Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift In the Lab

Auxbuss sends us to New Scientist for news sure to perplex and confound creationists: scientists have watched a new, complex evolutionary trait develop in the lab. "A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers' eyes. It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait. And because the species in question is a bacterium, scientists have been able to replay history to show how this evolutionary novelty grew from the accumulation of unpredictable, chance events."

Two words

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Continuous creation. God put those new bacteria there to test my faith ;-)

Re:Two words

[fastest fascist]

More insightful than funny. Creationism has nothing to do with a balanced look at the facts, and everything to do with strong personal beliefs. No amount of proof will turn the head of a devout creationist, since God, via the Bible (or the creationist's interpretation of it) is the ultimate authority.

Re:Two words

[omeomi]

Which is fine with me. People can believe what they want. Where I start to have problems is when they want to start forcing others to teach their personal beliefs in Science class.

Re:Two words

[lymond01]

Which is fine with me. People can believe what they want.

Because every good science article needs a religious debate....For simplicity's sake, let's say there's evolutionists (evos) and creationists (godists). When evos make the mistake of saying "People can believe what the want" they are making the assumption that beliefs have nothing to do with actions. This, in general, is not the case.

If I'm a godist, I might believe that God cures all ills, and never take my pneumonia-ridden son to the hospital. Bummer for my son but it was God's choice if he died. If I'm a godist, I might believe that evolution is a myth meant to defeat my faith. I ignore science, I lobby to create laws that ignore science, and I preach to other people to ignore science. I believe science is wrong and I want to convince other people of this truth.

So you can have personal beliefs that very much affect your public actions. Putting your money where your mouth is, so to speak.

The answer to ignorance of science or ignorance of faith is always going to be education - school, word of mouth, whatever. We need to talk it out, show why science is useful, and why the community of religion and other aspects can also be useful, and why either can be detrimental (sure the A-bomb was neat, but geez...).

Re:Two words

[element-o.p.]

Or you could be like me: a godist (in your terms) who really wants to reconcile science and faith. If a scientific discovery comes along that challenges my understanding of the Bible, then I need to figure out how what I understood the Bible to say is different than what God really intended to say. Back in Galileo's day, the position of the Church was that the earth was the center of the universe, and all the heavens (lower-case "h") revolved around it. No matter how hard I try, I can't find that in the Bible. Ergo, no conflict between science and religion. The Big Bang vs. creationism -- well, what do you think it would have looked like if God spoke and suddenly a universe was born? ;) Evolution vs. creationism...well, the Bible says God created all of the creatures on the earth, but it doesn't describe the method by which He did it, does it? Having said that, I'm not quite ready to embrace evolution as the origin of species (as opposed to evolution within species, which I do accept), but this discovery is definitely interesting.

The answer to ignorance of science or ignorance of faith is always going to be education - school, word of mouth, whatever. We need to talk it out, show why science is useful, and why the community of religion and other aspects can also be useful, and why either can be detrimental (sure the A-bomb was neat, but geez...).

Agreed 100% -- I couldn't have said it better, no matter how hard and how long I tried.

Re:Two words

[Idiomatick]

That sure is a lot of effort to rationalize an old book. Wouldn't it be easier to take it from a new standpoint ... look at the world then the book and decide whether or not its needed?
 
Anyways there are contradictions within the bible itself. How is that rationalized. How do you rationalize the 6000year issue?
 
  Also, about the flat earth thing: http://sol.sci.uop.edu/~jfalward/Flat_Earth.htm [uop.edu]

Re:Two words

[Micah]

> How do you rationalize the 6000year issue?

Easy. The days in Genesis 1 are long ages of time. In fact Gleason Archer, probably the best Hebrew scholar of modern times, has argued that the way the text is worded rules out the calendar-day theory. Also there are demonstrable gaps in the genealogies, so I have no problem with humans being on earth tens of thousands of years.

When you look at the whole Bible, including everything it says on Creation, it describes Big Bang cosmology fairly accurately (well not the science of the BB itself of course, but the effects of a BB universe).

> Wouldn't it be easier to take it from a new standpoint ... look at the world then the book and decide whether or not its needed?

I've done that, and to me the Bible describes reality more consistently than other worldviews.

Re:Two words

[Micah]

I'm not sure what the waters above are;

Water vapor in atmosphere? Rain clouds?

The Earth very clearly exists before the Sun in this account, and the Sun and Moon are created at the same time.

In the English translations it looks that way. However there are a couple things about Day 4.

First it says that God ordered the lights to appear. The word here is Hebrew 'haya', meaning "let there appear". This is NOT the same as ex-nihilo creation, Hebrew 'bara', which is used for the heavens and the earth in verse 1.

The second verse in Day 4 is a parenthetical note that says that God created the sun and moon, and the stars also. The verb there is the other Hebrew word for create, 'asa'. It also is not ex-nihilo creation, but the formation of something from what has previously existed. Also, the tense there is an imperfect past tense, stating that God had accomplished that at some point before the end of Day 4.

Even more noticeable is that plants were on the face of the Earth before the Sun was there to allow them to grow.

Yes it was.

So what happened? God created the universe, which expanded and the earth formed by generally accepted planetary formation physics. According to planetary formation theory, the earth should be covered in thick atmosphere, even more so than Venus, and it probably was. It was also covered by water after the initial cooling. Note that both of these conditions are mentioned in Genesis 1:2 -- "darkness was over the face of the deep."

I also believe the phrase "the Spirit hovered over the waters" is a reference to the creation of the first life, widely believed to be in the ocean very early in life's history. The word for 'hovered' is the same Hebrew word used later for God brooding over Israel, protecting her like a hen protects its chicks. Obviously something profound was happening.

Also early on was the collision with the Mars-sized object that ended up creating our moon. This ate up much of the atmosphere causing it to become translucent. Light from the sun was visible on the earth's surface for the first time, hence "let there be light."

As the atmosphere dissipated over the eons, it eventually became transparent in Day 4, when the heavenly bodies were finally visible from the surface. This happened sometime before the Cambrian Explosion, which I think is rather nicely described in Day 5.

Perhaps there's further dilation of time here and "year" actually means 1 tenth of a year.

