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| BumFluff |
 Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:49 am Post subject: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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Forum Senior
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Posts: 393
Location: Canada
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I was browsing another forum and came across a recent link concerning bacteria in the lab that have made a major evolutionary change.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html
I'm curious as to what all the macro-evolutionary naysayers have to say about this? I'm curious as to what caused the change.
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| i_feel_tiredsleepy |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:55 am Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 21 Mar 2008
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Location: Montreal
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They'll ignore it just like every other piece of evidence they disaggree with  .
It's not even that remarkable, bacteria near chemical plants have been found to evolve to metabolise nylon. A substance that hasn't even existed on Earth until Dupont invented it in the last 100 years. |
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| Theoryofrelativity |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:00 am Post subject: Re: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 24 Jul 2006
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This is funny:
it says:
"the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use."
They have no idea whatsoever HOW this change occurred, NONE, ZIP, NIL, NADA
So tell me how this change proves a supernatural being or alien of superior powers doesn't exist? The two are unrelated. A GOD or a superior alien may have just ZAPPED the bacterium with their raygun and made the change happen.
Tell me how the experiment proves otherwise?
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| i_feel_tiredsleepy |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:08 am Post subject: Re: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 21 Mar 2008
Posts: 659
Location: Montreal
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| Theoryofrelativity wrote: |
This is funny:
it says:
"the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use."
They have no idea whatsoever HOW this change occurred, NONE, ZIP, NIL, NADA
So tell me how this change proves a supernatural being or alien of superior powers doesn't exist? The two are unrelated. A GOD or a superior alien may have just ZAPPED the bacterium with their raygun and made the change happen.
Tell me how the experiment proves otherwise? |
The fact that they can observe the older cultures and then analyse the changes bit by bit over time until they identify how the change occured. Moreover, you couldn't ever disprove a more superior being is interfering in any experiment, if they were so superior they could just manipulate your perception , what a load of bullshit. |
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| KALSTER |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:15 am Post subject: |
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Forum Cosmic Wizard
Joined: 08 Sep 2007
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| Quote: |
So tell me how this change proves a supernatural being or alien of superior powers doesn't exist? The two are unrelated. A GOD or a superior alien may have just ZAPPED the bacterium with their raygun and made the change happen.
Tell me how the experiment proves otherwise? |
Because then you can use that same logic with anything requiring explanation.
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| BumFluff |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:32 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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Forum Senior
Joined: 06 Mar 2008
Posts: 393
Location: Canada
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| Theoryofrelativity wrote: |
This is funny:
it says:
"the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use."
They have no idea whatsoever HOW this change occurred, NONE, ZIP, NIL, NADA
So tell me how this change proves a supernatural being or alien of superior powers doesn't exist? The two are unrelated. A GOD or a superior alien may have just ZAPPED the bacterium with their raygun and made the change happen.
Tell me how the experiment proves otherwise? |
I think you're adding things to my original post that were never there. Where in my post did I ever mention anything about God? All I said was "macro-evolutionary naysayers" I'm fairly certain that the existence of God can never be disproven because, as I've said time and time again, it's virtually impossible to prove a negative.
This does however give quite a lot more leverage to the macro-evolutionary theory.
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"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt" - Bertrand Russell |
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| paralith |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 12:44 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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Forum Ph.D.
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| BumFluff wrote: |
I think you're adding things to my original post that were never there. Where in my post did I ever mention anything about God? All I said was "macro-evolutionary naysayers" I'm fairly certain that the existence of God can never be disproven because, as I've said time and time again, it's virtually impossible to prove a negative.
This does however give quite a lot more leverage to the macro-evolutionary theory. |
Just to elaborate for those who may not get the reference, many people accept the truth of microevolutionary changes, largely because there is actively observable evidence for this (e.g., the size of beaks on Darwin's finches changing year to year depending on food availability, moth populations changing color, etc).
However, many do not accept macroevolution - things such as speciation and by extension the fact that all existing life on this planet descended from a common ancestor. They do not believe populations of organisms can acquire new traits they never had before, and they say they will never be convinced until it can be directly observed. (Some think that scientists say such changes take very long periods of time just so they can justify being unable to actively observe it.) And here is an active demonstration.
