Nonbelief In A Nutshell

A Work In Progress - I think this is a good rough draft, I'll refine it over time, add references, links, and citations. In the meantime, feel free to help me by pointing out any errors or defeating arguments (or even just linking to other resources in the comments).

But here are a few foundations for my Nonbelief:

Morality

If "objective moral values and duties exist" then the question of god is irrelevant because, being objective, they cannot depend upon god. They would have to exist as facts of the matter, independent from any god, or else they are not objective. This argument is the same as saying 'if matter objectively exists, then god". It is a non sequitur.

Nor do I grant that objective morals exist. All evidence is that we follow something closer to empirical consensualism (the proposition that, I and others have a say in the nonsense you try to pull on us which we can legitimately base on the facts of the matter). I believe that GIVEN THE HUMAN CONDITION (which by definition means we're not talking about the objective - a human who, for example, lacks a sense of empathy would not likely share our values) that there are moral imperatives that we can discern through observation. I believe there are good, empirical arguments to be made for such imperatives but ultimately they depend on shared values. If we cannot agree on a value position then we will not agree on the conclusions regarding ethics or morality. Nor does a morality existing necessarily imply that there is some arbiter of them. They are JUST principles of behavior. Some behaviors we don't always like, but we tolerate in others (belief in religion, free speech, non-belief in religion, blasphemy). Other behaviors we find so contrary to human existence that we're willing to enforce them upon others, even when we're not directly affected (murder, theft, assault, rape, fraud, child abuse, slavery, etc).

Slavery

Slavery is one of the best arguments against the Bible as a source of moral authority. I will let Marvin Wheat make that point for me: "emancipationism [or] abolitionism is atheism" 'The progress and intelligence of Americans', Marvin T. Wheat. Bravo Mr. Wheat, I couldn't have said it better. The rejection of slavery is the rejection of the Judeo-Christian values that underlie it (neither group invented slavery, they merely codified as if it was the will of god). This Atheism is the claim that we have grown beyond the narrow-minded claims of iron age, theocratic despots asserting their power and exploiting the ignorant/uneducated/undereducated masses of the time. Yes, I Very Well understand the draw - for a finite payment today, and draw from infinite perfection tomorrow - you know, after you're dead so we don't have to actually prove anything. And the bad people will get punished (since we failed to hold them responsible) and the "good people" (defined invariably by EVERYONE as those on YOUR side, it's always the other guys who are evil) will be rewarded. Oh, and it's conveniently undetectable and unprovable (despite 1 Kings 18), so you'll just have to take their word for it. I mean, nobody would Die for a false belief would they? (*cough* 9/11 *cough*, Opps, deploy the Special Pleading police to clean that one up). And let's ignore the fact that it's not REALLY the bad people who are punished, they merely have to confess their sins and accept Jesus and get a Free Pass. It's those evil atheists who want to take responsibility for their OWN sins and not scapegoat them through a Human Sacrifice that will receive infinite punishment for their finite transgressions against the make-believe. What god really hates is someone who thinks for themselves, not the murderer, or the rapist, or the child abuser.

But a bare and unsupported assertion that ones moral claims are grounded in their god is fatuous and empty. You must provide and argument or demonstration as to why your claims of moral ground in YOUR God are substantial, whereas all the other tens of thousands of such claimants are in error.

The fact is that the religious methodology (be it revelation, gnosis, or otherwise) is wholly unreliable and demonstrably leads to mutually exclusive conclusions. I might as well be a Scientologist or Mormon or follower of Jim Jones or Sai Baba as all such claims rest on the same, deeply flawed, methodological footing (that of making things up and deciding to believe in them ON the absence of evidence and contrary to all rationality).

