Do you believe that the theory of evolution has never been observed? That it is purely theoretical and has never been, can never be, demonstrated in the laboratory?
Well, it appears that this ICR and AIG favorite is no longer a sustainable argument:
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.
Twenty years ago, evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski of Michigan State University in East Lansing, US, took a single Escherichia coli bacterium and used its descendants to found 12 laboratory populations.
The 12 have been growing ever since, gradually accumulating mutations and evolving for more than 44,000 generations, while Lenski watches what happens.
This population of E. coli was observed to evolve a new trait known as Cit+, the ability to metabolize citrate. What’s really interesting is that the inability to metabolize citrate has previously been one of the distinguishing features of E. coli. This is more remarkable than it may seem on the surface. How so?
Just think - it only took twenty years for this population to evolve this ability. What say we give it another hundred years? Remember, we’ve spent the last hundred and seventy years or so developing the kind of procedures that would allow for this type of accurate scientific observation and analysis, and only the last third of that did we really know what to look for. Who knows what other significant changes might happen in the next hundred and seventy years? Or the next? My point is that we have observed one species-defining characteristic change; a couple more, and we might be able to demonstrate in the laboratory the illegitimacy of that other great special creationist claim that “kind begets like kind”, where only infraspecific evolution (”microevolution”) is allowed as a possibility. Of course, if that happened, the special creationist opponents of interspecific evolution would claim that there was no such thing as intergeneric (from one genus to another) evolution [which, I have been reminded, is the more common special creationist argument].
Now don’t get me wrong - this is not the first example of observed evolutionary processes. What’s remarkable about this particular one is the complexity of the change: the Cit+ feature is apparently not a simple one, as other populations have not been observed to reproduce it. But be honest: it’s harder than ever to argue that there has been no demonstration of the possibility of evolutionary change as predicted by evolutionary theory. And while this doesn’t prove common descent from single-celled organisms, it is definitely a feather in the cap of the theory that predicts common descent through just such means as we have seen here.
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Doug Moody // Jun 10, 2008 at 10:18 am
I have never heard this question, let alone an answer. But in all the evolutionary discussion, has anyone seriously considered what CAUSE might be behind ANY evolution, including this change to the bacterium?
In other words, although scientists can observe that things DO change, has the question been asked as to WHY they change at all? Yes, I have heard that it is in reaction to changes in the environment, but what else? Can it be said with certainty that all the samples of this original bacterium underwent the same environmental stimuli? If they had, then this is a truly remarkable event.
But if, as I suspect, they were exposed to different environmental conditions, then it would be expected that they would “evolve” different mechanisms to cope with their environments.
It is my opinion that God imbued ALL lilfe with the primary desire to survive no matter what. In that sense, these bacteria were doing what they had been programmed to do from the beginning - SURVIVE! That they diverged different coping mechanisms, being separated in time and space is not all that remarkable. Its what I would have expected an all-knowing God to anticipate from the beginning!
2 Steve // Jun 10, 2008 at 11:21 am
There is an immense amount of discussion on evolutionary mechanisms (which is what I assume you mean by “WHY” as opposed to its existential meaning). In fact, that’s where the evo-devo field lives. Interesting stuff, to be sure. For some fascinating insights, check out Stephen Matheson’s blog, The Quintessence of Dust (here is a good recent example).
Well said. That’s the design I believe in, not successive miracles needed where natural processes (that God designed!) ran into insurmountable bumps. It’s what Van Till has described as a “fully gifted creation”, created from the start with the ability to unfold naturally into giving us the world God wanted.
3 Bad // Jun 10, 2008 at 11:26 am
Doug: if you read more about the experiment, you’ll note that what’s so neat about it is that the researchers basically flash froze a “fossil” record of the bacteria every 500 generations or so. That means that they have a very complete record of exactly how it changed: and they even know the specific mutations that were key in the transition.
There isn’t any evidence that God played a part: all the basic known and observed elements, from mutation to selection, explain what happened just fine without any extraneous imaginings.
And in this particular experiment we can document that with a very high degree of detail.
Also, if the bacteria were driven by God to evolve, it’s hard to explain why all of the rest of the experiment happened as it did, wherein the researchers retested strains at various levels of development, and found that the necessary steps are really quite rare and singular, rather than some sort of special drive that all bacteria have and can make happen as they need.
4 Steve // Jun 10, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Bad,
I took Doug’s meaning slightly differently than you. If Doug meant that God miraculously inserted an “evolve this way” component into organisms, I would agree with you. As a theist, I believe there’s a bit of built-in teleology (e.g. the evolution of man) that, while working itself out in a completely natural way, has meaning and divine intent associated with it on a different plane.
Random processes can generate anything, but the fact that God chose a universe in which those processes created us is not a statement as to God’s immediate (miraculous) causation, nor an implication that God actively desired everything any natural process ever created.
5 Doug Moody // Jun 10, 2008 at 8:42 pm
I think we Christians ought to begin seeing the Adam and Eve story more about the miracle of God breathing HIS life into man (an animal), rather than seeing the miracle as the creation of the animal. The bible calls that animal (no matter how wondrous you see his makeup) “the flesh” but we are called to “the spirit”
I firmly believe that what happened in Eden was NOT evolution per se. That is, I don’t believe that Eden was just another place in which God happened to be walking, and then He saw one of these “man-creatures” that had evolved to an adequate step in time, and then God decided to start the modern human race from that original pair. No, I don’t believe that. I believe that Adam was indeed personally shaped from the clay directly by the hand of God. In fact, however, it is entirely possible that Adam looked not much different than the other man-animals outside Eden. But the REAL miracle was when God breathed life, a soul, into that flesh.
That was the defining moment when we began the race of modern man, and the civilizations, good and bad, that brought us to what we see today. Remember, Adam’s curse was getting kicked out of Eden. Into what was he kicked? Well, it was a land that brought forth weeds and briars - outside Eden. We have been outside Eden ever since!
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