Evolution occurs in a laboratory

[Beldaran]

An evolutionary process has been fully observed and documented in a laboratory. In order to be a believer in creationism, you must now claim that things we have seen happen did not actually happen.

Summary:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/10/1845250

Full Article:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn14094-bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab.html

The best quote:


Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. "The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events," he says. "That's just what creationists say can't happen."

[Masamune]

Pix, or it didn't happen.

[Beldaran]

Pix, or it didn't happen.

I think this is going to be my new argument against christians. :)

[Breaker]

and jesus is white, don't you know.

[bigjoe]

Neat article though, as it suggests that changes and adaptations in organisms can be underway long before the trait actually appears.

[Zaphod Q. IX]

and jesus is white, don't you know.

Jesus wasn't white?
I'll be damned. You learn something new every day.

[phattonez]

In order to be a believer in creationism, you must now claim that things we have seen happen did not actually happen.

You're thinking of intelligent design there, buddy, not creationism. This kind of stuff can go hand in hand with creationism.

[rock_nog]

That's really cool and all, but I don't see what good proof is going to do for a bunch of people who believe in an invisible man who lives in the sky. These are people whose entire worldview is based on faith, which is specifically belief without proof. Which leads me to wonder, what would happen if God just suddenly popped down to say hello? I mean, then no one would have any faith anymore. Which reminds me, weren't the disciples always being chastised for not having faith? How does Jesus expect anyone to have faith if he's just there, you know? Kinda hard to have faith if the dude's just healing people or whatever right in front of you. After all, you can't help but have proof in that situation, and proof denies faith. But all that's neither here nor there.

Besides, it doesn't prove that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old. It doesn't prove that we did evolve, it only proves that we can evolve. They'll always come up with new arguments. I mean, if it comes down to it, they can just claim the science itself is faulty, so it doesn't matter how much evidence you present. In their minds, they're convinced they're right, and so any evidence to the contrary must necessarily be flawed in some way.

[Beldaran]

You will never be able to silence the truly depraved sycophants. However, this is a big poke in the eye to the wishy-washy creationists that want to be taken seriously by science. Their claims that evolution cannot have occurred have been destroyed.

They must now argue that even though evolution can occur, has been demonstrated to occur, and that all evidence indicates that it did occur, it did not occur because instead something magical happened.

[bigjoe]

Or they can just take the easy way and say God created evolution. Taking the easy way seems to be the route with creationist "logic."

I'm neither a creationist nor an atheist, though. Nor can I call myself an agnostic. Nowadays, I simply ignore any speculation related to Gods whatsoever, whether its for or against the belief in them.(Is there a word for that?) It's sickening to even think of all the bickering it causes. That the concept of a deity exists is the reason atheism itself exists. What if we lived in a world where some caveman monkey throwing rocks at a wall didn't come up with deities? It's too late now. The infectious thought will forever stain our minds. Even if all the top atheists in the world kill all the religious folk,(which I'm sure they will eventually, unless the Catholic Church is building a spaceship or an underground network so deep it would be undetectable) if they keep records of religion for study, it will infect one stray mind who happens to read it, and then it will happen all over again.

[Cloral]

That's missing the point of creationism though, to say that God created evolution. Creationism is an avenue to deny the existence of evolution, since evolution is in conflict with things stated in the bible. So to say that God created evolution doesn't really help anything for them.

[bigjoe]

That's just mainstream creationism. The general definition has applications beyond Christianity or similar monotheistic beliefs

Let's say I believed that the universe is a pee stream from God. That could be creationism. God's wee wee created the universe.

[Russ]

In order to be a believer in creationism, you must now claim that things we have seen happen did not actually happen.

Not true Beldaran. Ever heard of the belief Theistic Evolution? Anyways, I'll have to look into this. Most of the articles are just some scientist making amino acids in a test tube anyways. I'm sure I'll have some argument ready in a little bit.

[rock_nog]

The gist of the article is that scientists observed a strain of E. Coli evolving the ability to digest citrate, an amazing accomplishment for a bacteria. The reason it's so amazing is that the trait is relatively complex, and it required several different mutations in order to evolve.

I find it fascinating because it once and for all shoots down the eye argument. This is the argument that the eye is far too complex to evolved due to random mutation, because it would require many mutations to evolve an eye, and any mutation that only created part of an eye wouldn't be favorable (which is a load of dingo's kidneys anyway, because a proto-eye would be incredibly useful in a world where no creatures had eyes).