What Passes For Biblical 'Morality'

On Christianity, what one must accept is that commanding someone to murder their own child is a moral action (if not, then god is immoral; or if it's moral for god to do it and it's not moral for you then it is NOT an objective standard). And if you argue that it was ok because God stayed Abraham's hand then you fail to account for the thousands of infants murdered by and on account of God: The first born of Egypt; in the presupposed flood; by the Israeli soldiers against the Amalekites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; or amongst the 100,000 Syrians; or the 1 million Ethiopians; etc (2,476,636 in total explicitly numbered in the Bible, which doesn't account for the flood or first born or many other mass murders and genocides in the bible). God doesn't care much about the lives of humans, infant or otherwise.

Even if you presume the Canaanite (et al.) adults deserved genocide (which is a prejudiced and abhorrent conclusion to begin with, and is baseless in fact), there is no argument by which you can convince me that it was thus a good and moral action for the poor Israeli soldiers to also slice open the children with a sword. Such murders (presuming they actually occurred, which also fails the factual history test) would be immoral. Period. Inexcusable. I DARE you to pick up a sword in your hands and hold it over an infant and even CONTEMPLATE bringing that sword down with force. If it doesn't make you ill just thinking about it then you need mental help because you are abnormal.

Historicity

The Bible shows every evidence of being plagiarized from older mythologies and events from history (e.g., from Gilgamesh, Judas the Galilean, Egyptian sources, etc).

The utter lack of contemporaneous corroborating historical accounts is also devastating to the claims. Nobody else thought to mention the graves opening up and the dead walking among the living? Josephus was far too late (and either plagiarized or dishonestly modified), Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were TOO late, written anonymously, and we have every reason to suspect them (ask any Jewish scholar for their opinion of Christian re-interpretation of their own works). The Church's violent suppression of dissenting voices (just ask the Arian's) and destruction of contradictory evidence likewise condemns them. And then the Church, as further evidence of their systemic (commanded by the authority of the Church) immorality, for the next 1700 some-odd-years rules via murder, torture, and intimidation and destroys innumerable cultures around the globe under the pretense that it is God's Will (Manifest Destiny, Requerimiento, etc).

And please do not try to pretend like Protestants escape any of this, read Luther's 'On the Jews and their Lies' and 'In Bondage Of The Will' for starters. Then we can move to the Thomas More / William Tyndale screeds against each others respective religion. Calvin's vicious theocracy is likewise well documented (cf. Michael Servetus).

In the end it doesn't matter if there was a historical personage that the character of Jesus was based on or not. It is irrelevant to the question. I think the best evidence argues for an amalgamation (especially the evidence for Judas the Galilean). You can legitimately disagree because there is no conclusive evidence. Claiming the Biblical texts as prima facie evidence for Jesus buys you no more than the prima facie evidence for the gods in the Hellenistic texts. Once again, the religious methodological failure is fantastic and profound.

Scientific methodologies converge on answers while religious methodologies obfuscate, diverge, and bifurcate.

Magic Mushrooms & Caveats

re: http://www.livescience.com/14606-magic-mushrooms-treat-depression-addiction.html

First, thanks to @RachaelRettner for even covering the story. Don't take my criticism as being unappreciative. I'm trying to be constructive here - as well as point out the facts that I'm aware of... [and I understand that, unfortunately, your ability to state facts may be limited by politics]

So I guess I feel like this is pushing some of the myths a bit far, from the referenced article on LiveScience:

However, use of the substance, called psilocybin, is not without risk. Its side effects include paranoia and delusions

and then later quoted a researcher as saying:

"Someone having an adverse reaction might be so scared they might run across a highway and be hit by a car,"

Seriously? And exactly how many times has that ACTUALLY happened? What is the ACTUAL risk? 1 in a billion? Sure, it COULD happen, in theory... but come on. You could also watch a sad movie, have a tear in your eye, and not see a car and get hit by it. That's a risk, it COULD happen - how often is that Risk highlighted in a movie review? The problem is that they present this like you are completely out of your gourd or something, that simply isn't even in the ballpark. You would have be very sensitive and take an absolutely massive dose and just be really unlucky to reach that point.

