Evolution observed in bacteria?

[Daniel]

Sorry to make my first post a link.. I don't intend to post and run. My name is Daniel and I'm a recent accepter of theistic evolutionist and a Baptist. I've browsed here before and when I read this in the news I wanted to see what the reaction here was.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/lif ... e-lab.html

It appears that evolution has been observed for the first time in bacteria, as a new trait has been seen for the first time. This seems to flies in the face of the claim that this couldn't happen.

Thoughts?

[Robert Byers]

YEC here.
First with creationist its fine to see change in creatures. This happened constantly before and after the flood. In people too.
This bacteria is still the same bacteria and not a cow. If its from mutation, so called, and then selection process well yes it could be the model of evolution. however this is all common sense and any creationist of any time could say the same thing.
Crationism is not based on rejecting mutations and selection but extending it to big ideas. Anyways I'm not sure these bacteria had a mutation problem as opposed to a adaptive action in some of them under some innate trigger.

[Daniel]

Thank you for your swift reply. I will be the first to admit that biology is not a specialty of mine, and I am not 100% sure on some of the specific differences between macro and micro evolution other than that one is to form a completely different species, which is one of the reasons I posted this here.

[Canuckster1127]

Thank you for your swift reply. I will be the first to admit that biology is not a specialty of mine, and I am not 100% sure on some of the specific differences between macro and micro evolution other than that one is to form a completely different species, which is one of the reasons I posted this here.

Micro versus Macro evolution is a somewhat artificial distinction that is used mostly by YEC to account for the fact that biology has demonstrated pretty well that evolution is sound science. The issue that causes the distinction is to point out, correctly, I might add, that while evolution can be demonstrated to be a reality that the scope to which it has actually been observed and can be directly documented is limited. When it is appealed to as an explanation for the development of life on a broader scale then it is moving from direct observation to inference or plausibility based upon less directly observed transitions.

Scientists themselves would not use the term, "macro" vs "micro" in that sense.

The irony really in some forms of YEC is that they actually support or argue for evolution on a more accelerated scale to explain the diversity of life present from the common denominator of a world wide flood which would bring most creatures today from a relatively small group of common ancestors.

[Himantolophus]

This bacteria is still the same bacteria and not a cow. If its from mutation, so called, and then selection process well yes it could be the model of evolution. however this is all common sense and any creationist of any time could say the same thing.
Crationism is not based on rejecting mutations and selection but extending it to big ideas. Anyways I'm not sure these bacteria had a mutation problem as opposed to a adaptive action in some of them under some innate trigger.

sigh... mutation does not go from a bacteria to a cow.... not even a cat to a dog, not even a Thalassoma to a Sparisoma.
Isn't an accumulation of "microevolution" macroevolution? Why not?

Where is the fine line in the sand that says "10 or less mutations/adaptations is "micro" but 11+ mutations is "macro"? Face it, if you "microevolve" a creature many times, it will form a new species. If it "microevolves" more than that, it will become a genus. If it continues to "microevolve" further, it can be considered it's own family. The names are artificial (created by humans), but if you look at the finished product, it would have appeared to have macroevolved! Voila!

Thank you for your swift reply. I will be the first to admit that biology is not a specialty of mine, and I am not 100% sure on some of the specific differences between macro and micro evolution other than that one is to form a completely different species, which is one of the reasons I posted this here.

YEC's cannot get by the fact that alot of microevolution IS macroevolution. You can only change an animal or plant's genotype so much and still be the same species. Continue to change it and you have broader classification as seen above. This is how evolutionary theory explains the formation of new species.

Bacteria-sized evolution is the ONLY macroevolution that we can observe in a human lifetime so it will have to suffice for now. We cannot observe multicellular things change drastically into other genera or families because it requires too much time. YEC's who demand this know nothing about evolution. They even go as far as to assert that all animals today "hyperevolved" after Noah's Ark, yet they are unable to show new species forming today.

[cslewislover]

I've been reading a lot lately about ID, evolution, and creationists. I have not seen the distinction that you guys have put forward - that YEC are the ones who mostly promote micro vs macro evolution. I've seen it all over in OEC literature that I've read.

