GREAT DISCERNMENT.
THANKS!
Posted on 02/17/2012 4:17:50 PM PST by wagglebee
The only difference between "microevolutionary" and "macroevolutionary" (as they relate to the ToE, and NOT as portrayed by advocates of "creation science") is the time scale.
The paleontological record most certainly supports the ToE; observations made on the basis of that record were what led to the formulation of the various competing ToEs in the first place.
I'm not going to comment on Richard Dawkins' quote; without seeing its context, I can guess that he goes on to explain why the fossil record behaves more like snapshots taken at random intervals than a continuous record, but I don't know.
Now, as far as the gradualism goes--most small, gradual changes won't appear in the fossil record. A single amino acid change that makes a trans-membrane calcium transporter able to pull calcium into cells at a lower serum calcium concentration is unlikely to show up in the fossil record. However, we might be able to observe that "newer" fossils exist in an area where the soil contains less calcium than where the "older" fossils were found. Our best bet of revealing such a minute change would be in finding some ancient DNA that we can analyze--but, given the instability of DNA, finding that DNA happens quite rarely. So, in order to build a more complete picture, we have to compare what we know of DNA mutation rates from various other lines of research.
A characteristic of evolutionary research is that there is no single line of evidence that fully supports the evolutionary picture. We have, instead, millions of pieces of disparate evidence that we must piece together like a giant puzzle, we have no picture on the cover of the box to guide us, and most of the pieces are missing.
Technically speaking, every one of us is a "transitional" form. The only pieces of DNA that are passed (mostly) unchanged from parent to child would be the mitochondrial DNA (remnant of ancient bacteria that lived inside other cells) from the mother, and the Y chromosome from the father.
That's the model for public consumption. Get a couple of beers into a scientist (after hours, at a conference) and they often start venting about rivals.
And get most scientists talking to someone whom they perceive as being not academicically trained, or from a "lesser" institution, where the gap between the institutions involved is great enough, and the whole "my degree is bigger than yours" arrogance comes out...witness your treatment of Quix elsewhere in this thread.
But what's really interesting in this regard is that the "publish or perish" phenomenon has produced so many PhDs from "stellar" schools that there simply is not room for them at stellar schools, and the academic progeny are often forced to accept postings at schools which would otherwise be considered "beneath" them; while academic postings are often made on the basis of a "hot" thesis topic or other considerations. Examples include a posting of a Harvard English / Lit PhD bemoaning having to accept an academic position down in Georgia among the fundies; a personal anecdote (who shall remain unnamed) of a PhD in chemistry who was awarded a professorship at a Big Ten school on the strength of having cracked an intractable technological problem with his prof's apparatus as a grad student; a Cal Tech grad taking a professorship at a Minneapolis College which accepts 75% of its applicants; etc. etc.
A scientist is always aware that the conclusions they make on the basis of their research can be overturned or shown to be wrong by someone who approaches the same topic from a different direction. As a result, our language tends to be uncertain--the scientific literature is full of probabilistic language "might, possibly, could, suggests".
You happen to be incorrect; I have dealt with many arrogant scientists during my life.
I could give amusing personal anecdotes but it would necessarily lead to "too much information" syndrome.
In the meantime, here's another Dilbert strip or two for the amusement of lurkers.
Cheers!
Let's take a paragraph from the original source, which is only three paragraphs before the one you quote-mine:
Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a fundamental law – one may call it an iron law of Nature – which compels the various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse, the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc.
Deviations from this law take place only in exceptional circumstances. This happens especially under the compulsion of captivity, or when some other obstacle makes procreative intercourse impossible between individuals of the same species. But then Nature abhors such intercourse with all her might; and her protest is most clearly demonstrated by the fact that the hybrid is either sterile or the fecundity of its descendants is limited. In most cases hybrids and their progeny are denied the ordinary powers of resistance to disease or the natural means of defence against outer attack.
Isn't the very *definition* of species, related to whether or not mating results in offspring, or more precisely, of fertile offspring?
And as for your assertion that
"Hitler was a rather strict Creationist - he doesn't even allow that a canine “kind” could give rise to foxes, dingos, coyotes, and wolves - all in record time when needed. Nope - to him “a fox is always a fox”.
try to reconcile that with the paragraph before the one you posted:
Such a dispensation of Nature is quite logical. Every crossing between two breeds which are not quite equal results in a product which holds an intermediate place between the levels of the two parents. This means that the offspring will indeed be superior to the parent which stands in the biologically lower order of being, but not so high as the higher parent. For this reason it must eventually succumb in any struggle against the higher species. Such mating contradicts the will of Nature towards the selective improvements of life in general. The favourable preliminary to this improvement is not to mate individuals of higher and lower orders of being but rather to allow the complete triumph of the higher order. The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.