I don't think so. There are conceivable explanations. I admit none can be proven (nor disproven), but speculations as to how it could have worked. First, all humans were said to have been vegetarians in the beginning. This would allow one to be healthier if they had lived hundreds of years. Second, there may have been less cosmic radiation early on (one or more supernovae have occurred since man came to earth). But what I think had to have happened is that God modified human telemeres, which essentially limit our lifespan. Yes, the God I believe in is plenty capable of that, and the Bible says that God ordained our days to be no more than 120. A divine manipulation of telemeres seems to fit the bill here. Also note that other ancient cultures have legends of kings living 1000 years. This is not unique to the Bible.

That, and the fact that the story has the entire human race originating with a single couple.

I think again I have to appeal to manipulation by God. Note that at the Tower of Babel God is said to have confused languages. It seems reasonable to me that He would have changed a few genes in the process.

I realize this isn't acceptable to a methodological naturalist. It certainly isn't falsifiable nor provable. To me there are a lot of other factors that make belief in the God of the Bible reasonable, and that belief causes me to accept Genesis.

Round it all off with an impossible flood of the world

I believe the Flood was geographically local, but it covered all the areas where humans were living at the time. I think I can even prove that from the Bible itself, which drives young earth fundies nuts. :)

Re:Two words

[Rimbo]

The simple way is to look at the Bible for what it is: A collection of writings by different human beings at different points of time who all had different views of the world. That pretty much covers all of the conflicts. It does, however, require you to use your brain from time to time.

Hi! I'm a Christian, and I'd like to introduce you to a version of Christianity you might not have known existed: The kind that believes that if facts conflict with dogma, then facts win.

Rant follows:

There's an interesting history to Fundamentalism, and it (and the history of the Bible) is well-covered in the phenomenal book Whose Bible Is It? [amazon.com]. But the short version is that at some point, along with all of the Scientific knowledge that was challenging a lot of how we understood how the world works, a lot of Biblical scholarship occurred since the Enlightenment that was challenging to some standard dogmas. For example, the original Hebrew prophecy of the Messiah spoke of a "young girl," which in the Greek Septuagint -- which was the most popular "Bible" back when the New Testament was being written -- translated into a word meaning "virgin." Well, this eventually snowballed into the Immaculate Conception, but starting from the 1700s or so Christians started to recognize that what really happened was that young teenage Mary got herself knocked up.

As people began to recognize these sorts of things, obviously there was some resistance from those who felt that commonly-held and well-treasured dogmas that had been held for nearly 15 centuries really weren't up for debate, and sometime in the early 20th century these "not up for debate" dogmas were published as pamphlets titled, "The Fundamentals." (From which we get the name, "Fundamentalism.")

Now the key thing to note about this is that this didn't begin as a war between Science and Religion. It started out as a conflict within Religion itself. And it's notable that the Fundamentalists were taking the view that tradition trumped whatever the Bible actually originally said, that mistranslations and misunderstandings of what was in the book that had become traditional -- such as Young Earth Creationism -- were really more important than what had actually been written. You'll note that this is a very different thing from believing in a "literal" interpretation of the Bible.

Well, what's happened is that the Fundamentalists won the war. There are some good churches out there left, but generally the populations in those churches are elderly and dying off; in the rest of the churches, intellectuals are ostracized. Young Christians today know little more than a dumbed-down version of Christianity that's based on living through certain traditions, rather than a "way" or a "walk" to try and understand and learn about God; they think they know all they need to about God, and are ready to show the rest of the world just how it is. (Get off my lawn.)

And this is the Christianity that they now inflict on the rest of the world. It is not my Christianity, not the Christianity I grew up with. But even that good old church was taken over by the Fundamentalists shortly after I left for college. And that war is over.

Oh, as for Genesis 1? When you look at the text repeated in the verses, you see the same things over and over: "And God created... and said it was good." I think the point here is that God created the universe and everything in it, and called it "good." Note how the sun was not created until the 4th day -- so how could there have been an evening and morning? The "days" are just a poetic device, part of the oral tradition, a (very effective) memory trick used to help people remember the story during the many centuries the story existed but hadn't yet been written.

(But if you are one of those Christians who needs the Bible to say something before you believe it, just take a peek at Psalm 90:4; given that Genesis is "The Fir

Re:Two words

[johnlcallaway]

Or take a real look at your faith and realize that the natural world around doesn't need a god to exist if one simply agrees that there are somethings that just can't be explained yet, there is no soul, your life has no purpose except to breed (and what you want to make of it), and everything dies.

Then you have nothing to reconcile, and life becomes a lot simplier. If that scares you, work on reconciling that.

Plus, you'll be able to sleep in on Sundays for a change and not have to give part of your income to something that sucks the life out of society and produces nations of sheep.

Christians sure do work hard to believe in something that doesn't exist, when it's a lot less work to just live your life like you are doing now without all that crap.

Re:Two words

[barius]

I'm an atheist, but I do have to take issue with the following comment:

Plus, you'll be able to sleep in on Sundays for a change and not have to give part of your income to something that sucks the life out of society and produces nations of sheep.

Even as an atheist I still volunteer to help at the local Presbyterian church. Why? Because the church provides community services that are not offered anywhere else. The church where I volunteer provides baby-sitting, computer education classes, yard-sales, book readings, community meeting space, discussion groups, and much more. There are so many good things that church groups do that I find it foolish and irrational that so many Atheists automatically discount the very real and tangible benefits of their presence.

I suggest you at least try to respect the good things done by your local church, even if you disagree with the beliefs. It wouldn't hurt to show them up a bit and actually leave your computer for a few hours a week to join a local charity or community group either.

Re:Two words

[Half a dent]

there is no soul

Sure there is and James Brown is its Godfather!

Re:Two words

[Anonymous Coward]

"just as I can't prove that God *does* exists, so you cannot prove that God *doesn't*" Do you have any idea how that comment has made you look? Lets see here... The Tooth Fairy exists because you cant prove that the tooth fairy doesnt exist The Jaberwocky exists because you cannot prove that it doesnt exist Santa exists because you cant prove that he doesnt exist... shall i continue?

Souls

[ttfkam]

If a soul exists, when does it come into being? At conception, formation of a brain, or...?

The reason I ask is because if it's at the formation of a brain, that would imply that the "meat" has importance independent of some immaterial artifact.

If it's at conception, what about identical twins where the zygote splits in two? Does the soul split in two as well? If what about when two young embryos (fraternal twins) merge to make a single embryo, a chimera? Do the two souls merge or does one simply go away?

If you look at the natural world in and of itself, these questions don't need to be asked. Zygotes sometimes split and young embryos sometimes merge. Done.

