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ID: What’s it all about, Darwin?
The American Thinker ^ | August 26th, 2005 | Dennis Sevakis

Posted on 08/26/2005 8:57:58 AM PDT by wallcrawlr

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To: wallcrawlr
17 Reasons why Evolution is NOT a fact!  (But then again, facts and science don't really seem to matter much to evolutionists)

1. Law of Biogenesis
Life comes from... other life! There has not been a single time in history that proves otherwise.

2. Acquired Characteristics
Acquired characteristics cannot be passed down. Example, if a man works out every week and gets big muscles, his big muscles aren't gonna be inherited by his kid.

3. Mendel's Law
"Mendel discovered that genes are merely reshuffled from one generation to another. Different combinations are formed, but not different genes. A logical consequence of Mendel's Law is that there are limits to such varations."

4. Natural Selection
"Natural selection doesn't produce NEW genes, it only SELECTS among pre-existing characteristics. The variations Darwin observed among finches on different Galapagos islands is another example of natural selection producing micro- (NOT macro-) evolution. In other words, while natural selection sometimes explains survival of the fittest, it does not explain the orgin of the fittest. Actually, natural selection PREVENTS major evolutionary changes."

5. Mutations
"Mutations are the only known means by which new genetic material becomes available for evolution. Rarely if ever is a mutation beneficial to an organism. Almost all observations are harmful, some are meaningless, some are lethal. No known mutation has ever produced a form of life having greater complexity and viability than its ancestors."

6. Fruit Flies
Scientists experimented with fruit flies for 90 years, that's more than 3000 generations, and although there were many unnatural efforts to boost mutations, there was NO genetic improvement observed.

7. Complex Organs
Mutations cannot produce NEW organs such as highly complex organs like the eye, nose... "the adult human brain contains over a hundred billion electrical connections, more than all the electrical connections in all the electrial appliances in the WORLD."

8. Languages
Read this! This one is good!
"Nonhumans communicate, but not with language. True language recquires both vocab and grammar. With greath effort, human trainers have taught some chimpanzees to recognize a few hundred spoken words, to point to up to 200 symbols, and to make limited hand signs. These impressive feats are sometimes exaggerated by capturing and editing the animal's successes on film.
Chimpanzees have not demonstrated these skills in the wild and do not pass their skills on to other chimpanzees. When a trained chimp dies, so does the trainer's investment.
Did languages evolve in humans? Charles Darwin claimed it did. If so, the earliest languages should be the simplest. On the contrary, languages studies reveal that the more ancient the language, (for example, Latin, 200 BC, Vedic Sanskrit, 1500 BC) the more complex it is with regard to syntax, case, gender, mood, voice, tense, and verb form."

9. Speech
"Speech is uniquely human. Furthermore, studies of 36 documented cases of children raised without human contact (feral children) show that speech appears to be learned only from other humans. Apparently, humans do not automatically speak. If this is so, the first humans must have been endowed with speaking ability. There is no evidence that speech evolved."

10. Two-celled life?
"Many single celled forms of life exist but there are no known life forms of animal life with 2,3,4, or 5 cells. Even the forms of life with 6-20 cells are parasites. They must have a complex animal as a host to provide such functions as digestion and respiration. If macroevolution happened, one should find many forms of life with 2-20 cells as transitional forms between one celled and many-celled organisms.

11. Out of Place Fossils
One example, out of MANY I could have chosen.
"Petrified trees in the petrified forest of Arizona contain fossilized nests of bees and cocoons of wasps. The petrified forests are supposedly 220 million years old while beas supposedly evolved 140 million years later. Evolutionists and textbooks systematically ignore discoveries which conflict with the evolutionary time scale."

12. Ape-Men?
"For about 100 years the world was led to believe that Neanderthal man was stooped and apelike. Recent studies show that this erroneous belief was based upon some Neanderthals who were crippled with bone diseases such as arthritis and rickets. Neanderthal man, Heidelberg man, and Cro-Magnon man were completely human."

13. Fossil Man
"Bones of many modern-looking humans have been found deep in rocks that, according to evolution, were formed long before man began to evolve. Examples include the Calaveras skull, the Castenedolo skeletons, Reck's skeleton. Other remains such as Swanscombe skull, the Steinhem fossil, and the Vertesszollos fossil, present similar problems."