I'm not a biologist, but it seems to me that what we call a "species" makes a big difference in the debates. Probably many creatures that are considered separate species are not separate in reality. I'm not sure, of course, and it'd be hard for anyone to prove or disprove. I have a little example from my yard (!). A couple of years ago Brown Widow spiders made their way here to Southern California (from the South). They really hit our yard good, getting all into the yard furniture I bought light-toned specifically to be unattractive to spiders. Their webs are incredibly strong. Anyway, within a year, I found many spiders that look like they are inbetween a Brown Widow and a Black Widow. Brown Widows are very light colored, being cream and light brown striped with an orange splotch on their abdomens. Black Widows, of course, are very black with a red "hour glass" on their abdomens. The new spiders are dark brown with some striping. They behave the same as before (except they don't care much for my light-toned lawn furniture anymore) and their egg sacs look the same. I haven't seen a regular Brown Widow in a while now, maybe for a year.

[Canuckster1127]

I've been reading a lot lately about ID, evolution, and creationists. I have not seen the distinction that you guys have put forward - that YEC are the ones who mostly promote micro vs macro evolution. I've seen it all over in OEC literature that I've read.

I'm not a biologist, but it seems to me that what we call a "species" makes a big difference in the debates. Probably many creatures that are considered separate species are not separate in reality. I'm not sure, of course, and it'd be hard for anyone to prove or disprove. I have a little example from my yard (!). A couple of years ago Brown Widow spiders made their way here to Southern California (from the South). They really hit our yard good, getting all into the yard furniture I bought light-toned specifically to be unattractive to spiders. Their webs are incredibly strong. Anyway, within a year, I found many spiders that look like they are inbetween a Brown Widow and a Black Widow. Brown Widows are very light colored, being cream and light brown striped with an orange splotch on their abdomens. Black Widows, of course, are very black with a red "hour glass" on their abdomens. The new spiders are dark brown with some striping. They behave the same as before (except they don't care much for my light-toned lawn furniture anymore) and their egg sacs look the same. I haven't seen a regular Brown Widow in a while now, maybe for a year.

The terms are not exclusive to YEC, and remember OEC - Progressive Creationists don't subscribe to what would be described as "macro" evolution as well, so that's not surprising.

[cslewislover]

OK. Maybe I'm not understanding some of the posts here. Rich has some articles on the subject, and when I did a search this one came out on top: http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/evolution.html

How many here agree with this?

[zoegirl]

The terms micro and macro evolution have traditionally been used in the manner that RIch has described. However, and I think this is in response to the arguments posed by creationists, scientists are now trying to change the terms.

Micro and macro are really thought to be inditinguishable, especially with regards to the support they have.

Do I agree with Rich's definitions? yes. Microevolution is absolutely testable and repeatable. HIstorical or macroevolution will always be in the realms of speculation and extrapolation.

Personally, curretntly, I would align myself iwth the OEC progressive creationists. However, I would not reject theistic evolution with an understadning that it is not a deistic model, rather a model of an invovled GOd throughout the process. I reject the idea of it being random. (Given the fact that we bring up the intimate involvment that God has in our lives, why should this be any different? And invovled, intimate creator creating through a process.

[cslewislover]

Yes, thanks for responding. You sound like you would disagree, then, with Francis Collins in his The Language of God. I could not agree with him because of what you said - it doesn't make sense to me that God would not be involved with us until some certain point in evolution. I don't have a label other than creationist at this point, although I definitely lean to OEC. I don't yet know the detailed difference in OEC and Progressive Creationism, but I'll get to it some day soon. I don't like all this labeling anyway, so I'll probably go with "creationist" no matter what detailed conclusion I come to.

[zoegirl]

I don't doub that, from our perspective, what methods God could have used *seem* random, much the the rules of probability that we have established. AAnd those rules are so predctable it is hard to get away from that idea of random.

But we don't live our faith like that and have no problem reconciling this seeming act of randomness with a God. FOr instance, winning the lottery is often ascribed to God's p[lanning even though we set odds to this sort of event.

So any sort of "evolution" as a process would never, as a CHristian, really be random.

So in that regard I am not sure I could really be called a theistic evolutionist, I don't consider it to be randon. However, if on econsiders the chromosome patterns between mankind and chimps and sees, as COllins point s out in his book, the similarities between the fused chromosomes and unfused ones, I have no problem in posing a model whereby GOd caused that to happen.

[Canuckster1127]

The terms micro and macro evolution have traditionally been used in the manner that RIch has described. However, and I think this is in response to the arguments posed by creationists, scientists are now trying to change the terms.

