Dan Luke <c172rg@xyz.net> wrote:

"John Wilkins" wrote:

It still sounds like an accountant keeping two sets of books:

the tax collector (God) and another to know how much money the firm
*really* has.

Possibly right. If you are required by some prescriptive rule to

audit, and by necessity of economics to do another, wouldn't it be a
useful thing to do both? What you deny is that the prescription is
authoritative, not that it is rational to undertake both kinds of
record-keeping if it were.

But what are your reasons? In the case of our hypothetical

to avoid taxes -- a dishonest practice.

In the case of a Bible believer,
does he think he's cheating reality for a heavenly payoff, or does

shut off the part of his brain that worries about such

find it impossible to manage this, which is the exact reason I am not a
Christian.

There are always competing exigencies in human life - it's not a sin
only of the religious. I don't think the accountant needs to be cheating
(that's your claim ;-) - I have seen double entry bookkeeping done
because the legal and statutory requirements simply did not give the
institution a true and accurate picture of the state of the accounts.
However, they also had a duty to maintain the accounts required by the
governing authorities.

The Bible believer (I'm not talking about literalists) has an
authoritative source of moral and other claims, one around which the
believer's community and traditions are organised. It is no more
hypocritical of them to maintain those beliefs than it is me to maintain
Australian drinking traditions and the so-called culture of mateship. Of
course, it doesn't need to, and simply cannot rationally, contradict the
science of the day, so the original Rabbinic idea is in fact a solid one
- treat your scriptures as theological documents and your science as the
source of natural knowledge and try to reconcile them as best you can.
If you fail, it must be that you have made a mistake. Thus do religious
traditions evolve.

I think that a rational Christian, or Jew, or Muslim, would only have
troubles if the theological aspect of their scriptures are forgotten and
the texts are treated as a source of natural knowledge. In short, if
they ignore the revelatory aspect of their scripture. This is not a
rational approach, since it must necessarily bring the community into
conflict with reality. This can be a social evolutionary survival
strategy, so I don't act surprised when I see it, but that is not
rational. The other approach is.

Religious folk have authoritative rules they must follow if they

remain religious. This seems fair. I have authoritative rules I must
follow if I am to remain an Australian, and despite my mutterings

the sanity of some of those rules (must I *really* drink that much
beer?) if I want to stay in good standing as a dinkum ocker (look it
up), that's what I must do.

Haw! I think we see what the payoff is here!

The payoff is to remain a member in good standing in my community (it's
why I have to buy the drinks occasionally) so that when I need a
reciprocal altruistic act from members of my community, they will
provide it. *This* has fitness implications.

Alexander <alexander.hudson@virgin.net> wrote:

"Marty Erwin" <thunnus@cox.net> wrote in message
news:NqCGd.3073$hu.1682@fed1read01...

"Dunk" <pdunkel@palebluedot.net> wrote in message
news:41eaf0ce.1190500@news.east.earthlink.net...

Dover articles this Sunday, cut from elsewhere and checked:

note that one is from a Fellow of the Wedge. Not a very bright
fellow, but a Fellow. Will talkorigins regulars respond?

Follow evidence wherever it leads
JONATHAN WITT, PH.D.
**** SENIOR FELLOW
**** DISCOVERY INSTITUTE, CENTER FOR SCIENCE & CULTURE
http://ydr.com/story/letters/55643/

Interesting, apparently Witt is not witty enough to stay current

philosophy of science and is not up to speed on the general

of Kuhnian paradigm models.

Naturally his interpretation of Kuhn is also wrong. Kuhn does indeed
typify certain elements of science going through 'crisis' periods

also quite clear on what he considers to be science in the first

something based on what we observe in nature

not 'fill in the blanks with
a designer'.

I have wondered how long it wuld be before Kuhn got dragged into the
ID/YEC lexicon

of half thought through rhetoric - and how easy it would be
to misrepresent what Kuhn actually discussed.

"Let's set aside definitional games and bogus appeals to scientific
consensus meant to shut down debate. In "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions," historian of science Thomas Kuhn shows that these are
standard tactics for a dominant scientific paradigm in crisis."

