In the South Pacific Gyre, where life moves very, very slowly, bacteria from were brought up from sea floor sediment at 6000 metres where they had been dormant for perhaps 100 million years:
The microbes got straight to work doing what bacteria do, and within 68 days of incubation had increased their numbers up to 10,000-fold. They doubled about every five days (E. coli bacteria in the lab double in around 20 minutes). Their progeny contained specially labeled isotopes of carbon and nitrogen that made the scientists sure that the microbes were eating what they had been offered.
It’s worth pausing to consider the meaning of these results. In this experiment, cells awoke and multiplied that settled to the bottom when pterosaurs and plesiosaurs drifted overhead. Four geologic periods had ground by, but these microbes, protected from radiation and cosmic rays by a thick coat of ocean and sediment, quietly persisted. And now, when offered a bite, they awoke and carried on as if nothing unusual had happened.
Jennifer Frazer, “100-Million-Year-Old Seafloor Sediment Bacteria Have Been Resuscitated” at Scientific American
It works because they have few needs and no ambitions.
The paper is open access.
In comparison to their younger offspring, the only thing the researchers stated was,
There was a somewhat similar study that was done not too long ago with bacterial spores in which the bacteria were ‘revived’ from their dormant state.
In fact, Ancient bacteria spores recovered from amber crystals and salt crystals, which are tens to hundreds of millions of years old, have been ‘revived’,,,
,,, And these ancient ‘revived’ bacteria have been compared to their living descendants of today,,,
,,, To the disbelieving shock of Darwinists, “Almost without exception, bacteria isolated from ancient material have proven to closely resemble modern bacteria at both morphological and molecular levels.”
Evolutionists were so disbelieving at this stunning lack of change, (far less change than was expected from the neo-Darwinian view), that they insisted the stunning similarity was due to modern contamination in Vreeland’s experiment. Yet the following study laid that objection to rest by finding some ancient DNA sequences that were completely unique:
I wrote an e-mail to Dr. Cano and asked him if he had performed a ‘fitness test’ on the ancient bacteria he had revived to see if they were more fit than their modern day descendants. He wrote back and said that he had done such a test and that “we surmised that the putative “ancient”,,, isolate was capable of utilizing a broader scope of substrates” than the modern strain
Moreover, the ancient yeast that Dr. Cano had also isolated was also found to be more resilient than modern day yeast in terms of making beer:
Thus, these ancient bacteria are actually more resilient and robust than their modern day descendants. Which is exactly the opposite finding one would have expected from a Darwinian perspective.
Moreover, in terms of morphology, billion year old bacteria “surprisingly looked exactly like modern species,” and the similarity in morphology is widespread among fossils of [varying] times,”
Here are a few more references to drive this point home:
Darwinists simply have no empirical evidence that it is possible to change one bacterial species into another bacterial species.
In the following paper, Alan H. Linton – emeritus professor of bacteriology, states that ‘Bacteria are ideal for this kind of study, But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another,’
Darwinists often claim that bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics is proof for evolution. What they leave out of their supposed proof for evolution is that there is always an associated ‘fitness cost’ for bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics.
The following video, at the 2:15 minute mark, shows that there is always a ‘fitness cost’ associated with bacteria gaining antibiotic resistance.
Here is a more recent video on the subject that was made a few months ago:
In the following article, Casey Luskin states, ‘(an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution.’
In other words, it turns out that instead of creating anything new, antibiotic resistant bacteria always degrades or modifies some preexisting molecular abilities in order to gain antibiotic resistance. This following site provides a list of some of the degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria
Darwinists simply never tell their audience that antibiotic resistance is actually proof for molecular degradation, and always act as if antibiotic resistance is undeniable proof for Darwinian evolution.
In fact in 2016 a video was made by Darwinists of bacteria rapidly adapting to higher and higher doses of antibiotics and the researchers claimed to have captured ‘evolution in action’,,
Evolutionary biologist, (and militant atheist), Jerry Coyne went so far as to claim that the video was a ‘creationist’s nightmare’
Yet, the fact of the matter is that no new information was generated in the rapid adaptations.
