is required to describe wolves and poodles and dalmatians and Old English sheepdogs and dachshunds than is required to describe wolves alone? No. And you are rather comically wrong. If that meant anything, it would be wrong.The words all mean something, but the entire sentence doesn't.Sometimes listening to a creationist try to talk about biology is like listening to someone trying to talk about sports and saying "The third baseman scored a touchdown, so the quarterback awarded a slam-dunk." It's not just wrong, it's meaningless, in that it conveys no picture of events to anyone who understands the terms being used. In this case, it's both. I have long experience of reading creationist literature. No. Because of that not being what "this experiment" (actually, lots of different experiments) shows. 'Cos of that not even tangentially being what the fruit-fly experiments were about. And again, this does not say that they all became sterile. And if creationists asserting stuff, without evidence, without references, about experiments they didn't do, was in any way a substitute for evidence, then creationism would be on a much firmer footing than it actually is. No you don't.What matters is that they were wrong. The mutants were not sterile. This is why it was possible to breed from them. Don't you know anything about the fruit-fly experiments? The whole point of finding the mutants in the first place was to see what happened when you crossed them with one another and with the wild type. If they were sterile, there wouldn't have been any fruit-fly experiments. No, I refuse to accept your false statements about the fruit fly experiments, because I know them to be false. As would you if you'd ever taken the slightest interest in the experiments. If you are under the delusion that you are discussing Lenski's experiment, you are wrong. Oh, other than that.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You don't understand the theory of evolution at all, do you?Let's look at what it actually says.About the wild type, it says that they have undergone millions of years of evolution adapting them to live in the wild, and that it is therefore profoundly unlikely that (without a change to their environment) any mutation could arise making them better adapted to that task that hasn't already happened.About the lab specimens, it says that they have undergone a further sixty years or so of:(a) artificial selection for use in genetics experiments;
(b) natural selection for living in fly bottles.We would therefore predict that they will be more suitable for genetics experiments (as is the case) and that they might well be better adapted to living in fly bottles (I don't know if anyone's checked). And as both these selective pressures move them away from the type adapted to survival in the wild, they would with extremely high probability be worse at surviving in the wild (as you assert is the case).So the theory is borne out by the observations; and from an evolutionary perspective it would be astonishing and inexplicable if the experimental strains were superior to the wild type in the wild.The observations may contradict a made-up "theory of evolution" that exists only in your head, but they are predicted by the actual theory of evolution --- the one in biology textbooks.Maybe you should spend less time reading stuff that creationists have made up and more time reading biology textbooks. At least that way you'd know what you ought to be arguing against.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

If that is your opinion, what are you doing here? And if germ-line mutations were the same as somatic mutations, which they aren't, or if cancer were hereditary, which it isn't; and if the ability to produce histidine was fatal like cancer, which it isn't, or if having cancer was harmless to one's health like the ability to produce histidine, which it isn't; and if running was inevitably fatal like having a broken his operon in a histidine-free environment, which it isn't, or if having a broken his operon in a histidine free environment was only occasionally a mere predisposing factor to accidental death, which it isn't; and if people with cancer were more favored by natural selection than people with the ability to run, which they aren't, or if bacteria dying of malnutrition were more favored by natural selection then bacteria not dying of malnutrition, which they aren't --- then this would be an accurate analogy, which it isn't.---Oh, and to satisfy your apparent masochism, let me add that "you don't know what you are talking about", that "you are comically wrong", and that "only a creationist idiot would think such a thing".Happy now?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Not noticeably.

You didn't notice, then, that he was comparing being able to make histidine, which is essential to life, with having cancer, which is generally supposed to be bad for you?Or is this the sort of argument you find congenial?

You are lying to me about my own opinions. How do you think that's going to work out? That was a bizarre non sequitur.

Your pores are for sweating through. I'm fairly sure. This cools you down in hot weather as the sweat evaporates.

* sighs *And how do you measure genetic complexity? And in this particular case one of them will be flat-out wrong. That would be you. There is nothing whatsoever which "documents" the claims you have made about the fruit fly experiments. There are false assertions by creationists, of course, but that is not documentation for creationist claims, those are just the claims.

Then your specific point is wrong. Obviously a new allele is new information. This is because DNA contains information, and because new things are new.

No. Variation within a species is a good example of variation within a species. For something to be an example of microevolution, it has to be an example of evolution. Mutation explains the origin of new genetic information.And hence the variation within a species. What do you mean "finally"? I was not aware that you had ever denied that DNA contains information --- just that you've refused to say how you're measuring it.