There are a number of issues here:

1. Is Kuhn being fairly represented? No - he does not say these are
standard tactics for a dominant theory in crisis. He says that adherents
of differing theories have a problem in communicating due to
incommensurability of the theoretical terms.

2. Is Kuhn thereby saying science is irrational? No, in a somewhat
overdrawn metaphor in the Postscript he uses, of all things, an
evolutionary parallel to say that science is adapting to facts.

3. Is Kuhn saying science is a matter of rhetorical flourish? No - Kuhn
thinks science is a lot more than rhetoric, although it plays a part in
the construction of educational materials like textbooks (as it does,
let it be noted, in any educational enterprise).

4. Is Kuhn right about science? No. Kuhn's typology doesn't even work
for the (excuse me) paradigm case - the Copernican revolution.

Nice to see I haven't been dissapointed.

I could have stood the disappointment.

Dover figures deny remarks on creationism
Their depositions contradict what others remember
LAURI LEBO
http://ydr.com/story/doverbiology/55668/

Board members seem to be incompetent
RANDY BENNETT
http://ydr.com/story/letters/55633/

Teach the controversy about evolution
CHUCK WARNER
http://ydr.com/story/op-ed/55596/

The real difference between theories, laws
W. KONRAD CRIST
http://ydr.com/story/op-ed/55597/

Ernest Major <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote:

In article <BYuGd.15261$wi2.7217@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>, Bob Eaton
<bob_barb_eaton@sbcglobal.net> writes

"Ernest Major" <{$to$}@meden.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:79wS5CA$9j6BFw7O@meden.demon.co.uk...

...

My position on the origin (or non-origin) of the universe is that "I
don't know". It appears to me that merely invoking an additional

explains nothing in scientific terms,

and labelling this entity as God,
rather than, as, say, the universogene, drags in a lot of

confuses the issue.

Perhaps not in scientific terms, but certainly in philosophical

does add something.

Paging the resident philosophers.

I'm onna break. Union rules. Can't someone else handle it?
...

*sigh*

Bob, so far as science, and only science, is concerned, the invocation
of God as an explanatory agent is always otiose. This has been
understood since the early 1800s,

but it seems that two centuries
haven't filtered down the educational chain so well.

If you or anyone else requires God for non-scientific reasons, and it
seems to me enough clever folk have that you need not be apologetic
about it, understand that this places God as a precondition for the
activity of scientifically-established natural laws. The activity of the
laws themselves in generating evolution

or galaxies or life is not
directly the result of divine activity. Another way to put it is, either
nothing is divine or everything is... a third way to put it is that you
either believe God created all or none of the processes science studies.

Ockham's Razor is the (originally a theological) claim that it is
unnecessary to add causal agents when fewer will suffice. If God is
invoked as a causal agent in the ordinary course of the physical world,
then He becomes just another object of scientific scrutiny. If He is the
underlying cause of *everything*, then no scientific explanation needs
to invoke Him.

HTH

Dan Luke <c172rg@pantsbellsouth.net> wrote:

"John Wilkins" wrote:

"Saaida Gaon said that if there is scientific evidence of

and it contradicts what Torah (Scripture) says, the Torah can't be
wrong and science can't be wrong. I'm wrong. I'm interpreting it
wrong," the rabbi explained.

That is what is known as a cop out.

Not exactly. It is a very rational approach to take. You have a
community-supporting document that provides you with moral and

identity, which you don't want to lose (particularly if you are

in an Islamic world); you have a commitment to learning about the

through investigation. The only way to rationally reconcile these

assume that you are the source of the problem.

It still sounds like an accountant keeping two sets of books: one for
the tax collector (God) and another to know how much money the firm
*really* has.

Possibly right. If you are required by some prescriptive rule to do one
audit, and by necessity of economics to do another, wouldn't it be a
useful thing to do both? What you deny is that the prescription is
authoritative, not that it is rational to undertake both kinds of
record-keeping if it were.