Micro and macro are really thought to be inditinguishable, especially with regards to the support they have.

Do I agree with Rich's definitions? yes. Microevolution is absolutely testable and repeatable. HIstorical or macroevolution will always be in the realms of speculation and extrapolation.

Personally, curretntly, I would align myself iwth the OEC progressive creationists. However, I would not reject theistic evolution with an understadning that it is not a deistic model, rather a model of an invovled GOd throughout the process. I reject the idea of it being random. (Given the fact that we bring up the intimate involvment that God has in our lives, why should this be any different? And invovled, intimate creator creating through a process.

I think the issue of the definitions go back to the different ways that the word "evolution is used".

In terms of the narrow definition of hard science, evolution is a demonstrated, highly cohesive theory. Taken further and applied philosophically it expands past that and ceases to be purely science.

I think Rich's article is spot on in that regard.

I'm not anti-evolution. I think God "could" have created in this manner and if He did, I don't see it as inconsistent with Scripture although it would make some elements of it more metaphorical than what I am comfortable with. It's not about me in that regard however.

Theistic evolution is plausible in my opinion. I just don't think it is necessary or proven yet and so I lean strongly toward OEC Progressive Creationism.

[Himantolophus]

I'm not a biologist, but it seems to me that what we call a "species" makes a big difference in the debates. Probably many creatures that are considered separate species are not separate in reality. I'm not sure, of course, and it'd be hard for anyone to prove or disprove. I have a little example from my yard (!). A couple of years ago Brown Widow spiders made their way here to Southern California (from the South). They really hit our yard good, getting all into the yard furniture I bought light-toned specifically to be unattractive to spiders. Their webs are incredibly strong. Anyway, within a year, I found many spiders that look like they are inbetween a Brown Widow and a Black Widow. Brown Widows are very light colored, being cream and light brown striped with an orange splotch on their abdomens. Black Widows, of course, are very black with a red "hour glass" on their abdomens. The new spiders are dark brown with some striping. They behave the same as before (except they don't care much for my light-toned lawn furniture anymore) and their egg sacs look the same. I haven't seen a regular Brown Widow in a while now, maybe for a year.

nice example. This lends support to evolutionary theory because most scientists see current species in their current forms as "snapshots in their evolution". Some are further differentiated than others. Some maintain their reproductive capability with related species while others cannot. Even in between those extremes, you have some that can interbreed but produce unviable offspring and those that can interbreed and the offspring are transitional between the species (see your example and ligers). The definition of "genus" is more solid since there is rarely interbreeding between different genera.

The definition of a species as such is strictly morphological most of the time since biologists and taxonomists do not have the money nor the capability to do breeding studies with MOST animals on the planet. Genetic studies are recently confirming the similarities amongst species and confirming (and clarifying) the evolutionary relationships. If you choose to define a species by a slight difference in color or a gap in their distribution, this creates many problems with defining what a "species" is. I am really interested in taxonomy and I've run across many situations where the lumpers and splitters are at each others throats over naming "new" species. The reality may be that current species are ar different "degrees" of transition and we are just seeing this snapshot of their divergence (since macroevolutionary timescales are far too long to observe).

On the other hand, if YEC's believe microevolution created each species we know from ancestral kinds, they first have to define what each of these ancestral kinds were (as in was the original cat kind a tiger or a domestic cat?) and also explain how species can be created so quickly yet we cannot even create a new species in the lab. No matter how hard we try, the varieties of plant we create are either artificial, infertile, and/or reproductively compatible with their wild cousins

[Robert Byers]

Yec Creationists, like me, don't mean that micro evolution is macro evolution . First there is no time for natural selection to have taken advantage of any changes/mutations to create new kinds of creatures. All that is meant, I believe, is that changes in a population can be taken advantage of in special cases to bring adaption. Mutations are too vague and chancy for creationism to believe in them.

[zoegirl]

And once again I ask you, what mechanism BRINGS about these new adaptations if not mutations? In one hand you quickly dismiss natural selection and mutations and yet blithely state on the other hand that "adaptations", some vague term on your part, that would be responsible for changes on a level even faster than evolutionists claim!

Mutations are too vague and chancy for creationism to believe in them.

Is God not in control over creation?! CAn He not mainpulate genes, DAN sequences? COuld He not craft the genome of a population do that it survives?