If however you fixate on the lessons of the Bible, you are stuck with an awkward sort of soul arithmetic; one soul divided by two equals two souls (or one half a soul), and one soul plus one soul equals one soul (or two souls in one body).

Citing Occam's Razor, which is more likely? That one zygote into two is simply that or that an immaterial and unproven concept known as a soul inhabits each of us and must under a special arithmetic to follow natural processes?

Re:Souls

[TheNucleon]

Citing Occam's Razor implies that Occam's Razor is an axiom.

No matter how you slice it, everyone I've met ascribes value and meaning to human life. Why is this, if we are all just destined to die anyhow, and be dust, and our heirs to be wiped out by the heat death of the universe? Does that picture look stark just because we are frightened, or because our intuition tells us otherwise? We are sentient and curious beings who have the audacity to ask not just how to live, but why. I don't find it remarkably persuasive that all this happened as a result of some quintillion random quarks that conveniently arranged themselves just so I could enjoy my life. Given the depth of philosophical inquiry, the mystery of dreams, the allure of art and music, the love of family, the beauty of nature, and the wonder we feel at our lives, I don't think I'm going with William of Ockham on this one. The most simple solution may not, in fact, be the best. I have thought about this a lot, and I believe I have a soul.

Re:Souls

[ttfkam]

And many people have thought a lot about it and think their children are the smartest, most beautiful creatures ever to grace this planet.

Thinking and believing do not make a thing so. That's why we make observations, make predictions based upon those observations, and then have others independently verify those predictions.

Humans are faulty. We need help with objectivity. That's what the Scientific Method does; it helps us to be more objective.

Belief is not objective nor is it always right.

Re:Two words

[pugugly]

There is the rather ruthless approach as well.

If you genuinely believe God will cure your son's pneumonia, and I genuinely believe a doctor will cure my daughters pneumonia, then only the survivors of our respective decisions will go on to reproduce.

As it happens, Pneumonia has a significantly lower mortality when treated than untreated.

Education is only the answer if you genuinely *like* those people. Alternatively, you can simply allow those that believe in science to reap the awards of science. Personally, I'm all for banning creationists from any technology *not* specifically mentioned as a good thing in the Bible.

Pug

Re:Two words

[Sancho]

If I'm a godist, I might believe that God cures all ills, and never take my pneumonia-ridden son to the hospital. Bummer for my son but it was God's choice if he died.

And your son won't grow up to pass those beliefs on to his children.

The answer to ignorance of science or ignorance of faith is always going to be education - school, word of mouth, whatever. We need to talk it out, show why science is useful, and why the community of religion and other aspects can also be useful, and why either can be detrimental (sure the A-bomb was neat, but geez...).

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I just don't see this working on most creationists. Or hell, most religious people (stem-cell research is a great example of a scientific area which doesn't conflict with religion in any way, shape, or form, but which many religious people still protest.)

Re:Two words

[im_thatoneguy]

But let's sweep those under the rug in favour of pointing out what a hypothetical group of people (who you invented) might do their hypothetical children (who you also invented).

I think members of The Church of Christ, Scientist might be offended by being called imaginary.

Re:Two words

[Verteiron]

Actually, that's not hypothetical. That's a group called the Christian Scientists (irony abounds), and that is exactly what they do their children.

Fortunately they're a relatively small group. And if they keep doing as their belief tells them, they'll get smaller still.

Re:Two words

[Idiomatick]

ahh evolution at work. I wish it were faster though.

My Grandparents were Christian Scientists

[RexDevious]

Ya gotta be pretty smart to live through being raised by them. Fortunately my mum was - hence me being here.

Funny story - although Grandpa walked around with club feet his whole life (praying that condition away apparently takes a very long time); something did happen that finally convinced them to see a doctor. My uncle (who was about 15 at the time) went from being irrational, to disturbed, to homicidal. I guess when you've got a homicidal 15 year old male in the house, and you can't out run him because your "please fix my damn club feet" prayer hasn't kicked in yet - self-interest makes you do crazy things - like call the nice men in the white coats. But as with many things, if you wait until something is life threating before changing your approach - it's usually a bit too late. No, he didn't kill my grandparents or anything - he got the typical "locked up and shocked up" treatment most people in his condition got back in the '50s. I don't know if Granpa asked if he was also too late to get his feet fixed, or just kinda figured it out on his own. The whole experience did cure them of their religion though.

Again, a bit late. The story losses it's "funny" status around the time my uncle escaped from the hospital. He burned down a block of flats for some reason, then later beat an old lady to death with a skillet because he thought she was trying to kill his children (he didn't actually have any children). Later he escaped from prison and showed up at my house with 2 other convicts, and car full of guns (no easy trick in England). My mum set them up and got them caught with no harm done to us (told ya she was smart).

So, to get back to the "Christian Scientists only hurt themselves" question - no, they don't. They can get other people killed at the same time. My uncle could have just as easily been afflicted with typhoid and sent off to school with nothing but prayer just as easily as he was sent into society with severe mental illness (which may or may not have been the result of some other untreated medical condition).

No one likes to take away something that makes people happy (like faith) - but until people take responsibility for their actions, it's the burden of others to deal with the mess. I think it's OK to argue that people should take responsibility for their actions - even if there's no way of doing it that won't offend them.

And while I don't want to see religious discrimination anymore than anyone else here does - I recognize that there's a world of difference between *offending* someone and discriminating or persecuting them. It's OK, when necessary, to offend.

Re:Two words

[Metasquares]

On the other hand, evolutionary biology, when misapplied to the social (pretend) sciences, produced a whole range of crimes against humanity whose shock waves have turned the Western mind inside out.

That is not the fault of the evolutionary biologists, but those who applied the theories in all sorts of inhuman ways. Since we're already skirting around Godwin's Law anyway, I'll just out and say it: Neither Darwin nor Nietzsche were responsible for Hitler's actions; Hitler was responsible for Hitler's actions.

To use a more contemporary analogy, if I teach someone how to drive a car and he uses that knowledge to deliberately run people over, it isn't my fault; it's his.

(And who cares whether social sciences are truly sciences? They provide us with useful tools, and that is sufficient for me to respect them as areas of study. Computer Science isn't really a "proper" science either, and yet here you are on the Internet...)

Re:Two words

[ignavus]

One would have thought that Stalin was the more obvious reference here than Hitler. He had more people killed, and (mis)ruled for a longer time, and was more obviously opposed to religious belief and more obviously pro-evolution.