[Beldaran]

Yay, one person gets it. Meanwhile, russadwan is searching through his christian education textbooks for a paragraph about why science is false.

[Russ]

Yay, one person gets it. Meanwhile, russadwan is searching through his christian education textbooks for a paragraph about why science is false.
Hey, did I ever once say evolution could not happen. All I said is I believe what the Bible says. It says "God created the Heavens and the Earth". This could mean God created the universe, put some bacteria on it, and left them to evolve on their own, stepping in here and there. Ans for your information, I have not looked through a single textbook, and I don't intend on doing so. If I can't defend my religion without help, then what kind of person am I?

[Cloral]

The bible also says that God created plants, animals, and man. Are you choosing to ignore those passages and only keep the parts of the bible that you like?

[Russ]

The bible also says that God created plants, animals, and man. Are you choosing to ignore those passages and only keep the parts of the bible that you like?
I am just stating a belief (I don't believe it), but still, it is a belief (know as Theistic Evoultion).

[Beldaran]

If I can't defend my religion without help, then what kind of person am I?

The fact that you can defend your beliefs without information shows how worthless beliefs are.

[Russ]

How is that every you can use every single word I say against me? Let me just say this, if in life, you act just like you do on these forums, you must be one lonely creature.

[AtmaWeapon]

Executive Summary: This doesn't do much for origin of man; that would require observation of a simple organism developing complicated traits. Bonus points if it's reproducible. Not all creationists believe the same thing; most of them will be unswayed by this.

This only really addresses a single school of thought in creationism. I'll discuss it as I point out some interesting things I noticed.

First, you have to decide how narrow or broad you want the phrase "evolution" to be. In the broadest sense, evolution is taken to mean "genetic code changes in a fashion that is repeated via reproduction"; most people I know are more comfortable with calling this "adaptation". The reason for this is they prefer to reserve evolution for the generation of new species, and in general a requirement for being a new species is the inability to interbreed with the previous species and producing fertile offspring. There's plenty of adaptations within our species: people who live in higher altitudes have larger chests in order to hold larger lungs, people in climates with more sunlight have darker skin, etc. Still, they are able to interbreed with other humans and create fertile offspring and therefore they are part of the same species. However, bacteria are a difficult case to classify; they reproduce asexually. This makes it hard to base a definition of species off of interbreeding, so I'm not certain how well an argument that this is adaptation vs. evolution will hold.

Still, we can accept that this is a major adaptation, and I'd even go so far as to admit I don't wish to argue that it's not evolution; the bacteria were able to digest something that they couldn't before. This is much more significant than a change in coloration or size because it would require several complicated mutations in the genetic makeup of the organism.

Now let's look at it from some different Creationist viewpoints.

The most hard-headed of religious zealot ignores anything that clashes with their beliefs. I don't think it takes much discussion to deduce what they will say about this research.

Another type of creationist is the strict constructionist who believes the Bible's version of the creation story is correct to the letter. This Creationist is unswayed by the research: making a bacteria out of bacteria has nothing to do with making a man out of an ape in their eyes. I imagine this group will be unimpressed and tell science, "Nice try, but come back when you can turn the vacuum of space into an organism in 7 days." It's important to these people that the proof of evolution starts from void and ends with a human, so this discovery has no effect on their beliefs.

Next, we have someone who believes the creation story as laid out in the Bible could be inaccurate other than a few points. God told man it took 7 days and he came from dirt because however many thousands of years ago the ancient Hebrew people wouldn't be able to comprehend matter/antimatter reactions or the evolution of unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms. These people won't be impressed by this research because their belief system can already include the origin of man as something other than dirt. These people would feel that disproving creationism invalidates the minor details of a few chapters of the Bible that generally get the large details correct.

Finally, we have people who simply subscribe to the philosophy of Jesus; to them the issue of creationism is irrelevant so it's obvious what an effect on their beliefs this will have.

Personally, I'm in the middle. One interpretation of the creation story decides that Adam and Eve were created as the start of God's people, the Jews. Other people existed and appeared somehow, evolution is as good a theory as any for how that happened. I'm not sure how much I buy that, but basically whether or not the creation story is exactly correct is probably one of the least important contributing factors to my faith. It'll be earth-shattering to me when you can prove that Jesus was wrong: being a dick to everyone you meet spreads peace and harmony at an exponential rate.

