The Discovery Institute has now made it crystal clear that they have no interest in reconciling science and religion – instead, they want their brand of religion to replace science. Which makes it all the more concerning when their new website includes resources and curricula for high-school biology classes, and promotes the pseudoscientific documentary film "Expelled" as part of their campaign to introduce non-scientific alternatives to evolution under the banner of "academic freedom".

Originally posted by soficrow
reply to post by schrodingers dog

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I'm most interested in microbial evolution these days ...

Originally posted by schrodingers dog

Originally posted by soficrow
reply to post by schrodingers dog

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Ah, if you haven't seen this you might find it interesting:

Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli

Very. So a successful mutation "finally evolved in one population by 31,500 generations." ...I can't access the full article but seems there were no environmental changes - which are key to triggering mutations.

...I'd like to know how quickly E. coli might evolve with few electrical jolts added to the medium. Just occasionally...

Thanks.

Originally posted by schrodingers dog
reply to post by soficrow

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As requested.

files.abovetopsecret.com...

Francis Collins criticizes intelligent design (ID) on the grounds that it fails to suggest approaches for experimental verification, but then he cites experiments that he says prove it wrong. He also criticizes it for being a God of the gaps argument, but only after redefining ID as an argument from ignorance. Collins feels that ID poses a serious problem to Christian belief because it rejects Darwinian evolution, which he feels is supported by overwhelming evidence. But the only evidence Collins cites for Darwin’s mechanism of variation and selection is microevolution – minor changes within existing species. And the principal evidence he cites for Darwin’s claim of common ancestry is DNA sequences that he says have no function – though genome researchers are discovering that many of them do have functions. Collins’s defense of Darwinian theory turns out to be largely an argument from ignorance that must retreat as we learn more about the genome – in effect, a Darwin of the gaps. CSC

The term God-of-the-gaps argument usually refers to an argument that assumes an act of God as the explanation for an unknown phenomenon, and is a variant of an argument from ignorance.[citation needed] Commonly such an argument can be reduced to the following form:

There is a gap in scientific knowledge.

The gap is filled by acts of a god (and therefore also proves, or helps to prove, the existence of said god).

One example of such an argument, demonstrating how God is supposed to explain one of the gaps in biology, is as follows: "Because current science can't figure out exactly how life started, it must be God who caused life to start." This example is widely used in the debate of "intelligent design vs. evolution", since the religious side of intelligent design often tries to discredit the theory of evolution for not accounting for the origin of life.

The God of the Gaps argument tries to relegate God to the leftovers of science: as scientific knowledge increases, the dominion of God decreases. Dietrich Bonhoeffer said: "...how wrong it is to use God as a stop-gap for the incompleteness of our knowledge. If in fact the frontiers of knowledge are being pushed further and further back (and that is bound to be the case), then God is being pushed back with them, and is therefore continually in retreat. We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know. wiki

Can one be a Christian and accept evolution? The answer, as far as the Discovery Institute is concerned, is a resounding: No.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. ...
Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?
Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you.

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”
Galileo Galilei

I could never understand how that for some can be construed as an affront to God.