This has never happened to me until today. I made a prediction about Darwinist debating tactics and the prediction was fulfilled in the very post in which I made it!!!
In this post I describe the common Darwinist “literature bluff” tactic:
Note carefully the common Darwinist tactic here:
Literature bluff: There are thousands of books and articles demonstrating Darwinist proposition X.
Calling the bluff: OK, show me exactly where in just one of those books or articles this proposition is established.
Inevitable Darwinist response: [crickets]
Then in the comments section Alan Fox posts this link “beneficial mutations drosophila” in comment 8, and in comment 9 he says: “One or two article in there must be worth a glance, or am I bluffing?!
This is the classic literature bluff. Alan is saying, essentially, “Hey look. I googled “beneficial mutations drosophila” and got 349,000 hits! QED, the literature proves that scientists have induced beneficial mutations in drosophila, and that in turn proves beyond doubt the Darwinist position on macroevolution.”
Astounding. So let’s see how this unfolds [I feel like Flounder in Animal House: “Oh boy, this is GREAT!”]
Step 1: Alan makes his literature bluff as described above.
Step 2: Sterusjon calls Alans bluff when he writes:
BEGIN STERUSJON QUOTE:
Just for kicks, I followed your link in post #8. I found 349,000 Google hits. All well and good. I found numerous hits that were irrelevant to the issue. I found that many of the top links lead to the same paper. On that account the 349,000 number is quite deceptive. In addition that often listed paper defined its “beneficial” mutation as a change that allowed subsequent generations to survive in an artificial environment of >4% NaCl in their food supply that their distant ancestors could not. Oh, the wonders of micro-evolution to bring about macro-differences is thus demonstrated.
I wonder if the salt tolerance would persist if the flies where returned to “normal” feeding conditions? Just as Scambray noted about other “beneficial” mutations.
But more than that, I found these two links:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sci…..23-05.html where I found:
The researchers turned to the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to test this hypothesis. By crafting synthetic chromosomes, they created flies that reproduce asexually. They then established 17 populations of these asexual flies, all with white eyes. For comparison, they also set up 17 populations of white-eyed sexual flies. The team then let the insects breed for 10 generations. They added red-eyed flies and artificially favored the red-eyed gene by adding more red-eyed flies each generation. Thus the red-eyed gene mimicked a beneficial mutation. (Emphasis added by me)
“[A]rtificially…mimicked a beneficial mutation” What’s this. No real beneficial mutations?
And http://harunyahya.com/en/Evrim…..Drosophila where this was to be found:
All evolutionist efforts to establish beneficial mutations have ended in failure. In order to reverse this pattern, evolutionists have for decades been carrying out experiments on fruit flies, which reproduce very quickly and which can easily be subjected to mutations. Scientists have encouraged these insects to undergo all kinds of mutations, a great many times. However, not one single useful mutation has ever been observed.
The evolutionist geneticist Gordon R. Taylor describes these evolutionists’ pointless persistence:
It is a striking, but not much mentioned fact that, though geneticists have been breeding fruit flies for sixty years or more in labs all round the world—flies which produce a new generation every eleven days—they have never yet seen the emergence of a new species or even a new enzyme.
Another researcher, Michael Pitman, expresses the failure of the experiments on fruit flies:
. . . geneticists have subjected generations of fruit flies to extreme conditions of heat, cold, light, dark, and treatment by chemicals and radiation. All sorts of mutations, practically all trivial or positively deleterious, have been produced. Man-made evolution? Not really: Few of the geneticists’ monsters could have survived outside the bottles they were bred in. In practice mutants die, are sterile, or tend to revert to the wild type.
In short, like all other living things, fruit flies possess specially created genetic information. The slightest alteration in that information only leads to harm.
(Citation links removed)
If appears that more of the “evidence” is contrary to your position.
Are you bluffing? Yes! If you know where the evidence is buried in your 349,000 hits, please point to it with specificity. My perusal indicates it is not so easy to find. I’m calling your bluff.
Stephen
END STERUSJON QUOTE:
Now, let me make another prediction. The third step that I described [i.e., “crickets”] will now follow. Don’t get me wrong. Alan and others will likely post comments at a frenetic pace in response to Stephen’s work. What you will not see is any comment that actually demonstrates that the drosophila mutation experiments establish Darwinist claims beyond dispute as the Darwinists so often claim.
Classic.