And a couple of paragraphs later he says:
If the case were different the progressive process would cease, and even retrogression might set in. Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, the former would always increase more rapidly if they possessed the same capacities for survival and for the procreation of their kind; and the final consequence would be that the best in quality would be forced to recede into the background. Therefore a corrective measure in favour of the better quality must intervene. Nature supplies this by establishing rigorous conditions of life to which the weaker will have to submit and will thereby be numerically restricted; but even that portion which survives cannot indiscriminately multiply, for here a new and rigorous selection takes place, according to strength and health.
This is by definition survival of the fittest.
The difference, since you seem unable to grasp it, is that Adolph reasoned that changes in kind only came about by breeding of different kinds to create a new kind, whereas "evolution" suggests that changes come about by random changes in the allele -- but both are subject to selection pressures.
And it is the selection pressure which Adolph uses as his excuse for racism. As he writes in the next paragraph:
If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.
To recap:
Evolutionists claim that the diversity of species results from random changes to the allele coupled with selection pressure leading to differentially greater chances for survival and hence reproduction among the offspring who happen to have characteristics more conducive to survival in a local environment; that such characteristics become dominant within a species over time; and that when enough genetic changes accumulate, representative individuals who possess enough of those changes become mutually infertile with members of the population who do not -- hence the "origin of species".
Hitler was only an amateur painter and dictator, we have no evidence he was a serious student of biology. He seemed to think new races came about by breeding of existing disparate populations or kinds; and that nature herself rejected the miscegenation of the stronger by making the offspring infertile, thereby preserving purity of races; and that if by any chance the offspring *were* fertile, they would represent a dead end since they did not have the survivability of the "stronger" parent.
In both cases, then, the action of culling by external actors applies: in the one case a nebulous 'fitness' function, in the other case strength and health (which are probably pretty well correlated with "fitness" btw, if one reads the endless articles in popular magazines about how people choosing mates based on appearance has an evolutionary origin and component...)
What Adolph did was to emphasize the fitness part and use it as a springboard for racism and eugenics. It is the philosophical feature of "survival of the fittest" taken out of its scientific context within evolutionary theory which served as the underpinning for this.
(Incidentally, the other feature of 'selection pressure' which lends itself to eugenics is its strictly statistical nature, with no notion of mercy, compassion, or forgiveness. Those who wish to engage in cruelty will always have an easier time justifying their actions by pointing to nature as a guide, since morality as expressed in Christianity is simply unknown when considering selection pressure per se The error consists in assuming or insisting that a model construct useful for approximating statistical populations of biological entities, is either an adequate reflection of, or a normative guide to, conscious behaviour of sentient beings within a socio-historical context.)
Cheers!
I was thinking of getting an answer from the person Dan asked.
Actually, using sizes and types of font and color is highly recommended to avoid putting people to sleep, by those who are professionals in corporate marketing and communications.
Not hardly.
May I draw your attention to Quix's posts #345 and #346, where he/she used huge fonts, garish colors, and irrelevant pictures to essentially scream at me, like a 2 year old throwing a tantrum? And where the whole gist of both posts can essentially be distilled down into, "OMG i cnat belive ur so stoopid adn u sya ur such a smrt sinetst LOLOLOL !!!!!!1111elevenone"
I really don't appreciate being the recipient of such posts, and my (albeit somewhat sarcastic) reply reflected both the fact that the entire basis of Quix's argument sounded like it had been lifted straight from some "creation science" screed, and that any kind of further discussion with him/her is impossible.
Not hardly.
Know anybody in marketing / layout / design? I've had to attend seminars on this kind of stuff (to help the technical types "get up to speed" on effective communications) at work. The Dilbert strip on the brochure is pretty accurate.
May I draw your attention to Quix's posts #345 and #346, where he/she used huge fonts, garish colors, and irrelevant pictures to essentially scream at me, like a 2 year old throwing a tantrum? And where the whole gist of both posts can essentially be distilled down into, "OMG i cnat belive ur so stoopid adn u sya ur such a smrt sinetst LOLOLOL !!!!!!1111elevenone"
Apparently you and I got different messages out of the same posts. The "O RLY?" is a common internet meme; and I ignored the fonts and colours in favor of the text involved.
