Darwinism the root of the culture of death: expert

LifeSiteNews ^ | 2/17/12 | Kathleen Gilbert

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for the links!

[GourmetDan]

"For science being a supposed religion, with supposed gatekeepers, there sure were a lot of hits when I Googled "science news" just now. Over 4 billion--I have never seen a search show up that many hits before."

Surely a competent scientist would recognize a non sequitur before posting?

"Peer-review is a quality-control measure. By having people review an article for scientific plausibility and accuracy, we can filter out the junk science that, if published, would quickly make science lose all credibility."

The only place 'credibility' has in science is as a tool to convince non-scientists that what they are being told should be believed. An emotional appeal to 'credibility' is the antithesis of science. Surely a competent scientist would recognize that.

"That whole scenario of "gatekeepers" of science just doesn't mesh with reality."

Sure it does. You just proved it.

[exDemMom]

Begging the question, but how do we know there were tall trees?

1) Fossil evidence

2) Photographic evidence

The fact that we can look at pictures of giraffes in their native habitats and see tall trees strongly suggests that tall trees also existed in the past.

And what was the selection pressure which led to the trees getting taller?

One selection pressure (but not the only one) would be that short trees keep getting eaten by all the short herbivores. Have you ever noticed that in a pasture containing cows, the height above the ground of the leaves and branches of the trees in the pasture almost exactly coincides with how high the cows can reach? *That* is a selective pressure.

For that matter, what were the list of genetic changes all of which would have to occur in tandem in order for the neck to get longer successfully?

Probably not as many as you would think. A random mutation in a promoter of a gene responsible for vertebrae formation that causes the neck vertebrae to grow longer would be sufficient. The muscles, ligaments, and blood vessels would automatically grow to fit (just like they always fit people of different heights and bone structures). The only other change might be vascular changes to strengthen vessels against the higher pressures resulting from greater elevation of the head; that would not have to occur simultaneously with the vertebrae elongation. Evolution does not occur through sudden massive changes throughout the entire genome; it progresses change by change.

Has anyone *done* a bioengineering study on the giraffe to see if there are any discontinuous physical characteristics which would require elemental changes to aspects of the physiology, once the neck got beyond a certain length? And the genetic changes necessary for the individual proteins coded for, the macroscopic structures, and the inbred ('instinctive') behaviours to accomodate these things?

Yes, people research all of those issues, and if you are genuinely interested in finding the latest research on biomechanical features of giraffes, I'm sure you can find it in a zoological/veterinary research database. Giraffe-specific research is not generally found in PubMed (although studies covering all of those aspects of physiology are there, if they concern humans, pets, or laboratory animals).

Although I did find this in PubMed:

Pressure profile and morphology of the arteries along the giraffe limb.

Østergaard KH, Bertelsen MF, Brøndum ET, Aalkjaer C, Hasenkam JM, Smerup M, Wang T, Nyengaard JR, Baandrup U.

Zoophysiology, Department of Biological Sciences, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. kho@hst.aau.dk

Abstract

Giraffes are the tallest animals on earth and the effects of gravity on their cardiovascular system have puzzled physiologists for centuries. The authors measured arterial and venous pressure in the foreleg of anesthetized giraffes, suspended in upright standing position, and determined the ratio between tunica media and lumen areas along the length of the femoral/tibial arteries in the hindleg. Volume fraction of elastin, density of vasa vasorum and innervations was estimated by stereology. Immunohistological staining with S100 was used to examine the innervation. The pressure increase in the artery and vein along the foreleg was not significantly different from what was expected on basis of gravity. The area of the arterial lumen in the hindleg decreased towards the hoof from 11.2 ± 4.2 to 0.6 ± 0.5 mm(2) (n = 10, P = 0.001), but most of this narrowing occurred within 2-4 cm immediately below the knee. This abrupt narrowing was associated with a marked increase in media to lumen area ratio (from 1.2 ± 0.5 to 7.8 ± 2.5; P = 0.001), and a decrease in mean volume fraction of elastin from 38 ± 6% proximal to the narrowing to 5.8 ± 1.1% distally (P = 0.001). The narrowing had a six-fold higher innervation density than the immediate distal and proximal regions. The sudden narrowing was also observed in the hind legs of neonates, indicating that it does not develop as an adaptation to the high transmural pressure in the standing giraffe. More likely it represents a preadaptation to the high pressures experienced by adult giraffes.