I could even imagine Hitler supporting creationism provided it was a blond Nordic Adam that was created in the Garden of Eden. And belief in God would be fine if his name was Woden or Thor. Stalin's Communism was strictly atheistic and pro-science (even if it was sometimes junk science, like Lysenko).

Soviet Communism was based on some kind of scientific rationalism. Nazism was based on crude nationalistic sentiment (irrationalism). Both were quite content to destroy millions of lives in pursuit of their respective ideals. But Stalin was more "efficient", or at least more successful in holding onto power and killing more people.

Hilter was the amateur. Stalin was the professional. But when you are looking from the West, you see Hitler first.

Re:Two words

[RsG]

Stalin supporting evolution? Oh boy, were you misled. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that whoever told you of the views on evolution in the USSR under Stalin was a creationist, who wanted to villify evolution.

I suggest reading up on Lysenkoism and the effect it had on science in the Soviet Union:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism [wikipedia.org]

(You'll probably want to look beyond wikipedia for the in-depth story, but it's a place to start.)

Stalin was strongly anti-religious, but he was equally anti-evolutionary. Neither fit well with the beliefs of communism, and while Stalin probably wasn't an idealist, he needed his citizens to buy into a certain worldview. The notion of heredity doesn't gel well with the notion that all humans can be molded to the communist ideal.

Lysenko's "science" was basically Lamarckism revisited in such a way as better fit communism. Genetics and evolutionary biology were labeled "bourgeois science". Actual evidence-based research was written off in favor of what the people in power would rather believe. Sound familiar?

The parallels between Lysenkoism and Creationism (or Intelligent Design, to use the newspeak name for it) are striking. Both were proposed as alternatives to evolution by those who didn't want to have their worldview challenged by science, both were labeled and taught as science (despite failing to meet the scientific criteria), both had the vocal support of people in high places. The underlying "religion" was different - Lysenkoism was rooted in the quasi-religious views of Marxist-Leninism - but beyond that, they're the same story told in radically different countries.

The major difference is scale - evolutionary biology was all but outlawed in the USSR under Stalin, whereas it has not been similarly repressed in the USA. That can be chalked up to the fact that the US doesn't have, and has never had, a party or ruler with that kind of unchecked authority.

This little adventure into pseudoscience crippled Soviet biology for years to come. It can be argued that Russia still hasn't caught up to the rest of the world. An object lesson in why it is important to leave science to scientists, and keep faith, however deeply held, separate.

Re:Two words

[10Ghz]

The reason why Stalin and the commies were "atheists" was because they saw the Orthodox Church as a potential adversary to their rule. After all, the church was quite close to the Tsar, and deep down, Russians were a religious people. And if their religious leader had told them that their political leaders are godless heathens, things could have gotten ugly for the commies. But when Germany invaded USSR, Staling went to a mass and prayed.

Re:Two words

[snkline]

Hypothetical people? Hypothetical children?

Ahem Faith in Prayer Kills Children [livescience.com]

Re:Two words

[CrimsonAvenger]

Perhaps it should be revised to:

People can believe what they want to believe so long as they don't believe it strongly.

Better yet, it seems that most people (on both sides of any debate) hold with:

People can believe what they want to believe so long as they believe what I believe.

Terrible argument

[Woundweavr]

First, the unlikely happens. If I flip a coin 1,000,000 times, the odds of that exact sequence of results is astronomically small (1/2^1,000,000). If something happened against the odds, that isn't magic its happenstance.

Second, this argument is terrible.

The article is a good read. It basically covers how incredibly narrow the limits are concerning the laws of nature. If any one of them was just an astronomically small amount different, then the Universe would not exist as we know it, and certainly life would not form. Which leads your budding C/ID believer to ask, "what are the odds of this happening by chance?"

Why would life not form? Because the laws of nature say so? But we just established the laws of nature are not the same in this alternate universe. Its a variation on the first fallacy. "Life" has the characteristics of this universe because it exists in this universe. If there was another set of rules, life might be much more likely, much less likely, extremely different or very similar.

Re:Terrible argument

[Tablizer]

Why would life not form? Because the laws of nature say so? But we just established the laws of nature are not the same in this alternate universe. Its a variation on the first fallacy. "Life" has the characteristics of this universe because it exists in this universe. If there was another set of rules, life might be much more likely, much less likely, extremely different or very similar.

The problem is that most variations produce "bland" universes where a single force tends to dominate, wiping out variation in structure. Life as we know it lives and forms best on boundaries between different matter types and energy differentials. Our universal constants seem to produce more of these than most the other possible variations. There may be variations where "interesting" universes exist, but they are relatively rare combinations according to the models. Is it just a coincident that we are in a "boundary and variety abundant" universe when most combos are not?

It sort of reminds me of those Java applets where you tweak constants to produce pretty patterns. Most combinations are not very interesting because they tend to over-do or under-do one thing or another such that it dominates everything, creating something too uniform or too random: muck. The nice combos are the lucky "sweet spots".

The anthropic principle against a field of multiple universes seems like the best explanation for the "fine tuned constants" to me.
     

Re:Two words

[hobbit]

Of course "the Universe would not exist as we know it". After all, we are the ones doing the knowing of it. If the constants were different, others would have to be the ones doing the knowing of it. Maybe that knowledge would not be borne by creatures of carbon and water, but to say "life would not form"? That's just an extension of the anthropomorphism we have come to expect from religious grandeur-delusional thinking.

Re:Two words

[Drakonik]

But the quoted text assumes that ALL life MUST be carbon-based with four base DNA proteins that process oxygen and so on.

The problem with the "Everything is so perfect for life that a supreme being did it on purpose" argument is that it makes the assumption that life cannot exist in any form but ours.

Re:Two words

[MightyMartian]

Regardless of any other premise, why should I accept your authority that God exists and Jesus is real?

Re:Two words

[nsayer]

why should I accept your authority that God exists and Jesus is real?

I have nothing for the former, but as to the latter, it's pretty well established [wikipedia.org] that Jesus was a real, historical figure.

Perhaps that's not what you meant in your question, but then that simply means you should have worded the question better.

Re:Two words

[MightyMartian]

I'm willing to concede that there was likely a historical Jesus. But so what? There's more evidence for Mohammed and Joseph Smith, but their mere existence nor their claims or the claims of those who claimed to know them (or claimed to know people who knew them) would convince me that any of these individuals were linked in some way to the Divine.

