Scientists can now watch evolution happen

[afleitch]

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/20/scientists_can_now_watch_evolution_happen/

"Creationists are about to have even more scientific data to ignore. Researchers from Michigan State University have used “in-depth, genomics-based analysis” to understand how E. coli bacteria developed a mutation that allows it to digest citrate, which the bacteria normally cannot digest with oxygen present. In other words, a group of human beings has watched and outlined the process of evolution for a group of living things. This is kind of a big deal (postdoctoral researcher Zachary Blount described it as “pretty nifty”):

    The experiment demonstrates natural selection at work. And because samples are frozen and available for later study, when something new emerges scientists can go back to earlier generations to look for the steps that happened along the way."

[Franzl]

I don't care. The Bible tells me the Earth is 6,000 years old. And I'm not related to apes. Period.

[Platypus]

That's a good start

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Pretty cool.

[ilikeverin]

Awwww yeahhh we're awesome

[Spanish Moss]

Anyone can watch evolution happen, if you've got the time.

[Joe Biden 2020]

I don't care. The Bible tells me the Earth is 6,000 years old. And I'm not related to apes. Period.

Correction:  It doesn't say the Earth is 6,000 years old just that man is 6,000-7,000 years old.  We are not monkeys.  The creation story says "the evening and the morning were the first day", but it doesn't necessarily mean 24 literal hours as we know today.  Each "day" could be thousands or even millions of years.  For the age of man, if you start at Abram (Genesis 11) and work backward, you will get somewhere between 6,000-7,000 years.  Abraham was 2,000 years before Christ who was 2,000 years before the present day.  So, when you start with Abraham, you're starting at roughly 4,000 years ago.

[Associate Justice PiT]

I don't care. The Bible tells me the Earth is 6,000 years old. And I'm not related to apes. Period.

Correction:  It doesn't say the Earth is 6,000 years old just that man is 6,000-7,000 years old.  We are not monkeys.  The creation story says "the evening and the morning were the first day", but it doesn't necessarily mean 24 literal hours as we know today.  Each "day" could be thousands or even millions of years.  For the age of man, if you start at Abram (Genesis 11) and work backward, you will get somewhere between 6,000-7,000 years.  Abraham was 2,000 years before Christ who was 2,000 years before the present day.  So, when you start with Abraham, you're starting at roughly 4,000 years ago.

     Nobody claims that humans are monkeys, except in a cladistic sense. Humans are apes, and there is no logical basis for denying that without denying other predictions of Darwin's theory of evolution, such as the experiment outlined in the initial post of this topic.

[Хahar 🤔]

Because evolution can be directly observed like this, one of the most common "scientific" arguments is that microevolution and macroevolution are completely separate, and that the former exists while the latter does not.

[minionofmidas]

Apes are monkeys.
The very fact of having these two different words makes English appear ridiculous.

[Associate Justice PiT]

Apes are monkeys.
The very fact of having these two different words makes English appear ridiculous.

     There are some pretty important physiological differences between monkeys and apes. The problem is that humans are categorized as apes, despite deviating from the ape template in a couple important fashions; the most troubling one being that we have a cylindrical ribcage like that of monkeys, as opposed to the conical ribcage that is characteristic of the apes.

[Vosem]

The very fact of having these two different words makes English appear ridiculous.

English is an absolutely ridiculous language.

[Franzl]

The very fact of having these two different words makes English appear ridiculous.

English is an absolutely ridiculous language.

But you can certainly do so much with it.

[Vosem]

The very fact of having these two different words makes English appear ridiculous.

English is an absolutely ridiculous language.

But you can certainly do so much with it.

Well, English is basically the language of international commerce nowadays, so yeah. But English is really weird in a lot of ways, most notoriously its writing system.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

In all fairness, the debate between creationism and evolution boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

[afleitch]

In all fairness, the debate between creationism and evolution boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

There's no debate. Debate suggests a contentious issue in the scientific community. Evolution is not a contentious issue.

[John Dibble]

In all fairness, the debate between creationism and evolution boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

In all fairness, the debate between the spherical earth/heliocentric model of the solar system and the flat earth/geocentric model of the solar system boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

As afleitch says, there is no debate over this in the scientific community. One side has evidence while the other has none.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

In all fairness, the debate between creationism and evolution boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

In all fairness, the debate between the spherical earth/heliocentric model of the solar system and the flat earth/geocentric model of the solar system boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

Yes, it does.

Also, the "scientific community" is at liberty to dabble in the sandbox of physical science however it likes. That doesn't mean it comes anywhere near being able to touch the big questions of truth.

[John Dibble]

In all fairness, the debate between creationism and evolution boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

In all fairness, the debate between the spherical earth/heliocentric model of the solar system and the flat earth/geocentric model of the solar system boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

Yes, it does.

You know, when you put it that way epistemology doesn't exactly come out as being a rational school of thought.

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It's shown itself to be better at answering big questions than anything else on numerous occasions. Evolution is one such answer.

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us ... Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." - Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I don't think the heliocentrism/geocentrism comparison is a good one. Geocentrism is scientifically much more valid than creationism could ever hope to be.

[John Dibble]

I don't think the heliocentrism/geocentrism comparison is a good one. Geocentrism is scientifically much more valid than creationism could ever hope to be.

True - you can actually make a predictive model based on it.

[MODU]

I don't care. The Bible tells me the Earth is 6,000 years old. And I'm not related to apes. Period.

Correction:  It doesn't say the Earth is 6,000 years old just that man is 6,000-7,000 years old. 

Actually, the Bible doesn't even say that.  The 6,000 year estimate came from different Jewish and Catholic leaders that estimate the Earth was made somewhere between 5500-3750 BC based upon a Biblical ancestry established in the Old Testament.  However, it's a flawed system they used based upon estimated ages of the different family members and when they were born (hence the nearly 2000-year difference in dates).  The few that actually follow the 6,000 year premise also believe that the Earth was made in six 24-hour days, though the Bible says that the perception of time by God is not the same as man (so a day to God could be thousands of years, for example).

[Spanish Moss]

In all fairness, the debate between creationism and evolution boils down to epistemology more than anything else.

There's no debate. Debate suggests a contentious issue in the scientific community. Evolution is not a contentious issue.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Apes are monkeys.
The very fact of having these two different words makes English appear ridiculous.

     There are some pretty important physiological differences between monkeys and apes. The problem is that humans are categorized as apes, despite deviating from the ape template in a couple important fashions; the most troubling one being that we have a cylindrical ribcage like that of monkeys, as opposed to the conical ribcage that is characteristic of the apes.

Personally I'd rather be descended from monkeys than apes for aesthetic reasons.

This is a neat story showing adaptation of a species to a new situation. I don't see how it proves  common descent or any of the things about evolution that are actually contentious.

[John Dibble]

This is a neat story showing adaptation of a species to a new situation. I don't see how it proves  common descent or any of the things about evolution that are actually contentious.

1. Common descent isn't contentious among scientists. It's well accepted as all available evidence points to it.
2. This is not mere adaptation. A species can adapt without any genetic changes, such as putting on thicker clothes to adapt to cold. This is the actual birth of an entirely new trait with the steps of the mutations actually having been monitored. Given that one standard creationist trope is that mutations can't produce new features, this is important as we now have one more solid piece of evidence contradicting that notion.