As with all analogies it isn't perfect. I'm only talking about the principle.
And indeed, sometimes when you go down an evolutionary path, it's a dead end. The
vast majority of all life that has ever existed is now dead - and that's the case when you look either at individuals
or entire species. Things that suck at surviving don't always get much chance to be studied extensively, because they're too busy ceasing to exist.
And some bacteria have DNA that is much longer than ours.
I wouldn't doubt it.
These bacterial adaptations result in less viable organisms when the temporary pressure is removed.
In some cases, yes - if they result in a drain on the life form that inhibits its ability to survive. Our muscles will atrophy if not used regularly. Muscles are expensive to maintain, in terms of energy consumption. In an environment where we were frequently unsure of where our next meal would be, there was benefit in reducing resource requirements whenever reasonably possible. That's one adaptation that showed up that improved chances for survival, just as our ability to store fat when excess calories were available.
And we've got leftovers. Our eyes have remnants of a nictitating membrane. It may simply be in the process of slowly going away, or it might just stay there, because I very much doubt that it's a significant drain on our survival ability. (Evidently, our other survival skills made the lack of such a protective shield less of a problem.)
The issue I have with this is that from 0 (self replicating molecule) to now there had to be a lot of stuff added to make life on the planet as diverse as it is. At one point there weren't lungs, hearts, wings, cell membranes etc etc etc. There needed to be these positive additions in order for us to get where we are today with some neutral/negative changes thrown in for good measure. What we see in bacterial adaptation is almost always the loss of an ability which because of new environmental pressures gets selected for and eventually the ability is lost in the population completely.
I'm not expecting miracles in short periods of time, all I'm saying is that we need more than what we have observed in almost all of these cases to occur or the complexities of living systems simply cannot be created.
There is a "nylon bug" that comes much closer however.
Yeah, no doubt there had to be a lot of additions. You also have a laboratory the size of a planet to work in, along with an injection of trillions upon trillions of watts of energetic photons, an atmosphere with lots of reactive oxygen, lots of liquid water being continually stirred by thermal imbalances, and a long
long time.
Heart, lungs, etc: These things also didn't just arise fully completed. It's a continuous process, all filtered out by the simple ability to survive. Anything that would give a better chance of surviving improved the odds of that benefit being perpetuated. It didn't guarantee it, but it helped.
There is better evidence than bacterial resistance for "mud to jud" (just made that up :awe
evolution out there. I find the bacteria case overblown and a hand overplayed imho.
Why is it a problem, or "overplayed," to look at bacteria? They've been here a long time, and they're arguably the most successful kind of life on the planet. They're
everywhere. A great deal of other life is now thoroughly dependent upon them.
One reason that they're nice for biological studies is simply because they reproduce quickly, giving many chances for genetic mutations to show up. Besides that, you're not going to get many activists pitching Save the Microbes campaigns. If you're done with your culture, bleach it and dispose of it. Want more of them? Start a breeding program in a little petri dish.
Pascal's wager?
You better be Catholic because otherwise what if you die and God expected you to confess your sins AND do good works AND believe in him?
Or am I off base with your reasoning?
And you'd better believe in all the available gods, just to be safe.
Though you'd better get a good lawyer, because some religions, such as Christianity, forbid you from following other gods.
I think that was his point.
If you know ABSOLUTELY, without a shred of doubt, then you can critisize other's beliefs, is what I gathered.
There is absolute knowlege in life, though, with some things.
For someone to say that God absolutely doesn't exist, that's herculean claim that would need some absolute evidence. I know science isn't out to attack belief in God, however, but you have some who believe such a thing and make such claims.
To say it again, proof doesn't work that way.
Concerning "absolute evidence": There's the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" thing too. So we've got an infinitely powerful, infinitely intelligent, infinitely loving deity. That's going to need some infinitely extraordinary evidence. Thus far, I've only ever seen extraordinarily circumstantial evidence.
Then there's the matter of practicality. I can say that there's a very good chance that the Sun will
not get whacked tomorrow by an absurdly-energetic particle and implode into a black hole. Could it happen? I suppose, perhaps. The odds against it are just absolutely insane though, so I feel quite safe in saying with certainty that it won't happen. And I still think that that scenario is more likely than this "god" entity.
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