Re:Two words

[ArcherB]

I'm willing to concede that there was likely a historical Jesus. But so what? There's more evidence for Mohammed and Joseph Smith, but their mere existence nor their claims or the claims of those who claimed to know them (or claimed to know people who knew them) would convince me that any of these individuals were linked in some way to the Divine.

Of course Jesus is real and Divine. Just read your sig. How could Jesus have died approximately 2000 years ago AND be seen on a Moped on I-50 without some Divinity thrown in?

Re:Two words

[John Whitley]

How could Jesus have died approximately 2000 years ago AND be seen on a Moped on I-50 without some Divinity thrown in?

Photoshop?

Re:Two words

[element-o.p.]

IIRC, that's kind of the reasoning C.S. Lewis used to arrive at the conclusion that Jesus was who he said he was: if Jesus was legit, then end of story. If Jesus was not legit then he must have been insane to preach what he preached and challenge not just the Roman garrison in Israel, but also the Jewish priesthood in Israel.

Generally, if you are going to pick a fight with someone, you don't go out of your way to piss off both your mark and your potential backers <grin>

Lewis, however, could find no evidence -- other than Jesus' apparent disregard for the opinions of those in power -- that Jesus was insane, and therefore, Lewis concluded, Jesus had to be legit. I'm not satisfied that this is an entirely compelling argument, but I thought it was rather interesting, nonetheless.

Re:Two words

[db32]

I think you are right to a degree. I have read some of his stuff but quickly became irritated with him. His tone quickly became anyone who doesn't believe is stupid and they believe in nonsense. He made a large number of assertions that morality can only exist because of God, but he relies on a terribly flawed model to make his proof. He ignores the fact that humans by nature are herd/community animals and not loners. Humans tend to go quite insane without other humans around.

The greatest irony for me is that Jesus was VERY vocal about the whole Pharisee approach to the religion. He advocated the "love thy neighbor" and everything else falls into place naturally approach rather than the Pharisees and their "you must follow this monsterous list of rules and rituals" approach. Interestingly enough he also talks about how many of you will have claimed to know me and I will say I have never known you, get away from me. Even from the getgo he predicted that a large number of his "followers" would fall right back into that rules and rituals approach over kindness and compassion. He was ridiculed for spending so much time with the various sinners of his time and his answer was "A healthy man has no need for a doctor." What is preached today in the name of Christianity is almost identical to the very same religious structure that Jesus fought against.

Dunno about the whole religious aspect of it all, but I think Jesus himself seems to be a pretty good example of how humans should behave. Which is why I think Jesus as a man is more impressive than Jesus as a divine instrument. As a man it means we should all be able to emulate that behavior. As a divine figure it gives the copout crap about how "he died for our sins, all you have to do is accept that".

Either way my two most favorite things to mess with the overly religious is walking past them as the pass out their bibles, preach on the corner, or pray in public(all of which was specifically advised AGAINST by Jesus "pray alone in your room for when noone else can hear you pray God does") and saying "Jesus was such a jew" and watching them get up in arms because they are so ignorant of their own faith. The other fun one is a similar exploit, when asked some variant of "Do you accept Jesus?!" I answer something to the effect of "I follow the teachings of Yeshua" and laugh as they blather on about how I must accept Jesus instead.

Re:Two words

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

> it's pretty well established that Jesus was a real, historical figure.

That certainly isn't the case. The evidence for a historical Jesus is very scant, far less than the amount of evidence for the existence of Julius Caesar and Alexander say, and the majority proponents of the existence of a historical Jesus who are described as Biblical scholars are, by and large, religious believers seeking to justify their faith. While we still need to take seriously and reply to the arguments of religious believers, the number of scholars who claim the historicity of Jesus has been swelled by the number of religious believers in their ranks. The term "pretty well established" is a a claim based on counting such numbers.

Re:Two words

[Hatta]

The historicity of Jesus is hardly well established. It might be well agreed upon by scholars who make their living studying jesus, but that's entirely different. We have absolutely no first hand accounts of Jesus. All of the gospels, as well as the text by Josephus everyone seems to like were written well after Jesus' alleged death. We have no artifacts, no surviving papers (and the romans loved their bureaucracy). If you look into it, we have about as much evidence for Jesus as we do for Hercules.

Which isn't to say Jesus didn't exist. There's also about as much evidence for Alexander the Great as there is for Jesus. Hell, even the existence of Troy was thought to be a myth until it was discovered a few decades ago. My point is history is damn hard, and nothing is well established until there's archaeological evidence.

Personally, I do rather doubt the historical Jesus. The whole thing REEKS of myth.

Re:Two words

[morgan_greywolf]

I know that God exists, Jesus is real.

If no one ever told you God exists, how would you know?

Re:Two words

[Opportunist]

Out of necessity.

Humans are pack animals. We work well in groups of 10, maybe 20 individuals. Anything beyond that isn't in our genes. You cannot easily make more than 20 people work together on a given project. And even those 20 people have to have something in common, most commonly their genes. It is likely that the first "packs" of humans were actually what we'd now call "extended family". Cousins, brothers, sisters and their mates.

If you want to create larger groups, you have to create a reason why they don't go to each other's throat to increase their own pack's strength. It gets worse as soon as a division of work (and the difference in status that comes along with it) sets in, which is another necessity for an efficient group. There's no use when you have 100 farmers but nobody to build you a new plough. And if everyone can do everything, nobody can do anything really well.

With the agricultural revolution you run into a new problem: You need to know when to sow and when to reap. You need an astronomer (the reason why astronomy is one of the oldest sciences). Now try to explain to your people why they should feed someone who doesn't do anything but look at the stars.

All those problems can be solved with religion. Religion is a tool to create order, to make people work together and to keep large groups of people from fighting each other for resources. Every single religion (at least the successful ones) made it an important point that God (or whoever) doesn't like it when you kill your fellow man or steal from him. And since they had no surveillance cams back then, God was usually allmighty, omnipresent and omniscient, so you could rest assured that you'll get your punishment, if not in life then in death.

Check any religion. All of them contain such or similar parts.

You're doing it backwards

[bberens]

I don't think the question should be "How does evolution fit within my God hypothesis?" I think the question should be, "What conclusion does my evolutionary data support?" The answer to that question may lead you to create a God hypothesis, which you would then invariably need to test more directly. However, looking at the situation from the perspective you described is like trying to decipher the revolution of the stars and planets about the Earth, because the Earth is in the center of the universe.

