Atheists : Give examples of positive mutations.?

Question

btw bacteria becoming resistant to drugs/antibiotics is not a positive mutation for the bacteria. The reason it became resistant to the drug is due to the process of developing that mutation it's information was scrambled around and suffered a genetic loss. Now the antibiotics can not lock onto the ribosomes.

For example: A man loses his hands, both have been torn off. Now say later down in the road the cops come to arrest him for a crime, but they can't, due to the fact he has no hands. Sure for this moment it is positive, but now put that disabled man back into a normal population of humans.... He will undoubtedly be worse off in the long run, prior to the mutation.

Same exact thing with bacteria sure it may be positive for a that moment. Once again put that bacteria in it's normal population & it will be worse off in the long run. Not only that, but the resistance does not last forever. At best it will only last for short term....
So this proves to be negative once again & shows that prior to the resistance/mutation, the bacteria as whole is better fit to survive.

Your theory leads to the extinction of life.... or at least everything would be at great disadvantage, prior compared to what we "allegedly" were prior to the mutations. The fact you claim it took millions/billions of years would be a great formula for our extinction today.

Answer 1

First, Antibiotic resistance in bacteria have nothing to do with nuclear (hereditary) DNA but is a product of plasmids in the cytoplasm modifying themselves to metabolize the antibiotic (or nylon). This is a natural process similar to the human body producing T-lymphocytes in response to infection and therefore would not be legitimately classified as a mutation.



This is passed on to future generations because part of the cytoplasm is passed on to future generations as part of the reproductive process. This can also be passed horizontally to completely different species of bacteria when the plasmids are picked up as these different species eat the bacteria having the plasmids.



The simple fact is, at this point there do not appear to be any documented cases of positive mutations, or an accumulation of neutral mutations producing a new allele positive or negative.

Answer 2

"btw bacteria becoming resistant to drugs/antibiotics is not a positive mutation for the bacteria."



Not true, it is the opposite of the truth.



"The reason it became resistant to the drug is due to the process of developing that mutation it's information was scrambled around"



Not true



"and suffered a genetic loss"



Not true.



"Once again put that bacteria in it's normal population & it will be worse off in the long run."



Support that assertion with observed facts from a neutral source. On the face of it, not true.



"Not only that, but the resistance does not last forever."



And why not?



Your "question' shows yet again that creationists accept lies and nonsense from apologetics sites without checking facts. You confuse individual bacteria with populations, you have no idea of how evolution works, you claim things for which you have no evidence.

Answer 3

The example of the elephants being born without tusks is probably more in the class of a non beneficial mutation, since tusks are the main defense for elephants; if they happen to be living in an area where that mutation confers some temporary advantage, it could reverse itself to being a disadvantage if they are later protected by humans against these criminal poachers. In short, if they were to return to their natural habitat, the ones without tusks could die.



Rattlesnakes that do not rattle is an example of another variety surviving better due to the influence of humans, who for a hundred years have been killing off the ones they could hear. However, both varieties survive today anyway; it's just that we're seeing more of the favored kind than before.



Lactose intolerance is humans after childhood is the norm, and the mutation allowing the use of milk products in adulthood is not the strongest example of a beneficial mutation, since those without this mutation still live good lives and multiply just as efficiently without milk. In Asia, for example, it's difficult to even find a restaurant that has milk products on the menu.



The humans who are able to climb mountains aren't using less oxygen, they have larger rib cages and squat bodies (such as the Sherpas in the Himalayas) so more of the thin air can be processed to extract the oxygen they need. This is not a mutation leading to a new species of human, but just a variation in Homo sapiens, like red hair or blue eyes.

Answer 4

There is no example of a positive mutation. What is more, evolutionary theory does not rely on positive mutation, the concept of it doing so is far outdated.



The example that you give with the man losing his hands defys one of the fundemental precepts of biology, acquired characteristics are not inheareted. If you take a mouse, cut of its tale, and its childrends tales, and its childrens tales and so on and so fourth, mice will still be born with tales, because the change does not take place in the genetic code of the mouse, which is what the mouse passes down to its chldren.



How does evolution work then? The simple answer is variation. Your genteic code is slightly diferent from mine, even though were are in the same species. Your code may make you taller or shorter, lighter or darker, more or less muscular etc. This comes from the minor variations we have in our geens. In fact, my geens are difernt from my parants, this is not mutation, it is just the way things are, slight variation.



