stevestory
Posts: 13407
Joined: Oct. 2005
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This afternoon I was thinking about this post, and the thought struck me that the case of bacteria developing resistance to anti-biotics (which, according to Darwinists, would probably be the ‘classic’ argument for NS) has a certain force to it.
But as I thought about it some more, I began to re-analyze it applying to this case the little I know about bacteria’s reaction to anti-biotics. Bacteria respond to anti-biotics with what’s called the “SOS” response; the individual bacteria–in what appears to be a completely ‘pre-programmed’ reaction–repair their DNA strands by randomly adding nucleotides to the locations where the anti-biotics have caused their DNA to be spliced. It’s a last ditch effort for survival, and hence the “SOS” label.
But, again, let’s first note that while randomness is a component of this repair mechanism, the mechanism itself appears to be completely pre-determined.
Having noted the pre-determined nature of the repair mechanism, the question we’re left asking is, what role does NS play in this, if any at all?
When you think about what’s happening here, you see that you it’s a case of bacteria being lethally damaged by an environmental agent and the bacteria having to, in some way, respond to this lethal intervention. So it begins its SOS patch job. The bottome-line is that the bacteria’s patch job either works or it doesn’t work. It’s as simple as that. If the combination of nucleotides ‘randomly’ selected now allow the bacteria to avoid the kind of strand breakdown that the anti-biotic normally causes, then the bacteria survives. And, if it doesn’t work, it dies.
Let’s notice–and I think this is significant–that nowhere is there “competition” between the bacteria themselves. The surviving bacteria don’t survive because they can take up more nutrient than the other bacteria, nor because it has found a way to move around faster, nor because it’s found a way to reproduce faster. The bacteria ’survive’ simply because, in a pre-packaged, pre-prgrammed ‘random search’ fashion, it has found a two or three nucleotide combination that protects it, to some extent, from the lethal mechanisms of the anti-biotic. Thus, the bacteria are “competing” directly against the anti-biotic, and NOT against each other. Therefore, we can’t talk about “selection” taking place since there is either “survival”, or “no-survival”. So, in what way can we say that we’re dealing with “natural selection”? What appears is not “natural selection”, but “natural survival”. For me, this all brings back to mind the fact that NS is nothing more than a tautology: Natural Selection=’survival of the fittest’. So, who are the ‘fit’? The ones that ’survive’. And, who ’survives’? The ‘fittest’.
This is the ‘classic’ case of NS, and it seems as though no “selection” is taking place at all; just survival.
Comment by PaV — September 1, 2006 @ 7:53 pm
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