So far, in all of history and all of the universe, we only have significant evidence that a single planet has developed intelligent life. Some people feel this indicates that the odds are so poor that it is evidence of a divine influence. Personally I feel that's not the right approach and probability supports me: no matter how low the probability of an event is if you allow infinite trials you will have a successful event. That leads us to this experiment: in 20 years of free mutation, a single colony with significantly different traits occurred, and the researchers can have the mutation happen again when they start with a particular population. This is the exciting part: it shows the mutation isn't reliant upon something like a hundredth of a degree of temperature or something and possibly makes the odds better for a void -> mankind chain much better. I bet now instead of a number with 50 zeroes to 1 it's a number with 47 zeroes to 1!

So I guess what I'm trying to say is it's an exciting development, but the article's just not doing a good job conveying how this single event conclusively proves the millions of events that would be required to take a bunch of atoms floating around and end up with a man. It's definitely a great discovery, but I believe it's similar to a common problem I see budding programmers make on programming forums: They want a solution to problem X, and they know that problem Y is similar, but easy. So, they ask a question about solving Y, and several weeks later when they're crushed under the weight of lots of crappy code it comes out they were trying to do X, and a completely different solution was called for. These scientists seem focused on the problem of proving the ape -> man evolution, and they have proved a bacteria -> different bacteria evolution. Nice try, but call me back when the bacteria develops a nervous system or an eye and they can take any bacteria of a particular species and reliably produce the newer, more advanced one.

Note that I'm not saying that I don't think this is proof that large-scale evolution can happen; to say that would be to completely ignore the research. What I am stating is the crux of creationism lies with a belief in the supernatural: you can prove that animals, plants, etc. were created via natural processes, but you cannot prove that there is no divine being that set the processes in motion. My belief is we can prove how a deity did something without disproving the existence of the deity. Turning the supernatural into the supernatural is science's job, so if it takes motives such as, "We're going to show those creationists!" to get real research done then so be it.

Also, why are we experimenting on E. coli? Why can't we pick something that isn't harmful to humanity for our genetic mutation experiments? Don't these guys watch movies or read books?

*Note:* I wrote the vast majority of this post after misinterpreting the article to read as they had not been able to reproduce the mutation. After posting, I didn't feel right so I double-checked and saw that I was wrong. I came back and tried to take out the paragraphs that attacked this part; if I missed anything that seems to hinge upon the experiment's reproducibility please consider it retracted.

[Cloral]

I just wonder what you think science has been doing for the last 100 years if you think this is the first real research that has been done into evolution.

[Beldaran]

Cloral is right. To refute evolution before this research came out still makes you a failure at science. Still, this experiment did destroy one of the cornerstones of creationism; that very complex behavior can't evolve from simple mutations. Clearly, it can.

[Daarkseid]

Also, why are we experimenting on E. coli? Why can't we pick something that isn't harmful to humanity for our genetic mutation experiments? Don't these guys watch movies or read books?


Probably because the vast majority of E. Coli strains are harmless and apparently naturally occur in the digestive system of animals.

[Dann Woolf]

Pix, or it didn't happen.

http://archives.bulbagarden.net/w/upload/9/95/Evolution.gif

Seriously, this is awesome. I wonder what the religious big cheeses are gonna say about this?

[ctrl-alt-delete]

Fuck science. I will tell you what really happened.

God zapped the E Coli and caused it to change.

@Dann Woolf: I laughed out loud.

[phattonez]

Seriously, this is awesome. I wonder what the religious big cheeses are gonna say about this?

They're not going to care. There is no problem with having creationism and evolution.

[Cloral]

Then why do the creationists protest teaching evolution in schools? Ultimately it is that action that is the source of my problem with creationists. If they stop that then I really don't care what else they think.

[Russ]

\
Then why do the creationists protest teaching evolution in schools? Ultimately it is that action that is the source of my problem with creationists. If they stop that then I really don't care what else they think.
It's not creationists that do. It's people who believe in Intelligent Design. It is possible to have a creator who creates, throws in some bacteria, and lets them evolve you know. I don't believe in it, but it could happen.

[phattonez]

Then why do the creationists protest teaching evolution in schools? Ultimately it is that action that is the source of my problem with creationists. If they stop that then I really don't care what else they think.