As far as "scientism" goes, think of the politicization of science: Quix is (as far as I can tell) in psychology: look what the social pressures have done to the DSM over the years (e.g. homosexuality no longer "abnormal" by fiat). Or consider the treatment of Martin Haskell and his candidacy for the post of Observatory Director at the U of Kentucky. He was explicitly denied the job on the grounds that he was a creationist, despite being far-and-away, vastly, completely the most qualified for the position.
Cheers!
Computational fluid dynamics comes to mind; as does Group Theory; or yet again mechanical engineering.
You get the idea.
Cheers!
Major water leak in the kitchen which went through the floorboards and soaked the laundry room.
(Grabs mop and blueprint for an Ark.)
Perhaps a good exhortation would be . . . if the shoe fits, wear it and learn something from it, oh lofty one.
When posts scream for gifs, I'm happy to oblige and provide them.
When posts scream for sarcasm, I'm somewhat happy to provide it.
When posts seem to have chips on their shoulders a mile high, I'm happy to post chip-reducers.
When posts come across as arrogance to the max, I'm happy to help provide some arrogance reducer meds.
Prayers for speedy and easier clean up and repair.
Leaks are no fun.
Wheeeee.
LUB
Similar for group theory / crystallography.
I hate household maintenance crises.
Cheers!
To the extent that you have been called out for the dishonest poster that you are, and as much as you might wish it wasn’t about you, this article in fact is all very much about you and people like you
Care to address any of the points I made.
Moth to flame: read and learn.
Hitler was a Creationist who believed in fixed kinds.
Whether you realize it or not, everyone is a creationist (or Creationist, depending upon the esteem one holds that entity/Entity which created him). You see, whether you just spoke and brought yourself into existence (as Jesus Christ did the entire Universe), or by some intelligent mechanism of your own design – if you created yourself supposedly without any Divine help -- you are a creationist. Get used to it.
Maybe that simple concept has escaped you until now, but from this point forward you are without excuse – unless of course your dishonesty insists that you continue fooling yourself.
You are a creationist in very much the same way Hitler or even Darwin was a creationist:
1. Like Hitler, you believe your Creator is not the God of the Bible.
2. Like Hitler, you believe you are your own Creator – not that either you or he in spite of your self-adulatory collective “brilliance” could possibly tell anyone how it was that either of you brought yourselves into existence
3. As your own “Creators” you mistakenly believe you are the masters of your own destinies, and answerable only to your megalomaniacal selves.
4. Hitler called himself a Christian much like you do, but Hitler, like you, do/did not claim to be created by the God of the Bible. This is because the Bible declares that the Creator of the Universe and all life is Jesus Christ Himself -- who you reject, of course, even as did Hitler.
5. You are a “Christian” in name only, even as RINOs are Republicans in name only.
6. One is a Christian-In-Name-Only when one does not affirm what Jesus Christ claimed about Himself: The Truth, Creator, Son of God, and Redeemer of His Creation.
7. Hitler – also a Christian-in-Name Only – pathologically lied to himself and to those around him – again, much like yourself.
8. Darwin, at one time claimed to be a Christian, but ultimately rejected Biblical authority, much as you have.
9. Darwin’s writing manifests little to no original thought, much like yours does.
10. Darwin surprisingly enough manifested enough humility to admit that if credible evidence of reproducing transitional forms didn’t exist, his whole premise was toast. Remarkably, it’s his philosophical inheritors like yourself who have hitched your self-worth to this failed premise, and who can’t seem able to let go in face of all the failure, because to do so upends your whole identity. The facts be damned – it’s an ego and intellectual self-preservation thing for you now. It never was about science. In your case it is merely “survival of the petty ego.”
Biblical Creationists like myself have been calling out Christians-In-Name-Only like yourself on these boards for years. If you do not believe what Jesus Christ says and conduct yourself as though you do, you simply are not by any biblical definition a Christian.
The Soviet Communists rejected Darwin's theory in favor of a Lamarkian mechanism.