What is risk of an overdose and complications associated with Acetaminophen? According to http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=an0NgFGyErgU&refer=worldwide

Acetaminophen overdose was linked to 458 deaths and 26,000 hospitalizations annually from 1990 to 2001

How many deaths from psilocybin are there annually? 0.1 maybe? if you stretch the facts a bit. By some accounts it is Zero.

150 people die from food allergies every year in the US. There are maybe half-a-dozen TOTAL cases in the world where psilocybin mushrooms MIGHT have been related to cause of death. An investigation into one of them found issues: http://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_journal5.shtml.

National Survey on Drug Use & Health, 2009 data suggests that 8.1% of the population had used psilocybin - that's 24.9 MILLION people in the US alone (and potentially over 500 MILLION people world-wide). And we know use of these mushrooms is MUCH higher in South America where they have been used for centuries as medicines.

The vast, vast, vast majority of dangers associated with psilocybin ONLY exist BECAUSE it is illegal (proper identification, purity, etc). It is an absolutely absurd situation in my opinion.

http://dionysus.psych.wisc.edu/CourseWebsites/PSY411/DrugFacts/mushrooms.pdf

The risk of death from psilocybin overdose is virtually nonexistent – there remains no conclusive evidence of any fatalities despite ingestion (often accidental) of dosages greatly exceeding the effective amount. No apparent physiological damage from the use of psilocybin has been observed from the limited research conducted to date (Grinspoon and Bakalar 1997; Stamets 1916)

I'm NOT saying it's harmless (here comes my own CYA), a trip can certainly be extremely intense (I would say for a majority of people, a full dose trip would likely be THE most intense experience of their entire lives) and the person should be aware of what is going to happen and take appropriate precautions. Yes, it is prudent to have a "sitter".

These are the kinds of cautions and facts that should be given as a reservation or caution. Real facts, not the propaganda. As always, check out http://www.erowid.org/ for detailed drug fact info.

Human beings have used psilocybin for at least many thousands of years (direct evidence of use as far back as ~9,000 BCE), if not tens or hundreds of thousands (paleolithic, shamanistic cave paintings in Chauvet Pont d'Arc, Lascaux, Altamira, Chauvet, Magura, et al.: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/clottes/page7.php). Yes, there is risk - but we don't need hyperbole or propaganda that seems rampant in this line of research and reporting today (no doubt due, in part, to the racist and politically motivated "Drug War").

Beyond that, let's be honest - the hallucinations not a "side-effect" they are the effect.

If you have never "been there" (an apt metaphor) it would probably be wise to speak with someone who has so they can give you a better/deeper explanation.

It is always amusing (in a sad and disappointing sense) to read the clinical list of 'effects' of these types of substances like "increased heart rate, disorientation, lethargy, giddiness, euphoria, joy". That's like describing an orgasm as "muscle spams". These capture nothing of the essence of the experience.

How often to do you see ecstatic, noetic, unity, ineffability, awe, astonishment in the list (The Johns Hopkins studies actually do)? You can be utterly transported to 'elsewhere', you can feel the greatest joy or greatest sadness, or greatest fear or sometimes all three at once. It is incomprehensible to someone who doesn't have the experience against which to compare notes. It's like describing color to a person blind from birth - the description just doesn't replace the "felt presence of immediate experience" (to borrow a phrase from McKenna).

I hope this is helpful in some ways to someone.

Legal history of Milk, 1860-1940

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3757/is_200201/ai_n9027703/

In-depth review, looks at historical data as well as the legal and constitutional issues.

One of the reasons I found this was I look at the issue of honey we face today:

http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/

300 - errors?

Absolutely brilliant, loving this guy.

http://davidbrin.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/move-over-frank-miller-or-why-the-occupy-wall-street-kids-are-better-than-spartans/

Hypatia

In 415 CE, the Archbishop Cyril of Alexandria has his monks incite a Christian mob to murder the last scientist/librarian of the Alexandrian Library, Hypatia. The Christians, led by Peter the Magistrate, strip Hypatia naked, drag her through the streets to the Christian church Caesareum, where they flayed her body with ostraca (while she is still alive, they stripped off her skin with pottery shards), tore her body into pieces, and then finally burned the remains.

