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My earlier posts on this thread support Kevin's proposal that we contemplate voting for a
Democrat for President this fall with the clear objective of defeating Liberalism longer-term.
Maybe this is a bad idea. Many here clearly think so. Nonetheless I would like to see that idea discussed and defeated or not defeated, on the merits, here. If this position gets me banned, so be it.

Re “chance” as Creator: Examples, please. Chance only enters into biology via the assumption that mutations are random.

“Chance” is the Darwinists’ mantra, not mine, and your “only enters” is all-encompassing. Gould’s argument, you may recall as a Darwinist, is that given sufficient time favorable mutations accumulate yielding new species. Ludicrous. Mutations have been shown to be virtually uniformly destructive and it is the Darwinists chore to demonstrate that their speculations are backed by evidence. They have failed miserably. No evidence. Just speculation. Not Good Enough and Not Science.

Me: Darwinists have become a major embarrassment to the physicists …

You: If Darwin had been more of a speculator, and less an empiricist, he could have predicted radioactivity! But, he was very much a man with both feet on the ground.

Rather than simply say this is a complete mischaracterization, here’s Gertrude Himmelfarb shredding poor Darwin:

Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Copyright 1959, Doubleday. The Times Literary Supplement had this to say about the work:

A thorough and masterly book punctuated with a delicate sense of humor ... Until he has read, marked, learnt and inwardly digested this authoritative volume, no one should presume henceforth to speak on Darwin and Darwinism.

We begin at page 333 of the Elephant Paperback edition published in 1996:

"...For his essential method was neither observing nor the more prosaic mode of scientific reasoning, but a peculiarly imaginative, inventive mode of argument.

"It was this that Whewell objected to in the Origin:

For it is assumed that the mere possibility of imagining a series of steps of transition from one condition of organs to another, is to be accepted as a reason for believing that such transition has taken place. And next, that such a possibility being thus imagined, we may assume an unlimited number of generations for the transition to take place in, and that this indefinite time may extinguish all doubt that the transitions really have taken place.

"What Darwin was doing, in effect, was creating a 'logic of possibility'. Unlike conventional logic, where the compound of possibilities results not in a greater possibility, or probability, but in a lesser one, the logic of the Origin was one in which possibilities were assumed to add up to probability.

"Like many revolutionaries, Darwin embarked upon this revolutionary enterprise in the most innocent and reasonable spirit. He started out by granting the hypothetical nature of the theory and went on to defend the use of hypotheses in science, such hypotheses being justified if they explained a sufficiently large number of facts. His own theory, he continued, was 'rendered in some degree probable' by one set of facts and could be tested and confirmed by another -- among which he included the geological succession of organic beings. It was because it 'explained' both of these bodies of facts that it was removed from the status of mere hypothesis and elevated to the rank of 'well-grounded theory'. This procedure, by which one of the major difficulties of the theory was made to bear witness in its favor, can only be accounted for by a confusion in the meaning of 'explain' -- between the sense in which facts are 'explained' by a theory and the sense in which difficulties may be 'explained away'. It is the difference between compliant facts which lend themselves to the theory and refractory ones which do not and can only be brought into submission by a more or less plausible excuse. By confounding the two, both orders of explanation, both orders of fact, were entered on the same side of the ledger, the credit side. Thus the 'difficulties' he had so candidly confessed to were converted into assets.

"This technique for the conversion of possibilities into probabilities and liabilities into assets was the more effective the longer the process went on. In the chapter entitled 'Difficulties on Theory' the solution of each difficulty in turn came more easily to Darwin as he triumphed over -- not simply disposed of -- the preceding one. The reader was put under a constantly mounting obligation; if he accepted one explanation, he was committed to accept the next. Having first agreed to the theory in cases where only some of the transitional stages were missing, the reader was expected to acquiesce in those cases where most of the stages were missing, and finally in those where there was no evidence of stages at all. Thus, by the time of the problem of the eye was under consideration, Darwin was insisting that anyone who had come with him so far could not rightly hesitate to go further. In the same spirit, he rebuked those naturalists who held that while some reputed species were varieties rather than real species, other species were real. Only the 'blindness of preconceived opinion', he held, could make them balk at going the whole way -- as if it was not precisely the propriety of going the whole way that was at issue.

"As possibilities were promoted into probabilities, and the probabilities into certainty, so ignorance itself was raised to a position only once removed from certain knowledge. When imagination exhausted itself and Darwin could devise no hypothesis to explain away a difficulty, he resorted to the blanket assurance that we were too ignorant of the ways of nature to know why one event occurred rathar than another, and hence ignorant of the explanation that would reconcile the facts to his theory..."

And so on ...

Darwin was a masterly sophist, but a poor scientist.

You again: For an amusing example of denial, see dialog between me and Phaedrus a few months ago. Especially post 223, where he, ahem, denies the significance of pseudogenes, transposons, etc, precisely tracking already-established phylogenies.

Having just shown above that you have mischaracterized, what incentive is there to give this characterization any credence?

You: To me, finding a "needle" (viral remnant, for example) in a huge "haystack" (a genome), exactly where is was predicted to be, and doing this over and over again, seems to be telling us something.