14. Sexual Reproduction
"If sexual reproduction in plants, animals, and humans is a result of evolutionary sequences, an absolutely unbelievable series of chance events must have occurered at each stage.
The amazingly complex, radically different yet complementary reproductive systems of the male and female must have completely and independately evolved at each stage at about the same time and place. Just a slight incompleteness in only one of the two would make both useless, and the organisms would become extinct."

15. Immune System
"Each immune system can recognize invading bacteria, viruses, and toxins. Each system can quickly mobilize just the right type of defenders to search out and destor these invaders. Each system has a memory and learns from every attack.
If the many instructions that direct an animal's or plant's immune system were not already programmed into the organism's genetic system when it first appeared on the earth, the first of thousands of potential infections would have destoryed the organism. This would have nullified any rare genetic improvements that might have accumulated."

16. Heat
"Heat always flows from hot bodies to cold bodies. If the universe were infinitely old, the temperature throughout the universe should be uniform. Since the temp of the universe is NOT uniform, the universe is NOT infinetly old."

17. Magnetic Decay (Last one, folks!)
"Direct measurements of the earth's magnetic field over the past 140 years show a steady and rapid decline in its strength. This decay pattern is consistent with the theoretical view that there is an electrical current inside the earth which produces the magnetic field. If this is correct, then just 20,000 years ago the electrical current would have been so vast that the earth's structure could not have survived the heat produced. This implies that the earth could not be earlier than 20,000 years."

All this to say is that evolution is not quite a fact yet. it will take a little more evidence to convince me that it is a fact.

[all quotes taken from In the Beginning by Walt Brown, publishing company CSC, Pheonix, AZ]

101 posted on 08/26/2005 1:16:25 PM PDT by woodb01 (ANTI-DNC Web Portal at ---> http://www.noDNC.com)
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To: RobRoy
Well, should someone just post the Black Box in it's entirety and we can really get the two sides of "experts" going?

Forget it. Charlatans never give their books away for free and simpletons who quote charlatans in forums never reply to thought out rebuttals with anything more than smart-aleck snippets.

102 posted on 08/26/2005 1:18:33 PM PDT by shuckmaster
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To: wallcrawlr
http://www.goodschools.com/darwin.htm

Darwin's Theory of Evolution 

--A Notion Rooted Deep in Racism, but not in Science!

It is Time to 'Out the Darweenies'
(Related news:  Darweenies booted out of Kansas schools)

***Netwurking News Printable Copies (PDF Format)  (This is the two-page publication designed for mass distribution.  You must, however,  have Acrobat Reader to download this file.  Click here for free Acrobat Reader download.  You probably already have it on your system.  However, if you are not able to open the above files, you can get Acrobat Reader here)
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 Everyone is aware that Darwin's "The Origin of Species" (Origin) stands as the historic basis for the theory of evolution taught in the public schools throughout America. While the relative merits of the theory are widely studied today, what is not so commonly known (and never studied) is the fact that the mindset of the theory's author, as well as that of his contemporary supporters, was blatant racism.  Not only was Darwin a raging racist, it was racism that drove him to initiate his Origin and "The Descent of Man" (Descent) studies, and forced him to his racist conclusions. 

It is the position of this writer that this type (or any type) of racism has no place in the curriculum of our schools.  While we are not accusing the educational establishment of racism, we do point out that acceptance of racism, whether de facto or by design, results in the same thing.  There is no excuse for racism to be tolerated.  It is a shame that our schools still condone it.  There must be pressures brought to bear on leadership to put an end to this shameful era in our nation's history.  It is time to put an end to all vestiges of racism in education; it is time to 'Out the Darweenies.'   

(Darwinian racism started in our schools before the turn of the century (Darwin and his followers), gained strength in the 20s (Scopes), flourished in the 30s and 40s (John Dewey and his followers), and has lingered ever since.   Now, while the Darwinian theory does languish, it is not yet dead.)  

The following quotes and thoughts are provided to show that both the theory of evolution itself, and the men responsible for devising and propagating it, were raging racists. 

