More About MacroDEvolution

Mr. Pogge,

Thank you again for your work on this website. Centuries from now, when humans look back on our time and wonder how everyone was stupid enough to believe in the mythology of evolution, historians will point to your website (if these bits of electronic data are somehow preserved) as evidence that not everyone was on board with this lunacy.

Great job in answering Greg's email regarding macro and micro evolution. I have a few thoughts to add:

-Greg seemed especially interested in macroDEvolution. I would speculate that a macroDEvolution event (in this case the loss of a chromosome) may have been the genetic event that made horses and donkeys no longer able to produce viable offspring. Maybe the same sort of thing happened with lions and tigers, or wolves and coyotes. I don't know, I'm just speculating and not engaging in real science (but if I were an evolutionist I would try to get my speculations published and accepted as scientific fact:). Like you said in your email, none of these separations between species or genus have resulted in any significant new life forms, but just variations within the pre-existing "family". Which brings me to my second thought...

-People need to appreciate that the categories of lifeforms (kindom [sic], phylum, class.....) are completely arbitrary divisions based on the understanding of the people who made the categories at the time. Additionally, these categories are constantly refined to suite [sic] the purposes of the evolutionist theory. Those of us who are skeptical of evolution can argue that while new species may develop from deevolutionary or neutral evelutionary [sic] events, no new "families" of life are created. This argument is compelling and undeniable, however, the evolutionist will respond by assigning horses and donkeys to different families to "prove" how much they have evolved. [Actually, horses and donkeys have been assigned to the same family and genus, but different species; but Nathan’s point is still valid.]

-Lastly I want to say a word about neutral evolution. I worked in a medical microbiology lab, and so I was often exposed to the idea that bacteria are "evolving" resistance to antibiotics (thank God I was never exposed to the bacteria themselves;). This bacterial drug resistance is often touted as microevolution, but I want to point out that this "evolution" is only neutral and would not provide an advantage to the bacteria in an environment that lacked the selective pressure of the antibiotic. Antibiotics often work by binding to a bacterial enzyme that is crucial for bacterial growth (such as ribosome) and thereby inhibiting the enzymatic activity. Antibiotic resistance can occur because a mutation in the gene can cause a slight variation in the enzyme that will make it no longer bind to the antibacterial drug, but still carry out it's [sic] desired enzymatic function. As long as the bacteria are growing in the presence of the antibacterial drug, the "resistant" bacteria will grow and replicate faster than the susceptible (wild type) bacteria. However, the enzyme that confers resistance, will most likely not carry out it's [sic] enzymatic process as efficiently as the wild type enzyme if there is no antibiotic around to inhibit the wild type enzyme. In other words, the wild type enzyme was the way it was because in a normal environment, it out competed all of the other enzyme variations that may have developed in the past. In an environment without antibacterial drugs, it would not take long for the wild type enzyme to once again dominate the bacterial population. So we see that the apparent micro evolutionary story of antibiotic resistance, is just a neutral evolutionary event when looked at in the wider context. The same can be said of antibacterial resistance that involves enzymes that "attach" or otherwise inhibit the antibacterial drug (beta-lactamases are an example of this type of enzyme). If the bacteria are free to grow in an environment free of the antibacterial drug, the biochemical cost of continuing to replicate the beta-lactamase will make those bacteria eventually "loose [sic] out" to the bacteria that are not replicating said enzyme. Also, it is worth mentioning that the rapid spread of bacterial drug resistance is often the result of bacteria "sharing" the genes that code for things like the beta-lactamase enzyme, and not the result of new advantageous evolution in the bacteria. No new "ability" is being created by random chance, the bacteria are just sharing the enzyme that has been around for a long time already.

Thank you for reading my email. Perhaps none of my ideas are new to you, but I hope it is still enjoyable for like minds to converse.

btw, you should etch some of your newsletters into stone so that our opinion is discoverable to future generations. Let's just hope the future historians can recognize parody or we will be greatly misunderstood:)

Nathan