This is all well and good but it does not give us any mechanism for the transition of one species into another. This is and has been a or the fatal lack of Darwinism since he penned Origin … You will not finding me denying that living forms exhibit many similarities and that their complexity increased over geological time. Legitimate science, however, tells us how this occurs and Darwinism gives us speculation only. Species numbering anywhere from a conservatively estimated 250,000 to over 1 million and the Darwinists can give us at most a handful of “transitional” forms and boatloads of speculation. I’m underwhelmed.

Me: What mechanism? Natural Selection? Nature does not select. Nature is the passive environment

You: As I mentioned in the thread I linked to above, imagine we're both trying to outrun a hungry bear. If I'm just a little bit faster than you, your DNA becomes bear DNA, whereas mine has the potential to become children and grandchildren, who will probably be a bit faster than yours would have been. Passive environment? Get real!

You get real. Speculative musings do not constitute evidence. Science knows this. Darwinism does not.

Me: Since they don't have the facts to defend their theory, which is the job of true science, the Darwinists attack Creationists to distract. You: I'm sure you can point out specific examples of where I've done that.

There are exceptions, of course. It’s refreshing.

You: BTW, have you found a transposon that's in a cow and a whale, but not a hippo yet? Or one in a baboon and chimp, but not people or gorillas?

Not interested. English needs to be spoken here and you purported scientists need to clearly establish that your jargon is relevant to one species transitioning into another. Einstein could reduce it to plain English so I presume it would not be too much to expect that the biologists can as well.

You: OK, I get it now. These aren't facts. Yeah, that must be it.

Clever but you will note that my earlier post stands intact.

And you and all the other third-party folks gave us Clinton, because of your personal dislike of Bush. Thanks for nothing.

A third-party vote is not recommended here. Take another look at the article.

I've known for several years what a fine mind you have. With this article I feel you have done a vast service to the true conservative cause. I do wish you would polish it up and send it along to the Wall Street Journal in some form.

For at least a decade, the Republican strategy has been to assume we would be too fearful to vote for a Democrat. Bush is the epitome of that strategy. I see an element of "Bush arrogance" in all this as well. Bush Sr. won the Gulf War and his approval ratings exceeded 90% at one point. He felt he could not lose, relaxed and said "Read my lips ..." Like father like son?

Here's the winning Conservative political strategy and the answer to all the RINO gamesmanship. The article should be published as a column or a letter in the Wall Street Journal.

Bush Slips--Among Republicans

From THE WASHINGTON TIMES, "Bush defends deficit-laden 2005 budget", James G. Lakely, January 31, 2004

President Bush defended his 2005 budget, which will be officially introduced Monday with a projected deficit of $520 billion, maintaining it is consistent with his plan to cut the deficit in half in five years as long as Congress "is willing to make tough choices."

The fly in this ointment is that it is Bush who is supposed to control Congress's spending.

Vote for Gridlock in 2004!

Excellent post, Kevin ... Just excellent.

I second this motion!.

Gridlock is good, period. Every new law is a constraint upon our freedoms because it applies to all of us, not just the criminals. Few, unfortunately, seem to get this. We've got more laws than Carter has little liver pills.

Excellent, insightful, penetrating piece, Kevin. Gridlock IS preferable to unified progressive control.

Here is the solution to a Republican President that has run amok giving away the store in an orgy of progressive "spend and elect".

Produce this naturalistic ‘mechanism’ that is your mindless creator. Prove you are a product of mindlessness living in a mindless universe.

They cannot do this. They have never been able to do this. They keep trying, the latest "try" having been to enshrine "chance" as Creator, which is ludicrous, sheer lunacy, surreal and completely anti-science. Some of them understand the existing scientific vacuum and are in denial. Some, amazingly, do not understand. This latter group is heavily represented here with those who shout the loudest having the least to say.

Darwin was a sophist, not a scientist. Mechanism? What mechanism? Natural Selection? Nature does not select. Nature is the passive environment. We have sophistry, words. What's also amazing is that this doctrine ever got off the ground in scientific circles and I now suspect that the Darwinists have become a major embarrassment to the physicists, and to anyone else that has given more than a moment's thought to the so-called theory.

Since they don't have the facts to defend their theory, which is the job of true science, the Darwinists attack Creationists to distract -- perhaps a fun game to them but that is all, just a game without substance -- more mere sophistry.

So what do you really think, commish?

Like minds ...

Someone said we are in the awkward stage between voting and shooting.

Claire Wolfe

Kindly refrain from posting to me. We have nothing to say to each other. Post to someone who's interested in what you have to say or to "All" if you must post.

You underline my point. It gets old.

LOL! You gotta be a Cowgirl.

You perceive GWB as "full of himself"?

I do.

Just more evidence of intellectual dishonesty on the part of evolution theory proponents.

Like it is ... and let us not ignore their "devolution" into nastiness and pettiness. They love the personal attack -- which convinces no one but themselves -- passionate displays of righteous arrogance ... and ignorance. They can't defend failed science so they attack those who notice that the emperor has no clothes. Look! Ma! An evil Creationist behind every tree!

It gets old.