Posted on 11/05/2003 5:29:49 AM PST by truthfinder9
All day Saturday, November 15, 2003
Most of science is an objective search for the truth.
However, the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) seems to abandon that concept when the discussion turns to the question of our origin. Only one answer is allowed - naturalistic evolution.
On October 18, 2002, the AAAS Board decreed that all public schools and AAAS members should censor and suppress the scientific challenge to the naturalistic explanation of our origin - Intelligent Design. Darwinists claim that life is not designed. Other scientists disagree. The AAAS, in a curiously unscientific fashion, seeks to suppress that scientific disagreement. WHY?
The fourth annual symposium on Intelligent Design, DDD IV, will address that question with 18 experts in biochemistry, neuro science, cosmology, physics, chemistry, geology, philosophy, theology and the law.
Yes, and to get somewhere in finding the truth, you have to discard the false.
"There are no transitional forms." FALSE.... And so forth. ID has nothing to offer but retreaded creationist propaganda."The second law of thermodynamics forbids the evolution of complexity." FALSE.
"Complex structures with lots of internal inter-dependencies cannot have evolved." FALSE.
"The Cambrian Explosion disproves evolution." FALSE.
If that is the case, please identify even one. I suggest you not go down that road because if you do, I will make you look really stupid.
Sadly, I don't find a rung for Network Television Producers. Maybe they're off the (bottom of the) charts, having never evolved past the form of Primordial Slime.
However, so much of the reported findings are merely opinion, isn't it true? And opininions, like fashion, come and go. Today's "truth" is tomorrow's faux pas.
That we aren't still living in the kind of world in which my grandfather (born in 1879) grew up is not because of fluctuations in opinion. Science evaluates the data, gathers more data, and re-evaluates.
Science doesn't change its "opinion" lightly at all, it does so under the pressure of facts. Hard facts are the engine of scientific change.
The history of science is a convergence upon an increasingly accurate description of nature. That should be obvious. What disturbs me is that many people of a creation/ID stripe seem ready to chuck a thousand years or so of accumulated work, eager to believe that it's all a house of cards ready to come crashing down. The attitude is lamentable.
Isn't it true not even one skeleton of a something morphing into another something has never been found?
Most fossils just lay there, yes. However, many fossils are intermediate in form between those found earlier and later. The fossil record outlines a branching tree of life much like those derived from studying the morphology of currently extant life and (more recently) molecular biology.
Darwin, faced with a much, much less complete fossil record in 1859 than we have now, was reduced to predicting that a lot of intermediates must have existed and would turn up when more of the world was investigated. Many scoffed, but he was right. Virtually all of the previous examples are post-Darwin. If he wasn't right, he was the luckiest charlatan in history. How did he do that?
Yet many people of the evolution stripe see nothing wrong in chucking 6000, and especially the last 2000 years of God's work, years that have benefitted and brought civilization to the point where it is possible to have a country such as the US of A and why do you not then find that lamentable?
To me at least, evolution is a theory that describes the origin of the diversity of life on earth. The history of the earth is what it is. Most people can handle the truth.
Thanks for your unbiased scientific opinion.
All it is then, is a worldview that you can live with. I take it that spiritual things are of no concern to you? You yourself, may consider the theory "truth", but your opinion does not necessarily make it so. Even if it be the opinion of all the world, we must say to you as Peter said to the unbelievers, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.
Out of curiosity, would you die to support your theory of evolution?
Statements like that don't exactly enhance your credibility.
I trust it won't be necessary. Are you planning on dropping by?
Yes and no. The world has betrayed your viewpoint by making you wrong. The very heavens mock you. You need to make some minor allowance for that when crying about science not paying enough attention to your "truth."
Oh, and BTW, if Gould actually believed there were transitionals, why did he invent the fairy tale known PE?
The bottom line is that evo apologists have redefined what it means to be a transitional form. Regardless, where is the fossilized
Meaning the existence of a Creator cramps your style?
Anyone forced to bow to a lie might as well be a slave.
Meaning you'll stop trying to convince others?
Here Gould talks straight to people like you.
Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am—for I have become a major target of these practices.Is it starting to come back to you yet?...
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.
Answer: They exist only in the minds of the evos.
Out for a bit.
Don't know about angels, but those 10-billion year old quasars don't fit in your story very well. Now I mean it, gone for supper.
Students who think for themselves are creationists.
Students who have difficulty in that area prefer evolution.
Smarter students are creationists.
The not-so-smart are evos.
The study is scientific so you should love it.
Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.
The Lord's quasars were burning with a purpose for spiritual man ere there ever was a man.
Then the not-so-smart ones go to college and the smart ones fry burgers.
It is true that he has no professed belief in Lord Vishnu. Or Zeus. Or Wodan. So what? Does that make him against the Easter Bunny too?
Now, I have said some things that might seem critical of a creator, things of the form, "God shouldn't tell people to behave the way Discovery Institute is doing in that paper." When I do that, I don't really think the creator of the universe is ordering people about. What I'm really saying is that faith in things unseen doesn't seem to be all that healthy for everybody. The people trying to order science and science education about for sure do not understand science and often don't really want to. They should not be humored.
Throw me in the water and I swim to shore. The Puritans would probably have burned me.
No, he did not, as anyone with an ordinary level of reading comprehension knows if they've read anything of Gould's besides the out-of-context quotes that creationist sources like to parade around. Gould discussed many, many transitional forms, including over half a dozen here. Excerpt:
Still, our creationist incubi, who would never let facts spoil a favorite argument, refuse to yield, and continue to assert the absence of all transitional forms by ignoring those that have been found, and continuing to taunt us with admittedly frequent examples of absence.
How is it you are more informed than your superiors?
How is it that you are so poorly informed about what Gould actually believed?
Oh, and BTW, if Gould actually believed there were transitionals, why did he invent the fairy tale known PE?
He didn't invent it, Darwin did, and it's no fairy tale:
I further believe that these slow, intermittent results accord well with what geology tells us of the rate and manner at which the inhabitants of the world have changed." (Darwin, Ch. 4, "Natural Selection," pp. 140-141)This is classic Punctuated Equilibrium -- from Charles Darwin in 1859.But I must here remark that I do not suppose that the process ever goes on so regularly as is represented in the diagram, though in itself made somewhat irregular, nor that it goes on continuously; it is far more probable that each form remains for long periods unaltered, and then again undergoes modification. (Darwin, Ch. 4, "Natural Selection," pp. 152)
"It is a more important consideration ... that the period during which each species underwent modification, though long as measured by years, was probably short in comparison with that during which it remained without undergoing any change." (Darwin, Ch. 10, "On the imperfection of the geological record," p. 428)
"Widely ranging species vary most, and varieties are often at first local, -- both causes rendering the discovery of intermediate links less likely. Local varieties will not spread into other and distant regions until they are considerably modified and improved; and when they do spread, if discovered in a geological formation, they will appear as if suddenly created there, and will be simply classed as new species. [Charles Darwin, Origin of Species 1st Edition 1859, p.439]
[All quotes from Darwin's 1859 "On the Origin of Species"]
The bottom line is that evo apologists have redefined what it means to be a transitional form.
"The bottom line" is that you make a lot of amusing claims without a shred of support.
Regardless, where is the fossilized:
half feather / half scale
On Sinosauropteryx :
half leg / half wing
On Protarchaeopteryx :
half foot / half hoof
On late Condylarths:
Yeah, I know, lousy picture -- can't find a decent one on the web. But the "one hooflet per toe" structure easily meets your "half foot half hoof" requirement, as do the feet of modern Tapirs (themselves sort of a living fossil):
etc etc etc.
Yes indeed, etc. etc.
Answer: They exist only in the minds of the evos.
Uh huh... Well certainly, there are a lot of things that exist only in *your* mind.