As Michael Behe stated about the video, the “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria demonstrate evolution by breaking stuff,, what we have here is devolution, not evolution, the opposite of what needs to be explained”
Moreover, the fact that antibiotic resistance was being gained so rapidly in the video, as well as being gained rapidly in nature,,
,,, should have been a solid clue for Darwinists that the adaptations to antibiotics are not being generated by random Darwinian processes as they assumed, but that antibiotic resistance is already ‘programmed’ into bacteria.
And indeed, contrary to Darwinian thought, it is now found that antibiotic resistance, instead of being something that is ‘new’ for bacteria, is an ability that is ancient.
i.e. antibiotic resistance is an ability that bacteria have had all along.
In fact, one researcher, who found antibiotic resistance in four million year old bacteria, remarked ‘that antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria and could be billions of years old.’
As antibiotic resistance itself indicates, supposed beneficial adaptations that are often falsely touted by Darwinists as undeniable proof for Darwinian evolution are actually the result of degraded molecular abilities.
And as Lee Spetner, in his book ‘Not By Chance’ remarked, ‘Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.’
In 2016, Lee Spetner went on to remark, ‘there is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome, and that statement still stands.’
Thus in conclusion, bacteria, far from providing proof for Darwinian evolution as Darwinists often like to falsely portray, actually turn out to be the ‘Darwinist’s worst nightmare’, (Hat tip too Jerry Coyne) :), in that bacteria consistently highlight the inability of the materialistic processes of Darwinian evolution to ever generate the immaterial information that is ‘running the show’ in life.
Verse:
So if we sacrifice the need for oxygen and bury ourselves deep in the mud and silt on the ocean floor we could survive for millions of years? Not sure that’s a good trade-off from a human perspective.
Bornagain77/
Why would that be the opposite of what we would expect from a Darwinian perspective? Evolutionary fitness is a relationship between an organism and its environment. That the ancient bacteria could be revived is fascinating, as is their resilience under certain stresses. But how do we know that, if they were released into a modern environment, they would survive as well as their descendants?
Bornagain77/2
Can you provide a definition of bacterial species?
We observe the capacity for environmental adaptation, yes, in antimicrobial resistance but also in Richard Lenski’s LTEE which revealed the evolution by E Coli of aerobic growth on citrate and the bacteria that were able to metabolize the waste products of plastics manufacture. Without this capacity for adaptation, the chances of new species evolving would be lower. But it’s observed so it’s not.
And as Linton points out, we’ve been doing bacteriology for around 150 years. Given the unimaginable number of bacteria that must have existed on this planet over 4 billion years and left no trace in the fossil record, we’re in no position to know one way or the other how much bacterial speciation occurred.
Seversky is proof positive that Darwinists “don’t need no stinking evidence” in order to believe wholeheartedly in evolution.
In fact, Seversky is proof positive that it is possible to have blind faith that evolution occurred even when you have multiple lines of evidence telling you that Darwinian evolution could not have possibly occurred.
Seversky may repeatedly claim that he ‘believes in science’, but his ‘belief in science’ is lip service only. His belief in evolution trumps anything and everything that science has to say about the impossibility of evolution.
Bornagain77/3
How so? If bacteria find themselves in an environment awash with antibiotics, the one that is lucky enough to evolve some sort of adaptation that confers resistance has a much better chance of surviving and reproducing. So what if it slows the reproductive rate? That bacterium gets to survive and reproduce. The others don’t. So what is the survival value of all that extra “information” that was lost?
H’mm, if I were YEC, I would throw a red flag. Entropy, entropy, entropy. KF
Bornagain77/4
And is Spetner’s position the only one in this debate? Is it even the majority view? What are the others? Do you even know or care?
Oh Goody, Severky references the Talk Origins website to try to defend his position. A ‘fake news’ website if there ever was one.
