Posted on 12/15/2005 9:10:41 AM PST by flevit
Simon Schama appears to have little understanding of biology (Opinion, September 4). With an ostrich mindset that tries to ignore reality, pseudo-scientists continue in the vain hope that if they shout loud and long enough they can perpetuate the fairy story and bad science that is evolution.
You don't have to be a religious fundamentalist to question evolution theory - you just have to have an open and enquiring mind and not be afraid of challenging dogma. But you must be able to discern and dodge the effusion of evolutionary landmines that are bluster and non sequiturs.
No one denies the reality of variation and natural selection. For example, chihuahuas and Great Danes can be derived from a wolf by selective breeding. Therefore, a chihuahua is a wolf, in the same way that people of short stature and small brain capacity are fully human beings.
However, there is no evidence (fossil, anatomical, biochemical or genetic) that any creature did give rise, or could have given rise, to a different creature. In addition, by their absence in the fossil record for (supposed) millions of years along with the fact of their existence during the same time period, many animals such as the coelacanth demonstrate the principle that all creatures could have lived contemporaneously in the past.
No evidence supports the notion that birds evolved from dinosaurs, nor that whales evolved from terrestrial quadrupeds, nor that the human knee joint evolved from a fish pelvic fin. And the critically-positioned amino acids at the active sites within enzymes and structural proteins show that the origination of complex proteins by step-wise modifications of supposed ancestral peptides is impossible. In other words, birds have always been birds, whales have always been whales, apes did not evolve into humans, and humans have always been humans.
But you might protest that it has been proved that we evolved from apes. In fact, the answer is a categorical No. Australopithecines, for example, were simply extinct apes that in a few anatomical areas differed from living apes. If some of them walked bipedally to a greater degree than living apes, this does not constitute evidence that apes evolved into humans - it just means that some ancient apes were different from living apes.
Despite appearances, it was not by design.
Those shoreline etchings are the high-water marks from Lake Bonneville, which inudated most of Utah during the glacial melt-off at the end of the last ice age.
Here's some specifics: http://www.ugs.state.ut.us/online/PI-39/
I don't know. It looks irreducibly complex to me.
Ichy, nothing you post is worth a glance. Your personal bias has prevented you from seeing the obvious and logical truth. You post long collections of worthless opinion and attempt to push it off as science. Give up.
I was spared that lie, but not the Santa Claus one. Got past it.
I suppose I would believe more in the Torah and Genesis in my various scripture versions literally true than you would, but do not believe all of it was literal.
Two things. An elaborate religious system was built on the concept of some kind of original sin or fall of man. Why build an elaborate, supernatural religion on a lie (talking about Judaism as practiced in the OT)? I can think of some rationalistic explanations based on primitive understanding of what would now fall into the categories of psychology or philosophy, but they might not be true either.
As to the NT which you would reject (not meant as any kind of derogatory remark, just pragmatism), I have the additional problem as a Christian that Jesus taught as if some of these happenings were literally true, actually an awfully lot of them, Adam, marriage, exodus, manna, Jonah, Moses, ark (which had disappeared by the time He entered the scene), devils, etc.
Now I have to deal with the question as to whether he was ignorant Himself, pandering to an ignorant audience much as a parent might use a metaphor of the fox in Aesop's fables as literally true whereas the parent knew better (it was a manner of speaking, we do it sometimes today when referring to fiction in discussions as fact whereas we know it is fiction, example Ashley Wilkes was a prisoner in Rock Island), or did He literally believe it Himself?
My religion makes no sense if He didn't literaly believe a lot of it, and yours (if you are a practicing Jew) makes no sense either if some of it was not literally true. Why bother with passover if it didn't literally happen? Did God speak to Moses or not? Was there a literal exodus? What really happened on the mountain? Was there really an ark (I believe so but it's based on faith), was there really a temple in Jerusalem, some of it can be proven by archaelogy but not a whole lot. Or do the revisionists and scholars know better because it can't be proven and their "theories" prevail?
I just threw those out there; we don't have to agree about religion to discuss evolution per se.
Thanks for the links BTW. I hope to get to them and be able to understand some of it.
One more little incidental, the matter of credentials. I can't remember which scientist in the Watson and Crick team, but one of their specialties was ornithology per "The Double Helix". He started where he was and read up, don't believe he got another degree just to have the right credentials, worked from where he was deferring and consulting with others to fill in the gaps in his knowledge base. That didn't stop him from participating in the breakthrough. Just because someone writes about evolution or against it without the accepted credentials doesn't necessarily negate their credibility.
Thank you for the valuable link. I was going to delve into that, too.
Yeah, Ichy. You're obviously blinded by rationality. Give it up.
</internet idiot mode>
Nonsense! Do you know how improbable it is that your life would unfold exactly as necessary so that you would be positioned to get post 400 on this thread on this website, especially when you consider the odds of the Internet being created in exactly the correct form to enable you to post to this site? Probabilities don't lie, man.
Your brilliance has convinced me. Let's go hunt for Noah's Ark.
Better grooming and personal hygiene habits too.
Don't worry. The lurkers know who is doing the research and who is handwaving.
bump
That's not research it's manufacturing propaganda. Research requires facts, and lurkers are smarter than you give them credit for.
He cites the papers so that anyone with any gumption can go out and check for himself. Your problem is you have nothing to rebut him with so you simply dismiss his posts. It's glaringly apparent to everyone here.
At least you can eat the spam. Ichy's stuff is only good for after you eat the spam.
He cites peer-reviewed scientific research papers. Your website is chock full of thrice-refuted creationist claptrap.
You're being insensitive. Teach the controversy!
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