[ARCHIVED] - Creation vs. Evolution

[Tiberius]

But the point I have, is, even if it WAS (which it is not) evolving, your odds of this actually happening in nature is a billion to one. And you believe this happened many, many times through history. It's IMPOSSIBLE.

Have you any evidence to back up your assertion that the odds of this happening are "a billion to one". One of the fundamental flaws in the "creationist statistics" is that they never take into account natural selection, the fact that mutations are passed on (saved) and the more beneficial mutations are spread as the species reproduces. Yes, I agree with you that saying "single-cell -> human by simply having a load of random mutations" is impossible, but this has never been claimed by the theory of Evolution. Darwin never claimed this, and neither have any evolutionary biologists to date. The only people who claim this are creationists. Every mutation goes through the natural selection process, and if it is beneficial, it helps the species survive, and the mutation is passed on. Instead of the creationist view of "a load of random mutations in a row", it is really "mutation *SAVE* *SELECT* mutation *SAVE *SELECT*".

Even if you could prove it in a laboratory, with the right conditions and treatments. Also, you are proving, as far as I know, exactly what you are trying to DISprove. By attempting to do this, you are actually using intelligence to create a life-sustaining enviroment.

I'm not trying to disprove anything. I'm simply trying to show you how the theory of Evolution is the theory that fits the facts best. I couldn't disprove the idea that the entire world was created last Thursday, with everyone's memories altered so they thought everything was older, since I find that exercise quite pointless.

Bear in mind that all the scientists did was keep the E. coli in jars, giving them small quantities of food. They let nature do the rest. There was no genetic manipulation, no human control over anything the E. coli did. By the same logic you use, you could say that using a man-made light source like a lightbulb in a physics experiment means the results of experiment won't be correct because of "intelligence" interfering. The reality is that visible light is visible light, and nature is nature. If you let nature do the experiment and simply watch (which is what Lenski and his team did) then it is nature at work.

And in thinking as I wrote this, I thought of something else. (keeping in mind my science and vocab, excuse and correct me if this is completely off the wall and ridiculous.) How do you know that the "ancestors" of the E. coli didn't have whatever it was they needed to do whatever it was they did/are doing? (I desperately need to study this stuff more D=) I mean, couldn't it have been in their "blood," I guess, and they not had it, but their "offspring" did? Can scientists test for that?

We have been able to sequence DNA (map out the base pairs) for almost 4 decades. This leads back to the original point I raised, which was the use of the word "information" by creationists. I'm not sure how much you know about DNA, but all it is is a long list of base pairs, denoted by 4 characters A,C,G,T.

A mutation happens when one or more of these characters aren't copied properly when the organism replicates. There are several different types of mutation, some are simple deletions (ACCT -> ACT), some are duplications (TAC -> TACC), some are inversions (TACG -> TCAG). A diagram of these and more is below:

What this means is that every single mutation changes the whole "information" of the DNA. Any one of these mutations could add something to the genome (even a deletion!) because the code has completely changed. I think if more creationists actually understood the genetics behind Evolution they wouldn't get so confused about the whole "information" issue.