Religious folk have authoritative rules they must follow if they are to
remain religious. This seems fair. I have authoritative rules I must
follow if I am to remain an Australian, and despite my mutterings about
the sanity of some of those rules (must I *really* drink that much
beer?) if I want to stay in good standing as a dinkum ocker (look it
up), that's what I must do. We all make such tradeoffs

by convention.
It's a self-righteous mistake to assume that those without religion

(such as me) are excused these decisions.

Michelle Malkin <hypatiab7@comcast.net> wrote:

"Jason Spaceman" <notreally@jspaceman.homelinux.org> wrote in message
news:-O-dncj5INLmUXTcRVn-jA@rogers.com...

From the article:
--------------------------------
Was the world created exactly as it says in the book of Genesis,

the theory of evolution a more accurate account? Not every faith that
includes Genesis among its Scriptures feels compelled to debate the
matter.

For the vast majority of Jews, any discrepancy between science

was pretty much settled 1,100 years ago, said Rabbi Steve Vale of
Congregation Ha-Makom (The Jewish Community of Solano County).

Saadia Gaon, a Babylonian rabbi who helped codify Rabbinic Judaism,
resolved the conflict, Vale said.

"Saaida Gaon said that if there is scientific evidence of

it contradicts what Torah (Scripture) says, the Torah can't be

science can't be wrong. I'm wrong. I'm interpreting it wrong,"

explained.

That is what is known as a cop out.

Not exactly. It is a very rational approach to take. You have a
community-supporting document that provides you with moral and cultural
identity, which you don't want to lose (particularly if you are Jewish
in an Islamic world); you have a commitment to learning about the world
through investigation. The only way to rationally reconcile these is to
assume that you are the source of the problem. Kuhn noted a similar
issue in science - the failure of a cherished theory would be blamed on
the tools rather than the theory.

This has allowed most theist communities to adapt to information about
the world, albeit slowly and reluctantly in many cases. This is why
theists do not have to reject evolution - since truth cannot contradict
truth on their approach (i.e., the world is coherent and rational...
think of the impact of that on the western evolution

of science), they
must be making the wrong interpretations. Personally I think that's a
very good way to deal with the incommensurability of the two "sources"
of knowledge.

It is easier to have only the one source, though. Science is complex
enough.

---------------------------------

Read it at

http://www.thereporter.com/Stories/0,1413,295~30197~2655658,00.html

Robert Grumbine <bobg@radix.net> wrote:

In article <1gqf9vo.17ckd2h11cmzh6N%johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au>,
John Wilkins <johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au> wrote:

Robert Grumbine <bobg@radix.net> wrote:

In article <1gqd9n0.3xhcealm1pndN%johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au>,
John Wilkins <johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au> wrote:

...

Note, though, that I am not saying that we should not act now

bad outcomes. We should, since whatever is happening will be less
dramatic if our influence is lessened, unless we happen to be

natural underlying trend by our activities (I think there's a

that is to argue this on soon) - at the worst we will do no

that way. But the decision to take action is an economic

balance possible costs in the future against actual costs now.

change may make rational *economic* sense, even if it makes not
ecological sense. For it to be rational in both cases, the

of later costs (in terms of reduced economic output and greater

cleanup) need to be a lot firmer than they are right now. For many
people, anyway.

Oops. Now you are indeed into the realm of placing great faith in
the economic models. Just what verifications of those models (and
which ones are you using) have been done? Are you sure that they've
been tested more thoroughly than the climate models?

No, I am making no claims as to the rightness of any economics

am merely saying this is the behaviour of humans - to balance - as a
group - how they see the payoffs versus the costs in view of the
probabilities. I'm not saying they are correct in their assessments.

Ok. Earlier you were saying that we were talking about the informed
community, not the population at large. As we're talking about
the population at large, it is indeed relevant for me to go back
to very elementary things like "Yes, human activity is the source
for CO2 increase of the past century."

Policy makers tend to react to the claims of economic exigency rather
than the interests of scientists. Moreover, we have seen, in any matter
that has strong economic interest involved, many policy makers will
cherry pick those from whom they can get advice on science. I thought
that was assumed here...

