Posted on 11/14/2007 4:00:52 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
==Is ‘ever branching and beautiful ramifications’ synonymous with ‘complexity’
So when Darwin shows all life forms ascending up a tree and calls it “improvement”, are you suggesting that he’s referring to an ever increasing loss of complexity?
“I think it was the part about the critters losing their brains. That’s rather serious you know.”
Not to argue with your statement, but democrats and other Liberals/socialists are living proof that brain loss is not behaviorally significant.
Say it ain’t so.
There’ll be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Of course, evolutionary theory is constantly changing and adjusting to newly discovered facts (see the history of gradualism), and I'm sure the Darwinists will adjust to this data too, as long as any of them are left standing.
I liked this comment on the loss of central nervous systems in some species:
"If you just sit around your entire life you don't need much of a sensory integration centre coupled to a locomotor nerve cord," says Arendt.
Moral of the story: Don't be a couch potato.
Yeah, but it won’t really be true until science confirms it.
Oh, but wait a minute, science isn’t about truth so that can’t be....
Could be why the Democrats and Liberals can't think any farther along than two steps in a process.
==Is ‘ever branching and beautiful ramifications’ synonymous with ‘complexity’ or ‘genetical richness’ however it is that you define it (a definition which includes your notion that a bacteria isn’t really less complex than a human)?
I never said that “a bacteria isn’t really less complex than a human.” I said that bacteria cells are roughly as complex as human CELLS. It’s what the organism does with those cells that make them more or less functionally complex IMHO.
And now for a few more choice quotes from the “Origin of Species”:
“Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature’s power of selection.”
....
“In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory will be given: namely, first, the difficulties of transitions, or in understanding how a simple being or a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed being or elaborately constructed organ...”
.....
“Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is more than enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection.”
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=side&pageseq=1
==Moral of the story: Don’t be a couch potato.
LOL...and from an epigenetic point of view, I couldn’t agree more.
==There’ll be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Already in evidence in both this and the previous thread. Their visceral reactions speak volumes about what really underpins the TOE.
Index to Creationist Claims, edited by Mark Isaak.
This site takes several hundred typical creationist claims, numbers them, and provides a response, based on science, for each.
(just kidding)
Been there, done that:
The Creationist rebuttle to Talk.Origins “Index to Creationist” claims.
http://creationwiki.org/Index_to_Creationist_Claims
Do you have any arguments that you consider your own, or have you forever consigned yourself to the regurgitation of the hard-won ideas of others?
Religion and apologetics: http://creationwiki.org/Index_to_Creationist_Claims
Ooops, should have read “hard-won (if hair-brained) ideas of others.”
Talk about the brainwashed leading the brainwashed. You crack me up! But I guess I shouldn’t expect anything less from a long-time Temple of Darwin devotee.
Do you have any arguments that you consider your own, or have you forever consigned yourself to the regurgitation of the hard-won ideas of others?
Yes, I have a lot of ideas of my own. The primary one is that ID is religion in disguise, dressed up in new clothes after the Edwards decision. It has no science behind it, only misrepresentations and outright lies. Its main proponent, the Dyscovery Institute hires lawyers and PR flacks to promote their religious belief because they are aware, more than anyone, that there is no science behind their efforts.
The whole sordid scheme was leaked somehow (see the Wedge Strategy).
I think they would love to see a theocracy, with them running the show. They wouldn't have to pretend to be doing science then!
I have lots more ideas, some based on several years of study at the graduate level in fossil man, osteology, and evolution, and a lot more based on more recent study.
Thank you for asking.
Ok Wiley,
Why don’t you present two or three of your evolutionary ideas, and back them up with the overwhelming evidence you keep talking about. I’m all ears.
Let's start with just one.
Creationism is religion, not science. It follows scripture, not scientific evidence. When the two come into conflict, creationists still follow scripture rather than scientific evidence.
The modern iteration of ID, dormant for nearly 200 years (since Paley, 1802), is largely due to the efforts of the Dyscovery Institute. The story of their efforts is contained in the Wedge Strategy. That planning and fund-raising document leaked, exposing their dishonest efforts to disguise religion as science, and their efforts to replace creation "science" which was blown out of the water by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Edwards decision, with "Intelligent Design." The goal of the whole sorry scheme was to destroy real science and replace it with a theocracy.
And you seem to support this ID fraud, hook, line and sinker.
How's that for an evolutionary idea?
Hollow rhetoric. The ravings of a very tormented mind. ("squirming like a toad..." )
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