Proof of microscopic evolution.

I am getting slaughtered in a ‘debate’ right now. Are there any dopers willing to provide me quickly with some cites to ‘prove’ evolution…on the microscopic level, I mean.

I know there are lots of comments that may come in like, “Well, you can’t really prove anything in science, young lady.” or, “when you say microscopic, it shows your lack of understanding of what the recent findings in evolutions…” or whatever.

I respect that you all know way more about this than I do. Ok. But is there anyone willing to simply provide me with any solid cites really quickly that I can use to convince this person that evolution has been proven on a microscopic scale? Thank you.

I think this is what you’re looking for. If that specific page isn’t what you want, I’m sure it’s somewhere on talkorigins

Point out to him the evolution of drug resistant strains of bacteria. Or the fact that cancer is evolution in action.

The evolution of microscopic life is not only proven; it’s a matter of serious medical concern.

Another interesting example are HeLa cells, which have evolved from 46 chromosome humans cells, to 82 chromosome cells specialized to infest laboratory tissue cultures. They’ve evolved to adapt to a new, human created ecological niche, the medical laboratory.

Bacterial antibiotic resistance?

This may be worthless, in the category of “comments that may come in”, but it would be pretty hard to win a debate when the other side has magic and you don’t.

It’s not something that really needs “proof” per se. So long as there is some amount of randomness introduced when a microorganism reproduces, some of its offspring will be more or less fit. Those that are more fit are more likely to reproduce again.

The only part of that chain which requires anything more than common sense is the inherent assumption that there is randomness introduced during reproduction. Except for budding and fragmentation, which essentially produce clones, even asexual reproduction involves some amount of randomness.

Thanks for the help guys. This particular debate was frustrating, because…the person I was arguing with claims not to be religious at all, but just says that he believes that we need to prove evolution if we are going to teach it in school.

These arguments are crazy, every time, for the same sad reasons. Both myself, and the persons I am arguing with, have no idea what we are talking about.

I don’t know the math or science to back up my positions. I am constantly trying to figure out how to show my arguments, but am still a poor student.

I am convinced by people whose science has been shown solid in every way and manifestation (Hi, Einstein), but I cannot myself work out his math.

I love to have Carl Sagan try so hard to explain it all to me, and I feel sure that I have it, but then when I try to explain it to my friends while we sit around the ghetto having drinks and ‘philosophysing’ I am pretty bad at presenting my argument.

I love the straight dope, man. I really do. I thought about just straight up PMing Der Trish, just to get to the point quickly. But I knew there would be good input from many posters that I would learn from, and I was right.

Thanks again for the input.

Well, you’ve alluded to this already in the OP, but it makes no sense to say one has to prove everything one teaches in the science classroom, since in fact, science is inductive not deductive and so no theories can be proven. What should be taught in the classroom are the currently-accepted scientific theories. And, in the case of evolution, it is the accepted theory because there is tons and tons of evidence supporting it, in fact much of that evidence (e.g., the genetic evidence) not even being available at the time it was proposed. So, it is not only a theory that has done well at explaining the facts known at the time but one that has done well at explaining facts subsequently discovered.

Besides which, evolution is the unifying principle in biology. Without it, biology is really just a bunch of disjointed facts. (Well, that’s a physicist’s view of it anyway; an actual biologist may or may not agree.)

Two things. First, as jshore said, science is about teaching things for which there is a predominance of evidence, and with theories which can be falsified but haven’t been, given ample chance. You might ask this person what should be taught in science class. We haven proven gravity also, and we teach Newtonian physics, though it isn’t quite correct, since it is good enough for everyday.

The second thing is I wonder what you guys mean by “microscopic” evolution. People talk of micro evolution, which usually is taken to mean changes within a species, as opposed to macro evolution, which is changes which result in new species - though most of the people making this distinction are pretty fuzzy on the differences. Even most creationists accept microevolution, since changes within a species are too obvious to ignore, and aren’t even forbidden in the Bible. Evolution of microorganisms happens also, and you’ve been given plenty of examples, but I haven’t seen it to be a big issue.

Here’s a pretty simple scenario for speciation. Say you have a species of plant eaters which gets split up for some reason. Group A is in a lush environment, with juicy leafs at high levels, and those individuals who are slightly taller eat more of the leaves and thrive. So the average height increases, as does size to match. The other half is in a poor environment, and they shrink because a smaller creature needs less food, and so has more chance of surviving. After enough time the differences become market. Now, these are still the same species, since they look very different, but so do dogs.

