Activate the Mechanism!

Dear Creationists: Science has re-created evolution in a lab.

Scientists put forced selection pressure on a population of yeast, a single cell organism, and within about 350 generations the yeast had become a new multicellular organism. 

They were even able to witness the in-between stages where at first, there were single yeast cells that would stay connected together even after dividing. Then they started seeing a “rudimentary” multicellular organism that reproduced by budding, and had basic division of labor among cells.

In even later generation cells had divided labor even further and included specialized cells that were programmed to die in order for the “daughter bud” to break off of the parent when reproducing.

The only criticism of the experiment involved claims that the rapid evolution from single-cell to multi-cell may have been a result of the fact yeast, as it exists now, evolved from a multicellular organism and that some of the genes to express this trait may have been latent in yeast’s DNA.

But all that means is that organisms that lack latent DNA code for being multicellular, may not make the evolutionary leap so quickly. 

The point is, they got it to evolve, in a lab, and even noted transitional stages.

Here is a source on this information.

And, here is more about the evolutionary leap from a single cell organism, to a multicellular organism. 

sugaronastick asked: it shouldn't come as a surprise that apologists and wingntus cannot understand what a 'theory' is. dogma demands blind faith and no matter how you would try to reason with them, there's always the chance that they will try and derail your argument with some kind of word salad.

It’s not a surprise, but it still aggravates the living shit out of me. 

That line of argument is so invalid that creation ministries themselves has suggested not using it:

‘Evolution is just a theory.’ What people usually mean when they say this is ‘Evolution is not proven fact, so it should not be promoted dogmatically.’ Therefore people should say that. The problem with using the word ‘theory’ in this case is that scientists usually use it to mean a well-substantiated explanation of data.

And this shows the entire willful ignorance of these people, they won’t change their position or way of thinking no matter what, they just keep repeating the argument over and over no matter what facts are given to them or how many times they are shown otherwise.

Seems like the very definition on delusional, doesn’t it?

Dear Creationist.

abaldwin360:

Creationism is not science.

Let me repeat that; CREATIONISM IS NOT FUCKING SCIENCE.

Creationism is religion, plain and simple, there is no way to argue around this, it’s nothing more than a bunch of shit you can’t test.

Please show me how you can test your theories (and they are just theories, not scientific theories, please stop using this fucking argument, it makes anyone who says it look like a fucking fool because you obviously don’t know what the fuck you are talking about).

Maybe we should focus on that, you guys say, “Evolution is just a theory” - just a theory - do you people even understand what a scientific theory is?

Let me lay it out for you, first, the word “theory”, as in the non scientific kind; since it seems to be where the confusion lies.

• Theory: a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact.

Okay, so in this regard, a theory is not a fact, it’s conjecture, it’s something you might think is true. I could theorize that when I flush my toilet, the contents of it go down the pipes and into an underground cavern beneath my apartment building. Lets say someone presented this to me as a fact, lets say everyone living in, or who have ever lived my apartment building has been told the same thing. Everyone would go on believing that there was a huge cavern under the building filled with sewage.

So, lets say, one day I start thinking to myself, “That must be a pretty big cavern, this apartment building is 40 years old, 40 years of flushing toilets, and I don’t smell a thing, the pipes leading down to it haven’t ever backed up, I flush my toilet and everything goes down just like it always has.” and I go to the owner of the apartment building and ask them about this, ask them how it is that this cavern under the apartment building has not completely filled up with sewage in the last 40 years, or why can’t I smell anything coming from this cavern full of sewage.

They might say, “Oh well, it’s a very big cavern, it can hold hundreds of years worth of sewage.” and “The cavern is very far underground, almost a mile in fact.”

So, I would ask them, “Have you ever seen this cavern?” and say they answered, “No, there was another building here when we bought the land, we demolished it and built this apartment building where the old one stood, we used the existing pipes that lead to the cavern.”

If I asked them, “How do you know the cavern is even there?” they might say “The previous owners told us.”

So, right now, this cavern is theoretical, we have no proof it’s there other than second hand “knowledge” passed from person to person.
This is where science comes in;

A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts. A scientific theory is constructed to conform to available empirical data about such observations, and is put forth as a principle or body of principles for explaining a class of phenomena.-Wikipedia

In other words, a scientific theory isn’t just something that someone pulled out of their ass and called a cherry plumb.

In other words, in a scientific theory you make observations, you collect data, you find proof and come to the best possible explanation for what it is you have observed.