Can you actually demonstrate this, or is it nothing more than hand-waving to be accompanied by personal attacks on the questioner?

I don't engage in personal attacks, and I endeavor to show the evidence, or at least have it available, to support anything I say.

[exDemMom]

The only place 'credibility' has in science is as a tool to convince non-scientists that what they are being told should be believed. An emotional appeal to 'credibility' is the antithesis of science. Surely a competent scientist would recognize that.The only place 'credibility' has in science is as a tool to convince non-scientists that what they are being told should be believed. An emotional appeal to 'credibility' is the antithesis of science. Surely a competent scientist would recognize that.

Credibility means that the correct questions were asked, the experiments were designed appropriately to answer those questions, the appropriate controls were used, and the conclusions fit the experimental evidence. I do not see where "emotional appeal" comes into play here.

Sure it does. You just proved it.

If, despite being shown how much effort is put into making science accessible to everyone, you still choose to believe that there are gatekeepers (who, by definition, exist to keep the knowledge out of your reach), then spending more time trying to demonstrate the accessibility of science is a total waste.

[Quix]

Not at all. There is no religion of "scientism", and there are no gatekeepers.

.

1. TRY publishing a professional journal article that does not please the gatekeepers . . . the Bishops of the Religion of Scientism.

2. TRY publishing a book that does not please the Bishops of the Religion of Scientism.

3. TRY publishing a book or journal article that does not please the Bishops of the irrational Religion of Scientism & THEN TRY and get tenure.

4. TRY publishing a book or journal article that does not please the Bishops of the idiotic nihilistic Religion of Scientism and THEN TRY and get a promotion.

5. TRY and get hired in most higher ranked universities with a reputation of even seriously questioning the irrational nihilistic Religion of Scientism.

6. However, it is good to know of the hostilities in the camp regarding the Judeo/Christian construction on reality. Sometimes, it turns up important. Perhaps rarely for physics issues but certainly for sociology, psychology etc.

7. BTW . . . how is it that you believe that so many original Bible Colleges woke up on a Monday morning and decided to be ruled by the irrational nihilistic Religion of Scientism and the globalist cabal instead of the Christianity of their founders?

8. It is Sad, however, to see those conservatives that still seem uninformed of the realities of our era:

http://twoday.net/static/omega/files/quotes_from_people_who_consider_us_subjects.htm

12. "We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries." David Rockefeller, founder of the Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.

14."To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism, and religious dogmas." - Brock Adams, Director UN Health Organization

15. "We are not going to achieve a New World Order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money." - Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 'The CFR Journal Foreign Affairs', August 1975.

18. "No one will enter the New World Order unless he or she will make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferian Initiation." David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations

published in 1844 called Coningsby, the New Generation 22. "In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press....They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. "An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month; an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers." U.S. Congressman Oscar Callaway, 1917

38."The case for government by elites is irrefutable" Senator William Fulbright, Former chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stated at a 1963 symposium entitled: The Elite and the Electorate - Is Government by the People Possible?

[Quix]

Peer-review is a quality-control measure

You seem to really believe that.

You're a scientist and you're UNAWARE of how grossly--often almost unreadably--poorly written most scientific journal articles are?

You're a scientist and you're UNAWARE of how grossly shallow and insignificant most scientific articles are?

You're a scientist and you're UNAWARE of how grossly petty the vetting of most journal articles can be?

Yet you still hold to the farcical religious dogma that peer review is about quality instead of about PRIMARILY vetting whether the author is holding to the nihilistic Religion of Scientism??? One can publish all manner of garbage in peer review articles as long as one scratches where the Bishops of the irrational Religion of Scientism itch.

