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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.origins
Subject: Re: I'm a Lone Cowhand
Message-ID: <513@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 29-Apr-85 14:24:54 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.513
Posted: Mon Apr 29 14:24:54 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 1-May-85 05:46:38 EDT
References: <997@uwmacc.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Distribution: net
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 34

In article <997@uwmacc.UUCP> dubois@uwmacc.UUCP (Paul DuBois) writes:
> >>          7.  Over seventy years [a] of fruit-fly experiments, involving
> >>              2700 consecutive generations, give absolutely no basis for
> >>              believing that any natural or artificial process can cause
> >>              an  increase in complexity and viability. No clear genetic
> >>              improvement  has  ever  been  observed  despite  the  many
> >>              unnatural efforts to increase mutation rates [b-f].
> 
> >         2700 generations over 70 years?  And probably hundreds, maybe even 
> > thousands of fruit flies?  Please compare that to 1 million years and many  
> > billions of fruit flies.  Big difference, isn't there?  
> 
> "Big difference"?  I guess so.  But "Absolutely no basis" doesn't
> extrapolate very well to anything but "Absolutely no basis."  We might
> expect SOMETHING to occur.  Clearly *somebody* expected something to
> occur or a lot of research that has been done wouldn't have been done.

Assume for a moment that some change we have observed in a fruit fly
experiment IS the first step of the evolution of a new species showing
"an increase in complexity and viability".  Joe Scientist observes just
this first step.  Not being blessed with foresight, how could he know
or claim this?

So Joe Scientist doesn't publish the evidence of evolution he has witnessed.
Only in hindsight is it clear.  That's why creationists can claim
"absolutely no basis."  But it CAN extrapolate into something real.

Finally, the something that somebody expected to occur in those 70 years
of experiments DID occur.  Thus we have much of our current science of
genetics.  The vast majority of fruit fly experiments have been addressed
to genetics, not evolution.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh