Posted on 10/11/2002 9:02:01 PM PDT by gore3000
Actually I am not a moral relativist. I believe we have made much moral progress in the last 150 years, as exemplified by the fact that even most abolitionists did not believe blacks were equal; they merely believed it was wrong to enslave them. There are numerous examples of prominent abolitionists making racist comments.
I see you understood my point. Things change. The only thing that remains the same, is change.
And you say: "The statement is also completely relevant to a discussion of evolution. Evolution does assert that some are inferior to others. Evolution does assert that destruction of the weak leads to progress. So the statement is a central part of evolutionary theory and cannot be written off as a personal eccentricity of Darwin.
Whether or not Darwin's "social Darwinism" is amoral or evil or has merit has no effect on the historical truth or falsity of evolution. If Heisenberg were a Nazi, would that affect the truth of his uncertainty principle? Does the answer depend upon whether his political philosophy gave him insight into the physical world? Should philosemites accept Einstein's science, while anti-semites object that it is "Jewish science" (as actually happened). Did the failure of Marxist politics disprove Larmarckian evolution, or did the failure of Lamarckian techniques disprove themselves?
God made the universe so life could evolve.
The first sentence is true today. But the first life forms had no competition, and were floating in a soup of amino acids and other nutrients, making the second (bold) sentence false.
Your point would be relevant if an insect were the simplest possible life form. In fact, it is not, and the debate is whether the first life (self replicating chemical cell) was only somewhat simpler than the simplest currently known or feasible bacterial cell; or much simpler than that, in the early primordial "soup" where it would have had no competititon and would have been surrounded by nutrients.
Yes, but those figures are down from the averages of the Revolutionary War and basically reflect harsh conditions during the westward expansion that preceded the Civil War. Remember the name of Roy Rogers's backup singers? "The Sons of the Pioneers." The real sons of the pioneers grew up scrawny on hardscrabble pioneer farms and then had to fight the Civil War.
There was a high reject rate and a high mortality rate from exposure, TB, and pneumonia during hard-weather campaigns like Fredericksburg in late 1862. Poorly-supplied Southern soldiers in addition faced the menace of scurvy at times.
Amen to that, Bro. Amen to that!
Here you have point, and you don't. Average life expectancy has risen dramatically in developed countries. That reflects good eating and good health care.
Maximum life expectancy has only slightly budged as modern technology attacks late-life killer diseases such as stroke, heart disease, and cancer. There have always been a very few people who lived to be close to 100, even in pre-tech societies in hard conditions. In the NY State/Great Lakes region of the late 1600s, Daniel Garacontie in his 90s was an important chief of--I think--the Iroquois. The average life expectancy for that time and place would have been laughably low compared to what it is for the modern residents.
In fact, it is easy to increase order in an open system. To take a trivial example: Insert a seed in a sterile medium. Let the sun shine. A plant will grow.
Perhaps more to the point, the problem of the initial code: I agree that it is very unlikely that the first self-replicating cells had DNA, or at any rate used DNA in anything like the current system, where base pairs are read by other complex chemical structures and code for amino acid chains. Too complex to self-assemble randomly, as all you creationists would agree. But in an already existing line of self-replicating creatures (which would quickly dominate the Earth, there being no competition), there is no difficulty in evolving new structures and functions. Indded, it would be impossible for this not to happen, as more successful creatures with useful innovations would of course be those which left more offspring.
Has there been no evolution? Have no nontrivial changes occurred to life since creation? Have there been no extinctions in the past? Is the Earth about 6,000 years old? Were fossils made by the Devil to confuse us? If not, how is their existence compatible with your Creationism?
As you can probably tell, my point is that there is no possible creationist theory which is logically consistent and compatible with the physical evidence, with one exception: God, or the Devil with God's aquiescence, has gone out of his way to fool us into believing evolution. In which case, doesn't God want us to believe in evolution, and so isn't it a sin to be a creationist?
Finally, if you are afraid or unable to answer these questions, then why shouldn't we dismiss you out of hand as a hopelessly confused hack?
Yes, some species are fairly stable. But your claim is that all species are stable. Giving a few examples of stability is not evidence for your proposition, especially given the numerous counterexamples. Indeed, by implicitly accepting modern interpretations of the fossil record, you have opened the door to the counterexamples.
Do you even believe that any fossils are that old?
If Darwinian evolution has been disproven, it is in the way that Newtonian Physics has been "disproven" by Einstein -- which is to say, tweaked around the edges, or shown not to apply in bizarre and unearthly circumstances. Is Newton's theory a sham and a hoax? If so, why do you quote him as an authority. (I wouldn't quote him as an authority for a number of reasons. First, he was not a biologist. Second, arguments from authority are inherently weak. Third, he lived hundreds of years ago and knew little of the evidence which is now apparent.)
They aren't amino acids, they are nucleic acids. They don't all self replicate. In fact, evidence is that none "self-replicate".
Not to make too fine a point on your dazzling argument, but if my aunt woulda had balls, perhaps she woulda been my uncle. I suppose you have faith that such a simpler organism existed in the past and was easier to spontaneously generate than a more complex one?
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