Re:Young earth creationists believe in evolution..

[pluther]

There is no difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution" - except to people with agends, and those who don't know what they're talking about.

Since we haven't had a good car analogy in this thread yet:

Microevolution would be if you drive your car across town. This has been proven so many times that by now everyone accepts it as true.

Macroevolution would be if you could drive your car all the way to another country. This is, as everyone in America knows, impossible.

Come to think of it, this analogy could help explain why they hardly ever have these kinds of debates in Europe, too...

Re:Two words

[NMerriam]

Wake me up when puppies start having kittens.

Indeed, such an event would completely disprove evolution, and should be noted. Such an event would be a miracle outside of biology, not macroevolution.

amusing

[fish_in_the_c]

I often find it amazing how people are stereotyped. Not all people who believe God is responsible for creation of the universe have a problem with evolutionary theory. Roman Catholics believe God is responsible for everything. Including random chance ( which everyone knows is seldom all the random.)

So assuming all science were in and we could prove from end to end the entire evolution of the human species , you would have made no progress in proving or disproving either the existence of God or weather or not He was ultimately responsible for the creation of human beings.

The only group that holds 'evolution can't happen because the bible says' is a very small minority of Christians. Specifically biblical literalists.

Evolution also poses no particular threat to Hindu or Buddhist belief system.

Re:

[Strilanc]

It's becoming more commonplace for "creationist" to by default mean "young earth creationist", and that is what the GP was most likely referring to (definitely seems that way based on the context).

Strictly speaking, you're correct because "God created the universe" and "the theory of evolution is true" can both be true.

Re:

[NMerriam]

I often find it amazing how people are stereotyped. Not all people who believe God is responsible for creation of the universe have a problem with evolutionary theory

Nor are such people called Creationists, so I'm not sure why you think they're being stereotyped in the message you're responding to. Creationists believe God created life (or at least Man) from whole cloth. Believing in Guided Evolution (which is what Catholics and many/most contemporary Protestants believe) isn't remotely controversial exce

Re:amusing

[Tebriel]

Roman Catholics believe God is responsible for everything. Including random chance ( which everyone knows is seldom all the random.)

I am a Roman Catholic and that's not true. There's no doctrine stating that God controls every single thing in the universe and there never will be. While you can safely say that God is the ultimate cause of all creation, there's nothing that theologically indicates that God actively controls everything. That's not to say that He couldn't influence anything, but He's certainly not guiding every single atom at every time. He created perfectly good laws of nature to do that for Him.

Re:amusing

[Hatta]

He's certainly not guiding every single atom at every time. He created perfectly good laws of nature to do that for Him.

What's the difference?

Re:

[ElizabethGreene]

Obligatory link to xkcd.com here [xkcd.com].

Let me be the first to say...

[MightyYar]

It's a miracle!

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[zach_d]

It's clear evidence of a noodley appendage!

Re:Let me be the first to say...

[Spy der Mann]

It's a miracle!

Hmmm that doesn't sound right. Let's see...

It's alive, Igor! It's ALIVE!

There. Much better.

Remember...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"One in a billion odds" means very, very different things for bacteria than it does for humans.

Re:Remember...

[oldspewey]

Hell, even for humans it means ~6.7

Re:Remember...

[Wandering Wombat]

To bacteria, that means "It'll happen eight times before Thursday."

I can't wait for God's press release on this one.

Re:Remember...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

I can't wait for God's press release on this one.

Blah-blah-blah revolutionary E. Coli version 2.0 blah-blah-blah flexibly interoperate blah-blah-blah leverage synergies blah-blah-blah best-of-breed blah-blah-blah exciting new environmental opportunities blah-blah-blah...

Quote from article:

[Izabael_DaJinn]

"In the meantime, the experiment stands as proof that evolution does not always lead to the best possible outcome."

Wasn't that already proven with the rise of homo sapiens?

Never Be Enough

[dontPanik]

Too bad this evidence still won't be enough to make creationists change their minds.

Re:Never Be Enough

[spun]

Of course not, because nothing can refute creationism. That's the precise reason it isn't a scientific theory at all. It can't be falsified. There is simply no way to disprove the hypothesis that an all powerful being willed it to happen that way.

Re:Never Be Enough

[vtscott]

Unfortunately, like any article that mentions evolution or something that happened in the universe over 6000 years ago, this has turned into a flamewar against creationists and Christians. However, this article is actually news if you are looking for more than just something to throw in the face of people who don't believe in evolution. The reason this is really interesting is that these scientists can go back through the generations of bacteria they stored and pinpoint exactly where the bacteria started to evolve this new trait and how it came about. This will be kind of like stepping through code in a debugger vs. just giving it some input and seeing what the output is. We will actually get to see step by step how a very useful trait evolved uniquely in one population.

Re:Never Be Enough

[Spy der Mann]

Science explains HOW, not WHY. Imagine a little child.

- Daddy why do things fall down?
- Because they're attracted to earth.
- Why?
- Because the law discovered by newton states... blablablah, 9.8m/s^2, blablablah
- Why?
- Because the law of universal gravitation... blablablah... equation... blah...
- Why?
- According to quantum physics and Einstein's relativity theory, the curvature in the space-time continuum... blablablablabla...
- Why?

The why's never end. Science try to explain HOW things work. But why they work that way, it's a problem impossible to solve - we'd need a way to measure them that is superior to the things being explained. In other words, we'd need a power greater than the whole universe to explain WHY.

Ah, but HOW... that's a very different thing.

Or alternately...

[Anonymous Coward]

God performs miracle of transformation on bacteria right before the eyes of watching scientists, yet they still refuse to believe in Him.

Okay... I was just saying :(

This is why ...

[oldspewey]

This is why doctors ask people to finish the entire bottle when prescribing antibiotics. This is also why we should ban antibacterial hand soaps for domestic use - because when you bathe a population of microbes in something for millions of generations, the odds are that eventually a spontaneous mutation will occur.

All the anal-retentive clean freaks will just have to figure out how to live with the notion that they - like everyone else - carry microbes on their skin.

Re:This is why ...

[slashname3]

I always figured this would be how we kill ourselves off. Over use of antibacterial soaps and cleaners in homes. At some point in the next few decades we will have an outbreak of a supper bug that can not be defeated with any antibiotics that are available. As more and more people die off civilization collapses.