If you say the giraf was once a horse that had to crane its neck to get to high leaves, and its longer neck was passed down to its chldren, you would be wrong, but if you say that some horses were born with longer necks and some with shorter necks (as is true now) and that the horeses born with longer necks were slighly more likley to survive (even though a slighly longer neck is no more a mutation then being tall) and that over many generations the longer necked horses were more sucesfual at breeeding becaus they had more energy, and the subsequent generations had longer necks because their faterhs had longer necks in thier geens, and if this went on for millions of yeas, you can get a giraf.



A mutation is a sudden change in geens, and subsequently is unlikely to survive and even less likely to breed. Even if it does have the good fortune to breed, its ofspring will problably be steril. A mutation is a flaw in the genetic code, evolution is the gradual selection of the natrually occuring variation within a species.



In the bacteria example, some of the bacteria happend to have higer resistiance to the drug (just like my familly has a history of strong imune systems). Those who had a higher tollerance lived, others died. High tollarance geen was pased on, whilst other geans were not. Had the antibiotics not been administered, the sliglty more resistant strain would not be selced over the otehr. If this happens over generations, weedig out only the most imune bacteria, you eventually get bacteria that are compleetly imune (a generation takes about twenty miniutes, depending on the bacteria, so a week of antibiotics is a long time to evolve). However, if you kill them off the first time, there are no survivers and so no evolution.

Answer 5

Not necessarily. The bacteria can also go under a process called transformation, in which the bacteria obtains a plasmid, which can contribute to resistance to a drug. Also, that bacteria can transfer that plasmid to another bacteria, giving more of a chance to resist the threat. Through natural process, including natural selection, a bacteria gains resistance. Those bacteria that are able to live to divide and survive pass on their genes. Over the course of thousands of generations (Bacteria can do this rather quickly you know) the good genes against a strain of bacteria eventually become dominant.



Back to medicine, this is why pharmacy companies have to develop new cold medicines and flu shots every year. The best way, if you are healthy enough to , is to fight an infection off with T cells.

Answer 6

"Positive" and "negative" are subjective human terms -- they don't really apply in evolution.

Natural selection is simply statistics -- if a mutation provides a survival or reproductive benefit, no matter how small, it will tend to spread in a population. Those that don't, don't spread. That's all there is to it. What *you* consider "positive" or "negative" is irrelevant.



You're also either painfully ignorant or intentionally dishonest. Bacteria becoming resistant to something that would otherwise kill them is most certainly a survival benefit -- and the mutation involved a *duplication* of a section of their genome, resulting in more "information," not less.



Currently, about 80% of the human population on earth can digest milk proteins beyond adolescence, and only about 20% are "lactose intolerant." Less than 20,000 years ago, no humans could digest milk proteins beyond adolescence, and we were all "lactose intolerant." Somebody was born with a mutation that didn't turn off the production of enzymes for digesting lactose at the end of adolescence; with the domestication of milk animals, that proved to be a survival benefit, since milk was a ready food source available year-round. So that mutation spread in populations of humans that had domesticated animals, to the point that now it's "normal" to have it. There you go.



Your rant contains a great deal of either outright lies or ignorant made-up nonsense (I can't tell which). You appear to need a great deal of education in biology, genetics, chemistry, and more. You won't get it from "answers in genesis." I suggest a local university.



peace.

Answer 7

Having your hands torn off mechanically is not a genetic mutation. Please learn the definition first.



One example of a positive mutation is the mutation that allowed adults to digest milk products. That's a fairly recent one. Then there's the mutation that allows a population of people that live high in a mountain range to get along with less oxygen than most humans.



Then there's ivory tusks in elephants. Elephants were routinely killed for their tusks, and it used to be that only 2 to 5 percent of Asian male elephants were born without tusks. By 2005, it was estimated that the tuskless population had risen to between 5 and 10 percent. And it's not just happening in Asia, either. One African national park estimated their number of elephants born without tusks was as high as 38 percent. That's definitely a positive mutation.



The Atlantic Tomcod living in the Hudson River are becoming immune to toxic waste.



In 1971 scientists introduced 10 Italian wall lizards to an island in Croatia, but right after they dropped them off, the Croatian War for Independence prevented the researchers from following up on their lizard experiment. When the scientists went back in 2004 they found 5,000 lizard descendants who had not only annihilated the indigenous lizard population but also rewired the shape of their own digestive tracts to accommodate the local diet.

