It's not a factor of time, it's allegedly a factor of mutation rates and these mutations being weeded out between harmful vs beneficial and passing down only the beneficial mutations from generation to generation. Also just for clarification, the E. Coli long-term evolution experiment started in 1988. It has not been a single decade as you have stated, it has in fact been 3 decades, again not that this matters.
Ok, so it has been 30 years. Thats still nothing compared to tens to hundreds of millions of years in which major transitions occur lol. If you said 30
million years, you might actually be saying something of value.
Nobody expects bacteria to become anything other than bacteria in 30 years. And time is a factor with respect to things like mutation rates. No scientists believe that any organism on earth, would ever turn into something completely different, in a matter of 30 years, because nothing evolves at such a rate. Even at a higher turnover of generations and at a higher rate of fixated beneficial mutations, nobody actually thinks that bacteria would become anything other than bacteria in the span of 30 years.
Can you acknowledge this? Can you acknowledge the dishonesty of your strawman argument?
Lets look at your comment again:
"Being a geneticist, you'll be familiar with the E. Coli long-term evolution experiment - after 66,000 generations it can survive on citrate, but remains E. Coli... didn't become some other bacteria." ~Noble Mouse
This is a sleight comment suggesting that because the bacteria remained bacteria (although derived and morphological superior bacteria than what it evolved from), this somehow is a failure of the theory or a failure by scientists to demonstrate evolution.
But in reality, the theory doesn't suggest that in a mere 30 years, any organism on planet earth ought to evolve into something it is not. Even just speciation, in which bacteria would just become another species of bacteria, unfolds in the natural world on the order of tens or even hundreds of thousands of years.
So what was the purpose of the comment? To point out that life doesnt transform into something completely different in a matter of 30 years? Well obviously not, and nobody says that it ought to.
Was the purpose of the comment to point out that nobody has seen a fish evolve legs in the span of 30 years? Well good job, im glad everyone is aware that organisms do not evolve so quickly. Thankfully, this is not actually what the theory suggests ought to happen, to begin with.
So what is the purpose of the comment, but a dishonest strawman response. Irrelevant to the discussion.
If you have a problem with the theory, respond with a real argument. A technical one.
You suggested that there is no such thing as transitionals, Ill just quote you here.
"Lastly, "transitional fossil" as a term only brings to light one's presuppositional belief that one life form morphs into another (given enough time + random mutations + natural selection) - though this has never been observed or reproduced in a laboratory to my knowledge. "~Noble Mouse
First off, we already know that transitional fossils are something that span the geologic column, going back 500+ million years. So the fact that bacteria hasn't produced a fossil succession in 30 years, isn't a reasonable argument against the existence of a fossil succession.
Why would anyone ever suggest that seeing a fish evolve legs in a laboratory, was necessary to justify the fact that the fossil succession depicts fish evolving legs? Why would anyone think that this was necessary?
This is just another dishonest comment.
Here is your response, it is a technical one:
How many times have you been told of how tiktaaliks location was predicted, geospatially, temporally (with respect to superposition) and vertically (in strata that was immediately exposed at grade), in the earth, by the theory of evolution, in a remote place in the arctic, before it was ever even found.
If transitional fossils are not real or do not actually exist, then what do you make of predictions like these that are regularly made by the theory? Why is it that we can predict the location of fossils in the earth (anywhere on earth and at any depth), based on our DNA and rates of mutation? If not for the fossil record, being a product of common descent?
And I already know that you wont be able to answer this question. So now I will watch you avoid giving an answer.