I'm going to jump back to my earlier post re: difference in understanding of evolution between creationists and myself, by listing a specific example.
I've long been fascinated by how biological evolution could produce complexity. An example of complexity is a biological system that requires multiple functional components.
Awhile back, I was reading an article in Scientific American that described just this. It involved scientists recreating molecular pathways for a functional system (vacuolar ATPase complex) in fungi which requires three types of proteins. The scientists determined how the system could evolve from requiring two proteins to the current three protein system. Thus, the system evolved to became more functionally complex. See the following article under the "Molecular Complexity" section:
The Surprising Origins of Evolutionary Complexity
The scientists in question were able to determine how this was possible and even experimentally demonstrate this through ancestral gene reconstruction and experimentation with modern yeast (IOW, undoing the complexity and then charting a path to its recreation via evolutionary processes).
Even more interesting is that this doesn't explicitly require beneficial mutations; the changes are effectively neutral, yet still result in increased functional complexity.
When I'm discussing the subject of evolution with creationists, I've repeatedly had creationists tell me that biological evolution cannot produce increasing complexity. Yet I struggle to reconcile such a claim with what is in the scientific literature. The scientific literature contains the opposite; numerous examples of how evolution can produce complexity.
Thus, this illustrates a gap in my reading and understanding of the scientific literature on the subject of evolution versus what I find creationists tell me on forums like these.
Is there a way to bridge that gap?