So, lets go back to our cavern of sewage analogy, I now want to prove that there is a cavern under my apartment building that all the contents of flushed toilets go to.

The first thing I may do, is look at the geological survey data for the area, within this collection of information about the plot of land that the apartment building is on, I see no reverences to caverns or caves in the area. It could be that the cave is so deep they didn’t know about it when they did the survey, but this is just one piece of information against the cavern, if I were to stop there, I really wouldn’t have my answer, just like if I had taken the owners of the building at their word.

So, next, I can find the civil engineering information about the neighborhood the building is located in, in this collection of data, I find schematics and information about the building’s plumbing.

It shows that all the drains in the building run to a larger pipe underneath the building, is this the pipe that leads to the cavern? 

In studying the data for the whole neighborhood the building is in, I see that all the buildings in this neighborhood have drains that all run into a larger pipe, does that mean all the buildings around here have caverns under them that are filled with sewage?

Finally, I observe in the civil engineering data to this neighborhood that all these larger pipes all come together into an even larger pipe marked “main drain” that runs to the city’s sewer system, and the city’s sewage system runs into a treatment plant and then returns the water to a river.

I must be Sherlock fucking Holmes! - actually that’s a good analogy, what if instead of finding facts and evidence a detective just set behind his desk and stated who he believed committed a particular crime, I mean, he is a detective, it says so on the door to his office, he knows what he’s talking about, right?

Yeah, sounds pretty dumb doesn’t it? You walk into the office and he immediately says, “The butler did it!” and you ask how he knows, and he says, “I just believe he did.” and when asked if he did any investigation, he simply says, “No.”

So, back to the building’s method of getting rid of the sewage, I now have empirical data, the civil engineering blueprints show how the sewage system of the neighborhood works, so why is this proof enough for me?

Well, I know that you can’t build a building without adequate sewage, the city or local laws would not allow for this, in this way I’m using facts together with logic (in this case, the blueprints and knowledge of local building codes, and the logical conclusion that the building could not be built without adhering to local laws about sewage disposal).

So now, in a way I have a scientific theory that says that there is not a cave under my apartment building, and that my toilet flushes into the sewer.

If I presented this information to the building’s owner, and they simply respond “No, it goes to a cave, that’s what we were told and that’s what we will continue to believe.” - that would look pretty fucking stubborn and quite frankly idiotic, wouldn’t it?

I mean, yes, we haven’t actually torn down the building and dug into the ground to see if the cavern full of sewage is there, but all the evidence would point to it not actually being there, and now the burden of proof lies upon the building’s owners, who continue to claim all the sewage goes into a cavern under the building, because the previous owners told them so, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.

They believe in the sewage cavern on faith alone.

Now, lets say they decided that they didn’t like my explanation, and went to city hall and petitioned to have all references to the sewer system removed from the city’s records and replaced with “there is a cavern below the building that all the sewage goes into.”

This is EXACTLY the way I see creationism being taught as science.

It’s a cavern full of shit.

NPR - Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve

This debate over a historical Adam and Eve is not just another heady squabble. It’s ripping apart the evangelical intelligentsia.

Polls by Gallup and the Pew Research Center find that four out of 10 Americans believe this account. It’s a central tenet for much of conservative Christianity, from evangelicals to confessional churches such as the Christian Reformed Church.

But now some conservative scholars are saying publicly that they can no longer believe the Genesis account.

[FULL STORY]

Does this mean creationists can knock it off now?

The Relentless Christian Crusade to Prevent Kids from Learning Science

[SOURCE]

Religious Right strategies to introduce fundamentalist Christianity into public school science classes have (ironically) evolved over the years.

In decades past, state legislators passed laws flatly barring the teaching of evolution or requiring “balanced treatment” between creationism and evolution. Those efforts were struck down by the courts.

Undaunted, Religious Right activists returned with a host of new ideas and presented them to friendly lawmakers. They advocated teaching the “weaknesses” of evolution, asserted that public school teachers had a free-speech right to attack evolution in class and even advocating pasting anti-evolution disclaimers in science books.

When courts rejected those gambits as well, the creationists retrenched and relabeled. Creationism became “intelligent design” (ID), a concept that its proponents swore was not necessarily religious (although they were unclear on who the designer could be other than God).

That gambit floundered in court as well, bringing us to the newest incarnation of creationism: Teach the controversy.

