Evolution & Mutation in front of our eyes

A medical student - my daughter actually - accused me yesterday of wasting my time here on this site in futile arguments over evolution. She snapped two reasons why she wouldn't bother reading some of the postings here from the fundamentalist crowd.

REASON ONE: Any one who thinks evolution & random mutation does not occur should take a look at the HIV virus. Its resilience is due to it being able to constantly mutate and evolve to render each new drug cocktail harmless to it. She has observed this through a microscope and hence her scorn. Now either that is random mutation happening right there under her microscope or god is micro-managing each such change in the HIV virus just to get back at Gays. If it is not god mutating the HIV virus to smite the gay man then it can only mean that random mutation is occuring. The viruses mutate, and the evolved ones which can handle the drug survive and replicate further at a greater frequency than the ones being killed off by the drug. "Lo & behold then, verily evolution has indeed taken place" (cheeky brat).

She also asked me check out why the mosquito has become resistant to DDT.

REASON TWO: Biology as being studied and more importantly as being applied (in medicine, healthcare, genetics,) is totally based on evolutionary theories. According to her if these fundamentalists hold evolution in such scorn, they should put their money where their mouth is and refuse to take modern medication to save their "sorry asses" (her words) because Bubba, IF THERE WERE NO THEORIES ON EVOLUTION TO GUIDE RESEARCH UNDERTAKEN BY DOCTORS, SCIENTISTS, MICROBIOLOGISTS AND PHARMACOLOGISTS THERE WOULD BE NO MODERN MEDICINE.

The fundamentalist therefore, with his distaste for evolution should be honest to himself and look to the bible/koran not just for solace but also for medical therapy should he get cancer, diabetes, parkinson's disease or any host of other ailments including HIV infection (Yup! my daughter confirms that being a god fearing evangelist or a Haj-returned, 5-prayers-a-day muslim scores no brownie points with the virus).

Any takers for bible/koran therapy?

Ask your daughter this one. If Evolution is right, and man has been around for a million years, why can't we find any evidence of man made cities beyond fifteen or twenty thousand years? What was man doing for the last 980,000 years? And please, don't tell me he was just hunting and fishing.

Sorry. Can't. She is young and treats your thinking with a contempt it doesn't deserve.

But why don't you apply your mind to her point about the HIV virus? I am sure there is something to be learnt from that. It is a question worthy of an anwer from you is it not? Are those HIV vurus mutating or are they not mutating. What do you think? I'd really be interested to know.

Regards

The human body has biological changes occuring all the time. And some of these changes are defensive in nature, yet HIV producing more HIV is not the evidence needed to prove particle to people evolution. It's still HIV, and hasn't changed into anything else. Secondly, new unique information isn't being created. Also, in Darwin's model the survival of the fittest would come in to play, yet the newer evolved strains of HIV are weaker than the originals.
Which would show that the oppsite of Darwin's Theory of Evolution was taking place. It is not a progression, but rather a digression that is occuring.

Ask your daughter this one. If Evolution is right, and man has been around for a million years, why can't we find any evidence of man made cities beyond fifteen or twenty thousand years? What was man doing for the last 980,000 years? And please, don't tell me he was just hunting and fishing.

Ask your daughter this one. If Evolution is right, and man has been around for a million years, why can't we find any evidence of man made cities beyond fifteen or twenty thousand years? What was man doing for the last 980,000 years? And please, don't tell me he was just hunting and fishing.

If evolution is wrong, tell me why we have gone from mud huts to skyscrapers.

1) The HIV that manages to immune itself against the drugs via mutation is "fitter" in evolutionary terms, then the others. It's reproductions wil again survive against medical onslaught, better than the others. Hence it is "stronger" not "weaker" than the originals.

2) It is totally in line with Darwinian evolution. There must be someone you know & trust who knows a little more than the bible. He could verify this.

3) The opposite of progression is regression.

