Wednesday, April 8th 2009 at 10:16 AM
Ray Comfort (Bananaman) debates Darwinism
Just recently Ray Comfort (Bananaman) was featured on BBC radio, taking on Rev. Henry Brinton who believes evolution to be compatible with the Bible.
Whilst personally, I find it interesting the way, with growing evidence supporting evolution, the open-endedness of the bible is being geared more towards compatibility with evolution; Ray Comfort manages to make himself look a fool.
You can listen to the BBC interview here.
After listening to Ray Comfort make a fool of himself, I was especially interested in what Rev. Henry Brinton briefly talk about half way through the interview, regarding the 20 year study of the evolution of bacteria, and hit Google looking for information on the study - found here which is definitely worth a read!
Here are a few interesting extracts:
Over the generations, in fits and starts, the bacteria did indeed evolve into faster breeders. The bacteria in the flasks today breed 75% faster on average than their original ancestor. Lenski and his colleagues have pinpointed some of the genes that have evolved along the way; in some cases, for example, the same gene has changed in almost every line, but it has mutated in a different spot in each case.
Out of the blue, their bacteria had abandoned Lenski's their glucose-only diet and had evolved a new way to eat.
After 33,127 generations Lenski and his students noticed something strange in one of the colonies. The flask started to turn cloudy. This happens sometimes when contaminating bacteria slip into a flask and start feeding on a compound in the broth known as citrate.
And...
This rise and fall and rise suggests that the evolution of citrate-eating was not a one-mutation affair. The first mutation (or mutations) allowed the bacteria to eat citrate, but they were outcompeted by some glucose-eating mutants that still had the upper hand. Only after they mutated further did their citrate-eating become a recipe for success.
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