Creationists: read the last 3 paragraphs of this Yale article first (read entire article if you like)?

Question

http://www.yalealumnimagazine.com/issues/2006_05/evolution.html

Now, the question is, has this given you any new insight?

Ah let the semantics begin! Perhaps some refresher definitions are in order?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

You understand that the simple act of breeding domesticated sheep is speciation right? And flowers?

Jim K, will you give the scientist the same time scale in which to work (100s of millions of years+)?

The very reason they started working with microbes is because they reproduce and evolve faster than more advanced (evolved) species.

Have fun with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objections_to_evolution#Evolution_has_never_been_observed

Answer 1

the biggest truth in the whole article is that continueing debate over evolution vs creationism is a dangerous distraction ... scientist spend way too much time trying to disprove God .. not focusing on what is important ... and alienating those whom they should be enlightening ..

Answer 2

Sorry to burst your bubble Ross, but The viruses discussed, "evolved" into a bigger badder virus, which makes it a different kind with each host it attaches itself to, but it still remains a virus...

The Evolution Theory, is trying to tell us humans came from apes, and that seems to prove "natural selection".
The strongest species survive. Really? Then how come apes still walk the earth?

The theory goes, we started as a single celled amoeba
This amoeba created a fish like creature.
This creature then metamorphed or evolved into a reptile
The reptile evolved into a mammal
the mammal (ape) evolved into a human
Ta da! Evolution.........eeerrrnnntt! Wrong!

Never in the history of the world has ANYTHING including flowers, follage and animals let alone humans and viruses, EVER metamorhed to different species from which it came.
For example, never has a reptile metamorphed or "evolved" into a mammal.
Never has a flower "evloved" into a fish.
Never has a mammal "evolved" into a human. If it had the archaeologists of today would have found evidence of this.

What about the neandrathal man found by the head of the museum of natural history in Chicago in the 1920's you ask?
They have not yet proven this skeleton. The deciding factor of the species are the feet to identify this missing link.
Low and behold, no feet to identify this creature as an ape or human.....The feet were conveniently missing, even still today.

Some species have "evolved" into larger species, some have "evolved" into smaller species or in the case of your viruses, stronger species.

What your artical has merely shown us was the theory of Adaptation. The viruses moving from animal to humans...but alas, it still remains a virus....

And what about diseases like MS and Cancer. Doctors still have no clue as to where it comes from and how it goes away
This phenomenon actually proves Creationism. I would love for the "evolutionists" to try to explain these two diseases....


Where did they evolve from? Why do they disappear without a trace? This is a subject they all conveniently avoid.

Also according to your artical, "Unlike other forms, viruses lack the means to reproduce themselves."
The replication of viruses can happen, can be cloned, can be sped up or slowed down....but it still remains a virus....There is no "Evolution breakthrough" here.

In all actuality, Evolution, should be renamed to "Adaptation."

When this virus turns into lets say, an ape, that replace the virus, and there is no more virus, but instead a living breathing ape, then we will talk.

Answer 3

Given the urgency of these risks, Turner finds the continuing debate over creationism versus evolution a dangerous distraction. "I could take somebody into the lab, and over the course of a week, I could prove to them that evolution actually happens in microbes," says Turner.

No, it doesn't give me any new insights because God has created life with the capacity to evolve within certain parameters, as the Bible puts it "after it's own kind".

When a scientist can show a virus becoming a one celled creature or a fish turning into an amphibian or a reptile becoming a mammal then I will have to see if I have to change how I'm interpreting the Bible in Genesis chapter one.

I scanned the whole article and it reminds me of how statistical science has been used to show that there just has not been enough time for chance mutations culled by natural selection to produce all of the complex data encoded in the DNA of every living creature here on earth. The calculations were done with very favorable variables inserted into the equations like if there was a new mutation every second since the universe supposedly began around 15 billion years ago the odds against the current codes being produced are something like 10 to the 60th power against it happening.

"Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up of 100,000,000,000 atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world."4

The "simple cell" turns out to be a miniaturized city of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design, including automated assembly plants and processing units featuring robot machines (protein molecules with as many as 3,000 atoms each in three-dimensional configurations) manufacturing hundreds of thousands of specific types of products. The system design exploits artificial languages and decoding systems, memory banks for information storage, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of components, error correction techniques and proofreading devices for quality control.

All by chance? All without a Designer? (How do you define "absurd?")

Answer 4

don't see a link to a definition of creationism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism

If you're speaking of strict creationism, then perhaps there is a conflict.

But there is such a thing as theistic creationism, in which there wouldn't be nearly as much of a conflict.

Answer 5

It's given no one any new insight. This has been done before. Nothing new. I'll believe evolution when the virus emerges from the dish with fur and has changed into a completely new species. We already know about mutations. By the way, that article was written over a year ago. Still no simple to complex species changes. I just read a recent article on MSNBC's science section where the scientists have been trying for years to do it. They now say it's impossible. Just what I expected.

Answer 6

LMAO geez there are a lot of hilarious answers in this one.

Thank you for posting this article. I find it interesting, though I was already an evolutionist.

Answer 7

Thank you SOOOO much for posting that article! I'd read a quote from it awhile back but had since lost the link to it. It won't sway those with "faith in God" unfortunately, but at least those of us interested in facts have the proof we need of the theory of evolution. And we don't even have to BELIEVE in it because it just IS.

EDIT: And, as predicted, no one is swayed by scientific proof... quotes from a scientist on the website of a publication of major university. "God did it and no one can tell me otherwise." And "unless I see it grow hair and walk out of the petri dish, I won't believe it."

This is our country, boys and girls... playground of fantasy, reverting to centuries past, all in the name of a being we can't even prove exists.

Answer 8

Not at all. I never once, in all my answers, said that "mutation in response to external stimuli" doesn't occur.

What I have said, is that Homo Sapiens did not mutate into existence from a "lower lifeform." When you provide an article in which a scientist can mutate a virus into a Homo Sapien in the laboratory, and can repeat the results at will, and subjects his findings to peer review, then maybe I will accept that evolution is the origin of man.


Edit: If he needs that much time, sure. Unfortunately, by that point, neither of us will be here.

Edit: your second article is interesting. Here's one I'd like you to read. http://www.tdtone.org/evolution/TDTns.htm Enjoy.

Answer 9

SIlkworm research has shown evolutionary macro-evolution since the 70"s...

Answer 10

They're gonna say something like "it doesn't apply to animals" or "macroevolution is just a belief." Just let them be.

Answer 11

Can you spell adaptation?
I love when people try to sell us the ability of organisms to adapt to their environment as macroevolution. Show us an animal changing from one species to another, not one species adapting to its environment but remaining the same species.
Thanks.