Posted on 09/11/2008 9:55:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Sept 10, 2008 — Astrobiologist David Deamer believes that life can spontaneously emerge without design, but he thinks lay people are too uneducated to understand how this is possible, so he gives them the watered-down version of Darwin’s natural selection instead, which he knows is inadequate to explain the complexity of life. That’s what he seemed to be telling reporter Susan Mazur in an interview for the Scoop (New Zealand). Is the lay public really too dense for the deeper knowledge of how evolution works?...
(Excerpt) Read more at creationsafaris.com ...
You failed to respond to my follow-up. Behe’s claims of irrecucible complexity have been overtaken by research. If you had followed the debate on this thread you would know that predictions of evolutionary scenarios for the flagellum are being confirmed as we learn more about how it works and how the (impossible according to Behe) various subcomponents work. When Behe made his prediction that the flagellum was irreducible, we didn’t know of any living bacteria with functional sub components. Now we do.
The same cannot be said of blood clotting. If Behe had looked at the literature on blood clotting he would never have made the claim that taking away bits of it makes the whole thing fail. There are, in living things, many kinds and degrees of blood clotting systems. The system is not irreducible.
The example of the eye is particularly amusing, since the question of eye evolution was introduced by Darwin. The eye is one of the best example of evolutionary sequences, and many of the simpler versions of eyes are found in living things. the most interesting aspect of eye evolution is that we can see the steps at the molecular level. Precursors of eye function are found in single-celled organisms.
That neither Creationism or I.D. (Incompetent Design) are Scientific endeavors.
That Biology is in a Renaissance of discovery and application.
That most Scientists in the US are people of faith.
That nothing in Science is opposed to or can oppose true religion.
That Jesus Christ is Lord, and if you invited me over on Sunday I would say so, but I wouldn't tell you that when teaching a Science class.
That God's creation is a wondrous thing and the fact that the perfect structure for living systems was not a static structure for a static world, but an adaptable structure for an ever changing world.
That “The truth of our faith becomes a matter of ridicule if any Christian, not blessed with the necessary scientific learning, presents as dogma that which scientific scrutiny shows to be false” Thomas Aquinas
I’m not calling you ‘dumb’ for your beliefs. Nor am I calling anyone dumb for thinking that aliens created life. In fact, Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe have some way out beliefs, and no one can convince me that those two are dumb. My belief is that WE ARE HERE.
My view is pragmatic — we’re here, and anyone who thinks he or she should have more say about a child’s education than a parent can go to jump back in the gene pool.
Parents should be the boss. Period.
Neal Boortz really ticks me off when he says that teaching creation to children is child abuse. I’ve got newz for Neal— PUBLIC SCHOOLS do a lot more harm to kids than the flat earth Amish.
Good to hear you admit that 10 million years is an instant. That's progress.
Layman alert — I agree that the concept of light sensitive cells is possible. In fact, I think Darwin was brilliant for suggesting that. I could envision a simple light sensitive nerve cell evolving over time. Coulter’s point about the eye did not impress me. I’ll grant you that.
As for Behe being outdated, thank you for that, but there’s still the problem of evolutionists’ reaction to his findings. I think that, in hindsight, was Coulter’s main point. Evolutionists lashed out at Behe when he formed those conclusions. Her point is, after all, that evolution is part of the Godless Religion [although many good Christians are also evolutionists].
Behe’s discovery would have been blocked in schools for questioning evolution. Lawsuits would have been filed by the ACLU. That’s the only point I’m trying to make. We need to allow people to think beyond dogma and convention. Freedom. And anyone who thinks people are ‘too dumb’ to understand evolution is full of baloney.
[Repeating quote] When dealing with rocks half a billion years old, it’s impossible to resolve times to less than 5 to 10 million years ... in other words, the explosion of animal life could have happened in an instant [snip].
On a more pragmatic level:
Would you agree with me that kids raised by flat earth Amish have a better chance of turning out well than public school kids in Detroit?
I plan to check in again tomorrow. My only point is that religious parents deserve freedom and respect. FRegards ....
Actually, while Behe was most certainly on to something re: Irriducible Complexity, he didn't go nearly far enough.
AS IT TURNS OUT, ALL LIFE IS IRREDUCIBLY COMPLEX!
Living systems have DNA that codes for functional proteins.
DNA is subject to change, changing the nature of these proteins in new and different (usually bad, but possibly good, and certainly novel) ways. All of these DNA changes increase genetic variation.
Natural selection has been seen to act upon genetic variation such that some traits are favored in some conditions leading to differential reproductive success such that ‘advantageous’ variations increase in numbers throughout the population and ‘deleterious’ variations decrease in numbers (meanwhile ‘neutral’ changes accumulate).
The change in variation through natural selection can derive some fairly impressive changes in species, as witnessed by the evidence of the fossil record, and the analogous changes that selection has had on wolves over the past few thousand years.
See the movie “Devil's Playground”.
I can't find this quote on the internet. It would help if you would cite Coulter's source for this assertion.
The quote itself makes no sense at face value. If it is intended to mean that errors of five million years out of 500 million years will occur in dating rocks, I'd have to agree. But if errors of one or two percent are accepted, then one cannot assert that the explosion took place in a "mere" ten million years, because that would be within the value of noise.
Nevertheless, it is good to hear you discussing ages in hundreds of millions of years.
Several other areas of study which bear fruit include Linquistics, foreign language, Law, and Bible Study.
The Hebrew God is the only God to have made a contract with man. His Word documents the promises of behavior made in those covenants in history and in the future. In order to understand that Plan, one has to understand His Word.
Nearly every reputable university in the US was originally founded as institutions to develop an education to understand Scripture. Later, those same halls were distracted by the Adversary interrupting their endeavors from within, using the same temptations of worldliness, so common throughout all temptation.
It’s no wonder the intellectual community is so fraught with antichristian thinking, because thinking is the beginning point of our relationship with Christ. When it is distracted or interrupted, the Adversary is able to parlay that distraction into evil.
I'd beg to differ. Religions are full of such claims.
Thanks for the link!
You are entitled to misunderstanding.
You don't get respect by affirmative action. You have to earn it by working and telling the truth.
I will grant Behe credit for attempting to formulate a scientific opposition to evolution, but whenever he has made specific claims, the claims fall short of reality.
Perhaps he serves a purpose by directing research toward hard cases, but the value of that remains to be seen.
There is a maxim in law that hard cases make bad law. The equivalent maxim in science is that gaps in knowledge do not support supernatural explanations. At best, they present opportunities for research and discovery -- a path not taken by so-called critics of evolution.
I do not assert that study of His Creation and the its behavior is necessarily the work of the Adversary.
I do point out that the very institutions used by intellectuals who reject faith were originally founded to promote study of God.
Science, or more precisely, the scientific method, is still possible when performed through faith in Christ. Just like any other endeavor, when it is pursued independent of Him, it becomes mired in illusion.
Yes. The Prophets and Scribes of the ancient times were the scientists and historians. They even had the Big Bang Theory : ) A very good case can be made that the Bible was the foundation for modern science. It was wrong in most instances but it is very important to have theories to test against. Most of our theories of today, will ultimately be proven to be wrong or at least not complete, we 'know' that much : )
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