  • The first hint that Darwin was a racist can be seen in the subtitle selected for his "Origin."  The words chosen were:   "The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life".  Whom do you suppose Darwin tagged the "Unfavored Races?"  This subtitle has been eliminated from all modern printings of the book, but it remains on the original.  (Click here for further explanation regarding this aspect of Darwin's thinking.)
  • If there is any doubt that Darwin was a raging racist, these words should leave no doubt:  "At some future period (Darwin writes), not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes ... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."  (Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man 2nd ed (New York:  A. L. Burt Co., I 874), p. 178).   
  • "No rational man (writes Thomas Huxley, a contemporary evolutionist), cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.   And if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favor, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried out on by thoughts and not by bites."  (Thomas H. Huxley, "Lay Sermans, Addresses and Reviews" (New York:  Appleton, 1871) p. 20. Huxley was arguing that blacks could not compete intellectually with Caucasians, even under equal and fair conditions.)
  • A half century later, Darwin follower Henry Fairfield Osborn writes:  "The Negroid stock is even more ancient than the Caucasian and Mongolian, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the bodily characters. such as the teeth, the genitalia, the sense organs, but of the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average Negro is similar to that of the eleven-year-old youth of the species Homo sapiens.  (Henry Fairfield Osborn, "The Evolution of the Human Races," Natural History, Jan./Feb. 1926. Reprinted in Natural History 89 (April 1980): 129.).
  • It should be no surprise that no lesser racist villain than Adolf Hitler picked up on Darwin's evolutionary theories.  Karl Schleunes writes:  "Darwin's notion of struggle for survival was quickly appropriated by the racist ... such a struggle, legitimized by the latest scientific views, justified the racists' conception of superior and inferior peoples ... and validated the conflict between them."  (Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road To Auchwitz (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1970)p. 30 , 32. Cited by J. Bergman, "Eugenics and Nazi Racial Policy," p. 118.)
  • Before 1859 (before Darwin's Origin), many scientists had questioned whether blacks were of the same species as whites, but they had no scientific basis for that notion.   Things changed once Darwin presented his racist evolutionary schema.  Darwin stated that  African-Americans could not survive competition with their white near-relations, let alone being able to compete with the white race.  According to Darwin, the African was inferior because he represented the missing-link" between ape and Teuton.  (John C. Burham, Science, vol. 175 (February 4, 1972) p.506).

It is a simple fact that America was substantially racist in the 1920's.   Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the secularist movement of the day quickly espoused Darwin's racist evolutionary theories.  Educational theorists such as John Dewey, playing off the fallout from the Scopes trial, were able to make Darwin's theory the mantra of public education philosophy. 

We are now (hopefully) in the post-racist period in America.  Thinking people cringe at Darwin's hatred for the African peoples.  Thinking people view it as a disgrace that his racist theories are still being taught in the public schools.

Furthermore, serious scholarship now laughs at Darwin and his theory of natural selection on the scientific level.  Stuart A. Kauffman (a premier scholar outside the circles of our schools of education) writes:  "Natural selection, operating on variations which are random with respect to usefulness, appears a slim force for order in a chaotic world.  ...  Our legacy from Darwin, powerful as it is, has fractures as its foundations" (p.643, The Origins of Order, New York:  Oxford University Press, 1993). 

It just makes sense that theory as fundamentally flawed, and blatantly racist, as is Darwin's theory of evolution (particularly as it relates to origin and natural selection), has no place being foisted upon the youth of our land today.  

I say up with education; up with truth; up with sound scholarship; but down with racism, and definitely down with Darwin.  It is time for a change.  It is time to "Out the 'Darweenies.'"  (See below for a short summary of other quotes regarding the un-scientific nature of Darwin's theories.)

1.        "(Michael Denton, Molecular Biologist (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Adler and Adler, 1985): 

"Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence." (p.261)

 "The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event.  Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle." (p.264)

 "It is astonishing to think that this remarkable piece of machinery, which possesses the ultimate capacity to construct every living thing that ever existed on Earth, from giant redwood to the human brain, can construct all its own components in a matter of minutes and weigh less than 10 - 16 grams.  It is of the order of several thousand million million times smaller than the smallest piece of machinery every constructed by man." (p.338)