Thanks

BBC NEWS Aids virus 'could be weakening'

A team at the Institute of Tropical Medicine, in Antwerp, compared HIV-1 samples from 1986-89 and 2002-03.
They found the newer samples appeared not to multiply as well, and were more sensitive to drugs-

As we evolved, so did our ability to build and use tools. This is usually referred to as "technology". It's another one of those things that Christians fear. Over time, we got the method and means to build ourselves shelter, rather than stick outside in the blistering sun, pouring rain or freezing snow. Then we figured out how to build bigger buildings (stonework, metalwork, architecture, construction, coming up with ways to move all the material needed... there's a LOT we had to figure out before we built cities the likes of which you describe).

The thing you don't understand about evolution is it's timeframe. It isn't something you can stick into a short amount of time... from the beginning to now is roughly three or so billion years when it comes to life on this planet. Cities are just a blink of an eye to the timeframe that evolution fits into.

That has nothing to do with my earlier argument.

Try and stay with the plot.

THE ARGUMENT:
1) It is clear on observing the HIV that it tends to mutate rather rapidly.
2) Consequently, some of the new mutations have immunity to the drug cocktails we throw at them.
3) These "resistant" versions tend to multiple more than the once who do not have this resistance to our drugs.
4) THIS PHENOMENA, OBSERVED AND RECORDED, WHEREIN CERTAIN VARIANTS OF THE HIV DEVELOPS RESISTANCE TO DRUGS THROUGH MUTATIONS AND THEN GO ON TO REPRODUCE FASTER THAN THE ONES WITHOUT THE IMMUNITY (WHO DIE AS A CONSEQUENCE OF NOT HAVING IMMUNITY) IS IN LINE WITH PRINCIPLES OF DARWANIAN EVOLUTION. These mutated virus have effectively "strengthened" compared to the rest.

NOW,
because of all the hard work our scientists are putting in, newer and newer drugs are coming out and as a consequence, the mutating virus is eventally going to be beaten. And so, the BBC report is right. Our drugs are weakening the virus.

BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ARGUMENT ABOUT HIV MUTUTATIONS. Two different arguments.

Please feel free to seek further clarifications.

Regards

Has AIDS evolved?

Regardless of your ideas about either evolution or creation, a virus will not be able to exist before a cellular creature is on the scene. Viruses do not really fit anywhere on the evolutionary 'tree of life'. They cannot represent 'early forms of life' because they can only MULTIPLY within living cells. This 'chicken and egg' problem is often overlooked. They obviously could not, therefore, have been the ancestors of one-celled creatures, and it is difficult to see how they can be their evolutionary descendants.

Little Value

So we see then, that any changes which might occure in viruses have very little, if any, apologetic value for evolutionists trying to show us how a fish supposedly changed into an amphibian, for instance.

Wouldn't a change in a disease-causing agent, converting it from a minor nuisance to a serious health threat, be a major evolutionary step? Surely, say some, this could not be labelled 'horizontal change' or 'change within the kind'? Once again, though, we will see that this has little relevance to evolutionary apologetics.

So to answer the question posed by the title of this article, while viruses may change considerably, and while the AIDS virus may have changed its infectivity, it is certainly not the type of change, in quality or direction, which would or could cause that virus to become a totally new, more complex type of living organism. In that sense, AIDS HAS NOT EVOLVED.

Addendum

Long after this article was published, the PBS/SBS Evolution series used HIV/AIDS as 'proof of evolution. Yet the new data has done nothing to make the principles in this article obsolete. Rather, in one case, HIV resistance to drugs was clearly caused by a deleterious mutation, as shown by their inability to cope with the 'wild' type when the drugs were removed; and immunity to AIDS can be conferred by a mutation that causes loss of certain receptors on the immune cells preventing the HIV from docking on them.

To read the full article click link below.
Has AIDS evolved?

Finally Mr.Campbell, we are getting somewhere. Thank you. We now have the basis of an intelligent discussion and I shall fully entertain the possiblity that your argument could win, making a better case than mine.

We will go through your above argument at lenght once I have studied it. But for now, lets revert back to the issue I raised. Where virus are on the evolutionary tree - or are not there at all - can be dealt with as a step 2 discussion.

