Posted on 08/19/2010 1:19:28 PM PDT by TheConservativeCitizen
Documentary educational television would have us believe that the single greatest scientific achievement of the past millennium was Darwin’s theory of evolution. Many religious fundamentalists have serious issues with this assertion. Many legitimate scientists with both secular and religious perspectives do as well. Darwin himself recognized serious shortcomings with evolution. A new sort of “scientist,” the evolutionary biologist, has come on the scene. These folks are specifically dedicated to supporting and proving a theory. Previously science did not work that way. Scientists used to look for evidence of disproof, only accepting theories that prove unassailable.
On the other side we have unscientific religious fundamentalists. These folks are willing to describe their search for proof of their scriptures as basic science. They study scripture and seek evidence to support what it says.
Both sides’ methods are troublingly reminiscent of case law: by carefully selecting your precedents or evidence one can prove anything. Mathematicians and philosophers long ago concluded that “proving” a general hypotheses about the real world is a logical impossibility. That is, no one can find every possible exception to any assertion about the real world.
(Excerpt) Read more at constitutionclub.org ...
Sorry but the wolf has more genetic viability than any dog breed out there. Surely you know that their DNA deviates less than 1% yet there are many many attributes in the dog’s DNA that have been turned-off and can not be reversed w/o much inter-breeding w/ the wolf. How about you take just 2 dachschunds and breed them back into wolves.
We do have mutations, all living things do, but the survivors obviously have not accumulated enough genetic drift to be driven to extinction. I’ll grant you that a few species have gone extinct due to negative changes in their selected environments but certainly not all.
If you could just get past your bias against creation science you might begin to see that the hydroplate theory incorporates many more of the jigsaw pieces of natural history than does plate techtonics. Dr Brown’s theories encapsulate and explain many many more facts about nature and history than any other competing theories.
I missed that. What? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It has been around a lot longer and therefore has spent MORE time under the 'microscope' of critical thinking. Around longer time = more time, around shorter time = less time, not the reverse. Longer = more, shorter = less. Or am I missing something about the English language here? Anyway, the theory as it is today is quite a bit different than as first proposed due to over a century of critique and discovery. Germ theory is quite a bit different too. Successful theories tend to change over time because nobody gets it right from the beginning.
You need to re-examine the results. The mutated flies were completely incapable of re-producing.
They have used the force of government to impose their views of the most important things in life upon the children of other people.
The liberal on one hand will lie about their wish to undermine Christianity while on the other hand they will post a million newspaper articles, textbooks, movies, youtube videos and comments, websites, television show plots, revisionist histories, and legislate via the bench in order to attack and undermine the Christian faith and then brag about it on their most celebratory posts on leftwing sites.
If you love freedom and are assisting this trend, you are an enemy of American freedom and the country all of our parents intended to give us as our inheritance from them.
If we had a tax break-down that showed how much of our tax dollars go to supporting evolutionary science and also how much usefullness it has produced then and only then would it receive the same scrutiny as GW.
Of course I have a bias. I have read the literature and found it wanting, thus the bias. I have a bias against the miasma theory of disease, too. Miasma theory explains a lot, and its connection between sanitary conditions and disease is correct. Doesn't make it right.
Doesn't mean we should try to make species go extinct or that we shouldn't try to prevent extinctions.
The notion that dogs are “de-evolved” wolves makes no sense in light of the fact that I can find a breed of dog that can beat a wolf in just about any test of physical ability you care to name. If something can be “de-evolved” and yet have MORE genetic variability, and yet be faster, stronger, smarter, a better digger, etc - then the term “de-evolved” means what exactly?
If you are positing accumulation of mutation as the main cause of extinction, what mechanism protected the species that are extant upon the Earth that failed to protect those that went extinct supposedly due to mutation?
Why did, for example, the dire wolf go extinct through mutation, but not the wolf? Why did dinosaurs die of mutations but not present day mammalian species?
And why would a bacteria have a mechanism to increase its mutation rate during stress if mutation just caused “De-evolution”?