 "The twentieth century would be incomprehensible without the Darwinian revolution.  The social and political currents which have swept the world in the past eighty years would have been impossible without its intellectual sanction. … The influence of the evolutionary theory on fields far removed from biology is one of the most spectacular examples in history of how a highly speculative ides for which there is no really hard scientific evidence can come to fashion the thinking of a whole society and the social and moral transformation it caused in western thought, one might have hoped that Darwinian theory … a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth." (p. 358)

2.        "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups.  This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science.  It is useless."  (Professor Louis Bounoure, Former:   President of the Biological Society of Stassbourg, Director of the Strassbourg Zoological Museum, Director of Research at the French national Centre of Scientific Research, writing in "The Advocate," March 8, 1984, p. 17)

3.       Dr. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, London, writes:  "One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, was … it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it.  That's quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. …so for the last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people.  Question is:  Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true?  I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence.  I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ' I do know one thing -- it ought not to be taught in high school.'" (Keynote address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 5 November, 1981)

4.       "Scientists who utterly reject Evolution may be one of our fastest-growing controversial minorities…  Many of the scientists supporting this position hold impressive credentials in science."  (Larry Hatfield, "Educators Against Darwin," Science Digest Special, Winter, 1979, pp.9ff)

5.       "One is forced to conclude that many scientists and technologists pay lip-service to Darwinian theory only because it supposedly excludes a Creator…"  (Dr. Michael Walker, Senior Lecturer, Anthropology, Sydney Un Quadrant, Oct., 1982, p.44)

6.       "Today our duty is to destroy the myth of evolution, considered as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon which keeps rapidly unfolding before us. …  The deceit is sometimes unconscious, but no always, since some people, owing to their sectarianism, purposely overlook reality and refuse to acknowledge the inadequacies and falsity of their beliefs." (Pierre-Paul Grasse, Past-President, French Academy of Science, "Evolution of Living Organisms," Academic Press, New York, 1977, p.8)

7.       Wolfgang Smith, Mathematician and Physicist, Prof. of Mathematics, Oregon State University, Former Math Instructor at MIT, writing in "Teilhardism and the New Religion:  A Thorough Analysis of the Teachings of Darwin" (Tan Books and Publishers, 1988, pp.1,2) writes:   "Today, a hundred and twenty-eight years after it was first promulgated, the Darwinian theory of evolution stands under attack as never before. … The fact is that in recent times there has been increasing dissent on the issue within academic and professional ranks, and that a growing number of respectable scientists  are defecting from the evolutionist camp.  It is interesting, moreover, that for the most part these 'experts' have abandoned Darwinism, not on the basis of religious faith or biblical persuasions, but on strictly scientific grounds, and in some instances regretfully, as one could say. …We are told dogmatically that Evolution is an established fact; but we are never told who has established it, and by what means.  We are told, often enough, that the doctrine is founded upon evidence, and that indeed this evidence 'is henceforward above all verification, as well as being immune from any subsequent contradiction'; but we are left entirely in the dark on the crucial question wherein, precisely, this evidence consists."

8.       "In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists accepted it and many are prepared to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it."  (H.J. Lipson, F.R.S, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution," Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, 1980)

9.       "Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever.  In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact."  (Dr. T.N. Tahmisian, Physiologist, Atomic Energy Commission.  As quoted in:  "Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes, 3D Enterprises Limited, 1983, Title Page)

10.   "I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future.  Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has."  (Malcom Muggeridge, Well-known Journalist and Philosopher, Pascal Lectures, University of Waterloo)

11.   "After having chided the theologian for his reliance on myth and miracle, science found itself in the unenviable position of having to create a mythology of its own:  namely, the assumption that what, after long effort could not be proved to take place today, had, in truth, taken place in the primeval past."  (Loren Eiseley, PhD., writing in "Anthropology -- The Immense Journey," Random House, NY, 1957, p. 199)

12.   The following citations are from I.L. Cohen's "Darwin Was Wrong - A Study in Probability," New Research Publications, Inc., 1984.  Cohen is a Mathematician, Researcher, a Member of the New York Academy of Sciences, and an Officer of the Archaeological Institute of America.)