I haven't read the whole thread. What science are you a professional in?

[GourmetDan]

"Credibility means that the correct questions were asked, the experiments were designed appropriately to answer those questions, the appropriate controls were used, and the conclusions fit the experimental evidence. I do not see where "emotional appeal" comes into play here."

'Credibility' is simply the generally-accepted opinion of the group. The whole peer-review process is nothing more than one big appeal to the popular opinion of philosophical naturalists. No one with a shred of critical-thinking skills would be surprised that the conclusions beg the question of philosophical naturalism.

"If, despite being shown how much effort is put into making science accessible to everyone, you still choose to believe that there are gatekeepers (who, by definition, exist to keep the knowledge out of your reach), then spending more time trying to demonstrate the accessibility of science is a total waste."

I suppose that the best thing for you to do is to set something up that will allow you to declare victory and abandon the field.

[Mudtiger]

“People use science to discover things.

Creationism isn’t useful at all in that regard.”

I would say that perhaps creationism is irrelevant in most scientific endeavors. But, it certainly doesn’t hinder. One can believe in creationism and make all kinds of discoveries and applications in the biological and medical sciences...and have done so! Whether one believes in evolution or creation matters not at all regarding discovery and application. So in that sense, perhaps they are both irrelevant. The creationist and the evolutionist are both making scientific progress.

[spirited irish]

“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.”

Spirited: Hitler was a Darwinian pantheist, thus when he speaks of “nature” and “she” he refers to an immanent goddess-force (the progressive process) working through and within nature and history.

As the myth goes, over the course of millions of years of evolution, life finally emerged/evolved out of non-lifebearing matter (primordial pond scum). After evolving for another million years or so,an impersonal goddess-force emerged. Since coming into being, the goddess has been progressively unfolding (evolving) “throughout hundreds of thousands of years” in a work that involves the natural selection (predestination) of “an evolutionary higher stage of being,” or god-consciousness.

[spirited irish]

“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.”

Spirited: Hitler was a Darwinian pantheist, thus when he speaks of “nature” and “she” he refers to an immanent goddess-force (the progressive process) working through and within nature and history.

As the myth goes, over the course of millions of years of evolution, life finally emerged/evolved out of non-lifebearing matter (primordial pond scum). After evolving for another million years or so,an impersonal goddess-force emerged. Since coming into being, the goddess has been progressively unfolding (evolving) “throughout hundreds of thousands of years” in a work that involves the natural selection (predestination) of “an evolutionary higher stage of being,” or god-consciousness.

[metmom]

amd: "Because such supernatural means are capricious, unpredictable and non-replicable - such supposition will lead nowhere as far as further discovery and useful applications."

GD: Are you claiming that evolution is steady, predictable and replicable?

View Replies = "No replies."

Dan, let me know if and when you ever get one......

[metmom]

amd post 288: “The model that it all happened miraculously is absolutely useless in terms of application and further discovery about the natural world.”

mt: But neither does it hinder application and discovery, apparently. A lot of discoveries about the natural world, and applications from those discoveries, have been made by those who believe God created the world by miraculous means. Believing special, supernatural creation does not preclude discovery about the natural world — been going on for centuries. Perhaps I misunderstood your point.

amd: It sure seems to hinder an understanding of biological processes, estimation of age of objects artifacts and species, and amazingly enough even acceptance that the Earth orbits the Sun.

In your dreams.....

Tell that to Newton who developed the scientific method based on the reasoning that since God was a God of order, He created an orderly universe which could be examined and investigated by systematic observations.

The claim that believing in a supernatural cause of the universe automatically precludes the use of the scientific method in investigating it, is totally bogus.

The universe is able to be studied by the scientific method because the method works, not because of how the universe got here.

[metmom]

Thanks for answering that comment. That’s exactly what I was thinking.

