040401Email.php

Email dated 01/04/04

(I have italicised parts for clarity)

Hi Richard,

Sorry for the delay, I have been buried with other issues this week. Sometimes I may be delayed, but I always respond. My comments are indented, in-line below. Thanks for your patience.

Do you not think that the development of immunity to antibiotics is of benefit to a bacterium? Or resistance to warfarin a benefit to rats? These are clear examples of beneficial mutation! So in what way is resistance to antibiotics not a favourable mutuation?

Here is an expert account on how resistance to antibiotics is not a favourable mutation: In his book Not by Chance, Spetner likens this situation to the disturbance of the key-lock relationship. Streptomycin, just like a key that perfectly fits in a lock, clutches on to the ribosome of a bacterium and inactivates it. Mutation, on the other hand, decomposes the ribosome, thus preventing streptomycin from holding on to the ribosome. Although this is interpreted as "bacteria developing immunity against streptomycin," this is not a benefit for the bacteria but rather a loss for it. Spetner writes: This change in the surface of the microorganism's ribosome prevents the streptomycin molecule from attaching and carrying out its antibiotic function. It turns out that this degradation is a loss of specificity and therefore a loss of information. The main point is that Evolution. cannot be achieved by mutations of this sort, no matter how many of them there are. Evolution cannot be built by accumulating mutations that only degrade specificity

Lee Spetner, Israeli Biophysicist, "Not By Chance" 97

Many species produce fertile hybrids. The chichilids in the East African lakes is an example of the way in which hybridisation helps to increase the genetic diversity of a population, leading to rapid speciation. If you talk to plant breeders, they find hybridisation between widely different species leading to new species. 'Kinds' is a term only used by creationists, and as it has no clear definition is scientifically useless.

It's extremely rare that fertile hybrids are produced. Even if a fertile hybrid is produced, all breeding experiments have shown that there a limits to changes through breeding. If we try and breed that fertile hybrid again and again, we eventually see limits to change and changes into other species has NEVER been seen. So breeding cannot be cause for evolution.

The theory of evolution has to show that living things can break through their natural breeding limits, but this has NEVER been done. What about the observed cases of speciation in the wild? Plenty of examples.

Please provide some examples if you would, thanks

In what way was Java Man a hoax?
The finder himself discredited it!
Firstly, Dubois did not 'discredit' Java man. Dubois - a rather stuborn and single-minded person, but most accounts - had his own theory of human evolution, and tried to place his discovery of the first specimen of Homo Erectus (which he called Pithecanthropus Erectus) in his peculiar (by our standard) scheme of increasing brain size between the great apes and modern man. That he was wrong in the opinion of modern researchers does not mean that he 'discredited' his most famous find.
Secondly, Dubois found only a single partial skull, a tooth and a femur. Because of the difficulty of provenance - i.e. placing the specimens in the correct geological context - research has been mainly on the skull. Dubois thought that they all came from the same specimen, but that is hardly relevant. Since 1893 when he found his specimens in 1893, many more specimens of Homo erectus have been found, notably from East Africa, but also from China, the Middle East, Spain and Georgia.

The skull cap that Dubois found was very chimp-like, and the femur very obviously was from an upright being, of which an ape is not. In addition, among his findings, were found among MANY other animal bones. So he picked out pieces from a heap and tried to claim they were the same animal. Then Dubois, after years of research after his finding, renounced his finding as a most likely a gibbon. Not sure how else to put it, he recanted.

One last question - is your view that creation cannot be a possible cause because you simply don't believe in a creator, or because you think there is no evidence to support creation?
Most of the world's Christians have no problem in accepting the findings of science about the nature of the world. Why do you think my religious belief is relevant? The founders of the science of geology were in many cases men with strongly held belief in the biblical account. They were forced by the sheer weight of evidence from the natural world to accept that there is not a shred of evidence to support the biblical account of the origin of the world.

I ask this question based on discussions I have had with other evolutionists. What I've found is people of all beliefs easily accept evolution because it was taught in the schools. They assume it is fact and figure, "why would our textbooks lie?" Most normally don't give the theory of evolution another thought after they are done with school. Then some people stumble on some inconsistencies and start to look into it further. When they do, what happens from there is GREATLY affected by religious belief. The typical Christian, if he sees the scienitific aspect of the theory of evolution doesn't line up, can easily scrap it as garbage because they have belief in a creator and can easily accept creation as the source of things. Atheists and agnostics on the other hand, when faced with scientific inconsistencies in the theory of evolution, will either look the other way, or will outright CLING to the theory anyway even when they see the inconsistencies. They do this because without any religious belief, they NEED the theory of evolution. It is a fact that Darwin, Huxley and others of the time were originally Christians then dumped their religion and became agnostic/atheistic once they proposed the theories relating to evolution. I also have many quotes on my site from notable people who state how they will always believe in the theory of evolution REGARDLESS, because the alternative (creation) is unthinkable. I talk to evolutionists who think this way all the time, and it is an embarasingly weak way to think. This is why I brought up the question.

It's getting late and I have to go for now. Have a good night Richard. I look forward to your reply.

Paul

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