Comrade, get it through your head. Darwinism, Owen-ism, Wallace-ism, Hobbes-ism, Lamark-ism, Gobineau-ism, Spenser-ism, Plato-ism, Aristotle-ism, Haeckel-ism, Huxley-ism, Lyell-ism, Galton-ism, Sanger-ism are all joined at the hip of evolutionary self-transformation with all the self-importance attached to establishing an exalted “elite,” -- a human super-race beyond some supposedly lesser -- and exploitable – predicate “others.”
"Darwinism" and by extension, "applied Darwinism," and "social Darwinism" in today’s parlance has come to mean the singular embodiment of “survival-of-the-fittest,” “might-makes-right” philosophy that has underpinned every philosophy that has sprung from the concept: Das Kapital to the Descent of Man to Mein Kampf. Social Darwinism informs crony capitalism as much as it ever informed Margaret Sanger’s “Negro Project.” The Soviet Union survived as long as it did, because Western crony capitalism allowed for it to survive.
Some Commies rejected the term “Darwinism” largely on the basis of its use by crony capitalists of the time to justify English hegemony and the global political power projected by it, and with it, England’s regents who were cousins to the deposed Romanovs. Contrasting Darwinian with Lamarkian evolution is a distinction without a difference.
Will you also try to say that Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto did not inform the political and social system, which became the Soviet Union, in spite of the fact Marx credited Darwin with the biological rationale for his political theory – and you’ll do so all because some latter-day Reds were jealous of the powerful, well-heeled Brits? Get some historical perspective before you post such amateurish drool.
Creationists claim to not accept evolution and the (semi)common descent of species - except when they helpfully explain how it all happened at many hundreds of times the rate observed in evolutionary biology.
Biblical creationists say no such thing. You’ve transited from a polluted stream of consciousness into a world of babbling incoherent nonsense.
Creationists claim to accept ‘micro’-evolution when they fell [sic.] it is politic to do so…
I never use the term “micro-evolution,” because it tends to confuse people just like you. The correct concept is that of “adaptation,” because the organism is merely calling upon information with which it has been programmed by its Creator to adapt and to cope with its environment. You keep playing your politics with all the failed polemics and biblical Creationists will continue to do the credible, truth-seeking science.
…but then helpfully explain how any such mechanism is absolutely impossible - and that every useful DNA variation that ever existed was created and placed in the genome of the primordial “kinds”.
“Primordial” is a term of the evolutionist’s art, as in the oft referenced, “primordial soup” -- a la Miller and Urey’s failed abiogenesis experiments of the early 50’s. It is not a term Biblical creationist’s either need or use. You have to accept the fact that your premise of evolution requires an abiogenetically-derived system, belching forth directive biological information for processes not yet brought into existence, or equipped in any predicate fashion to either interpret or to act upon the messenger RNA thereof.
It’s like designing and launching a computer program driver into the ozone in search of a program that has yet to be written for a purpose that yet has to establish any rationale for its existence. You have failed to identify first cause or the predicate rationale for any of your evolutionary premise. What’s the purpose?
And if one must call upon sentient rationale, is one not now forced to speak of an Intelligent Designer to establish the First cause and from it the rationale behind the Creation – of anything?
Your evolutionary premise gives you no reason for existing apart from your inherent meaninglessness. In your world you can create yourself without a predicate rationale for doing so and you can therefore pretend to be anything you want to be on this board – a “conservative,” perhaps, or maybe even posturing as a “Christian.”
You can fool yourself. You can lie to others. Fools don’t last for long on FR and liars are often dispatched with extreme prejudice around here.
And are Creationists incapable of standing behind their own words without pinging a dozen or more of their amen chorus?
Your FReeper sign up date says Aug 1, 2007, but most of us have long suspected that you are nothing more than a retread from the Darwin Central days, posting under a newer name. You waited long enough past the 2006 flushing of the Darwin Central cabal, but you and a few others have come back under newer names as the “bowl floaters” on the Board.
Most of that “amen chorus” of writhing, whining, space-cadet, Gollum-gasbagged, materialistic Darwinians were banned to the perdition of their respective chat rooms for atheists and the DU blog site long ago.
If you are finding yourself outnumbered by true conservatives around here, well, looks like you’ll just have to get used that.
The reasoning resident within all that ejacu-gelato splooge between your ears is likely to find a more receptive audience somewhere other than here.
Feel free to go there.
Chewed him up and spat him out........
Discuss the issues all you want, but do not make it personal.
Man that second strip sure encapsulates the arguments on this thread...
bkmk
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