It was only 391 CE when Emperor Theodosius issued his edict closing down all Pagan temples, which immediately resulted in the temple of Serapis in Alexandria being razed to the foundation. And from there, only 19 years of internal ROT until the Visigoths sacked Rome.

These are the same ideological, fundamentalist Christians trying to get into power in the United States today. This is our History and our near Future if we fail to pay attention to the very clear warning signs of rising Christian nationalism, claims of religious supremacy, and promulgation of theocratic leadership.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypatia

http://www.kingdomnow.org/

Science verses Religion

Someone wrote:

Science only concerns itself with empirical facts. Religion concerns itself with moral "facts": is murder wrong? how ought I lead my life? how should I prioritize education and community service?

No microscope, no matter how powerful, can tell you that murder is wrong, or how to lead your life. Yes, science is really really good at figuring at empirical facts, but these moral questions are not within its purview.

Science, I think, is best defined as the best process humans know for removing bias and errors from our data and our conclusions. To propose some alternative is to argue that it is better if we leave in some biases and errors. There are certainly different applications of the Sciences (physics is different from history, is different from biology, is different from cosmology, etc) but in all cases the goal is the same. Discerning Truth from Fiction.

I would agree that some questions are difficult for the Hard sciences to address directly, but that doesn't make Science irrelevant - very much the opposite.

And I would argue that a far better distinction would be Science and Philosophy, which is STILL founded on an application of Reason, Logic based in Empirical Facts. But even then, Philosophy can ONLY propose Oughts - it cannot mandate them because an Ought is only meaningful when measured against some value or goal.

Empirical Facts are absolutely relevant to any discussion about ethics or morals. For example, it is critically important to know how our treatment of children is likely to impact their later development before we can make correct statements about the morality of their treatment.

If constantly screaming at a child causes them emotional damage and results in harm in later adult then surely we OUGHT not to scream at children. But in absence of this Empirical Fact many parents do exactly this under the ERRONEOUS assumption that screaming at them endlessly will make them better adults. Without such FACTS you cannot make CORRECT moral or ethical choices in line with your actual values. You will instead make ignorant choices.

To assert that science has no place here is just patently absurd. It is EXACTLY here where science is needed most. How we treat children, how we treat each other, how we go about the business of building a healthy society is exactly where floundering about blindly has failed in the past. Science doesn't have to give a perfect answer to be valuable - it is a progression of better understanding.

OUGHT we feed the worlds population so 15 million children don't die EVERY year? OUGHT we find a way to give basic medical care to everyone? OUGHT we assume that those stuck in poverty, living absolutely miserable lives filled with abuse, hatred, and suffering is their own damn fault? Or OUGHT we recognize that they are born into a situation that very few are able to extricate themselves and perhaps take some of that responsibility for raising up every person on ourselves?

These are questions that science can absolutely help us answer.

Meanwhile, Religion seems far more concerned with discerning the will of the imaginary being of ultimate prejudice - not with facts.

OUGHT we hate gay and lesbian people? OUGHT we deny them rights? OUGHT we take it upon ourselves to control a women's body? OUGHT we lie to people and tell them condoms CAUSE AIDS so they don't use birth control? OUGHT we slaughter those different from ourselves? OUGHT we do what imaginary voices in our head tells us to?

Let's look at two of the so-called "moral" facts of the bible: 1) if god commands it, you should murder your own child, 2) if god commands i,t you commit absolute genocide - murdering every man, women, child, suckling infant, and ox - slicing infants open with a sword.

Even today we find people who (so they say) are commanded by "god" to murder their children and they do it.

OUGHT we continue to teach people such absurd and harmful stories? This is another question science can inform us about.