Of course the good news is that we can then ride around in big honking SUVs made of all kinds of different parts searching for gas and shooting arrows at each other. I wonder where we will get the hair dye for the mohawks that will be in fashion at that time or the leather for the jackets and straps?

Re:

[rho]

At some point in the next few decades we will have an outbreak of a supper bug that can not be defeated

I for one...

Re:This is why ...

[eln]

I, for one, prefer to regard everything on the planet as being covered in a thin fecal veneer.

While I, being a more proactive sort, prefer to spend my days covering everything on the planet in a thin fecal veneer. It's nice to know someone has finally noticed my work.

Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[tiedyejeremy]

Keep it up and it won't be a "just" a theory any more! I'm so sick of my neighbor saying "evolution is just a theory" with a scornful attitude that implies evolution is a whimsical idea kids will have and common sense will later dispel.

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[zach_d]

You could counter your neighbour with "gravity is 'just a theory'" as well.

Re:

[Sponge Bath]

Or: "It may be a theory, but your religion isn't even that."

Re:Keep it up and it won't be a "theory"

[samkass]

No, it'll still just be a theory. A theory that happens to match reality with a large pile of evidence behind it. But in science, there's really no such thing as a "fact", simply theories with greater levels of evidence supporting them.

Gravity is just a theory. The Sun-centered solar system is just a theory. Radio waves are just a theory.

Re:

[Krinsath]

Actually, it will someday be "not a theory" I refer you to the example above of gravity. Newton proposed the Theory of Gravity, which has since been tested, observed, and (more or less) universally accepted as true by the scientific community. Hence it is currently the Law of Gravity. You also have the Laws of Thermodynamics from Sir Issac which have similarly been observed, tested and validated over the centuries.

When a theory is proved to be cogent, and repeatedly true in empirical testing over a long p

Re:

[Sciros]

Well, "evolutionary theory" (which includes natural selection) is in the scientific sense, a theory. In the colloquial sense, that translates to "fact." The colloquial sense of "theory" does not apply to the theory of natural selection any more than it applies to gravity, indeed.

I think that rather than defending the strength of the word "theory," we need to recognize that there is indeed more than one sense to the word, and creationists like to use the "weaker" sense when referring to evolutionary theory,

Ha! This is just how God test his flock.

[viking80]

Ha! God let the devil do this so he can test who are the real faithful, and who are the unfaithful to be smitten.

Re:

[seanonymous]

Without the smitten, it would be hard for a species to evolve.

Nylon Bug

[Camel Pilot]

It's the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait

Didn't the nylon eating bacteria already demonstrate that a complex trait can arise in short order? Actually I think it was industrial waste products from the nylon manufacturing process but still the same.

Grow up.

[bigstrat2003]

For fuck's sake people, grow up. Can't we discuss a cool scientific discovery without dragging religion-bashing into it? If this changes their minds, it will do so without our mockery. If it doesn't change their minds, it will do so without our mockery. In the meantime, we will have wasted our time, and ceded any moral high ground, by lowering ourselves to the level of 5-year-old "ha ha told you so ha ha ha!" nonsense.

Anyway, it's an interesting find, but I wonder, why did they not wait until they finished their investigation of the event? It says that they're still figuring out if the change was a random, incredibly rare mutation, or the result of many small changes. Why not wait until you get the whole story to announce your discovery?

Re:Grow up.

[Jzanu]

Funding. Science is expensive.

Re:Grow up.

[Abcd1234]

You're technically correct, but that doesn't make the action acceptable.

I couldn't disagree more. See, these creationist believers are fighting tooth and nail to get their ideas included in school curriculae, etc, in order to make themselves appear legitimate. They're feeding on, and also fostering, rampant anti-intellectualism, particularly in the United States, and historically, people have just sat back and let it happen. "It's their right to believe what they want", they'd say. "Gotta respect their beliefs!"

Luckily, scientists and the educated public have finally started to realize that they can't just sit back and let the anti-intellectuals foster an environment of anti-science. They *must* be challenged. And so, when stories like this come up, you can damn well be sure that those fighting on the side of science will hold up those results and say, "See, we were right!". Otherwise, the anti-intellectuals will continue to dominate the debate, by virtue of simply yelling louder, and things will never improve.

Important result. Read the article.

[Animats]

This is an important result, and it's going to be more important when the mechanism by which it happened is figured out. Read the article.

The great thing here is that the researcher made a backup every 500 generations of bacteria, by freezing samples. So it's possible to go back and make this happen again and again, which has bee done. Then it's possible to find out exactly when it happened, and eventually decode the DNA before and after the evolutionary jump. This should produce some real insight into the underlying mechanism. We're a step closer to figuring out how evolution really works.

What kept them?

[hcdejong]

The interesting thing will be: why were e.Coli never able to metabolise citrate? Has new code been added to allow for citrate metabolisation, or was the mutation much smaller, maybe removing a blockage from existing but dormant code?

The press release is fascinating and infuriatingly incomplete at the same time.

Wrinkly spreaders

[Michael Woodhams]

This isn't the first time we've seen evolution in the lab. Andrew Spiers has been doing it for years - e.g.
here (2003) [blackwell-synergy.com] or more recently here [plosone.org].

Basically Spiers grows bacteria in an unstired beaker. As the limiting resource for growth (nitrogen? Oxygen? I forget) is most available at the top of the beaker, it soon evolves a mutation which allows the bacteria to stick together and form a mat at the top ("wrinkly spreader"). Then somewhat later the mat collapses as freeloaders have evolved and come to dominate the population.

Spiers' experiment is highly predictable - the populations always go through the same phases, but different colonies turn out to have used different mutations to get there. This differs significantly from the research here, where it appears a low probability event has occured.

(Warning: the above is primarily based on my memory of a talk he gave several years ago. My memory is known to be lossy.)

Re:First!

[hostyle]

Turds often float to the surface even in the genetic pool.

Re:First!

[spun]

And getting first post on Slashdot improves your chances to reproduce how, exactly? No offense, but I think you may be an evolutionary dead end.

Re:First!

[Thyrteen]

For those of you who didn't RTFA, the new evolution which they claim occurred was the ability to metabolize citrate, a substance in the culture medium that e. coli were previously known to be unable to metabolize, and this occurred in one of twelve populations that were spawned from a single parent bacterium. I think it's pretty interesting :)

Re:First!