Now the barrier vanishes and the two halves are reunited. Theoretically they can still cross breed, but males of the smaller set can’t even reach females of the bigger one. They will drift apart, and sooner or later some mutation will cause one set to not be able to breed with another. Voila, two species.

If your friend thinks this cannot happen, he should explain exactly what it is which stops it. I hiope this was clear enough. All you need for to accept evolution is to accept that children won’t be exactly like their parents, that creatures with traits more likely to let them have children will be more likely to have children and pass their traits on, and that you can get new characteristics in the gene pool through mutation. Simple enough?

BTW, proof of evolution on the microscopic level is the easiest part to prove. I’ve generally found the ‘well, ok, evolution is true enough at the microscopic level, but there is no proof of MACRO-scopic evolution (as if there is some boundary between the two)’ folks to be the most stubborn on this subject.

Basically, if someone is so stubborn that you can’t even get through to them enough to acknowledge the mountain of evidence for microscopic evolution, then they aren’t even worth debating, and, IMHO should simply be dismissed. With heavy use of snark-asm and lots of pointing and laughing…

-XT

If that’s the premise (s)he’s coming from, try and point out, “proof” or not, evolution is science, and science is what is taught in a science class (Despite the blazing, blinking, neon arrow that points to the mountain of evidence that supports it).

Ask him if he can “prove” that George Washington was a real person and not an elaborate hoax concocted two hundred years ago to hide the truth about the founding of the United States.

Should we teach kids about George Washington?

Like others here, I’m a bit confused as to what you mean by “microscopic evolution”. Do you mean “micro-evolution”, as mentioned by Voyager, or do you mean evolution within micro-organisms, or do you mean what happens at the cellular level to drive evolution?

Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Without that light, it becomes a pile of sundry facts – some of them interesting or curious, but making no meaningful picture as a whole.
– Theodosius Dobzhansky (geneticist / evolutionary biologist)

Thank goodness I have long since provided the cites to the lettuce heads I was debating with, before the kind of over-my-head posts come trickling in, but I will try to explain why I asked what I asked.

I know that telling (let’s call him Sean) Sean that the theory of evolution is freakin’ real and should indeed be taught in schools is not enough. They all made it clear that they aren’t going to except that a ‘theory’ is real, no matter how much I bring up all kinds of theories that they have no trouble accepting as real, they were gonna fight me on this one.

But in trying hard to argue their point, they made the mistake of just saying, outright, that the theory of evolution has not been proven. They meant macro-evolution, I know, but they said, “evolution”. I pounced on that because I had remembered reading from many sources that scientists now have observed the evolution of micro-organisms (I’m getting sketchy now…hoping I have some clue what the hell I’m talking about.)

I just wanted to beat them at this in this discussion. I knew I could get some posters to provide me with some good cites.

What you gotta understand is that in the circle of friends I am describing right now, none of us are really educated. We didn’t go to college (unless you count the ‘business school’ I went to to achieve my associates, and I don’t) and we don’t know physics from a black hole in the wall. But we do get together and do something that people in my culture call ‘buildin’’, which basically means to discuss ideas and debate and philosophize and all that good stuff. I’m not going to educate anyone on the nuances of evolution within micro-organisms vs. what happens at the cellular level to drive evolution. That aint gonna happen. Buildin’ is just really a way of shootin’ the shit; but by discussing ideas rather than people.

I really only wanted some good cites for my little game, and I did get them. Thanks so much again for taking time to try to help me out.

A bit late, but…

Richard Dawkins - The Blind Watchmaker, pg 188 Chapter titled “The Power and the Archives”

Describes a repeatable experiment of a series of test tubes and the RNA replication from one to the next. Each test tube contains RNA replicase (like a factory that produces RNA from a genetic blueprint, these are a natural cellular component) and raw materials from which RNA can be constructed.

The initial RNA is dropped into the first test tube. It is replicated like crazy. Some amount of genetic drift is noted (some of the RNA is not entirely correct). This is the beginning of evolution, although at this point entirely random (as it always is).

Then, as the solution is transferred from tube to tube, it begins that the RNA (initially a viral RNA) begins to strip down to a more basic form. It no longer contains genetic instructions for creating replicase, as this is provided for it in the test tube. It becomes simplest form it can be. This change is driven by replication speed. The RNA which duplicates the fastest become the most numerous and is duplicated again. This is evolution.

Then, a problem is presented. Poison is introduced, weak at first, then increasingly strong from tube to tube as the RNA adapts. The poison is doubled each time. After 100 test tubes, the RNA is in its 40th distinct generation of genetic change and can thrive in 10 times the poison that the first generation could. It has evolved, not in particular response to the poison, but the genetic drifts that allowed fast replication in a poison environment were replicated more and came to dominate the gene pool. All evolution works like this, hence the title of the book, The Blind Watchmaker.