If all people heard that "If you hear voices telling you to murder your children and think it's God you need to seek help immediately" as often as they heard the story of Abraham and Isaac do you think that just perhaps, every once in a while, someone might just seek that help out instead of drowning their children? I wonder how we could find the answer to such a question? Should we A) Pray on it, or B) take the concern seriously and study the question using the best tools and methodology from psychology and related sciences? Which approach is likely to give us the most detailed and least biased answer?

Newton Was A Christian and other Fallacies

Newton was also an Alchemist and produced several volumes of alchemical works (if I recall correctly they far outnumber his scientific works) - does his contributions to science also prove Alchemy is true? Absurd of course. But tie him to Religion and all of a sudden people assume it has some bearing on the question.

Scientists of the past were largely religious because their culture demanded it on pain of death (primarily Christians and Muslims). Their willingness to spread their religion at the point of a sword doesn't make their religion true. I would argue very much the opposite in fact. Newton had to walk a very fine line with the Church to avoid problems. The fact is he was forced to censure himself. The Church was a force for scientific oppression - only in support when the science could be twisted to their own ends.

The maltreatment of Galileo Galilei in the hands of the Church is well known (despite their far-too-little-too-late and backhanded apology) but what may be less well known is that Galileo got off easy compared to Giordano Bruno who was murdered by the Church. Copernicus suppressed his research due to the church, Campanella was tortured by the church repeatedly for supporting Galileo, Rene Descartes suppressed his research due to Galileo's treatment, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Edmond Halley, Isaac Newton, Georges Louis Leclerc Comte de Buffon, William Buckland, Charles Lyell, Louis Agassiz, Adam Sedgewick, Robert Chambers, Charles Darwin... all scientists whose work was negatively affected by the actions of the Roman Catholic Church against the progress of science.

Scientists today are mostly still religious because of inculcation, indoctrination, and socio-cultural expectation. And many also live in parts of the world where religion-by-violence is still practiced.

And if it isn't the state pushing the religion now, then it's probably your family. My mom has been in tears begging me to rejoin the church because she cannot stand the thought of her son burning in Hell while she is in heaven (and honestly, what a horrible lie to have implanted in people's mind in the first place - pretending it's true to manipulate people into joining).

But even in the National Academy of Sciences in the US (which is an outlier for its preponderance of religious belief) some 93% of the members are NON-religious. As the level of education (or more accurately, the level of scientific knowledge) drops the likelihood that you accept the religion of your culture goes up. It's just a correlation but it shows a tension between scientific beliefs and religious beliefs.

If you accept even basic things like the Earth goes around the Sun, Earth is a spheroid which isn't likely to have "stood still" at any point, viruses and bacteria cause disease, life on earth evolved from simpler organisms (and must have started from a replicating molecule of some type, probably RNA-like, based on the heavy natural organic chemistry), there isn't a water layer above the "firmament" of the heavens, the universe is ~13.7 billion years old, the Earth is 4.5 billion years old - then the Bible is clearly and plainly false. There IS no other reasonable conclusion.

Just ask Pope's Paul V and Urban VIII - they knew this very plainly and with the full authority of apostolic succession. They knew what these verses meant and they knew well the implications of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. It meant their Bible was fundamentally wrong.

But Religion is nothing if not well adapted to the human psyche, so it persists. It feeds off the easy belief that the bad will be punished and the good rewarded, that our life will have had cosmic significance and not have been wasted. It allays our fear of death and gives us false hope. It is a cost borne by the living, attested by the unseen and unknowable, with rewards only promised upon death, the ultimate ponzi scheme.

• Treatise on Church history with particular reference to the Arian controversy (from The Newton Project).
  
• Isaac Newton, heretic: the strategies of a Nicodemite
  
• Newton's Anti-Catholocism
  

Necrometrics: Death Tolls in History

Aristarchus of Samos

Pretty cool guy

Evolution: As Simple As Possible

The modern definition of Evolution is:

evolution can be precisely defined as any change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next. - Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974

An Allele is simply a particular gene variant.

