A Common Descent Experiment (faith, Christians, believing, versus)

[Vizio]

Originally Posted by Shiloh1

Not a very good or Christian one:

See:

Part 2: 1, 2, and 3
Part 3: 4 and 5
Part 4: 4 and 5.

What about those leads you to that conclusion?

Originally Posted by Vizio

What about those leads you to that conclusion?

If you read it it should be self-evident particularly in light of your Christian understanding of God and Creation. Just read Endogenous Retroviruses - that does not line-up with Your view of God or his creation.

[Stubblejumper]

Originally Posted by Heavenese

Very interesting. I'm not going to lie and say I understand all the things said there, but I do understand a little bit. I'll look more into this experiment and it's results. I think as a creationist however, bacteria wouldn't be considered life in terms of what God calls life. I know I sound un-scientific here, but bear with me for a sec. According to the Bible, life is in the blood. So all creatures that have blood, is considered to be life. Now getting back to science, bacteria is considered to be life. So such an experiment would be valid. (I'm interested to know if the newly evolved bacteria, would be considered totally unrelated to it's ancestors. According to the wiki article, they are, but they could also re-evolve, which I take to mean they could return to the older form in newer generations if my understanding is correct)

Yet I want something a little more concrete than bacteria. As I said, I'm a creationist, and life is considered to be in creatures that have blood. There's no real scientific definition from the Bible, that seperates living bacteria from living animals/humans, but according to the Bible there is a difference. So I would like to see an experiment using creatures.

The issue with working with larger organisms is time. If I remember correctly, that change in Lenski's bacteria came about 31,000 generations into the experiment - even using something with a short lifespan, like a housefly, the equivalent length of experiment would take some 3,000 years.

The re-evolution section is actually about the team's work in figuring out exactly what changes occurred. They found that bacteria samples isolated after the 20,000th generation could be made to "re-evolve" that trait, while those from earlier could not. They concluded that another mutation had occurred at about 20,000 generations which facilitated the second, citrate-metabolizing mutation.

There is one ongoing experiment that you may be interested in keeping an eye on (a very dry, technical account of early findings can be found here. It's only about 65 generations in, though, so we might be waiting awhile before anything very groundbreaking happens (though you never know).

Originally Posted by Heavenese

I thank everyone for all their answers and links. I'll take some time to read up and study them. Personally, I think such an experiment can be done, a large scale speciation test. Yet if it can't be done with living creatures, I would also be interested in an experiment showing a single-cell organism evolve into a multi-cellular organism. (If we could speed up that process) Again, my thinking is because nature doesn't have a purpose, that is majorly why it would take millions of years to have major change. Yet because we are a focused people, who gives purpose, we should be able to cut down that time.

In that case, I offer this: University of Minnesota Biologists Replicate Key Evolutionary Step

By allowing only the heaviest individuals or groups to reproduce, they were able to create cells that would naturally grow into clusters - what's especially interesting, however, is that, rather than behaving as a cluster of individual cells, these clusters grew and reproduced as a single cluster. Simply put, the cells began to behave as one organism rather than individuals.

[Vizio]

Originally Posted by Shiloh1

If you read it it should be self-evident particularly in light of your Christian understanding of God and Creation. Just read Endogenous Retroviruses - that does not line-up with Your view of God or his creation.

I'm trying to see if you can express it in your own words, or if it's just a case of you hoping your expert can beat up our expert.

[Wild Colonial Girl]

Originally Posted by Heavenese

I'm starting to see what you're saying. Yet I'm hesitant to jump on the idea early life on this earth (pretty much bacteria and single cell organisms), evolved into the many creatures we see today, multi-cellular organisms. Are there any experiments showing this in real time?

It took a billion years to happen. Say we can speed it up a thousand times, we still would have had to start the experiment about the time we were losing our brow ridges.

Originally Posted by Vizio

I'm trying to see if you can express it in your own words, or if it's just a case of you hoping your expert can beat up our expert.

That's Ironic, since that's most of what you do. But here let me simplify - Is your concept of God and his Creation one where he creates parasitic viruses that interact with primates in a negative manner as well as make it look like primates such as humans and chimps have a common ancestor because these viruses have inserted themselfs in the exact places, numerous times (7 different viruses to be exact), within their genomes?

[Mightyqueen801]

Dogs are not descended from foxes. They are descended from wolves. And despite all the different types of dogs that have developed, you can still technically breed any dog with any other dog and any dog with a wolf, although, in cases such as St. Bernard and Chihuahua, it would be logistically difficult and amusing to watch.

[TroutDude]

Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801

Dogs are not descended from foxes. They are descended from wolves. And despite all the different types of dogs that have developed, you can still technically breed any dog with any other dog and any dog with a wolf, although, in cases such as St. Bernard and Chihuahua, it would be logistically difficult and amusing to watch.

Amusing if the male was the Chihuahua.

Not so funny if she's female....

[Vizio]

Originally Posted by Shiloh1

That's Ironic, since that's most of what you do. But here let me simplify - Is your concept of God and his Creation one where he creates parasitic viruses that interact with primates in a negative manner as well as make it look like primates such as humans and chimps have a common ancestor because these viruses have inserted themselfs in the exact places, numerous times (7 different viruses to be exact), within their genomes?

Yes--God did create parasites. They did what parasites do. And yes---they have a similar appearance because of a common designer. It's why my dog has 4 limbs, breathes air, etc.

[JerZ]

Originally Posted by Heavenese

It's not as far-fetched. When you read the creation story in Genesis, there's no weirdness to it. It's just God creating. There's no big battle that accidentally resulted in the creation of the universe. There's no creature, like a raven as you mention, making things out of clams. This is just God, who is not a creature Himself, specifically creating the world. Compared to other creation stories, the Bible's story just seems, normal. It's understandable.

IMO, it is definitely not more plausible that something we can't see or universally understand waved Its hand in the air and created the entire world as we know it.

It is definitely, for me, much more easier to understand that chemicals, which we can see, touch and experiment with and know to exist, gathered in a certain way, also which we've seen, and reacted, which we know chemicals to do.