Posted on 04/20/2005 5:17:33 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
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Brilliant...
It pays to check your fly
Very nice photograph of that fly though. That's hard to do.
I don't know. Some of these things seem obvious. But that's always easy to say in hindsight. (The same is true of natural selection.) One test of this is to see if it's geographically true. I assume that's already the situation. So we have no counter-examples. Still, although it seems to explain a lot, I don't know where we go with this. But it's interesting.
I'm concerned that this could give a lot of ammo to environmentalists.
Not if the fly is stuffed
"...and scientists speculate..."
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"The researchers think..."
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"This new theory..."
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"It is thought..."
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"...still not fully understood by scientists..."
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"Therefore, they speculate,..."
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"...if it stands further scrutiny."
All this is is speculative guesswork. Yawn.
For that matter, a skilled person can argue a dumb point better than an unskilled person can argue a good one. Then it becomes a silly game of showing how smart you are, not how right you are.
Axel Meyer needs to read Schopf's Cradle of Life. OK, he probably has. But I don't see his objection as much of an objection. It did take a long time to grow enough biodiversity for things to take off. It also took a long time to invent sexual reproduction, which was a big breakthrough in speeding up evolution.
I guess you think all science then is speculative guesswork?
With what can we contrast this? ID or creation science? My guess is that many adherents to these beliefs would not have any questions or doubts about them, and would not be trying to disprove (falsify) them. And that is precisely why they are not science.
When creationists try to destroy the credibility of evolution, they undercut the entire credibility of science in the minds of many people. No wonder the junk science used by the extreme environmentalists is so widely accepted.
Better leave science to the scientists.
I hate to stomp too hard, but I actually have seen robber flies here in southeastern Va. I was so startled by the first one I saw that I took it to our local nature museum for ID, and the zoologist there did not seem at all surprised by it.
It's possible it drifted on the trades from the canaries, since we also get our hurricans from there, but for the record, I have seen this critter outside of the Canary Islands.
Who knows, maybe I was witnessing the beginning of a variant in the species.
Axel Meyer needs to read Schopf's Cradle of Life. OK, he probably has. But I don't see his objection as much of an objection. It did take a long time to grow enough biodiversity for things to take off. It also took a long time to invent sexual reproduction, which was a big breakthrough in speeding up evolution.
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You would be assuming that there was long enough span of time for these evolutionary miracles to occur in the correct order in the necessary location. That takes to much faith for me.
"They are saying that if you have biodiversity it will create more biodiversity - I can buy that. But it still doesn't explain the initial step: how do you get more biodiversity in the first place?"
Legislate from the Bench?
That's the problem with common names. There's more than one species of Robber Fly.
Link:
http://www.geller-grimm.de/asilidae.htm
You have no idea of the difficulties inherent in the "not enough time" (6-10 thousand years) hypothesis in explaining the world we see. No doubt this is a conscious decision on your own part not to know some things.
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The only difficulty would be for you because it would involve God.
But please, let us keep focused on the topic at hand and not on personal attacks.
Who could have made the world looking old. Last Thursday.
Please provide us with detailed reasoning on this important subject, that supports your hypothesis on this specific case.
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