Where Did it Come From?

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PsychoticEpisode

It is very dry in here today
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To the fundamentalists, literal translators of the Bible(s), staunch Creationists and non-Believers in evolution, what’s the explanation for plastic eating microbes? Don’t think they dropped out of the sky only to land in a Japanese landfill 10 years ago. If they were created without evolving then can it be proven? Were they around in the beginning or appear when the need arose? Familiar with microbes that can survive exposure to radiation and that’s there’s actually fungi growing in a Chernobyl reactor but who knows if previously equipped to do so. Just have trouble dealing with an ancient microbe created with wherewithal to consume polyethylene.

For the science community, could the plastic eating microbe’s DNA show that it evolved from a different microbial species? I suppose a creator that knows the future could equip a microbe with a gene that makes the change and possibly, in that case, the life form changes its diet, but was still a creation. Idk but that would mean we are all the same creature throughout history wouldn’t it, should there be a common ancestor for all life on Earth, no?

I personally believe in evolution, not a creationist in the sense of there being an intelligent creator of life.
 
Polyethylene is just another long chain hydrocarbon. It's not technological magic.

Though its properties prove to be useful to us in certain ways, it's prone to natural breakdown like most other hydrocarbs.

Bacteria already do this.

Simplifying it - as if no other bacteria has ever been able to break down petroleum products before this - is a symptom of bad journalism and media hype.



I mean, I doubt this is a strong argument that will give fundies any trouble. There are way stronger arguments.

If any fundie doubts evolution, just take them on a field trip to the nearest fish store and show them the guppies, bettas or Koi. Or any puppy mill will do too.
 
PsychoticEpisode said:
To the fundamentalists, literal translators of the Bible(s), staunch Creationists and non-Believers in evolution, what’s the explanation for plastic eating microbes? [..]
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Many, if not most of them, accept microevolution now -- like iguana adaptations or microbes developing resistance to antibiotics (when not an indifferent anti-vaxxer). It's macroevolution and abiogenesis that you can't budge them on.
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C C said:
Many, if not most of them, accept microevolution now -- like iguana adaptations or microbes developing resistance to antibiotics (when not an indifferent anti-vaxxer). It's macroevolution and abiogenesis that you can't budge them on.
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Yes it's progress. Very hard to argue against evolution of microbes, cancer cells, and viruses. One hopes eventually they will start to see - within a generation or two at any rate - that erecting a barrier between "micro" and macro" is irrational and can't be argued logically.
 
exchemist said:
erecting a barrier between "micro" and macro" is irrational and can't be argued logically.
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The thing that I still struggle with - and thus I assume fundies simply cannot fathom - is the sheer timescale for macro-evolution.

From Jeopardy, I (re)learned that foxen are still canines, even though they split off from dogs and wolves 10 to 12 million years ago. It is just hard to intuit that kind of timescale.

It must be doubly hard to do so for someone who is being dragged kicking and screaming into it.
 
DaveC426913 said:
The thing that I still struggle with - and thus I assume fundies simply cannot fathom - is the sheer timescale for macro-evolution.

From Jeopardy, I (re)learned that foxen are still canines, even though they split off from dogs and wolves 10 to 12 million years ago. It is just hard to intuit that kind of timescale.

It must be doubly hard to do so for someone who is being dragged kicking and screaming into it.
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Yes it all comes down to numbers of generations, doesn”t it? With bacteria that is every few hours, whereas for a canine it is every 2 years or so. So with bacteria you can see the change in the course of one human lifetime, whereas with a canine it takes millions of years.

The other thing to keep in mind is many people just don’t think very much about these things, so it’s easier to nod along to whatever some preacher says than to ask oneself questions about it. Especially when asking questions can be interpreted as a lack of faith and therefore not to be encouraged.
 
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A major sticking point for creationists is that they can't cope with the idea that humans are hominids and our cousins are apes (or, to put it in stronger terms, that humans are essentially another kind of ape). As God's special little chosen ones, humans must have been specially created from scratch by the Big Guy. Also, that's what their Book says, so it must be true.
 
DaveC426913 said:
From Jeopardy, I (re)learned that foxen are still canines, even though they split off from dogs and wolves 10 to 12 million years ago. It is just hard to intuit that kind of timescale.
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Haven't watched since the late great Mr Trebek hosted it. Around the time Watson beat Ken and Brad, in spite of guessing Toronto in the category US cities.
And yes, macro timescales are not intuitive - I notice educators like to use physical distance analogies to give some sense of vast timespans.
 
Pinball1970 said:
Three an hour
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Really? Well there you go.

I suppose you know of the Lenski Affair, in which an idiot creationist lawyer called Andrew Schlafly affected to disbelieve that a population of E Coli had evolved, under lab observation, to metabolise citrate? That was bloody funny. He looked like a prize twat by the end.
 
exchemist said:
Really? Well there you go.

I suppose you know of the Lenski Affair, in which an idiot creationist lawyer called Andrew Schlafly affected to disbelieve that a population of E Coli had evolved, under lab observation, to metabolise citrate? That was bloody funny. He looked like a prize twat by the end.
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I knew about Lenski's work but I didn't know about Schlafly. A creationist lawyer helped push the ID project too? What is it with those guys?
 
Pinball1970 said:
I knew about Lenski's work but I didn't know about Schlafly. A creationist lawyer helped push the ID project too? What is it with those guys?
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In the States it seems to me that the lawyers regard themselves as at the top of the food chain. They can get a bit up themselves.
 
Phyllis's son? He was a physicist/EE before he went to law school, trained at Princeton. He should know better.
 
Right. Just meant he should know how the scientific method works and respect the evidence.
 
TheVat said:
Right. Just meant he should know how the scientific method works and respect the evidence.
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You would think.

Both (Schlafly and Phill E Johnson, the ID nut job) went to Harvard both ended up completing J.D.
Smart people can say and do some seriously stupid shit.
 
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