Under this approach, evolution is falsely branded a “controversial” idea that is losing support even in the scientific community. Thus, students must be taught to engage in “critical thinking” about its flaws, and, for good measure, controversies over global warming and human cloning will be discussed as well.

Bills promoting this idea surfaced in a number of states this year. According to the website Livescience.com, legislatures in Florida, Texas, Missouri, Kentucky, Oklahoma and New Mexico have considered anti-evolution measures. Most of the proposals died, but the persistence of the issue says a lot about the state of science education.

“This is a recent trend,” remarked Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a group in Oakland, Calif., that supports evolution instruction in public schools. “Part of the reason for including global warming and human cloning seems to be to deflect the criticism that evolution is being singled out for special treatment, and another part of the reason seems to be to appeal to a wider base of science denialists.”

Certain states have been flashpoints for the battle. Tennessee, site of the famous “Scopes monkey trial” in 1925, is one of them. Another is Louisiana.

When science disproves your religious dogma, what do you do?

They try and keep science from being taught properly and have it replaced with their dogma.

This kind of shit pisses me off to no end, these are the same people who will try and say that they are being persecuted, simply because actual science is being taught in public schools, and see it as an attack on their religion.

Sorry folks, the science is sound if you believe in it or not, how about growing up and accepting the evidence right in front of you instead of dumbing down our students and making the US a laughing stock among the rest of the world.

15 Questions for evolutionists - question 4

4. Why is natural selection taught as “evolution,” when natural selection selects, but does not create?

By definition it is a selective process (selecting from already existing information), so is not a creative process. It might explain the survival of the fittest (why certain genes benefit creatures more in certain environments), but not the arrival of the fittest (where the genes and creatures came from in the first place). The death of individuals not adapted to an environment and the survival of those that are suited does not explain the origin of the traits that make an organism adapted to an environment. E.g., how do minor back-and-forth variations in finch beaks explain the origin of beaks or finches? How does natural selection explain goo-to-you evolution? creation.com/defining-terms

Wait what?

That’s not right, that’s not even wrong. What the hell are they talking about???

We pretty much already covered the fact that evolution doesn’t even cover the origin of life in the answer to the first question, and here they are again trying to make exactly the same point.

It seems like the writers of this pamphlet keep wanting to drill in, “science isn’t 100% sure how life began so… GOD DID IT THERE IS NO EVOLUTION.”

Evolution is the result of mutations and natural selection, a mutation occurs, if it is beneficial, it will propagate down subsequent generations, if it’s a mutation that makes an organism that’s less fit and it doesn’t get the chance to produce offspring, that particular mutation will not propagate. It’s pretty simple logic, that when happening over vast scales of time has resulted in the variety of life forms we see currently on earth, as well as in fossils.

How come creationists accept microevolution, but reject common ancestry and instead rely on a set of beliefs that creates more questions than it answers (great pun waiting to happen there!)

Natural selection and mutations work hand in hand to better adapt an organism to it’s environment and ecological niche, it’s important to understand how they both work.

I also find it odd that the first questions kept emphasizing mutations, and then ask in this question “how do minor back-and-forth variations in finch beaks explain the origin of beaks or finches?” when, 1 - minor back-and-forth variations in finch beaks is describing random mutation, and 2 - explain the origin of beaks or finches? - Look back over time, and you will find a common ancestor not only to all finches but all birds, tiny variations over millions of years eventually create new species.

Why would such a “solid” concept such as creationism have to resort to deception, using definitions of words wrong, and ignoring evidence as a means of proving it’s self?

Sorry Creation Ministries International, so far your questions do nothing but make me think you guys are in the business of deception.

The next question on the list is: How did new biochemical pathways, which involve multiple enzymes working together in sequence, originate?

I’m going to do some research, and answer it in a few days…

15 Questions for evolutionists

Question 1

Question 2

Question 3

Turnabout is fair play: A scientist uses creationism to prove evolution.

Phil Senter has published the most deviously underhanded, sneaky, subtle undermining of the creationist position I’ve ever seen, and I applaud him for it. What he did was to take them seriously, something I could never do, and treat their various publications that ape the form of the scientific literature as if they actually were real science papers, and apply their methods consistently to an analysis of taxonomy. So on the one hand, it’s bizarre and disturbing to see the like of Ken Ham, Jerry Bergman, and Henry Morris get actual scientific citations, but on the other hand, seeing their claims refuted using their own touted methods is peculiarly satisfying.

[FULL STORY]