Now comes the amazing part. In a repeated, scrutinized, independently verified experiment, a German lab working on the origin of life used the same test tube filed with replicase and raw building materials idea, but provided NO genetic blueprint at all. A particularly large RNA molecule evolved SPONTANEOUSLY in the test tube. Not only was contamination ruled out, but the experiment was performed again and again by them and others and each time the EXACT SAME RNA was spontaneously produced…

Get this book and read it. It is written well and simply by an excellent teacher. It is a conversation starter and (I feel) far more worthwhile than Darwin’s Origin of Species as an introduction to evolution. I highly recommend it, and yes, I have a 10th grade education (I am 46).

I think in the end the education of your friends is pointless. They have chosen a “tribe” to belong to that does not want to believe in evolution. I’m sure that tribe has lots of things in common: they mistrust people in the “ivory tower”, they think things used to be better in the old days, they like country music or music from the decades ago, they watch Fox rather than listen to NPR, dont’t accept AGW, eat with forks in Chinese restaurants, etc.

You might as well try and convince someone from Boston to say the Yankees are better.

I think many liberal positions are similar. I can envision a world where the liberal tribe decrys abortion and likens it to the holocaust, says every fetus has a “unique spark”, and so on. Unfortunately we often take on a whole set of beliefs as one package rather than critically examining each one.

I know that I take one look at Gore and Boehner and know immediately which tribe I belong to. I try my best to be objective, but know that I can’t always do so.

Most of the plants and animals we consume daily did not exist as they do now a couple hundred years ago, let alone much past 10,000 years ago before the introduction of agriculture. Humans have been tinkering with dog, cat, and other exotic animal breeds for awhile, creating a whole spectrum of variation.

There are innumerable examples of small changes in wild species over even just the last 50 years, often in response to man made environmental changes, but a lot of these in my experience are scoffed at as “not being REAL evolution” by extreme deniers or, as someone else said, they’ll say species can adapt slightly but can’t “make new forms” or something like that.

Pointing out examples of speciation can be educational for yourself and is very interesting IMO, but trying to convince a denier will be about as productive as slamming your head into a wall.

if you want to try an exercise you could ask them at what point they object:

  1. You have DNA
  2. The DNA is shuffled and recombined each generation
  3. The alleles in a population will drift over time (boom, micro-evolution)
  4. Differential reproduction given environmental pressures means some traits will be selected against

And so on.

Sorry for the double post, but I haven’t seen an evolution debate in awhile and I’m curious what deniers say in response to molecular analysis of genomes. Other than “God did it to test our faith” I’m not really sure what the ID response to this is. How could this work or make any sense if evolutionary theory was wrong at all? It should be gibberish. Or it would say obviously wrong things, like a house cat is closer to a lobster than a dog, or something.

Born in VT, raised in NH, came down with a chronic case of Red Sox fever in 1986. I’ve even forgiven Bill Buckner.

For 86 long years, those pinstriped bastards were better. No doubt about it.

Having gotten that out of the way, I think your generalization of Nzinga’s friends is entirely unfounded and your conclusion (educating them is pointless) is completely incorrect. People’s ideas can be changed, and building sounds like a whole lotta good times. Nzinga may not succeed in convincing everyone, but the spirit in which s/he comes looking for answers to the difficult questions is a good way of educating oneself - and that can be done anywhere, not just inside the ivied walls of academia.

Oh, but they can still deny it. Specifically, they (the Discovery Institute) claims that the “tree of life” that you get by examining apparent characteristics is completely different from what is deduced from analyzing the DNA sequence. They say that the common genetic codes are evidence that an intelligent designer re-used the same design elements in various creatures. While it’s true that there is some debate around the edges about what creatures evolved from what previous ones, and which current ones are cousins and how far removed, due to differences in their outward characteristics and their DNA, the vast majority of the two are in agreement. The DI cherry-picks the points of disagreement to imply that the whole field is in shambles.

Even with the sharing of junk DNA, they cherry-pick. Scientists say that much of our genome is non-coding, and much of that has no purpose, such as snippets of viruses that are still hanging in our genome. The fact that we share most of these non-useful snippets with, for example, chimpanzees, is smoking-gun proof of common ancestry.

But the Discovery Institute says that there is no such thing as junk DNA. They cherry-pick news items where some function was found for a gene that was previously thought not to be useful, as proof that ALL DNA is useful, that there is no junk. They can hold this view only by sticking their fingers in their ears and repeating it to themselves over and over.

Surprised?