[iminplaya]

Actually it sucks. Now the lime won't kill the bacteria on the beer bottle.

Re:First!

[Jade E. 2]

Actually it sucks. Now the lime won't kill the bacteria on the beer bottle.

Yeah, you'll have to put something else in your beer to kill them. Alcohol, maybe.

Re:First!

[mako1138]

No, they're not random. The Flying Spaghetti Monster reached out with His Noodly Appendage and blessed the bacteria. Ramen.

Re:First!

[Timothy Brownawell]

Don't the researchers find it strange that of all the substances it could synthesize it chose one that was already there?

I doubt it.

Either the experiment is flawed or the bacteria have some sort o Lamarkian evolution mechanism working inside.

They probably did develop the ability to metabolize a number of other substances. And since none of those other substances were available, nobody noticed and the ability probably just randomly disappeared again a while later.

Re:First!

[UltraAyla]

Ok, I'll bite, given that this is the third post of yours that I've seen adamantly opposing this as proof of evolution.

Is it possible to discern that this "newly found" ability of these bacteria to thrive on a different nutrient was NOT already latent in the original ones they started with?

Yes, it is. First, RTFA, please. If you already did, I ask that you read it again with an open mind because I think you'll see that you missed something. You have continually asserted that maybe they always possessed this ability, but never expressed it until they needed to. However, in the experiment, somewhere around generation 20,000 is when this was enabled. Bacterial lines before generation 20,000 do not develop the gene, but lineages derived from that set do when "replayed." This, along with the fact that none of the other lines of bacteria show it under the same conditions (despite all originating in the same place) shows that this was not simply a case of a dormant gene becoming active. Only bacteria after a certain point in a certain genetic line were able to perform this function. That is adaptation and evolution since it outcompeted the other bacteria which lacked the trait.

Applying the word "evolution" to such adaptation doesn't justify the leap to claiming that birds came from reptiles or monkeys are the ancestors of people.

Sure it does. Give me one good reason why over the course of generations genes in monkeys couldn't slowly be mutated to stand upright and gain benefits from it. Remember, these bacteria took 35,000 generations to achieve this minor mutation. If we assume that the monkeys had 15 year generations (which I believe is quite long, maybe someone else can chime in who knows more on primate generational times), that is 500,000 years to make 35,000 generations for this beneficial mutation. Current science and anthropology think spines straightened over the course of millions of years, which means that it took even longer. It really is no leap. It just takes longer time scales and more generations than you seem to be able to comprehend (and most of us can't) at one time.

I think you ought to rethink your concept of "evolution" to mean more of the generation of random traits through mutation where beneficial results sometimes arise. Sometimes cancer or miscarriage results, and sometimes it's the difference between blue and brown eyes. But what you need to keep in mind is that all of these complex adaptations are not one single mutation. They are chained mutations that just happened to be beneficial with numerous, uncountable numbers of failures (eg:miscarriages and pre-reproductive deaths) over generational timescales. Your eyes didn't develop from one mutation. Nor did the lens in your eye or even the membrane on the lens. It is all the result of MANY mutations. That's why it's reasonable to make the "leap."

Re:Perplex and Confound?

[slashname3]

We are not bacteria! We are not bacteria! We are not monkeys! I mean we are not bacteria!

You can't even see a bacteria with your own eye, so this can't be real.

Re:NOOOOOOOOO!

[SatanicPuppy]

Not at all! They'll just say, "That's micro evolution. Evolve me a giraffe in a petri dish and I'll be impressed."

It's funny how they are completely non-skeptical when it comes to their book, and how intensely skeptical they are toward things like evolution.

Re:

[timster]

Well of course. It doesn't even require them to change their position. The whole "micro-evolution versus macro-evolution" argument has always been about accepting that 1+1=2 while denying that 1 * 1000000 = 1000000 because it "hasn't been observed and can never be observed". Now that somebody managed to get to a million, they'll claim we have to count up to a billion to prove anything. Same argument, different scale.

Re:NOOOOOOOOO!

[MightyMartian]

Just ask a Creationist if they've seen an electron. When they try to explain how we can tell they exist from how they influence things that we can directly observe, they've just admitted that inference/indirect observation are in fact useful ways of gathering knowledge. At that point, their whole "you can't see it happening" nonsense evaporates. They'll likely fall back on epistemological nihilism at that point, but since that position trashes their beliefs just as thoroughly as science, I always take that as a tacit admission on their part that they're argument is utterly fucked.

Re:

[Weaselmancer]

That's because God wrote their book, and faith is the exact opposite of skepticism.

In a way you have to admire people with faith. They want so badly to be good people that they're willing to even discount things their own eyes show them, because seeing these things would break their faith.

It's amazing, really.

That's why no argument can ever be enough. It would screw up their relationship with God. They're understandably grouchy when scientists come up with stuff like this. It requires another roun

Re:

[Strilanc]

Spontaneous generation is a type of abiogenesis, but abiogenesis is not spontaneous generation. Abiogenesis refers to any theory about how life arose from non-life. Lookup abiogenesis on wikipedia for more.

Re:energy?

[cashman73]

being said that they may evolve to feed on whats in abundance in their surroundings, could you feed them something that will make em' shit something out that will work in my gas tank?

Um, actually, that's been done. Yeast have been producing ethanol from sugar for how many years now? With very little modification, virtually none if you have a FFV, ethanol will work fine in your gas tank,... :-)

Re:Evolutionist

[Bombula]

Because in the incredibly sad state of affairs that is the US educational and political system, science - and with it the future of our nation - is genuinely threatened by religious lunacy and the moronic beliefs and ravings of dysfunctional schizoid-delusional sociopaths. Science IS modernity. That's all there is to it. The only thing we have that cultures didn't have 500, or 1000, or 2000 years ago, is science - and scientifically-derrived knowledge. We HAD religion. Only science has fostered new insights into the nature of reality. And as a result of those insights, we now have the modern world and the wonders of technology - from dentistry to antibiotics to cheap clothing to the internet and cell phones. Science gave us EVERYTHING that makes us different from the middle-eastern tribesman and shepherds of the 1st Century.

Scientists are preoccupied with Creationism because modern American Christianity has degenerated into a freakish, extremist cult that is substantively no different that Wahabism or Scientology - the only difference is that these people are in charge of our government. If that's not a threat you should be concerned about for the sake of your children grandchildren, then I don't know what is.