[spirited irish]

“What do Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, “father of the sexual revolution” Alfred Kinsey, Lenin, and Hitler have in common?”

Spirited: All of them hold in common two things.

First, their God-less naturalism and by extension, their lack of a source for life, consciousness, soul, and spirit. Six centuries before Jesus Christ Buddha already knew that if the living, transcendent Creator does not exist then there is no source for life.

In Psalm 30:3, David praises and thanks the Lord for bringing his “soul out of the grave,” meaning that without the living God Who is the only source of life and being, David was nothing. He was a walking dead men.

In freely rejecting the living God, Buddha, Hegel, Marx, Sanger, Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler negated the source of their being, meaning that they freely chose to reduce themselves to nothing. They chose death instead of life. This being the case, God granted them their wish, meaning that henceforth all of them joined the ranks of the walking dead. They were the Walking Dead, and this is the second thing they held in common.

[Quix]

ABSOLUTELY INDEED.

THX

[allmendream]

Fixed kinds = “a fox will always be a fox”. Strict Creationist. Even more strict than those who think a canine “kind” could give rise to foxes, dingos, coyotes and such.

He thought his race was created in “the Highest image of God”.

That was the lame attempt of the author to necklace the theory of evolution with Hitler. By Godwin’s law he loses in the first paragraph. Especially when Hitler believes in fixed kinds: “A fox will always be a fox.”.

There is no context where that isn’t a belief in fixed kinds. There is no context in which Hitler didn’t think his race was “the Highest image of God”.

Doesn’t speak well of Creationism that all they have is historic revisionist guilt by association.

Too bad that by pointing this out I got your goat. A goat that by Hitler’s creationist philosophy will ‘always be a goat’. ;)

[count-your-change]

I think it fair to repeat a question I've asked before (and for which no positive answer was forthcoming):

In the great advancements of science, of what importance was Darwinism to bringing these advancements about?

Advancements in understanding such as: Circulation of the blood, that nerves carried electrical impulses, atomic theory, development of antibiotics, metallurgy, electricity/magnetism,.....Anyone could add many more, but the point is that Darwinism has been a bust except as a motivation for the space program.

[betty boop]

"The model that it all happened miraculously is absolutely useless in terms of application and further discovery about the natural world.”

So claims our brother allmendeam.

But I wonder: What could be more "miraculous" than a Universe that did not have a beginning in time and space? How can anything be anything without what the philosophers call a first cause? Even a pure mechanist could appreciate the idea of a first mover to set up the resultant chain reaction of successive causes down the line, a la billiard balls.

In my view, there is no "before" the Beginning; there is no "before" the Big Bang. The singularity may be viewed as instantiating the Logos of Genesis 1. Yet from the scientific standpoint, it is simply pointless to speculate about such things, since the human mind, and all its science, cannot ever go there to see.

I would just like to point out to my dear brother AMD that the Holy Scriptures actually tell us that there was a Beginning, a First Cause, Logos Alpha to Omega.

And that is why we have a "lawful" universe — an absolute prerequisite to any kind of rational thinking at all — scientific, philosophical, theological, religious. FWIW.

Thanks ever so much for writing dear sister in Christ!

[betty boop]

The principle that evolution is a process of genetic change over time, and that those changes occur at a relatively steady rate.

Yes. We all know that doctrine is sacrosanct. It must not be doubted, let alone questioned.

The only problem is, the paleontological record does not lend a whole lot of support to the macroevolutionary aspects of Darwin's theory.

Even Richard Dawkins is aware of the problem of "missing" intermediate fossil forms.

...[T]he Cambrian strata of rocks ... are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertibrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. [Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1987.]

If Darwin's theory is correct — that evolution is a process of gradualism, or as you say, a process of transformations occurring at "a relatively steady rate" — then where are the "missing fossils" in the run-up to the Cambrian Explosion, c. 500,000 B.C.?

I do not argue for Lamarck's theory either.

Thanks so much for writing, exDemMom, and for the valuable link!

[allmendream]