So back to the HIV virus.

I wish to use it to make just two points:
1) That there is mutuation taking place.
2) That the mutuation taking place is in line with the principles of Darwanian evolution.

that is all and that is it.

I am not making a case above for virus being part of any evolutionay tree.

Now specifically, evolution is only concerned with making the organism productive & keeping it alive and kicking until the next generation. That is all and that is it. It is not evolution's job to chart course towards a more complex organism. I suggets a read of "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins to better understand this concept.

If an organism mutates to better survive changes in its enviornment and if as a result of such change it does survive and more importantly, successfully reproduces and some of the reproductions carry within them the changed characteristics that enabled their parent to survive, then evolution has taken place, irrespective of whether a higher organism has evolved or not. If a higher organism does evolve, that is an outcome of Evolution, not a basic tenent.

So, the quesiton to ask is, whether the mutuation of the HIV virus meets the above definitiion or not. I leave it to you to answer.

Regards

Technology is another thing Christians fear? LOL. Much of the technology we enjoy today was developed by Christians.

Early man built large stone cities over 10,000 years ago, yet before that time we see almost nothing. WHY? And as I have stated before and have yet to get a responce from any of you so called Evolutionest.

If the dinosaurs died out 70 million years ago, why do we see an indian Petoglyph showing us a stegosaur?

And why do we have dinosaurs figurines found at El Toro mountain carbon dated to 1500 B.P?

How did these ancient tribes even know what a dinosaur look like unless they were living at the time the figurines were made?

Why are they finding Mesopotamian art dated to 3300 B.C. with pictures of a Saurapod?

Why do we have a picture of a dinosaur fighting a mammoth in the Bernifal Cave in France?

(And why did SCIENCE NEWS refuse to publish that picture?)

Why in Bushmanland South Africa are there ancient engravings that resembles a sauropod dinosaur, and the other a pterosaur?

You guys are so lost in your Theory of Evolution, that you can't see the forest from the trees. When real evidence is staring you right in your face, you turn away, and slip on your white lab coat and play scientest. All I get from most of you is your empty one liners and mostly silence on these discoveries. Do anyone of you, even have an orginal thought on any of this.

Yup. Because science had nothing to do with it. Kind of like the fish in the barrel thing.



Perhaps it's because we made structures out of... I dunno... something other than stone? I'm thinking clay or dirt with some straw mixed in, sort of the way many other cultures do today. The downside is eventually nature wears away at these, and given enough time... they're erased from history.

Strange to think we could build structures out of something besides stone, isn't it?


Also, I kind of answered this question several posts back. So, you just blindly post stupid questions with blindingly obvious answers, claiming it as proof that evolution is wrong. Not so sure exactly how stone buildings and evolution go together, though...



Why can I show you drawings and painting of a phoenix? Because they must have existed.... according to your logic.

Show me dinosaur bones dating to around that time. Your "soft tissue" claim doesn't add up... too old even for that. Show me RECENT dinosaur deaths. I'm talking around 2,000 years recent. Can ya do that for me?



I can show you figurines of dragons dating further back than that. Damn, they must have existed too.

According to your logic, that is.




How do WE know what they look like? Ever seen one? I rest my case.



Ever seen one of those? I surely haven't. Of course their cultures show things like bulls walking upright and such. Surely bulls at one time did that, too!

Of course, this is using your logic.





There's a dragon and a phoenix fighting on a coin. You betcha they existed!





There's your picture. Yeah, that's a bit far fetched. At least I can make out my dragon and phoenix.




I looked at those. Nice try.

Ooh! I know!!! Check this out!



It's a MAN.... on MARS! Wow, that MUST mean there's life on that planet! The proof is right there!



And you're so deep in that Bible that you won't consider anything that doesn't fit with in your beliefs. The evidence stares you in the face (do you REALLY want me to bring up scientific evidence that shows you wrong?), yet you turn away and trip over your altar boys and play creationist.

As Lewis Black once said...



Fossil.

And so every culture on earth about the same time stopped playing in the mud and started building stone buildings? How did that happen?