My own model, of humans, tells me that the science is utterly

Nothing will be done in the industrialized world, especially not

US and Australia (specific reasons to single these two out), until
the changes in climate are overwhelmingly obvious to most people

personal level. Given that what we do has decades to centuries

the system, descendants will be paying for today's inaction for

long time. But 20 generations of descendants are not part of

equation.

They sort of are, but in a very small way. The immediate payoffs

the next generation only. We tend not to plan too far ahead. That must
have paid off in the past.

?! When did you become a panadaptationist?

There's nothing adaptationist, let alone panadaptationist, in saying
that it paid off in the past. I am not thereby committed to saying we
did it because it had been selected for; just the obvious truism that it
was a successful

[enough] strategy (if it is a strategy, rather than
some spandrel) to follow until recently.

But making strategic bets about the interests of future generations is
about as selective as you can get, fundamentally speaking, so why should
it not be an adaptation? I tire of people saying that any conjecture
must be "adaptationist" as if that were a mantra to dispel false
consciousness. *Some* things are adaptive,

and if we *do* have some
calculating cognitive skill about what will serve our immediate progeny
(to F2), but not beyond, that will likely work well enough. All I'm
saying is that we try to provide for our children. If that isn't
adaptive, then the term has no meaning.

Not that I'm Larry Moran, but the only thing I see reliably

from our current existence is that we haven't yet, as a species, done
anything or posess any traits that drove us to extinction. We have
any number of suboptimal, not paying off, traits. They have not been
enough to extinguish the species, yet. But that's all we know.
'paid off' gets pretty positive that the traits we have are actually
good,

rather than not-yet-lethal.

Which is implied by, and elucidated on, my statement.

Paul J Gans <gans@panix.com> wrote:

In talk.origins John Wilkins <johnSPAM@wilkins.id.au> wrote:

New South Wales in Australia has (or had - I'm a few years out of

a requirement for the statement being "in the public interest" as well
as true. This effectively cut off all criticism of public figures - in
particular business figures but also (and perhaps primarily)

- by members of the general public as the test was so vague as to make
the defence impossible. A certain radio personality (right wing, as it
happens, but he's a moron no matter what his politics) has made

million dollars this way.

Incidentally, I object to demogoguery of all kinds no matter the
political colour. I am classified as right wing myself, although I
prefer to think of myself as a Millian liberal.

You are right wing the way I am right wing. That's the way
I appear to most folks in the world. In the US I am routinely
described as an extreme-left winger with communist tendencies.

The whole right-left typology is systematically misleading (pun intended
for those who get it). There is no single-dimensional spectrum of
political opinion. In fact, nearly all those who declare I or anyone
else is "right wing" or "left wing" merely means by that, that someone
disagrees with the speaker's views, and the speaker considers themselves
rightwing/conservative/"liberal"-I or leftwing/socialist/"liberal"-A.

Liberal-I is the international sense of liberal, rather like being a
mild libertarian in American terms. Liberal-A is the American version,
rather like being a Fabian socialist.

My views are clustered around the right of individuals to do whatever
does not interfere with the rights of anyone else.

Unlike classical
libertarianism, though, I am a relativist WRT rights, and I also happen
to think that liberty must be tempered with a strong dose of republican
(in the classical sense of concern for the Res Publica) duties - no
representation without responsibility, as it were.

I think that changes will more often than not lead to a degradation of
social order, and yet that changes are needed. So, I conclude they ought
to be made incrementally and be tested every step, to avoid disasters.
But either way we will have disasters. So am I a conservative or a
reformer?

I consider that centralised economies will fail for reasons that have to
do with the propagation of accurate information. I consider that laisse
faire economies will fail because of the invasion of hitchhikers and
defaulters. I think that economies are dynamic rather than achieving a
static functional optimality.

So, am I a socialist or a libertarian? The answer is that the categories
fail to cover the differences. To a libertarian or neoconservative, I am
a socialist. To a socialist I am a rightwing reactionary.

To me, I am enlightened and everybody who disagrees with me is stupid. I
am in the Danae Party...

