I want to see a reptile changing into a bird. Or amphibian changing into a mammal.

Me too, but it ain’t going to happen.

According to evolution, it takes millions of years for those changes to complete. We don’t live long enough.

That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, though.

Are Darwinists really reduced to arguing about this kind of stuff?

No, but they are reduced to trying to explain these concepts to journalists so that they can be relayed to the latter’s readership reasonably accurately.

I ask again, do you see no difference between the development of a single animal and the evolution of a whole population of animals over thousands of generations?

I want to see a reptile changing into a bird. Or amphibian changing into a mammal.

Change within the organism itself is microevolution, which Lenski’s bacteria demonstrate nicely. It’s a far cry from the ‘organic soup’ that supposedly led to evolution of the various species and between the various species. If Darwin claims that a bear is a good ancestor for the whale (as he does in “Origin”), then show me that.

The farmer who puts out a flat pan of milk for the barn cats, after the milking has ended, knows this too.

Are Darwinists really reduced to arguing about this kind of stuff?

Lenski simply failed to show that Darwinism explains evolution.

If we could just accept that, we could get on with science.

How much brain melting evolution does Lenski’s e-coli really involve?

Hannibal – Brain scene
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noupHDxmUTE

These following articles refute Lenski’s supposed “evolution” of the citrate ability for the E-Coli bacteria after 20,000 generations of the E-Coli:

Multiple Mutations Needed for E. Coli – Michael Behe
Excerpt: As Lenski put it, “The only known barrier to aerobic growth on citrate is its inability to transport citrate under oxic conditions.” (1) Other workers (cited by Lenski) in the past several decades have also identified mutant E. coli that could use citrate as a food source. In one instance the mutation wasn’t tracked down. (2) In another instance a protein coded by a gene called citT, which normally transports citrate in the absence of oxygen, was overexpressed. (3) The overexpressed protein allowed E. coli to grow on citrate in the presence of oxygen. It seems likely that Lenski’s mutant will turn out to be either this gene or another of the bacterium’s citrate-using genes, tweaked a bit to allow it to transport citrate in the presence of oxygen. (He hasn’t yet tracked down the mutation.),,, If Lenski’s results are about the best we’ve seen evolution do, then there’s no reason to believe evolution could produce many of the complex biological features we see in the cell.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/.....96N278Z93O

Lenski’s e-coli – Analysis of Genetic Entropy
Excerpt: Mutants of E. coli obtained after 20,000 generations at 37°C were less “fit” than the wild-type strain when cultivated at either 20°C or 42°C. Other E. coli mutants obtained after 20,000 generations in medium where glucose was their sole catabolite tended to lose the ability to catabolize other carbohydrates. Such a reduction can be beneficially selected only as long as the organism remains in that constant environment. Ultimately, the genetic effect of these mutations is a loss of a function useful for one type of environment as a trade-off for adaptation to a different environment.
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....n-bacteria

Upon closer inspection, it seems Lenski’s “cuddled” E. coli are actually headed for “genetic meltdown” instead of evolving into something better.

New Work by Richard Lenski:
Excerpt: Interestingly, in this paper they report that the E. coli strain became a “mutator.” That means it lost at least some of its ability to repair its DNA, so mutations are accumulating now at a rate about seventy times faster than normal.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....enski.html

But the one crushing thing to all this is that Lenski’s e-coli are fatter and more sluggish (i.e. their, AHEM, supposed claim for novel change in shape and metabolism) than the wild type. i.e. The wild type display more robust “fitness” than Lenski’s e-coli in the “natural wild” environment, which is completely in accord with Genetic Entropy. What’s more is that Genetic Entropy will predict that each of Lenski’s strains will become less and less fit for survival in the wild the longer they are keep in the artificial cuddled environment that Lenski has imposed on them. i.e. the further Lenski deviates the bacterium from the original parent type the closer to genetic meltdown (death) they will become. This is all straightforward, testable as well as being based on actual foundational principles of science (Entropy, Conservation of Information) Whereas evolution only requires spectacular violations of those very same principles. In fact if evolutionists were ever to get honest with the evidence, instead of selling smoke, all they would have to do is pass this test by 140 functional bits:

Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? – “The Fitness Test” – video
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/3995248

Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria – 2008
http://www.answersingenesis.or.....-drugstore

Thank Goodness the NCSE Is Wrong: Fitness Costs Are Important to Evolutionary Microbiology
Excerpt: it (an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....s_wro.html

Yet even if evolutionists ever did manage to pass the test for functional information generation, they still would not have shown it to be by purely material processes. This is since quantum mechanics has made any claim for “purely material processes” in this universe to be absurd. i.e. they (atheistic/evolutionists) would still be stuck with the transcendent God, they are so adverse to, within a Theistic evolutionary framework since materialism is falsified from first premises.