Therarchos said:
1: Unfortunately that is quite often the result because of the way we fund our science they have to show results or nomoney. Often money from someone who wants the project to succeed.
Yes, for some certain branches of biology(pharmaceuticals especially *shudder*), this is true. Yet that doesn't say anything. If someone thought they could "disprove evolution", they'd try to, because there's
a lot of prestige involved in knocking down such a solid scientific theory, and with all the people who want evolution disproved, there wouldn't be a problem with getting it funded.
Thus the problem is that either nobody even bothers trying because they don't believe it's any point in wasting their time on it, or there simply aren't results that contradict it. It's probably a bit of both, though.
2:Evolution haven't held true through experiments but is strongly supported through observation of nature in all it's forms. If you could find one experiment that proved evolution I would be surprised since the hurdle of the problem is the part that would take a few million years.
Like I said, look at the new prevalence of pathological bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, which is a result of overuse of antibiotics. This has happened because bacteria that aren't killed by antibiotics gain a reproductive advantage. It started out with being the bacteria whose cell walls, purely by chance, had a minor chemical difference which made them slightly harder to kill, but these bacteria were the ones that were selected for and brought their genes further down the line. Over the trillions of bacterial generations they have evolved more elaborate ways to shut down antibiotics, because the ones that are the hardest to kill are the ones that get selected for the most.
Now, it could be that it's just strains with resistance to antibiotics weren't discovered before and that this wasn't related to evolution. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, because resistance to antibiotics can be induced in a laboratory. In fact, I did one of those experiments back in freaking
high school(and I do it on a semi-regular basis at my university), so it's a pretty damn simple thing to do. Antibiotics kill the vast majority of the bacteria during the experiment, but those that gain resistance, either by chance or through lateral gene transfer, bring their genes on to further generations.
This is survival of the fittest for you. If you've got a reproductive advantage, you'll bring your genes further down the line. This is how evolution works.
3:If evolution didn't exist bacteria couldn't evolve? If Santa-Claus doesn't exist then how come I get presents. Sorry but the arguments you are using there are holding themselves together by their own postulate.
Wait what? That made no sense whatsoever.
Are you seriously saying that resistance to antibiotics in bacteria could have evolved even if evolution didn't exist? If so,
please enlighten me on how that happened.
4: And your last point is valid. But have you ever tried to find some of the more serious scientific discussions on this subject or is it only the more diehard fanatics you have had a good laugh over?
I've seen people try to be reasonable about this discussion, but their evidence and arguments is usually just misunderstandings in how evolution actually works(there are a couple of examples in this thread, in fact). The rest generally is the retarded diehards.
If you could point me towards someone who has a good understanding in evolutionary processes and biology overall, who still argues against it, I'd happily take that discussion. I still haven't met that person, though.