Matt Giwer <jull43@tampabay.rOAr.com> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:

Matt Giwer <jull43@tampabay.rOAr.com> wrote:

r norman wrote:

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 03:38:46 +0000 (UTC), Matt Giwer
<jull43@tampabay.rOAr.com> wrote:

Jason Spaceman wrote:

Over 30 members of the University of Pennsylvania's Philosophy and
Biology departments have signed a letter urging the Dover

to change their ID policy.

Read it at

http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/sarkarlab/002895.html#002895

I would be much happier of orphan subjects like philosophy,

and religion were all put into one department instead of being

by real departments.

It should not be that hard to find a different way to divvy up
tuition fees so they can be funded.

One of my imfamous favorites was when I found little Debbie

identified as a sociologist. I looked it up and she was in the
department of Sociology and Religion and she taught religion.

If biologists only had signed it it would have much more

lumping in unscientific philosophy teachers.

I'll let Dr. John stick up for his kind. However, if you google on
"Philosophy of Science" or "Philosophy of Biology" you will turn

impressive list of philosophers who have contributed to evolutionary
biology.

1) That does not make them scientists.

It doesn't make them gourmet chefs or car mechanics either. They are
philosophers. Some of them are also practising scientists (for

David Sloan Wilson). Moreover, a considerable number of practising
scientists have done some serious philosophy, including, but not

to, JBS Haldane, Ernst Mayr, Gary Nelson, Donn Rosen, Stanley Salthe,
Richard Lewontin, Niles Eldredge, Elisabeth Fox Keller, Michael
Ghiselin, Richard Dawkins, Theodosius Dobzhansky, and that's just

on my shelves in front of me.

With some small effort, the list could be
expanded greatly.

2) They does not mean they have contributed to the science. For
example, Popper finally dropped his nonsense.

On the other hand, David Hull (who, amusingly, published his

because Popper sent a seminar paper of his without asking to the

not only contributed to the science by clarifying a number of

issues, he was also elected President of the American Association of
Systematics, and inspired several scientists to go into the field (I
know from direct communication). Others who have been involved in
scientific communications include Elliot Sober and Peter

who have co-authored theoretical biology papers with actual

Oddly, the scientists themselves don't seem to have your scruples

this.

That is three but if they are also scientists my comments do not
apply. I was talking only of merging departments because of the
traditional method of funding.

Hull (now emeritus from Northwestern) was not a scientist. He was always
a philosopher. Sober is a well-known philosopher of biology. He was
never a scientist and his books, in particular _The Nature of Selection_
and _Reconstructing the Past_ have affected the ways scientists have
discussed their subjects. Godfrey-Smith, who I met once but don't know
his background (checks Google - ah, here he is:
<http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/~pgs/>; yep, always a philosopher) has
published some very technical papers that are affecting the theoretical
development of, for example, population genetics. I just read a paper of
his:

"Individualist and Multi-level Perspectives on Selection in Structured
Populations," with (first author) B. Kerr. Biology and Philosophy 17
(2002): 477-517. With commentaries, and replies by the authors pp.
539-550.

I have to say the mathematics is as solid as anything in population
genetics I can understand. They are not also scientists. They are, if
you like, parascientists (which is a good way to understand a lot of
philosophy of science, like paramedics are to medicos).

3) They don't stick to science.

No. That's because they are philosophers. They also do

know, metaphysics,

Metaphysics is gibberish like freudian psychology.

So you do not know anything about metaphysics, I see.

Here's a hint: a lot of what is popularly thought to be metaphysics is
in fact the *worst* form of it. Strict metaphysics is a matter of
logical classification of the furniture of the universe, and the
metaphysics of biology deals only with the status of the objects of
biological theory.

analysis, logical formulation, criticism and general
clear thinking.

Much better taught by example in science departments. And it

the "rigorous creation" of total nonsense which is about all there

do these days.

Some science classes do indeed teach logic well (in particular
taxonomy).

But the logic was not discovered by scientists, and although
mathematical logic has spun off as a standalone discipline, there
remains a lot of logic and metaphysics done by philosophers which feeds
into science.

Remember fuzzy sets? Invented by Wittgenstein, developed by two
generations of subsequent philosophy.

As to the teaching aspect, I would put up any philosophical course on
reasonging against any scientific course. I have seen some dreadful
logical howlers committed by scientists.