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| Theoryofrelativity |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 1:15 pm Post subject: |
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| KALSTER wrote: |
| Quote: |
So tell me how this change proves a supernatural being or alien of superior powers doesn't exist? The two are unrelated. A GOD or a superior alien may have just ZAPPED the bacterium with their raygun and made the change happen.
Tell me how the experiment proves otherwise? |
Because then you can use that same logic with anything requiring explanation. |
indeed you could
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| Theoryofrelativity |
| Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 1:16 pm Post subject: Re: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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| paralith wrote: |
Just to elaborate for those who may not get the reference, many people accept the truth of microevolutionary changes, largely because there is actively observable evidence for this (e.g., the size of beaks on Darwin's finches changing year to year depending on food availability, moth populations changing color, etc).
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I do accept it, I accept that a superior being invented the process of evolution 
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| kojax |
| Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:57 am Post subject: Re: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 27 Mar 2007
Posts: 1065
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| Theoryofrelativity wrote: |
This is funny:
it says:
"the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use."
They have no idea whatsoever HOW this change occurred, NONE, ZIP, NIL, NADA
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Generally evolution is just believed to result from the random roll of the dice, moderated by the tendency of bad rolls to be selected against. It happens best in situations where a species enjoys a very poor survival rate (only a small percent of those born are surviving long enough to have offspring), and an incredibly high birth rate (that small percent that survive are having enough kids to make up for their comrades)
It also helps if they're in a situation where every little component of the change helps, rather than all changes having to happen all at once in order to begin to see a benefit. (Here it seems to be more of a sudden threshold, but I think the random mutation is easier to happen than in some cases.)
Basically, if one single e-coli cell is ever born that's able to metabolize citrate, and it lives to have kids, those kids will soon form a stable community, and soon after that they'll expand to take over the whole strain.
If the first one born doesn't live to have kids, then we just wait for the second one, or the third, but you can probably count the number of times you'll have to wait on your fingers. Whereas, the number of tries it would take for something that's being selected against to take over is an astronomical number.
| Quote: |
So tell me how this change proves a supernatural being or alien of superior powers doesn't exist? The two are unrelated. A GOD or a superior alien may have just ZAPPED the bacterium with their raygun and made the change happen.
Tell me how the experiment proves otherwise? |
Oh, it doesn't prove anything. What it does is disprove the theory that evolution is impossible. It doesn't guarantee that evolution happened.
Still, even proving that much is a good step.
A lot the debate is just where people think the burden of evidence should be set. Is the existence of god/evolution guilty until proven innocent, or innocent until proven guilty? |
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| Introspect |
| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 2:59 am Post subject: Re: Evidence of macro-evolution |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 07 Jun 2008
Posts: 7
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| Theoryofrelativity wrote: |
| They have no idea whatsoever HOW this change occurred, NONE, ZIP, NIL, NADA |
Perhaps you didn't actually read the study, so here's part of the abstract of the study in question, with emphasis added:
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| ...We observed no Cit+ mutants among 8.4 x 1012 ancestral cells, nor among 9 x 1012 cells from 60 clones sampled in the first 15,000 generations. However, we observed a significantly greater tendency for later clones to evolve Cit+, indicating that some potentiating mutation arose by 20,000 generations. This potentiating change increased the mutation rate to Cit+ but did not cause generalized hypermutability. Thus, the evolution of this phenotype was contingent on the particular history of that population. More generally, we suggest that historical contingency is especially important when it facilitates the evolution of key innovations that are not easily evolved by gradual, cumulative selection. |
This shows they have a very good idea of how this change occurred. So much so that they are now doing experiments to confirm their hypotheses. |
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| Robbie |
| Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 3:07 am Post subject: |
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Yes and this is only an early report, this seems to be a repeat of what happened with the discovery of nylonase from pseudomonas, it has now been very intricately described what genetic rearrangements allowed the development of this enzyme... give it time and I'm sure there will be a better explanation for the origin of this trait.
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