Maybe because, like a dog from a wolf, what you call “de-evolution” means increased genetic diversity and increased abilities?
If so, maybe we can just drop the “de-”. It is evolution. There is no loss of viability, or ability, and an INCREASE in genetic diversity going from the wolf to dogs.
No, it's just fun to watch liberals squirm. They yell nature, nature, we must respect and get back to nature. Okay, guess what, nature involves extinction at the hands of other species. We try not to make things to extinct because we can think and act outside of normal animal survival nature.
Agree.
You're talking about political scrutiny long after it has survived serious scientific scrutiny. As far as usefulness, I don't know about other disciplines, but evolution has been helpful to computer science. Look up evolutionary algorithms, specifically genetic algorithms.
Yeah, yeah. Science is for science class. Religion is for church, or a religion class if you'd like. It doesn't say much for you valuing American freedom if you'd like to use the government to force YOUR religion upon MY children.
Hey, its the Summer doldrums, need more argument and less agreement, your statement douses the flame all to easily.
Actually I was referring to public scrutiny. No one really cares until they see they are paying for it. Then they want some ‘return on investment ‘ (ROI). I will grant you that genetic evolutionary algorithms have proven useful but the ROI is very very poor.
I saw in your next post - 53 I think - that you think it is wrong to indoctrinate children w/ creation science in public schools.
I agree 100% but to teach evolution in public school is problematic for the same reasons. The main reason I agree is the church can and should do a much better job teaching creation science since they should be held to a much higher standard of truth and avoiding politics. Also I feel that the public schools would mis-represent and grossly distort creation science anyway. I see it all the time on these threads w/ folks who lack any real theological reasoning.
They often think the Bible is merely written from the minds of men, but to their own detriment they ignore the uniqueness of God’s Word. Try explaining how Psalm 22 written approx 1000 years before Jesus Christ was foretold by mere men.
At a minimum the school needs to have a frank and open discussion about its’ strengths and weaknesses to separate fact from fiction.
Strengths = micro-evoltion (leading to the algorithms you stated previously), genetic code allowing for increased diversity of species.
Weaknesses = Cambrian explosion of most lifeforms, stasis in the fossil record, limitations for mutations in the genetic code, etc.
BTW public/government schools are another fraud foisted on the people. School should be local or at worst state controlled - the feds have no constitutional authority in this area. But is is one of the ten planks of communism.
I think you are mis-representing the science on this purposefully. The dog has less genetic viabilty than the wolf - esp. the further they are removed (i.e. my dachshund challenge). If you are honest then you’ll fess up. I won’t hold my breath...
I agree with Reagan who wanted to eliminate the Department of Education. I am not a big government statist who wants the big centralized government to centralize and control education with their big government certification seal of approval.
I am for small government and want all education privatized then there will be no government approval ace in the hole that people can toss out as if that was proof of anything.
Beginning with the assumption of a Creator should be completely defendable in American life, in any school since the founding principle of our country is "we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights". How could you disagree with the functional use of that founding assumption that we are actually 'endowed by our Creator'?
At any rate the big centralized government liberals should not be runnning education and the government has no business setting up a government school system that outlaws the assumption of a Creator. That assumption is self evident as the founders believed.
Read the liberal posts. Control of government public education is one of the most important things that they know they control, it is vital to the perpetuation of liberalism.
(Grin) Just ignore me and blather on.
Dogs have much more genetic VARIABILITY than a wolf, and they display superior traits.
So your proposed ignorance of “de-evolution” means that we took a population of wolves, and from them derived much MORE genetic variability (in dogs from the daschund to the great dane), and derived increased abilities of use!
So why would bacteria have a mechanism to increase mutation rates during stress, if mutation just led to de-evolution?
And whatever happened to ‘microevolution’ being a ‘proven fact’?
How does your acceptance of ‘micro’-evolution square with your insistence that only “de-evolution” can take place?
Still no mechanism proffered whereby the dire wolf and other species would go extinct through accumulating mutations, but the wolf and ourselves would be protected.
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