How much ot his stuff have you actually *read* before
you attack it?

And that is why I was pointing out the real issue. The real

tuition is divvied up by students who take the courses given by the
department. As philosophy, for example, gets dropped as a degree
requirement the department cannot be supported. In this case it is

in with biology so they get a take from those who take biology.

Well, I just taught a course in the philosophy of biology.

About 75% of
the students were science students. They came to do this elective
because they were learning the science and needed to understand some of
the deeper issues (I can't say as I actually helped them, but I at least
provided a forum in which they could work it out). The History and
Philosophy of Science department that I taught for is jointly funded by
Arts and Science. It is doing pretty well, all things considered.

I suggested simply the orphan departments be funded by other

as it taints the department stuck with them.

Yes. Computing and Engineering

should always be distinct from science.

igtheist <igtheist_N_O_S_P_A_M@hotmail.com> wrote:

"species end at speciation"?

No that wouldn't be the case. Using your analogy, do streams end at
stream branches? I'm sure this was just a slip of the tongue, so to
speak. Otherwise very good job.

There is one school of thought, known as the "Hennigian" school, that
thinks a species terminates when it speciates, and that it is replaced
by two new species.

This seems a silly thing to say (and Mayr,

in particular, has attacked
Hennig on these grounds) until you consider the question "What does a
species name refer to, phylogenetically speaking?" If you think (as I
do) that a species can continue after it has been divided into another
species, then on phylogenetic grounds the *name* now refers to two
species. Another way to look at it is that the name now denotes two (or
more) species, and so it is ambiguous. It could, in fact, be thought of
as a generic name, rather than a specific name.

If a river divides into two, are both streams the same river? I guess
the Mississipi and the Amazon have many examples of this, and these will
get a local name ("the X branch of the Mississipi"); so the convention
would at least be correct as a way to unambiguously refer to
phylogenetic branches.

However, the species is unchanged in a more direct sense, a non-relative
sense, by being speciated from, or rather we can grant this here. So the
name of the functionally coherent object should refer to that even if it
does split. Now the name is not denoting a phylogenetic segment, but a
system (of gene flow, whatever). So we are now talking about something
of a different kind.

To check to see if your name is mentioned below, do a control - f/
"find" for part of your name.

John Wilkins wrote:

Dana Tweedy <reddfrogg@nospam.net> wrote:

"Dada" <dada_crea@hotmail.com> wrote in message

news:afb28c87.0412300908.a40b189@posting.google.com...

snipping

...

Or examples where there are hundreds of mutations
involved? Some evolutionst named Stebbins has esitamated that it

would

take about 500 point mutations to get new species.

Can you give a citation for that statement? I suspect you are

getting that

number from Lee Spetner, who quote mined Stebbins in a nearly 40

year old

book, in Spetner's "Not By Chance" 1997, Judacia Press. May I

suggest you

see the following website, which takes Spetner to task for his
claims.

http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.htm#Notes

The point being that Stebbins' figure of 500 point mutations does

not apply

to all speciation, and that it ignores the role of chromosonal

change, where

one mutation changes a large number of genes

...

Stebbins' original passage is worth typing out:

<bq>
We must, however, ask the following question: has a scarcity of
suitable mutations ever been a limiting factor in evolution? A few
simple statistics will help us answer this question. While rates of
mutation vary enormously from onegene locus to another, and can also
be greatly influenced by the environment, a rate of one mutation per
gene locus in every 100,000 sex cells is a conservative estimate.
Because all higher organisms contain at least 10,000 gene loci, and
most of them contain many more, we can conservatively say that one
individual out of ten carries a newly mutated gene at one of its
loci. As already pointed out, the great majority of these mutations
are deleterious, but a small proportion of them are beneficial.

What proportion? Of that proportion, what proportion can be passed on
to progeny?

From various experimental studies we
can arrive at a conservative estimate of the proportion of useful
mutations as one in a thousand. On the basis of these estimates we
can calculate that in any species about one in ten thousand
individuals in each generation would carry a new mutation of
potential value in evolution.

Meaning of "evolution"?