"In a certain sense, the debate transcends the confrontation between evolutionists and creationists.  We now have a debate within the scientific community itself; it is a confrontation between scientific objectivity and ingrained prejudice - between logic and emotion - between fact and fiction." (pp.6,7)

"…In the final analysis, objective scientific logic has to prevail - no matter what the final result is - no matter how many time-honored idols have to be discarded in the process." (p.8)

"…After all, it is not the duty of science to defend the theory of evolution, and stick by it to the bitter end - no matter what illogical and unsupported conclusions it offers. …  If in the process of impartial scientific logic, they find that creation by outside superintelligence is the solution to our quandary, then let's cut the umbilical cord that tied us down to Darwin for such a long time.  It is choking us and holding us back." (pp. 214-215)

"… every single concept advanced by the theory of evolution (and amended thereafter) is imaginary as it is not supported by scientifically established facts of microbiology, fossils, and mathematical probability concepts.  Darwin was wrong." (p.209)

"… The theory of evolution may be the worst mistake made in science." (p. 210)

Darwin's Theory of Evolution is blatantly racist, and it is bad science.  It is time for "seed" change in education.   It is time to stand up, to wise up, and to "Out the 'Darweenies.'  Our children deserve it. 

 --Mike Carrier, MA  (New York University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences)

 

 

 

(Note:  When Darwin refers to "races" here, there can be no doubt that what was intended was a meaning quite similar to the current meaning of the term.  According to the Oxford English Dictionary, historically the term at that time meant:  "A group of persons, animals, or plants, connected by common decent or origin."   It is also clear, when taken in the context of his entire work, Darwin intended the term rendered in the English as "race" to mean basically the same thing as it means in current usage.  You must remember, that while Origin did not specifically include a direct treatment of Darwin's notion of mankind's history, he fully intended us to make that connection.  In fact,  Darwin himself inextricably connected mankind's descent to his ground-laying work in Origin.  He writes that through his Origin "[Much] light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history" (Origin p. 407). Darwin himself further tied the knot with his words in his second edition of Descent: "...this [referring to the quote from Origin] implies that man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on the earth" ("The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin," Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books, 1998, p. 1).  There is no doubt that Darwin viewed his Origin as a two-part series, as Origin/Descent.   ...And that once he  completed his total task, he intended that Origin should never be read without Descent.   This effort was actually referred to as "one long argument" by Ernst Mayr in his so-titled book, "One Long Argument:  Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought" (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 1991).  In Origin Darwin was merely laying the  groundwork for Descent.  He knew that politically, that was the only way he could accomplish his task.  Dr. H. James Brix writes in his Introduction of a recent publication of Descent that "...Darwin had not included a treatment of the birth and history of humankind in Origin, because he feared adding to the sharp ridicule that would surely surround his scientific theory..."  ("The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin," Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books, 1998, p. xvii.).  I am convinced that it is safe to say that the only right way to regard Origin is as Origin/Descent.  Only then can Darwin be fully (read "rightly") understood.  To regard Descent merely as afterthought, or as a separate collection of subsequent thoughts, would be to miss the whole point Darwin was trying to make.  It is totally obvious in the second part of his work that the so-called "savage races" were, in his racist mind, destined for annihilation, for he writes in Descent that:  "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes ... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."  ("The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin," Amherst, New York:  Prometheus Books, 1998, pp.162,163.).   (Back to text)


103 posted on 08/26/2005 1:19:43 PM PDT by woodb01 (ANTI-DNC Web Portal at ---> http://www.noDNC.com)
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To: nightdriver
We just object to having evolution taught as FACT to the exclusion of any other scenario.

I agree, if there is any other scenario that is based on evidence other than simply a religious dictate.

Evolution is, at best, a theory. Its proponents weren't there to witness it any more than a creationist was there to witness creation.

Given that standard, history itself shouldn't be taught because the teacher was not there to witness it. But they can certainly go back and study the remnants of that history. Should we not discuss geological change either because we certainly weren't here to witness oceans where deserts lay today. Pretty tough standard.

The entire argument is about history, not science.

Seems easy enough to correct when your children get home. Just let them know that nothing they haven't physically observed happen ever took place. That should help them tremendously in this complex world.

But religion standing in the way of science is nothing new. Since the beginning of religion, there are those who feared science. The inquisitions murdered for "heresy". There are many who still would. Today we laugh at some of the religious doctrine from the middle ages, but it was nothing to laugh at. As far as creationism goes, there are several versions of it and each is firmly based in religion. Other than a mention in a classroom, it deserves no more attention in that environment.