But anyways, for what it is worth, nobody even debates the fact that the vast majority of mutations are detrimental. Lee Spetner is merely saying that there are no demonstrated ‘information building’ mutations. Period!
And technically he is right, although you have to get into the technical weeds to prove it. And he has defended his position in technical detail. The article I cited, “Gloves Off”, is a good example of his defending his position in detail.
But that technical debate, of if there are any truly information building mutations, is all besides the point anyways.
The overwhelming rate of detrimental mutations, which even Darwinists admit to , by itself, is enough to prove that evolution is impossible. So Dr. Spetner’s technical point about there being no demonstrated information building mutations whatsoever is, therefore, somewhat moot to the point of proving evolution impossible.
We can merely use what Darwinists themselves have already conceded in order to prove that Darwinian evolution is impossible.
For example, Dr. John Sanford, (Genetic Entropy), via computer simulations, has proven that Darwinian processes cannot overcome the overwhelming rate of detrimental mutation..
Here are more resources from Dr. John Sanford’s website that also disprove Darwinian evolution from many different angles
https://www.geneticentropy.org/resources
And if you don’t believe Dr. Sanford, well then there is also Dr. Michael Behe’s book (Darwin Devolves; 2019), which is the result of decades of research going through the finer details of adaptations showing that “we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,,”
But hey Seversky, don’t feel too bad about all this, it is just the Science itself that says Darwinian evolution is impossible. And science has never prevented you from believing is Darwinism before? So I see no reason for you to let such a little thing as the scientific evidence itself prevent you from continue believing in Darwinism now. 🙂
KF@10:
Thankfully you’re not a YEC.
Bornagain77/12
Perhaps Spetner should have consulted the Talk Origins Archive
So, contrary to Spetner, there are ways in which information can be created.
Yes, research by evolutionary biologists has found that detrimental mutations greatly outnumber the beneficial. But if the majority of detrimental mutations occur in non-functional regions of the genome then that effect is mitigated.
More importantly, detrimental mutations are those which, by definition, are going to be filtered out by natural selection, given sufficient time, leaving just the beneficial ones.
If Sanford is right, that the rate of detrimental mutations is so devastating as to cause a catastrophic collapse then how are we here? How did life based on such a fundamentally flawed system ever get to the point of creating such complex creatures as ourselves? It should never have got that far. Is it possible that Sanford’s simulations are not accurate?
A very interesting discussion you got here.
Let me give you some advice to make them even better in the future:
@Bornagain77
You might want to be a bit less condescending and better engage with your opponent’s arguments. Your post 8 is just unnecessary. Try not to dismiss sources as “fake news”, your opponent might do exactly the same with Evolutionnews, Sanford, or Spetner. It does not advance the discussion.
@Seversky
You wrote that Sanford cannot be right because if he was, we would not have evolved. This is utter nonsense as Sanford’s point is that we indeed did not evolve. So if you dismiss his argument, try not to assume evolution’s validity. That’s circular reasoning at its best.
The whole information debate is somewhat frustrating. From a YEC, OEC, or ID perspective, an organism has initially been equipped with a set of working and designed molecular machinery. While this system can be fine-tuned, e.g. think about the slight adaptation that caused bacteria to digest nylon based on a preexisting digestive pathway, natural selection and mutation cannot add whole new systems or body plans. From this point of view, it can and will only go downhill. While this process downhill might adapt an organism to a certain environment, e.g. think about Lenski’s LTEE with its highly artificial settings, it only deletes information and reduces adaptability. Can a deleterious mutation be randomly reversed? Definitely. Is this adding new information? No, it just restores old pre-existing “information”. i.e., molecular machinery.
From an evolutionist’s point of view, there is no initial optimum. Somehow, (may I suggest nearly magically), a cell arose and happily mutated until it found a protein that helped. As all is random and just good as long as it serves the organism, information is just the sum of stuff that is in the genome. Any mutation adds new information, and if it is selected, this new information is a step forward. There is no optimum, just fitness relative to an ever-changing environment.