And the reason you can show me pictures of dinosaurs today is because they have been discovered in the fossil record, and they have been reconstructed by present day science.

Early man did not have this kind of science and the resources to reconstruct dinosaurs. And showing me a shadow of the face on mars has little to do with actual figurines that are on display in Mexico dated to 1500 years. The figurines are hard evidence that have been carbon dated.

Your shadow man of Mars is a optical illusion.

But then with believes of Evolution it's all about smoke and mirrors anyway.

And then you come here talking to me about scinece. LOL. Showing a bull on two legs is not the same as seeing many figurines that match many of the dinosaures that have been recently discovered. And some of the figurines were of dinosaurs that had not been yet discovered untill after 1944. We know what dinosaurs look like because of recent discoveries in the fossil record, and we have today the ability to reconstruct them, early man did not. Many of the figurines were of Eskimos, Asians, Africans, beared Caucasians, Mongols, Polynesians, and objects that had cultural connnections with the Egyptians, Sumerians as well as others.
DO YOU THINK THEY JUST DREAMED THEM UP AS WELL? Maybe those cultures don't exist either?

The fact is you guys don't know what to do with hard evidence. An eight year old could tell you what those figurines are, but your false science God has blinded you. You have to resort to stupid arguements showing me shadow faces and standing bulls. And my soft tissue claim comes right out of the claims of believers in Evolution. For it was (YOUR) people who boasted that soft tissue would not last more than 10,000 years. Now because (your) people have been proven wrong again you say it's my claim?
And if your people told you tomorrow that soft tissue could only last 10,000 years again, I have no doubt you would believe them again. You believe what ever they tell you, because you blindly believe there ever changing stories.
Ten years ago according to believers in Evolution, soft tissue could only last 10,000 years, now they say it can last 70 million years. BOY, nothing like well grounded scientific facts. LOL.

Much the same way we stopped playing with rocks and started building metal structures.

Well, why did we do that?

That's easy... to make them bigger. To make them stronger. That is why we moved from mud and clay to stone. A mud hut won't stand against a strong storm. Stone however, will. You can't make a six story structure out of mud, but you can from stone.



And that fossil record and that present day science has shown dinos to be extremely old. None of them, not even the soft tissue we found comes close to that age.

You do know we found the impact site of the asteroid that took 'em out, right?



Again, I can show you figurines of dragons dated even further back than that. Doesn't mean they actually saw them. Also the figurines aren't 100% "dinosaur", it just so happens to look like one. Just like my optical illusion resembles a face. We humans have that knack... we'll stick an image with something real fast. Faces, animals, plants... you've laid back and stared at clouds, haven't you? Same principle.




Yup, sure is. However many people still think it's a sign of life over there. We scientists call them "crazy".



Science has never been about smoke and mirrors. It's about finding the truth, no matter what it is. I call stories about magical trees and talking snakes pretty smokey and mirrory.



I want you to show me a set of dinosaur bones dated to 2,000 years old.


If you cannot do this, then you cannot prove that dinosaurs existed during that time. If they did in fact exist 2,000 years ago, then we'd find some bones of that age, wouldn't we?



Well, let's address the last thing first. Science changes. Yes, it changes. See, when we find evidence that says something opposite of what we believe, we reevaluate all the evidence and then go with what we've got from there. We've done that a lot... flight was impossible, the sound barrier was impossible, the electron was the smallest particle, E=MC2 could not be used to make energy, etc. so on and so forth.

Here's a neat link I found studying your soft tissue. Neat stuff by the way.

Dinosaur tissue confirms links with the ostrich - Science - www.theage.com.au

Ouch. Soft tissue that points towards evolution. So, what's it gonna be? We've long since believed that birds are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs, and now we have soft tissue giving us a HUGE link in that direction. But that's the same tissue you're using to debunk evolution.

You failed to realize that sword has two edges!

I'm sorry sabz but your scientest are now telling us that soft tissue can last 70 million years.

Why would you say just the oppsite of what the believers of Evolution have stated? Are you trying to support the Christian view. Also, thay have found in the fossil record dinosaur foot prints aloneside human foot prints.