104 posted on 08/26/2005 1:20:07 PM PDT by MACVSOG68
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To: wallcrawlr

I never got to read comic books at home when I was a kid. My parents thought that they were evil. I loved going to stay with my cousins. They had tons of comic books; fantastic four, silver surfer, spiderman, the hulk, etc. I could go through a trunk full in about a week.


105 posted on 08/26/2005 1:20:11 PM PDT by wyattearp (The best weapon to have in a gunfight is a shotgun - preferably from ambush.)
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To: wallcrawlr

106 posted on 08/26/2005 1:21:27 PM PDT by Kokojmudd (Outsource Federal Judiciary and US Senate to India, NOW!)
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To: woodb01
If this is correct, then just 20,000 years ago the electrical current would have been so vast that the earth's structure could not have survived the heat produced. This implies that the earth could not be earlier than 20,000 years."

I'm glad I read the last one first...

107 posted on 08/26/2005 1:21:52 PM PDT by shuckmaster
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To: RobRoy
Yes, but it is the degree of magnitude. Everone lies, but not everyone is a "liar." It is also the spirit of the ad-hominem. There the two sides are quite different from one another.

You are indeed correct. For example, if I suggest that God could just as easily used evolution as part of his grand design I am called a Christian/God hater. I see what you mean.

108 posted on 08/26/2005 1:23:57 PM PDT by MACVSOG68
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Comment #109 Removed by Moderator

To: cripplecreek

Did you ever think that God's revelation might be _corrective_ of some of our ideas about the world? If you say "God only operates where we have no facts" then you deny that God has any relevance in the factual world, and therefore are asserting that He is only fantasy, and only temporary until man fills in the rest of the gaps.


110 posted on 08/26/2005 1:25:53 PM PDT by johnnyb_61820
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To: MACVSOG68

"You are indeed correct. For example, if I suggest that God could just as easily used evolution as part of his grand design I am called a Christian/God hater. I see what you mean."

Let me be more specific in what I am trying to say. The creationists tend to use ad-hominem attacks to attempt to impeach the integrity of the posters that disagree with them. The Evo's use the same tactics to impeach the integrity of the ID and creationist "experts" quoted and linked.


111 posted on 08/26/2005 1:27:46 PM PDT by RobRoy (Child support and maintenance (alimony) are what we used to call indentured slavery)
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To: Para-Ord.45; wallcrawlr; macamadamia; RogueIsland; PatrickHenry
Watch what you post. The gaurdians of dogmatic darwinism will have your head.

Translation: "They'll point out the flaws in the ID arguments. The horror, the horror..."

And most of them claim conservatism.

"Claim" conservatism? Oh, yeah, no *real* conservative could actually disagree with *you*, right? Since you're the standard by which all other conservatives should be measured, any departure from your "one true conservatism" beliefs is automatic proof of non-conservatism...

MIT biochemists calculated the odds of finding a folded protein are about 1 in 10 to the 65 power .

You are grossly misrepresenting the work of the "MIT biochemists" you don't seem to remember the name of. It was Robert Sauer et al. You clearly haven't read the actual papers, and are making the mistake of just relying on Behe's misleading mention of their work. (Behe is a popular "ID" writer.)

And you even managed to mangle the description: You say that the odds of "finding a folded protein" are very small, but actually the odds of "finding" a folded protein are equal to the odds of finding a protein, period, because all proteins naturally fold. What you *meant* to say was that the odds of finding a protein which folds in the manner necessary to most efficiently fullfil a pre-specified biochemical function are pretty low. But even that doesn't mean what you think it means.

Contrary to your implication that low odds would preclude the "discovery" of functional proteins via evolution, your assumption is flawed on two counts:

1. Low odds are actually not that hard to achieve in the molecular domain, because counterintuitively *vast* numbers of "trials" are possible because of the utterly enormous numbers of molecules present in small volumes of reactant, and because of the speed at which molecular combinations and recombinations occur (a millionth of a second is a *looong* time on the scale of molecular reactions). See for example Probability of Abiogenesis FAQs .

