Re: Are there things that don't evolve?

I told you before, I only think of evolution in the strict biological sense. Viruses change their antigenicity, but this isnt evolution. If selection pressure makes a certain antigenic pattern more favorable and these survive and pass their antigenicity on, that is evolution.

If the H5N1 virus mutates and becomes transmissable between humans, and thereby increases its host population, and increases its surviveablity, that is evolution.

If a bacteria has a mutation that confers resistance against methicillin, and only those bacteria that have the mutation survive, that is evolution.
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Gregory Arago
  To: Asa
  Sent: Saturday, March 25, 2006 8:43 PM
  Subject: RE: Are there things that don't evolve?

  David O.'s comment has furthered me thinking about the difference/similarity between evolution and change. Are they synonymous or not? If everything changes, then everything evolves. God doesn't change, but God does change - this is why some people here have recently said that the ethics in the Bible are examples of evolution; ethics evolve/change.

  In any case, from the 'downward evolution' thread, the recent post of Jack seems to use the two words 'change' and 'evolve' or 'change' and 'evolution' interchangeably. So, below I've taken the liberty to add to Jack's post the other word in brackets, hoping that perhaps it will prompt someone to help distinguish between change and evolution. Again, the purpose is still to discover if there are 'things that don't evolve'.

  Arago

  ~~
  "Viruses, are usually treated with immunization, and viruses evolve [change] all of the! time, and change [evolve] their antigenicity, which is why we need a flu shot every year." ... "But this change [evolution] in antigenicity is not the same thing as bacterial antibiotic resistance. Antibiotic resistance comes about because of selection pressure, the bacteria that are resistant survive, and
  reproduce. Eventually the population of the resistant bacteria becomes large
  enough to be clinically significant." ..." Viruses change [evolve] their antigenicity randomly, and are not subject to selection pressure in the same way." ... "As far as modern medicine and its effects on human evolution [change], this is something that we will not know if there is any effect for thousands of years. In fact the only effect I see is that modern medicine removes selection pressure, so puts human evolution [change] in stasis, I dont think we will "devolve" [change for the worse?] because of modern medicine."

  "perhaps you can say everything "evolves" if! by "evolves" you just mean "changes." Even here I think we'd have to exclude God from this, unless one wants to! endorse open theism. But if we use "evolves" that broadly, it doesn't seem to be a meaningful term anymore." - David Opderbeck

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Received on Sat Mar 25 21:32:11 2006