So does that mean man has been on the planet now some 70 million years? Science only reavaluates other theories that disagree with the theory of evolution, not the other way around. That's why they had to do a quick song and dance about how long soft tissue would last. Remember, 10 years ago soft tissue could only last 10,000 years. When they found soft tissue in dinosaur bones and that agreed with what creation scientest said we would find because dinosaurs are only some thousand of years old, the believers of Evolution scientest changed the soft tissue theory from 10,000 years to 70 million years to agree with their theory.

Their was no scientific study done, they just got caught with their pants down, and had to do a quick song and dance. Your people are so full of it. The fact is, there is so much fake evidence to support Evolution its hard to keep up with it all.

When ever they make some great discovery they bring out the brass band but as soon as it is proven to be a fraud or a fake we don't here any more about it. You still find names that are thrown out there to support the Theory and often the ones quoting those names have not even heard that those names were exposed as fakes years before. Trying to unravel all the false evidence for Evolution now is like trying to make sense out of a Watchtower Bible.

And by the way, those ceramic figuriens from El Toro mountain Mexico, are far more conclusive than your cloud theory. The figuriens match many of the dinosaurs they we know existed because those who made the figurines saw the dinos.

I'm sorry sabz, but your clouds don't hold water. And your theory of Evolution is more of a blind faith belief than good science. Good science does not have to do a song and dance to explain away evidence.

Science is telling us that something halted the decomposition process.

I'm sure you've heard of preservation. We use it a lot.



First part: What does the age of a dinosaur have to do with evolution? What you are trying to do is put creationism against science itself. Even if it were proven right now that dinos and man walked beside each other, that would in no way disprove evolution.

Secondly: On the "footprints" and Dr. Baugh.

Paluxy Dinosaur/"Man Track" controversy

However, the "man track" claims have not stood up to close scientific scrutiny, and have been abandoned even by most creationists. The supposed human tracks have involved a variety of phenomena, including forms of elongate (metatarsal) dinosaur tracks, erosional features, indistinct markings of uncertain origin, and some doctored and carved specimens (most of the latter on loose blocks of rock). This Web site provides a collection of articles reviewing the history of the controversy and evidence involved, articles on other alleged out-of-order fossils and artifacts, and information and links on dinosaur tracks in general.

No accredited degrees (A Ph.D in theology),


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And what about the "this is a test of faith" and "God put dino bones here on purpose!" song and dance back in the day?

Remember, ten years ago, Pluto only had one moon and 55 Cancri didn't have planets around it

Show me where science has said "Under any circumstances, soft tissue can last 70 million years". You can't. What you can find is "Wow, something must have completely shut down the decomposition here!"



And just about every one of your "petroglyphs", mammoth-dino fights (you don't seriously think that's true, do ya?) and "Inca stones" have been nothing but trumped up illusions, hoaxes and squiggles that you PRAY (pun very intended) knock the labcoats off track long enough to bang on a few more doors offering salvation.



That's right, it goes away. However, frauds such as the "inca stones" showing dinos and man, which were PROVEN to be fake (the guy confessed in writing to making them), still come to the top when the creationist puts his bible down and tries to pick up a beaker.





Look. Dino figurines. Surely according to your logic here... someone must have seen what they look like firsthand in order to make that!

The stuff you pull from the creationist museum is only making people laugh at you. Heck, isn't the guy who found those man-tracks the founder of that museum? Wasn't that found out to be a hoax... unless man wore boots back then...



That's right. Only religion need do that.

Also, you still have yet to answer any questions or put up any evidence requested.

1. Dinosaur bones roughly 2000 years old. Carbon dated, scientifically measured.

2. Proof God exists.

Now, it's your turn to be under the light. If you can't prove your stance with these two simple things, your creationism theory holds no water.

If you want solid info on Evolution, proof that there are links, check out DNA. How about that link I posted, showing a link between dinos and birds. Let's see... that evil book "The Origin of Species", the numerous skeletons, mounds of data, the list is rather long.