2. But the main reason that you're grossly misrepresenting Sauer's work is that in the same papers in which he determined the 1x1065 odds of a protein producing the exact same functionality as an *optimal* functional protein of a specific type, he *ALSO* determined that proteins which fulfilled the same function to SOME degree of efficiency were extremely common, AND that the partially efficient proteins could be "ratcheted" up in efficiency towards the optimal form via stepwise evolutionary changes. You and Behe sort of "forgot" to mention *THAT* when you set out to misrepresent the difficulty of evolution, didn't you?

See:

Protein folding from a combinatorial perspective
Abstract: Combinatorial mutagenesis experiments show the existence of many different solutions to the problem of complementary packing of non-polar sidechains in the protein core. They suggest that a significant amount of structural information is carried by the simple pattern of polar and non-polar residues along the polypeptide chain, indicate that the formation of buried polar interactions may be a fundamentally slow step in protein folding and show that proteins with many native properties occur at reasonable frequencies in random sequence libraries.

Why is it that the IDers point to "support" of their ideas in the scientific literature, they usually turn out to be lying about it?

See also:
Combinatorial approaches to protein stability and structure
Excerpts [emphasis mine]: However, the only way to rigorously examine how core sequence corresponds to stability and structure is to make many core variants and examine them for biophysical parameters. A number of excellent reviews have been written on this subject [31,83–87]. The seminal studies of Lim & Sauer, and further work with Richards, are among the first and best-known attempts to address this issue. [...] Seven buried residues in the N-terminal domain of lambda repressor were completely randomized in groups of three residues [70]. Between 0.2% and 2% of mutants were active, depending upon the library and level of function demanded. [...] Proteins with full activity at low temperatures or reduced but temperature-independent activity (implying similarity of structure and/or stability to the wild type) varied in volume over a very narrow range (two methylene groups), but those with any activity varied almost as much as all possible variants in the library (including inactive variants). This suggests that the overall structure is very tolerant of steric changes, but that precise structure and high stability are specified by a much smaller range of sequences. [...]

Now, when will the atheist/darwinists prove a single protein arose unaided.

  1. Böhler, C., P. E. Nielsen, and L. E. Orgel. 1995. Template switching between PNA and RNA oligonucleotides. Nature 376: 578-581. See also: Piccirilli, J. A., 1995. RNA seeks its maker. Nature 376: 548-549.
  2. Jeffares, D. C., A. M. Poole and D. Penny. 1998. Relics from the RNA world. Journal of Molecular Evolution 46: 18-36.
  3. Leipe, D. D., L. Aravind, and E. V. Koonin. 1999. Did DNA replication evolve twice independently? Nucleic Acids Research 27: 3389-3401.
  4. Levy, Matthew and Andrew D. Ellington. 2003. Exponential growth by cross-catalytic cleavage of deoxyribozymogens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 100(11): 6416-6421.
  5. Poole, A. M., D. C. Jeffares, and D. Penny. 1998. The path from the RNA world. Journal of Molecular Evolution 46: 1-17.

Even if they could,which they cannot,

Oookay... Try reading the scientific literature for a change, instead of all those creationist pamphlets.

it would probably be one single, isolated, worthless protein, which would quickly fall apart in the presence of water or ultraviolet light from the sun!

So you believe, anyway. Feel free to show us your analysis and evidence. Oh, right, you don't have any.

'Since science has not the vaguest idea how (proteins) originated, it would only be honest to admit this to students, the agencies funding research, and the public.' Journal of Theoretical Biology (yockey)

You sort of "forgot" to mention that this was written back in 1981, and there has been an ENORMOUS explosion of knowledge in biochemistry since then. Creationists are *really* fond of using old, obsolete statements about the state of knowledge in science, because they know that if they referred to *modern* findings, they'd be hard pressed to find any comfort.

They're also really fond of misquoting. The *actual* passage was:

"Since science has not the vaguest idea of how life originated on earth, whether life exists anywhere else, or whether little green men pullulate in our galaxy, it would be honest to admit this to students..."
(Again, back in 1981, this was a correct statement. It isn't now.) Please explain why you dishonestly changed the phrase "not the vaguest idea of how life originated" to "not the vaguest idea how (proteins) originated"...

The rabid atheist/darwinists maintain life spontaneously created itself, IDers claim it`s a little more complex, and mathematically impossible.

IDers usually "claim that" by lying about the actual state of scientific knowledge, using obsolete quotes, dishonestly altered quotes, lying about the results of studies, and employing bogus calculations -- as you have done here.