When a genetic scientist speaks of "microevolution" or "macroevolution" (which is rarely the case) they are talking about the exactly same underlying phenomena over different scales of time. They are not making a distinction between the cause of those changes, as uninformed evolution-deniers often like to incorrectly imply (this is a common dishonest tactic).

Microevolution: allele changes within organisms or populations of organisms; studies that look at individual genetic changes, or allele changes within a population over small periods of time (up to roughly 100 years).

Macroevolution: evolution on a scale of separated gene pools over geologic time; studies that look at the effects of accumulated allele changes between groups of organisms that are no longer biologically/genetically interconnected (over periods of 10,000 years or greater).


Here are the high-level facts regarding Evolution.

• We know for an absolute fact that many major biological components and structures are determined by DNA & RNA.
  
  Tens of thousands of genes have been specifically mapped out, we understand the proteins they produce, how those proteins are further modified and ultimately used. These are directly observed phenomena. We've taken spider-silk protein genes from spiders and inserted them into goats, the goat then produces this protein, in their milk glands as it turns out. There are thousands of studies on everything from pigmentation, to morphology (see, HOX gene complex), to cell specialization, etc. Thousands of confirmed, observed, direct links between the genetics and our biology.
  
  Hox Genes in Development: The Hox Code
  Spider Goats
  Hox patterning of the vertebrate rib cage
  Pearson, J. C., et al. Modulating Hox gene functions during animal body patterning. Nature Reviews Genetics 6, 893–904 (2005)

• We know for an absolute fact that entire genes can be accidentally duplicated during replication.
  
  We also know that this isn't even required because some genes produce RNA strands that can actually modify other proteins to adapt them to new purposes.
  
  Evolution by gene duplication: an update (pdf)
  Gene Duplication: The Genomic Trade in Spare Parts
  An Abundance Of RNA Regulators
  In Evolution, the Sum Is Less than Its Parts (epistasis)
  epistasis

• We know for an absolute fact that individual nucleotides in the genetic sequence can be inserted, deleted, replaced or translocated via mutations.
  
  And we know that mutations are fairly common. It is absolutely NOT true that most mutations are harmful (most have almost no effect). The average human has some 150 mutations in their genome. Truly harmful genes are weeded out by Natural Selection. Seemingly harmful mutations (e.g., sickle-cell) can have benefits (resistance to malaria) that can cause them to be prevalent in a population despite their detriment to the organism (assuming the organism can still live to reproduce).
  
  Nature: Genetic Mutation
  DNA Replication and Causes of Mutation
  Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease Type 1A -- Association with a Spontaneous Point Mutation in the PMP22 Gene

• We know for an absolute fact that our genetic material is recombined (where nucleotides are broken and then joined to a different location, especially during meiosis), where it facilitates chromosomal crossover and gene conversion. The crossover process leads to offspring having different combinations of genes from those of their parents, and can occasionally produce new alleles.
  
  Genetic recombination
  Evolutionary Origin of Recombination during Meiosis
  Mutations not considered harmful, FAQ at Talk.Origins

• We know for an absolute fact that chromosomes can be joined together or broken apart and experience inversions and duplications.
  
  Origin of human chromosome 2: an ancestral telomere-telomere fusion
  Chromosome 2 (human)
  Comparison of the Human and Great Ape Chromosomes as Evidence for Common Ancestry
  Chromosomal inversion
  Check out the genome size of Polychaos dubium! Amoeboid genome 200 times larger than the human genome

So, in summary:

1. We know that DNA drives pretty much everything that makes us, well, us.
2. We know how the genome can grow (gene duplication/chromosome duplication).
3. We know how the genome can and DOES change (nucleotides inserted, deleted, or substituted), with great frequency (~150 mutations per individual).
4. We know that the genome changes from individual to individual.