Perhaps we can help each other in understanding the other's viewpoint, perhaps not, but I am willing to try. The problem is much deeper than where one was academically educated. It goes to the core of being, one's purpose here on earth. Perhaps you see the reason that you are on the earth is to procreate and to advance the species? If so, you must have many children!
In contrast, I am of no particular notice, just a defender of the word bespoken in ages past to the apostles. It matters not whether I am here or there, but here I am at this moment. And here you are. Perhaps we must make the most of out time together, for tomorrow the wind will blow where it wilst.
Why do you profess to speak for your brother? Have you not enough unbelief to occupy yourself?
Glad to hear it. Whatever you hear, I'm not on these threads to attack religion. I don't go on the Religion forum or go into churches to advocate some kind of Godless Science as a replacement for religion. For me, as for so many, science is one thing and religion is about something else.
Perhaps you see the reason that you are on the earth is to procreate and to advance the species? If so, you must have many children!
No, I don't. Not that anyone can prove, anyway. ;) And evolution is not prescriptive, merely descriptive.
But you see, my friend, you are talking about a belief, and I am talking about a belief. My belief has a 6000 year track record and a manual, proven to work. Your belief has what, a hundred year one and no manual, little evidence even.
Yet you think your belief should be held superior to mine. I have a perfect right to disagree. It seems that me, holding to my rights, somehow infuriates the proponents of your Johnny-come-lately interloper.
Not when you look at the actual science. It's been 144 years, not a century, since 1859, but geology had already parted company with Genesis 20 years previously. That time span you denigrate has taken mankind from horse-and-buggy to the moon. Most of what we now know, we learned in that interval. The history of mankind before then was a slow ramp-up to the explosion. After 144 years, The Evidence for Common Descent is crushing.
I respect religion because I know where science stops. However, people who don't know where religion stops are a problem for science and science education.
But you see, you assume that I hold the same ideals that you do. This world that we have now, is not my ideal world. Is it yours? I appreciate advances in medicine, but do I appreciate medicine being controlled by insurance companies and drug companies? No I do not. Do I want to live forever in a world like this one? I do not. Perhaps you do, I really don't know. If this is all you know to be reality, then I guess it looks fairly good to you. I can't wait to be rid of it.
Geology, you say has parted company with Genesis, chapter 20. Now I am trying to understand this and so, pardon my perplexion. What has Abraham's journey to the south have to do with the earth's geology, precisely?
Where religion stops.
In my reality, it can't stop, whereas in yours, it is a thing apart.
This is why your objections to mainstream science and your preference for pseudoscience should have no weight. The world we're in is the only one I know of and the only one science is even trying to understand. You should just let science do its job in peace, as your interests lie elsewhere.
Geology, you say has parted company with Genesis, chapter 20...
No. I said, "... geology had already parted company with Genesis 20 years previously." Twenty years before Darwin, geologists had figured out that the Earth was much, much older than Archbishop Ussher's calculation allowed and that there had been no single massive global flood.
My side is getting a little thin here at FR. Maybe you really like us.
I respect religion because I know where science stops. However, people who don't know where religion stops are a problem for science and science education.
God created the stuff that scientists discover. Honest science leads to the Designer.
Here is a retread from the other day, but it fits in here rather nicely. Speaking of manuals.
Isa 40:22
22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:
Fairly good description of the fabric of space-time.
Ezek 39:12-15
12 And seven months shall the house of Israel be burying of them, that they may cleanse the land.
13 Yea, all the people of the land shall bury them; and it shall be to them a renown the day that I shall be glorified, saith the Lord GOD.
14 And they shall sever out men of continual employment, passing through the land to bury with the passengers those that remain upon the face of the earth, to cleanse it: after the end of seven months shall they search.
15 And the passengers that pass through the land, when any seeth a man’s bone, then shall he set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the valley of Hamongog.
The remnants of a nuclear battle, marking contaminated bones for the hired professionals to clean up. Waiting for the fallout to dissipate before beginning the cleanup process. Amazing use of an ancient language.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! I guess you got me there!
(It looked like a science thread, sort of.)
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