Answer 8

In 1975 a team of Japanese scientists discovered a strain of Flavobacterium, living in ponds containing waste water from a nylon factory, that was capable of digesting certain byproducts of nylon 6 manufacture, such as the linear dimer of 6-aminohexanoate. These substances are not known to have existed before the invention of nylon in 1935. Further study revealed that the three enzymes the bacteria were using to digest the byproducts were significantly different from any other enzymes produced by other Flavobacterium strains (or any other bacteria for that matter), and not effective on any material other than the manmade nylon byproducts.

Answer 9

A negative mutation will lessen the chances of an organism surviving in it's present environment. An example is geese flying south to a warmer climate in Winter. Those that flew in random or inappropriate directions are now extinct long ago, so the genetic tendency to fly South is passed on to each successive generation. This was a positive mutation.

Answer 10

First of all, the human hand thing is one of the stupidest things I have ever read. A human losing a hand is not a mutation, and doesn't get passed on through to the next generation. That literally has nothing to do with evolution.



Second of all, evolution isn't solely based on mutations. Look up the hardy-weinberg principle...



And this question is pretty complex and I am way too lazy to answer, but go ahead and do some reading...Google and its sea of links are at your disposal.

Answer 11

Your understanding of evolution is, alas, non-existent. You have had a poor education. That, however, can be remedied. I suggest you read "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins which is evolution for beginners. It is very readable and explains much of the evidence for evolution including examples of positive mutations.



To get you going before you go to the library or the bookshop, the Index to Creationist Claims has much to say on the subject of mutations. You can read it here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CB100

Answer 12

So, are you saying that the chain of mutations leading us to have eyes make us worse off in the long run?



Also, bacteria stay resistant to that particular antibiotic forever. It's when a new one is developed that the advantage is lost.

Answer 13

Sure I can give an example of positive mutation.

Bacteria that can now digest Nylon.

Nylon is a synthetic material, and thus it is not biodegradable.

There is a surplus of it on the earth.

Recently we have observed Nylon decomposing and when we took cultures of it noticed several strains of bacteria "Digesting and metabolizing" Nylon.

These Flavobactrium are collectively referred to as "Nylonase"

Answer 14

Evolution isn't an atheistic theory, its a scientific one, with which most theists don't have a problem, it seems just to bother the banjo players from the Bible Belt.



If you had half an education you would know that the ability for adults to drink milk is a recent mutation, many don't have that mutation and are lactose intolerant.

Answer 15

A man losing his hands is NOT a mutation. Please look up the meaning of a mutation. And obviously there ARE positive mutations; that's how species adapt over time. One individual is born with a mutation. This mutation can either be beneficial or detrimental. If it's beneficial, then the organism will have an advantage over others of its species and it will live to reproduce and its genes, including its mutation, will be passed down. Its offspring has that beneficial mutation, they pass it down too, so on and so forth. If the mutation is detrimental, then obviously the organism dies. As for examples, I can't think of any, Google it.

Answer 16

Mutations within the spine and pelvic region of early primates (that would become human) resulted in the ability to stand on the legs and free the hands for work and defense. Also, those proto-humans who could look over the grasses of the savannah and see movement in the distance that was caused by a predator were more likely to survive and reproduce.

Answer 17

What theory leads to the extinction of life? I don't see any theories.

Answer 18

WRONG. Antibiotic bacteria will produce offspring that's also resistant to antibiotics. The human with no arms will produce offstring that has arms.



Have any other flawed analogies?



Anyway:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/evolution-peppered-moth/

Answer 19

Why bother? You aren't interested in listening. Your question with its absurd preemptive rebuttals makes that abundantly clear.

Answer 20

The X-men.

Answer 21

Atheism and evolution are two separate things. You should ask this in the Biology section.

Answer 22

It's not just mutation, it's adaptation, natural selection, change in frequency of alleles. You are ignorant to this.

Answer 23

how about you? you are a "positive" mutation from neanderthals and other human ancestors

Answer 24

Opposable thumb.

Answer 25

What is this horseshit? You're quite literally spouting SHlT. Explain yourself.

Answer 26

Christians: Give verifiable examples of god poof-creating animals?



This isn't the Science section, moron.

Answer 27

THEY CANT' EVEN EXPLAIN WHY THEY'RE STILL MONKEYS