If you guys promise to stop lying about science, we'll promise to stop pointing out the uncomfortable truth about you.

112 posted on 08/26/2005 1:29:07 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: woodb01
If you think #2 does anything more than score points against the long discredited hypothesis of Lamarkian evolution your more ignorant of biology than even most other creationists. A strawman argument.

#3 is also a strawman. Mendel showed independent assortment of genes; it has nothing to do with genetic diversity.

#4 is also a strawman. No biologist claims that selection increases diversity, and natural selection (which you agree causes evolution (with the 'micro' caveat)) drives evolution, and while it prevents major changes (i.e. the protein the DNA codes for has to function if it is from a critical gene) evolutionary biology is dependent upon small changes over millions of years, not major changes in a single generation.

#5 is also incorrect. The Sickle cell anemia mutation of the hemoglobin gene causes greater viability among heterozygotes who live in areas where malaria is endemic.

#6 is also wrong. It depends upon what you call "improvements". Fruit flies can be selected for starvation resistance and the "improved" flies have a greater than 90% survival rate for a starvation that kills 90% of unselected flies. Quite an "improvement" as far as starvation resistance.

Should I go on?
113 posted on 08/26/2005 1:30:15 PM PDT by Mylo ("Those without a sword should sell their cloak and buy one" Jesus of Nazareth)
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Comment #114 Removed by Moderator

To: RobRoy; MACVSOG68
The creationists tend to use ad-hominem attacks to attempt to impeach the integrity of the posters that disagree with them. The Evo's use the same tactics to impeach the integrity of the ID and creationist "experts" quoted and linked.

Nonsense. Ad hominem" is a fallacy when used in this form: "What the person says must be wrong because he's [something insulting]".

An ad hominem analysis, however, is the *appropriate* antidote for the creationist fallacy of "argument by authority" (they wave around quotes from alleged experts then imply -- or outright snottily say -- that the quote is unimpeachable because it's an "expert" in the field and we're just internet peons).

In reply to *that*, it's quite appropriate to point out failings of the "expert" in question in order to show that he's not the "objective expert" the creationists claim he is.

Additionally, we don't point out that the "expert" must be wrong because he beats his dog or whatever, we point out that HE ISN'T THE EXPERT HE'S HELD UP TO BE BECAUSE HE'S WRONG. And we point out exactly how and why he's wrong. We undercut the "expert" by addressing his ARGUMENT, not undercut the argument by attacking the expert.

115 posted on 08/26/2005 1:35:10 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon
They don't know what ad hominem means; and they don't know what evolution is.

But they are CERTAIN that we are guilty of the first and that the other is most certainly not true as they understand it (which they don't).
116 posted on 08/26/2005 1:42:27 PM PDT by Mylo ("Those without a sword should sell their cloak and buy one" Jesus of Nazareth)
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To: MACVSOG68; RobRoy
I am called a Christian/God hater

Apparently post #63 was lost on you.

You now use it to try and gain sympathy from others...

117 posted on 08/26/2005 1:49:28 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: Mylo

Id be interested to know if you understand your tagline?


118 posted on 08/26/2005 1:54:26 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: wyattearp

sounds like they had all the good ones.


119 posted on 08/26/2005 1:57:46 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: wallcrawlr
Absolutely I understand it.

Jesus asked his disciples if when he sent them off without shoes, a purse or a cloak did they lack for anything.

They answered that they indeed lacked nothing (for HE was with them).

So then Jesus said "But now, whoever has a purse, let him take it, and likewise a wallet. Whoever has no sword, let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword. For I tell you that this which is written must still be fulfilled in me:
‘He was counted with the lawless.’ For that which concerns me has an end." (so now that they have a purse and wallet they should sell their cloak to buy a sword to defend it; for HE will not be with them much longer.)

The swords were for defense; and for Jesus to be counted among the transgressors. They were not for resisting arrest. Jesus would have his disciples "render unto Caesar" and not break the law- showing once again that Jesus was consistent in his morality.

"For he who lives by the sword shall surely perish by the sword."
120 posted on 08/26/2005 2:03:49 PM PDT by Mylo ("Those without a sword should sell their cloak and buy one" Jesus of Nazareth)
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