Evolutionism vs creationism

[JellySlayer]

I think I've had a change of heart on this whole matter. Clearly, the universe was created.

And it is all thanks to Mbombo, the great giant, who, upon feeling a great pain in his stomach, proceeded to vomit up all of the universe, the animals, and humans. And we thank Loko Yima, the god upon the earth, himself created by Mbombo's vomit, who continues to protect us from evil.

[minchazo]

My favorite answer when I asked someone how the universe began (paraphrased):

"Matter slowly collected around cockroaches to form everything we have today."

[grobblewobble]

Mbombo, the great giant, who, upon feeling a great pain in his stomach, proceeded to vomit up all of the universe, the animals, and humans. And we thank Loko Yima, the god upon the earth, himself created by Mbombo's vomit, who continues to protect us from evil.

I had expected you to come up with the Flying Spaghetti Monster at some point.

[JellySlayer]

Mbombo has thousands of years of history and culture behind him. More importantly, he's real!

[fazisi]

Don't be so open-minded, your brains fall out.

[Epythic]

Dear thread, please don't die.

[Silfir]

To not have a thread die you could contribute something you know

Since the previous links I've posted have been such runaway successes, another one won't hurt:

Linking extravaganza

And if that doesn't elicit any responses, let me guarantee the spawn of a new, unrelated flamewar by pointing out that the webcomic linked to above has a thousand times better art than xkcd.

[gut]

it was hard, figuring out which one was the 'asshole'

[grobblewobble]

And if that doesn't elicit any responses, let me guarantee the spawn of a new, unrelated flamewar by pointing out that the webcomic linked to above has a thousand times better art than xkcd.

I tried my best to be inflamed at that comment, but it didn't work. I'd say the art of that comic was cool, but I'm not really sure I understand what point they were trying to make.

[JellySlayer]

Straying dangerously close to being back on topic, I thought I'd just post a link on an experiment that just a really kickass job of demonstrating evolution: the E.Coli long term evolution experiment.

In brief, they've been following 12 colonies of initially identical E.Coli bacteria in identical conditions for a period of 20 years. As of February, an estimated 50000 generations of E.Coli have been run through. They took preserved samples every 500 generations (give or take), and can thus compare the fitness of any given strains from any prior point in time, effectively making a "fossil record" of the bacterial history.

The most remarkable discovery occurred in 2008, when the bacteria in one colony evolved ability to use citrate as a source of energy (in around generation 30000). This is significant because the inability to process citrate is considered one of the primary characteristics of this species of bacteria. They were able to demonstrate that older generations of that same line were also eventually able to re-evolve this property, but only back to about generation 20000. Before this point, the bacteria were (to date) unable to re-evolve this property. They thus hypothesize the existence of some neutral mutation around generation 20000, that, 10000 generations later, became essential in the development of citrate processing in the specimen.