Usinf conservative values of 100 million as the total number
of individuals per generation, and 50,000 as the number of
generations in the evolutionary life of the species, we could expect
that at least 500 million USEFUL mutations would occur during this
lifespan. We do not know how many new mutations are needed to
transform one species into another, but five hundred is a reasonable
estimate.

Meaning of "species"?

On this basis, only
one in a million of the useful mutations or one in a billion of all
mutations which occur needs to be established in a species
population in order to provide the genetic basis of observed rates
of evolution. <eq>
Stebbins, G. Ledyard. 1971. Processes of organic evolution. 2d ed,
Concepts of modern biology series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall, pages 30-31.

Now note the following: all the above calculations are done on
*conservative* estimates based on empirical data known *over 30
years ago*. Note also that he makes what can only be a guess at the
"reasonable" number of mutations. This is neither a lower nor an
upper bound. Not that the inescapable conclusion is that only 1/106
useful mutations, or 1/109 of all mutations, on this conservative
estimate are needed to make species.

But something is known now that Stebbins didn't know back then -
genes can be regulatory. That is, one gene can control the
expression of many other genes, as development proceeds. A *single*
regulatory mutation might easily be enough to change the
developmental process such that those that carry it cannot easily
interbreed with those that don't.

What are 3 or more of the more-noteworthy regulatory mutations that
have been observed in experiments?

Gould on paedomorphosis
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.95.970805010133.12918
J-100000%40umbc10.umbc.edu mutation URLs
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-37elv4F5260vbU1%40individ
ual.net

So the 500 figure is not even needed to be that high any more,

although we

still have no clear idea of the number of point mutations needed to
make new species.

Meaning of "species"?

I did once see a paper that suggested the number of
*crucial* point mutations between us and the chimps - 12 million
years of independent evolution from an ancestor 6 million years ago
(two branches, you see) was *50* point mutations.

Reference?

The question is not can evolution cause new species.

Meaning of "evolution" and "species"?
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-386md9F5lsv5cU1%40individ
ual.net

The question is how
anyone could think it did not. [And the *scientific* question is:
how *does* it, in actual cases.]

John Wilkins wrote:

Matt Giwer <jull43@tampabay.rOAr.com> wrote:

John Wilkins wrote:

Matt Giwer <jull43@tampabay.rOAr.com> wrote:

As I reminding people, it was only the Descent of Man
which

upset the

believers. They had no problem with Origin of the Species. I

would not

be surprised if Darwin had a problem producing the second book.

You have it exactly reversed. The Origin caused an enormous
storm of public reaction, particularly among the Church of
England and the evangelical protestant churches. The Descent
came long after

Lyell's and

Huxley's books on the topic, and in fact it caused very little
real storm additional to what had already been seen.

I can only say that is contrary to what I have read on the

subject. I

no longer remember details but there was churchly speculation on a
mechanism other than the six day Genesis account. The
relationships described by Linnaeus was accepted and suggested a
more complex variation of creation.

There had been ideas of continuous creation for some time by 1859.
In 1813, Cuvier published his influential _Revolutions on the
Sruface of the Globe_ in which he claimed that there had to have
been at least (memory tells me) six catastrophes wiping out existing
fauna and after which God created new ones.

views of Cuvier, d'Orbigny, and Agassiz (all creationists)
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.3.96A.980819011221.8126
B-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu

Also, he thought that there were four
_embranchements_, or "phyla" (his term) on the basis of which God
created new species.

Transmutation had been around since Linnaeus' time. He himself
thought that some new species could arise anturally (through
hybridisation). Lamarck's ideas were not rejected because they were
irreligious, as even Cuvier did not think that was a good criticism
of a scientific idea, but because his brand of evolution (a
progressive kind) predicted what the fossil record did not show.
Cuvier destroyed Lamarck's reputation in his funeral oration for
Lamarck (the _Eloge_) by pointing out that there was no clear
evidence of progress as Lamarck [but not Darwin] predicted.

