It is in no way nonsense. Science is all about truth. I would think that as you are Catholic you would spring to the defense of truth
ReggieM, I’ll check it out; can you give me the reference to the issue where Dr. Baker attacks evolution as a hoax? The biologists in my office are interested in reading it. They want to see the evidence on which he is basing the hoax theory.
PHILIPP: The book reviews of Dr.Larry Azar’s book, “Evolution and other fairy tales” by Fr. K. Baker, S.J. and that of E. Birmingham on www.kolbecenter.org will help folks realize that this book is one of the most important Catholic critiques of Evolution ever written. It was written by a philosopher who recognized the bankruptcy of the philosophical underpinnings of the evolution hypothesis. A philosopher was needed to see the many contradictions in evolution which also will help the scientists break away from supporting it such as wehn Dr. Azar pointed out that the leading paleontologist of his day, Dr. Patterson, curator of the British Museum said regarding the absence of transitional forms in the geological column in the mid-1980’s. KC has done a great service by reviewing this book and finding a tape recording of Dr. Patterson making the above statement about the fossil record - you can go to KC and listen to that part of the tape. It’s very revealing. But some of the more famous human artifacts found in the alleged ancient geologic column include the following taken from www.earthage.com
Science is not a tangible object. It is a label for groups of people who observe. However, there is a relationship between the observer and the object being observed. In the case of human origins, you appear to reject what the Church has to say and believe only the textbook. The Church clearly teaches that nothing would have turned out the way it did were it not for God. And no, I don’t mean the god of the biology textbook, but the God of the Bible.It is in no way nonsense. Science is all about truth. I would think that as you are Catholic you would spring to the defense of truth
And might I remind you that the Catholic Church has warned against science in the past and they were proven to be in error and essentially forced to change dogma.
Are they Catholics who have never heard of HPR?
Science isn’t a label. Science is a method.
I pretty much, maybe completely reject what the Church has to say about science.
Believe what ever you want, but science isn’t about belief. Science is about evidence. Religion is about belief. Do you want to turn science into religion?
No.
If you “pretty much, maybe completely reject what the Church has to say about science.” then why are you on a Catholic forum?
Intersting article but I’m unsure exactly what is its value. I can predict that many bacteria will soon develop resistance to fourth generation fluoroquinilones. And I didn’t even have to waste any grant money.Experimental Prediction of the Natural Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance
Miriam Barlowa and Barry G. Halla
a Biology Department, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627-0211
Corresponding author: Barry G. Hall, Hutchison Hall, River Campus, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0211., drbh@mail.rochester.edu (E-mail)
Communicating editor: H. OCHMAN
The TEM family of ß-lactamases has evolved to confer resistance to most of the ß-lactam antibiotics, but not to cefepime. To determine whether the TEM ß-lactamases have the potential to evolve cefepime resistance, we evolved the ancestral TEM allele, TEM-1, in vitro and selected for cefepime resistance. After four rounds of mutagenesis and selection for increased cefepime resistance each of eight independent populations reached a level equivalent to clinical resistance. All eight evolved alleles increased the level of cefepime resistance by a factor of at least 32, and the best allele improved by a factor of 512. Sequencing showed that alleles contained from two to six amino acid substitutions, many of which were shared among alleles, and that the best allele contained only three substitutions.
Surprise.
Bacterial colonies don’t know anything – evolution is not a willed process. It works like this: suppose a colony of a million bacteria are assualted with a antibiotic A. If only one tenth of one percent (arbitrarily chosen) are genetically resistant to the antibiotic, one thousand bacteria will survive and are resistant to antibiotic A. They multiply in turn to one million, at which point they are assaulted by antibiotic B. Again a certain percentage will be genetically resistant, survive, and multiply. Now you have a population of bacteria resistant to both antibiotic A and antibiotic B – they have evolved multi-drug resistance, without consciousness, will, or intentionality.
I think there’s at least one on every forum and I think they just like to stir things up. Maybe the rest of us should just plain ignore them and go on about our business. You can’t reason with them anyway, Didn’t Our Lord say to wipe the dust off our feet and move on? I pray for them.
So, when the Pope says that common descent of all living things is “virtually certain”, are you saying you know more than the Church, or are you saying the Pope is opposed to the Church?
Someone does, but I don’t think it’s the scientists who agree with the Pope.
Demonstrates that evolutionary theory is able to predict the future forms of antibiotic resistance.
But that’s not good enough. Evolutionary theory did that in the 1940s. What the new research is doing, is predicting the form that resistance will take so that we can take steps to deal with it.
OK, I’ll accept that you don’t know. Bacterial colonies know nothing at all. All that happens is that any mutations that make it more resistant to a specific antibiotic in the culture, will preferentially allow the bacteria having it, to increase, while the others are removed. And each generation, the most resistant are removed, so resistance procedes by steps, mutation by mutation.
Any mutation that has no value is neither favored nor removed. But it is true that an additional mutation may make that one quite favorable. Evolution has limits, which is why you don’t see squirrels with another set of limbs for wings. It would be useful, but there seems to be no way to deal with the useless intermediate stages.
Nope. All natural. God knew what He was doing.
Mutation or transfer of plasmids.
Yes. A rather clever test showed this to be the case. Would you like to learn about it?
Problem is, without a use, the metabolic cost of antibiotic resistance is harmful. So they tend to die out, unless the antibiotic is present. Remember, fitness counts only in terms of environment.
Yes, although bacteria being asexual makes it hard to actually draw the line. Bacteriologists don’t worry that much about it. For example, there are forms of E. coli that differ from other forms of E. coli by much more than humans differ from chimps. They get designations.
See here:
No. If God were, for example, faking it and inserting them in to look random, evolution would work the same way.
A sufficiently educated person could infer this from sampling the output and the (name removed by moderator)ut. However, mutations do seem to be random in the sense that a roll of dice is random.
au contraire
This looks like a good explanation of natural selection. However, it assumes that the genetically resistant bacteria are already there. Not that they evolved in response to some stimulus.
Just a musing here…
I disagree with the simple propaganda technique you use called repetition. All you are interested in is completing your assignment: universal acceptance of an atheistic form of evolutionary theory. For you, scientists are of the greatest importance, not the Church. Ask yourself, should science be in charge of the Catholic Church?
As I understand natural selection it works by removing individuals of lower fitness from the population where I presume that “less fit” means less likely to produce offspring. I guess I don’t understand how natural selection would work to increase the likelihood of survival of the altruistic person who, by the nature of his action, has diminished his own competitive advantage versus his neighbors. I can understand how a species with altruistic members might thrive, just not how such members could evolve given the self sacrificial nature of their actions. More significantly, as reggieM pointed out, leading evolutionists can’t explain it either.
Virtual certainty is not the same as “virtual infinity” (whatever that is)