We observe all these changes happening in real organism. Microorganisms are the most studied because they replicate faster and generally have smaller genomes to study. It's all there - we see things changing over time with EVERY type of change necessary to change a bacterium into a human being - given enough time. And the amount of time you would estimate from the observables above (and in more scientific detail) are exactly what we find. The radiometric dates (from fossils) align with the molecular clock dates we would expect to an astonishing degree (remember this is a stochastic process so we do not expect perfect clockwork changes) over a wide range of phyla and different time periods.

Yes, it requires many steps - but remember, each of those steps are filtered through Natural Selection. Natural Selection is the key process.

Imagine you thoroughly shuffle a deck of cards and, without looking at them, deal them into 4 piles. The odds that you have 4 Royal Flushes is as close to impossible as we can imagine. But with a subtle change of the rule, imagine that you turn the cards over and simply Select the next random card into the right piles. 4 Royal Flushes becomes a mundane result. Natural selection is Nature looking at the cards and selecting them based on survival. Survival itself is an extremely complex subject and it is NOT simply survival of the fittest, organism often develop complex relationships with one another (food, predator, host, symbiotic, parasitic, etc). If one species depends upon another, it is not in that species best interest to utterly destroy the other species, at other times species may compete for common resources. But the interplay between all of these relationships cannot be so easily summed up.

Evolution is a fact, it's happening all around you in every single organism.

This is why results like Escherichia coli evolving the genes necessary to process Citrate is such strong confirmatory result (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0803151105)). If you read all the papers from Lenski and his team on this you can find the exact genetic changes that gave this result, so they know EXACTLY what changed in the genome to enable this new function.

Evolution is Happening. That is the undeniable conclusion from the above set of facts. There is no way to avoid it if you look at the facts and apply even a modicum of basic reasoning. If you want to deny it, show me exactly which genetic change cannot happen that would get us from point A to point B. Creationists want to claim 'macro evolution' can't happen -- well show me which step can't happen. At the genetic level there is NO SUCH THING as a species, species is an arbitrary category that humans apply because some set of things is "different enough" from another set of things. There are some 10 million species alive today. There is a fantastic series of gradations of life from the lowly bacterium to human. Hundreds of different kinds of eyes (including eyes that are no longer eyes at all, like our own pineal gland, which literally functions in some reptiles as a "third-eye").

There are many other reasons we could go into as well, eg., the observation that everything is made of similar cells (with a few major groupings) goes to common origins, we've observed single-cellular organisms evolve the ability to stick together and form multi-cellular clusters - and the beginnings of specialization, how more essential genes are highly conserved. All these factors just support the facts outlined above.


Another important thing to note is that bacteria have survived for billions of years, the genome of the modern bacteria is NOT the same as the ancient bacterium. It has stabilized itself as it adapted for survival in the environments in which it survives so it's not likely that a modern bacterium would suddenly turn into a squirrel. That just isn't going to happen, if it was that likely to happen we would probably have trillions of species and not merely the millions see today. You would need the EXACT genetics of the ancient bacterium and the exact conditions under which it mutated. But what we do expect to see is a continual, long-term evolution. Just as we've observed in populations where human selection has resulted in massive and sometimes incredible changes in just a few hundred or thousand of years (eg, in dog, horses, cabbages, pigeons, avocados, peas, lettuces, etc).

Think of the tiniest dog and the largest dog - HUMANS did that in just a few hundred years. Because of the limited time-period the claim that "it's still just a dog" is really irrelevant - you are missing the significance of the amount of actual change we know has occurred. Nature still has to provide the mutations (short of genetic manipulation of course).


NOTE: I'll enhance the references as time goes along (I would like to link to definitions for all the terms as well), feel free to comment and suggest key papers and articles to be added. Meanwhile, the reader is encouraged to do their own research to validate the claims. They are VERY simple claims and easily confirmed in numerous scientific journals and popular science publications. Hint: use Google Scholar

There are an estimated 5 × 10³⁰ Prokaryotes (bacteria and the like) on earth today, that's a lot of parallel mutation going on.

For tons more information explore the talkorigins site and this video: