Oolon Colluphid

1. Nothing is ever absolutely proved in science, because we aren’t defining the world beforehand, but finding out what it’s like. Mathematical proofs are only possible because they do define the universe in advance. ‘All’ we can hope for is to be as near to the truth as possible. And this can be achieved in part by eliminating -- via evidence -- wrong ideas... such as creation.

2. Evolution is like forensic science building a case. It is not based on any particular single piece of evidence, but on millions of separate bits, all pointing to the same conclusion. Evolution, like any science, gets its stength from the amount of congruent evidence for it, and lack of refuting evidence. Based on this, evolution is overwhelmingly verified. There are many good single pieces, but it is the masses of bits that show this. So asking for any one piece of evidence is to miss the point.

3. Nevertheless, we each have some favourites. I’m personally fond of:

• the blind eyes of cave-dwelling vertebrates (eg: this one)
  
• the presence of telomere sequences in the middle of the human chromosome 2
  
• the twisted skulls of flatfish
  
• Hawaiian silverswords

and these two pictures:





Questions?

TTFN, DT

Magus55

Very very bad example of evolution. The bacteria gets "used" to the antibiotics and eventually becomes immune to it. Same concept as weight lifting. If you keep doing the same exercises over and over with no variation, your muscles will get used to the exercise and never increase.

That and evolution is a process of gradual change over long periods of time, not a couple days in your school bio lab.

Godless Dave

But those bacteria have life-cycles measured in days, hours, or less. Individual bacteria are not getting used to the antibiotics - they are either killed by the antibiotics or they are not. The ones that are not killed reproduce, usually passing on whatever trait(s) they have that allows them to resist the antibiotics.

Let me put it another way: if you weight train and get bigger muscles, and then father a child, will your child be born with bigger muscles than if you hadn't weight trained?

simian

Ah, look, a Lamarckian. If we cut the tails off mice do they become used to it and their offspring not have tails?

In some cases the mutation that allows for the tolerance to the antibiotics is very well characterized.

If you want a multi-cellular version, check out "clearfield" sunflowers. They are the commercial result of poor farming practices. A farmer was using an IMI herbicide to control sunflowers in a monoculture soybean field - the same crop and herbicide for at least 7 years. Low and behold, one year there were sunflowers not able to be killed by IMI herbicides. The gene was identified and is being transferred to commercial sunflowers.

Simian

Butters

This always kills me. Magus is sure that evolution does not occur, but he has no clue as to how it works in the first place.
You should go here before you embarrase yourself any further.

Lobstrosity

Yeah, it's always rather funny when someone makes a statement equivalent to "I have no idea what evolution is but I assure you it's not happening."

Oolon Colluphid

I see you have a very very bad understanding of evolution. And of bacteriology.
Horseshit. Antibiotics kill bacteria. Which is why they are used to treat bacterial infections. Even if the bacteria have some innate resistance, it’s still evolution, because the ones less good at withstanding the antibiotic get killed, leaving the others alive and reproducing.
I too thought this was Lamarckian at first, but in trying to respond to it, I see that it’s too confused to even be that. I don’t see how muscles getting used to exercise relates in any way to the survival -- or not -- of bacteria in the presence of antibiotics. The bacteria don’t just feel a bit poorly for a while, then recover. They either die or they don’t.

Some bacteria may have inherent resistance, sure. (Remember that antibiotics are just a variation on what bacteria do to each other.) But bacteria can also acquire resistance, either from other bacteria, or crucially in this context, by mutation. The relevant bit here is vertical, generation-to-generation evolution.

From here:
Rubbish. Evolution is a change in the genetic make-up of a population over time.

As I think Terry Pratchett has put it, time is relative. Old mayflies may sit around discussing how modern minutes aren’t as good as the golden minutes of their youth; trees might barely have time to wonder what all the flickering is before the wet rot sets in.

Go re-read the above quote. We’re talking mere hours. If a bacterium reproduced as slowly as once every half-hour, it would go through 336 generations in a week. That’s the equivalent to around 6,000 years to humans. Or 17,500 generations in a year: 300,000 human years. In twenty years, these slow bacteria would cover as many generations as humans have since we split from chimpanzees.

In fact, bacteria usually divide once every ten minutes: three times as fast as in the above simple calculations.

If you’re looking for so-called ‘macro’-evolution, go read the above link.

TTFN, DT

Duvenoy

Hm. A proof of evolution. Hell, that's easy. Just look in the mirror, then study the literture, then look in the mirror again. What could be simpler?

DT, thanks yet again for those pics. I never tire of seeing them.

doov

Happy Wonderer

:notworthy ROTFLAMO :notworthy

That is why I'm able to carry a full-sized steer around, I started out when it was a calf...

HW

Er, you aren't serious are you? Sometimes we have to check 'cause most of the irony meters around here are busted.

Happy Wonderer

We tried that, but the little blighters keep moving...

HW