The theory of natural selection makes a so-called "crazy quilt"
prediction about one pattern we should see in the fossil record. That
prediction does not match up with observation. Ref:
1952 Goldschmidt on the theory of NS's "crazy-quilt" prediction;
creationist Behe recommends research on a
intelligent-design-of-common-descent hypothesis
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=b1c67abe.0401271936.9a5dfd2%40po
sting.google.com

The religious reaction to transmutation was more a political
objection. During the 1830s, in times of social unrest in England,
radicals had adopted Lamarckian (actually, Geoffroyan) evolution as
a challenge to the special creationism (that is, creation if species
by direct act, not 6-day creationism, which was dead from the 1820s
or so) favoured by the conservatives. Even so, Richard Owen toyed
with transmutation in the 1850s until he was told to pull his head
in by the Oxford dignitaries of the Church of England. Later he
tried to claim credit for it.

So when Darwin, a highly respected inner member of the scientific
gentlemanly elite, offered a complete theory of transmutation, and
one which was entirely without recourse to divine action

Last line of the sixth edition of _Origin_:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few
forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning
endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are
being evolved."

and hence
providence, in the Origin, the church reaction was swift and sharp,
particularly in the columns of the _Atheneaum_, a literary journal
of the said elite.

But, by the time Darwin published the Descent, in 1871, the debate
was largely over. Within ten years around 9 of ten scientists had
adopted common descent (the branching tree model), transmutation,
and adaptation as a mechanism (but rarely *the* mechanism) of
evolution. And a great many church leaders, such as Baden Powell,
Frederick Temple, and Charles Kingsley, argued for evolution being
consistent with theism.

You can find out more from chapter 6 of _Evolution: The History of
an Idea_, by Peter Bowler, third edition.

Bowler, Peter J. 2003. Evolution: the history of an idea. 3rd,
completely rev. and expanded ed. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

Also see these references:

Bowler, Peter J. 1986. Theories of human evolution: a century of
debate, 1844-1944. Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins University
Press.

Desmond, Adrian J. 1975. The hot-blooded dinosaurs: a revolution in
palaeontology. London: Blond and Briggs.
---. 1984. Archetypes and ancestors: palaeontology in Victorian
London, 1850-1875. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
---. 1989. The politics of evolution: morphology, medicine, and
reform in radical London, Science and its conceptual foundations.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
---. 1994. Huxley: the devil's disciple. London, New York, N.Y. USA:
M. Joseph; Viking Penguin.

Ellegard, Alvar, ed. 1990. Darwin and the general reader: the
reception of Darwin's theory of evolution in the British periodical
press, 1859-1872. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Original
edition, 1958 as volume VIII of the series, Gothenburg studies in
English.

Hull, David L., ed. 1973. Darwin and his critics; the reception of
Darwin's theory of evolution by the scientific community. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press.

On the "evolution" (ahem) of geology from Flood geology

1800s creationists came to accept that the earth is old; Raup
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.SGI.4.10A.B3.10001161617160
.1771572-100000%40umbc9.umbc.edu go away, young-earthism
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=Pine.LNX.4.44L.01.0310190200530.
8725-100000%40linux1.gl.umbc.edu

to more modern
uniformitarian geology, see these:

Cutler, Alan. 2003. The seashell on the mountaintop: A story of
science, sainthood, and the humble genius who discovered a new
history of the earth. London: Heinemann. [On Bishop Steno]

Gillispie, Charles Coulston. 1959. Genesis and geology: a study in
the relations of scientific thought, natural theology, and social
opinion in Great Britain, 1790-1850. New York: Harper Torchbooks /
The Cloister Library. Original edition, 1951.

Gillispie quoted Hutton
http://groups.google.co.in/groups?selm=dford3-325tvsF3i3t01U1%40individ
ual.net


John Wilkins wrote:

allenroyboy <allenroy@peoplepc.com> wrote:

I am a creationists who has been on and off T.O. since the
mid-80s. You can search the archives and find my posts.

I posted these questions to gain a better understanding of
evolutionists who post on T.O. It is possible to envision the
"opposition" according to one's own prejudices or according to
what others ignorantly say and not as they really are.

This is true. It is best to know your enemy and to argue against
their *best* arguments,

Is it possible to "know your enemy&qu