I have never once protested teaching evolution in school, so there goes that claim.

The people who do that are religious fundamentalists, and I have no idea how they even get past the first two chapters of Genesis (2 different stories on the creation of the world).

[Dann Woolf]

They're not going to care. There is no problem with having creationism and evolution.

Is that what you or what they think?

'cause I'm pretty sure they think differently.

[Cloral]

I have never once protested teaching evolution in school, so there goes that claim.

Let's go to Wikipedia:


Creationism is a religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity (often the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or deities, whose existence is presupposed. In relation to the creation-evolution controversy the term creationism (or strict creationism) is commonly used to refer to religiously-motivated rejection of evolution.

Thus, creationists are the ones who are protesting the teaching of evolution in school. So there goes your claim.

[phattonez]

It says commonly. So what you're saying is that because I believe in God creating the world that I must deny evolution?

[rock_nog]

Fine, we'll use the term "strict creationists." Does that make everyone happy?

[AtmaWeapon]

This is just a psychological game. It's easy to gain support from the anti-religion crowd by lumping your opponents in with the religious radicals. So, if you simplify the evolution issue by calling it "evolution vs. creationism" with a small footnote that says "Oh, by 'creationism' we mean any religious opposition to evolution", you've polarized the issue and made your fallacies more fun.

I know many creationists (Southern Baptists, at that) that are willing to accept evolution as a valid explanation for the origin of man, and there's many interpretations of the creation story that could allow it. I agree, and so do my peers, that trying to block the theory of evolution from being taught in a science curriculum is analogous to dropping Revelation from a study of the Bible.

I feel the biggest problem is people who have little scientific background think the wrong thing when they hear "theory", and shame on schoolteachers for not teaching it in this manner. Science acknowledges that evolution may not be the answer to the origin of man or any other species by calling it a theory. However, sometimes in science there are theories that cannot be proved, but observational data provides overwhelming confidence that it's true. Evolution's one of these things: we're several leaps and bounds away from conclusive proof, but there's enough stuff there that to dismiss it entirely is idiotic.

I don't even understand how people think teaching any form of creationism can work outside of a philosophy or theology class. Every religion has a different creation myth; would some of these die-hard Bible-thumpers support the teaching of Hindu and Zoroastrian creation in addition to their Christian creation? I think the answer to that question is pretty much why one can't pretend to believe it makes sense to teach supernatural beliefs in a science classroom. This is one case where I will not take offense to Beldaran's harsh view: if you believe teaching some form of religious creation in a science class makes sense then we may as well start talking about the elements (that's Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water, not the periodic table). I'm not even sure mentioning, "Some people believe in supernatural causes for the creation of the universe and all species." is a good idea. Thumbs up in a philosophy or theology class though.

Science's job is to explain the supernatural and make it natural. Religion's job is to explain the supernatural when science can't provide that explanation. Sometimes they are wholly incompatible and shouldn't be mixed.

Also, I accept this statement with no refutations, and I think it would have made a better first post and tone for the article:
Still, this experiment did destroy one of the cornerstones of creationism; that very complex behavior can't evolve from simple mutations. Clearly, it can.I always believed that simple probability destroyed this, but hopefully some people will get their heads cleared.

[rock_nog]

Make no mistake - for the vast majority of young-earth creationists (strict creationists, whatever you want to call it - Earth was made in 7 days crap), it is not a simple misunderstanding about the definition of "theory." It is part of a growing trend of willfully anti-science, anti-logic, anti-rational attitudes in this country. "Truth" has been replaced with "truthiness," to borrow a phrase from Stephen Colbert. It's like, people pride themselves on their ignorance or something. Absolutely crazy.

[Beldaran]

I always believed that simple probability destroyed this, but hopefully some people will get their heads cleared.

Yeah, that's right. There hasn't been a credible scientific argument against evolution in many years. However, this is some nice visual proof.

[fatcatfan]

The fact that they can "replay" the evolution is interesting. It suggests that all the pieces weren't there at generation 20K (otherwise they'd already be digesting citrate), but that those pieces will inevitably come together from that point on. In other words, the same "random" mutation happens in the generations that follow from that point. But perhaps all the descendants don't develop into Cit+, the article isn't clear on that point.

Anyway, I'll be impressed when they create life, not just "proto-cells", from primordial soup.